“Money is not the issue. However, the timeline is. Look at this,” Shawn says, pointing to Allen’s report. “This is the first time I’ve seen Micah’s follow-up timeline next to the one he initially gave to the police. This one is the latest version of what Micah told police, which is sworn. The other one, this one right here, is the timeline he told the police right after the murder. He still has major gaps. Right before the event, right after.”
“Yeah, I wanted to make it clear that we have some work to do. The one he told the police right after the murder was a little more in our favor.”
“In our favor? Interesting. Sounds like you might not be sure of his innocence?” Shawn is half-joking, half-serious.
“Oh, I’m absolutely sure Micah is not the one who killed his husband. I think this Élan company surveilled them both for God knows how long, then found out Lennox knew too much about a financial cover up and hired someone with ties to Lennox, probably the Ghost guy, to go kill him that night. Then the poor bastard Micah got caught up in all of this in some random night of shitty luck.”
“Wrong time, wrong place.”
“Yep.”
“Any word on the missing hard drive from the police evidence room?”
“Still nothing.”
“And any follow-up to what Jenna said about the sinister corporate culture at Élan? People disappearing, shipped off overseas?”
“There are a few people who’ve taken jobs in other countries, sure, but nothing out of the ordinary. Social media feeds of these former employees show everyone happy and thriving. I gotta say though, people who work at Élan are creepy. Tight-lipped. Very ‘Theranos,’ if you get my drift. Anyway, give everything a once-over. I gotta head home to the wife. She’s been baking some sort of paella all day.”
Shawn looks up from his papers and smiles.
“I know, I know. Wish me luck.”
“Good luck, Allen,” Shawn says. “Thanks again. Be safe out there.”
C h a p t e r 2 7
On the lower east side, between the footings of the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, lies a vast expanse of cemented waterfront. Full of bustling life during the day, the boardwalk is the loud foreground to Brooklyn’s DUMBO skyline and its silent reflection on the East River. In the pitch of night, the shadows of the bridges, overpasses and surrounding mid-rises shield much of the area from streetlights, enabling patches of darkness to begin their nightly commerce.
Squeaks and thuds give way to a constant hum as a wheelchair glides from cobblestone to concrete. Spotted hands push the wheels from light into shadow, situating the chair at a perfect 90-degree angle to the glorious nightscape glistening in the water.
He waits.
Up the hill, a young man arises from the F train staircase at Madison and Rutgers. He clutches the right pocket of his tattered skinny-jeans and shakes his head, as if trying to rid himself of a persistent gnat.
“You got this, pussy,” he whispers to himself out loud, the sound almost echoing as the wind spits his words back at him. He scrunches his arms to bring his black overcoat closer to his body to shield himself from the cold, both real and imagined.
He turns right and walks down toward the river, remembering the emailed instructions.
Wheelchair near the waterfront. Left. Say nothing.
He walks forward, leaning into his uncertainty. His head begins to rise, and his confidence begins to build. To his left, he sees the figure in the wheelchair and approaches. He looks around, reaches into his pocket and pulls out his cash.
“Not sure what this will get me.”
“Shhh,” says the figure, taking the boy’s money and pulling out a bag of heroin from his dusky tweed jacket.
The young man glances at the bag, sees a familiar emblem, and speaks again.
“Whoa, you’re the Ghost guy?” he asks, looking at the heroin. “Aw man, some cops were asking about that logo at my NA meeting the other night,” he says, reaching for his fix. “I’ve been dying to try this stuff.”
Without hesitation, Ghost takes the package and places it back in his coat. He reaches into the pocket on the other side of his jacket and pulls out a handkerchief. He unveils a bigger bag of heroin, roughly twice the size as the other.
“For my biggest fan.” Ghost offers the entire contents of his freckled hands in a passive, upward gesture.
“No way, really? Thank you,” says the young man. No ghost sticker, but he doesn’t want to complain. With cupped hands, he envelopes the handkerchief and its contents as if it were precious frankincense, pushes it deep into his pants pocket, and skip-sprints back to the subway.
Ghost closes his eyes and sighs. He turns the wheelchair and begins the journey back to his son. Even with an uphill slope, he muscles his way through the two-mile digression until he turns from Avenue D onto 10th Street, to the end of the roundabout, the center of which is obscured from the streetlight by the foliage surrounding it. He hops out of the wheelchair, kicks it, then throws it to the very back of its usual resting place, next to his rickety old bicycle among a series of useless garbage cans devoured by hungry bushes.
“Shit,” he says, running to the back of his building, which all but disappears among a forest of similar, larger ones.
“Shit shit fuck.”
He opens the heavy metal door at the back entrance of the housing unit and bolts up the four flights of stairs that lead up to his small solemn apartment in Alphabet City. He unlocks the deadbolt and enters. Using only the light from the streetlamp outside trickling in through the tiny window in his living room to guide him, he tiptoes down the narrow hallway to the bedroom door. He opens it. A vertical shaft of light makes its way across the room until it bathes his child in an ambient glow, like a sliver of hope reminding him of the why of it all. The boy awakens and pushes himself up. He says nothing, lies back down, and turns away from the light.
