The Innocent (4 page)

SECONDS PASSED. Matt Hunter guessed it was seconds. He stared at the phone and waited. Nothing happened. His mind was in deep freeze. It came out and when it did, he longed for the deep freeze to return.

The phone. He turned it over in his hand, studying it as if he'd never seen it before. The screen, he reminded himself, was small. The images were jerky. The tint and color were off. The glare had also been a problem.

He nodded to himself. Keep going.

Olivia was not a platinum blonde.

Good. More, more…

He knew her. He loved her. He was not the best catch. He was an ex-con with few bright prospects. He had a tendency to withdraw emotionally. He did not love or trust easily. Olivia, on the other hand, had it all. She was beautiful. She was smart, had graduated summa cum laude from the University of Virginia. She even had some money her father left her.

This wasn't helping.

Yes. Yes, it was because, despite all that, Olivia had still chosen him- the ex-con with zero prospects. She had been the first woman he'd told about his past. No other had hung around long enough for it to become an issue.

Her reaction?

Well, it hadn't been all flowers. Olivia's smile- that drop-you-to-your-knees pow- had dimmed for a moment. Matt wanted to stop right there. He wanted to walk away because there was no way he could handle being responsible for dimming, even for a brief moment, that smile. But the flicker hadn't lasted long. The beam soon returned to full wattage. Matt had bitten down on his lip in relief. Olivia had reached across the table and taken his hand and, in a sense, had never let it go.

But now, as Matt sat here, he remembered those first tentative steps when he left the prison, the careful ones he took when he blinked his eyes and stepped through the gate, that feeling- that feeling that has never totally left him- that the thin ice beneath him could crack at any time and plunge him into the freezing water.

How does he explain what he just saw?

Matt understood human nature. Check that. He understood subhuman nature. He had seen the Fates curse him and his family enough to come up with an explanation or, if you will, an anti-explanation for all that goes wrong: In sum, there is no explanation.

The world is neither cruel nor joyous. It is simply random, full of particles hurtling, chemicals mixing and reacting. There is no real order. There is no preordained cursing of the evil and protecting of the righteous.

Chaos, baby. It's all about chaos.

And in the swirl of all that chaos, Matt had only one thing- Olivia.

But as he sat in his office, eyes still on that phone, his mind wouldn't let it go. Now, right now, at this very second… what was Olivia doing in that hotel room?

He closed his eyes and sought a way out.

Maybe it wasn't her.

Again: the screen, it was small. The video, it was jerky. Matt kept going with that, running similar rationalizations up the flagpole, hoping one would fly.

None did.

There was a sinking feeling in his chest.

Images flooded in. Matt tried to battle them, but they were overwhelming. The guy's blue-black hair. That damned knowing smirk. He thought about the way Olivia would lean back when they made love, biting her lower lip, her eyes half closed, the tendons in her neck growing taut. He imagined sounds too. Small groans at first. Then cries of ecstasy…

Stop it.

He looked up and found Rolanda still staring at him.

"Was there something you wanted?" he asked.

"There was."

"And?"

"I've been standing here so long, I forget."

Rolanda shrugged, spun, left the office. She did not close the door behind her.

Matt stood and moved to the window. He looked down at a photograph of Bernie's sons in full soccer gear. Bernie and Marsha had used this picture for their Christmas card three years ago. The frame was one of those faux bronze numbers you get at Rite-Aid or a similar drugstore-cum-frame store. In the photograph Bernie's boys, Paul and Ethan, were five and three and smiled like it. They didn't smile like that anymore. They were good kids, well-adjusted and all, but there was still an inescapable, underlying sadness. When you looked closely, the smiles were more cautious now, a wince in the eye, a fear of what else might be taken from them.

So what to do now?

The obvious, he decided. Call Olivia back. See what's what.

It sounded rational on one level and ridiculous on another. What did he really think would happen here? Would the first sound he heard be his wife breathing heavily, a man's laughter in the background? Or did he think Olivia would answer with her usual sunny voice and then- what?- he'd say, "Hi, hon, say, what's up with the motel?"- in his mind's eye it was no longer a hotel room, but now a dingy no-tell motel, changing the
h
to an
m
adding a whole new significance-"and the platinum wig and the smirking guy with the blue-black hair?"

That didn't sound right.

He was letting his imagination run away with him. There was a logical explanation for all this. Maybe he couldn't see it yet, but that didn't mean it wasn't there. Matt remembered watching those TV specials about how magicians did their tricks. You watched the trick and you couldn't fathom the answer and once they showed it to you, you wondered how you could have been so stupid to miss it the first time. That was what this was like.

