by Robin Spano
Richie froze the frame on Wade and Norris clinking glasses. “You want me to keep going? Or you get the gist?”
On Richie’s couch, Norris seemed frozen in place — frozen and shaking.
Richie was going in harder. “What I also have — now, this is just for posterity, I don’t expect to have to use it — is the three of us on tape in Chopper’s cabin. I had my phone recording the whole time we were talking.”
“Why?” Norris’ mouth hung open. “Aren’t we . . . on the same side?”
“We are.” Fuck, Richie hated strong-arming. “But you haven’t been playing your end so nice. I need you to take the Snow across the border. You do that for me, I’ll not only forget about the ten grand and pay you the fifty we talked about, I’ll give you all of Sacha’s recordings. As far as I know, I have the sole, exclusive footage. I’m assuming you’ve gone through her computer.”
“We have. It’s clean.”
“You also might want to check out Sacha’s laptop. Currently in use as Jana’s laptop. That information is free, but please don’t tell Jana I told you.”
Norris stood and walked over to Richie. He kicked the white carpet with his shoe, leaving a gray mark. “I’m going to need to confiscate your phone.”
Richie chuckled. He was mad about the gray mark. “Yeah.”
FIFTY-THREE
CLARE
“Where are you?” Clare asked Noah. She was sitting against a tree with her snowboard on just off a ski run.
“I’m at home.”
“What’s that banging sound?” Clare watched a family skiing by. The father leading the way, kind of dweebishly. Two little kids with earnest looks on their faces — the taller one confident, the smaller one snowplowing and frowning. The mother, in all the right gear including a perky ponytail poking out from under her helmet, keeping up the rear.
“Huh?” Noah said. “Oh, that’s Stacy. She’s making popcorn. On the stove — retro, huh?”
Retro wasn’t the word that leapt to Clare’s mind. “Who’s Stacy?”
“My ex.”
“Oh.” Clare had heard about Stacy. She was one of those Upper East Side girls who’d been going for pedicures with girlfriends since junior high. Noah said he didn’t dig manicured princesses, that he found them too high-maintenance. But Clare wasn’t sure she could trust a word Noah said anymore.
“She’s bummed because her boyfriend dumped her. I invited her over to watch chick flicks.”
“You never watch chick flicks with me.”
“Because you hate romantic comedy. Rambo is too soft for you.”
That didn’t feel like a compliment. Clare wondered if Noah would prefer to be dating Tiffany, the girly cover role she’d been playing when they’d met on the poker tour.
“I guess you can’t talk, then, about your end of the job.” Clare looked out onto the snow-capped panorama and wished she could stay in Whistler longer. It was a clear day, which sucked for the snow because it made the hill hard and kind of icy, but the glistening sun made the mountains in the distance dance with a beauty Clare wanted to reach out and touch. She suddenly didn’t miss New York at all. The buildings were too gray and the pace was too hurried. How could anyone even catch their breath in a place like that?
“I could take a walk,” Noah said. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Clare said. “I mean, no, I’m not fine at all, but what do you care?”
“You are such hard work.” Noah sighed. “Hey, Stacy, I’ve got to take this work call. I’ll be back in, like, ten minutes. Don’t start the movie without me.”
A female voice said something, and Clare heard Noah’s thin apartment door shut behind him.
“Okay, I’m in my stairwell, walking down to street level so the elevator doesn’t cut off the call. You going to tell me what’s up?”
Clare slid her snowboard edge back and forth across a patch of snow. “I dropped acid last night and I’m probably being sent home.”
Noah laughed. “Are you serious?”
“Yes, and before you get all judgy, the situation called for it.”
“I’m sure it did. It’s just — you won’t even smoke a joint with me.”
“Because it messes up my head. Acid’s different, though. It’s like . . . you can see so much more of the world.”
“Oh yeah? Are you Timothy Leary now? You planning to come home and drop every weekend?”
Clare smirked. “Once was enough. It’s, like, such a downer the next day. I feel like slitting my wrists.”
“Like Sacha.”
“Shit. Yeah. Bad metaphor.”
Through the phone, Clare heard a car horn honking — most likely an impatient cab — and suddenly she missed New York again.
Noah was quiet for a few seconds before saying, “You think it could have been suicide, then?”
“No.” Clare told Noah about the video she’d seen. “Sacha thought someone wanted to kill her.”
“She say who?”
“No. But honestly, it could be anyone here. She told her stepmother she was smuggling drugs — and her friends here knew she’d opened her mouth. Chopper, Richie, or Norris might have wanted to silence her permanently. That blogger could release a new suspect interview every day for a week, and they’d all be good candidates in my eye.”
“So the blog’s hit Whistler, huh?”
“Um, yeah.” Clare found the segue strange, but answered anyway. “Everyone reads it. Have you thought about finding this Lorenzo guy? Or do we already know where he lives?”
“We already know,” Noah said.
“He must have really hated Sacha.”
“Lorenzo? Why?”
“Wouldn’t you?” Clare thought the dynamic was obvious. “Some rich kid decides your life is so flawed she needs to send you her allowance?”
