by K. Ryan
"Fine," he pushes out roughly. "Bring Bennett then. But be there on time and wear something presentable."
No need to elaborate when I'm supposed to be there or what I'm supposed to wear. Apparently, I'm on my own for that part.
"Okay, Dad," I can feel my nostrils flaring again at that name. "We'll be there. So...what about lunch?"
He glances at his watch and then places a hand on my shoulder. This is only for show, of course. He'd be loathe to touch me with any sort of affection without an audience around to benefit from it. "I'm sorry, Raena. But something came up this morning and now I need to go meet with some potential investors for the city."
The mayor really is a class act. Manipulating his way into getting exactly what he wanted from me without giving an inch in return. It should be an art form—he could teach a master course on the how to shame and humiliate everyone around you to get what you want.
"Oh, okay," I feign disappointment and dejection like the old pro I am. "I understand. I know you're busy. Maybe next week sometime?"
Something a little like a smile flashes across his face, but it's more likely an ironic one, not a genuine one.
"Come on," he gestures with his head toward the end of the hallway. "I'll walk with you on my way out."
I half-expect him to grab my elbow and pull me out of City Hall, but instead, we walk side by side, the picture of father and daughter having a private moment together. Neither of us say a word and that's the way both of us prefer it. Once we pad down the wide concrete steps leading to the expansive sidewalk on the street, I spot his shiny black Maserati idling next to the curb.
"Do you need me to call you a cab, Raena?"
"No," I smile tightly. "You don't need to do that for me."
And once I figure out why you told me to lie about that night, I'll never need anything from you ever again.
"Alright," he nods as he opens the back door to slide down to the leather waiting for him. "Go back to the store today and help your sister."
One last order before he goes. Par for the course.
The best I can muster is a silent nod and I wave a little when he disappears behind the Maserati's tinted windows. Then I whirl around on my heel and pound out a quick text to Jack:
He just left. I'm heading your way.
"CAN YOU SEE anything?"
"Jesus Christ, keep your head down," Jack snaps at me and tightens his hands around the steering wheel.
I gesture toward the looming warehouse the mayor's car just pulled up in front of. "Don't get your panties in a twist. He might see you too, you know."
He reaches over and nudges my shoulder a little to force me into crouching down in the passenger seat. "I'm pretty sure I know which one of us he'll recognize first."
"Geez," I grumble and slide down a little in the seat just to get him to shut up. "Happy?"
"Ecstatic."
I huff out a laugh and shake my head. "You still haven't answered my question."
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Jack squint through the window, eyes locked on the black Maserati parked nearly a block away. "Nothing yet. He's..."
Jack trails off just as movement from the car catches my attention. The back door closest to the curb opens and the mayor slides out briskly, coolly, always keeping up the pretense even when no one—at least not that he knows of—is watching. I scramble to get my phone out of my purse and snap as many pictures as I can of him entering the building, making sure to get at least part of his face in each one. When he disappears through the front door, which is the only real activity we've seen around the whole building since we've pulled up, my head snaps to face Jack.
"Let's go to the other side of the building. Maybe there's something else over there."
His lips pull apart in a frown. "No way. It's too risky."
The way he just brushes me off without a second thought nearly pushes me over the edge and my shoulders slam into the passenger seat. "How do you know we won't be able to see what's going on in there?"
"I know I don't feel like getting shot today," he shoots me a wary glance. "That's good enough for me."
There's not much room for argument there. Jack's right—it's too risky to get much closer, at least until we have a better idea of who he's meeting in there and why. All I know is that meeting an 'investor' is most likely just a euphemism for something more nefarious. The problem is that now we have to wait here for the mayor to come back out. Here, in Jack's pickup truck. Without Bennett. All by ourselves.
This should be fun.
Almost as if he can read my thoughts, Jack reaches over and blasts some music through the speakers while I flip through the pictures I just took. When I settle on the pictures of the mayor's schedule, my eyes fall right to those empty spaces around the ribbon-cutting on Friday.
"You think you could turn this down a little?"
He scrubs a hand over his face, but obliges. "This," he gestures to the radio, "is Incubus. I know it's not the Backstreet Boys, but it's my truck. My music."
"Benn's the one with the boy band obsession," I mumble.
I will not, however, admit that I have an inappropriate amount of One Direction songs on my iPod. And N'Sync. And Hanson. And fine, Backstreet Boys, too. Way more than a 27-year-old should have, that's for sure, but he'd have to kill me before I ever admitted that out loud.
"Well," he waves it off. "I've heard enough of that shit to last me a lifetime."
Time to change the subject. "So why is Friday off the table?"
His gaze snaps to mine, a tense, stormy grey. "It just is."
"You know, this whole partnership thing doesn't really work if we can't be honest with each other. You know, if we don't trust each other."
Now his lips turn up in a smile, not unlike the one I saw on the mayor when I suggested we get lunch next week. "You sayin' you trust me?"
When he lifts an eyebrow at me, my eyes narrow. I have no interest in playing right into this game, so instead of responding, I just blow out a deep breath instead. To trust him would be like speeding down a pitch black highway with my hands anywhere but on the wheel. I just can't do it.
