The Spellman Files

by Lisa Lutz

  Rae followed every instruction to a T her first day on the job. I usually took point, instructing Rae by example on the general rules of surveillance. You could provide a manual on how to perform an effective surveillance, but those most suited for it follow their instincts. It didn’t surprise anyone that Rae was a natural. I suppose we all expected it, just not to the level at which she adapted to the work.

  I closed my distance from Youngstrom when the noon lunch traffic cut down on visibility. I was within ten feet of my subject when he made an unexpected one-eighty and shot back down the sidewalk in my direction. He passed me, brushing against my shoulder and offering a quiet “Excuse me.” I was made and could no longer take point. Rae was about ten yards behind me and my mother and father were a short distance behind her. Rae saw Youngstrom turn back before my parents did. She quickly ducked under some scaffolding hidden from his view. My parents, focused on their six-year-old daughter, didn’t notice the subject until he was practically standing right in front of them. Rae realized that she was the logical person to take point and made the offer into the radio.

  “Can I go?” Rae pleaded, watching Youngstrom slowly fade out of view.

  I could hear my mother sigh into the radio before she replied. “Yes,” she said hesitantly, and Rae took off.

  Rae ran down the street to catch up to the brisk walk of a man over two feet taller than she. When the subject turned left, heading west on Montgomery, my mother lost sight of Rae and I could hear the panic in her voice when she called to her through the radio.

  “Rae, where are you?”

  “I’m waiting for the light to turn green,” Rae replied.

  “Can you see the subject?” I asked, knowing that Rae was safe.

  “He’s going into a building,” she said.

  “Rae, don’t cross the street. Wait until Daddy and I catch up,” my mother said.

  “But he’s getting away.”

  “Stay put,” my father said more forcefully.

  “What does the building look like?” I asked.

  “It’s big with lots of windows.”

  “Can you see an address, Rae?” I asked, then rephrased the question. “Numbers, Rae. Do you see any numbers?”

  “I’m not close enough.”

  “Don’t even think of moving,” my mother reiterated.

  “There’s a sign. It’s blue,” said Rae.

  “What does it say?” I asked.

  “M-O-M-A,” Rae slowly spelled. This was undoubtedly an unnatural situation: My little sister was learning how to perform a surveillance before she could even read.

  “Rae, Mommy’s going to pick you up at the corner. Don’t move. Izzy, I’ll meet you at the entrance to MOMA,” said my father. And then it occurred to me that, as a family, this was the first time we had gone to a museum together.

  After that day, it was not unusual to find Rae on a surveillance job that didn’t interfere with school or bedtime.

  Rae, Age 8

  There was a sixteen-year age difference between Rae and David. He was out of the house by the time she was two, and while he lived nearby, he was not a consistent presence like I was. He distinguished himself by buying her the best birthday and Christmas gifts and by being the only member of the family who didn’t boss her around. On one of his rare dinner appearances, Rae asked David the question that had always been on her mind.

  “David, why don’t you work for Mommy and Daddy?”

  “Because I wanted to do something else with my life.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I find the law interesting.”

  “Is the law fun?”

  “I’m not sure I’d use the word ‘fun.’ But it’s compelling.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather do something that is fun than not fun?”

  David, unable to honestly explain to Rae why he left the family business without offending my parents, resorted to a different tack. “Rae, do you have any idea how much money I make?”

  “No,” Rae replied disinterestedly.

  “I charge three hundred dollars an hour.”

  Rae appeared confused and asked what she believed was the next obvious question. “Who would pay that?”

  “Lots of people.”

  “Who?” Rae pushed, probably thinking she could tap the same spout.

  “That’s confidential,” replied David.

  Rae mulled this new information over in her head and continued on suspiciously. “What exactly do you do?”

  David contemplated how to answer that question. “I…negotiate.” When the confusion did not lift from Rae’s face, David asked, “Do you know what ‘negotiating’ is?”

  Rae responded with a blank stare.

  “Negotiating is something you do on a daily basis. Some negotiations are implied, like when you go to the store and give the clerk a dollar for a candy bar; both parties are essentially agreeing on the exchange. You always have the option of saying to the clerk, ‘I’ll give you fifty cents for this one-dollar candy bar,’ and he can say yes or no. That’s negotiating. It’s the process of coming up with a solution that different parties can agree upon. Does that make sense?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Do you want to negotiate something right now?”

  “Okay.”

  David considered a negotiable topic. “Let’s see,” he said. “I would like you to get a haircut.”

  Since Rae’s last professional haircut had occurred well over a year ago, this was not the first time such a request had been made. And yet each appeal was met with the same unsatisfying response: Rae would administer her own haircut. The resulting lopsided ends and jagged bangs were certainly an eyesore, but to the dandy in my brother, Rae’s hair was truly offensive.

  My sister, tired of the repeated haircut harassment, snapped back, “I. Don’t. Need. A. Haircut.”

  “I’ll give you a dollar if you get one.”

  “I’ll give you a dollar to shut up about it.”

  “Five dollars.”

  “No.”

  “Ten.”

  “No.”

  “David, I’m not sure this is a good idea,” my mother interjected.

