The Third Child (30 page)

“Call Nadine and tell her. I’m going to get right on finding out where they took him and what’s going on. Had he gotten rid of his old computer?”

“He was still transferring programs and stuff. I’m sure this has to do with the pardons and the paroles.”

“Don’t say anything more. Call Nadine.”

She obeyed his instructions and called Nadine. “Oh shit,” Nadine said. “I’ve been afraid of something like this. What’s Si doing?”

“He’s going to try to find out where the feds took Blake.”

“Sit tight.” Nadine was silent for a moment. Melissa could imagine her scratching her head, setting her white hair on end. “If they haven’t come after you yet, you might be safe for the time being. Don’t do or say anything to call attention to yourself. One of you in custody is one too many. I’ll be back in touch when we know more. Leave your cell phone on.”

She was too nervous to go to class that afternoon. Emily had not got back for lunch, but they ate supper together. “Emily, don’t answer any questions about me. You don’t know anything. Don’t even let on you know we’re married.”

“I won’t. But what’s this about?”

“You don’t want to know, believe me. You know Blake’s into hacking sometimes. I figure he hacked into someplace sensitive and they’ve caught him.”

“What’s that got to do with being married to you?”

“I didn’t do any hacking into databases or whatever, but what would
that matter if my name came up? My parents would kill me if I got involved.” She hated lying to Emily, but it would be a disservice to tell her the truth.

Melissa was so frightened, she felt icy. She seemed capable of operating as if normally, speaking in a calm voice, shoveling food into her mouth and chewing it, nodding and greeting acquaintances and classmates. She had reached a state of numbness. She was so frightened, her nerves had cut off. She knew she was afraid, but she could not feel a thing. It was as if fear were sequestered in some bony box deep in her body and held there, radiating a deep and deadly chill quietly in the background of consciousness.

Why didn’t Si or Nadine call her? Why didn’t they let her know what was happening? She was Blake’s wife, she had a right to know. But she could not come forward as his wife. Sometimes she simply could not remember why. She could not remember why they had been carrying on this dangerous game of spying on her father. She should simply break off with her family, try to forget them and let them forget her. Let them pretend she was dead. She should have pried herself loose and just walked away. Why had she let Blake talk her into concealing their marriage? So he could continue his vendetta against her father. What did that matter now? Being together mattered, building a life, making their own way in the world and forgetting about his father and hers. Letting go of the past. Why hadn’t she insisted?

Emily was talking. Her lips were moving and words dribbled out. Melissa nodded and made noises in her throat that seemed sufficient to satisfy Emily. Melissa had not insisted, she realized, because she had so much anger toward Rosemary and Dick and her older siblings. She wanted her father’s attention, yes, but perhaps even more she had wanted to punish them for their long disregard of her, for their neglect and disrespect, for always putting her dead last. She would be first now if only through hurting them. That was what she had wanted, she realized in the clarity of her fear, even more than she wanted Blake. Her anger toward them had been the spine of her being for years and years. It was an essential part of who she was: that was why she had not insisted on being truth
ful with them. That was why she had not walked away. Her anger at them was greater than her love for him. She had pretended he was the instigator, but after demurring and dragging her feet, she always joined in. She had never thrown her energy or the weight of her attachment and feelings into resisting him, because she was too spiteful.

“Hey, kid. Are you here?” Emily was tapping her arm.

“I’m sorry. I’m so worried and confused, I just spaced. What were you saying?”

“I was wondering how we could find out where they took Blake. And maybe you should go over to his room. Maybe there’s some clue to what they wanted.”

She didn’t believe that for a minute, but she wanted to go there anyhow. She had a silly hope that she would go to his room as she so often did, and Blake would be there, grinning at her. “All a mistake,” he would say. “Just a big fuck-up. No problema. My babes was worried for nothing.”

No, she didn’t believe there was no problem, but she had to go, now that Emily had put the idea in her head. “Come with me. Let’s go see what happened over there.”

“Sure, but can I finish my ice cream first? Aren’t you going to eat yours?”

