Just Between Us

by Rebecca Drake

  He was going out the back. Shit! Was he off work? I’d been so engrossed in their encounter that I hadn’t realized she was his replacement. He disappeared through a service door and I quickly swallowed the rest of my drink, shoved a twenty at a waitress, and pushed out the front door. Trying to look nonchalant, I walked around to the parking lot in the back, breaking into a run only when I was out of sight of the front door.

  I scoured the lot and there it was—his Harley. At that moment, a back door banged open and I ducked behind the corner, peering around the side as Ray Fortini stepped outside, pulling on a jacket. I pulled out my phone, starting to text Julie and Alison that he was leaving, but then I realized that he hadn’t gotten on the bike. He took a seat at an old picnic table on a dingy concrete patio just to the left of the door, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and lit up.

  It was just a break—he wasn’t leaving. I was so relieved that I sagged against the building. I glanced at my phone and saw that I’d missed several texts. Before I could read them, the back door opened again and I looked around the corner as the skinny male waiter, barely recognizable in a puffy parka, came outside carrying a plastic snack basket and what looked like a soft drink. He deposited his food on the table, hitching up his sagging chinos and taking a seat across from Fortini, who reached into the basket and helped himself to what looked like fries. The guy protested, turning sideways to try to shelter his food, but Fortini only laughed, half-standing to reach across the table and grab some more.

  Looking back down at my phone, I saw that one of the texts was from Heather. “About time,” I muttered, stopping short when I read the message: At hospital—miscarriage.

  I stared in shock at the screen for a moment, wishing I hadn’t sent that complaining voice mail. Just as I started to type a sympathetic—and apologetic—message, a new text came, this one from Eric: CALL ME.

  Crap. I looked over at the table. Ray was talking and smoking, half his attention on the waiter, the other half on his phone. I ducked back around the corner and quickly called home. Eric sounded harried. “Do you know where Josh left his blanket?”

  The fragments of a soft, once baby-blue blanket given to him as an infant and carried around so religiously that all that was left was a gray knotted string that he couldn’t sleep without. “I don’t know—did you check under his bed?”

  “Yep. And under Sam’s bed and in the sofa cushions and in our bedroom.” He recited every place he’d looked while I half-listened, sticking my head back around the corner to see if anything had changed. Fortini was gesturing with his cigarette while he spoke to the waiter, the phone sitting on the table. I ducked back behind the wall. “I can’t think of anyplace else to look.”

  He sighed. “I’ll keep searching—it’s got to be here somewhere. What time do you think you’ll be home?”

  Not until I’ve stolen this iPhone. “Sorry, but I’m going to be late.” I latched on to the first excuse that popped in my mind. “Heather’s had a miscarriage.”

  “What? Heather was pregnant?”

  Whoops. Distracted, I’d forgotten that she hadn’t told anyone else yet. “Um, yeah, it was kind of a surprise.”

  “But I thought Viktor had a vasectomy?”

  Before I could reply, the door banged open a third time and a female voice called, “Hey, Ray, your food’s up.” I looked around the corner in time to see the waiter heading back inside as Ray stubbed out his cigarette in a plastic ashtray and stood up, heading for the door. And miracle of miracles, he left the phone on the picnic table.

  “I’ve got to go, Eric—I’ll call you back.” I hung up without waiting for his good-bye, stuffing my phone in my purse as I walked toward the picnic table. It might have been the gin, but I felt as if I were moving in slow motion, my hand closing over Fortini’s phone, the plastic case slipping in my sweating palm as I pivoted, turning toward the street.

  The slap of the door startled me. I didn’t turn around, kept moving forward, away from the bar, but when I heard him bellow “Hey, you!” I broke into a run, shoving his phone into my purse as I dashed around the corner and fled up the street.

  chapter thirty-eight

  ALISON

  The address my brother had given me turned out to be an old Victorian in Bellevue that had been converted into three apartments, the “C” after the number the designation for the third-floor unit, which I learned was accessed on the side of the house via a long, rickety, and rusting set of metal stairs. A mailbox at the front confirmed that this was the right place: One of the slots read “Fortini” in slanting blue Sharpie.

  Staring at Fortini’s apartment, I wished I were the one sitting at the bar. I surveyed the house while Julie dug in her purse for the tiny set of screwdrivers that she’d brought along in case we had to pick a lock. That was looking likely, since it was going to be impossible to check a third-floor unit for any unlocked windows.

