Loud Pipes Save Lives

by Jennifer Giacalone

  Lily let him off the phone and sat thinking for a long moment. It was starting to come into focus, what Maggie Burnett wanted: she wanted to hold Lyonsbank, or at least some of its executives, responsible for the role she suspected that they played in the crash. Tying her father’s death back to them was the key to cracking that open—assuming that the D.A.’s intuition on the matter was correct. And having Lily working on it, surreptitiously, was meant to keep it temporarily under the radar in order to catch them with their pants down.

  It also seemed plausible that if Lyonsbank had been holding her own family’s trusts at financial gunpoint, they might be doing the same to someone else’s.

  But, consistent with the way things had been going lately, it raised more questions than it answered.

  25

  Chasing Shadows

  Vea had been exhausted all morning at work, downing black coffee after black coffee to keep her eyes open while she opened up bike engines, picked them apart, and put them back together. Eilidh had kept her up half the night arguing with her about Empress’s decision.

  “Why in feck does she get the final word? Nadia’s our fecking girl, and we’ve got a right to stand with her.”

  Vea had groaned and tried to roll over and go to sleep. “Look, it’s her show, star. Empress been callin’ the shots from day one. I’d be in jail right now probably, along with Khady, Nadia, and Ainsley, too, if she didn’t get us outta trouble.”

  Eilidh wasn’t having it, though. She yanked the sheet off of Vea. “Still a bunch of shite. She don’t have a say whether we go stand with our girl.”

  Vea yanked the sheet back, but Eilidh wasn’t letting go without a fight.

  “No sleep for you, bird. Not till you promise me to fecking stand up to the Empress and do what’s right. The rest of them girls aren’t gonna listen to me, but they’ll damned well listen to you.”

  So, Vea had called Empress up. At one a.m. She’d argued the case: It’s not right that the law has become what it’s become and that Nadia can’t feel safe walking into a clinic. We’re her crew, and her family, and we have to be there with her.

  Empress had initially been set against the idea that any of them should go with Nadia and her boyfriend, except possibly Ainsley, since she was Quin’s sister. Vea argued the point that in other places where people were used to the law being this tilted, there were support structures in place, they had clinic escorts and things like that.

  “Understand that I completely support Nadia’s decision,” Empress answered. “I had a choice taken away from me once; I know how important it is.” She thought about it for a minute and then finally relented: “Fine. It can be a couple of you. But no big show. Not the whole group. No bikes. No doing some dumb shit that’s going to get you on the news.”

  And so, Eilidh rewarded her with a typically riotous fuck and then finally let her go to sleep.

  But here, at work the next day, as she buzzed along on coffee and Clendon’s brain-melting dubstep that echoed through the shop, she felt dissatisfied with that. Why not the whole group? Why not show these craven choke puppies that they had an army to contend with? Empress had been scary right about so many things, but what were the odds that maybe this was the one time when she was just wrong? Vea decided to bet on it.

  On her lunch break, she started writing a group text message.

  “Look, Maggie, we can’t arrest them if what they’re doing isn’t against the law.”

  Maggie was fuming on the other end of the phone. “Goddamnit, Corey! There’s no way this should have even gotten past the Council. They’ve legalized harassing people! It’s incredible. Has Tommy said anything to you about it?”

  Corey sighed. “No, not yet, but I suspect he caved under pressure.”

  “From who?”

  “Do you really need to ask who?”

  “The goddamned deputy mayor,” she growled. It was unlike her to lose her cool, but this wasn’t about scoring points in the press. Lifting the long-standing ban on protests in front of clinics that provided abortions was just an insane thing to do, and she knew, she knew it wasn’t Tommy’s work. This was one of those times when his people-pleasing tendency was a problem. Maggie had thrown a little bomb to keep Lina busy, and she’d gotten busy indeed. She couldn’t begin to contemplate the amount of arm-twisting Lina had had to do to get the votes. “That law was one of the first ones like it in the country, did you know that?” she ranted. “That was in place since my grandmother’s administration!”

