Black Heart (7 page)

I hold up my hand. “That’s okay. Let’s skip that part.”

She takes a deep drag from her cigarette and blows three perfect rings of smoke. When I was a kid, I loved those. I would try to pass my hand through them without the breeze from the movement blowing them apart, but it never worked. “So, Ivan—he was angry. Well, but he knows me, so he didn’t want to kill me right out. We have history. He told me I had to do a job for him.”

“A job?”

“The Patton job,” she says. “Ivan has always been interested in the government. He said that it was important to stop proposition two from passing in New Jersey, because if it passed in one state then it could pass elsewhere. All I had to do was make Patton renounce it, and Ivan thought the whole thing would just collapse. . . .”

I put a hand to my forehead. “Stop. Wait. It doesn’t make any sense! When did all this happen? Before Philip died?”

The kettle starts to wail.

“Oh, yes,” Mom says. “But you see, I blew it. The job. I didn’t manage to discredit Patton at all. In fact, I think I made the chance of proposition two passing better than ever. But you know, sweetie, it’s never really been my
thing—politics. I know how to make men give me things, and I know how to get away before things get too hot. Patton’s nosy aides were always asking questions and looking up things about me. That’s just not the way I work.”

I nod numbly.

“So now Ivan says I have to get the stone back. Only, I have no idea where it is! And he says he won’t let me leave until I give it back—but how can I give it back when I can’t even look for it?”

“So that’s why I’m here.”

She laughs, and for a moment she’s almost like herself. “Exactly, sweetheart. You’ll find the stone for Mommy, and then I’ll be able to come home.”

Sure. She’ll be able to waltz right out of Zacharov’s apartment and into the waiting arms of every cop in New Jersey. But I nod again, trying to work through everything she’s said. “Wait. When I met you and Barron for sushi—the last time I
saw
you—you were
wearing
the ring. Had Zacharov already put you on the Patton job?”

“Yes. I already told you. But I figured that since the diamond was a fake, I might as well wear it.”

“Mom!”
I groan.

Zacharov appears in the doorway, a silver-haired shadow. He walks past both of us to the stove, where he clicks off the burner. Only when the kettle stops its screaming do I realize how loud it had became.

“Are you two finished?” he asks. “Lila says it’s time for her to go back to Wallingford. If you’d like to go with her, I suggest you go now.”

“One more minute,” I say. My palms are sweating inside my gloves. I have no idea where to even start looking for the real Resurrection Diamond. And if I don’t find it before Zacharov runs out of patience, my mother could wind up dead.

Zacharov takes a long look at my mother and then me. “Quickly,” he tells us, heading back down the hallway.

“Okay,” I say to my mother. “Where was the stone last? Where did you keep it?”

She nods. “I hid it wrapped up in a slip in the back of a drawer of my dresser.”

“Was it still there when you got out of prison? In the same exact place?”

She nods again.

My mother has two dressers, both of them blocked by huge piles of shoes and coats and dresses, many rotted through, most moth-eaten. The idea that someone went through all that and then her drawers seems unlikely—especially if they didn’t know to target the bedroom.

“And no one else knew it was there? You didn’t tell anyone? Not in prison, not at any time? No one?”

She shakes her head. The ash on her cigarette is burning long. It’s going to fall on her glove. “No one.”

I think for a long moment. “You said you switched the stone with a fake. Who made the fake?”

“A forger your father knew up in Paterson. Still in business, with a reputation for discretion.”

“Maybe the guy made two forgeries and kept the real one for himself,” I say.

She doesn’t look convinced.

“Can you just write down his address?” I say, looking toward the hall. “I’ll go talk to him.”

She opens a few drawers near the stove. Knives in a wooden block. Tea towels. Finally she finds a pen in a drawer full of duct tape and plastic garbage bags. She writes “Bob—Central Fine Jewelry” and the word “Paterson” on my arm.

“I’ll see what I can find out,” I say, giving her a quick hug.

Her arms wrap around me, bone-achingly tight. Then she lets me go, turns her back, and throws her cigarette into the sink.

“It’s going to be all right,” I say. Mom doesn’t reply.

I head into the other room. Lila is waiting for me, bag slung over her shoulder and coat on. Zacharov stands beside her. Both their expressions are remote.