  How were we going to get up to the apartment? At least the staircase was on the side of the house, but it was otherwise completely exposed. It was almost seven P.M. The sun had finally set, but there were streetlights, and a house with large windows right next door, not to mention that at the top of those long metal stairs, hanging above the door, was a porch light.

  “We have to come up with a story,” I said to Julie. “What do we say if someone sees us?”

  We’d parked across the street, but hadn’t moved from Julie’s car, both of us scanning the building and the block. She took a long swallow from a bottle of water and rolled her shoulders as if limbering up for a run.

  “How about this,” she said. “We’re considering buying property in the area and we wanted to talk to some renters.”

  “We’re not exactly dressed for that, are we?”

  “Maybe we were at the gym first? Believe me, if someone does question us it’s not going to be about what we’re wearing.”

  She had a point.

  We got out of the car and closed the doors quietly, conscious of the noise. As we headed toward the side of the house, one of the doors in the front cracked open and a small, gray head poked out. “Hello?” a tremulous voice said.

  “Good evening,” I said, and Julie echoed me, both of us smiling.

  “Do you have my dinner?”

  “I’m sorry?” I said, confused.

  The door opened wider and an old woman shuffled out onto the wooden porch, the ancient boards creaking underfoot. “Aren’t you with Meals on Wheels?” She picked at the corner of a shapeless brown sweater.

  “No, sorry, we’re here to talk to your neighbor,” I said, pointing in the general direction of the upstairs apartment.

  She scowled, her round, wrinkled face like a wizened apple. “My meal is supposed to be here by now.”

  “I’m sure they’ll show up soon,” Julie said, both of us inching our way past the porch, desperate to go, but afraid to attract negative attention by hurrying away.

  “Are you lying to me?” The voice suddenly suspicious and rising.

  “No, of course not,” I said in a soothing tone. “We wouldn’t lie to you.”

  “Everyone is a liar,” she declared, before abruptly shuffling back inside and slamming the door.

  We saw no one else as we started up the metal steps, which vibrated like a rope ladder, slapping against the brick wall and squealing at spots, as if the screws were being tortured. The steps ended at a small metal landing with a potted geranium and a wooden door painted black. While Julie tried to shield me from view, I tried the doorknob—locked, as we’d expected—and ran a gloved hand quickly over the jamb, searching for a key. There was none.

  We switched places, Julie fiddling with her small screwdrivers in the lock while I tried to block her and scout the neighboring house and the street for anyone watching. There were curtains drawn over the upstairs windows in the opposite house, but had one of them twitched? Was someone spying on us? “Hurry,” I muttered to Julie.

  “I’m trying,” she said in a stage whisper, �
��but it’s hard with the gloves.”

  My phone rang, the stairs swaying slightly as we both startled. I pulled it out of my jacket. “It’s Michael—I have to answer.”

  He sounded harried. “Hey, sorry to bother you, but is Lucy allergic to mushrooms?”

  “No, at least, not that I’m aware of—why? Is she okay?” I had a sudden vision of my child red-faced and blown up like a puffer fish, picturing a frantic trip to the emergency room for an EpiPen.

  “She hasn’t eaten any, so she’s fine,” he said. “She’s just making a pretty convincing argument that this is why she can’t eat the pasta I made.”

  “Well, neither kid likes mushrooms so if it’s got a lot of mushrooms in it they’re probably not going to eat it.”

  “Matthew is eating it.”

  “Is he?” My people pleaser. Poor kid was going to need so much therapy. “Have you tried picking out the mushrooms?”

  “She insists the whole dish has been tainted.”

  “Well, there’s always mac and cheese—we’ve got boxes in the cupboard.”

  “I don’t think we should coddle the kids like that—they should eat what we serve for dinner.”

  “Hmm,” I said, thinking that given how infrequently “we” made dinner that “we” weren’t really entitled to an opinion. “Well, good luck.”

  “How’s your dinner?” I caught an undertone of sulkiness that made me long to tell him the truth about what I was actually doing, risking my life on this stupid metal staircase, breaking the law so I could avoid going to prison and leaving him to make dinner every night for our children.

  “Delicious,” I said. “They’re serving the next course, so I need to go.”