Seeing no other option, Matt decided to call.

Olivia's cell was programmed into his speed dial in the number one spot. He pressed down on the button and held it. The phone began to ring. He stared out the window and saw the city of Newark. His feelings for this city were, as always, mixed. You see the potential, the vibrancy, but mostly you see the decay and shake your head. For some reason he flashed back to the day Duff had visited him in prison. Duff had started bawling, his face red, looking so like a child. Matt could only watch. There was nothing to say.

The phone rang six times before going into Olivia's voice mail. The sound of his wife's animated voice, so familiar, so…
his,
made his heart stutter. He waited patiently for Olivia to finish. Then the beep sounded.

"Hey, it's me," he said. He could hear the tautness in his tone and fought against it. "Could you give me a call when you have a second?" He paused. He usually ended with a perfunctory "love you," but this time he hit the end button without adding what had always come so naturally.

He kept looking out the window. In prison what eventually got to him was not the brutality or the repulsion. Just the opposite. It was when those things became the norm. After a while Matt started to like his brothers in the Aryan Nation- actually enjoyed their company. It was a perverse offshoot of the Stockholm syndrome. Survival is the thing. The mind will twist to survive. Anything can become normal. That was what made Matt pause.

He thought about Olivia's laugh. How it took him away from all that. He wondered now if that laugh was real or just another cruel mirage, something to mock him with kindness.

Then Matt did something truly strange.

He held the camera phone out in front of him, arm's distance, and snapped a picture of himself. He didn't smile. He just looked into the lens. The photograph was on the little screen now. He looked at his own face and was not sure what he saw.

He pressed her phone number and sent the picture to Olivia.

TWO HOURS PASSED. Olivia did not call back.

Matt spent those two hours with Ike Kier, a pampered senior partner who wore his gray hair too long and slicked back. He came from a wealthy family. He knew how to network and not much else, but sometimes that was enough. He owned a Viper and two Harley-Davidsons. His nickname around the office was Midlife, short for Midlife Crisis.

Midlife was bright enough to know that he was not that bright. He thus used Matt a lot. Matt, he knew, was willing to do most of the heavy lifting and stay behind the scenes. This allowed Midlife to maintain the big corporate client relationship and look good. Matt cared, he guessed, but not enough to do anything about it.

Corporate fraud may not be good for America, but it was damned profitable for the white-shoe, white-collar law firm of Carter Sturgis. Right now they were discussing the case of Mike Sterman, the CEO of a big pharmaceutical company called Pentacol, who'd been charged with, among other things, cooking the books to manipulate stock prices.

"In sum," Midlife said, giving the room his best you-the-jury baritone, "our defense will be…?" He looked to Matt for the answer.

"Blame the other guy," Matt said.

"Which other guy?"

"Yes."

"Huh?"

"We blame whoever we can," Matt said. "The CFO"- Sterman's brother-in-law and former best friend-"the COO, the C Choose-Your-Favorite-Two-Letter Combination, the accounting firm, the banks, the board, the lower-level employees. We claim some of them are crooks. We claim some of them made honest mistakes that steamrolled."

"Isn't that contradictory?" Midlife asked, folding his hands and lowering his eyebrows. "Claiming both malice and mistakes?" He stopped, looked up, smiled, nodded. Malice and mistakes. Midlife liked the way that sounded.

"We're looking to confuse," Matt said. "You blame enough people, nothing sticks. The jury ends up knowing something went wrong, but you don't know where to place the blame. We throw facts and figures at them. We bring up every possible mistake, every uncrossed
t
and undotted
i
. We act like every discrepancy is a huge deal, even if it's not. We question everything. We are skeptical of everyone."

"And what about the bar mitzvah?"

Sterman had thrown his son a two-million-dollar bar mitzvah, featuring a chartered plane to Bermuda where both Beyoncé and Ja Rule performed. The videotape- actually, it was a surround-sound DVD- was going to be shown to the jury.

"A legitimate business expense," Matt said.

"Come again?"

"Look who was there. Executives from the big drug chains. Top buyers. Government officials from the FDA who approve drugs and give out grants. Doctors, researchers, whatever. Our client was wining and dining clients- a legit American business practice since before the Boston Tea Party. What he did was for the good of the company."

"And the fact that the party was for his son's bar mitzvah?"

Matt shrugged. "It works in his favor, actually. Sterman was being brilliant."

Midlife made a face.

"Think about it. If Sterman had said, 'I'm throwing a big party to win over important clients,' well, that wouldn't have helped him develop the relationships he was looking for. So Sterman, that sly genius, went with something more subtle. He invites his business associates to his son's bar mitzvah. They are caught off guard now. They find it sweet, this family guy inviting them to something personal rather than hitting them up in some stuffy business venue. Sterman, like any brilliant CEO, was creative in his approach."