  But this was David’s job and he couldn’t stop. “Fifteen dollars.”

  This time there was a brief pause before Rae said, “No.”

  David, sensing weakness, went in for the kill. “Twenty dollars. You don’t need to cut it all off. Just trim the split ends.”

  Rae, showing an aptitude for bartering beyond her years, asked, “Who pays for the haircut? That’s at least fifteen dollars.”

  David turned to my mother. “Mom?”

  “This is your negotiation,” said my mother.

  David turned back to Rae, ready for the final settlement.

  “Twenty dollars to you. Fifteen for the haircut. Do we have a deal?” David asked, reaching his hand across the table.

  Rae turned to me for a nod of approval before the handshake.

  “You’re forgetting about the tip, Rae.”

  Rae pulled her hand away and turned to me. “Tip?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “You have to tip the hairstylist.”

  “Oh. What about the tip?” Rae said to David.

  That is when David shot me an annoyed look and shifted from instructive older brother to ruthless corporate lawyer. “Forty dollars total. Take it now or the offer is off the table.”

  Rae turned to me again and I knew David’s patience had come to an end. “Take it, Rae. He’s ready to walk.”

  Rae held out her hand and they shook on the deal. She turned out her palm and waited for the money. As David paid Rae her forty-dollar bribe, he appeared pleased that he was able to teach his little sister something about his line of work.

  The lesson in negotiation stuck with Rae. It stuck hard. She discovered that even simple acts of grooming could be negotiated to her end. In the first half of her tenth year, the only time she would brush her teeth, wash her hair, or take a shower was when money
changed hands—more precisely, leaving ours and entering hers. After a brief family meeting my parents and I agreed that we had to cut her off cold turkey and deal with the consequences. It was three weeks before Rae realized that hair washing was not a career.

  Rae, Age 12

  Sometime in the winter of Rae’s seventh-grade year, she made an enemy. His name was Brandon Wheeler. The genesis of their conflict has always remained somewhat fuzzy. Rae likes her privacy as much as I do. What I do know is that Brandon transferred to Rae’s school in the fall of that same year. Within weeks he was one of most popular boys in her class. He excelled in sports, possessed a firm grasp of all academic subject matter, and had clear skin.

  Rae had no problem with him until one day in class, when Jeremy Shoeman was reading aloud from a passage in Huckleberry Finn, Brandon offered a dead-on imitation of Jeremy’s stutter. The class laughed uproariously, which only encouraged Brandon, who added the Shoeman imitation to his regular playlist. Rae never had a problem with Brandon’s previous impersonations, which included a red-headed boy with a lisp, a girl with horn-rimmed glasses and a limp, and a teacher with a wandering eye. Rae wasn’t even friends with Shoeman. But for whatever reason, this rubbed her the wrong way and she was determined to put an end to it.

  Rae’s first line of attack was an anonymous typed note that read, Leave Jeremy alone or you will be very, very sorry. The next day when Rae caught sight of Wheeler cornering Shoeman during the lunch hour, apparently thinking the note was from the victim himself, Rae decided to come clean. Wheeler then spread the word around school that Rae and Jeremy Shoeman were a couple. While this infuriated Rae, she kept her cool as she plotted her revenge. I cannot say how my sister acquired this information, but she discovered that Brandon was not twelve, but fourteen, and was repeating seventh grade for the second time. The next time Brandon was flattered for his excellence in academics, Rae made sure her classmates understood that it was a matter of practice and not talent.

  Some minor verbal sparring between my sister and the fourteen-year-old seventh grader ensued. But Brandon soon learned that talk was Rae’s weapon of choice and he resorted to the only weapon he knew. While I have never met a girl as mentally tough as Rae, she favors my mother and, at the age of twelve, was still under four foot ten and barely eighty pounds. She can run fast, but there were times she didn’t have the chance. When I saw the unmistakable rash of an Indian burn on her wrist, I asked her if she wanted me to take care of it. Rae said no. When she came home with a black eye from a “dodgeball accident,” I asked again. Rae insisted everything was under control. But I got the feeling that the constant bullying was starting to break her.

  I had just picked up Petra from her apartment and we were on our way to a movie when my cell phone rang. Petra answered it.

  “Hello. No, it’s Petra, Rae. Izzy is right here. Uh-huh. What happened to your bike? Yeah. We’re not far. Sure. ’Bye.” Petra hung up the phone. “We need to pick up your sister at school.”

  “What happened to her bike?”

  “She said it doesn’t work.”

  We were five minutes away. Rae was sitting on the grass outside, her bike in pieces in front of her—the five-hundred-dollar mountain bike that David had given her for her birthday. I saw several boys standing some distance back, laughing at her expense. Rae told me to pop the trunk and Petra helped her gather the spoils of the wreckage and put them inside. Rae jumped into the backseat, took out one of her schoolbooks, and pretended to read. I could see her eyes watering, but I couldn’t quite believe it. I hadn’t seen Rae cry since she was eight years old and ripped open her arm on a barbed-wire fence. She had bled so much that day that it had been impossible to see the actual wound.

