About Face

by Adam Gittlin

  Knowing I have Anne’s blessing to roam, I head straight for the desk. I take a seat behind it, and my eyes go straight for the pen I had replaced, the pen Scott had given me. I remember the line about pushing it straight forward, but also remember other words from that moment.

  “That’s why I did it to myself when all the darkness began … I know how to do it. I learned how to do it. I—for proof.”

  Had he taped himself as he had the other two?

  Why?

  My eyes search for the phone and find it under the desk’s mess. I pick up the handset. I examine it, from every side, thinking perhaps there’s a recording device. I start taking it apart. Once it’s in pieces, I pick up the base from the desk and do the same. I determine that I have nothing. And, more importantly, that if there was something of note here, I would have no idea as it would probably just look like one of the other parts I can’t identify.

  My eyes move back to the pen. The slim holder it rests in has a small ball at the end fitting into a socket attached to the base. I reach forward, and push the pen forward. The ball smoothly rotates in the socket until the D on the top of the pen is pointing straight ahead at the opposite wall.

  At a photograph of Anne Green.

  She looks at the picture I’m now staring at.

  “It’s from a few years ago. We were in Miami for a wedding.”

  I stand up and walk over to the picture. Anne joins me for the up-close examination. I study it, remembering my past has taught me to look closer when it comes to pictures, art, anything. Convinced there’s nothing I’m not seeing, I take the picture from the wall. On the back, written small toward the bottom of white backing of the photograph by the frame, I find something: www.VivRecord.com.

  “What is that for?” asks Anne.

  “Let’s find out,” I respond.

  I replace the photo back on the wall, head back behind the desk, and sit down. Anne settles in behind me looking over my shoulder. The PC monitor on Scott’s desk hovers above the mess. Down below is the tower, or CPU. I reach down, press the “on” button and listen to the whir of it booting. In seconds the monitor comes to life.

  I hit the browser and type in www.VivRecord.com. Within seconds, the purpose of the site becomes clear.

  “It’s an audio file storage site,” I explain to Anne. “One for the purpose of recording and storing telephone conversations.”

  My eyes find the “login” button, which I click on. The username is already there: “DavidWendy.”

  “What would your husband have used as his password?”

  “Try Brewer. It’s the town in Maine where he grew up. He used it as the password for everything.”

  I type it in.

  Done.

  We’re in.

  “What are we looking at?” asks Anne.

  “A log of all the calls your husband recorded, calls associated with the number 917-555-6676.”

  “That’s his cell phone number. You mean he was recording his own phone?”

  “It appears that way.”

  I point at the screen.

  “If you look here, it gives the date and time of each call, and next to it is an indication of whether it was an incoming or outgoing call. Here,” I go on, “you can play it back or download it as an MP3 to either be archived or e-mailed.”

  The calls go back about four weeks. All incoming and outgoing calls were recorded so the log is a long one. I start by playing back random calls when the recordings began.

  “Hi, honey, it’s me,” begins the first one. “Listen, I know we’re supposed to meet Laura and Harlan tonight, but—”

  “Me,” Anne says.

  I move on.

  “Scotty! Big Bri here—”

  “His friend Brian May,” Anne fills me in. “Law school buddy.”

  “Look, may be a few minutes late to the Garden so messenger my ticket to my office, and I’ll meet you in the seats probably about halfway through the first quarter. Lakers coming to town—love it!”

  We move on.

  “Scott, it’s Ryan.”

  Ryan Brand.

  “You need to call me back.”

  He hangs up.

  I take the number the call came from, Brand’s cell number, and put it in the search box. The call log we’re looking at has now been reduced to those coming from and going to this number. The majority of which are incoming.

  “Scott, Ryan. Look, I don’t think you’d be foolish enough to try and hold this deal up in any way, but in case you’re thinking it may not be—uh—it may not be something the firm should see through, you may want to talk this through with me. Call me back.”

  “What deal is he talking about?” asks Anne.

