Same Difference, page 16
‘You have no idea who the supplier was?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘I mean, the truth is that we never really talked about it that much once it got going. I didn’t want to have anything to do with it and Damien wouldn’t listen to me about it. I think he was only telling Laura because she thought it was a great idea.’
A lot of this was the direct opposite of what Laura Rapinoe had told me, but I tended to believe Eliza more than Laura, whose story had changed a few times in the short period I’d known her.
‘What about this Mr Martin you talked to Jules about? Who’s he?’
Eliza looked a little shaken. ‘I’ve never seen Mr Martin. He’s somebody they threaten you with, like when your mom tells you to wait until your dad gets home. I don’t know anything about him.’
That was something to file away.
‘Was Laura the supplier?’ I asked.
Eliza laughed. ‘No! Laura wouldn’t have been able to find pills at a Walgreen’s. She just thought Damien was great and anything he did had to be great, too.’
‘So our first order of business should be finding out who was selling the drugs to Jules that he was selling to Damien, that he was selling to everybody else,’ I said. My head was getting a little hazy and there was just no denying it. ‘I’m tired. I’m going to go into one of the bedrooms and sleep for a bit,’ I told Eliza. But on my way I picked up the little charger.
‘What’s that?’ Eliza asked.
Dammit. ‘Shaver,’ I said, and turned back toward the hallway, carrying my candle and the charger.
‘Can I borrow it?’ I looked at Eliza again. She was wearing just enough of a mysterious grin that the candle could make it visible.
‘Um … I’m kind of personal about stuff like that,’ I said. ‘We’ll find you another one tomorrow.’
I was three steps into the hallway when I heard her say, ‘It’s because I’m trans, isn’t it?’
Turning myself back toward the living room had become a habit. ‘Of course not!’ I started.
But then Eliza burst out laughing. ‘You’re so easy,’ she said.
I didn’t turn back this time; I just kept walking until I was in the completely bare bedroom with a candle, a tiny battery-powered charger, and a long note my brother had snuck into the grocery bags along with $200 in cash.
You can charge with this. It’ll take a long time but it’ll do the job. There are some backup batteries in the bag if you need them.
Aunt Margie knows you’re OK but nothing else. We’re living proof that she can keep a secret, but she’s also a mad gossip and told me she doesn’t want to know where you are in case she’s asked. I think that was a good plan.
We have a lot to do. I’m working on finding out who this Julio guy is.
That’s the problem when you’re communicating by notes; whole news cycles go by without an update.
Mankiewicz calls about every two hours and asks the same questions. He seems surprised when he gets the same answers.
I’m guessing you told him about us. I’m not mad at you, Frannie. I’ve wanted to tell someone but I don’t ever get close enough to trust. But if something’s going on between the two of you and it’s a danger, you need to tell me. Trust runs both ways.
The incident report of Damien’s murder naturally doesn’t give any really helpful details; I looked it up. It’s public record and that means there’s nothing in it the cops don’t want you to know. No mention of physical evidence that Brooker might have picked up off the floor except some hair, which doesn’t make sense, and not a word about fingerprints on the extension cord or anywhere else. For a spontaneous crime, this one seems to have been really well planned.
Brian Hennessey has been calling the office. I’ve told him that Eliza isn’t in danger but can’t come home now. He doesn’t want to accept that but, as you know, I can be fairly stubborn. He’s not going to find out anything else until Eliza wants him to.
I did some checking in places I shouldn’t have been and found some medical records on Eliza. She’s taking some hormones but isn’t yet on a path to surgery. If she goes without her meds for too long things could start to reverse themselves.
Also checked on Rainbow Zelensky, who appears to have vanished into thin air. She leased the apartment where you found Eliza six months ago and has been paying the rent in cash to the super, a guy named John Cassidy. Nobody seems terribly concerned about Rainbow, which makes me concerned about Rainbow.
Leave me a note in the fourth drop spot tomorrow morning and I’ll leave you what I can there. In the meantime, try not to get killed or arrested. You’re not leaving me that detective agency all to myself.
K
That was a lot to unpack. So were the groceries, in which I had found basic unperishable foods that didn’t require a can opener or utensils. There was bread but no butter. There was soda and bottled water but no juice or milk. There wasn’t anything to make a sandwich out of, which made the bread, a store-bought wholewheat loaf, seem kind of lonely. There had been two bagels included, one with cream cheese for me, one with lettuce and tomato for Eliza. They’d survive long enough to serve as a breakfast in the morning. Although again, Ken had been unable to provide us with a working bathroom. We’d be having lunch out early to find a restroom. We’d pay in cash.
There was also a pen and a legal pad so I could respond to Ken’s note. I’d do that after I charged up. The little charger, which luckily included a USB cable and instructions, didn’t provide the same tingly rush that a real one, plugged into the wall, would, but I could feel myself getting stronger … very … slowly. Ken was right; this would take a while. Best to think about next steps.
