Deceptive Innocence, Part Three (Pure Sin) Page 6

  The request startles me. I had almost forgotten that I had planted that particular seed.

  And yet the reminder makes me unspeakably happy. When I mentioned that name to Travis it had been a shot in the dark. The fact that I actually managed to hit something is a little stunning.

  “Can you give me any information that might help me draw him out on that score?” I ask. “For instance, does Talebi work for the bank? If so, perhaps I should start by asking him about his coworkers in a more general sense before zeroing in. Or maybe he’s a client? Should I start by asking him about his accounts? Or—”

  “Just ask him why he wants to know whether or not I mentioned the name Talebi,” Travis says impatiently. “He’s the one who brought it up, right? You don’t need any better excuse to ask him about it than that.”

  I nod, quietly tucking away my disappointment.

  Travis looks at his watch. “I have to get back to the office.”

  “Wait,” I say, taking a step forward. “I wanted to ask you . . . I, um . . . Do you think I did a good job last night?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “As a translator for Javier. Despite being bilingual, I’ve never actually acted as a translator before. Did I perform satisfactorily? What about Javier? Is he happy with how the information was relayed?”

  I watch Travis’s face carefully, looking for any sign that he might know something that he’s not letting on.

  But instead he just shakes his head again and pushes past me. “Trust me, Bell, if I have a problem with your performance you won’t have to ask.”

  I sit down on the sofa as Travis exits and try to stave off dizziness.

  Moments after I hear the front door open and close Jessica comes in. “I’d like you to leave early today.”

  “Jessica, the way Mr. Gable behaved . . . It wasn’t based on any encouragement I’ve given him. I would never—”

  Jessica holds up her hand to stop me. I notice that the cocktail glass that was half empty before is now completely drained. “Just go,” she says softly.

  Without another word I get up and gather my things. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning at ten,” I say, and when Jessica doesn’t answer I make a quiet exit, secretly thankful for the respite.

  A few blocks from my home I find Mary sitting on the sidewalk. She has a whole stack of coloring books now, two boxes of colored pencils, and a small sharpener, all stacked and lined up with the precision you would expect from a preschool teacher preparing for class.

  As I step up to her she flashes me a big smile. “Hi, I’m Mary.”

  “I know,” I say quietly.

  “Your family’s real nice,” she continues, looking down at her new supplies. “They gave me the money for all of this and a good meal too. I ate at Red Lobster last night. I just walked right in and ordered up a four-course feast! And all they wanted in return was my help in getting you to talk to them. Did you talk to them?” she asks as she opens up a coloring book filled with images of Dora the Explorer. “You should always talk to family, you know. I would have helped them even without the money. But the money, that was real nice. Been a long time since I’ve had lobster.”

  I think about the Clif Bars in my purse and suddenly feel ashamed. I’ve been treating Mary like she’s a dog, not a person. Giving her the occasional treat or toy. Micah and Javier were able to buy Mary’s trust simply by offering her the means to feel human for a night.

  “Maybe someday we should go to a better lobster restaurant,” I say, thinking about the duffel bag full of money still in my apartment. “Maybe Ed’s Lobster Bar in Soho.”

  Mary shakes her head. “I don’t like that part of town. I like it right here in Harlem where my people are.” She looks at me suspiciously, seeming to notice my tailored attire for the first time. “Are you sure you’re from around here?”

  “Yes,” I say with a sigh and take a seat next to her on the curb. “I’m your people.”

  “And did you talk to your family?”

  “I spoke to the men who gave you all this, but they’re not family.”

  “You can’t disown family,” Mary says, shaking her head so hard a green pencil she had in her hair comes flying out. She picks it up primly and uses it to color the clouds of Dora’s world. “You can’t pretend you don’t belong to them and they don’t belong to you. You share the blood, that’s what matters. Can’t pretend you don’t.”

  “I don’t share their blood,” I say softly, not sure if I can convince her of that or even sure if it’s worth my while to try. “The only family I ever had was my mom.”