Ghost walks to the bed, pulls back the covers, lies down and wraps himself around his son, one arm tucked underneath the boy’s pillow, the other around his waist. He pulls him close.
“It’s almost over, mon cœur. Daddy almost has enough to take us home.”
He rubs the back of his son’s head. The child lets out an audible sigh.
“Shhh. Sleep.”
C h a p t e r 2 8
“How did you sleep?” Haylee asks, bringing a cup of coffee into the bedroom. Darkness still fills the room, as the sun has just begun to illuminate the Brooklyn sky. Shawn, face down, pulls the Egyptian cotton sheets with his hands and stretches across the king-size bed.
“What time is it?” Shawn grunts. “Better yet, did you remember where you saw that ghost emblem?”
“Geez, baby, you are obsessed.” Haylee moves toward her husband with the coffee, which is her signal for him to sit up and start the day. “No, I haven’t remembered where I saw it, and yes it’s time to get your lazy ass outta bed.”
“It’s quite the logo. Can’t make sense of it, but it’s key to acquitting Micah.” He sits up, takes the coffee and sips it like it’s nectar. “I just know it. Oh, that’s good, thank you, honey.”
“That’s why I can recall seeing it, but I can’t remember where.” Haylee scooches herself halfway into bed, almost causing Shawn to spill his coffee.
She stares out the window that looks onto the tree-lined street. Shawn notices.
“Honey, it’s okay, we’ll find this guy some other way.” Shawn places his hand over hers.
“No, no, it’s not that. I was just dreading seeing this client of mine today. It’s always so heavy.”
“That’s because my baby feels everything.” He pulls his hand away from hers, and in a loving jab he grabs a pillow as if he’s about to hit her with it.
“I hope you spill that coffee,” she says as she climbs off the bed and heads toward the bathroom.
“Baby.” Shawn puts his pillow down and stands up. “What’s up with this client of yours that has you so poopy?”
“Oh God, honey. It’s
awful. He’s been spiritually abused in the worst way.”
“Spiritually abused? Did you make that up?” Shawn places his coffee on the nightstand.
“No, it’s very real, and it’s pretty common. The church can do a number on you, trust me. I have three clients who moved to the city because, I don’t know, they wanted to escape?” She plugs in her flat iron to warm it up.
Shawn moves toward the doorway, his body backlit by the morning sun.
“Escape what, specifically?” He knows she won’t answer.
“Nice try,” she says, opening the floor-to-ceiling glass door of their seamless shower and pressing the electronic control knob to start the water. She speaks louder so Shawn can hear her over the ceiling showerhead pelting rain drops onto the basalt floor. “The confidentiality of my patient-client relationship prohibits me from …”
Her voice fades into the noise of the shower, as Shawn mouths a blah, blah blah at his own reflection in the mirrored medicine cabinet. He places his hands on either side of the sink and pushes his upper body toward the mirror. He nods in approval at his scruff and decides to keep it for the day. He opens the medicine cabinet, pulls out his dental floss, and begins twirling it around his finger.
“But what I can tell you,” Haylee continues, her voice louder to make her point, “is that these abused religious people move to the city to escape the church, but they can’t seem to escape their core beliefs. Like they’re in there. Way in there. Deep. So it’s a constant internal battle. I mean, we didn’t grow up that way, you and me, so we don’t have a frame of reference, nor do I want one. But I hear story after story like this all the time. It’s rampant. The weirdest thing, don’t you think?”
Shawn closes the cabinet, his reflection coming back into view. He looks at himself and squints as if a light had just turned on above him.
✽✽✽
((Honk honk.))
Across the East River, the loud noise causes the young man to stumble into the traffic going the other way. With no memory of how he got there, he now finds himself in the middle of 42nd Street and 8th Avenue, in early morning rush-hour traffic.
((Honk honk honk.))
The cars swerve and brake to miss the man, who is desperate to find a resting place for his flailing limbs. His skin is a pale blue, and his tattered skinny-jeans are the only thing that remain on his cold and shivering body. His bare chest is splattered in crusty puke from the neck down to the waist, and his shoeless feet find it hard to figure out what his brain is telling them.
“You got this, pussy,” he says out loud. “You got this, pussy.”
He zigzags toward the sidewalk next to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, only to be struck by an oncoming cab, catapulting him onto its hood and discarding him onto the pavement below. He lands face up, contorted but moving. A brown soapy mixture foams in his mouth, as if he’d been spit from the sea. He convulses. Yellow pus begins to ooze from his left nostril down the side of his cheek, followed by a cascade of blood that carries the entire mixture to the ground.
✽✽✽
Jenna squeezes the last of her concealer onto her fingertips and spreads it under her eyes. She is at the offices of Cooper Harlow at 7am, as she often is, along with most of her coworkers. She is finishing the last of her makeup when she hears the ding of her text go off. She washes her hands, puckers her lips, and winks at herself in the mirror on the way out.
Morning light floods the offices of One World Trade Center. Jenna’s office is on the 52nd floor of the magnificent steel structure. As she walks to her desk, Hermès Birkin bag in hand, she relishes the breathtaking views of lower Manhattan and beyond.
