Had that neighbor seen Lucas and me? Had Dad set me up?
Before last night, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to even ask.
I heard a bump against the room’s thick door and then the cheerful jangle of keys. It swung open. A middle-aged sergeant stared at me. He spun the key ring on his index finger. A faded tattoo peeked out from the cuff of his long-sleeved uniform shirt.
This little key trick didn’t appear to be a power trip, wasn’t a “do not screw with me” message for the incarcerated. It had the resigned nonchalance of a thing one does to keep from nodding off.
“Taylor. Let’s go.”
I followed him. This was it. They’d book me, pitch me in the holding cell with the rest of the criminals. But we soon passed the door that lead to a vast, bustling room called “Processing.”
“I don’t…” I began.
“Save it,” he muttered. The man’s voice was a sleepy flat-line, a Ben Stein carbon copy. He yawned. “Poor kids check in, they don’t check out. Rich kids come in, they get a ‘get out of jail free’ card. That’s Monopoly. It’s a game.”
“I know what…”
“Uh-huh, a game,” the cop said, as we walked further into the bowels of the building. “See, most of us get stuck being the iron or the dog. And most of us are happy with our little green houses on Oriental, right next to the Reading. That’s the railroad.”
I gave a nervous laugh. “Heh, I know. I’ve played…”
The sergeant whirled around and shoved me against the wall. I gasped. The man’s jowls were quivering now, furious. He jabbed his index finger into the center of my chest, poking my sternum, poking hard.
“And a blessed few of us—”
Poke. I sucked air through my teeth, in pain.
“—get to live—”
Poke. Shit!
“—on the Upper East Side.” The cop’s eyes bored into mine, hating me. His finger was relentless now. “These folks move around the board, do whatever they want, in their silver race cars, wearing their top hats. Free pass. Just visiting. Get… out… of… jail… FREE. Understand?”
He stepped backward, finger still pointed at me. I nodded, not understanding, not at all. I wasn’t a rich kid—hell, Rachael and I eat hot dogs and mac and cheese one week out of every month to keep the lights on. No, I didn’t understand, but I nodded with manic gusto, anything to stop this craziness.
The cop’s finger swung to the right, toward the end of the hall.
“Sign for your bike and belongings down there,” he said.
The sergeant smiled. It was an unapologetically, infuriatingly fake smile.
“You won’t be getting everything back.”
He stepped off, away from me, back toward the interview room. The keys jingled, spinning, on his finger.
The tires of my Cannondale crunched on the gravel parking lot as I pushed it away from the 67th Precinct’s impound garage. The tiny building was behind the station proper. I navigated the bike around the potholes. I was exhausted.
I checked my watch, biting my lip when I saw the jagged scratches on its glass bezel. It was just after 8 p.m. Damn it all. I’d neglected to sign out of The Brink, had been gone for hours, hadn’t told Dr. Peterson where I was going, hadn’t filed paperwork, hadn’t planned, not one bit. I was fired, had to be. The day couldn’t get any worse.
I spotted my father at the edge of the parking lot.
“Yes it can,” I said softly.
The wind sliced through the hole in the elbow of my shirt, making me shiver. My father waited for me just beyond the lot’s chain-link gate. His black overcoat fluttered and flapped in the breeze, like bat’s wings. He looked like an undertaker.
In a normal family, a moment like this—a meeting like this—would begin with the father asking if his son was all right, just once, just to make sure, just before digging in with the fire-and-brimstone paternal fury. I didn′t think my father would do that. William Taylor hadn’t been a normal father for some time now.
I was right.
Dad nodded at the pothole directly before him. The murk inside the divot shimmered like a sleepy brown eye. Dad leaned his head forward, gazing at me in the puddle’s reflection. He reminded me of a kid, about to spit into a pond.
“You see me here, young man,” he said. His voice was ice, Defcon One.
Not knowing what else to do, I nodded.
“Tell me. Should I get on my hands and knees and give myself a good dunk here, right here in this filth? Does that seem like a good idea to you”
I felt my lips trembling. I said nothing.
Dad’s blue eyes flicked up, met mine. “Well, it should. After today, it should come as second nature, a basic instinct. You see, you seem to be doing everything you can to drag my name, this family’s name, through the mud. You must want to destroy everything I’ve worked for, son. That’s the only explanation I have for the absolute, bloody abortion of a day this has been.”
I flinched.
“Martin Grace’s lawyer called my office,” he continued. “She’s gunning for an investigation because of you. Your involvement at Brinkvale. It doesn’t matter if it holds up—she’s going for it, which means there’s a perception of injustice, sloppy management. Perception is an illusion, young man. But perception is everything.”
He exhaled. I waited, shivering.
“Why didn’t you listen to me? I said you were in danger. I said I was doing this to protect you. Do you know how many calls I made to dust-broom this? How many favors I owe so the press doesn’t catch a whiff of this… this…”
He blinked twice, searching for the word that would convince the jury to convict.
“…this ruination? Do you know? Six. Six calls to six very powerful men.” He nodded to the police station behind me. “I had half a mind to let them crucify you in there. But no. Perception defines reality. This is a reporter’s wet dream. Me, you, the case, you breaking into that killer’s apartment…”
His eyes, pained, looked into mine.
“You could’ve been killed going down that fire escape. And for what? For trying to help a man who doesn’t deserve to breathe. Not after what he’s done.”
He kicked a shoe-tip’s worth of pebbles into the puddle.
“The universe itself conspires against me,” he said. “Your friend Peterson isn’t pulling you from Grace’s case. He says you’re the best The Brink has for this sort of thing.”
I raised my chin, surprised. Something inside me shifted and glimmered. This news was… unexpected.
“That man just committed career suicide—whatever career he had left,” Dad said, “but that’ll come later. This is about you, Zachary, and the great, grand mess you’re in. The mess that I just pulled you out of. Understand me”
I suddenly did.
“I… I owe you,” I said.
My father nodded. I thought of Malcolm and his damnable currency, and the envelope of Grace’s personal effects—the envelope Lucas still had, wherever he was. And the lockbox.
So many clues. So many insights. So close. And yet…
Wait. Dad was right: this was all about me. He hadn’t mentioned my brother, or a nosy hallway neighbor who might have spotted us. Play this out, I thought, like you know how, like you do every day. Just another minute.
“I just wanted to look around, Dad,” I said. “I just wanted to find something to help—″
“You’re lucky you didn’t,” he said. “No number of calls could’ve saved you then, young man—and we both know how many calls I’ve made for you over the years. This is a tired rerun, Zachary… and it ends now. If you’re going to lose all control again, you’ll do it on your own, and God help whoever you pull down with you. But this is the last time I’ll ever do anything like this for you. You would’ve been in felony territory…”