Wishful Thinking (38 page)

“Oh my God,” Alicia said. “It’s the world’s tiniest man cave.”

The cabinet did look as though it were the only place in the world a man kept under tight control by his fastidious wife had left to shove things. There were scores of handwritten notes, Post-its, receipts, newspaper clippings, and other miscellany that neither Jennifer nor Alicia could make heads or tails of, and none of which seemed to relate to BTE for Good. There was no sign of Greg Schloss’s payroll report, though Alicia did find a folder marked
Memoirs
, inside which was a handful of legal paper covered with Bill’s neat, tiny print. “‘Women I’ve Loved,’” Alicia read, sticking it back into the folder in disgust. Before they knew it, twenty minutes had gone by, and, despite being surrounded by papers and the occasional file, they seemed not to have begun to scratch the surface, let alone find what they’d come there for.

“What time is it?” Alicia asked.

“Five forty,” Jennifer replied, looking at her phone. “Bill is in the car. Tim was tracking the driver with GPS, but he seems to have lost the signal. We might have another thirty-five minutes,” Jennifer said. “Or we might have ten.”

“There’s got to be
something
in here,” Alicia said. She reached into the bottom of the file cabinet, pulled another folder out from under the pile, and looked at it. Cocking her head, she read, “‘BTE Investment Securities, LLC.’”

“Bill runs an investment firm?” Jennifer asked. She began to thumb through other files to see if any was similarly labeled.

“I don’t think it’s really an investment firm,” Alicia said. “I
think it’s just something he’s done for the last few years for his friends. He mentioned it to me when we got together to discuss the job. I know a couple of the investors.” She peered at some of the statements and whistled. “I recognize a lot of these names, actually,” she added. “It reads like a who’s who of black people with money.”

Jennifer found another folder related to BTE Investment Securities, marked
Correspondence
. She opened it.

“He started doing it right after the recession, I think,” Alicia said. “He had a lot of big real estate deals go bad. But obviously,” she said, gesturing to the room they were in, “he recovered.”

“Alicia!” Jennifer said, her eyes widening as she paged through the contents of the correspondence folder faster and faster, her pulse quickening. “Look at this.” She handed Alicia one of the letters from the file.

Alicia took the letter and began to read. “‘Dear Bill,’” she began. “‘This is the fifth letter I have written asking you to repay the two hundred and sixty-four thousand dollars I placed with you for investment in April of 2012. As you know, I have urged other of your investors—and, might I add, not just “investors” but mutual colleagues and friends—to do the same, as I have come to believe that the returns you have promised are not sustainable and were, perhaps, fiction to begin with. Out of respect for your late father, I’m willing to let the matter drop if you are able to fully disburse my original investment in the next thirty days, but otherwise I will be forced to take this matter to the SEC. …’”

Alicia read silently through to the end. “I know this man,” Alicia said quietly. “He was a major donor to the mayor’s education charity when I was superintendent.”

Jennifer produced another letter. And another. Some of them were typed and written in formal language, like the first,
but some were handwritten, striking more desperate, pathetic tones.
Dear Bill,
one began,
we have been friends for twenty-two years now, and you won’t answer my calls? I have been trying to explain to my wife why we have not gotten our money back. As you know, she has been talking to Richard Stuart, and he has got her very worried about all this. …

Alicia and Jennifer set the folders down and looked at each other.

“Maybe he
didn’t
recover from those bad real estate deals,” Jennifer said. “Maybe he sustained huge losses in the crash and decided to offset them by running a Ponzi scheme.” It was all beginning to make sense. “His investors are calling him on it. Which would explain why a billionaire would bother to steal from the government.”

“He could have sold the house in Aspen,” Alicia said, sighing. “Or the yacht.” She set the folder down next to the only photo on Bill Truitt’s desk—a picture of Bill Sr., who had passed away more than a decade ago, with his arms wrapped proudly around his son on his graduation day from Yale. “His daddy must be turning over in his grave,” she added. “Junior is none other than the black Bernie Madoff.”