  She couldn’t tell whether this move was aimed specifically at her, or whether it was just part of a larger distraction intended to take the focus off the story about Roberto’s bastard kid, but either way, it was no damned good.

  Corey sounded especially tired. “Look, Maggie. You know how this works. Have your people look at the damn law. Find something we can use. Noise ordinances, whatever. I’ll work with you. I don’t like it either, believe me. But I can’t keep enforcing a law that’s not a law anymore.”

  Maggie, who had been stomping back and forth behind her desk, slowed, then sat on the edge of the desk—still fighting mad, but already thinking strategy.

  “All right,” she said after a moment. “We’ll get some eyes on the thing and see what we can find. I appreciate your willingness to work with me. I’ll let you know what I come up with.” She hung up.

  Strictly speaking, this shouldn’t even be her office’s domain, and they both knew it. She was supposed to be about nailing people breaking the law, not finding ways to nail people who were doing something legal that she happened to dislike. She figured she would quietly put a couple of her sharp young assistant D.A.’s on the task of looking for weak spots in the law, making very clear that they were not to discuss what they were working on with anyone. She didn’t want to appear overzealous or ineffective, nor give any opposition a chance to mount a preemptive defense.

  She flicked on the television in her office to the local news channel and saw some coverage of a protest outside of a clinic downtown: a small crowd knotted around the front entrance with their ghastly dead-fetus-in-a-jar signs, hollering God knew what at the women trying to get to the front door. Even with the sound off, she felt literally, physically sick looking at it.

  But then, something interesting happened.

  A group of motorcycles pulled up in front of the clinic. There were enough that she couldn’t tell how many there were because some of them were out of frame. At a glance, what looked to be roughly eight bikers in leather riding gear, with their helmets still on, streamed into the frame. The crowd began a restless pitching and stirring, their command of the small stub of sidewalk space suddenly challenged. The bikers never removed their helmets, but pushed their way into the bunch of people and cleared a small pathway for a young woman and a young man (probably her boyfriend) to walk into the building.

  Maggie picked up the remote and turned on the sound. The anchor’s voice was intoning: “—and while this amounted to little more than a traffic violation in terms of any issues for these mystery bikers, the police did not arrive in time to issue any parking tickets. This is the first response that the people of New York have seen to the new phenomenon of protestors outside of clinics.”

  She smiled.

  Lily was parked up at Miri’s place, feet up, watching the same footage.

  The bikers never took off their helmets, but there was Ainsley’s Indian, just within the frame.

  She shook her head. This was not good.

  Miri came over and rumpled her hair. “What’s the matter?”

  “I think that’s my sister on the news.”

  Miri looked at the television for a moment, taking everything in. “Where?”

  “One of the bikers. Because look—that’s Quin, right? And that’s his girlfriend that we met? And there’s my sister’s bike. That’s her bike. Our dad’s old bike.”

  Miri looked for a moment more. “So? She’s stepping up and protecting women’s rights. Isn’t that g
ood?”

  Lily sighed. “Yes, but…” She was struggling to explain. “Look, she’s with a group of bikers. They’re deliberately being intimidating…”

  “So what? That’s the point, right?”

  “Yeah, but that’s not what clinic escorts usually do. They’re just there to protect the woman, not to intimidate the protestors.” She’d written her share on that issue during her time at Intersect, and the move was clearly admirable in its intent but not done by people who had ever done something like it before.

  She picked up the remote and backed up the feed, showing the footage again.

  “And look… Look how they’re in sync with each other. They’re obviously used to doing something together, and it clearly isn’t volunteering as clinic escorts.”

  Miri seemed dubious, but Lily’s instincts were also pretty good.

  “So?”

  Lily shook her head. “So, nothing. Nothing yet, anyway. I’m probably just chasing shadows.”

