Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
EDIE
My Uber speeds past bars and pizza places and slumbering construction sites.
I smooth my hair and pull my rain poncho tighter around myself.
Luka gave me two weeks’ pay based on double my night rates. Did he see the thousand dollars Dardan paid me? That means he gave me at least twenty-eight thousand dollars. Could I possibly have that much money in my bag?
That kind of money would be life-changing to me. I could start eating normal meals again. I could give up some of my nights on the tower cleaning crew.
But I can’t keep it—not that kind of money. It’s probably drug money. It probably has cocaine residue on it.
He plans on calling me—on the phone he gave me. Just the thought of that makes me feel funny inside, like an invisible wire inside me is still connected to him. And he can tug it any time and make me come.
In every sense of the word.
Is it possible he’s tracking me? I pull out the phone and type in “green” to unlock it. Sure enough, GPS tracking is enabled .
I switch it off. My heart starts pounding. Will he know? Of course, he’ll know.
It doesn’t matter. This thing is over.
I stare out the window, reviewing my mnemonic devices and reciting the names, dates, and places that I heard.
With every repetition, I’m clawing myself back to stable, secure ground where doing the right thing is the right thing. That’s where I prefer to live.
But I can’t stop thinking about the money. I could open a savings account and put it toward the life I want to build for Mary and me—a little house in a seaside town with a garden like we dreamed of when we were kids.
I’d get a job teaching high school and support Mary while she cleans up her act. I owe her at least that much for all she’s done for me.
I shake the thoughts out of my head. Taking the money is not who I am.
It’s after three a.m. when I arrive. The place is like a 1950s diner with chrome and sparkly red vinyl on the chairs and fifties-style neon stuff all over. These Bronx places are less crowded than the ones in Manhattan. No lines. No hovering. Open tables.
Bender is at a side table, hunched over a cup of coffee. He’s a big man, a bruiser type with pale cheeks and hair in a crew cut.
He smiles when he sees me. “You made it!”
“I did, and I did what you asked.”
“Good going. Coffee?”
“Ginger ale,” I say.
He signals the waitress and orders. I can feel him looking at me strangely. “You didn’t answer your phone.”
“Yeah. I need a piece of paper or something. ”
He takes out a little spiralbound notepad as the waitress delivers my drink. I begin to write. Name, place, name, place.
I can feel him studying me. “You remembered all this?”
“I’m on a history scholarship at Columbia. I can memorize a few names.”
“Fair enough.”
I add all the details about Zedd, and then I stop writing. If he knew the rest of it, would I be in more trouble?
“Is that it?” he asks.
“No, there’s more. But let me clarify—does the completion of this task absolve me of the charge of prostitution? Because you know that’s not what I am. I want you to admit that you knew I wasn’t a prostitute all along, that I was just looking for my sister.”
“Yeah, that’s our deal.”
“And you’ll help me find my sister now.”
“Again. That’s our deal.”
“Is that a yes ?”
“Yes,” he says, annoyed. Like I’m playing schoolgirl games.
“Okay.” I make a line and write “Luka Zogaj, Orton, silent man arrive.” I start jotting down the stuff Luka said.
“Wait—Luka Zogaj was there?”
“He came and sat down after a while, yes.”
Bender’s sitting up at full attention now, just like the people at the table did when they saw Luka.
“Luka himself?” The way he says it, you’d think Bigfoot visited.
“Luka himself sat down.”
“You’re sure they weren’t just talking about Luka?”
“I’m sure. They called him Luka. Tall—maybe six-two. Brown eyes. Dark hair. I thought he was going to kill Dardan right in front of me.”
“Jesus Christ,” Bender says.
I go back to the list I’m making. “He had a man named Orton with him. Orton is six feet tall with a shaved bald head and a big, bushy beard. And then there was a silent man who looked like a battle-hardened Nordic type.”
“Storm,” Bender whispers.
“So you know these guys?”