O
NCE THEY KNEW WHAT
they were looking for, it didn’t take long to find the proof to support Jennifer’s theory. Greg Schloss’s payroll reports weren’t there—shredded, Jennifer guessed—but, in an unmarked folder buried at the very bottom of the file cabinet, Jennifer and Alicia found bank statements showing transfers from BTE for Good directly to BTE Investment Securities. The rate of the transfers had increased markedly in the last few months, as Bill had grown more and more desperate to appease his investors with cash, and correlated with the bigger amounts he’d been taking out of the
residents’ paychecks. Jennifer’s calculations had been correct— the total transfers added up to more than half a million dollars. Bill, having tapped a cash cow, had only just gotten started milking it.

“We should start packing up,” Jennifer said, indicating the time to Alicia on her phone. “He probably won’t get here for another twenty minutes, but when he does, I want to be long gone.”

Alicia nodded and began to replace papers carefully into their files and place the files back into the file cabinet. “I’ll edit our return,” Jennifer said, opening Wishful Thinking. Just as she did, however, there was a
ping
. It was a text from Tim.

HE’S IN THE LOBBY.
It was 6:00 p.m.

R u sure?
Jennifer texted back.

Doorman
, Tim replied.
I will call, try to stall him. Get ready!!!!

“We’ve gotta go!” Jennifer yelled. Alicia rose quickly from Bill’s chair, closed the file cabinet, locked it, shoved it under the desk, and replaced the key while Jennifer used the
EDIT
button, which had come in as handy as she’d suspected it might, to change their Wishful Thinking return time.

Pulling up the entry, she changed the appointment’s end time to 6:01 p.m.

“Oh my God,” Alicia said. “He could walk in here any minute!” She shut the office door and joined Jennifer behind Bill’s desk. Editing complete, Jennifer set the phone on the desk between them.

“We’ll be gone in less than sixty seconds,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

Alicia put one hand on the phone and one hand on Jennifer’s upper arm. “I can’t believe I’m actually looking forward to being turned into atomic soup,” she said with a nervous laugh.

Jennifer smiled. “You got everything?” she asked.

“Yes,” Alicia said, patting the folder tucked under her arm.

Looking at the clock on the wall, Jennifer and Alicia watched as the second hand swung past the six, beginning to count down the last thirty seconds they would have to wait. Steadily it glided past the seven, the eight, and then the nine. There were just five seconds to go when Jennifer, her eyes darting down to her phone, saw something that made her heart stop. Against Wishful Thinking’s familiar dark blue background was an unfamiliar screen, unlike anything she had ever seen before.
A notification from Wishful Thinking.
Jennifer tapped it.

Unable to connect to the Internet to secure location coordinates
, the notification said.
Please wait while Wishful Thinking searches for a wireless network. As soon as a connection is established, your appointment will begin.

“Fuck,” Jennifer said quietly.

“Why are we still here?” Alicia asked, turning to her. Jennifer motioned dumbly to her phone.

Alicia stared at the screen. “She invented a time-travel app that uses
3G
?”

“No,” Jennifer replied, trying to think, her brain spinning just like the little wheel. “It uses GETS. Some network for government emergency responders. It’s fail-safe—Dr. Sexton got the code! This never happens; it’s impossible!” She motioned to Alicia to take out her own phone. “Call Dr. Sexton,” she said, and dictated the number, which she had memorized months ago in case of an emergency, “but don’t let go of me while you do.”

Alicia dialed. “The reception is terrible in here,” she said anxiously. “It’s not even ringing.”

Ping.
Another text from Tim. Somehow
his
texts were coming through. Maybe he had Verizon.

COMING UP NOW
, it read.

“
Whisper
,” Jennifer hissed to Alicia.

Please, Dr. Sexton
, Jennifer thought.
Please pick up.

“It’s ringing!” Alicia cried, her hand over her phone.

“Voice mail!” Alicia said. There was a beep. Alicia began to whisper-babble. “Dr. Sexton it’s Alicia we’re trying to get out of Bill’s apartment but somehow we aren’t getting a signal.” She paused. “Please call us back.” Alicia hung up. Jennifer’s eyes were glued to her phone. At the top of it that wheel, that goddamn endlessly spinning little wheel, with its flashing and fading tiny little cheery spokes flashing and fading again and again, all of it adding up to nothing, to zero, to zilch, jammed up and pointless and impotent at precisely the moment she most needed it to work—if that little wheel didn’t stop spinning soon, she thought, she was probably going to go to jail.

But the little wheel spun on.