Melissa could not remember eating anything, but indeed there was a dish of strawberry ice cream melting in front of her. “You take it. I’m too nervous.”

Blake’s room was torn apart. His computers were missing, and the papers on his desk were gone. His drawers had been dumped out, both in his desk and in his dresser. The skim of thick ice over her fear cracked and she could taste it like blood in her mouth. Her hands were shaking. She thought she might throw up, but she managed not to.

Jamal came to the door. “Heard anything?”

“I’m hoping his parents will find out what’s going on.”

“You called them, right?”

“Both of them. You haven’t learned anything else?”

“They were asking questions about him. But nobody wanted to give them anything. Blake hangs to himself a lot but people like him. He never has a bad word for anybody. You know what this is about, don’t you?”

“Maybe,” she said.

“But you don’t want to talk about it?”

She shook her head.

“Cool,” Jamal said. “Later.”

Emily cleared her throat behind her. Melissa realized with a start that she had forgotten to introduce them, so she quickly did. Then Emily and she went back to their dorm.

“What did he mean, You know what this is about?” Emily asked.

“Well, I didn’t want to sound like a dweeb. I don’t know a thing…. He must have hacked into something sensitive. I’m going to call his parents again.”

Only the answering machine seemed to be home. Phil appeared at her door and immediately started blurting out his fears. “We’re all going down! It’s Blake’s fault. I don’t know what to do!”

She seized him by the elbow, walking him to the stairwell and pushing him down on a step. “Shhhh. Don’t go around telling people what they don’t need to know.”

“How did they track Blake down? How did they know to grab him?”

“How do I know? I’ve spoken with Blake’s parents, and they’re in a much better position to find out the facts.”

“Are they going to let us know?”

“I assume they’ll call me as soon as they can.”

He gave her his card, with his cell phone number and e-mail address. She thought it pretentious of him to have a card. She did not know anyone else in college who had cards printed and handed them to people.

“Call me as soon as you know anything.”

“Sure.” She was glad to get rid of him.

She went on calling the house regularly, but she got only the answering machine until nine. Then Nadine answered. “It’s that guy, Tom Bellefontaine. They subpoenaed his phone records and they’ve been making their way through them. He called Blake, and Blake called him from his cell phone at least twice. That much we know. It’s a question of what they’ll get off Blake’s computers. After all, talking to someone on a cell phone is not in itself a crime, as we have been yelling all afternoon.”

“You found out where he’s being held?”

“Sure. Now what could they have found in his room?”

“I’ll call you back.”

To Emily she said, “They’ve located him, and it sounds like it’s all a big mistake. Anyhow, I’ll call back tomorrow and find out what’s going on. Both his parents are lawyers and they’re on it.”

She took her towel and toothbrush and went down the hall, but instead of heading into the showers, she slipped into the stairwell and called Nadine back on her cell phone. “It’s me again.” She explained her maneuver. “I don’t see any reason to get Emily more involved. She has no idea what we’ve been doing, and I think it should stay that way.”

“Smart choice. The fewer people who know, the better for both of you.”

“Can I see Blake?”

“He doesn’t want you to—”

“Oh!”

“Not like that, sweetie. He wants to protect you. It’s better for you to stay out of it, at least for now. You can communicate through me.”

“But I want to see him, I need to see him.”

“You need to do what’s best for both of you, and right now, Blake feels strongly that means staying away from him. He doesn’t want the two of you connected. He doesn’t want anyone to know about the marriage yet. You have to wait to hear from one of us, Melissa, and just stay put.”

“On his computer, he was monitoring my mother’s e-mail.”

“Did he erase it?”

“I think so. But maybe they can reconstruct the stuff.”

Nadine sighed. “This just gets worse and worse. I’ll talk with him tomorrow. At least as his lawyers, we can have private conversations with him.”

“I know he did have on his computer all that information about paroles and pardons. He was correlating the names of contributors with instances of prisoners being paroled or pardoned. I doubt if he erased that.”