"The ribbon-cutting is on Friday," I try instead. "That wouldn't be of any interest to you now, would it?"
His eyes never leave the space right above his steering wheel. At least I know I'm on track.
"Didn't the mayor raise taxes on them or something like that? That's how he got his fancy new condo right in Southie?"
Finally, he takes the bait and a hard tick works its way down his jaw. "Yeah. That's about it."
"St. Anthony's owned one of the spaces in that building, too, right? What did they use that for again? Community outreach? Office space for planning all their fundraisers?"
"Why do you say fundraiser like it's a dirty word?" His shoulders are still square with the windshield, but I don't have to see him to know he's narrowed his eyes at me. He's also successfully managed to dodge my original question and maybe that's for the best.
"I don't know all the rules about Catholics and the way they raise money," I shrug. "But some of their methods seem a little suspect."
"Oh really?" He cocks a wary eyebrow at me.
"I don't know...playing bingo—you know, gambling? Raffling off bottles of liquor, that sort of thing. Pretty sure there's something in the Bible about not doing those kinds of things, but who's keeping track, right?"
He bristles next to me, his hands tightening around the steering wheel so tightly they turn pale. I don't know why I'm pushing this because he's definitely not the person to have this kind of conversation with. But we've got nothing but time and I'd rather argue with him than strike up a genuine conversation.
"Of course you'd think that," he grumbles. "Of course all you'd see is the bad."
"Hey. It's not my fault those people are the most hypocritical, judgmental people you'll ever meet. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the Bible says you're supposed to treat others the way you want to be treated and to
judge not lest ye be judged and all that."
His hard eyes shoot to mine. "What are you talkin' about?"
"Oh, come on," I shrug. "None of them practice what they preach. And I don't care what anyone says, but I don't really want to have anything to do with people who would never accept Benn in their church."
"Not everyone feels that way, yah know."
"Yeah, but most of them do. And they thump their out-dated Bibles while they're doing it. What's the point of picking and choosing which part of the Bible you want to follow? Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of it in the first place?"
Jack mulls that over for a few moments before his quiet voice fills the truck. "What do you mean?"
"I don't know," I rack my brain for all the inconsistencies I've accumulated through my little working knowledge of the book. "It just seems like people tend to play fast and loose with it is all. If something in the Bible conveniently backs up whatever they think or whatever they want, then it's this sacred text that must be followed to the letter or else. And when something is inconvenient, they ignore it because it's...inconvenient."
"Like what?"
"Oh, you know," I lift a shoulder. "Isn't there something about how a husband can have sex with his wife whenever he wants? Even if she doesn't want to? And cut off her hand if she tries to help him in a fight?"
"What?" he frowns. "That's not a thing."
"Sure it is," I laugh. "Haven't you read it?"
He huffs out a laugh and shifts his gaze to the window. "Not really. I guess I figured I'd just leave the Bible-thumping to everybody else."
That puts a little kink in my armor—I'd been counting on him to have the whole thing memorized, but like all my interactions with him, few and far between, he just isn't what I expected.
"That's probably a good choice," I laugh to mask my surprise. "I'm pretty sure it says you can't have tattoos. Oh, and women who are on their periods are unclean and must be avoided for seven days or something like that. Let's not forget the laundry list of rules about owning slaves, too. "
"Huh," he twists his hands around the steering wheel. "I guess I never thought about it like that before. So I take it you've read it then?"
"Oh no," I shake my head. "Google is a wonderful thing. You know, I just don't get how people can buy into all of that. Especially when they just pick and choose what they want to believe—let's send all the abortionists and gays to hell, but priests who molest children? They're cool as long as they go to treatment and as long as we sweep it under the rug until someone finds out about it."
He squints at me a little in thought. "No one ever said institutionalized religion was without its faults."
"Might as well be a cult."
Jack's head snaps to me and the nerve I've hit is laid bare. "Watch it, Rae."
"Well, I'm sorry," I throw a hand up in the air. "But you go to a building where you listen to a guy tell you how to live your life and how to get into this mystical heaven that probably doesn't exist, you stand when you're told, sing when you're told, sit when you're told...all in worship of some deity no one has ever seen before. Add that to swapping the kool-aid for body and blood—sounds a little like cult mentality to me."
"Maybe some people find that comforting," he narrows his eyes more and more with every syllable. "Maybe some people like feeling they belong somewhere."
"It's just preying on people's weaknesses," I know I'm skating on some seriously thin ice here, given that he's wearing a cross necklace and has a tattoo of a cross on his forearm, but I'm on a roll now. I can't stop it. "You shouldn't need to sit in a room with a bunch of people and sing and eat and drink someone's body and blood just to feel strong. You should be able to lift yourself up and take care of your problems on your own without having to pray to something that might not even be there. But if you pray to God for help and if you get that help, it's because he wanted it that way. If you don't, you get an automatic out for whatever problems you're having in your life because that just wasn't in his plan. No big deal. No accountability. Just say a few Hail Marys and you're good for awhile."
