She returns, a pair of scissors in hand. I bring up my knees protectively as she snips the scissors open and closed, the sharp sound making my heart pound. But she merely goes to the headboard and saws through the rope at my wrists. “I lied about yachting,” she says. “I just made up how to tie these knots, and given how much you pulled at them, I think they’re probably too tight for me to untie now.”
My muscles go slack as she frees both hands, then tosses aside the rope and grabs some tissues from the nightstand to tidy me up before joining me on the bed.
“Was that okay?” she asks eventually. I feel like I just survived a near-death experience, like a guy whose parachute opened fifty feet from the ground but who spent the previous twenty thousand feet screaming at the top of his lungs, preparing to die.
“Susan,” I mumble, turning to bury my face in her neck. “You’re a sadist.”
And it’s only when she snuggles into the crook of my arm and I feel the weight of her head on my shoulder that I realize that it’s the only thing weighing on me. For the first time in a long time, I feel like everything is going to be okay.
Chapter Fifteen
All too soon, it’s time for Susan’s fundraiser. In order to get changed and navigate rush-hour traffic into Chicago, I’m only working a half day. To compensate for the lost time, I head in to work early, arriving shortly before eight. I like the office this way, dark and quiet, no one around as I flip on lights and take a second to appreciate things. My life is in a good place, finally. I’m fighting, I’m fucking, I’m fundraising. If it starts with F, I probably like it.
I bite into an apple and make my way to my office, fiddling with my phone as I wait for the computer to power up. Camden’s awake at this time of day, the white noise of cars, buses and pedestrians filling the air, but what we don’t normally hear is development. Construction. Wrecking balls.
That’s what I see first. From the corner of my eye, something large swoops down, swinging right toward the Green Space. I turn in slow motion, the apple slipping from my fingers, and stare in shock at the destruction that sits where the Green Space used to stand. Because there’s no more green. No plants, no grass—no building. It’s a gaping hole in the concrete sea, a sickening void where we’d been building up hope.
I run out of the office and jump in my car, burning rubber the whole way over. I can’t even get on the block because of the construction vehicles. There are big orange caution signs announcing the detour, unnecessary flashing lights informing passerby that there’s a demolition in progress. I park and hurry down the road, covering my mouth with my sleeve to avoid breathing in the dust and chemicals hovering in the air. The construction workers mostly ignore me as they prepare for the next phase of the project, dump trucks at the ready, waiting to cart away debris.
I stand on the opposite sidewalk and stare at the ruins of the Green Space, piles of bricks and dirt, the occasional flicker of color where a dying plant pokes out of the rubble. I can barely breathe. I’m doing well just to remain standing. I feel like I did when I got that knock on my door in college and learned everything I loved was gone. No warning. No time to prepare. Just...over.
“Hey. Buddy. Can we help you?”
It takes a second for the words to penetrate, and when I turn the big construction foreman is approaching, phone pressed to his ear. He hangs up when he nears and I see a couple of other guys lingering behind, just in case.
“What...” I shake my head to clear the ringing in my ears. “What’s going on here?”
“What does it look like?” He retrieves a folded sheaf of papers from the back pocket of his jeans and waves them in front of me as though I’ll somehow be able to read the pint-sized writing. “Demo orders. Condemned building.”
“It’s my building.”
“It’s your building?” He laughs without humor. “Then I guess you already know, huh?”
“No.” I can’t stop staring at the wreckage. “There’s some sort of mistake.”
He sighs and looks me over. The suit and tie do their job and convince him that maybe I’m not just some nutjob wandering by to interrupt his day. He unfolds the paper and skims, then turns the top page over so I can see. It’s a permit for a commercial demolition. It’s got this address, 4411 Arthur Street. And just in case it wasn’t perfectly, horrifyingly clear, next to the words “Work Description” it reads “Remove office building.” Which they have done.
