by Tod Goldberg
“Wait here,” I said.
“You gonna go down there and kick his door in? He don’t know you.”
“Sugar,” I said, “if there’s something bad to see-like a body-you don’t want to be anywhere near it, okay? You also don’t need to be seen on camera.”
Sugar thought about this. “I’ll hang back,” he said.
I walked down the hall and peered into the other rooms as I went. In the first room, two young men sat motionless on beanbag chairs playing a video game, their jaws opened just enough to allow airflow. In the second, a young woman wearing only a bathing suit top and cut-off shorts walked in circles talking on her cell phone about someone named Lyle being an asshole, and in the final room before I got to 804, a young man and a young woman sat quietly-amid thumping rap music-reading. None of them bothered to even look my way as I walked by. No one is naturally as uninquisitive as someone who is twenty years old and likely drunk eighty-five percent of the time. All of the dorm rooms looked to have the same layout-a small living room and kitchenette with a bedroom and bathroom off to either the left or the right. It was, in fact, more Soviet on the inside than on the outside.
I got to Brent’s door and knocked loudly. There was no response. I knocked again, this time harder, and said, “Brent? Brent? It’s me. I’m here with Sugar.” Still nothing. I couldn’t hear any movement behind the door, but that was most likely due to the fact that it was a fairly high-grade fireproof door: stainless-steel hinge; frame made of zinc-coated steel sheeting; the door itself silicate aluminum, likely over a honeycomb board, which also made it nearly impossible to kick in.
He probably didn’t know it, but Brent Grayson was living in the perfect place to avoid getting murdered by gangsters and bookies.
I tried the door handle. Locked.
Normally, this would be a situation where I’d pick the lock and be in the room in just under ten seconds, but with the cameras and the sensitive nature of whatever might be behind the door, I figured acting like a normal person might serve me better.
I peered down the hall and saw that there was another open door on the other side of Brent’s room. There wasn’t any music coming from the door and I hadn’t seen anyone going in or out, so I decided to press my luck and look in. There was a young man sitting on a blue sofa tinkering around on the computer. He wore all black, including a black turtleneck, which seemed excessive in the heat of the Miami spring, but not as excessive as the white pancake makeup, black eyeliner and black nail polish he wore. Above the front door was a sign that said, WARNING: YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE VAMPIRE LAIR, KING THOMAS PRESIDING.
If there was one person on the floor who might have an extra key, it would be the self-proclaimed vampire. Goth kids are always more responsible than the hard-drinking frat boy types, since they’re usually content to stay home listening to sad music and reading Camus. Brent seemed like a reasonable enough person, or at least smart enough to give his extra key to a person who never left his room.
“Excuse me,” I said.
“What?” the young man said without looking up.
“King Thomas, I presume?”
“You presume correct,” he said, eyes still fixed on the computer screen.
“I’m here to see my nephew Brent,” I said. “But his door is locked. You wouldn’t happen to have an extra key, would you? I’m supposed to leave him some money.”
King Thomas’ eyes flickered in my direction and then back to the computer. “You could leave the money with me,” he said.
“I could,” I said. “But I’m not going to.”
King Thomas sighed, as if the conversation we were having was such an existential weight on him that it hurt his soul, and then stood up and disappeared into another room. He reappeared moments later with a ring holding at least twenty-five keys. “Everyone always asks me to keep their extra keys,” he said.
“You seem very responsible,” I said.
“I’m not,” he said. He fumbled through the keys silently and then landed the one he wanted. “I slept through three classes this week. That’s not very responsible, is it?”
“Were you in prison?”
“No, I just couldn’t get up. You ever have days like that?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What do you do?”
“I get up.”
“I guess there’s no lecture notes in real life,” he said.
“Not that I’ve found,” I said.
King Thomas removed the key from the key ring and then seemed to ponder what his next move was going to be. “I haven’t seen Brent leave, so he might just be asleep.”
“I tried knocking on the door.”
“He takes that Ambien stuff,” King Thomas said. “Every Saturday. And I’m the vampire?” King Thomas stepped into the hall and looked down at Sugar. “Hey, Sugar.”
“What up, T-Dawg?” Sugar said. “How you been?”
“Chilling,” King Thomas said.
“You know each other?” I said to King Thomas.
“Yeah,” King Thomas said. “Are you with him?”
“Kind of,” I said.
“So you’re not really Brent’s uncle?”
“No, not really,” I said. “But I’m not here to hurt him. I’m here to help him. And, just to be clear, I don’t work with Sugar. He happens to be someone I know.”
“Don’t worry,” King Thomas said. “No one would make you for a drug dealer.”
“What do I look like?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe a hit man?”
“Close enough,” I said.
King Thomas put his key in the lock and the door opened with a whoosh. I put a hand on King Thomas’ chest and held him back while I looked in. The living space was empty-just the same sofa, chair and nondescript coffee table as all the other rooms had-save for a few books and papers left on the floor and kitchen table. There was no blood anywhere, which is always a good thing.
I stepped into the room and listened. Nothing but the electrical undertones you’d expect. “Wait here,” I said to King Thomas.