Back in 2012, Cooper Harlow made national news as being one of the first tenants to sign the lease at One World Trade, which prompted other media companies to relocate downtown. The headline-grabbing move was also the major impetus that prodded Élan CEO James West to try and one-up his competitor by building the even more technologically advanced, more secure building to house Élan. Cooper Harlow has felt the hit, sparking countermeasures to offset their premature real estate move.
Even though she has had to live through the media giant having to sub-lease many of the floors because of their rival Élan’s dominance, Jenna closes her eyes for a second and smiles, grateful she has the opportunity to work here.
She grabs a quick cup at the small coffee station just next to her maple-clad, well-appointed Knowles desk station, which houses her and another assistant.
“Good morning,” she says to Petra, the other “her.” Petra is on the phone and does not acknowledge her.
Jenna tucks her white D&G blouse under her buttocks so it does not wrinkle, reaches into her purse, and pulls out her iPhone as she sits down. The phone’s face recognition doesn’t work fast enough for her, so she enters her password. 1-2-3-4-5-6.
She squints to see who sent the message. It’s James West, the CEO of her former company Élan.
Would you please come see me?
“What on earth?” she says out loud. Seeing a text from James West, her former boss’s boss, sends shivers down her spine. And she cannot recall a time when he was so formal. They used to work down the hall from each other, and when he wanted to speak with her, the usual subject was television shows and other pop culture nonsense. Most of the time he would just yell her name, with a loud “Get in here!”
“Petra, I’ve gotta run out, can you handle this nonsense while I’m gone?” She criss-crosses an open hand in the general area of her desk.
“Sure,” Petra is now off the phone. “You don’t do anything here anyway.”
The two assistants are both European, with similar senses of humor, so the sarcasm is not lost on either.
“Oh Petra, you always know just what to say!” Jenna does her best Karen Walker impersonation.
Jenna grabs her Jimmy Choos and slides them on without buckling the straps as she moves toward the elevator. She begins to call Josh on her way out, all the while dreading the long process of exiting the building through all the extra security protocols that had been put in place because of the murders and investigations.
She trips on the threshold of the elevator, losing one of her shoes as well as her phone.
“Josh, Josh!” she yells at the phone on the floor while she slips her shoe back on. She bends down and buckles the leather straps. She is fully aware of the three people in the elevator with her. “Josh, don’t hang up!”
She composes herself with little to no grace, and grabs the phone, only to find there’s no service.
“There’s no service,” says a short bald man in the elevator.
“No shit,” Jenna says.
She turns to the front of the elevator to await her exit at lobby level. Ray Montagne’s “Trouble” begins playing over the speakers.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Jenna says.
“Somebody has a favorite word,” says the bald guy.
Jenna, never diverting her gaze from her straightforward elevator stance, mumbles, “I’ll show you my favorite word, you sonofa—"
((Ding.))
Jenna exits and hits redial.
“Jenna, are you okay?” Josh says.
“Yes, darling, I’m about to go through security, lemme call you back.”
“You coulda just wait—”
((Click.))
Jenna throws her Birkin onto the conveyer belt, removes her David Yurman earrings and bangle, and throws them in the dog food bowl, as she calls it, along with her phone. She’s done this before. As her accoutrements go through screening, she walks through the metal detector.
((Beep.))
“It’s your shoes, ma’am,” the security guard says. “Those particular Jimmy Choos have metal spikes.”
“Dear God, is every man on this island gay?” She reaches down and begins to undo her heels, the leather straps making a whipping sound from the sheer force of her frustration. She throws them onto the conveyor belt. The guard smiles as he hands her back
her phone and jewelry.
Jenna hits redial while she begins to re-accessorize. Josh answers.
“Jenna, I’m busy. I don’t have time for this.”
“I’m so sorry. Thanks for your patience. You gotta help me.” She halfway throws on her shoes and hobbles toward the door.
She exits the building and turns left toward the west side highway. She bustles through the gathering tourists waiting in line to visit the top of the trade center. As the light above the intersection turns red, she motions for a taxi, which swerves to the right to pick her up. She ducks into the cab and catches her breath.
“Up, up, up, 45th and 12th, quickly please,” Jenna says to the taxi driver. “And don’t take the highway all the way, there’ll be too much traffic during rush hour.”
“Yes, ma’am,” replies the driver.
Jenna turns her attention back to Josh.
“I’m listening,” Josh says in an impatient tone.
“James West just asked to see me, so I’m headed there right now.”
“Wait, what? Why?”
“Hell if I know. But I think it may have something to do with Lennox.”
“Lenny? What do you mean? Is that why you’re calling me?”
“No! I mean yes. I mean kinda. You know how Micah is about to go on trial for killing Lennox?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I told Shawn that I knew certain things about a corporate cover-up, and now I’m scared the corporation knows something.”
“What are they covering up now?”
“Josh, did you hear me? I think they know something. I think they know something.”
“Oh.”
Jenna notices the taxi is not moving.
Naive Page 10
