Reckless Disregard (27 page)

“Your ex-girlfriend was a law student, right?” she asks. “Now she’s your opposing counsel? She must be a great fuck, an ex-porn star and all. But you know what? I’ll bet you I’m better. You want to find out?”

She puts her hand between my legs and starts fondling me. I stand up so quickly that my chair tips over and crashes to the floor.

“You’re going to have to leave now,” I say.

She moves close again. “You’re going to make love to me, because that’s what I want. And if you don’t, I’ll call the cops and say you lured me here and tried to rape me after the others left.”

“I’ll take my chances.” I pull out my cell phone out, but she slaps my hand so hard that I drop it.

“You really don’t know who I am, do you?” she says. “And you’ve been searching for me so hard.”

“I—”

“I’m Felicity’s daughter, of course.” She takes a step back and pulls her sweater above her breasts; she’s not wearing a bra. “Don’t you want to fuck Felicity’s daughter, Parker?”

“Who the hell are you?”

“I told you, I’m—”

“Cover up!” The voice reverberates off the ceiling. Standing inside the front entrance is an imposing man dressed in a brown bomber jacket and dark sweatpants. My heart rate accelerates like the engine of a top fuel dragster. I should’ve locked the door when the other students left. Then I recognize the man as the cosplayer Banquo.

The woman frowns and lowers her sweater. Banquo walks over, grabs her hair and pulls hard, and I wince at his abuse until the wig comes off and I see the red dreadlocks pinned to her scalp.

I feel like I’ve spent the evening with Clark Kent and was fooled by a flannel suit and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. Despite the disguise, I should have recognized her. I was enraptured with my own words, with the students’ adulation. She was cunning—she exhibited less hero worship than the others, not more. She’s a marvelous actress.

“I’m very sorry for Courtney’s behavior, Mr. Stern,” Banquo says. “It won’t happen again. Will it, Courtney?” He sounds more like her parent than her friend or lover. Though he still speaks with some kind of accent, it isn’t quite British.

Courtney stares at me defiantly. Her eyes seem to suck up whatever light exists in this dim room and reflect it back in taunting spears of derision.

“What’s this crap about Felicity’s daughter?” I ask Banquo.

“She’s confused,” Banquo says. “Takes the game a little too seriously.”

“It’s true,” she says. “I look just like her.” She unpins the dreadlocks and shakes her head. “Don’t you love my beautiful red hair? I got it from my mother.”

There is a resemblance. But that’s the whole point of the dress-up game she’s been playing, right? Besides, Courtney, or whatever her real name is, has already proved that she’s a chameleon.

“Shut up,” Banquo says to her.

“Did Felicity McGrath have a daughter?” I ask, already knowing the answer from Philip’s research but wanting to find out what they know.

“You can find any kind of rumor on the Internet,” he says. “But we don’t really know anything. We just like to pretend.”

“Who are you? Really?” I ask. “Do you work for William Bishop? Is this some kind of attempt at sabotaging me? Because if it is, Bishop’s wasting his money.”

Banquo bows. “We’re merely humble followers of the prophet Poniard. Nothing more sinister than that. We revile William the Conqueror. We won’t trouble you again, Mr. Stern.”

“And that means you don’t hang around The Barrista anymore. If you do, I will get the cops involved.”

“Of course, sir.”

He places his hands on her shoulders and guides her toward the door. When she gets to the exit she shouts, “You’ll never find out what happened to my mother! You’re unsettling her soul! Let her rest in peace!”

He pulls her outside roughly, and I don’t like it. I hurry to the front door, but they’re moving quickly and she seems to be going willingly. After they’ve walked a block she starts stumbling back and forth across the sidewalk as if she’s drunk, though she didn’t consume anything but coffee in all the time we were together. I watch to see if they’ll get into a car, but they walk two blocks down Melrose, turn left on Robertson, and disappear. Are they going to catch a bus this late? I’ve lived in the city my entire life, and I don’t even know if buses run at this time of the morning.

I lock the front door and leave out the back, hurrying into my Lexus. On the drive home I think of all the questions I should have asked—what are their real names, where do they live, how do they survive? Are they a couple? Banquo, whoever he is, barely has control over her, and at times he seems abusive. I should’ve called someone to try to get her help.

Felicity’s back, the first time since Level One. The HF Queen says “Game Over,” that Poniard’s beaten, which means that no one will ever find out what happened to Felicity. How could they if the judge shuts the game down? An injunction, the Queen calls it. When Ed said, “You’re counting chickens, Lovely,” she said, “Not this time.” She won’t tell why she’s so sure.

There’s a big fight at school—a
brouhaha
, Bugsy calls it. The parents who hate Poniard are down on the teachers because one of the kids was found playing
Abduction!
on a library computer.
Violent and corrupting
, this one annoying mother keeps saying. The Queen still lets Brighton play the game, but she watches him closely. He’s a good player—a great player, in fact—so what he learns could help her case. He doesn’t know if he should feel wanted or used.

Felicity sits with her back to the monitor, removing the cornrows from her hair with practiced fingers. The scene pulls back to reveal prison bars. Dressed in orange prison clothes that clash with her hair, she’s trapped in a barren cell furnished with a cot, a sink, and an open toilet. Cobwebs cover the ceiling vent. Giant black ants swarm a dented food tray and carry breadcrumbs from a moldy sandwich through a cranny in the wall.