“Whatever,” he said.
The door to the bedroom was open. On the floor were stacks of clothes and newspapers and Big Gulp cups and socks and dirty dishes and, finally, at least two dozen baseball caps. But the surprising thing was the number of computers in the room-five laptops and one desktop-all of which were on and linked together. It was enough computer power to run SETI, or maybe a portable NORAD installation, but certainly more than your average college student might need, even one who was a computer science major.
In the bed was a body.
Or, well, the body of a sleeping college student, which can (and often does) resemble the dead. It wasn’t until a stifled snore came out of the body that I realized with certainty that it was a sleeping human and not a dead one. The smell in the room didn’t help.
I stepped over the heaps of clothes, made my way around the dirty dishes and sidestepped the innumerable computer cables until I was standing above Brent Grayson’s sleeping form. I tapped him on the shoulder.
Nothing.
I tapped him on the side of the face.
Nothing.
“Brent,” I said. “Wake up.”
Nothing again.
I looked at his bedside table and saw that he had a prescription bottle for Ambien, just as King Thomas had suggested, but the label said it was for someone named Irene Rosenblatt.
I walked back out into the hallway and saw that Sugar was deep in conversation with the vampire king and another boy, this one with dreadlocks that looked like they were matted with pet fur. “Sugar,” I said, “what did I tell you?”
“Sorry, boss. I know these cats,” he said.
I held up the bottle. “You know Irene Rosenblatt, too?”
“Oh, man, you know,” he said.
I just shook my head and went back inside the dorm room. I sat down on the sofa and called Sam. “We’ve got a body here,” I told him.
“Is it messy?” he asked.
“No,” I said, “it’s asleep. On Ambien.”
“You can have crazy sex on that stuff,” he said.
“So I hear,” I said. “Listen, I’m going to bring this kid home with me and I’m going to leave Sugar somewhere where he can’t hurt himself or anyone else. Like Guantanamo Bay, maybe.”
“Yeah, about that,” Sam said. “His car is gone.”
“Towed away?”
“No, I mean gone. Like blown up. Along with the entire notary office. Looks like a pro job, Mikey. These guys are legit that came out there today. This isn’t someone looking to collect on a gambling debt, just like you thought.”
“Well, this kid has about $20K worth of computer equipment in his dorm room, the kind of computers no college freshman would ever need. Something is going on here beyond Sugar’s comprehension, that’s for sure. So meet me at my place in about an hour. See if Fiona is available. I have a feeling Brent Grayson might respond to a pretty face more than to guys like us.”
“Will do,” Sam said and hung up.
I walked back out into the hall and Sugar was leaning against the wall chatting up a young woman. Great. I went back into the vampire’s lair and saw that the exalted King Thomas was back on his computer, as if nothing had gone on outside the norm whatsoever.
“King Thomas,” I said, “mind if we have a word?”
“You can just call me Tom,” he said. “That’s mostly a joke.”
“Do you know what Brent’s major is?”
“He does some stuff with video game design,” he said.
“How many computers do you need for that sort of thing?”
King Thomas shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m in graphic arts, so it’s all crayons for me.”
“Six computers seem excessive to you?”
“He downloads a lot of music, I guess,” he said.
“Listen, Tom,” I said. “I’m going to take Brent out of here now. If anyone comes looking for him, I want you to call me, do you understand?”
I wrote my number down on a piece of scrap paper and handed it to King Thomas. He eyed it suspiciously. “How do I know you’re not a bad guy?”
“You don’t,” I said.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll call you. Should I be expecting something bad to happen?”
“Maybe,” I said. “At the very least, if Sugar should show up? Call me then, too.”
“Got it,” he said.
I left the king to his lair and went back into Brent’s room. He was still fast asleep. I shook him as hard as I could without breaking his ribs, or neck, and his eyes fluttered open.
“Who are you?” he said.
“The person who is going to save your life,” I said.
“Are you friends with Sugar?”
“No,” I said. “I’m the person who saved Sugar’s life, too.”
“Are you Sam?”
“No,” I said. “I’m Michael Westen.”
“The spy?”
Nice that Sugar had been discreet in all of his dealings. I wondered if Brent had my burned dossier, too.
“Yes,” I said, “the spy.”
“So he brought the wolf. Cool.”
“The wolf?”
“From Pulp Fiction. The fixer. Badass.” Brent sat up and rubbed his eyes. “What time is it?”
“After three.”
“Did Sugar take care of, uh…” Brent trailed off. “Is he dead?”
“No,” I said. “And no. He’s out in the hall. Now grab your stuff and however many computers you think you need and come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
“A place where if ten Russian gangsters show up, your friends and classmates won’t end up murdered. That sound like a good plan?”
“Oh,” he said, which I took to mean he understood that the playing field had changed, that dangerous things were afoot, that he needed to listen to me and, finally, that he needed to get moving. But then he threw the covers over his head and moaned.
“Brent,” I said, “you need to come out from under the covers.”
“Does this mean something bad happened today?”
“It does,” I said.
