Go-Between

by Lisa Brackmann

  She doubted Helen believed that. Helen had lived in Humboldt long enough to know the kinds of things that happened when the DEA got involved.

  “Okay, will do. I hope … I hope everything goes okay.”

  “Thanks. It’ll be fine.”

  After she disconnected, she wondered if this was the last time she’d ever talk to Helen. Wondered if she never went back to Arcata how long the restaurant would go on running without her, like a ship on autopilot before it ran out of fuel, or ran onto the rocks.

  “Do you still want to take a look at the San Francisco donors?” Caitlin asked after lunch.

  “Oh, right. Yes. That would be great.”

  With everything that had happened, she’d completely forgotten about her plan to access the donor database, and as Caitlin logged them in on the desktop computer in the home office, explaining how it worked—“Click on this tab to get location. Here’s how to search by donation level. This field is type of donor, meaning person or company or organization”—Michelle quickly realized that it wasn’t as revealing as she’d hoped it would be.

  Sure, there were some names she recognized, some names that she could make a pretty good guess at what they did, what their interests were. A few famous billionaires. Companies, ones that ran detention centers like Prostasis, others with the word “Corrections” in their title, companies that provided “security technology,” others that manufactured guns.

  Law enforcement organizations. Prison guard and police unions. Rehab clinics and drugtesting companies.

  If she took the time to go through the entire database, maybe she’d find out something useful, some shell company of the Boys, of Mexican cartels. But what good would that really do her? She already knew the Boys were involved because Gary had gotten her into this. And with the Boys came drugs. She didn’t need any more proof of that. She’d lived it.

  And all these names? They also just confirmed what she already knew. Most of the people supporting Safer America were invested in the policies it promoted.

  Follow the money.

  There’s no warrant.

  She told herself that as she waited in line at Harris County jail.

  She had to risk it. Had to see Danny one more time before there was a warrant—and regardless of what Derek said, her best guess was that there would be one. She didn’t know if Gary was pulling those strings or not, but it would be just like him, to reduce her options down to the one path he wanted her to follow.

  Soon there would be no going back to Emily.

  She’d taken the logbook and passports with her. There was no place she felt secure leaving them. Not in a safe-deposit box under a name Gary knew. Not in her apartment, with its cheap alarm system and personal safe she’d installed in the closet that would be far too easy to crack or steal.

  Instead, they sat in a locker here in the lobby of Harris County Jail.

  It won’t be for long, she told herself. Just long enough to get through the lines. The line for the deputy. The line for the metal detector. The line for the visitation room.

  Just long enough to find out what Danny wanted her to do with the logbook.

  This would be her last chance before leaving town tomorrow with Caitlin. Maybe her last chance to visit Danny in Harris County period, if Emily had to disappear. Suddenly turning up here as Michelle—too big a risk.

  Her turn at the first Plexiglas window and the deputy behind it. She put the slip of paper with Danny’s information and her Emily driver’s license in the aluminum trough, and waited.

  There’s no warrant.

  The deputy looked at her license first. He was heavyset, with a shaved head and thick neck. He glanced at the license, gave her a long look up and down.

  “Oh, you cut your hair,” he said, with a smile she didn’t like. “Makes you look real different.”

  She nodded and forced a smile back. Maybe he was just trying to be friendly, and anyway, she needed this to go smoothly.

  He faced his computer. Entered in her license number. Waited for the results. She stood there, willing herself to stay calm.

  He put her license aside. She tried to keep her face arranged in the same neutral expression. To not show her relief.

  The deputy picked up the piece of paper with Danny’s information and typed in the SPN number.

  “Not available,” he said after a moment.

  “What?”

  “Not available,” he repeated, impatience edging his voice.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I don’t understand.” Stay calm, she told herself. Swallow the panic that rose in her throat. “Not available … can you tell me why?”

  He shrugged. “No information. Takes the system a day or two to update sometimes. Check back then.”

  “But …”

  He pushed her license plate into the trough. She’d been dismissed.

  Smile, she told herself. You need his help. “It’s just that this is all pretty new to me. Can you tell me what that generally means?”

  “Could be sick and in the clinic. Most likely pulling chain.”

  “Pulling chain?”

  “Transferred.” The look he gave her now, the curled-lip smirk, there was no mistaking the contempt. “Like I said, check back in thirty-six to forty-eight hours.”

  She nodded and picked up her license, her hand trembling. “Thank you,” she said, gripping the license, feeling its plastic edges cutting into her fingers, into the meat of her thumb. She turned to go.

  “You look better with the hair long,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “You’re in Houston?”

  “Of course I’m in Houston, isn’t that obvious?”

  “Okay, Emily, try to calm down.”

  “Calm down? Did you hear anything I just said? They transferred him someplace, or he’s sick or hurt and in the clinic, and they wouldn’t tell me a fucking thing!”

  Michelle had waited until she got back to her apartment before calling Derek. Now she paced around the tiny living room, which felt far too small to contain her rage.

  “Okay. Look, I understand you’re upset. It’s probably some kind of … administrative error, or computer glitch. It happens. Have you talked to Marisol?”