“Know of them. Did Luka say anything about his brother, Alteo, or what happened between them?”
“Actually, a little, yes.”
Bender sits up, riveted. “He talked about it? What did he say?”
“This guy named Ghost asked him what his beef with his brother was, and Luka was like, ‘If you guys are loyal to me, I’ll make you princes. But if you’re disloyal, you’ll see how dark a man can go.’ He didn’t specifically speak to what happened with his brother.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. The men were all very concerned, though.”
“I bet,” Bender whispers.
I continue jotting.
“So, nothing about being out on the boat with Alteo? Anything about a boat?”
“Nothing about a boat.” I jot the rest down and slide the paper to Bender. “This is every name, place, caper, and more that was mentioned.”
He reads it over. “Looks like Luka asked a lot of questions. Did you get a sense of what he was driving at?”
I shake my head. “Right there I gave you every name that was mentioned, every date and place that was mentioned, all of it. Unless you want, like, stuff about the Knicks.”
He squints at the paper. “What was Luka’s beef with Dardan?”
I swallow.
“You can’t leave anything out, or our deal’s off.”
Bender’s a cop... what if he had people there at the bar? What if his surprise is an act, and he had cameras there and saw me disappear upstairs with Luka? If I don’t tell everything, he might not uphold his end of the bargain. My sister’s whereabouts and my future career are on the line.
“Luka wanted… to be alone with me.”
He looks at me strangely. “He wanted to hire you?”
My face flares red. “He did hire me.”
He looks shocked. “You and Luka...”
I look him right in the eye. “In a hotel room, yes. So, I more than completed this assignment, I’d say. You told me I only had to sit there, and I ended up in a lot of danger. You put me in a dangerous, illegal situation that went way further than I agreed to.”
He looks mystified.
“So...” I shrug.
“I’m sorry you had to...” He blinks. “How did he seem?”
“How did he seem? I don’t know.”
“You don’t understand who this is. The tiniest scrap could be important. Was his mood happy, angry...”
A lot of words stream through my mind. Dark, dangerous. Extreme. Troubled. He likes my scorn of him. Sexier than any man I’ve ever met.
Coolly as I can, I say, “He seemed like a dangerous and mysterious man of few words who showed very little to people. Everybody was scared yet wanted his approval, but he barely gave it. Later, he seemed like a mob guy who wanted to have sex.”
I grab a napkin and use it to extract Luka’s phone and the stack of money.
“What’s all this?”
“Luka’s going to be calling me to come to him whenever. Maybe you can use it to find him or something. I don’t care. You could probably run it for prints. I’m sure the money’s drug money. Maybe there’s blood on it. Or drug residue.”
“Jesus!” Bender snatches the bills and the phone and shoves them into his pocket. He throws a twenty onto the table and practically drags me out into the cool night.
“What are you doing? ”
“He could have geolocation turned on that thing. You want him to think you’re a CI? You stopped at a cop diner! Fuck.”
“Don’t worry, I turned it off.”
He glances at me, surprised. Like he didn’t think that would occur to me. “It’s off?”
“Yeah. He had it on, and I switched it off.”
“Still. There could be a redundant one.”
A chilly breeze blows down empty sidewalks. A light turns green, and cars speed by.
I jerk away my arm. “I can walk on my own, thank you.”
“So he’s calling you. When?”
“Whenever he wants. You’ll probably find over twenty-eight thousand in that stack.”
“He wants you back.” More of a question than a statement.
I shrug.
He sends a text to somebody. “This way.”
“Where are we going?”
“Meeting somebody. What’s your class schedule like for the next two weeks?”
“What does it matter? Busy.”
We’re at a light. “Look... I need you to... keep up this act for just a little longer.”
“What?”
“If he calls.”
“Excuse me? No!” I say. “I can’t.”
“You don’t understand—this is major.”
“But I’m a college student, not a...” I look around. “A prostitute. He’ll figure it out. He’ll know.”