“Sacha didn’t decide Lorenzo needed help. It was some Christian foundation.”
Clare pushed a strand of hair back under her helmet. It came loose again immediately. “You wouldn’t get it. You went to private school, your dad’s a surgeon — no one ever saw you as a charity case.”
“People saw you that way?” Noah sounded surprised.
“At school, they looked at us trailer kids like we were plotting to steal their lunch money.”
“So did you?”
“Fuck off.”
Noah laughed. “What’s the big deal? You came out of the experience strong enough.”
“Exactly. And if a little rich girl had come along and tried to rescue me from my so-called poverty, pretty sure I would have punched her in the mouth before I took her charity.”
“Yeah, I can see you doing that. But Sacha’s money wasn’t buying Lorenzo new toys. It was for food, health care, education — things you Canadians take for granted as your god-given rights.”
“Most first-world countries consider those rights.” But Clare didn’t feel like arguing politics.
“What’s wrong, Clare?” As in, Noah didn’t have all day; he had to go watch chick flicks with Stacy.
“I don’t know. I’m feeling kind of lost.”
“Why?” Noah’s voice became gentler.
“I guess I screwed up. Amanda hates me.”
“Do you care? I thought you didn’t like Amanda.”
“I don’t. Well, not really. I don’t know why I feel lost. Maybe it’s just drug aftermath.”
“Hey — did Amanda tell you, or maybe this came in after you talked to her — some interesting news on Norris.”
“I already know he’s dirty.” Clare glanced at the trees to make sure no one was hiding there listening.
“But what if he isn’t?”
“Huh?”
“Norris contacted the RCMP about half an hour ago with a detailed list of the criminal activity in town. The acid manufactur
er, the drug dealer, the bar owner who’s been laundering the cash. He detailed Sacha’s involvement.”
“So? We already know all that. All this means is he’s decided to sell out his friends.”
“He says he’s been playing both sides. He forwarded correspondence he’s been having with the DEA.”
Clare felt her shoulders sink. All this information made her feel like she was underwater, and her arms were too tired to swim. Maybe Amanda was right — maybe they shouldn’t give her too much information. Still, she said, “If Norris had been playing both sides, someone else in the RCMP would have known about it.”
“Maybe,” Noah said. “There’s a drug run on Monday that he’s planning to make. He’s looping in authorities because he thinks this will bust people from both sides of the border.”
“So can we talk to the DEA? Find out if he’s for real?”
“Paul Worthington is on it now.”
“Big guns,” Clare said.
“Big case.”
“Hm. Well, you better get back to Stacy, I guess.”
“I wish I could be there with you. You sound like you need a hug.”
“Don’t worry. I have someone here to take care of that.” Damn. Why did Clare ruin a good phone call with a single low blow? She missed Noah. But she was freaked out by what Amanda had told her, about the girl on the boat.
“You want me to say I’m happy for you?”
“No,” Clare said.
They were both quiet. Noah broke the silence, kind of. “Okay, well . . .”
“Yeah. Bye.”
Clare hung up and rode down the hill. She was awkward on her board. She fell a lot. The hard snow didn’t help — it made falling much more painful. She started becoming afraid every time it got a little bit steep, so she stuck with the green runs and edged down as slowly as she could. She felt alone, abandoned, like if she were to ride off one of Whistler’s many cliffs, no one on Earth would really miss her.
If Sacha had done enough of this drug, had enough LSD lingering in her system, maybe she felt an amplified version of this emotion that was gnawing at Clare. With all the real shit going on in Sacha’s life, maybe the world did look bleak enough for her to want to leave it.
Maybe the killer Sacha feared, in her note and in her video, was herself.
FIFTY-FOUR
MARTHA
Ted rushed up to Martha as she was about to walk onto the Battle Creek town hall meeting stage. His voice was tinnier than usual. Maybe he’d been ingesting aluminum shavings from his Red Bull cans. “The FBI called with a change of plans.”
“Again?” Martha felt chai-flavored milk froth on her upper lip and dabbed it off with her finger. She slipped off her microphone and made sure the switch was turned off.
“They’re pulling the Whistler operative.”
What? Martha would get on the phone with Paul Worthington as soon as this production was over. If his favor had expired, so had her need to politely let him do his job.
“It’s good news, I think.” Ted had the decency to soften his voice, to take the tin out. “Now that the RCMP is treating this as a murder investigation, the FBI is confident Sacha’s killer will be caught. So their efforts would be superfluous, even invasive.”
That didn’t sound like any FBI Martha had ever worked with. They loved invasive. She double-checked her microphone before saying, “Did they say if their operative had found anything while he was in place?”
“No. They’re being irritatingly tight-lipped.”
“Better than loose. Has your . . . other friend learned anything?” She disconnected the microphone from the wire, just in case. “The cop?”
“He’s not sure.”
“So there’s something.”
Ted frowned. “Maybe we should ignore the investigation, now that it seems to be proceeding in a good direction.”
Martha’s head throbbed. She could take an Advil, but there was no point. The headache would just be there waiting in four to six hours.