  “Okay, well, you enjoy yourself, we’ll just be here—”

  I hung up the phone, my stomach growling because of course I’d had nothing to eat; I hadn’t even thought of food, I’d been so intent on the task at hand. “Any luck?” I said to Julie.

  “Stop asking,” she hissed. “You’ll know if I get lucky because the damn door will—” At that moment we both heard a distinct click. I turned around to look and she smiled. She stood up, placed a gloved hand tentatively on the knob, and slowly turned. The door opened.

  The inside of Ray Fortini’s apartment reminded me of Michael’s bachelor pad: an emphasis on electronic equipment—a fifty-inch flat-screen, a PlayStation with multiple controllers, and a complicated-looking speaker system—at the expense of furniture and decoration. An exception was the bed, king-size wrought iron with ornate curlicues and expensive-looking sheets.

  “Well, that’s a surprise,” Julie said, rubbing a corner between her gloved fingers as if she could actually tell the thread count through latex.

  It took me a minute of glancing around before I spotted the computer, a large desktop set up on a table in an alcove. “Bingo,” I said, powering it on and not surprised when a page with a password box popped up. “Let’s see if we can find a birth certificate or any other personal documents. I need his birth date or his mother’s maiden name or something like that to try.”

  Most people aren’t that careful with their passwords; they think about something easy to remember for quick access, not realizing that this means quick access for other people, too.

  Julie and I started opening drawers. The nightstand held a lifetime supply of condoms, ribbed and regular, thin and “stimulating,” natural sheepskin, and some that were supposedly flavored. “Good to know he believes in safe sex,” I said, slamming the drawer closed and moving on to the closet. A few boxes on a top shelf looked promising, but they turned out to hold childhood mementos—an old Nerf football, a small Steelers jersey, some family photos that had dates but no names to identify the smiling faces.

  “Check this out,” Julie called from across the room. She was kneeling in front of an old-fashioned trunk, and before I reached her side I could see that it was full of sex toys. “Now we know how he spends his free time,” she said, giggling, waggling a pair of leather-covered handcuffs at me.

  “Fifty Shades of Cliché,” I said, wondering if this was a serious interest or just something he used to woo the people he managed to bring up here. I looked around again, frustrated. “He’s got to keep papers somewhere.”

  “Maybe it’s all online.”

  “Let’s hope not.” Heart sinking, I started at the front of the apartment and examined everything. The kitchen was small, but had a table next to a window that overlooked the backyard and some shared parking. I opened the refrigerator: several different types of craft beer, condiments like RedHot, a loaf of something labeled “Pepperoni Bread,” and the only nods to healthy eating, a bag of moldering carrots and a perfectly round head of iceberg lettuce. The freezer held Hot Pockets and pizza snacks.

  The cupboards were equally sparse: Pop-Tarts, a bag of Doritos, and a huge plastic jug of something called Fuel XXX, which looked like one of those protein powders you bought at muscle-bound health stores.

  There were only DVDs and video games in the entertainment center and there was nothing hidden behind the couch. The small bathroom had a medicine cabinet stuffed full of prescription pill bottles—oxycodone, Zoloft, diazepam—all mixed in with the mundane toothpaste, razors, and shaving cream. I went back to the table with the computer, checked the single center drawer a second time, and slammed it shut in frustration.

  “This is taking too long,” Julie said. “Can’t you figure out how to get in without a password?”

  “Not easily.” Finally, in desperation, I ran my hand under the bed and felt something hard. Using my iPhone flashlight, I spotted a gray box and pulled it out. A fire safe, but it was locked.

  A third time through the apartment failed to reveal a key small enough to fit in the lock. Julie had a go with the screwdrivers, but this keyhole was too tiny even for them. Trying to pry it open with a knife was equally futile. “Aargh, this is so frustrating!” I said. “Maybe if we drop it out a window it’ll break open.”

  “And maybe the neighbors would come running,” Julie said. “Here, let me try again.” She went at it with the knife, but only succeeded in snapping off the blade. “Shoot! Now what are we going to do?”

  I tilted the safe and the broken metal tip dropped from the keyhole. “We’ll just throw out the knife or put it back in the drawer. If we hide it in plain sight—” I stopped short.

  “What is it?” Julie said.