  “Huh.” Mary’s pencil is working furiously now as she makes green drip from Dora’s mouth so it looks like she’s been eating this artificial sky Mary’s creating for her. “So where’s your mama now?”

  “She’s dead.”

  Mary looks up, startled. I’m a little startled myself. I’ve never said those words aloud in quite that way, without poetry or venom. Just stating it as a fact the way you might tell someone that you didn’t win the lottery, the disappointment so expected it’s barely worth noting.

  “You alone in the world?”

  “Yes.”

  “Me too,” she says as she pulls out another pencil, this time from the box, and gives Dora a pink sun. “Whatcha gonna do about it?”

  “What do you suggest?” I ask. “Coloring books?” I hear the sarcasm in my voice and instantly feel ashamed, but Mary seems unfazed.

  “Nah,” she says. “Colorin’s my way. Everybody’s gotta find their own way to be alone in this world.”

  “I had a plan,” I say as a large truck goes rumbling by and a passing teenager throws his empty Coke can into the gutter.

  “What kinda plan?”

  “The kinda plan that I thought would help me handle being alone, I guess,” I say with a sigh. “It’s been sort of a big focus for me. It’s a very, very detailed plan. But it’s gotten complicated. So complicated I can barely tell what’s going on anymore or who’s doing what. It literally makes my head spin.”

  “That’s good,” Mary says mildly as she pulls out a lavender pencil.

  “That’s good?”

  “Sure,” she says as she colors the grass. “When your head’s spinnin’ you forget about being lonely . . . Too busy being dizzy, I imagine. If you just focus on the emptiness it’ll swallow you up just like it was a big black hole.”

  A big black hole . . . Yes, that’s what loneliness is. I’m a little surprised by the wisdom of Mary’s insights, but then, unhappy, lonely people usually make the best philosophers. Happy people usually try not to see people like Mary. They pass them on the street without so much as a cursory glance as they rush home to their loved ones. But Mary sees everyone. She doesn’t have the luxury of blinders, so it makes sense that she might have a better grasp of what life really is and what it isn’t.

  “Ever think about being a therapist, Mary?” I ask absently.

  Mary smiles as she colors in the earth beneath Dora’s feet. “I’d rather be a lobster catcher. That lobster last night was good.”

  I laugh, pull my wallet out, and hand her a twenty and a ten.

  “What’s this for?” she asks politely, but she does snatch the money from my hand.

  “For the therapy session,” I say as I get to my feet. “And for Red Lobster.”

  I walk the last block home mulling it all over. Although I know Mary’s right about every distraction being a blessing, I can’t help but think that these are blessings I could do without. I actually feel cheated. It’s as if I had spent all of 2007 coming up with a plan to destroy Lehman Brothers only to find out that they had decided to implode themselves. Clearly Travis and Lander are going to tear each other to shreds with or without me, which gives the desired result, but without any of the satisfaction.

  And Micah and Javier went to all that trouble to scare the shit out of me last night, and to what end? So they could keep me from undoing men who are intent on being undone? L
ander and Travis are making all of our subversive tactics and threats completely irrelevant. It’s just not right.

  When I get to my apartment I throw my purse onto my bed next to the duffel bag. It feels odd leaving thousands of dollars in cash in my apartment, but then again no one in their right mind would think to look for that kind of cash in this particular rat hole.

  “It’s all right,” I whisper to myself. “It’s only stage one.” And it’s true. Travis is using me as a double agent against Lander, and Lander is using me as a double agent against Travis. Neither one of them seems to be able to grasp the fact that I’m my own agent working exclusively for myself. I’m the only one with a bird’s-eye view of the game.

  That’s stage one.

  And while Travis has his fur up over Lander, he’s completely oblivious to the quiet setup I’m orchestrating from Jessica’s computer.

  Although Travis seems hell-bent on making that job easier for me too. I don’t know what keeps Travis and Jessica together, but if he wants her to disappear he’s going to get his wish.