Midlife arched an eyebrow and nodded slowly. "Oh, I like that."

Matt had figured as much. He checked his cell phone, making sure it was still powered up. It was. He checked to see if there were any messages or missed calls. There were none.

Midlife rose. "We'll do more prep tomorrow?"

"Sure," Matt said.

He left. Rolanda stuck her head in the door. She looked down the hall in the direction of Midlife, faked sticking a finger down her throat, and made a gagging noise. Matt checked the time. Time to get moving.

He hurried out to the firm's parking lot. His gaze wandered, focusing on nothing and everything. Tommy, the parking lot attendant, waved to him. Still dazed, Matt may have waved back. His spot was in the back, under the dripping pipes. The world was about the pecking order, he knew, even in parking lots.

Someone was cleaning a green Jag belonging to one of the founding partners. Matt turned. One of Midlife's Harleys was there, covered by a see-through tarp. There was a tipped-over shopping cart. Three of the four wheels had been ripped off the cart. What would someone want with three shopping-cart wheels?

Matt's eyes drifted over the cars on the street, mostly gypsy cabs, and noticed a gray Ford Taurus because the license plate was MLH- 472, and Matt's own initials were MKH, pretty close, and things like that were distractions.

But once in his car- once alone with his thoughts- something new started gnawing at him.

Okay, he thought, trying his best to stay rational. Let's assume the worst- that what he saw on the camera phone were the opening moments of a tryst of some kind.

Why would Olivia send it to him?

What would be the point? Did she want to get caught? Was this a cry for help?

That didn't really add up.

But then he realized something else: Olivia hadn't sent it.

It had come from her phone, yes, but she- assuming that was Olivia with the platinum wig- didn't seem to realize that the camera was on her. He remembered thinking that. She was the subject of the film- the filmee, if you will, not the filmer.

So who sent it? Was it Mr. Blue-Black Hair? If so, then who snapped the first picture, the one of Blue-Black? Had he taken it himself?

Answer: No.

Blue-Black had his palm up as if waving. Matt remembered the backside of a ring on his finger- or what he thought was a ring. He really wasn't up for looking at the picture again. But he thought about it. Could that have been a wedding band? No, the ring was on the right hand.

Either way, who had taken Blue-Black's picture?

Olivia?

Why would she send it to him? Or was the picture sent to him inadvertently? Like maybe someone hit the wrong number on the speed dial?

It seemed unlikely.

Was there a third person in the room?

Matt couldn't see it. He mulled it over some more, but nothing came together. Both calls had originated from his wife's phone. Got that. But if she was having an affair, why would she want him to know?

Answer- and yes, his reasoning was getting circular- she wouldn't.

So who would?

Matt thought again of the cocky smirk on Blue-Black's face. And his stomach roiled. When he was younger, he used to feel too much. Strange to imagine it now, but Matt had been too sensitive. He'd cry when he lost a basketball game, even a pickup game. Any slight would stay with him for weeks. All of that changed the night Stephen McGrath died. If prison teaches you one thing, it's how to deaden yourself. You show nothing. Ever. You never allow yourself anything, even an emotion, because it will either be exploited or taken away. Matt tried that now. He tried to deaden the sinking feeling in the pit of his belly.

He couldn't do it.

The images were back now, terrible ones blended in with achingly wonderful memories, the memories hurting most of all. He remembered a weekend he and Olivia had spent at a Victorian B amp;B in Lenox, Massachusetts. He remembered spreading pillows and blankets in front of the fireplace in the room and opening a bottle of wine. He remembered the way Olivia held the stem of the glass, the way she looked at him, the way the world, the past, his tentative, fearful steps all faded away, the way the fire reflected off her green eyes, and then he would think of her like that with another man.

A new thought hit him then- one so awful, so unbearable he nearly lost control of his car:

Olivia was pregnant.

The light turned red. Matt almost drove through it. He slammed on the brakes at the last moment. A pedestrian, already starting across the street, jumped back and waved his fist at him. Matt kept both hands on the wheel.

Olivia had taken a long time to conceive.

They were both in their mid-thirties and in Olivia's mind the clock was ticking. She so badly wanted to start a family. For a long time their attempts at conception hadn't gone well. Matt had started to wonder- and not just idly- if the fault lay with him. He had taken some pretty good beatings in prison. During his third week there, four men had pinned him down and spread-eagled his legs while a fifth kicked him hard in the groin. He had nearly passed out from the pain.