  Without stopping to answer, I ran back to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator again. The perfect head of lettuce. I reached into the vegetable drawer and knew the minute I touched its waxy leaves that I was right. Julie had followed me into the kitchen and she watched, perplexed, as I took the lettuce from the fridge.

  “Isn’t there anything else to eat?” she said as I set it on the counter.

  “It’s not edible,” I said, tapping the plastic surface. On the bottom was a round rubber stopper like the kind in a piggy bank, but held on with a small knob. Julie’s mouth dropped as I twisted it open and out spilled two tiny bags of white powder, a roll of bills bound with a rubber band, and a tiny key.

  The fire safe opened easily with the key and I riffled quickly through the files inside, grabbing one that seemed to have personal documents and running with it to the computer. My hands shook a little as I typed in his birth date. No luck. His mother’s maiden name. No luck. Maiden name and her birth year. No luck. His year and initials and her year and initials. The password screen slid aside, revealing his files, and I cried out in triumph.

  “Shh,” Julie cautioned, stepping past me to look out the window and then checking the ones on the other side of the apartment. “It’s been over thirty minutes, we need to hurry.”

  Before I erased anything, I wanted to see what he’d been holding over our heads. I opened Photos and scrolled through them as fast as I could, a rapid blur of color, until I found the dark, grainy shot that he’d sent to us. There were other photos, over a dozen in all, of the three of us and the road and the cars, t
he headlights a smear of light illuminating first my face, then Sarah’s. Julie stepping into the frame of another one. Heather on the side of several shots, head turned or looking as catatonic as I remembered. All four of us had been caught on camera, clearly visible. Viktor’s leg dangled out of the car in one photo, and although someone else might not have realized what they were seeing, no one could miss that bottle-green Mercedes.

  Something was odd. It took me a minute to realize that the close-ups were too close and too in-focus to have been taken with a smartphone. I clicked on one and opened the EXIF data, which revealed that the shot had been taken with a Canon. I quickly checked the others. All taken with the same camera, not a smartphone.

  “This is really weird,” I said to Julie, who was sitting on the bed sifting more carefully through the fire safe. “He took the photos of us with a regular camera.”

  “So?” She sounded distracted.

  “So what was he doing out at two A.M. with a camera? He’s a bartender, not a professional photographer.”

  “Maybe it’s a hobby,” she said. “People leave stuff in their cars all the time. Who cares? Just get rid of them.”

  But he didn’t drive a car, so he didn’t have a place to leave a camera. He drove a loud motorcycle. Could we really have failed to notice that revving sound in the silence that night? Except we had noticed—I suddenly remembered being startled by the noise of an engine somewhere in the distance. Could that have been Fortini?

  Looking once again through all the photos, I was struck by how deliberate the shots seemed, each one of us caught on camera either individually or in a group. The cursor jumped and I accidentally clicked open a video. A naked man was having sex on a familiar ornate iron bed, his back to the camera. Ray Fortini seemed to realize that he didn’t have the right shot, because he pulled out, his face turning to the camera for a moment, a study in concentration, before he reached up to wherever he had it positioned—it appeared to be hidden on the tall chest of drawers—and changed the angle slightly. As he stepped back, the camera autofocused on a naked woman with her head covered in a tight black hood that had an opening only for her mouth. She was lying spread-eagled, handcuffed to long chains attached to the bed frame and wearing ankle restraints that had a metal bar between them, holding her legs apart. Fortini grabbed her by her skinny hips, and unceremoniously hauled her in different directions so that he could capture more of her body and his on film. He grinned at the camera as he reached for something out of view and then stepped back in with what looked like a riding crop. He started hitting her with it, flicking it over different parts of her body while she twitched and turned but couldn’t get out of range because of the restraints. He flipped her onto her stomach and whapped her across the butt over and over before he tossed the crop aside and entered her again, slamming into her so violently that she jerked forward on the bed, his hands on her hips forcing her back into position, his grip and the restraints holding her in place. I felt as if I could hear her body breaking apart; I winced at every violent thrust, even though there was no sound. I couldn’t stop watching, as transfixed as I was repulsed, until he climaxed, head back, mouth open in a long, silent scream. He fell forward across the woman and grabbed the hood, yanking it off and jerking her head up by the long, light blond hair that tumbled down, and then I was the one crying out, because as he forced her face toward the camera I recognized her. It was Heather.