  And Travis will never see it coming.

  Of course, it’ll look more believable once I know what shady dealings he’s involved in. Then I can make it look like Jessica knows too, and of course she might. But what’s important is that I’ll make it look like she might be on the verge of spilling the secrets. Jessica’s posts about spousal abuse will be damning, but to ensure that someone of Travis’s means actually goes to prison I’ll need to show that he has something to gain from the murder and a lot to lose if he doesn’t go through with it. And once they convict him of the white-collar stuff it’ll be so much easier to believe that he lost control in other areas as well.

  A little truth, a little fiction. It’s a potent and delicious dish that I’ve stolen directly from the Gables’ recipe book.

  I sit on the bed and carefully open the duffel bag. Fifteen thousand dollars . . . Considering what Micah thinks he’s buying the price seems a little low. Then again, he doesn’t really need to pay me anything. If I were capable of complying, his threats would have been enough. But I can’t comply. It would go against my very nature. So no amount of money would do the trick.

  Still, if Micah catches even the faintest whiff of what’s going on, not only will he subject me to unthinkable torture, he’ll make sure that Travis gets off.

  That can’t happen. And yet I’m not sure of how to prevent it from happening. And the horrible truth is that the white-collar stuff that I’m hoping to expose might very well directly involve Micah. Bringing down the Gables will be a dangerous task, but to take down a mob boss with them? That’s a death-defying feat.

  So question number one is, do I have the ability to defy death?

  And question number two is, what about Lander?

  I pick up a handful of bills and flip through them, trying to make them create that sound, the sound money makes in the movies when the bad guy holds a rubber-banded stack of bills to his ear and makes them rustle like a deck of cards. In the movies he can tell how many bills are there just by listening to that noise.

  It’s total bullshit, of course. Bills can never sound like plastic cards. You can’t count money by listening to it any more than you can get to know Lander by watching him from afar.

  I wish I had worked that out earlier, the part about Lander. I had pegged him as a movie-style villain. If that had been the case, I would have made sure he was also implicated in whatever crimes Travis was up to. I would have made Jessica’s disappearance look like a conspiracy hatched by the two brothers. Travis and Lander would have spent most of their time trying to prove each other’s guilt and very little time working together in a productive manner.

  But Lander isn’t a movie villain. He’s Lander. And I don’t want to treat him like he’s his brother’s clone, because he’s not. They deserve different fates.

  I know what fate Travis deserves. I’m not sure about Lander.

  I know what I want him to be deserving of. I want him to be deserving of me. I’m fully aware that’s a punishment of sorts, perhaps for both of us. But I’d like to think it’s a fitting punishment. It’d be nice to think that we’re Catherine and Heathcliff, or Valmont and Merteuil from Dangerous Liaisons. All completely screwed-up individuals who were cursed to love and torture each other. A lifetime of love and torture at the hands of one special individual. It’s all any of us can reasonably ask for. The perfectly happy, all-American families with their white-picket-fence homes and ice-cream-soda weekends? Norman Rockwell dreamed those people up between his wife’s depressive-alcoholic episodes.

  And that Disney princess dream, complete with the prince and the horse and the pretty white castle? I gave that up on the day they took my mother from me.

  But now, for the first time in my life, I find myself craving something else. I have a new dream, one that doesn’t directly involve revenge.

  For the first time I find myself longing for the torture of love.

  chapter nine

  I have no idea from where Lander ordered this chilled peach soup or the grilled chicken breast with the grapefruit glaze sitting on the plates in front of us—I didn’t even know you could order such things to be delivered. But as we sit in his formal dining room, a bottle of Reserve Brut chilling in a silver bucket, I remind myself that when you’re rich anything is possible.

  I wait for him to mention Travis or Jessica or the impending fund-raising dinner, but he avoids all of those subjects. Instead he works on my edges, trying to find quiet ways to push past my defenses.

  “What’s your favorite book, Bell?” he asks. He dips his spoon into his soup and takes a small sip, as if the question was casual and not an attempt to learn who he’s been sleeping with all this time.