  “Rae, please. Let me handle this,” I said, dying for a chance to set things straight. We sat in silence for a few minutes, then she looked over at the flock of boys and caught sight of Brandon waving cheerily at her. And that was it.

  “Okay,” she whispered. I was out of the car.

  As I swaggered across the grounds to the pack of future frat boys, I tried to gauge what level of bully I was dealing with. I have a knack for looking menacing (at least for a woman), so I made sure to walk slowly and purposefully, deep down hoping that a few of the boys would scatter before I got too close. Three answered my prayers and took off, leaving four behind. At five foot eight, I had at least three inches and fifteen pounds on Brandon, the tallest. And I knew I could take him. But if all four boys decided to stick around, I could not predict the outcome. Petra read my mind and got out of the car. Leaning against the passenger door, she slipped a knife out of her back pocket and started cleaning her fingernails with it. The blade reflected the sun and before I reached Brandon, the rest of the boys decided that it was time to go home. In fact, so did Brandon.

  “You. Stop,” I said, pointing at my target. Brandon turned around and forced a sneer in my direction. I moved closer, backing him up against a chain-link fence.

  “Wipe that dumb-ass smile off your face,” I seethed.

  The smile disappeared, but not the attitude. “What are you gonna do? Beat me up?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’m bigger than you, I’m tougher than you, I’m angrier than you, and I fight dirtier than you. Plus, I’ve got backup. You don’t. So if I were to make a wager on how this fight would turn out, I’d bet on me.”

  “What’s the big deal? We were just joking around,” Brandon said, his nerves showing through.

  “Joking. Interesting. Do you think destruction of property is funny? A black eye is funny? Intimidating a girl half your size is funny? Well, then we are going to have a good time.” I grabbed his shirt by the collar, twisted it around, and shoved him against the fence.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered nervously.

  “Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Listen to me very carefully,” I whispered back. “If you lay a finger on my sister or her property ever again—if you even look at her the wrong way—I will fuck you up. Got it?”

  Brandon nodded his head.

  “Say ‘I understand.’”

  “I understand.”

  I released my grip and told him to get lost. Brandon ran away, a changed man, I told myself.

  When I got back into the car, Petra suggested we go rough up some punks at the preschool around the corner. I looked at Rae through my rearview mirror.

  “You okay?”

  Rae returned my gaze with dry eyes. Then she asked, “Can we get ice cream?” as if nothing had happened at all.

  I wish that were the end of the story, but it isn’t. Brandon ran home crying to his father, who in turn called my parents and followed up by filing assault charges against me. When Rae and I arrived at home with our ice cream cones, my mother and father had already received the first threatening phone call from Mr. Wheeler. Their stern expressions offered a flashback of my misspent youth. I’m sure they were wondering whether the Old Isabel was making a comeback. My father suggested we speak privately in the office and told Rae to go watch TV.

  Rae, of course, didn’t watch TV. She lurked by the door (which my father had locked), eavesdropping on our conversation.

  “Isabel, what were you thinking?”

  “Believe me, you would have done the same thing.”

  “You threatened to kill a twelve-year-old boy.”

  “First of all, he’s fourteen—”

  “He’s a kid—”

  “—and I didn’t threaten to kill him; I threatened to fuck him up. There is a difference, you know.”

  “What is wrong with you?” my mother yelled.

  “That is the most reckless, irresponsible thing you’ve done in years,” screamed my father.

  Then Rae smacked her hand against the door and shouted at the top of her lungs, “Leave her alone!”

  My mother shouted back, “Rae, go watch TV.”

  Rae banged on the locked door again. The thud was so loud it sounded as if sh
e was throwing her whole body against it. “No. Leave Isabel alone! Open the door.”

  My father sighed and let Rae in the room. Rae pled my case, which I didn’t, because I’ve got too much attitude. My father was forced to tone down his reprimand to, “In the future, let us handle this sort of thing, Izzy.”

  There was almost nothing my mother wouldn’t do to protect her children, even if it was morally ambiguous. It was Mom who handled the potential assault charges, mostly because she can spot an Achilles’ heel with almost X-ray vision. If there is a single unfiltered trait I inherited directly from her, that might be it.

  Olivia ran a civil lawsuit check on Mr. Wheeler and discovered a handful of sexual harassment suits in his wake. The pattern piqued my mother’s curiosity and she ran an informal tail on Wheeler over the next week. She caught him with a mistress, snapped some revealing photographs, and then cornered him at the coffee shop on his way to work. My mother suggested he drop the charges. Wheeler said no. My mother showed him the photos and repeated her suggestion, adding that she expected Rae’s bike to be replaced within the week. Wheeler called her a bitch, but the charges were dropped by the afternoon and a new bike was delivered on Friday.

  Rae never forgot what I did for her that day. However, I should remind you that Rae’s brand of loyalty takes an entirely different form than the devotion to which one might be accustomed. While she can readily tell you she loves you, it is entirely void of the sappy heart of a greeting card. She is merely stating a fact for your own edification. There were times it seemed Rae lived to please our parents and sometimes even me. But this often lulled us into a false sense of security. Rae’s interest in pleasing ended if it didn’t align with her own agenda. Yet there were times she followed instructions with the blind faithfulness of a well-trained dog.