  “The one between GlassWell and the Alessi family. Your husband was on to them. And I’m pretty sure it cost him his life.”

  I hit the next one. Then the next. The calls become more heated in nature. And more and more it becomes clear Scott Green is not only having cold feet about allowing such a deal to happen, but he’s being threatened that if he fucks with it he’ll pay.

  “What, Ryan?” starts the next one.

  “What, Ryan? That’s how you want to speak to me? I left you a message in your office to come find me.”

  “I was busy today top to bottom.”

  “I don’t care. If I say I need to speak with you, then you need to find me.”

  “For what? So you can hear me tell you I’m okay with all of this? That I’m willing to be party to this?”

  “Well, aren’t you?”

  Green doesn’t answer.

  “Hello?” continues Brand.

  “I have to go,” Green says.

  Then he hangs up.

  “That’s why I did it to myself when all the darkness began … I know how to do it.” I again remember Green saying to me, “One was elsewhere, the … covert, but I learned how to do it. I—for proof.”

  Covert. Elsewhere. Once Green overheard them, and Brand started threatening him, he must have used some kind of spyware to tap Brand’s phones. While he was able to use something like VivRecord.com to record himself, the other conversations must have been housed elsewhere. That’s why those needed to be passed by flash drive.

  Next call. Then another. Then another.

  Each more contentious in nature.

  Each more threatening toward Green.

  I play one from a week ago.

  “How we looking?” asks Brand in an even voice. “You getting all the contracts in order?”

  “I don’t think I can do this,” Green says after a pause. “I’m going to go and speak with Gary…”

  Gary Spencer.

  The Big Boy.

  “I’m going to tell him everything.”

  “No, you’re not,” Brand counters. “You know why?’

  Green says nothing.

  “Because if you do anything but see this deal through and carry on as though life is just rosy, I will act on my promises. You have the pictures. Don’t ever doubt me.”

  “Why are you doing this?” asks Green. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  Because he’s a greedy lowlife who fell in way over his head.

  That’s why.

  I hear a sniffle back over my shoulder. I look up at Anne who, trying to remain strong, is suppressing a cry that on the inside is much bigger than she’s allowing me to see.

  “You all right?” I ask.

  “No. What kind of animal is this guy?”

  “The worst kind,” I answer. “One without a soul.” “I’m doing this because GlassWell needs this deal,” Brand goes on, “and because I’m not going to let you fuck it up over something you have all wrong.”

  “Something I have all wrong,” Green says, showing some fight still. “You so sure about that?”

  The recorded conversations between Brand and Alessi.

  “Don’t fuck with me. I am a man of my word. Remember what I told you will happen if you decide to make up stories.”

&
nbsp; “What’s that?” responds Green angrily, losing patience. “That if I tell GlassWell or the cops what happened, you go away quietly because the order to kill my family if you’re outed has already been put in place? Huh? Isn’t that how you put it, you sick fuck?”

  No doubt a last-ditch effort to get such a damning threat confirmed on tape.

  A threat—perhaps more a promise—Brand made to Green offline.

  In person.

  Brand doesn’t bite.

  “Like I’ve already said, Scott,” Brand comes back, his voice still calm, “you need to reel in your imagination and keep the storytelling in check. It’s liable to get you into trouble at some point.”

  Then, he’s gone.

  Turns out Green wasn’t scared for his own life. He was scared for his family.

  Silence behind me. I turn around. All the color has rushed from Anne Green’s face. She’s covering her mouth.

  I close the browser and open Green’s e-mail. I do a search for all those from Ryan Brand, but nothing unrelated to business dealings comes up.

  Pictures.

  What pictures?

  If something was received via e-mail, it wouldn’t have come directly from the scumbag. My mind moves to anonymous e-mail services. I start scrolling back through e-mails looking for anything that seems odd. The first thing that catches my eye is an e-mail from the address Bobbi@GunBroker.nl. ‘nl’ is the e-mail suffix for the Netherlands; ‘GunBroker’ speaks for itself. To spare Anne, I keep going without stopping or opening it. Then I see an e-mail that came in a week ago from a source called FlazMail.