  26

  Clowns to the Left, Jokers to the Right

  When Lily got into work the next day, Chernov was lingering near her desk. “Hey Sparr,” he called as she trudged in, sounding like he wanted an actual conversation.

  “Hi Chernov,” she replied, hoping to head it off at the pass by grabbing the folders Ray had left from the night before, flipping them open, and acting urgently interested in them. To say she’d slept poorly would be a gross understatement.

  “So, uh did you see the news last night?”

  Lily tensed but didn’t pause for more than a split second. “No, why?”

  “There was a clinic protest, you know…the new law, how the assholes with the signs are allowed to hang around outside the Planned Parenthood and stuff now?”

  Lily nodded. “Yeah, I heard about that.”

  “Well, some bikers broke up a protest yesterday.” He looked at her expectantly. “What do you think?”

  Lily shrugged. “You mean, do I think they’re our bikers?” Her stomach felt like it was devouring itself but she struggled to keep cool. She knew where he was headed and didn’t like it.

  “Yeah. I mean, you seem like you’re following this angle, you know? The whole ‘women’s rights’ angle or whatever? Maybe they got tired of assaulting wife-beaters and rapists, and they’re moving on to uh…bigger and better things?”

  Lily bristled. “Well…I don’t know. I mean, they’re pretty rough on rapists and abusers in the joint. It’s not such a stretch to think a bunch of guys with that type of attitude decided to go on a white knight crusade or something. You know, maybe their wives or daughters got attacked or something… But defending abortion clinics? I don’t know. That doesn’t really seem like a Hell’s Angels kind of thing to me.” She paused. “Besides, whoever we’re looking for on these assaults, they’ve been super careful. They don’t get ID’d, not ever. To go and do something so big and visible like that… It doesn’t fit with their M.O.”

  Chernov shrugged. “Well, I don’t know. It’s not like we’re swimming in leads, here. I think it’s worth a look.”

  She looked at him evenly. “Is that an order?”

  He sighed. “Come on, don’t make me do that, Sparr.”

  She shrugged. “Okay. Ray and I are sorting some other data, but…I’ll check it out. I’ll have her pull the news footage and see if I can get a better look, talk to some witnesses.”

  Chernov nodded approvingly and walked away.

  “Why’s he being so pushy about that?” Ray asked after he’d gotten out of earshot.

  Lily shrugged. “I don’t know. This whole assignment has been weird from jump. Nobody wanted me here.”

  Ray shook her head sympathetically. “Anyway, you think he’s right about looking at that clinic thing?”

  Lily gave a noncommittal wave of her hand. “Can’t hurt, I guess.”

  Lina and Erik sat on the terrace in Lina’s palatial Gramercy Park condo, drinking wine in the unseasonably warm breeze. It was too damned early in the day for wine, but he wasn’t about to start that conversation again.

  “So,” she asked him after a long silence, “what are you doing with your pet Sparr this week? Taking him to the zoo to see the penguins? Hang-gliding for the disabled?”

  Erik gave her a pained look. “Do you need to be that way about it?”

  Lina leveled her gaze at him. “Yes. I do. Haven’t we discussed at length already what a terrible fucking idea it is for you to be friends with him?”

  He sighed. “Yes. Yes, we have. But…look, his life was shattered, and…”

  “And that’s not your problem. You don’t owe him anything.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck and, wincing as he braced for her wrath, he replied, “But, I kind of do, though. I’m just doing the right thing.”

  Her voice took on the kind of cold that it did when she was about to do something so awful that he didn’t want to know about it. “Erik, there is no ‘right thing.’ You protect your own, like I’ve always protected you. Like Dad has always protected all of us, even our lousy brother. That’s the only right thing that there is.”

  Erik started to object to her trashing Terrance, but she cut him off.

  “The right thing, Erik, begins and ends with us. You seem to be losing your grip on that very important fact.” Her cell phone rang. She picked it up, raised an eyebrow, and answered: “Yes.”

