Echo Bridge

by Kristen O'Toole

  “Nah. He lives in Newton with Mrs. Zarin 2.0. On the upside, when he left, he bought me a ton of awesome computer shit. On the downside, now that he’s got a couple of replacement babies, he’s decided he only wants to pay a wee fraction of my college tuition, which sucks, because his salary still determines my financial aid. So if I don’t get a scholarship, I’m looking at UMass.”

  “Amherst isn’t so bad,” I said, and Farah snorted behind me. I was afraid to say more. It was obvious to me that paying for college was a constant worry for both Lexi and Farah, and it had never even crossed my mind. My parents had paid for all my older siblings to attend the school of their choosing, and they would for me, too. For the first time, it occurred to me that this was quite a financial feat.

  “So are you going to tell us who this appointment is with?” Lexi demanded, and I was grateful for the change in subject.

  “This guy I know from a listserv,” said Farah.

  “Oh, lord. Are you taking us to catch a predator, Farah?” Lexi laughed. “Are we on camera for Dateline?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” snapped Farah. “I know him from a Taqwacore message board. We’ve been emailing for a year. He dropped out of MIT to work as a freelance IT security consultant for a bunch of pharmaceutical and tech companies.”

  “An IT security consultant is going to help us hack Hugh’s phone?” Lexi asked skeptically. “Isn’t he supposed to make sure we can’t do that?”

  “That’s just his day job,” said Farah, as if that explained everything. “Stop asking so many questions and drive.”

  “Have you met this guy before?” I asked.

  Farah exhaled loudly. “No, okay? But this isn’t like meeting some random who pokes you on Facebook. Like I said, we’ve been emailing for a year. He’s practically famous, in some circles.”

  “Yeah, circle jerks,” muttered Lexi. “Don’t tell me this is all a ploy so you can meet your virtual crush, Farah.”

  “Blow me, Lexi,” Farah said mildly. “He can help us. Even if he’s not up for it, he’ll find us some one who is. Trust me.”

  Chapter 7

  After twenty minutes in the car, we arrived in Cambridge and turned onto Memorial Drive, which ran along the Charles River past Harvard and then MIT. I gazed out the window at the full moon shining on the Charles and wished that we were just going out like normal girls to see a band somewhere or to party at Hong Kong, a Chinese restaurant in Harvard Square that turned into a dance club after ten o’clock and was notoriously lax about fake IDs. I wished we weren’t on a mission.

  Lexi performed an expert parallel parking maneuver on a narrow street just outside of Kendall Square, and we walked up to the address Farah specified: a tall apartment building with a lot of huge windows and terraces on the upper floors. A banner on the front advertised renovation and luxury living in Athenaeum Lofts.

  Lexi whistled. “This is where he lives?” She dropped her head back to gaze up at the top of the building. “A lot of dark windows.”

  Farah pointed to the sign. “Guess there are a lot of unoccupied lofts.”

  Instead of a doorman, there was a portly man with a gray beard sitting behind a desk inside the front door, with a bank of security cameras behind him. Farah gave him an apartment number, and he lifted a phone and asked for her name.

  “Mad Judy,” Farah said. Lexi and I, standing behind her, exchanged a glance, but after the security guard repeated the name into the phone, he hung up and nodded at us, pointing to an elevator bank.

  Lexi barely managed to hold it together long enough for the elevator to arrive. Once the doors slid closed, she burst out laughing. “Mad Judy?”

  Farah folded her arms. “It’s a Buzzcocks song,” she said. “It’s my handle. It’s the only name Mr.—this guy knows me by.”

  “Wait,” I said, as Lexi kept laughing. “Does that mean you only know this guy’s screen name?”

  “Yes,” said Farah. “It’s safer for everyone that way. Most of the work he does is not exactly legal.”

  “So what’s his name?”

  Farah blushed. “Mr. Grieves.”

  That set Lexi off again. “Mad Judy and Mr. Grieves. You’re like a comic strip!”

  “It does kind of sound like a Jimmy Stewart movie,” I admitted, chuckling.

  “It’s a Pixies song,” Farah said to me. “A good one.”

  “I take it you like punk rock,” I said.