  I open the e-mail. It has three attachments. I open the first one, a photograph of a doctor—or dentist I’m guessing from the chair in the center of what appears to be an examination room. The dentist, dressed in dress pants and a button-down shirt with a white smock-type thing on top is on the far side of the room, half-turned toward a counter with a canister of tongue depressors and the like on top. The picture gives a good shot of his face. He’s writing in a chart. The photo is clear. The subject seems to have zero idea he’s on camera.

  “David,” I hear over my shoulder. “Our son.”

  I open the next attachment, another photo. This one is of a twenty-something brunette seated in a restaurant—brasserie I’m guessing from the décor—at a table with another woman. They’re having coffee. Both seemingly unsuspecting of a photo being taken.

  “That one,” Anne says, pointing, “that’s our daughter. Wendy.”

  I open the final one. It’s of Anne Green. She’s accepting a package. The person making the delivery, standing right in front of her, snapped this shot. Anne Green never knew it.

  “Oh, my God, that’s right here, at our home,” Anne says. “We have to go to the police.”

  Green wasn’t kidding. Brand had made it clear if the truth got out, Green’s family would pay. These photos drove that message home.

  “It’s definitely time for the police, Anne, but I’m going to have them come to you. You are to tell no one about any of this—no one—except a man named Detective Lovell. When he comes here, and he will come here, you show him everything we just looked at—the call-log website—”

  I bring VivRecord.com back up, and minimize the window so it’s ready to go.

  “—and the e-mail and photos we just looked at. Got it?”

  Anne nods yes.

  “Detective who?” I test her.

  “Lovell.”

  “That’s right. Until he’s standing here in front of you, in this study, not a word of it to anyone.”

  The disposable vibrates in my pocket. It’s Jake. I pick up.

  “You’re all set for three twenty p.m. Go to the Visitor Center. James Reynolds will be on the list.”

  CHAPTER 38

  NEW JERSEY

  2013

  Amtrak Acela number 2155 from New York’s Penn Station to Union Station in Washington, D.C., is tearing down the East Coast. The ride is smooth, steady. First Class on any luxury train line is sure to be emptier than coach, and even more so during the middle of the day such as the 11:00 a.m. I’m riding on. Essentially alone aside from a few other scattered folks in the car, I take out both phones. I put them on the small table in front of me. First I check the iPhone. There are numerous texts from Julia.

  WHAT’S GOING ON?

  WHY DID YOUR SIDE DELAY THE CLOSING AGAIN THIS MORNING?

  IVAN—WE NEED TO TALK.

  CALL ME NOW.

  Leaving Julia alone for now, I find the number Perry’s husband gave me for Andreu. I pick up the disposable, dial the number, and hit send. It’s ringing.

  “Zdravstvuj?”

  I pause for a second before speaking. The sound of him both angers and excites me.

  “Been a while, Andreu,” I say, making sure Jonah Gray’s voice is coming from Ivan Janse’s throat. “Sounds like your stint in jail was a pretty quick one. Whose dick did you suck to get out?”

  “If by whose dick did I suck you mean who’d I pay off—what’s the difference? It’s nice to have a couple bucks. Isn’t that right, my half-brother?”

  “We may share some of the same blood, but make no mistake. We’re far from family.”

  “Anyway, that’s all in the past for me. Unfortunately for you, jail very much remains in your future should you ever try to return home. Is that hard? Any harder than knowing that scumbag of a man who fathered us was murdered in cold blood, like the animal he was?”

  The words sting. My father was a lot of things, but he was far from the kind of man who deserved to die the way he did. Gunned down in his own front doorway.

  “I’m coming to Russia, you fuck. And I’m going to be there sooner than you know, so keep your phone close. I’m going to give you—and your slut mother—something you both want. You’re going to give me Perry.”

  “I knew even if it took years it was only a matter of time before you came looking for her, Jonah.”

  “Looks like for once you were right about something. Because that time is now.”

