Illicit Intent, page 13
“Unless you count moral indignation,” Ren huffed.
Twitch nodded. “Well, according to the detective, Pete Brigger, the janitor Calliope heard vacuuming has fibromyalgia. He couldn’t lift a shotgun.”
“Not our circus, Twitch. If the murder is unrelated to Calliope’s presence at Gentrify, let the police handle it. Let’s move on to something that does concern us.”
Nathan sat next to Tox on the couch. “Calliope Garland is confronted on the sidewalk outside of her home by three men. She runs, they chase her. While this is happening a fourth perp breaks into her home, distracts the dog with a chew bone, and searches the house, bypassing the remaining flash drive and printed Gentrify files that are in plain sight. He doesn’t disturb anything. He doesn’t take anything. And we know from Calliope’s hinky linen closet door that he most likely searched the entire house. Which begs the question…”
Tox scrubbed his stubbled head. “What the hell were they looking for?”
“And did they murder Phipps Van Gent to find it?” Twitch brushed the end of her auburn braid against her fingertips. “I know. I know.” She held up her hands to ward off Nathan’s warning glare. “I’d still like to know who killed him.”
New York City
April 20
Freddy Kerr hooked his dry cleaning over his shoulder, the bunch of hangers suspended from two fingers, as he made his way down Bleecker Street. He was feeling lightheaded. His insulin pump had malfunctioned, and he had been waiting for a replacement for weeks. He wasn’t used to the U.S. health insurance system. If he were back in Vancouver, he would have had the thing by now. For the time being, he was forced to go back to injections.
He zipped into the corner bodega and snagged a Coke from the cooler. He downed it on the sidewalk out of the path of rushing NYU students and shoppers, the miasma of urine and garbage tainting the taste. He stopped at the recycle bin on the corner and pitched the can.
Then he reached into his deep coat pocket and tossed the central section—the trigger and bolt—of the dismantled 12-gauge shotgun into the neighboring trash can as well. He walked to Charles Street and made his way to the walk-up he shared with three fraternity brothers from his Vanderbilt class. They all worked in finance, partied like the ship was going down, and lived like pigs; not much had changed from their days at the Beta house.
He would toss the muzzle and magazine into the Hudson during the booze cruise he and his friends were attending this weekend. The stock had been donated to a barrel fire on 3rd Avenue on the way to McSorley’s Pub the night before. In a day or two, he would give the sports duffle to the Knicks-obsessed homeless guy who hung out in front of the Duane Reed. Freddy paused at the corner waiting for the light to change and swallowed an unwelcome surge of grief.
The karma of Phipps Van Gent’s demise was undeniable, but not because Phipps was a shark. No. Phipps was a hyena, preying on the weak and vulnerable, laughing while he did it. Before Phipps, Freddy would have thought a human incapable of such malice.
But Freddy had learned.
And Phipps had paid. A slaughtered king on a throne of rapacity. A parable of greed. No less than he deserved.
San Francisco, California
April 20
Roman Block slammed the door to his Tesla, utterly dissatisfied at the soft thump. He walked with purpose up his front walk, ignoring his elderly neighbor who had paused her nightly rose bush inspection to wave.
Idiots! This is why I micromanage. They had one simple task, but no. Those morons had turned it into a clusterfuck. He dreaded the risk and the inconvenience, but he was going to have to oversee this himself.
His fury dissolved to unease in an instant when he saw his front door ajar and his alarm disengaged. He touched his fingers to the door, pushing it open the rest of the way, and spotted Loker Stillwater helping himself to a whiskey. Roman pushed down his unease. He’d been handling thugs his entire life. He could handle the gang leader.
Stillwater kept his back to Roman. “You have my money?”
Roman set his briefcase down, closed the door, and joined him at the bar. He reminded himself that Stillwater was a street gangster, nothing more. He may have been wearing a two thousand dollar suit, but beneath it were the scars and tattoos of a man who had spent his life in The Tenderloin.