“You’re on in five minutes,” Ted said.
“So I have four to talk. What did your source say?”
Ted smoothed his suit jacket. “He thinks maybe Kearnes was involved.”
“Geoffrey?” Martha said Kearnes’ first name in full without thinking. God, it would be brutal irony if he had anything to do with Sacha’s murder. “Involved how?”
Ted looked at her, like Do I have to say it out loud? “Involved in arranging the murder.”
Martha nodded to the interviewer who was waiting for her onstage. She returned the woman’s smile and removed the smile to face Ted. “Is this more speculation, or does your friend have any facts?”
“He found some phone calls from Kearnes’ campaign office to Whistler and Washington State. Where the, um, drugs were being smuggled into.”
“Washington State is hardly a surprise — the caucus is two weeks away. But Whistler? Have you told the FBI?”
“I will,” Ted said. “You want that, right?”
“Of course I want that. Maybe this will make them think it’s worth their precious resources to keep their man in Whistler.”
“Okay.”
“I have to get onstage. Was there anything else?”
Ted nodded. “You’ve fallen to last in the Michigan polls. The legalization platform seems to be having purely negative impact. I think we should blow open the story about Sacha and the smuggling — make it clear that you’re not pro-drug, not at all. That your desire to get creative with policy is actually you fighting harder for the eradication of drugs from our society.”
“We need to talk about this now?” Martha lifted her eyebrows once more at the host, who was standing onstage tapping her wrist.
“Christy and Melissa wrote a blog post that’s ready to take it live. All it needs is your final edit, so when we post it will be in your voice. The angle will be a mother’s remorse for not knowing what was going on in her daughter’s life.”
Martha’s neck and shoulders joined her head with their tension pain. “Look, I understand that Washington culture forces people barely out of college to think faster than you’re emotionally capable of. But please don’t turn my daughter into political leverage.”
Ted was silent.
“You’re a smart kid,” Martha said, one foot on the stairs to the stage. “Hell, when I was your age, I had to fight sexism and ageism, and I’m sure I was twice the brat you are.”
Ted’s small voice exploded out of him. “Your career is my life. I wake up at five-thirty every morning and I’ve often fallen asleep with my head on my keyboard because I’m that devoted to your success.”
Shit. Martha had been way too harsh. Just like she’d been too harsh with Sacha all her life. She didn’t mean to be unkind; it was the way things came out of her mouth, like she was missing the softening filter that everyone else seemed to have been given at birth. Which was strange, because on camera, she found it easy to turn on the charm.
“Send me the blog post,” she said. “I’ll read it, but my strong guess is that I won’t agree to publish. Okay? I’m on.” Martha climbed the stairs to join the event host onstage.
FIFTY-FIVE
WADE
In his claustrophobic office, Wade shook his head at Norris, then at his computer screen. Today’s blog post was odd.
Charity and Resentment
by Lorenzo Barilla
I spent my childhood hating Sacha Westlake. I needed her money. I did not need colorful letters filled with stories about Central Park and snobby schoolgirls and Jules the Bear.
For two years, she wrote me. I was learning English so I could write back with intelligence, to tell her I was not a charity case. I need not have bothered — her letters stopped coming two weeks after my twelfth birthday. The money still came, but Sacha’s heart had moved on to more interesting
causes than poor Lorenzo Barilla.
I came to America to get my revenge. I planned to become so wealthy in this Land of Opportunity that I could squish Sacha Westlake with my power, then give her a helping hand up. Show her how that felt.
But when I arrived in New York, she was dead.
I instantly hated myself for all those years of rage. Sacha had been kind to me, and I was so self-obsessed I could not see it.
I wanted to turn back time, to write back even in imperfect English, to say thank you to this sweet little girl who shared her allowance and her world with me, in letters.
But I could not — cannot — because some senseless idiot killed her.
My penance is to find Sacha Westlake’s killer and bring that person to justice.
“This make any sense to you?” Wade asked Norris, who was still staring blankly at the screen.
Norris shook his head, sipped coffee from the ceramic mug Wade had given him. “The kid was right the first time. People like Sacha think they can fix the world’s problems by patting their heads and throwing money at them. They consider themselves the ruling class. Like we commoners couldn’t possibly know what’s good for us.”
Wade poured some brandy into his coffee, held the bottle for Norris, who lifted one shoulder and said, “Why the fuck not?” before setting his cup down on Wade’s desk. “God, this is bad.”
“I know. Sorry. I had to switch to a cheaper coffee. Want some more brandy?”
“I don’t give a shit about the coffee. I’m swimming in fucking chaos, if you haven’t noticed. Actually, fuck swimming. I’m drowning in chaos.”
Norris wasn’t usually metaphorical, not at all. It worried Wade.
“Did you . . .” Wade wasn’t sure how to say this. For better or worse, the booze eased the question out of him. “Did you have something to do with Sacha’s murder?”
Norris’ eyes shot wide open. “God, no!”
Wade relaxed. “Okay. Then it really can’t be that bad.”