  I get off the train and head right for the public restroom. I take the second to last stall, close and lock the door. I’ve done my homework. Once at the Capitol there are no restrooms available until after one has gone through security. Therefore the gun in my pocket might be an issue.

  I remove the piece and place it on the ground, behind the base of the toilet, out of sight. I step back, look at it from every angle possible—sides, crouching, on tiptoes, the works. Then I take a leak. I exit the stall, wash my hands, and leave.

  As I step out of Union Station, I swig down my last Life Fuel and toss the empty little bottle in a garbage can. The sky is gray, the air is cold but a refreshing slap in the face. I head up Massachusetts Avenue. Twenty minutes later, my iPhone’s GPS system has me staring at the U.S. Capitol.

  The Capitol Visitor Center, the new main entrance to the U.S. Capitol, is located beneath the East Front plaza at First and East Capitol Streets. I review the game plan in my mind as I head there, going over the map of the property, and the sequence of events exactly as they will unfold from the moment I step through the front doors until I exit them again. I suck in a breath and cross the threshold. The security area is tight, buzzing. There are tourists of all ages, lots of cameras and lots of passes and badges hanging around necks. I wait for a few minutes in line to check-in.

  “James Reynolds,” I say when my turn comes, my best Midwest accent in play. “I’m here for the three twenty tour.”

  The serious-looking woman in the U.S. Capitol garb checks her computer. She has both the glasses and the black, beehive hairdo to suggest she’s had a bit of trouble leaving the sixties behind.

  “Reynolds, James, yup, right here,” she says.

  Morante. Nice.

  They don’t usually ask for ID, something else learned from my homework. I’m ready with a story in case, but don’t need it. The agent hands me my pass. I get in line for screening and again wait my turn.

  I st
ep up to the conveyer belt that will be carrying the contents of my pockets through the X-ray. I take a bin. I place everything in from both cell phones to the loupe to my keys to my shoes and lay my suit jacket on top. My belongings start their trip through the tunnel. When they do, I’m invited to step into the magnetometer—same type of screening machine used at the airport—which will X-ray my person.

  “Is there anything in your pockets?” asks an older fella also proudly wearing his U.S. Capitol uniform.

  “No.”

  “Hands above your head please,” he goes on.

  Within minutes I’m through security, as are my belongings. I place everything back into its rightful pocket. I look at the Perregaux—3:18 p.m. Right on time.

  I step into Emancipation Hall, the centerpiece of the new Visitor Center opened in 2008. My eye immediately catches the plaster cast of the Statue of Freedom standing in the space—a replica of the actual statue sitting atop the building. The space is wide open, bright; the colors are predominantly lighter shade earth tones. Despite projecting a feeling of both history and dignity, Emancipation Hall also feels fresh, modern. My group is comprised of about fifteen people, some whom I recognize from the security process.

  The tour begins in the Orientation Theatre with a thirteen-minute film entitled “Out of Many, One”—a piece about our country’s struggle to create the world’s first truly representative democracy as well as the remarkable building that houses the U.S. Congress. But I don’t hear a word of it. Our tour will last about an hour. I’m thinking solely about what takes place at minute thirty. That’s when I’ll be breaking off from the tour and heading back to the same place the tour begins—the Visitor Center. More specifically, Exhibition Hall. This way any of the people I’ll have been with, who might recognize me, will still be off somewhere in the Capitol. By the time they return to where they started, I’ll be long gone.

  At 3:50 p.m., once the group has already been to the Crypt of the Capitol and is coming toward the end of their time in the Rotunda before heading to the National Statuary Hall, I literally stop in my tracks as we collectively take a turn. As the rest of the people following our guide make a hard left to turn a corner, I simply do an about-face and head right back where I came from. I retrace my tracks, stopping for a second to pretend I’m looking at something on the wall to unzip my fly and pull a pair of latex gloves from my underwear. Within minutes I reenter the Visitor Center and make my way to the lower level where the Exhibition Hall is located.