“Not yet, but I’ll have it within the week.”
“May I ask how?”
Roman’s first instinct was to say no, but he could only push Stillwater so far.
“There’s a woman, Calliope Garland. She has the information we need on a work cell. I get that phone, I get my money.” At Stillwater’s raised brow he amended, “Our money.”
“And you will do that, how exactly?”
“I’m handling it personally. As I said, within the week.”
“All right.” Stillwater downed the eighty-year-old scotch like a shot of rotgut and set the glass on the bar. He withdrew his phone and walked to the front door. With a hand on the knob, he turned back to Roman and in an even voice added, “The money. One week.”
He left. The threat remained. Roman reached for the whiskey.
New York City
April 21
“Do you have siblings?” Tox and Calliope were lying on their backs in her postage stamp of a backyard, watching dark clouds rush across the April sky. Coco was focused on a hole-digging project she had commenced several days ago. Calliope and Coco had returned home after a brief showing at the Harlem Sentry. Calliope wanted to check the house again; despite her transient life, she had some irreplaceable valuables and sentimental belongings she wanted to make sure were untouched. Tox had come back to Brooklyn after the meeting at Bishop Security’s Midtown office. After walking around her block, checking out the little pastry shop across the street, and trying his damnedest not to look like a lurker, he had knocked on her door. He told himself the reason was to update her about the meeting. Calliope hadn’t found it strange at all that he had just shown up, but deep down Tox knew he was playing with fire. He was like a gambling addict buying scratchers tickets or a junkie smoking weed, nothing serious, it’ll be fine…said every addict ever before a relapse.
Without preamble, Calliope had hauled him back to her tiny green patch and pulled him down on the quilt where, propped up with patio cushions, she had been reading Astrophysics for People in a Hurry.
“Nope. Just me,” Calliope answered. “My stepfather is much older than my mom, so he probably didn’t want to do the baby thing.” She paused for a moment. “I was probably enough. I was a bit of a handful.”
“I can imagine.”
She elbowed him in the ribs.
“It’s a support group.” He turned just his head to face her. “That bookstore in Harlem.”
She didn’t pretend not to know what he meant.
“I figured it out.”
“The suicide rate among special forces is high. My best friend can’t walk into a bar without flipping tables. It helps to talk about our stuff.”
“What about you?”
“Booze and sex are supposed to be fun. Not painkillers. I’ve been going to the group for about a year now.”
She sat up and looked at him. “Is it helping?”
“Yes. But not in the way I thought it would. I expected to go in and talk about my shit and feel better that I got it off my chest. But really it’s the other guys. I like helping them when they’re struggling, slapping them on the back when something good happens.”
“It’s a connection,” she said.
“Yes. Exactly.”
“I’m sorry I followed you. I didn’t mean to violate your privacy. I didn’t think it through. I saw you and…it was so out of context, you in my work neighborhood, I just…”
“It’s okay, Cal. You really do just go where the wind takes you. I love that about you.”
“Maybe.” She tugged on her earlobe as she stared at the sky. “I’m trying to be more grounded.”
“I’m trying to be more flighty, but it’s hard to get this body in the air.”
Calliope laughed at his attempt to lighten the mood and took the opportunity to scoot closer, hip to waist, shoulder to bicep. He obliged her and lifted his arm, molding her into the nook.
“That cloud looks like a sphinx.” She pointed straight up.
“I don’t really see shapes in clouds. They just look like clouds,” Tox said.
“Their isolation, the clouds do not protest
As they waft and list and drift across an endless sky.
No sound they make,
No whisper of complaint,
Until they weep their torment to the grateful earth below.”
“That’s really beautiful.” Tox rolled to his side to face her.
“My mom wrote it. She wrote a lot of really sad stuff before she met my dad. Now her poetry is much more romantic. My parents would be happy if they were the only two people in the world.”
“The only two people plus you, you mean.”