“Don’t you...Don’t you have to notify people?” I hear myself ask. “Shouldn’t there be signs? Some sort of warning?”
“Yes and yes,” he says, nodding at the electrical poles and fence that line the road in front of the Green Space. Sure enough, there are little white papers flapping in the breeze, papers that most definitely weren’t there yesterday or any of the days before. I want to kill this guy. I want to blame someone for whatever the fuck just happened here, and he’s the closest person. But I know he’s not the problem. Whatever’s going on, he’s just a guy showing up to do his job, paperwork in order.
“Why are they doing this?”
He scratches his ass. “Unofficially, the city wants the land to use as a dumping ground. The soil’s fucked from the tannery, so they figure why not make it worse. But you didn’t hear that from me.”
“What do I...Who...”
He takes pity on me and peels off the yellow carbon copy of one of the bottom papers. “Details are on here. You want to question the work order, contact information’s all there.”
“This is my building,” I say. “I bought it.”
He jabs a thick finger at a spot near the bottom of the paper. It was filled in with pen, the scrawl barely legible. “Are you Frisco Bay Properties Inc.?”
I frown. “No.”
“Then you’re not the owner, my friend. Now, you’ve gotta clear out.”
I reach for my phone to take a picture of the destruction, but my pocket is empty. I want to call somebody, call Susan, call Jade, call whatever authorities deal with this kind of...issue, but I’m not sure what anyone could do at this point. I don’t understand how this could happen, only that it did.
I walk toward Titan’s, where I know Oreo will let me use his phone. Except when I get there the place is still locked up. It’s not even nine o’clock.
“Fuck!” I shout, slamming my fist into the metal door, enjoying the shuddering pain, the way I feel something more than shocked and lost and embarrassingly helpless. Because I don’t know what to do right now. I don’t know how an hour ago I thought I had everything and now I have a pile of bricks that may or may not even belong to me. Because if they don’t...Where the hell is my money?
I turn to jog back to my SUV just as a rusted old car rolls past, driver’s window down. Marco’s grinning he slows. “You want your typed invoice, motherfucker?” he calls, flipping up his middle finger. “Here it is!” He hits the gas and roars away, his laughter wafting back to haunt me.
A second screech of tires has me turning to see Oreo’s battered pickup squeal into the lot. He parks and jumps out. “I just heard,” he says as he nears. “What the hell’s going on?”
I can’t decide where to start. “I don’t know if I own the property,” I say, staring at the paper in my hand. “They said something named Frisco Bay Properties owns it and okayed the demolition.”
“No.” Oreo shakes his head firmly. “No way. That’s not possible. I heard you talking to Francisco. I know you paid for it.”
We freeze at the same time, hearing the words out loud. Francisco. San Francisco. Frisco Bay. Oh fuck.
“I have to use your phone,” I say. “I don’t know where I left mine.”
“Sure,” Oreo says, unlocking the door. “Use whatever you want. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“Marco drove past,” I add, following him inside the dank, smelly gym
. “He seemed pretty happy.”
“Marco’s Francisco’s second cousin or something,” Oreo tells me. “You think he knew about this? Had something to do with it? The fire and all the rest?”
I stop midstride. “What?”
“What what?”
“They know each other?”
“Everybody here knows each other.”
“You think it was some kind of set up? Fake-sell me the building, get me to hire Marco and pay him for his half-assed work?”
“What’s the point?”
“The point is, he takes my money for the building, then sells the land to the city and gets paid twice.”
“Didn’t you sign a contract?”
“Of course we did. It’s at home. I had a fucking lawyer look at it.”
“Any chance that lawyer was related to Francisco?”
I shake my head. “Definitely not. I used someone in the city. No way he could predict that.” The chill of shock is wearing off, turning into a simmering rage I have to work to keep under control. No point flipping out until I talk to Francisco. And now that I’m in Oreo’s office, staring at his phone, I realize I can’t talk to Francisco, because I don’t have my phone, and that’s where his number is.