I hadn’t had time to process all that had happened. Eliza and I had been moving too fast and too often to evaluate. But now, lying on the bare floor in a bare room in a bare building that still needed a good deal of construction before it could be called habitable, I had nothing but time. And a bagel with cream cheese for the morning.
Start at the beginning, Aunt Margie always says. So I avoided blowing out the candle, no matter how I might need it again, so I wouldn’t fall asleep, and I thought about the scene in the basement across from Yankee Stadium. I forced myself to mentally look at Damien’s body with the thick extension cord coiled around his throat.
Had I seen what Brooker had picked up? I was pretty sure it wasn’t hair; Merchant or Brooker was covering something. It was small, certainly, and floppy, if I remembered correctly. Paper? Maybe, but probably not. Was there anything on Damien’s body that could help? Surely Brooker and Merchant had been all over the photographs from the scene with a fine-toothed comb and had the benefit of having read the full ME’s report. What was I missing? There was no doubt in my mind that Eliza had not killed Damien, and for reasons I couldn’t begin to justify I didn’t think Jules had done it, either.
It’s amazing what you can recall when you’re in a room that is one step away from a sensory deprivation tank. In that dim space something struck me: Damien’s mouth had not been open. His eyes were not bulging. I lay back, just starting to feel a little more strength return to my muscles and my brain, and considered the conclusion I’d just drawn for myself.
Damien Van Dorn had not been strangled.
TWENTY-FOUR
First, we decided to save the bagels for at night because we both needed a restroom and didn’t want to stiff the wait staff at the nearest breakfast place. I felt fully charged after a good six hours of battery boost and had come up with a plan, which Eliza had agreed to reluctantly, only because it was my plan.
For the first time since we’d met, Eliza and I separated. We both needed to communicate with important people in our lives and that meant visiting libraries. I felt it was best if we were not in the same building when we made ourselves vulnerable to surveillance, so Eliza took the subway to the Kips Bay Library on Third Avenue and I walked all the way to the Columbus Library on Tenth Avenue in the low 50s. I just needed the walk, and I put all my effort into it, feeling fresh from my charge. My legs are longer than most, so what should have been a forty-minute walk took me just under half an hour. We’d agreed to meet on 28th Street at the Lexington Avenue line in two hours. And I’d insisted Eliza promise me not to spend more than twenty minutes online in the library. I figured that gave her thirty minutes online in the library.
The Columbus branch is a short, two-story building that seems determined not to draw attention to itself. It does have a sign by the door identifying itself, but it looks more like a small school or an ancient office building (it’s more than a hundred years old) than a library until you get inside.
I found the public computers on the lower level, used the code the librarian had provided (in exchange for a scan of my driver’s license, which I have never used and hoped would not become visible to the authorities for at least the twenty minutes – really twenty minutes – I expected to spend here), and started checking in on what until yesterday had been my life.
The publicly available version of the medical examiner’s report on Damien Van Dorn was remarkably skimpy. The cause of death was listed as asphyxiation, which I thought might have been true or not, brought on by strangulation, which I very much doubted. The extension cord was almost certainly a prop to distract investigators. Details were, let’s say, limited. In other words, the real ME’s report wasn’t available to the public yet.
I check in on my email immediately after looking at that. Aunt Margie and Ken were no longer attempting to communicate that way. I had chosen the Columbus branch because the message drop spot Ken had directed me to was near it, and that would be my next stop. Paper notes were not the quickest form of communication but they were efficient and would be until the first time it rained.
Mank had continued to frantically email, and I assumed he was texting as well but my phone wasn’t going to be activated so I wouldn’t find out. I responded to the last one of his emails:
The cops are chasing the wrong suspect. Eliza wasn’t there. Check on possible inaccuracies in the ME’s report. I can’t respond by phone. But I’ve decided not to hate you, so there’s that. Talk to Ken. He doesn’t know where I am but he can get me information. Don’t ask for anything else.
That was probably more than I should have said, particularly the part about not hating Mank, because it still stung when I thought about how he’d reacted to the real me. But Eliza was giving me some insight into the dangers of showing people your true self, and even if she hadn’t really forgiven Brian yet, she wasn’t openly angry at him. Maybe there was a lesson to be learned.
Technically, Ken did know where I was, or at least where I’d been, but I didn’t need Mank knowing that. He’s a nice cop, but he’s a cop. He’d do cop things, which would include closing in on a suspect in a homicide and the woman who’d helped her escape. In a weird way I couldn’t blame him, but then there were all the normal ways.
I sent an email to Shelly because I couldn’t call or text her. Basically it said that while I was still interested in finding out about Malcolm X. Mitchell, it wasn’t my top priority at the moment and I appreciated her help. I did not suggest that she ignore any bulletins she might have seen about me because I was hoping there hadn’t been anything that would have traveled as far as Portland, Oregon.
But I added a quick paragraph asking if she knew anything about a guy named Julio, or Jules, or Eric, who might have been involved in a drug trade in the Bronx. She’d tell me that was an NYPD matter, but it would gnaw at her that I’d have bothered to ask and she would do some digging. People look down on passive-aggressive behavior, but it can be really effective.