  I think about making up an answer that will sound right, but when I open my mouth I surprise myself by telling the truth. “I think . . . I think The Princess Bride is my favorite.”

  Lander stops, clearly surprised. “The Princess Bride . . . the movie with Billy Crystal?”

  “No,” I say impatiently. “The book that came before the movie. I hate movies based on book adaptations.”

  “It was a fun film—”

  “I didn’t say I hate that movie. I said I hate movies based on books in general. I don’t want to see someone else’s version of a story that I’ve already played out in my head. They never get it right. They can’t. They’re playing for the masses. A movie will always belong to a crowded theater, but a book is personal. It’s an individual and intimate experience shared exclusively between the author and each individual reader, and when they turn books into movies they take that element away.”

  “I never thought of it that way,” Lander admits, “but you’re absolutely right.”

  “It’s just not my thing. The truth is, I’m a selfish person,” I say with a light laugh as I lift my champagne flute. “I know it’s bad, but I don’t like sharing. I don’t like sharing my experiences, I don’t want to share what’s in my head or—”

  “Or what’s in your heart.”

  I sip my drink and let the bubbles play on my tongue. “You’ve got to stop finishing my sentences, Lander. You don’t always know what it is I’m going to say.”

  “Did I get it wrong that time?”

  I smile and put the glass back on the table, unwilling to answer.

  “I can finish your sentences because we think alike,” he says mildly.

  “What do you like to read?” I ask, ignoring his last comment.

  “I’ve always enjoyed Shakespeare.”

  “What’s your favorite play?” I ask, even though I know it’s Macbeth.

  “Macbeth. Hamlet and Titus Andronicus are also favorites.”

  “You like ’em dark,” I note.

  “I like things I can relate to,” he replies. “It’s easier for me to connect with a tragedy than a farce.”

  I nod, fully understanding.

  “And what kind of music do you like? What’s your favor
ite band?” he continues. “I can’t believe we’ve never talked about this. Wait, let me guess, you’re a Linkin Park girl . . . or maybe Nine Inch Nails. I can see you as a Nirvana enthusiast too.”

  “Christina Aguilera!” The name bursts from my lips before I can stop it.

  Lander looks at me, clearly startled. “Christina Aguilera?”

  I feel my cheeks redden and I duck my head down to try to hide it. “I listened to her when I was young,” I say softly. “My mother would play her all the time when we were home. We would dance around our little living room to ‘Come on Over Baby’ and ‘Genie in a Bottle,’ and when ‘Beautiful’ came out, my mom said it was her song. I thought it was a little sappy at first but eventually I came around.”

  Lander reaches forward and tucks my hair behind my ear so he can better see my face. Still, I won’t meet his eyes. “Did your father like her too?”

  “I’ve never met my father.”

  “Ah.” He sighs and shakes his head. “So where’s your mother now?”

  “She’s gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  Finally I lift my head and meet his eyes. “She was killed when I was still a kid.”

  He takes a moment to absorb this, his gaze sliding away from me to an abstract painting on the wall. “Do you want to talk about how it happened?”

  “No.”

  He nods his acceptance of this. “If she was killed when you were still a kid and your father wasn’t in the picture . . . what did you do?”

  “I grew up.”

  A sardonic smile plays on the edges of Lander’s lips. “Tragedy tends to do that to people. It ages them.”

  “Yeah,” I agree with a sigh. “That’s probably why so many of the high schoolers on Glee look like they’re about thirty. If they sing ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ one more time they’ll be ready for social security.”

  Again Lander looks startled and then he breaks out laughing. I find myself giggling too and then something in me just sort of breaks and succumbs to a full-on belly laugh. Tears start trickling down my cheeks and I have to hold on to the table to steady myself. It’s not that what I said was so funny; it wasn’t. But talking about my mother here, like this, to Lander . . . It feels like a relief. And maybe for him it’s a relief to hear me reveal anything about my life at all.