“Oh, oh,” he said and this time-well, this time he actually got up out of bed and got busy getting the hell out of his dorm.
3
If you want to learn how to fight, don’t take a course in self-defense. The best thing a self-defense course will teach you is how to lose with dignity. They are designed for those being attacked, not for those who are about to go on the offensive. The result is that the fighting skills most people possess are reactionary: What do you do when someone hits you in the face? What do you do if someone grabs you from behind? How do you fend off someone who is trying to abduct you?
Learn a martial art as a kid and it will be drilled into your head that you should use your skill only when you’re being attacked. This is done for a simple reason: Children aren’t smart enough not to go around jump-kicking everyone who angers them and thus they must be wired for passivity. The result is a generation of Americans who curl up in a ball and let bullies steal their lunch.
Americans like Brent Grayson, who, after arriving at my loft, immediately lay facedown on my bed and began his moaning again. I’d had a feeling he’d be like this-that he’d opted to sleep through Sugar’s confrontation that afternoon told me he wasn’t going to be a real take-charge kind of kid-which is why I made sure Fiona was at my loft by the time we arrived. I had Sam drive Sugar home so he could break the news to him about his car. I figured Sam got himself into this mess, he could be the one in charge of listening to Sugar cry. Meanwhile, Sugar’s problem kept emitting this low wail that reminded me of a wounded bear. It also made me want to put him out of his misery.
“What is his issue?” Fiona asked. We were in the kitchen, which is only a few feet from my bed, but with the amount of moaning and woe-is-me-ing Brent was doing, we both felt fairly comfortable speaking in our normal voices.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Have you asked him?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Fi,” I said, “he’s curled up on my bed like a five-year-old. You know I have a hard time talking to kids.”
“What about in the car ride over?”
“It was enough for me to keep Sugar from speaking,” I said. “I might have killed them both.”
“So, what, you want me to coo him into telling you why the big mean bad guys blew up his daddy’s office?”
“Yes.”
“And then what? We both read him a story and put him to bed?”
“Fi,” I said, “he just needs a sweet voice in his ear right now. I’m afraid I might shake him to death if he continues to whine.”
“Fine,” she said. She walked over and sat down on the foot of the bed. “Brent, honey,” she said, “turn over. Let’s talk.”
“Oh,” he said, but didn’t move.
Fiona leaned over and rested her hand gently on the back of his neck. “Sweetheart,” she said, “we’re here to help you. Do you want our help?” She stroked his neck lightly. I know it was wise to bring her over.
“I guess,” he said.
“Then either turn over and stop babbling,” she said-and then I saw her squeeze his neck with a bit more force than a cougar does its young-“or I will break your neck. Okay, sweetie?”
Brent flipped over and stopped making noise.
“There,” Fiona said to me. “He’s all yours.”
“Thanks, Fiona,” I said. Sometimes I forget that Fiona isn’t really like other women, particularly as it relates to the care and concern of wounded animals and such.
I pulled a chair next to the bed and looked at Brent. He had brown hair that hung loosely over his eyes, a complexion that could use a bit of exfoliation but was otherwise fine and teeth that had benefited from what was probably very expensive orthodonture. His clothes were brand name and he didn’t hav
e any obvious track marks on his arms and wasn’t constantly wiping the cocaine from his nose. So how was it he was mixed up with such bad people?
“Can I get you something to eat?” I asked.
“No, I’m fine. I ate, like, last night.”
“Can I get you something to drink?”
“I wouldn’t mind a Yoo-hoo. Do you have any Yoo-hoo?”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” I said. “How about water?”
“Water would be fine.”
“Fiona,” I said, “would you kindly get our young guest a glass of water?”
“I’d be happy to,” she said and got up.
“Is she going to hurt me anymore?” Brent asked.
“Probably not,” I said.
Fiona came back with a bottle of water, which Brent drank down quickly. He looked back and forth at me and Fi as if trying to determine who was in charge. He settled on me. “I guess things got bad today.”
“That would be correct,” I said. “Your father’s office was blown up.”
“Like with dynamite?”
“More likely with C-4,” I said. “But the result was the same.”
“What if Sugar had still been there?” he said.
“That’s a good question, Brent,” I said. “It’s why you’re now in my loft and not in your cozy bed on campus. Would you care to explain why you’ve got the Russian Mafia blowing up your father’s place of business?”
“How do I know I can trust you?” he asked.
“You don’t,” Fiona said.
This didn’t seem to reassure Brent much. “But you’re not, like, criminals, right?”
“I’m not, no,” I said.
He looked at Fiona, who said nothing.
“Why do you want to help me?” he asked.
“Because you’re in over your head,” I said. “If you didn’t know that before, you should now. And Sugar can’t help you. Trust me on that. He’s a good friend, but you don’t need friends right now. You need tactical support.” I let Brent process that bit of information for a moment. “Sugar told me that your father has a gambling problem and has disappeared. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” Brent said.
“But those guys today-” I said. “That wasn’t about that, was it?”
“No,” he said. “No, that’s my problem.” Brent flopped back onto the bed and covered his face with a pillow. “I’m, like, so stupid.”