  “No, because as we’ve determined, I’m in Houston, and it’s almost 9 p.m. here.”

  “I’ll call her. We’ll deal with this first thing in the morning, I promise.”

  “Okay.” She felt suddenly exhausted, like someone had pulled a plug and all her energy had drained away, leaving a wash of toxic chemicals behind. Her shoulders ached. She flopped down on the couch, the stiff fabric that reminded her of indoor/outdoor carpeting making her bare calves itch.

  “Emily, so.” Derek sounded a little tentative. He was probably worried about setting her off again. She’d never lost it with Derek before. Not like this. “Since you’re in Houston … we should think about setting up that meeting with the DEA. The sooner the better. Marisol can act as your counsel.”

  “I’m not staying in Houston.”

  “How long will you be there?”

  “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m … I’m going to be in transit for a few days. I’ll call you from the road.”

  “Emily, you need to listen to me. Seriously. We need to have this meeting. If you keep stalling, you’re just giving them an incentive to look at you more closely. You don’t want that. I don’t want that. Because it starts making Jeff’s case look bigger than it is, and there’s nothing the feds love more than turning a simple case into a multi-defendant conspiracy. One where they can add charges and years onto a potential sentence. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  She wanted to cry. Or laugh. A conspiracy? she wanted to say. You have no fucking idea what kind of conspiracy this is. Or maybe you do, and you’re just playing your part, in case someone is listening.

  “I do understand,” she said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
<
br />   Tomorrow she’d be in San Francisco, where Derek’s office was. They had the Safer America event on Thursday and a free day scheduled on Friday. If she had to, maybe she could slip away from Caitlin for a while, and meet with the DEA there.

  “We think it’s a transfer,” Marisol said.

  “You think?”

  “We were able to determine that it’s nothing medical, he’s not in the clinic, he’s not in Ad-Seg, and they moved over a hundred prisoners yesterday because of overcrowding, so don’t worry, he’s fine. We just don’t know exactly where he is yet.”

  It was just after 10 a.m., and Michelle was getting ready to leave her apartment and drive to Caitlin’s house to meet the town car that would take them to the airport.

  “I don’t understand,” Michelle said. “How can you not know? How is it they don’t keep better track of these things? It’s crazy!”

  “I know. You’d think it would all be computerized, like they’d have barcodes or something, but there’s still an awful lot of stuff that gets entered by hand, and they don’t make it a priority for us to know. Believe me, you’d be surprised at some of the stuff that happens.”

  “Not really,” Michelle said.

  After she hung up, she did one last final bit of packing. She opened the safe in the closet and got out the cash she’d stashed in it, and then she retrieved the rest of the cash that she’d kept in the suitcase there.

  She decided to put most of it in her checked luggage. If she got ripped off, she got ripped off, but her checked luggage was less likely to get searched.

  The logbook and the passports she’d keep close.

  Too bad about the .38 she’d bought from the guy in the trailer park with the shih tzu. Declaring she had that in her checked luggage as required seemed like a sure way to get flagged for a secondary search, and she needed to keep the money safe.

  She’d need the money if she had to run.

  “What a beautiful hotel!”

  “Glad you like it,” Michelle said.

  Lotus was a new boutique hotel with a vague Asian theme: black and red lacquer accents, mandala paintings and a giant Buddha at the back of a fountain with black stones and stylized lotus blossoms carved from marble in the lobby. Michelle had picked it because of the location and reviews, which noted that the on-site sushi restaurant, spa and fitness center were all excellent. Seeing it now in person, Michelle worried that it wasn’t really Caitlin’s kind of place—the crowd in the lobby looked to be predominately Tshirted techies and soul-patched hipsters—but Caitlin’s smile seemed genuine.

  She looked good, Michelle thought. A little blush to her cheeks, and she looked steadier, somehow, not so fragile. She hadn’t had too much to drink on the plane, and she seemed more focused than when they’d traveled together to Los Angeles. Maybe she hadn’t taken the tranquilizers or anti-anxiety meds or whatever was she was on.

  “Ma’am? Take your bag?”

  Michelle flinched and shook her head. The bellhop already had Caitlin’s massive suitcase and her own smaller wheeled bag on the luggage cart. She’d carried on Danny’s ruck and had it slung over one shoulder now. Inside were the logbook and passports and several bundles of cash.

  No one was carrying this bag but her.

  “You look like you’re about to go camping, or invade a small foreign country,” Caitlin had said as they’d boarded the plane.

  “Hah, well, I thought if you felt like it, maybe we could go hiking in the Muir Woods. And … it’s a good bag for that.”

  It was a good bag if she decided to run.

  Face it, she thought now. At some point you’ll have to.

  What were the odds that she’d be able to resume her life as Emily, or continue on as Michelle?

  The odds of successfully running weren’t great either. She’d have to time it just right.

  But with Danny missing … the logbook …

  What made sense?

  Caitlin perused a welcome brochure that came with their keycards, as they followed the bellhop to the elevator.

  “Did you know this place showcases premium sake and soju, as well as locally produced spirits, premium tequila and small-batch mescals, and that their artisan cocktails are handcrafted to reflect seasonality and creativity?”

  “I … did not.”