  “I like loud music, whether you want to call it punk or hardcore or just rock or whatever. Those classifications were only ever just labels on racks in music stores. They’re essentially meaningless in the era of digital music formats.” Farah gestured at her messenger bag, which was covered with patches for bands, some of which I’d heard of, like NOFX and Fugazi, and most of which I hadn’t: Secret Trial Five, Black Blood, The Kominas, Liberty or Death, Agnostic Front. I didn’t say anything else. I was obviously out of my element—aside from a handful of girly folk CDs left over from my sister’s college years, I just listened to whatever was on the radio.

  The elevator dinged as we arrived on the eighteenth floor, and Lexi stopped laughing. We stepped into a vestibule and looked around. The chrome elevator bank faced a leather settee and a huge abstract painting. The hallway was off to our left, ending with a window of black sky. There were three doors, spaced far apart. Our feet were silent on the gray wall-to-wall carpet, and no voices or TV sounds came through the walls. I began to feel nervous.

  “This is a really nice building,” murmured Lexi. “Mr. Grieves doesn’t—I mean, this has to be his parents’ place, right?”

  Farah smiled a small, satisfied smile, and it occurred to me that Lexi probably wasn’t easily impressed. Farah straightened her shoulders. “Just follow my lead.” She marched down the hall and knocked on the center door, 18D. After a pause came the clicking sound of some number of locks.

  “Paranoid much?” hissed Lexi, but I could tell she was nervous, too.

  A tall guy in his early twenties, with olive skin and shaggy black curls, stared at us. He wore a black T-shirt that exposed his skinny-but-muscly arms. FRAK ME was printed on it in white block letters. His black eyes rested on each of our faces in turn: Farah, then me, then Lexi, then back to Farah.

  “You didn’t tell me you were bringing people,” he said, like she’d brought bedbugs. Farah looked nervous just for a second, until the guy followed up with, “What is this, a Miley Cyrus fan club?”

  Then her cheeks flamed pink and her eyes got big and she busted out a flirty little grin. “I think I deserve a little more credit than that.” She pointedly hitched up her bag and the guy’s eyes traveled to her band patches.

  “Anyone who shows up at my door with two cheerleaders in tow, their cred is officially under review. Actually, anyone who shows up at my door with unannounced guests is on sudden-death probation. It’s a house rule. But you might as well come in,” he stepped back and opened the door a few more inches. “If you were Feds, you’d have a more effective cover.”

  “Feds?” Lexi mouthed at me as we walked through the door. I shrugged. We had obviously entered The Twilight Zone. Lexi was piqued at being called a cheerleader. She stuck out her hand. “I’m Lex—”

  “I don’t want to know your name,” said the guy—Mr. Grieves. “Why’d you bring civilians here, kitten? I thought we were discussing business.”

  “We are.” Farah pulled out her laptop and sat down at the glass-topped table that separated the kitchen area—white tile, brand new appliances—from the living space. It was surrounded by four tiny white leather stools that looked terribly uncomfortable. Except for a large leather chair at a worktable with a widescreen monitor on it, all the furniture looked uncomfortable and too coordinated, like a showroom or a catalogue spread. The ceiling was at least twenty feet high, and the outer wall was entirely glass, exposing a spectacular view of the Boston skyline. An iron spiral staircase led to a large loft over the kitchen and doorway.

  “You didn’t think I wa
s going to show up at the apartment of some dude I met online without backup, did you?” Farah asked, without looking up from her computer screen.

  Mr. Grieves blushed, just a bit. “I thought we’d established a little trust,” he muttered, eyeing Lexi and me doubtfully. He slapped Farah’s laptop closed. “You have PGP encryption?”

  “Obviously. I’ve sent you encrypted emails.”

  “You’re still not running this thing here until I’ve installed some of my own security programs.” He picked up the laptop with one hand and walked over to the worktable, which had a series of hard drives stacked underneath. He picked up some cables from the floor and plugged them into Farah’s computer.

  “This apartment is awesome,” said Lexi. She was looking around curiously, and tugged open the refrigerator doors.

  “What are you doing?” I asked quietly.

