Читать книгу The Ones We Trust - Kimberly Belle - Страница 12

4

When the doorbell rings in the middle of the day, nine times out of ten it heralds the arrival of the UPS man or a band of Jehovah’s Witnesses on a mission to save my soul. Today, like pretty much any other day, I ignore it. I’m not exactly in a position to go to the door anyway, my body wedged uncomfortably under the bathroom sink, both hands prying loose a particularly stubborn drain nut. This happens to be a crucial moment, one the internet tells me is best handled equipped with a bucket, a mop and an endless supply of rags.

But when the doorbell rings again, and then again and again and again, I retighten the nut, wriggle myself out, dust myself off and head down the stairs.

The person on the other side of the door is a kid, twelve or thirteen maybe, with long shaggy hair that falls in a honey-colored veil over eyes I can’t quite see. He’s prepubescent skinny, his beanpole limbs sticking out of baggy shorts and a faded Angry Birds T-shirt, his bony ankles tapering off into orange Nike sneakers. White earbuds dangle from his shoulders, the long cord trailing down his torso and disappearing into his pants pocket. He shifts from foot to foot in what I read as either a bout of sudden impatience or the sullen annoyance typical of kids his age, almost-teens with a laundry list of things to prove to the world.

“Can I help you?” I say, glancing beyond him to the street for an idling car. No bike or skateboard, either, and I wonder if he’s one of the neighborhood kids. Once they hit middle school, they shoot up so quickly I stop recognizing them.

“I’m Ben,” he says, and when my brow doesn’t clear in recognition, he adds, “The dude who sent all those emails?”

“Ben. As in BenBird21225?”

“Yeah. How come you never emailed me back?”

There are a million reasons I haven’t emailed him back, none of which I’m willing to go into with a twelve-year-old kid. I settle on the one I think would be easiest for him to comprehend. “Because I didn’t feel like it.”

He makes a face as if I just offered him raw broccoli. “I thought you were a journalist. Aren’t you supposed to, like, follow every lead or something?”

“I’m not a journalist. I’m a content curator.”

“Huh?”

“I mine the internet for content relevant for today’s active seniors.” It’s my elevator pitch, and I typically pull it out only when I want the person across from me to stop talking. It almost always works or, at the very least, results in slack jaws and glazed eyes and a very swift change of subject.

But Ben here doesn’t take the bait. “Like, Viagra and adult diapers?”

“No,” I say a bit defensively, even though Ben’s right. Viagra and adult diapers are relevant to pretty much every senior, even if it’s only just to brag about how their still youthful, virile body doesn’t yet need them. “Do you need a ride? Or for me to call your mom to come get you?”

“I’d love for you to be able to do that, but my mom is dead.” He runs his fingers through his messy bangs, pulling them off his face, and recognition surges. I know those gray-blue eyes. I’ve seen them before. I know the gist of his next words before they come out of his mouth. “She hung herself in the shower.”

From the start, I knew this day would come, though I always thought it would be Chelsea’s husband or one of her three sisters who showed up on my front porch, not her son. After all, journalists are threatened all the time by the people they expose. I’ve been bullied, intimidated and terrorized. I’ve gotten death threats on my car and answering machine, found knives stuck in my tires or front door, and once, a decapitated rat in my mailbox.

I get it, too. I understand why. It’s not a pleasant thing to have your dirty laundry aired for all to see. Chelsea never asked for that crew camped out on her front lawn, for the camera-wielding reporters that followed her around like a pack of hyenas, for the humiliation and discomfort that came with having her transgression plastered across every American newspaper, television and computer screen—and neither did her family.

And once your secret is out there, there’s no taking it back, ever. It’s so much easier to blame the reporter who broke the story than it is to admit your wife or mother or sister molested one of her employees.

But Ben here doesn’t look the least bit vengeful. He slips his hands in his pockets and waits, watching me from under his bangs with an intent expression.

“Look,” I say, my voice coming across surprisingly strong and even, “I don’t know why you’re here or what you want from me—”

“Because you haven’t read any of my emails,” he interrupts. “If you had, you’d know that Maria Duncan is driving around Baltimore in a brand-new BMW convertible. She lives in a condo in some downtown high-rise, the kind with a doorman and a pool on the roof, and she carries a different designer handbag every day of the week. She also has the biggest boobs I’ve ever seen. They’re fucking ginormous.”

“You shouldn’t say the F-word.”

The kid rolls his eyes, and honestly, who can blame him? His mother preached loudly and to anyone who would listen about God’s message of one man and one woman, and then she molested her female secretary. What’s a little curse word compared to his mother’s front-page hypocrisy?

“That’s it?” he says. “That’s your answer, is don’t say ‘fuck’?”