“That would absolutely link him to Bellefontaine. Not good.”

“It’s all unbelievably bad.”

“Hang on, Melissa. I’ll be in touch when we learn something relevant. In the meantime, try to act normally and behave as you always do.”

“That doesn’t make sense. I’m with Blake most of the time I’m not in class.”

“Well, carry on as normally as you can and don’t call attention to yourself.”

She sat on in the echoing stairwell, clutching herself. What would happen to them? Would they both go to prison? They didn’t put married couples into prison together. How serious a crime was this? She tried to imagine prison. Images from old B movies and sensational made-for-cable movies swam through her head. She would take a shower. She would take a long, very hot shower and try to settle herself. How could she go to classes, how could she stagger zombielike through what was left of her daily routine? She could hear a score of competing records playing rap, rock, hip-hop, fusion, jazz from the rooms on her corridor. She could hear two girlish voices in an argument about who tore whose sweater. She could hear a hockey game on some TV. She could hear canned laughter and she could hear real laughter. A woman came up the steps, tears rolling down her face, and pushed past without looking at her. Melissa could not cry. Fear had dried her tear ducts. She could only clutch herself and shudder, wondering what lay ahead for Blake and for her, separately or together.

B
lake was back and in her arms. They lay grasping each other in his room. They had fallen into bed and made love in a trance of desperation, digging at each other, thrusting as if they could totally interpenetrate and fuse. Now they were spent but still entwined. She felt sore and on the verge of tears.

“I should have made you stop this months ago. I feel so guilty. I feel as if I sacrificed you to my anger against my parents.”

“That’s nonsense, babes. I have my own agenda, and it involves my father. All my life since his death, I’ve carried the burden of needing to clear his name and avenge him. I would have tried to do that even if I’d never met you.”

“But I got you in much deeper than you could have gone on your own.”

“You’ve been a big help, but I’d have done it anyhow. It would have taken me longer to get the same information, but I would have kept at it.” With a hand under her chin, he lifted her head to stare into her with his large luminous dark eyes. “I’m sorry I got caught, but I’m not sorry we tried to do what we did. Maybe it’ll still do some damage.”

“Did they hurt you?”

“They were rough at first, but nothing serious. After Si and Nadine showed up, they were careful with me.”

“Is it over?”

“Not nearly. They took my old computer.”

“You erased everything damaging, didn’t you?”

“Of course. I downloaded onto zip disc everything hot, and I gave it to Jamal for safekeeping. I trust him more than Phil—”

“Phil’s pissing himself with fear.”

He snorted. “I’m not surprised. Anyhow, Jamal’s cool with keeping stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“My zip discs. My backups. Printouts.”

“How do you know Jamal will cover for you?”

“I’ve covered for him.”

Maybe the gun was Jamal’s. She wanted to think so. “So what are you worried about?”

“I ran a good erasure program over my hard drive, but I think a hacker type could still find my data. But I would have to ask my hacker friends in Williamsburg, and I’m nervous about calling. I’d have to go out of town a ways and use a pay phone to be safe. And you can’t tell if they’re under surveillance.”

“Can’t you ask them without being specific?”

“I’ll try.”

“Will they know who you are if you don’t say your name?”

“I’m Caped Crusader.” He grinned. Strangely enough, she thought, he seemed less frightened than she was. Maybe things would be all right. Maybe his parents could get him out of trouble.

“If we do get through all this safely”—she touched his cheek—“then we should retire from the spy business. We should work on our lives instead. We should get on with school and just be married and together.”

He smiled, a crooked, almost aloof grimace. “That would be pleasant, wouldn’t it?”

“I hope you think so.”

“Sure. A quiet student life together worrying only about what should we eat for supper? Sounds like paradise. But we have to get through this battle first.”

“The timing just sucks. I’m supposed to go to Philadelphia next Friday.”

“We have to figure out how to turn that into a way to help us.”

“They wouldn’t help you if you were drowning and they were standing there with a life preserver.”