She wanted to scream, but screaming, she knew, would be a very bad idea. Because by now Bill must surely have come off the elevator and onto the fifty-fifth floor. And then they heard it. Footsteps approaching the door.

“Put your phone away,” Jennifer whispered, concentrating on keeping every muscle still.

Alicia gripped Jennifer’s hand so tightly, Jennifer had to bite her lip to keep from crying out in pain. “Our father,” Alicia murmured, “who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name …”

The door opened, and Bill Truitt was there, standing inside it. And for a split second—a moment so fleeting Jennifer knew that later Bill Truitt would doubt whether it had ever occurred, if only to preserve his sanity—Jennifer and big Bill Truitt locked eyes. And just as they did, just as that tiny wheel finally stopped spinning and just as the wormhole, her old, faithful friend, yawned out of her phone, the blue tunnel of light lashing outward and upward in all its swirling,
tremendous glory, enveloping Jennifer and Alicia inside, Jennifer managed to say the three words she most wanted to say right to that arrogant asshole’s stunned, disbelieving face.

“We got you.”

And then they were gone.

B
REATHLESS AND SHELL-SHOCKED
but triumphant, Jennifer and Alicia appeared—the evidence inside the folder tucked under Alicia’s arm—in the exact spot where they had begun their journey in Jennifer’s apartment an hour before. For Dr. Sexton, of course, it had been only a minute, and when she saw the folder Alicia held, she sat up in her chair, eyes glittering with excitement. “You found what you needed?” she asked.

Sitting down, still shaking a little, Alicia placed the folder on the table. “It turns out that Bill Truitt was in big financial trouble,” Alicia said. “So he set up a dummy investment business and took money—millions, we think—from his wealthy friends, promising them huge returns. But in the last year or so,” she said, pulling out some of the correspondence, “some of his investors got suspicious and started to demand their money back. He was embezzling from One Stop to get the cash to hold them off.”

“And this is the proof?” Dr. Sexton said, skimming the
documents. Jennifer, who’d taken a seat next to Alicia, nodded.

Dr. Sexton clapped her hands together. “Bravo!” she said. But Jennifer and Alicia were silent. The thrill of their find, and of their narrow escape, had already worn off. Jennifer sighed.

“I know,” Alicia said, sighing too.

“Why so glum?” Dr. Sexton asked. “You got what you needed, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Jennifer said. “The problem is, what do we do now?”

“Why, you take it to the inspector general you mentioned, and you have this greedy thief put in jail!”

“But what happens to One Stop?” Alicia said. “We’re so close. Just six months away from opening our doors. This will blow up the whole project completely. There will be an investigation, which could take months, even years, and the breach of trust with the community will be nearly irreparable. There will be protests, demonstrations … We caught it, yes, but the damage will be crippling.”

“Not only that,” Jennifer added, “but the new mayor is a maniac about corruption. He campaigned as Mr. Clean, and Bill is connected to him personally. Which means it’s a scandal that will taint
him
, and he’ll want to stay as far away from it— and us—as he possibly can.”

“We got Bill,” Alicia said, “but in the end, he may have gotten us instead.”

Alicia didn’t have to say it. They should have been more vigilant. They should have known better.

It took a moment for them to register that Dr. Sexton was smiling. Grinning, in fact, from ear to ear.

“What’s got you so cheery?” Alicia said, jerking her head back.

“I believe,” Dr. Sexton said, “I may be able to be of some assistance.”

“What?” Alicia said. “Do you have an app that saves public-housing projects from being sunk by corrupt, ego-maniacal businessmen?”

“No,” Dr. Sexton replied. “I am not an app maker, or whatever such people are called. I am a physicist who happens to have made the greatest discovery in the history of science.” That shut Alicia up. “In this case, however,” Dr. Sexton continued, softening her tone, “I believe I can offer a more traditional sort of help, of the nepotistic variety. Do you remember, my dear,” she said, turning to Jennifer, “when I mentioned my younger brother to you? And that he had gone into your line of work? Government or, more accurately put, politics.” Jennifer nodded—she did remember, vaguely. “My brother’s name is … Aldon!” When Jennifer and Alicia met this declaration with blank looks, Dr. Sexton added, slightly exasperated, “Fitch.
Aldon Fitch.
”