Chapter 6
DOLL
The room they take me to has one door, no windows, and a table long enough to seat a jury.
Angel gives me the roll call while the others settle.
Bishop, the tattooed giant at the head of the table.
Smoke, arms crossed, skulls on his knuckles.
Cash, in a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a legal pad in front of him.
Compass, a scar through one eyebrow, who nods and says nothing.
Cash sets a phone in the middle of the table. Cheap, black, probably older than me.
“It reads as a prepaid out of Tacoma,” he says. “Thirty minutes of life in it, then it goes in the river. Speaker stays on.”
Bishop laces his hands on the table. Up close he’s calm in a large, permanent sort of manner, a mountain that talks. “Whenever you’re ready, Doll.”
Angel takes the chair beside mine. He doesn’t touch me, he only slides the phone two inches closer to me, so putting it down stays in my reach, my choice.
I dial from memory. His private line, the one with no receptionist in front of it. I’ve dialed it from lobbies and airports and once from a hospital hallway, and my hands know the number better than they know my own.
Second ring.
“Yes. Who is this?”
Victor answers before the fourth ring for no one. Four rings tell callers he’s a busy man. Two rings tell me he’s been staring at the phone.
“It’s me.”
Silence. I listen for relief the whole length of it. I’d settle for surprise.
“Where are you?” Flat. An item on an agenda.
“I’m okay.” The smooth open, right on schedule. “I’m somewhere safe. I’m calling so you don’t do anything drastic. We can figure this …”
“I can guess where you are.” Paper rustles, his blinds tick against the glass, he’s pacing.
“Ian’s driver read the vest of the thug who jumped him.
You ran from a business associate of mine into a street gang, Sloane.
The same animals who killed my project. My own niece!
Are you with them now? Do you have the first idea what that looks like for me? ”
For me. Like he’s the only person in the room.
“Nobody jumped anyone. Ian’s driver chased me.”
“Then tell me they took you.” His voice drops into the register he uses on bankers, warm, reasonable, a hand on your shoulder from three miles away.
“That’s all this has to be. You panicked, they grabbed you, you’re a victim.
Ian can respect taken. Taken, I can sell.
Say it and you’ll be where you need to be by dinner, and this never happened. ”
Four men look at me across the table. One waits beside me. The lie would cost me nothing with them that the truth hasn’t already cost, and it would buy my uncle his week.
“Nobody took me,” I say. “I ran. You wanted me to go with Ian. The man scares me, so I ran.”
A long breath through his nose. When he speaks again, the businessman is gone.
“You should be scared, but no longer of him. Of me. You’ve ruined me.
Do you understand? Ian sat in my office for an hour today explaining what my family owes his.
He’s not giving me a week anymore. He wants a signed sale in three days now, and he wants you returned with an apology, in person, and you will give him one if I have to … ”
“I’m sorry …”
It’s out of my mouth before I know it left, on rails, greased by a thousand deliveries. Sorry the car is late. Sorry the board is upset. Sorry, sorry, sorry. And then it stops, right there in my throat, on the word returned. Like a coat. Like a deposit.
Beside me, Angel flattens one hand on the table, slow. He’s looking at the phone frowning.
“But it’s a no,” I say.
“What did you say to me?”
“No. I’m not coming back. No. I’m not apologizing to the man you handed me to.”
“You ungrateful bitch.” It comes out of him whole like he’s wanted to spit it out for years.
“I clothed you. I schooled you. For years I carried my brother’s charity case, and the one time you’re useful for anything past a calendar, you sprint down an alley and hand my life to a motorcycle gang.
You have no idea what the Quinlan brothers are going to do to me.
None. Ian is the polite one, do you hear me?
Ian is the cousin they send when they still like you … ”
The name lands on the table. Cash’s pen stops. Compass says a word under his breath I’m glad I don’t catch. Smoke’s arms come uncrossed, and he looks at Angel, not at me, a long look with a nod at the end of it.
My uncle is still going, three days, the parcels, me me me, a man narrating his own drowning. I rest my thumb on the red circle.
“Goodbye, Victor.”
I press it. I push the phone toward the center of the table with both hands, gently.
Nobody speaks first for a moment. Then Smoke leans forward.
“Nobody writes that script,” he says, to Bishop, to the table. “Nobody plants that.”
Bishop hasn’t moved through any of it. Now he looks at me, and I make myself hold it.
“One question tonight, Doll.” He taps the table once, next to the dead phone. “Quinlan. Did you know the name?”
“First time I hear it. Ian Durey always went on and on about his powerful cousins but he never said their name when I was around.”
“Durey.” Bishop turns the name over. “Ian Durey?”
“Yes.”
Cash writes it at the top of a fresh page and underlines it twice.
Bishop stands, and everyone stands with him. “Cash, I’m not sure if we have until tomorrow.”
“I already reached out to Glitch,” the man answers. “Give me an hour and we should have all you need.”
Bishop stops at the door and looks at me over one shoulder. “For what it’s worth, it looks like running with Angel was a smart move.”
They leave. Cash stays, opens his laptop, pulls a headset on.
Angel turns his chair a few degrees toward mine, and asks, “Ten years of that?”
“Ten years of that.”
“He had that speech loaded. Word-perfect. First try.” He shakes his head once, slow.
“He’s had practice being disappointed in me.”
“That wasn’t disappointment, Doll. That was fear. He wasn’t screaming at you. He was screaming at what’s coming for him.” He stands, collects the dead phone, pockets it for the river.
He walks me to the door and stops, close. For a second I think he’s going to come closer …
Stepping away doesn’t even cross my mind.
I stand there with my eyes on his lips wondering how soft they are, despite the cut.
He’s the one who steps back to let me out.