The Schwarzschild Radius (7 page)

achel was logged into Yahoo Messenger waiting for Achara to appear. While she waited, she looked through the porn site for anyone who looked like her sister.

Three-thirty a.m. and no Achara. Rachel was getting worried. She nodded off.

She awoke from a clouded sleep and reached for the mouse to bring the screen back to life. It was four-twenty in the morning. Achara was calling her online.

Hi. U there?? Please be there.

Hi,
Rachel scrambled to type.
Been waiting 4u.

Sorry late. Hard to get away. Any news about passport???

Rachel’s heart sank.
Not yet. As soon as I get it, I’ll send it. I promise you.

I find out how much money I need for bribe officials. It a lot of money.

How much?

I need 2000 USD. You have money for me?

Oh my God
, thought Rachel,
it might as well be two million
.

Achara, I don’t have that right now. But I’ll get it somehow. I promise.

Not much time left. They take me away soon. I don’t want them get suspicious to me. They trust me to go buy beer. I save a little money, but only enough for ten minutes of Internet. You have cam?

No cam either.

I like to see your face. When I see your face, I pretend I look in the mirror. U r so beautiful.

Rachel accepted the invite and Achara’s face materialized. She seemed to have aged since last time. Her hair was unwashed and she had a bruise under her right eye.

Your eye.

Customer hit me. I fight him back. I always fight back.

Keep fighting, baby, I’ll get you out of there. Can you go to a relative or friend’s house until I can help you?

No. Tong knows my relative address. He can send men to get me. Nowhere to hide. You still help me?

Of course. I don’t want anyone hurting you until I get you out.

Don’t worry. I’m very strong. But u r my only hope. I have plan to get out, but just need your help. Passport, money. I hate to ask.

Rachel could see she was losing faith that her own sister would help her.

I promise you, I will get you out.
She didn’t know how she was going to keep that promise, but she’d keep it if it killed her.

When I see you again?

Day after tomorrow.
Rachel hoped that this would be enough time for the passport to arrive―but had Olivia even applied for it?

God bless you.

It was six in the morning when Rachel found it. The blood rushed out of her head as she witnessed Olivia in bed having sex with a forty-year-old man. The scene was uploaded two months ago. And her name was Tia. She watched it all the way through, then she watched it again. She held her cell phone in her hand for a half hour before she could bring herself to hit the speed dial.

“McKenna.”

“Detective, this is Rachel Wallen. I found something, but you have to promise me that if it’s not necessary to tell my parents, they won’t be told.”

“I’ll have to be the judge of that, Rachel. What is it?”

“I’m sending you a link. It’s a scene. A sex scene. With Olivia. There are other people in it.”

“You’re sure it’s her?”

“It’s my sister. She’s wearing the jade pendant I gave her for her birthday last year.”

“I’ll look into it right now.”

Rachel buried her face in the pillow. In her tangled mind, she tried to fathom how such a transformation could take place. Then Father Massey’s words came back to her with new meaning.

The infinite power of human transformation.

want to thank you for your support, ladies and gentlemen. Together we’ll prevent what happened to Dina Anne Sullivan from ever happening again.” Father Massey stepped down from the podium to vigorous applause. The guests had paid three hundred dollars a plate for this fund raiser. Transcendence House was one of the most popular causes in the city, one that brought politicians of both parties into the same room. The murder of Dina Anne Sullivan three years earlier was one of the few things they could agree on.

An eleven-year-old girl runs away from her abusive stepfather and seeks refuge in a convent. Instead of taking her in, she is turned over to a city agency which, after a cursory review of the case, sends her back home. One month later, the stepfather rapes and kills her in a drunken rage. The incident mortified the Church and embarrassed social welfare agencies.

Enter Father Massey, who proposed a bill which would allow the state to underwrite selected religious institutions of all faiths for the specific purpose of taking in, educating, and caring for runaway children under the age of fourteen while their cases are under investigation.

Such a bill would have been subject to the full force of separation of church and state arguments had it not been for the few pints of blood that Dina gave and the tons of ink which followed. Dina’s Law had just been signed by the Governor, and it meant that a child could seek refuge in one of these institutions and have the cost of their needs covered by the state.

As Father Massey worked the tables like a bridegroom, the cameras flashed in pursuit. Indeed, to the audience, he was wedded to his unending fight against child abuse. Every politician in New York wanted to be associated in some way with this young, charismatic priest who managed to help illiterate street kids score in the top tenth percentile on their SATs and took hookers off the street and transformed them into IT technicians and computer programmers.

This dinner at a Long Island VFW raised twenty thousand dollars for new computer equipment for the shelter. The new website had donor items ranging from sponsoring a day’s worth of medical care in the clinic for ten thousand dollars to buying a tank of gas for the outreach vans and uniforms for the intake staff.

Massey was careful to keep his accounting hound’s tooth clean, showing exactly where each and every dollar went. Donors liked that, and city officials did, too, as it was a trick they had never mastered. Every year, Massey brought in independent auditors to go over the books of Transcendence House, Inc. and made the results available on the Internet. This kind of transparency, along with the results made him command the unquestioned respect of all.

The idea was to go national, then world-wide. For this, hundreds of millions would have to be raised, and Father Massey was a born fund-raiser.

As he drove back to Transcendence House in his ‘99 Honda Civic, Massey thought this had gone well, as had yesterday’s trip to Washington. Gabriella had recorded his subcommittee testimony, and he wanted to review that as soon as possible to critique his performance. Then he needed another media event to keep him in the public eye while the Washington job was being decided. That would be tomorrow’s project.

In his office at Transcendence House, Massey sat at his laptop inputting his schedule for the next two weeks. Breakfast tomorrow with Cecil Wright, the CEO of Kanga Systems, a microprocessor company. Massey was lobbying for five hundred thousand dollars.

His research had revealed that Wright was a thirty-two-year-old electrical engineer, graduate of MIT and founder, at twenty-three, of Kanga. His firm went on to develop MPP, massively parallel processors used in supercomputers. He was vegetarian and single. Massey hadn’t been able to identify any activities outside of fly-fishing that the CEO enjoyed.

What would be appropriate attire? He had located several photos of Wright and he was formally dressed in all of them. In a taped interview, he proved to be a humorless man. Massey debated whether to put on the collar or the Barney’s Fifth Avenue. As a general rule, if you were going to ask for money, wear the collar; if you’re going to ask for power, wear the suit. The collar it was, then.

After the CEO, it was lunch with Daniel O’Leary, the city comptroller. Just a get-to-know-each-other lunch at Fraunces Tavern. Probably has mayoral aspirations. Massey had to cover himself. He’d use the suit for that one.

His days were sixteen hours long, and he still couldn’t get everything done. He wondered how men with families accomplished anything at all.

Someone knocked. It was five minutes after ten. Lights-out.