Now suddenly Olivia was pregnant.

He wanted to shut down his brain, but it wouldn't happen. Rage started to seep in. It was better, he thought, than the hurt, than the awful gut-wrenching ache of having something he cherished ripped away from him again.

He had to find her. He had to find her now.

Olivia was in Boston, a five-hour journey from where he now was. Screw the house inspection. Just drive up, have it out with her now.

Where was she staying?

He thought about that. Had she told him? He couldn't remember. That was another thing about having cell phones. You don't worry so much about things like that. What difference did it make if she was staying at the Marriott or the Hilton? She was on a business trip. She would be moving about, out at meetings and dinners, rarely in her room.

Easiest, of course, to reach her by cell phone.

So now what?

He had no idea where she was staying. And even if he did, wouldn't it make more sense to call first? For all he knew, that might not even be her hotel room he'd seen on the camera phone. It might have belonged to Blue-Black Hair. And suppose he did know the hotel. Suppose he did show up and pounded on the door and then, what, Olivia would open it in a negligee with Blue-Black standing behind her, a towel wrapped around his waist? Then what would Matt do? Beat the crap out of him? Point and shout "Aha!"?

He tried calling her on the camera phone again. Still no answer. He didn't leave another message.

Why hadn't Olivia told him where she was staying?

Pretty obvious now, isn't it, Matt ol' boy?

The red curtain came down over his eyes.

Enough.

He tried her office, but the call went directly into her voice mail:
"Hi, this is Olivia Hunter. I'll be out of the office until Friday. If this is important, you can reach my assistant, Jamie Suh, by pressing her extension, six-four-four-"

That was what Matt did. Jamie answered on the third ring.

"Olivia Hunter's line."

"Hey, Jamie, it's Matt."

"Hi, Matt."

He kept his hands on the wheel and talked using a hands-free, which always felt weird- like you're a crazy person chatting with an imaginary friend. When you talk on a phone, you should be holding one. "Just got a quick question for you."

"Shoot."

"Do you know what hotel Olivia's staying in?"

There was no reply.

"Jamie?"

"I'm here," she said. "Uh, I can look it up, if you want to hold on. But why don't you just call her cell? That's the number she left if any client had an emergency."

He was not sure how to reply to that without sounding somehow desperate. If he told her he had tried that and got the message, Jamie Suh would wonder why he couldn't simply wait for her to reply. He wracked his brain for something that sounded plausible.

"Yeah, I know," he said. "But I want to send her flowers. You know, as a surprise."

"Oh, I see." There was little enthusiasm in her voice. "Is it a special occasion?"

"No." Then he added extra-lamely: "But hey, the honeymoon is still on." He laughed at his own pitiful line. Not surprisingly, Jamie did not.

There was a long silence.

"You still there?" Matt said.

"Yes."

"Could you tell me where she's staying?"

"I'm looking it up now." There was the tapping sound of her fingers on a keyboard. Then: "Matt?"

"Yes."

"I have another call coming in. Can I call you back when I find it?"

"Sure," he said, not liking this at all. He gave her his cell phone number and hung up.

What the hell was going on?

His phone vibrated again. He checked the number. It was the office. Rolanda didn't bother with hellos.

"Problem," she said. "Where are you?"

"Just hitting Seventy-eight."

"Turn around. Washington Street. Eva is getting evicted."

He swore under his breath. "Who?"

"Pastor Jill is over there with those two beefy sons of hers. They threatened Eva."

Pastor Jill. A woman who got her religious degree online and sets up "charities" where the youth can stay with her as long as they cough up enough in food stamps. The scams run on the poor are beyond reprehensible. Matt veered the car to the right.

"On my way," he said.

Ten minutes later he pulled to a stop on Washington Street. The neighborhood was near Branch Brook Park. As a kid Matt used to play tennis here. He played competitively for a while, his parents schlepping him to tournaments in Port Washington every other weekend. He was even ranked in the boys' fourteen-and-under division. But the family stopped coming to Branch Brook way before that. Matt never understood what happened to Newark. It had been a thriving, wonderful community. The wealthier eventually moved out during the suburban migration of the fifties and sixties. That was natural, of course. It happened everywhere. But Newark was abandoned. Those who left- even those who traveled just a few miles away- never looked back. Part of that was the riots in the late sixties. Part of that was simple racism. But there was something more here, something worse, and Matt didn't know exactly what it was.

He got out of the car. The neighborhood was predominantly African American. So were most of his clients. Matt wondered about that. During his prison stint, he heard the "n"-word more often than any other. He had said it himself, to fit in at first, but it became less repulsive as time went on, which of course was the most repulsive thing of all.