“Of course.”
Calliope’s parents loved her. She knew that. She just always, deep down, had the unshakable sense that they loved each other more.
Coco abandoned her archaeological dig and plopped down next to Calliope on the quilt.
“Tell me about Miles.”
“My brother?”
“No, Miles Standish. The pilgrim.”
Tox chuckled, a low gravelly sound that revved her engine. She liked making him laugh. He was a kaleidoscope of emotions evident only in brief flashes, yet they were all somehow shrouded in a pervasive, looming sadness.
“We were twins. Fraternal. I was the quiet one.”
“Hard to believe.”
“Yeah, he did all the talking. Our mom used to call him the salesman. Said he could sell ice to an Eskimo. He’d get us mixed up in the craziest shit. When we were like six or seven, he had us selling Girl Scout cookies to the neighbors.”
“What? How?”
“He said the neighbor girl was making all this money. So he created this order form with all these crazy cookies on it—I mean the cookies had these weird names like Marshmallow Surprises and Rainbow Scoops—and we went door-to-door and collected cash. Then, maybe a month later, the money long spent, the neighbors started asking my mom about the cookies. She comes storming up to our room and Miles, he gets these giant wet eyes and tells her we love baking with her so much, and her cookies are so good, he thought it would be fun to make cookies for the neighbors. So our mom gets all teary and pink and hugs us and tells us to meet her in the kitchen. And we spent the afternoon inventing Lemon Flips and Waffle Yummies and delivering them to the neighbors. When we were finished we went up to our room to clean up for dinner and Miles closed the door and did his little thing.”
“What thing?”
“It was this little song and dance he would do when he got us out of a mess, a mess that he created. Do you know that cartoon frog with the top hat and cane?”
“Sure.” She propped herself up on her elbows.
Tox pushed to his feet, his big body casting a shadow over Calliope. Then he did a little kick-dance with an imaginary top hat and cane.
“Hello, my baby, hello, my honey.”
He took a bow and flopped back down on the quilt.
“You must miss him.”
“Yeah. I think more than I let myself admit.”
“What do you mean?”
Tox pulled at the button fly of his jeans and sent Calliope’s hormones on a quick trip around the yard. Then he flopped onto his stomach and yanked the denim down over his left hip.
“The non-consensual tattoo?”
There, just above his left glute, was a tattoo of Michigan J. Frog, top hat and cane in hand.
“When we made it through BUD/s and Hell Week, we celebrated. A little too much. Any tattoo indicating Special Forces is discouraged, for our protection—if we get captured, we don’t want the bad guys knowing—but we wanted to do something. I remember thinking something about frogs because they call us Frogmen. I woke up with this guy.” He rolled onto his back and stared up at the sky. “Finn, my swim buddy, laughed his ass off, but when I saw it…”
“You loved it,” she finished for him.
“Yeah.”
“Hello, my baby, hello, my honey.” She searched her memory for the lyrics. “Hello, my ragtime gal.” Her voice was soft, dulcet. In the ensuing, peaceful quiet, Tox reached over without turning his head from the overcast sky and entwined their fingers.
New York City
April 22
Dr. Sharon Frank didn’t suffer fools gladly. She was the fourth therapist Tox had seen in his life—including the mandatory psych evals required by the SEALs—and by far his favorite. She had never served, but Tox sometimes thought she missed her calling; she would have made one hell of an admiral. She was barely tall enough to ride a roller coaster, but her perfect posture, innate confidence, and no-nonsense assessments gave her an air of authority that garnered Tox’s respect.
She retrieved her half-glasses dangling from a chain around her neck and positioned them on her nose. Tox was sitting in the leather recliner she had purchased especially for him, after he had broken the leg off a Queen Ann chair and bottomed out her small loveseat. He had just filled Dr. Frank in on the problematic events of the past few days.
Tox was staring at his boots when she spoke his name.
“Miller, you know this was inevitable.”