“You understand what you have to do?” he asks me.

I nod.

He walks us to the elevator. It’s right where other people would have front doors to their apartments. The outside of it is golden, etched with a swirling pattern.

When the doors open, I look back at him. His blue eyes are as pale as ice.

“Touch my mother, and I’ll kill you,” I say.

Zacharov grins. “That’s the spirit, kid.”

The doors close, and Lila and I are alone. The light overhead flickers as the elevator begins its descent.

We pull out of the garage and start toward the tunnel out of the city. The bright lights of bars and restaurants and clubs
streak by, patrons spilling out onto the sidewalk. Cabs honk. In Manhattan the night is just starting in all its smoky glory.

“Can we talk?” I ask Lila.

She shakes her head. “I don’t think so, Cassel. I think I’ve been humiliated enough.”

“Please,” I say. “I just want to tell you how sorry—”

“Don’t.” She flips on the radio, adjusting it past the news, where the host is discussing Governor Patton’s terminating the employment of all hyperbathygammic individuals in government positions, whether or not they’ve been convicted of a crime. She leaves it on a channel blasting pop music. A girl is singing about dancing inside someone else’s mind, coloring their dreams. Lila cranks it up.

“I never meant to hurt you,” I yell over the music.

“I’m going to hurt
you
if you don’t shut up,” she shouts back. “Look, I know. I know it was awful for you to have me crying and begging you to be my boyfriend and throwing myself at you. I remember the way you flinched. I remember all the lies. I’m sure it was embarrassing. It was embarrassing for both of us.”

I press the radio button, and the car goes abruptly silent. When I speak, my voice sounds rough. “No. That’s not how it was. You don’t understand. I wanted you.
I love you
—more than I have ever loved anyone. More than I ever will love anyone. And even if you hate me, it’s still a relief to be able to tell you. I wanted to protect you—from me and the way I felt—because I didn’t trust myself to keep remembering that it wasn’t really—that you didn’t feel like I—Anyway, I’m sorry. I’m sorry you’re embarrassed. I’m
sorry I embarrassed you. I hope I didn’t—I’m sorry I let things go as far as they did.”

For a long moment we are both quiet. Then she jerks the wheel to the left, tires screeching as she veers off the road, making a turn that takes us back into the city.

“Okay, I’m done,” I say. “I’ll shut up now.”

She slams her hand down on the radio, turning it on and up so that it drowns the car in sound. Her head is turned away from me, but her eyes are shining, as if wet.

We careen around another block, and she pulls up to the curb abruptly. We’re in front of the bus station.

“Lila—,” I say.

“Get out,” she tells me. Her head is turned away from me and her voice shakes.

“Come on. I can’t take the bus. Seriously. I’ll miss curfew and I’ll get expelled. I already have two demerits.”

“That’s not my problem.” She fumbles around in her bag and lifts out a large pair of sunglasses. She pushes them on, hiding half her face. Her mouth is curved down at the corners, but it’s not nearly as expressive as her eyes.

I can still tell that she’s crying.

“Please, Lil,” I say, using a name I haven’t called her since we were kids. “I won’t say a thing for the whole way back. I swear. And I’m sorry.”

“God, I hate you,” she says. “So much. Why do boys think that it will be better to lie and tell a girl how much they loved her and how they only dumped her for her own good? That they only tried to rearrange her brain for her own good? Does it make you feel better, Cassel?
Does it? Because from my perspective, it really sucks.”

I open my mouth to deny it but then remember I promised not to talk. I just shake my head.

She pulls away from the curb suddenly, the force of acceleration enough to throw me back against the seat. I keep my eyes on the road. We’re quiet all the way back to Wallingford.

I go to sleep tired and get up exhausted.

As I pull on my uniform, I can’t stop thinking about Zacharov’s cold vast apartment where my mother is now imprisoned. I wonder what it’s like for Lila to wake up there on a Saturday morning and wander into that kitchen for coffee.

I wonder how long she’s going to be able to look at my mother before she tells Zacharov what Mom did to her. I wonder if each time Lila sees her, she remembers what it was like to be forced to love me. I wonder if each time, she hates me just a little bit more.

I think of her in the car, her head turned away from me, her eyes filled with tears.