  “Junk food,” she answered. The fridge and freezer were side by side, and together contained several red, single-serving boxes of frozen French fries; an economy-size bag of miniature tacos; half of a moldy lemon; and a cardboard six-pack of fancy beer with one bottle left. Lexi closed the fridge and turned to Mr. Grieves. “This is your own place?”

  “Yeah.” He stopped tapping and glanced at Lexi, all sarcasm. “I’ve got squatter’s rights.”

  “What are squatter’s rights?” I asked.

  Mr. Grieves looked at me with undisguised disdain. “I’m joking. I own the building.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Lexi. “You don’t own this whole building. We’re not that stupid, and you’re not that much older than we are.”

  “Lexi!” snapped Farah. “You’re being rude.”

  He leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. The tendons in his forearms flexed. “Yeah, I do own this building. I’ll withhold judgment on your stupidity, but I’m sure you…” He cast an appraising eye over Lexi. “…think small. You can’t help it,” he held up one hand when Lexi opened her mouth to protest. “You’re from Belknap. You’re in high school. You’ll probably go to college.” Like college was a pep rally. He shrugged. “I’ve been a freelance security consultant for five years, and I’ve been working off the books for even longer. Real estate is a good investment, and this way I have control over who lives nearby.”

  Lexi gaped. “How old are you?”

  “Nineteen.” Mr. Grieves went back to Farah’s laptop, and I caught her with that same funny smile she’d had in the hallway. “Now what is it you need from me, Mad Judy? Your Facebook page get hacked?”

  “Don’t be a dick,” said Farah. “We need to get into someone’s phone.”

  “Why? Your boyfriend texting some other girl?” asked Mr. Grieves. He crossed the room and gave Farah’s laptop back to her and then returned to the desk, where he began typing faster than I thought was possible.

  “Do you really think I’d come here for that?” asked Farah. “Give me a little credit, Grieves.”

  “This guy dump one of you?” He cast a derisive eye over all three of us, and I saw Farah cringe a little. “Ask you to prom and then hook up with the school slut?”

  Farah looked at Lexi and me, and we looked at each other, having a silent conversation.

  Should we tell him?

  “Something like that,” Farah told Mr. Grieves, with a wry twist to her mouth.

  “You know he’s out with Molly Winslow right now,” I blurted to Lexi. I don’t know why. There seemed like some kind of grim, ironic parallel between the cheesy soap opera Grieves imagined we were in and the fact that Hugh was, at that moment, charming his way into a younger girl’s pants, or at least her bra.

  “What?” Lexi’s eyes were suddenly enormous. I could see the whites all the way around the hazel irises, which made her look a little bit nuts. “This rapist is out on a date with that innocent little—I mean, she’s a little full of herself but—Courtney, how could you not do anything?”

  She had grabbed hold of my wrist and squeezed while she spoke. On top of that, my chest was tightening and my face felt flushed and hot. Because Lexi was right: Molly was out there somewhere with Hugh, and whether they were at the football game or Bertucci’s or a party, at some point he was going to get her alone in the dark. A fresh wave of self-loathing crashed over me, and I thought I might faint.

  “Lexi,” I whispered. “You’re hurting me.”

  She held up my wrist in her hand and looked at it uncomprehendingly.

  “Did I hear you say this dude is a rapist?” asked Mr. Grieves.

  Lexi dropped my arm and blinked, muttering, “Sorry.” She turned to Mr. Grieves. “Um, yeah. He’s got this poor sophomore out on a date right now.” She glared at me.

  Mr. Grieves swiveled his big chair around slowly, like a villain being revealed in a Bond movie. “Is his car a 2009 model or later? You know his license plate number?”

  “No,” said Lexi. “What do you need that for?”

  “Wait,” I said. “I might.” I fumbled through my bag, nearly dropping it I was so relieved to be able to do something helpful, even if I had no idea what Mr. Grieves was up to. But I had realized that if Hugh did something to Molly that night, I’d never forgive myself. “His car’s from last year, I think.” I walked across the room, away from Lexi, who I was worried would never forgive me for having kept Molly’s date with Hugh to myself. I pulled out my phone and scrolled through the pictures. The first week of school, before extracurriculars and athletics were in full swing, we’d hung out in the senior parking lot every day, goofing off. I had more than a dozen pictures of my friends perched on each other’s cars, clutching soda cans and mugging for the camera.