“How so?”
She sighed and removed her glasses. “Your goal in therapy is to learn to form healthy bonds, not eliminate that process altogether. Your natural tendency is to form bonds; that’s a good thing. You have done it successfully most of your adult life—with your SEAL Team, your coworkers, even your neighbors. The next logical step is a romantic connection.”
“I’m not ready.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I feel it happening again. It’s like I see her, and I want to have her.” Tox shifted in his seat.
“Miller, that’s called attraction. I would hope you found that in any romantic relationship you entered.”
“It’s more than that.”
Dr. Frank merely cocked her head, waiting for Tox to continue.
“I don’t just want to be with her. I want to…consume her.”
“I will take that in the metaphorical sense in which it was intended. Miller, you haven’t had a meaningful romantic relationship since you were what? Twenty?”
“Twenty-one.”
“You have to take this one step at a time. If there are sparks flying, terrific. If you’re up at night with thoughts of her, wonderful. You are taking her feelings into consideration, yes?”
“Yes, she’s attracted to me. She asked me to kiss her. I’m definitely picking up signals.” He left out the part about her following him in Harlem. He had enough dysfunction all on his own.
“That’s the key. Reciprocity. You cannot let your desires eclipse your partner’s. It’s the key to any good relationship, really. I want you to pursue this, Miller. Just make sure to keep your finger on the pulse.” She pointed at him with her readers then returned them to her nose.
“The bear’s in the cage,” he mumbled.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
She sat stone still and waited.
“Some of my brothers, Teamguys, say I have a caged bear inside me that comes out in certain situations.”
Dr. Frank nodded her understanding, silently acknowledging the necessity of ruthlessness in battle.
Tox continued, “So with Calliope, I have to keep the bear in the cage.”
“Certainly, I would advise that at this stage. You have no issues with anger or violence in any relationship you’ve had, so I’m assuming by letting the bear out of the cage in a romantic relationship, you mean completely unleashing your passion and emotions.”
“Yes, but I don’t ever want to do that.” Tox averred.
Dr. Frank pulled off her readers and let them dangle from the chain.
“Don’t be an idiot, Miller.”
Tox’s head shot up and he saw the ghost of a smile on Sharon Frank’s face.
She continued. “In a loving, mutual, committed relationship, the bear should absolutely come out. Your partner should be the recipient of all your passion and unfiltered emotions. A relationship without those things is ultimately unfulfilling. Hell, I’ve treated plenty of women, and men actually, whose chief complaint is that their partner won’t uncage their bear, as you say. But that uncaging has to be organic and come from a place of trust, not desperation. The bear’s job in a romantic relationship is to bring passion and honesty, not emotionally wrestle your partner into submission. Do you understand?”
“I think so,” Tox nodded.
“Let’s try something.”
“Okay.”
“I want you to continue dating this woman. Is that the term you’re using? Dating?”
“Sure.”
“Continuing with your bear metaphor, I want you to monitor your bear. Can you do that?”
“I think so.”
“Close your eyes and picture the bear inside you. Where is he?”
“In my head. In a tall cage, like an old cage in a circus caravan.”
“Excellent. And what is he doing right now?”
“He’s asleep,” Tox smirked with his eyes still closed.
“And when you’re with this woman?” She checked her notes on her tablet. “Calliope?”
“He rattles the bars.”
“But you are his keeper. You decide when to let him out. The bear can’t break down the door.”
“I…I’m not sure.”
“It wasn’t a question, Miller.”
“Oh, right. Sorry.”
“In a passionate, profound relationship, the bear can come out. You can bare your soul and show your partner your true self, but you’re nowhere near that stage. Correct?”
“Correct.”
“So, get to know this woman. If you feel at any point, you are losing control of your bear, take a step back. The more you are able to do that, the more confident you will become about your ability to be in a mature, committed relationship that is reciprocated by your partner. We don’t want the bear in charge. Do you understand why?”