I don’t know how to even start to make Lila forgive me. And I have no idea how to help Mom. The only thing I can think of—aside from finding the diamond—that might keep Zacharov pacified is if I agree to work for him. Which means betraying the Feds. Which means giving up on trying to be good. And once I start working for the Zacharovs—Well, everyone knows that paying off a debt to the mob is impossible. They just keep piling on interest.

“Come on,” Sam says, scratching his head and making his hair stand straight up. “We’re going to miss breakfast again.”

I grunt and head to the bathroom to brush my teeth. I shave. When I sweep back my hair from my face, I grimace at the redness of my eyes.

In the cafeteria I make a mocha with coffee and a packet of hot chocolate. The sugar and caffeine wake me up enough to finish up a couple of problems due for Probability & Statistics. Kevin Brown glowers at me from across the room. There’s a bruise darkening his cheekbone. I can’t help it; I grin at him.

“You know, if you did your homework at night, you wouldn’t have to do it in your other classes,” Sam says.

“That would also be true if someone would let me copy their answers,” I tell him.

“No way. You’re on the straight and narrow now. No cheating allowed.”

I groan and get up, shoving aside my chair. “See you at lunch.”

I sit through morning announcements, resting my head on my arms. I turn in my hastily done homework and copy down new problems from the board. As I come out of third-period English and trudge through the hallway, a girl falls into step beside me.

“Hi,” Mina says. “Can I walk with you?”

“Uh, sure.” I frown. No one’s asked me before. “Are you okay?”

She hesitates and then says the words all in a rush. “Someone’s blackmailing me, Cassel.”

I stop walking and stare at her for a long moment as students rush around us. “Who?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, does it?”

“I guess not,” I say. “But what can I do?”

“Something,” she says. “You got Greg Harmsford kicked out of school.”

“I didn’t,” I say.

She looks up at me through lowered lashes. “Please. I need your help. I know you can fix things.”

“I really don’t think that I can do as much as—”

“I know you made rumors go away. Even when they were true.” She looks down when she says it, like she’s afraid I’m going to be mad.

I sigh. There were some perks to being the school bookie. “I never said I wouldn’t
try
. Just that you shouldn’t expect too much.”

She smiles at me and tosses that gleaming mane of hair over her shoulders. It falls down her back like a cloak.

“And,” I say, holding up one hand, cautioning her against being so thrilled by my answer, “you’re going to have to tell me what’s going on. All of it.”

She nods, her smile fading a little.

“Now would be good. Or you can keep putting it off and—”

“I took photos.” She blurts it out, then presses her lips together nervously. “Photos of me—naked ones. I was going to send them to my boyfriend. I never did, but I kept them on my camera. Stupid, right?”

Some questions have no good answer. “Who’s this boyfriend?”

She looks down and reaches across her body to adjust the shoulder strap of her bag, making her seem smaller and more vulnerable. “We broke up. He didn’t even know. He couldn’t have anything to do with this.”

She’s lying.

I’m not sure which part is the lie, but now that we’re getting to the details, she’s exhibiting tells. Avoiding eye contact. Fidgeting.

“So I guess someone got a hold of them,” I say, prompting her to continue.

She nods. “My camera got taken two weeks ago. Then this past Sunday someone slipped a note under my door. It said that I have a week to get five thousand dollars. I have to bring that to the baseball pitch at six in the morning next Tuesday or the person’s going to show the photos to everyone.”

“The baseball pitch?” I frown. “Let me see the note.”

She reaches into her book bag and gives me a folded piece of white printer paper, probably from one of the computer labs on campus. The note says exactly what she told me.

I frown. Something doesn’t add up.

She swallows. “I don’t have that kind of money—not like the note wants—but I could pay you. I could find
some
way to pay you.”

The way she says it, with her lashes fluttering and her bruised voice, I know what she’s implying. And while I
don’t think she’d actually follow through, she must be panicked to try that angle.

Plenty of people get conned because they don’t know any better. They’re just gullible. But lots of people
are
suspicious at the start of a con. Maybe the initial investment is small enough that they can afford to lose it. Maybe they’re bored. Maybe they’re hopeful. But you’d be surprised how many people start a con knowing there’s a good chance they’re being conned. All the signals are there. They just keep ignoring them. Because they want to believe in the possibility of something. And so, even though they know better, they just let it happen.