I turn over the paper in my hand and squint at it. There’s no phone number, but I recognize the address scrawled beneath Frisco Bay Properties. It’s about twelve blocks from here, a shitty place in an even shittier part of town. “I’ve gotta go,” I tell Oreo.
“What about the phone call?”
I can’t stomach the thought of walking past the destroyed Green Space to get my car, so I run the twelve blocks, undoing my tie as I go. I take off my jacket around block five, and have sweated through my shirt by block ten. The farther I run the angrier I get, the more my grief morphs into fury, the way it had so long ago. But I’m not a twenty-one-year-old kid looking to drown his sorrows in a bottle of Jack. Those days are behind me. What’s not behind me is the burning need to fight someone, to use my fists to express my feelings when words are inadequate. And though I’ve worked long and hard to control that need, right now I feel no such urge. Whatever happens here, happens. Beginning, middle, end of story.
I slow as I reach Francisco’s house, a rundown single story bungalow painted pale yellow. The lot next door has been razed, just a large patch of dirt with a few scraggly dandelions popping up. The front porch is listing and the screen door is propped open with a rock, the sickly sweet smell of marijuana filtering out alongside canned applause from a game show playing on an unseen television.
There are two cars in the narrow driveway, Marco’s and one I don’t recognize. I stalk to the porch and stop at the base of the steps, yelling through the doorway. “Francisco!”
A pause. The television shuts off, then Francisco materializes from the gloom. He’s wearing a red T-shirt and black boxer briefs, his eyes red-rimmed. The first time we met I thought he looked like a toad, with bulging dark eyes and a protruding stomach, skinny arms and legs. Then he’d represented an opportunity; now he’s an obstacle. Now he’s the guy who may have fucked up something very important to me.
“Oz,” he says, his grin showing grimy yellow teeth. “Surprise, surprise.”
I hold up the paper. “What’s going on?”
“What’s going on with what?” He’s trying not to laugh. I’m trying to remind myself to ask questions first, throw punches later, but this guy is making it hard. This is some big joke to him. My life’s in tatters, and he’s smirking. The last time someone ruined my life he died before I could get to him.
“You sold me that property, but this paper says it still belongs to you.”
“Does it?” He doesn’t even glance at the paper. He already knows what I’m talking about.
“What the fuck is going on?”
“I don’t know, pal. You seem to think you own something that belongs to me.”
“I paid you. We have a contract.”
“Nah,” he says, scratching his stomach. “I think you misunderstood. You paid me half, and then we agreed that you’d pay the second half after thirty days. You didn’t pay, so the building’s still mine. And so is your money.”
I cannot believe what I’m hearing. Is he trying to convince me this is true? Does he think I’m recording the conversation? “No,” I say firmly, still trying to be civil though I know it’s a wasted effort. “You’re remembering incorrectly, Francisco. I bought that building outright. I put a lot of time and money into it, and you’re going to need to reimburse me for my trouble.”
Francisco busts out laughing. “Reimburse you? Can you hear this guy?” He glances over his shoulder and Marco slinks out of the darkness to stand next to him.
“I hear him,” Marco sneers. “I heard him loud and clear the other day, too. When he threatened me.”
“Uh-oh,” Francisco says, a mocking note in his voice. “Did you threaten my cousin?”
“You don’t want to make me do this,” I say, even as my fists curl in anticipation. Because I want to do this. I want to do to them what they did to the Green Space. I want to walk out of here knowing they’ll never get up again, that they’re just two crumpled bags of bones and blood, wasting less space than they did when they were standing. Francisco’s fat and stoned, Marco’s skinny and stoned. Neither one of them are any match when I step onto the porch.
Francisco arches a brow in challenge, his smug expression replaced by shock when I hit him. My fist sinks into his bloated stomach and he gags, eyes bulging even more than normal. I hit him again, this time in the face, hearing the satisfying splinter of bone on bone.