  Erik watched, unable to hear what was being said on the other end.

  Lina stood listening for a moment. “She has? All right… Well, has she found anything? Well, for fuck’s sake, find out! No, no, nothing yet. Just keep me apprised. Thank you.” She hung up.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “Lily Sparr had better hope that Corey feels inspired to listen to me and fucking move her out of Midtown South immediately.”

  Erik’s stomach twisted hard. He knew that tone. That was the tone of a campaign manager who had gotten a dead hooker out of a congressman’s hotel room in the middle of the night. That was the tone of a woman who had people’s fingers broken. Who had probably done a hundred and one other things he absolutely did not want to know a word about, as much for the sake of not wanting to contemplate the damage to what was left of her soul, as for the simple fact of plausible deniability.

  “Lina…”

  “Erik, I don’t know how close she is to the truth, but we can’t afford that. If Corey doesn’t take care of this situation, I will.”

  He set his wine down and gripped her shoulders. The warm breezes blew softly through her pale hair, and the city breathed faint traffic sounds from several flights below. “Lina…don’t. I—I don’t like that you’re even thinking about it. Corey knows what’s at stake, I’m sure he’ll take care of it.”

  The angry blush came to her cheeks as she glared into his eyes. “I don’t want to rely on that fucking drunk. I want a backup plan.”

  He gripped her tighter, eyes pleading. He was exhausted with all of it. He missed her sweetness; why was it that now, even her love came wrapped in claws and razor sharp teeth? “Not a backup plan that involves Frankie Beanbags. Please.”

  Lina’s face was unreadable. “Erik, I’m going to do what I have to do to protect you, and us, and our family. You can’t go fucking weak-kneed on me, not when we’re in so deep.” She hooked her arms around his waist. “I’d do anything for you, Erik. And I already have. Don’t go running for the hills and ruin this entire thing.”

  He closed his eyes, still hanging onto her shoulders, wanting to believe that she was still in control, but he knew his doubt was palpable to her.

  Suddenly, she was pressing herself against him, shoving him back inside and away from the terrace. She started laying desperate kisses all over his face. “Erik, Erik, you have to be strong. You have to let me take care of it, okay?”

  But he didn’t feel strong. He felt his heart racing and his sister’s lips all over his face, and he wanted to push her away, but he couldn’t. He found himself gripping her
chin with one hand, her hungry tongue delving into his mouth. This had happened before, when they were much younger; he’d shoved that memory away into the darkest part of his mind and forced himself to never think about it. They’d gotten into their own adult entanglements and marriages after that, and he was able to let himself forget it. But here it was again.

  When he felt himself starting to grow stiff against the insistent press of her body, her whispers of, “Erik, Erik, be strong, honey,” he knew it was time to get himself out of there before it became something he regretted.

  She hadn’t acted that way in a very long time, but the only time she ever had was when she wanted something from him very badly. He pulled himself away. He gazed into her eyes, trying not to look as pained as he felt. “I’m all right, Lina, I promise. I’m good.”

  Her eyes flicked from his eyes to the front of his trousers and back again. “Swear to me?”

  “I swear to you. I’m good.”

  She straightened up, and then, as if nothing had happened, gave him a chaste peck on the cheek and a tight little smile. “That’s all I needed to hear.”

  She was lying, and he knew it. But frankly, he was lying, and she knew that too. The clock was now ticking on whose lie was going to explode in their face first.

  27

  Good News and Bad News

  Lily had finally been moved to a proper desk and was surreptitiously leafing through an article of Gary Crick’s which she had slid inside of a folder full of spreadsheets that she’d been working on. One line jumped out about halfway down a column dealing with the very thing she’d discussed with him on the phone: the ease of money laundering. She suddenly remembered reading that Shane Connolly, Corey’s father, had lost the family’s entire savings in the dotcom crash, and something clicked in her mind. She wondered whether the Connollys’ fortunes were as dire these days.