I shrug. “Maybe Maria has a rich girlfriend.”

“She has boyfriends. Boys. A billion of them. And none of them last for longer than a couple of pictures on Facebook and Instagram.”

“So she went through a phase with your mother. So she experimented for a bit. Lots of girls do.”

“You don’t think it’s weird that she’s suddenly so rich?”

“Maybe. But there are plenty of ways to get rich quick. Just because she’s found one doesn’t mean the money is connected in any way to what happened between her and your mom.”

“Okay, then.” He slips the iPhone from his pocket, fiddles with the screen for a few seconds, then flips it around so I can see. “How do you explain this?”

It takes a beat or two for the film to load, and then it’s Maria, all right. I recognize her sharp cheekbones and delicate ears, her ruffled pixie cut, her thin, suntanned frame in a skimpy red bra and nothing else. And Ben was right about the boobs. They are inflated to ridiculous, porn-freak proportions, swaying up and down, up and down to the rhythm of the man riding her from behind.

“Should you be watching this?” I say. Even with the blurring and voice distortion, this video is pornographic, and far too hard-core for a twelve-year-old.

My question earns me another mouth twist. “Please. Nothing can shock me these days.”

I return my attention to the film, and I think how much Maria has learned since her last go-round with Chelsea. The lighting is softer, the images are clearer, the angles less awkward. It almost looks professionally shot, as if all the clip needs is some cheesy background music and a willing pizza delivery man to make it a halfway decent, if not predictable, porn flick.

And then I see the man’s hand, and what looks like an expensive watch winking on his wrist above a wedding band. He says something I can’t quite make out in a voice that’s distorted to be less dark bedroom and more Darth Vader. This isn’t a porn flick. This film is exactly the same as that decapitated rat some asshole once left in my mailbox: a threat.

Because it’s not a very far stretch to assume that whoever this man is, he would prefer his heaving, sweating, married face not be revealed on the internet, and his manicure and jewelry tells me he likely has the money to pay to make sure it doesn’t. Which means that the person who uploaded this film—and after what Ben just told me, my money is on Maria—did so with an intent to harm.

“You should take this to the police. Blackmail is a crime, and it’s punishable by law.”

Ben shakes his head so hard, his hair slaps him on the cheeks. “No way. That dude’s married. What if he has kids? What do you think will happen to them if his identity gets out? I’ll tell you what will happen. They’ll be fucking traumatized.”

This time, I let the “fuck” slide. Ben is right. They will be fucking traumatized, and so will his wife, his friends, his family, his colleagues, everyone he ever knew. The scandal will likely die down quickly, but by then it will be too late. The married man will have lost his family, his job and most likely a good deal of his savings.

Still, though. It’s really not any of my business.

“What do you want from me, Ben? I don’t write those types of articles anymore. I can’t...” I lift my shoulders and search for the words, settling finally on a definitive, “I can’t.”

“I don’t want an article. I only want to know that my mom was not the bad guy here. That she didn’t go after her secretary but the other way around. I want you to tell me that.”

I think about what he’s asking, for me to take another, closer look at Maria, to search for clues that she might have been a not-so-innocent victim of the affair with Ben’s mom, her boss. I think about what it cost him to come here, to the front door of the journalist who outed his mother and ruined his life, requesting not a retraction or even an article refuting my original claims against his mother, but an answer. All he wants is an answer.

But I meant what I told him before. Maybe she’s having an affair with a wealthy married man. Maybe she’s an amateur porn star on the verge of her big break. Maybe the money and film are not connected at all. I don’t know. My point is, there are unlimited possibilities, and the answer isn’t necessarily the one Ben is hoping for.

“What if I can’t tell you that? What if I do a little digging and find my original claims still stand?”

Ben thinks about it for a moment, lifts his bony shoulders. “Then at least I’ll know for sure. I’ll have closure.”

“I don’t know...”

I do know. The thought of reopening that old wound sends an army of fire ants skittering over my skin, biting me not with old guilt, but with new terror. After Maria’s pornographic performance, I’m terrified of what I’ll find. What if Ben’s right? What if Maria really isn’t as innocent as she made me think?

“You owe me.” Ben jerks his head sharply to one side, whipping his bangs off his eyes long enough to bore his gaze into mine. “You owe me everything.”

Those last few words come with a whiptail lash, and I stand there for a moment, waiting for my skin to stop stinging, for the spots to stop dancing in my vision, for the rope to stop squeezing my heart and lungs. But his words don’t settle. The knot around my middle doesn’t loosen.

Because, hell’s bells, Ben is right. I owe him everything.

I sigh, but it comes out more like a groan. “I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”