Marco’s standing there stunned when I land the first blow, and he slumps to his knees muttering something through bloodied lips.
I hear the footsteps when it’s too late. The house was dark and quiet, but the three guys creeping up the hall to check on their friends were even quieter. When they jump me, I finally get the fight I’ve been missing. Teeth and ribs crack, blood flows, bones break. It hurts and it’s glorious and I never want to stop.
* * *
Wyatt’s the one who finds me. I’m sitting on the curb, my shirt bloodied, a hole ripped in my pants, my suit jacket gone, probably for good. One eye is swollen most of the way shut and my lower lip is so busted I can barely grimace when I watch him cruise down the street in his creepy white van. I stand painfully slowly, but that has more to do with the overwhelming sense of failure that’s crushing me than any of my injuries.
“What the hell?” he asks, jumping out and rounding the van. He braces a hand on the hood as though he’s the one who needs support right now. For a long moment we just stare at each other. Then he reaches for his phone.
“Don’t,” I say, cracking open the fresh scab at the corner of my mouth and tasting blood. “Don’t call her.” It says a lot about Camden that I’m more worried about Wyatt calling Jade than the police.
His mouth opens but nothing comes out. Then he puts the phone in his pocket and opens the door. “You need help getting in?”
Yes. “No,” I lie. I could cry, it hurts so much to boost myself into the passenger seat, but I manage with only a muffled string of curses I’ll probably go to hell for.
“You gotta see a doctor,” Wyatt says when he climbs in the driver’s seat. “I’ll take you to the hospital.”
I know I’m not in the best frame of mind right now, but this isn’t exactly my first time being beaten up. Everything hurts, but until I’m pissing blood, I’m not worried. What I am is...sad. I’m so fucking sad I can barely feel anything else. Still I muster up the brain power to say, “No hospitals. No doctors. Just take me home.”
“Where’s your truck?”
I take a second to think about it. “On Grady,” I say. “Near Arthur. Near the Green—near the...place.”
W
yatt’s quiet for a minute. “What the hell happened?” he asks eventually, navigating the way through Camden’s side streets, eerily empty for a summer day.
I rasp out an achy laugh. “Which part?”
“The Green Space.”
I touch my tongue to my lip, the metallic tang of blood warm and familiar. Yeah, I’ll feel it tomorrow—and the next day, and the day after that—but nothing’s going to take away the satisfaction I felt when my fist connected with those smug faces, the give of soft flesh, the grind of bone. Just remembering it makes my adrenaline surge, like a junkie who’s been clean for years getting a taste of what he gave up. Wondering why anyone would ever quit.
And then I realize Wyatt’s taking the long way around so we steer entirely clear of Arthur Street and the debris of the Green Space, and I know why people run away. Jade’s brothers may be assholes who abandoned their sister, but maybe they know there’s nothing worth sticking around for, not even family. Hell—who am I to judge? I left my mother and sisters here to fend for themselves, and look what happened. I put on a suit and tie every morning, I sign paychecks and fork over money to the bank every month to pay my mortgage, but I’m no better than anybody else. I’m a product of this piece-of-shit town, the only difference is I wasted time trying to pretend otherwise.
“Let me call Susan,” Wyatt says when he parks in my driveway and I don’t get out. All I can do is stare at my tidy little house and know it’s dark and empty and that’s my future. You can take the kid out of Camden, but not for long. The guy who thought he could buy a building and grow a garden and fall in love with a doctor—he’s sitting in the front seat of a rusted out van, struggling to breathe, to see, to move. He can barely uncurl his bloodied fingers long enough to open the door, to step outside into the stifling air, shuffling one foot in front of the other until he’s at the front stoop and realizing he doesn’t have his keys.
I’d laugh if I didn’t feel like my chest would explode with the effort.
The Good Fight (Time Served Book 3) Page 26