  “What the hell is soju, anyway?” Caitlin asked.

  “It’s like Korean vodka, except it doesn’t taste that strong,” the bellhop said. “Stuff’ll really kick your butt if you’re not careful.”

  “Well, we’ll have to try some,” Caitlin said.

  “We also have shochu.”

  “Shochu?”

  “That’s the Japanese kind.”

  Caitlin laughed. “You know, I think I’m really going to enjoy it here.”

  “We hope so, ma’am.”

  Michelle had booked the two of them in adjoining rooms. After she’d tipped the bellhop, had put her suitcase on the luggage rack and her ruck in the closet—should she risk the hotel safe for the logbook and passports?—she knocked on Caitlin’s door.

  “I just wanted to check and see what you wanted to do for the rest of the day and tomorrow before the event. Do you want me to book the spa, or make any dinner reservations, or … ?”

  “Oh.” Caitlin looked a little flustered. She’d already kicked her shoes off, and the contents of her big suitcase were spread across one of the queen-sized beds in her suite. Bad idea, Michelle thought. Never put your suitcase on the bed, in case of bedbugs. But Caitlin probably had never had to worry about bedbugs.

  “Well, actually, Troy’s coming up from Los Angeles tonight.” Caitlin’s cheeks flushed. “We’re going to talk about potential collaborative projects.”

  Shit, Michelle thought. Caitlin and Troy collaborating—would Gary consider that “going off the reservation”?

  “Oh. Well, that’s … great. Will you want me to take notes?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. This is just spitballing.”

  Caitlin stared out the balcony window, at a view of San Francisco rooftops and hills bathed in late afternoon light. “But I’m hoping we come up with something … I don’t know. Something different. Something that’s gonna change this conversation we’ve been having.” She seemed to shake herself. “Now I gotta figure out what to wear.” She gestured at the pile of clothes on the bed, the muted creams and beiges and tans. “I’m just so tired of all this stuff.”

  “Maybe we could do some shopping tomorrow or Friday.”

  “Let’s do that.”

  “Do you want me to find you someplace for dinner?”

  “That would be wonderful, hon. Though I guess we could eat here.” Caitlin grinned. “Maybe try some of that soju.”

  “Okay.” Michelle hesitated by the door. “Just let me know.”

  “You know what, don’t worry about it,” Caitlin said suddenly. “Why don’t you just go relax this evening? Treat yourself to something nice. You look like you could use it.”

  “Thanks. I’ll do that.”

  Caitlin and Troy collaborating. Did she have to tell Gary?

  If she didn’t tell him now … how long would it take him to find out?

  Best-case scenario, she’d be gone by the time he did.

  Worst case …

  Well, it depends on what they come up with, she told herself. If their projects fit within Safer America’s mandate, then that wouldn’t be a problem, would it?

  Figure the odds of that, though. She already knew what Troy’s views were on the propositions Safer America had come to California to lobby against.

  But telling Gary? She didn’t know what he’d do if he decided that Caitlin was taking Safer America in a direction he didn’t like. But she did know that he had people killed.

  Not telling Gary carried its own set of risks. To her. To Danny.

  Fucking Gary. No matter what she did, someone was likely to lose.

  Right now, it’s just a dinner, she told herself. I’ll wait and see what h
appens. Then I’ll decide.

  Like the rest of the hotel, her room was decorated with Asian accents. It had a comfortable bed, a view of the city, a great minibar, a big TV and a shower/tub with massage jets. Under other circumstances, she’d really enjoy spending a few nights here.

  She powered up her Emily phone and called Marisol Acosta. It was after 6 p.m. in Houston, but Marisol had promised her she’d be there for her call.

  “We found him. He’s in a facility just outside of San Angelo.”

  “Okay,” Michelle said. “Isn’t that … isn’t that pretty far from Houston?” Her Texas geography wasn’t all that good, but she was pretty sure San Angelo was in west Texas somewhere.

  “Yeah. It is. A six and a half hour drive.”

  The way Marisol said that, she sounded almost angry.

  “I don’t understand,” Michelle said. “Jeff … he hasn’t even had a trial. Why would he get transferred to a jail that’s hours away from the court that’s handling his case?”

  “That’s a very good question. It’s one we’re asking right now. We’re going under the assumption that it’s a mistake.”

  “A mistake.”

  “It’s not unheard of, when a lot of prisoners get transferred at once. Hopefully we can get it fixed quickly. Because they’re making our access to Jeff more difficult during a time that we need to be working on his case. And I’d hate to think they were doing that on purpose.”

  “That would be shocking,” Michelle said. “What’s the name of the jail?”

  “Weaver Detention Facility, but look, there’s no need for you to go rushing out there. By the time he’s allowed to have visitors, hopefully he’ll be on his way back to Harris County.”

  “I was just curious,” Michelle said. “Hopefully you’re right.”

  As soon as she disconnected, she got out her iPad, logged onto the hotel’s internet, sat down in the club chair by the window balcony, booted up her VPN and Googled Weaver Detention Facility.

  A couple of official-looking sites connected to various government agencies. A Wikipedia entry. A prisoner advocacy group promising information and support. Some news articles.