Brighton tests the mouse and executes some keystrokes to get Felicity’s attention, but she doesn’t turn around. He rattles the bars, jiggles the metal cover on the wall grating, and shakes the ceiling vent, but nothing gives way. He tries to dive down the drain and the toilet like he did when he discovered the dead ex-cop, Bud Kreiss—but they lead nowhere.

If Felicity were real, what would he say to make her turn around and face him? Would he describe how his life has changed, how the Queen magically became less cold-hearted after she told him the embarrassing truth about why she gave him away (which he almost, but not quite understands) and about what Ed used to do for a living? When Brighton asked his grandfather about directing porn, which Lovely strongly advised him not to do, Ed snapped at him, saying in his best Bugsy voice,
I made cinematic art that celebrated the human anatomy and natural acts associated with reproduction just like Renoir painted nudes, but ever since the Japanese invented that goddamn video recorder there’s no art to it, and it’s worse with the Internet, a Bulgarian in a basement with a cheap digital camera, a couple of streetwalkers, and a Romanian primate with a nine-inch putz.
Ed says Brighton serves two functions—the son he never had and the grandson he always wanted.

The Queen is trying so hard to be nice and act like a real mother, but the more she goes around calling Stern a gullible fool, the guiltier Brighton feels, because he knows that he was the reason they broke up. Bugsy let it slip out, or maybe it wasn’t such a slip, because Bugsy wants the Queen and Stern to get back together, which can’t happen with the lawsuit going on. Brighton found a couple of YouTube videos where reporters tried to interview Stern about an old lawsuit. Stern’s a good-looking guy, but he sounds angry, says
no comment
as if he wants to slug the person asking the question, clenches his jaw and focuses his clear eyes past the camera like he’s trying to predict the future. Ed says Stern isn’t really an angry man, but serious, dedicated, and loyal, that he’ll run through a steel-reinforced concrete wall to see that justice is done. No wonder Poniard hired him. The Queen would do that, too, Ed says. So now she and Stern are sprinting toward that concrete wall in opposite directions, about to crash head-on. The thought makes Brighton want to cry.

He works this level of
Abduction!
for hours. When he gets bored he finishes his math homework and watches the fourth quarter of a basketball game with Ed—the Queen is working late again. After that, it’s bedtime, but he goes to the computer and jiggles the mouse and watches Felicity fuss with her hair, removing the cornrows, which exist in an infinite loop. He tries something new, follows the ant trail. Fixing the cursor over an ant with a particularly large piece of bread between its mandibles, he holds down the left mouse button, and in a flash he’s inside an ant colony, trapped in a dark tunnel inside the wall. He has to fight many bloody battles with ant soldiers to get to the Queen Ant, leaving severed antennae and insect armor in his wake. The Queen Ant sits on her throne. She looks like Brighton’s mother! The Queen Ant regards him with fiery eyes and then raises her sparkling scimitar to strike Brighton dead, but he parries the blow, maneuvers in close, snatches a necklace from around her neck, and escapes another of the swords. He sighs in relief because he doesn’t have to kill her—he couldn’t have done it.

Brighton examines his booty—not just any necklace but the very cross and chain that Felicity wore in Level One before the kidnapping—a replica of the necklace the real Paula Felicity McGrath wore that horrible night. The necklace flashes light that cycles through all the visible colors of the rainbow, and the ant tunnel morphs into scintillating sky. In a cutscene, Brighton flies on billowy clouds back to Felicity’s prison cell, where the necklace floats through the air and wraps itself around Felicity’s neck. She turns to face the monitor, her hair now flowing down her shoulders in crimson waves.

“Ah, my rescuer,” she says. “You’re so smart and courageous.” She purses her scarlet lips and puts a finger to her temple, as if deep in thought. Brighton smiles because even though she’s in prison, she has makeup on.

“Here’s what you must do,” she says. “You must find The One who knows about me. The someone who remembers who I really was.” The light shimmers from her tears like sunlight off a pond. “I know you’re out there. Please come forward. If not for me, for the purity of your soul.” She fingers the cross around her neck and then turns her back to the monitor. A new level doesn’t launch, but the game continues.

Brighton knows a lot about the lawsuit, of course—Bugsy and the Queen talk about it all the time even though the Queen says she doesn’t want to, and Brighton reads the online news reports when the Queen isn’t looking. So he understands that Poniard has put out an all-points bulletin on a witness, any witness, who can help his case. But why doesn’t Felicity say the same thing at the start of this level instead of waiting until the player has battled killer ants to win the necklace? Brighton thinks he understands—you take things more seriously if you have to fight for them.

Before I can take a sip of my espresso, Brenda puts a document on my table.

“Can this judge really do this?” she says. “Seriously?”

The document reads
Order Setting Trial
, scheduling the trial for March 18, 2014, eight weeks from now. It’s too soon. I’ll have to present evidence and call witnesses that I don’t have.

“What happens if Grass overrules Judge Triggs’s order and forces Poniard to show in person?” Brenda asks. “Which he won’t, right?”

“She could fine him. Or she could hold him in contempt of court. Or order his website shut down. But knowing her, she’d impose the civil death penalty.”

Brenda reacts to my lawyer’s jargon with a weary eye roll.

“The civil death penalty means she’ll enter judgment against Poniard as a sanction for violating a court order,” I say. “And then Bishop can pursue Poniard for tens of millions in damages.”

She doesn’t say it, but I know what she’s thinking—I should never have waived Poniard’s right to a jury trial in that first hearing before Judge Triggs. Now, we’re at the mercy of a judge who can’t stand me.