  “Here.” In one shot, Hugh’s license plate was partially visible, half obscured by Lindsay’s long hippie dress. She was laughing at Ted and Hugh, who’d been caught with sitcom-worthy expressions on their faces, as if they were both saying “This guy!” and rolling their eyes.

  Grieves glanced at the phone and punched the four digits he could see into his computer. “Good enough, if you can give me his last name.”

  “Marsden,” I said. “What are you doing? Tracking them with GPS?”

  “Better,” said Mr. Grieves, tapping away. “All these luxury cars with their computerized assistance systems have cameras in them so the operators can see what’s happening if there’s a wreck and the driver’s unconscious.” I flinched as music suddenly burst out of a set of hidden speakers, the cheesy dance club schlock to which Hugh was partial.

  “—don’t call me kid,” Molly’s voice carried over the music, and she and Hugh appeared on Grieves’ monitor. We were staring straight at them; the camera must have been in the rearview mirror. She was flirting, her lips in a pout. “I hate that. I’m only two years younger than you.”

  “Holy crap,” said Lexi. She stood next to me and peered over Mr. Grieves’s shoulder.

  “Exactly. You’re a kid.” Hugh teased Molly.

  “Yeah,” Mr. Grieves said to Lexi. “They’re in a car in Concord somewhere, according to the GPS.” On screen, a map of Belknap and the surrounding area appeared below the video feed, and he pointed to a gray dot.

  “Wow,” Lexi said softly.

  “This isn’t my first time to the rodeo, kitten,” said Grieves.

  “I bet he took her to Le Hibou Jaune,” I said. This was a restaurant off the Concord town square that was decorated like a crazy grandmother’s attic, with pinball machines, tin signs, pink velvet armchairs, and various curios. The waiters were really French, very good looking but mean, bitter they were stuck in Concord instead of making better money in Beacon Hill or the South End. At Le Hibou Jaune, everyone always ordered steak frites, which were served on low mahogany tables under a huge crystal chandelier. It was a Belknap Country Day boy’s idea of a Big Date.

  “If the girl is about to get assaulted, we’re not going to sit here and watch it.” Mr. Grieves frowned. “I guess I can go downstairs and get Bernard to call 911 on a burner—”

  “Grieves,” said Farah. “T
here’s a reason we came here instead of going to the cops in the first place.”

  “Well, if you three can sit here and watch a live snuff film, you’re a lot more evil than regular teenage girls. That’s pretty fucking evil.” Mr. Grieves was pissed.

  “We’re not going to do that,” said Lexi. “But shut up for a minute. They might go to a party or something. If they’re on their way back to Belknap right now, he’s going to be driving for at least fifteen minutes. If they park or go to a party, we’ll have enough time to make the call. If they’re not…I don’t want him to know something’s going on. Not yet.”

  We all leaned forward and stared fixedly his computer.

  “So,” said Hugh, with his half smile. I wanted to punch his smug face. “Anyone else tell you I’m a bad, bad man today?” His voice was slick as shit.

  “Actually, Courtney Valance apologized to me yesterday for talking trash about you,” said Molly. “It was weird.”

  “I was not talking trash,” I muttered. I had hoped Molly hadn’t told Hugh I’d tried to warn her away.

  “Well, C’s a drama diva,” Hugh said. He sounded almost affectionate. I felt ill, and caught Lexi looking at me out of the corner of her eye. “She’s, like—”

  “Unpredictable?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I cannot believe they’re talking about you,” said Lexi. “What a little bitch.”

  “Well, I did try to tell her to break up with her cool older boyfriend for basically no reason, as far as Molly knows,” I said. I was relieved she didn’t seem pissed at me anymore.

  “Still. Why would you lie about that?” Lexi crossed her arms.

  “—sister’s still not talking to me, though,” Molly was saying.

  “She’s just jealous,” Hugh said, joking. “I’m tellin’ ya, Molly, it’s tough to be such a stud.”

  “Shut up,” Molly giggled.

  “Do girls actually fall for this crap?” asked Mr. Grieves.

  “Seriously,” said Lexi.

  “She’s a sophomore,” I said.