Do Not Disturb
Page 50
“Where are you?”
I don’t answer. If I speak, my voice may wobble. If my voice wobbles, the man before me may move. I suddenly don’t know why I am here or what I am doing. I wanted ice cream and lotto. Wanted to prove that I could handle the night. That I didn’t need a druggie to lock me in at night like a caged animal. Wanted to exist as someone other than myself. How did those wants become this situation? My fingers moments away from taking a stranger’s life? I hang up the phone and shove it, with trembling fingers, into my pocket.
“Lie faceup on the fucking ground,” I bark, my voice behaving. “If you do anything other than what I say, I will kill you.” I step backward once, just out of reach of the stranger who likes the Lakers, whose life I almost took.
Muffled by fabric, my cell rings. I watch the man sit back, his hands up as he lies back on the dirty ground, his eyes on the gun, which I now handle with both hands.
“Bye, motherfucker.” I step back, the gun on him for seven full steps, until the ground beneath my bare feet changes and I am back on the street, my gun slipping back into the pocket of my sweatshirt. Then, with my cell buzzing against my stomach, I run home like the scared white girl that I am.
When I get home, I can’t open the door. Simon has motherfucking locked it.
CHAPTER 60
MIKE USHERS THE guest into the living room, his worn furnishings consisting of a couch, recliner, and coffee table. The furniture had been left by the previous tenant, someone with cats, and white hairs still litter the surface, any rough movement creating a snow effect in which the hairs float up, irritate any available allergies, and then rehide, waiting patiently for their next opportunity to invade.
The stranger sits back on the couch. Looks around, his eyes picking up on everything, something akin to confusion in his gaze. What was he expecting? Mike mimics the action, trying to see the room through foreign eyes, not picking up on anything suspicious, no computer equipment in this room, at least none visible at this moment in time.
He waits for him to speak, wondering if he will search the apartment, and if he will find the laptop that sits underneath him, beneath the couch, its battery no doubt dead, its code still fully functioning and incriminating.
The man clears his mouth and asks his first question, one that both calms Mike and introduces an entirely new possibility for his visit.
“You the boyfriend?”
He fights the urge to look around, to see if the uninvited guest is speaking to another individual. “What?”
“Where’s the bitch?”
The bitch. A worrisome title for some poor girl in some place other than here. Mike blinks slowly, hiding the moment of elation at the realization that this man is in the wrong place. “Who?”
“Jess Reilly.” The short man drags out the name, injecting lust and want and disdain, all into the three syllables.
Fuck. He is in the right place. Mike swallows, shrugs his shoulders to the best of his limited ability. “I don’t know who you are talking about.” This is unexpected. He can feel his body tensing, his protective instincts coming forward in one surge. This man, with his shifty eyes and expensive clothes, the darkness that seeps from his skin—he has no good reason to want her, no good reason to be here.
The man scoffs, rolling his thin neck, loose fat still bulging on the sides when his head tilts. “My web guy said this is her address. So where is she?”
“How’d he get this address?” In the horrible moment, the hacker in him is curious about which of the intentionally left rabbit holes was picked up and followed.
The man growls. Physically growls, like a chained dog, a response that doesn’t match his meticulous appearance. “I don’t fucking know. He looked into her website.”
“I work on websites,” Mike responds slowly. “Build them, manage them. Perhaps you’re looking for someone who owns or puts content on one of those websites. But I have thousands of clients, I don’t personally know a Jessica.” Thousands was a gross exaggeration. Hundreds, maybe. If you added up every client he’d ever had. But there was only one Jess. Had been from the first time he had dealt with her.
The man’s face hardens. He holds up a finger, pulls out an old cell phone. Dials a number and waits.
“Tell that tattooed computer prick to call me.”
Then he hangs up, Mike’s eyes picking up on the delicate flaring of the man’s nostrils. The burn of his face. Embarrassment? At being mistaken? The man sets down the phone on the side table. Stares into Mike’s eyes while his left hand fumbles in his pocket, pulling out something. Mike’s palms sweat as the man flips his wrist, and reveals a blade.
