Chapter 21
Walker
Adding heavy blue shadows to the clouds I’ve spread across my walls, I know this isn’t art.
This is coping as best I can with a totally untenable situation. And it’s almost my birthday. So, it’s not going to get any better. It can’t, not with Clara wholly inaccessible to me.
I used to be the forgettable face on the team.
It afforded me the freedom to go places and talk to people I had no business talking to.
But it turns out that once someone knows my face, I’m perfectly obvious.
RJ’s grown out his beard and hair, barely recognizable from the guy he was last fall.
Now that Jansen’s in full goth mode, the Westerhouse guards would have to have the visual memory of a Stone Age facial reconstruction artist to recognize him. They don’t. There’s no way.
Meanwhile, I can’t grow a beard, and I have no desire to have the weird old man goatee I can grow. I could dye my hair, or grow it out, but I’ve done some mock-ups online, and I still look like me. Which means I can’t get close to the one person I want to be close to.
I dip the brush into a muddy brownish red I made, swiping it at the midpoint of the wall that’s holding my anger and frustrations. It looks like the dried blood left on Jansen after his surgery.
The doorbell rings as I’m debating what color I should add next, my project I should work on discarded behind me. Tonight. Tonight, I’ll start on the Van Dykes.
Stumbling past the loveseat from my bedroom in the upstairs hallway, I make it to the front and open the door to a grinning Jansen, new piercings scattered across his face. I yank him inside. “What the hell, man?”
“Don’t worry, I have a plan,” he says.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m taking you out! Your birthday’s on Monday, and that’s not going to work. I know you’re going to spend the actual day moping, so I figured we could get a jump on the celebrations this year.”
“Jansen…”
“Trust me. I’ve got it covered. Is RJ upstairs?”
“You didn’t text or call either of us?”
He shakes his head, bouncing up the stairs, leaving me no choice but to follow him. “I wanted it to be a surprise so you couldn’t talk me out of this.”
“At least you know I would have tried,” I mumble, as he knocks on RJ’s door.
RJ opens it, and the look on his face must reflect my own. “Jay, you shouldn’t be here,” he says, his voice gravelly from not talking.
“I have a plan. We’re going out tonight. It’s Walker’s birthday, at least, almost, and we’ve had shit-all to celebrate for a while. So, we’re spending one night pretending things are normal.”
“There’s no Clara. It’s not normal,” I say.
He deflates at my words. “I know that. We all know that. But that doesn’t mean we’re dead.
She’s suffering, yeah, but we can’t fix that.
And torturing ourselves doesn’t help her or us.
We’re here. We’re free to go where we want, when we want.
And best of all, we’re all still gloriously alive, sucking in oxygen and everything.
If that isn’t worth a celebration, I don’t know what would be. ”
RJ looks at me, and I know we’re going out. Even if I’m definitely the wet rag tonight. “Okay. Fine. What kind of clothes?”
Jansen looks down at his all-black getup. “Whatever. It’s not going to be fancy.”
“Then let’s go,” RJ says, locking his room while I do the same.
The night is a whirlwind of strangers and acquaintances collected by Jansen as our cover and stops at every museum within walking distance, coupled with snacks and dinner at a collection of hole-in-the-wall restaurants he found.
Emma joins us for part of the night, as do a few of my classmates from my major, Jansen somehow seeking them out and inviting them to the walking tour of art and food.
The rest of the crowd was made up of people from the other guys’ freshman dorm, Jansen’s classes, and even a few people RJ worked with at the dojo.
It’s almost fun.
Almost.
Which is more than I’d thought I’d get, so at the end of the night, I thank him.
He looks like I gave him a trophy with the praise, reminding me of how happy he’d get when Clara told him he’d done a good job.
He disappears a few blocks before RJ and I make it back to the house, our tail not even trying to hide, assuming we’re drunk, I guess.
RJ glances back as we go around the last corner. “It’s only one tail.”
“Yeah. Tonight.”
“No, always. It’s a PI that Papa Westerhouse hired. He doesn’t have enough guards to keep two posted on both of us 24-7. He just paid the guy yesterday, and I saw the invoice.”
“Do we want to do something about it?”
RJ sighs. “I don’t know. Also, I found out more on Trips’ brother. I should probably meet Reed and give him what I’ve got.”
We step onto the porch and a blob unfolds from the corner, both of us falling into defensive stances. But as it steps forward, it turns into the man we’d just been talking about.
“Shit,” I mutter, while RJ steps to the other side of the porch, not really relaxing.
“Sorry. I thought I’d wait for a bit. It looks like I fell asleep out here.”
“You slept on our porch on a Saturday night? You’re lucky some drunk frat boy didn’t piss on you,” I say, leaning next to the door, waiting to see what the cop does.
He stretches, yawning. “It’s been one hell of a week. That’d just be the icing on the cake.”
I share a look with RJ, letting him take the lead here.
He’s the one who can’t breathe when the man comes around in dress blues.
He’s quiet for a while, and Reed gives him time to gather his thoughts, moving the man up a step in my estimation.
Not more than a single step up as he’s still a cop, but still. He’s not the bottom of the barrel.
As Trips said, an honest cop is the worst kind. At least we’ve won this one over.
Finally, RJ nods to the front door, and I let us in, Reed cocking an eyebrow at our tail. “What’s with that guy?”
“Paid surveillance,” I say, figuring it’s not worth the lie.
“Does that mean my photo’s being sent off someplace?” he asks.
“Yup, straight to Papa Westerhouse. But you’ll be in a collection of like sixty people tonight, so they shouldn’t look too close.”
“That’s a crowd.” He follows us into the living room, taking RJ’s seat by the door. RJ takes Trips’ chair, leaving the couch for me.
“Apparently, I needed a birthday party. So I had one. Why are you here?”
He turns to RJ, then slides a piece of paper across the table. “CI contract. The same one I gave Clara.”
RJ picks it up and reads it over. After he finishes, he sets it down. “How long?” he asks.
Reed shrugs. “As long as you feel like chasing these perverts over the web, we’ll be happy to take your intel. And while I appreciate Clara trying to keep you out of this, this isn’t her fight, is it?”
“It’s not not her fight.” RJ leans back in the chair, and it’s like Trips superimposes on him. Like the chair is a throne that gives whoever sits on it the power. It’s strange to see, but I’m happy about it. Especially with a cop in our living room.
“True. But she’s not here. You are. And as much as I hate this, I need your help.”
RJ stares at the cop, and I know he’s thinking it through, trying to figure out what angles he could be screwed from if this goes sideways, but even knowing that’s what’s going on, his gaze is a little intimidating.
I’m glad I’m not at the other end of it.
Finally, RJ holds out his hand, and the cop drops a pen into it.
With a swipe, another of my teammates is a rat. And I can’t blame either of them.
We’re not vigilantes. And if the names we give the cops fall through the cracks, well, I’m sure we could find some vigilantes happy to help.
But it won’t be us. We were always supposed to be white-collar crooks.
And once these hellish few months are through, I’m going to enforce that shit if it’s the last thing I do.
I’m an artist, for all I’ve been forced to learn to fight.
Reed turns to me. “Unless you’re signing, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“You know he’s just going to tell me once you go.”
“Doesn’t matter. You’ve got to go unless you have some intel you can offer the task force as a CI?”
I let RJ make the call, and a nod is enough to send me back to my room, but my heart’s in my throat until I hear the click of the front door. We’ve sent yet another allied enemy into the coming winter’s wind.