“Did he figure it out tonight?”
“No.”
“If he hasn’t at this point, he won’t.”
“It doesn’t matter. I can’t?—”
“You’ve gotten somewhere nobody else can get. This guy, coming back onto the scene out of nowhere, the thing with his brother, the questions, the rumors, nobody knows jack about him, nobody can get near him, and suddenly you’re in...”
“His bed?” I supply.
He sucks in a breath. “Look, what I did for you last week, holding off on the charges...” He lowers his voice like the buildings might hear. “I could get in deep trouble for that sort of thing. And I was happy to do it because we’re allies.”
“And I paid you back. Per our agreement.”
“Right. And look, I can probably get you that location for your sister, but what if I went above and beyond? Your sister hasn’t been easy to find, which means she’s deep into something. And I said I’d help you, but locating a person and extracting them? Those are two very different things.”
“Deep into something? What exactly does that mean?”
“Look, we checked the morgues, so that’s the good news, right?
She’s alive. But you have to ask yourself, why haven’t you heard from her?
She might have gotten herself into something she can’t get out of so easily.
She could be inside a cartel; she could be kidnapped, locked up under another name.
Locked up abroad, in some sort of debt to somebody powerful.
You go this extra mile for me, and I’ll do the same for you. ”
“Oh my God. You think she’s being held against her will? Is that what you think?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that it will take more muscle than you have to go the extra mile for her. More of me breaking the law for you. Like I did with your arrest.”
I swallow. “But I’m not a prostitute. You arrested me for prostitution, and you know that wasn’t what I was doing.”
“Regardless, now you’re doing undercover work. You’re helping the world. And the money—that’s for you to keep.”
My head spins with fear. Awe. Full-on shock.
“And I hate to say this, but even if you tried to hide, he would find you.”
“In a city of eight million? In a Columbia dorm?”
“That’s right. Come on.” The light turns, and we cross.
Music thumps from a nightclub as people spill out onto the broken sidewalk. We sidestep the crowd and push on, past a pizza place, past a shuttered bank, until we stop at a bus stop bench. “We’ll wait here.”
“For what?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer, just takes the money from his pocket and stuffs it into my bag.
“I don’t feel okay about this,” I say.
A van pulls up. He looks around, then goes to the window and hands my phone over. The van pulls away.
“What’s going on?”
“That’s tech. They’ll pull over somewhere to clone it and check if there’s redundant tracking and then bring it back to us.” He sits on the bench and pats the seat next to him.
I sit.
“When Luka calls, you are going to show up. Two weeks. I’ll do for you, if you do for me. In the meantime, you’re gonna go out and buy yourself some beautiful things with that money.”
“I can’t! I can’t do this! You know I can’t!”
“Yes, you can,” he says. “And there are some special things you’re going to listen for.
He was sent away as a boy. Where? Prison?
Military school? Another family? Also, what did his brother do to piss him off so much?
Figure it out. If you can get these answers, it would go a long way toward helping your sister. ”
“What if I have classes?”
“Figure it out.”
I feel dizzy. And is Bender getting harsher with me?
“This whole thing... a person needs years of training for this type of work. I’m a college student, Bender. I listen to Taylor Swift.”
“Wrong. A person needs instincts and common sense and balls, Edie. You went out on the street looking for your sister, and now you’re making some real progress in getting to her by wheeling and dealing with the likes of me and Luka Zogaj.
So, trust me when I say you have what it takes.
You got over the hard part—you’re inside.
From the sound of it, he yanked you right into his orbit. He won’t think to question you.”
“It seems like... a lot.”
“Don’t worry. You’re a natural.”
I grip my bag tighter, knuckles turning white. I am worried, but not just about playing criminal informant—I’m terrified because when he looked at me, I forgot who I was supposed to be. I forgot my sister, my principles, my entire life. I forgot everything except how he made me feel.