I don’t answer. If I speak, my voice may wobble. If my voice wobbles, the man before me may move. I suddenly don’t know why I am here or what I am doing. I wanted ice cream and lotto. Wanted to prove that I could handle the night. That I didn’t need a druggie to lock me in at night like a caged animal. Wanted to exist as someone other than myself. How did those wants become this situation? My fingers moments away from taking a stranger’s life? I hang up the phone and shove it, with trembling fingers, into my pocket.
“Lie faceup on the fucking ground,” I bark, my voice behaving. “If you do anything other than what I say, I will kill you.” I step backward once, just out of reach of the stranger who likes the Lakers, whose life I almost took.
Muffled by fabric, my cell rings. I watch the man sit back, his hands up as he lies back on the dirty ground, his eyes on the gun, which I now handle with both hands.
“Bye, motherfucker.” I step back, the gun on him for seven full steps, until the ground beneath my bare feet changes and I am back on the street, my gun slipping back into the pocket of my sweatshirt. Then, with my cell buzzing against my stomach, I run home like the scared white girl that I am.
When I get home, I can’t open the door. Simon has motherfucking locked it.
CHAPTER 60
MIKE USHERS THE guest into the living room, his worn furnishings consisting of a couch, recliner, and coffee table. The furniture had been left by the previous tenant, someone with cats, and white hairs still litter the surface, any rough movement creating a snow effect in which the hairs float up, irritate any available allergies, and then rehide, waiting patiently for their next opportunity to invade.
The stranger sits back on the couch. Looks around, his eyes picking up on everything, something akin to confusion in his gaze. What was he expecting? Mike mimics the action, trying to see the room through foreign eyes, not picking up on anything suspicious, no computer equipment in this room, at least none visible at this moment in time.
He waits for him to speak, wondering if he will search the apartment, and if he will find the laptop that sits underneath him, beneath the couch, its battery no doubt dead, its code still fully functioning and incriminating.
The man clears his mouth and asks his first question, one that both calms Mike and introduces an entirely new possibility for his visit.
“You the boyfriend?”
He fights the urge to look around, to see if the uninvited guest is speaking to another individual. “What?”
“Where’s the bitch?”
The bitch. A worrisome title for some poor girl in some place other than here. Mike blinks slowly, hiding the moment of elation at the realization that this man is in the wrong place. “Who?”
“Jess Reilly.” The short man drags out the name, injecting lust and want and disdain, all into the three syllables.
Fuck. He is in the right place. Mike swallows, shrugs his shoulders to the best of his limited ability. “I don’t know who you are talking about.” This is unexpected. He can feel his body tensing, his protective instincts coming forward in one surge. This man, with his shifty eyes and expensive clothes, the darkness that seeps from his skin—he has no good reason to want her, no good reason to be here.
The man scoffs, rolling his thin neck, loose fat still bulging on the sides when his head tilts. “My web guy said this is her address. So where is she?”
“How’d he get this address?” In the horrible moment, the hacker in him is curious about which of the intentionally left rabbit holes was picked up and followed.
The man growls. Physically growls, like a chained dog, a response that doesn’t match his meticulous appearance. “I don’t fucking know. He looked into her website.”
“I work on websites,” Mike responds slowly. “Build them, manage them. Perhaps you’re looking for someone who owns or puts content on one of those websites. But I have thousands of clients, I don’t personally know a Jessica.” Thousands was a gross exaggeration. Hundreds, maybe. If you added up every client he’d ever had. But there was only one Jess. Had been from the first time he had dealt with her.
The man’s face hardens. He holds up a finger, pulls out an old cell phone. Dials a number and waits.
“Tell that tattooed computer prick to call me.”
Then he hangs up, Mike’s eyes picking up on the delicate flaring of the man’s nostrils. The burn of his face. Embarrassment? At being mistaken? The man sets down the phone on the side table. Stares into Mike’s eyes while his left hand fumbles in his pocket, pulling out something. Mike’s palms sweat as the man flips his wrist, and reveals a blade.