Jack eyes me carefully like he's weighing his next move in this chess game. "How can something that makes you feel strong be a weakness? If it helps you be healthy and stay that way, then what do you care?"
My lips part to reply, but he doesn't give me a chance to get a word in. I guess that's only fair.
"Talking about religion always ends the same way: someone always leaves feeling either vindicated or persecuted. I don't see the point in debating something you're obviously convinced you're right about. All Christians, sorry, Catholics, are brainwashed idiots who are nothing but hypocrites, right?"
I swallow hard and shift in my seat uncomfortably.
"You're right, but you already knew that. There's shit in the Bible that doesn't make sense and there are people in this world who interpret it however they want, but guess what? Everybody does that. Now, I know it says somewhere in the Bible that Benn and whoever he decides to marry technically can't, but I call bullshit on that. Just like I call bullshit on the hypocrites who ushered those priests in and out of this city to keep what they were doing under wraps. But the fact of the matter is, none of that is enough to change my relationship with God. We're the ones with the problems, not him. Besides, how are you any different than all the other hypocrites? You're sitting here doing the exact same thing they are."
I've got nothing. He's right and he's stepped right over everything I threw at him without a second thought.
"If you strip everything else away," he pushes on, his features tight and fierce in a way I've never seen before. "All you're left with is the fact that people need to believe in something. They need to have faith in something. I like knowing there's someone out there, somewhere, watching my back. I like knowing someone's actually listening when I talk, even if he doesn't talk back, and that he might actually do something about it. And for some people, their lives are shit, you know? They don't have control over anything and it makes them feel better knowing if they don't have control, someone else does who might actually have their best interest in mind. That's not weakness. That's just getting through life."
Huh. I never thought of it that way before.
Coming from him, it makes sense. And now I don't know which one of us will leave this conversation vindicated and which one will leave persecuted. My gaze drifts over to where the Maserati is idling in front of the warehouse and for a fleeting moment, I find myself hoping the door to that warehouse doesn't open any time soon.
"Do you believe in heaven and hell?" I ask him quietly, unable to meet his eyes when I say it.
Jack turns to me with carefully raised eyebrows. "Heaven and hell?"
"Yeah," I shrug. "What do you think?"
"I honestly don't know," Jack tells me with a quick shake of his head. "I guess no one really knows, but I'd rather stack the deck in my favor."
My mom didn't really see the point in that, I guess. The deck was already stacked against her when she opened up that bottle of sleeping pills and decided to swallow every last one. And if everything Jack said is true, then wouldn't God, if he does exist, have her back? Wouldn't he understand what he'd put her through, if he was the one really in control, and accept some of the responsibility too?
Even I know it doesn't really work like that. If God does exist, life is his most precious gift and she squandered it.
I don't want to talk about this anymore and it's fitting that this is also the moment the mayor chooses to materialize from the warehouse's front door. That snaps both of us back into action and I manage to grab some pictures of him leaving before he slides back into his Maserati. Once the car turns down the street, Jack starts his truck back up and makes his way around the other side of the building.
"If you see any cars around the back, don't take a picture of it," he murmurs as we turn the corner. "The last thing we need is anyone seeing you taking pictures. You think you can jot down some license plate numbe
rs?"
I've got a note up on my phone before he even finishes talking. Sure enough, there's a black Cadillac pulling away from the curb as we drive by and my fingers fly across my screen to record the license plate as best as I can.
"You got it?"
"I got it."
That's all he needs to hear and he takes the first turn he can to get us moving away from the warehouse and the people who just left it.
"Who do you think he was meeting with?"
He just lifts a shoulder. "I guess we won't find out until we figure out whose Cadillac that was."
Jack drives me to my apartment, the truck filled with nothing but more Incubus, followed by Soundgarden and Red Hot Chili Peppers and it's just better that way. We might not have found anything useful today, but it was better than nothing. It's not enough to prove the mayor is working with the Gianotti brothers or anyone else like them, but it's a start. If we can just link him to something illegal, something under the table, we just might be able to follow the trail right to some unseen enemy, some back-alley deal that went south. Retaliation is the only thing that makes sense—now all we have to do is find a needle in a haystack.
Before I slide out of Jack's truck, I let myself give him this one last thing: "Look, I don't know what the deal with Friday is, but...just be careful, okay? There's no way Sean is getting out of prison if you do something stupid and can't help us get closer to the Gianottis."
He nods tightly and that's all I get from him.
I watch him pull away from my parking lot and finally let myself into my apartment. Freya is waiting for me at the door and crawls up my shins with her front paws before letting out a loud mew.
"Hi, baby," I purr and swoop her up in my arms. She wants food, not affection, right now, but I just need one moment of soft black fur against my cheek. The soft vibration from her chest soothes and comforts me and my mind flies back to the conversation I'd had with Jack in his truck.
He was completely right. How is me seeking comfort through my cat, the only thing in my life other than Bennett who loves me unconditionally, any different than him praying to a faceless God for solace?