Then I checked with a friend of mine in Texas named Luci who’d helped on some of my criminal justice studies to inquire about possible reasons a man could look like he was strangled when in fact he was, you know, not. Luckily I knew her email from memory because my iPhone was proving to be an attractive little bauble that, if used at all, could send me to jail for a very unpleasant number of years.
I’d been checking the clock obsessively and it was time to leave before the entire police department of New York City came to escort me out of the building. That would have been so inconvenient.
The phone was still out of the question, but before I left I had just enough time to log on to my cell phone provider’s website and check on messages. The expected pleas from Mank, a few quick confused tries from Ken before he got my last text, and some from Igavda confirming that I could use her place to crash, which was sweet but completely dangerous now.
Then there was one at the bottom that I almost overlooked because I thought it was a scam. But the address, which was not familiar, seemed to be from an official agency. I glanced at it. Contact me re: Important business involving the World Health Organization. We need to meet.
It was signed, which texts never are, ‘Malcolm X. Mitchell.’
I sent back, You’re not from WHO. Who are you really and how did you get my number?
There was no point in waiting for a response. I needed to be away from this building as quickly as possible. I logged out, stood up and grabbed my bag. I was at the door to the library in the same time it takes The Flash to do anything.
Because I’m paranoid, I stopped at the door to check for the people who might be hunting me, which at the moment would encompass the entire Eastern Seaboard. And again, my irrational fears turned out to be absolutely rational.
Leaning on a car I would have bet my entire bank account wasn’t his was Detective Sergeant Louis Merchant, barely even trying to look casual. I mean, at least he could have been looking at his watch or tying his shoelaces. He wasn’t wearing a wristwatch and his shoes were slip-ons. Merchant was a real class act.
Having learned my lesson at the first library, I had gone online and checked the layout of the Columbus library, so I knew exactly where the (publicly accessible) back door of the building was located. I walked back into the library itself and headed for the other door, plotting in my head what to do when Brooker was leaning against (I decided) a tree and looking at his phone because he really did want to blend in.
But when I reached the door and checked through the glass, no cops were to be seen. Brooker wasn’t there and neither were any of his academy classmates. Merchant must have been staking out the library on his own.
That suggested two possible explanations and neither of them was calming. It could have been that Merchant had followed me from the subway somehow and decided to wait until I came out, maybe checking in on the library computer records, to arrest me.
Or it could have been that Merchant had been monitoring the Columbus library computers on his own and didn’t want any other cops to be around when I exited the building.
I decided I liked the second scenario even less than the first, and I wasn’t crazy about the first.
But the first order of business was to check again, thank my good luck that this door wasn’t being monitored, and get out of Dodge before Merchant considered the concept of multiple exit portals. He wasn’t the brightest cop I’d ever met but he’d probably heard of back doors.
I walked out, wholly expecting to hear someone tell me to freeze after two steps, but there was nothing. If I were stupid enough to walk around the block and check out the front entrance, I’d probably see Merchant still leaning on that car not doing anything but looking like a cop.
Ashamed as I am to admit it, I was more than two blocks away and heading for the message drop point before my stomach clenched and I realized why Brooker hadn’t been watching me.
He was trailing Eliza.
TWENTY-FIVE
The spot where I could find a communiqué from Ken, on Ninth Avenue, was on the way to my planned meet with Eliza, where I’d find if she was already in custody or if Brooker was as bad a tracker as his partner. I was walking much more quickly than usual and starting to work up a sweat. I wished Ken would have included my exercise clothes in with the groceries but, being Ken, he had not thought of clothing. (And in all fairness, there wasn’t enough space in the grocery bags for that sort of thing). I was going to need a shower sooner than I’d anticipated, and that presented yet another in a series of problems, and not the one I needed to concentrate on immediately.
That would be Eliza. Running to 28th and Lex would have taken too long even for me because getting across town from West to East is untenable, so I made it as quickly as possible to the Port Authority Bus Terminal on 42nd Street at Eighth Avenue. There I could catch the S train or the 7. As it turned out, the 7 train got me to Grand Central Terminal, only six blocks from where I’d told Eliza I’d meet her, and I even took the subway from there because it was only one stop.
All along the way I castigated myself for creating a plan where we’d split up. I should have known better than to let Eliza, the focus of many investigations, out of my sight. If she wasn’t at our rendezvous point, I’d have to begin an entirely new search, frantic all the time that she might be arrested, or dead. The cops had clearly wanted to shoot at her when we’d been exiting from our ice-cream excursion.
But my fears proved, for once, to be baseless, because Eliza was pacing at the entrance to the Lexington Avenue line at 28th Street, just where I’d told her to be. And a fast scan of the area showed no evidence of law enforcement activity. Apparently Merchant wanted me and only me.
I wasn’t sure if that was bad or good.
‘Did anybody follow you?’ I asked the minute I was close enough for her to hear without my shouting.
She looked blankly at me for a second. ‘How would I know?’ It was a good point.