“They might not help me. But they might help your husband. They might want to prevent a big scandal.”

She sat up, rubbing her scalp and setting the hair on end. She felt a stirring of hope that had not visited her since Jamal had brought her news of the raid. “That’s possible. That’s really and truly a possibility. Rosemary hates scandal….”

“How much does she hate it?” He stared at his joined hands. “More than she hates me? Doubt it.”

“There’s a chance we could reach a compromise where they would drop charges and do a neat cover-up if we agree to stop going after my father. That they would agree to in order to keep things quiet.”

They were sitting cross-legged on his unmade bed, facing each other. “Is that what you want to do?” Now he was staring into her eyes again.

“I want you not to go to jail. I don’t fancy going myself. I think we do have some leverage if we play it just right with them. I can’t promise anything. They might let us both swing.”

“So how would we play this?” His head was cocked to one side.

She could tell she had not convinced him, but she was surprised and pleased he was willing to listen. Maybe they would come out of this mess right side up. “I’ll go there for Christmas like always. In Philadelphia while he mends fences and butters up backers and makes a show for his constituents…”

“And I’ll be there with Si and Nadine. So what’s the plan?”

“It’s a better place than Washington for pulling something off, because there’s less staff to shield them. Alison, of course. We’d have to pick a time when they’re not putting on an event or a party because Rosemary just won’t pay attention. ‘Oh, you’re married, fine, did the flowers come yet?’”

“We’ll have to play it by ear. So you’ll make your big announcement.”

“That’s the idea.” She shuddered. “All hell will break loose.”

“Look, let’s modify a bit. You let me in. I hide somewhere like your room until you’ve raised the subject. Then I appear and we both plead for our lives.”

“Would you do that?”

“If we have to. I want to hang loose about this until I know what the feds have been able to extract from my computer.”

“Maybe we won’t have to do anything. Maybe this will blow over.”

“Maybe John Lennon and John Coltrane and John and John-John Kennedy will all rise from the dead and do a circle dance around the Washington Monument. Or maybe not.”

“You don’t think you managed to erase enough?”

“I have no idea. Tomorrow I’ll get an estimate from my hacker buds.”

“Don’t you just feel exhausted with all the being afraid and all the waiting and the tension? I’m just overstretched and like I’m going to snap.”

He pulled her toward him, turned her around and began to knead her neck and shoulder muscles. “Got to keep it under wraps, babes. No use in combusting. We need all our smarts to get through this one.”

THEY RODE OUT
in midday on his motorcycle to a mall on the edge of Middletown, where they found a pay phone. She waited, perched on the edge of a planter filled with frozen earth and dead chrysanthemums. Someone, maybe Alison, had told her that the chrysanthemum was the flower of death. Alison sometimes said strange things like that. She read a lot. Melissa remembered gladiolus being the common flower at funerals of her childhood, and now people seemed to go for roses or lilies.

When he got off the phone, he was looking worried. “They say it’s likely that someone who knew what he was doing could reconstruct my data. That would pretty much do me in. They aren’t sure how much could be reconstructed, because the parts of the hard drive that were erased and then recorded over would be cool. But the parts that were erased and not recorded over, someone who knew what he was doing might get a fair amount of data off the drive.”

She wrung her hands. “It just gets worse and worse.”

He smiled at her, a forced smile, but still he looked so handsome standing there it seemed impossible that anyone could bring him down, that anyone would want to. Even when she dreamed of him in her sleep a couple of times a week, he had a radiance. It was different from that glow that surrounded her parents in public. It was not so much a glittering sur
face as something that shone through his skin from within. She had tried to explain that to Emily, who said, “Girl, you are in love. He’s a guy, not a saint. Come off it.”

Now he could be taken from her. Locked up for years. Brutalized. Tortured. Men got raped in prison. There his handsome face and lithe body would work against him. He could not go to prison. She had to stop the process, but only Dick and Rosemary could do that. Did she have any leverage with them? She frankly did not know.

“I have to go Christmas shopping,” she said.

“We do a little of that, not much,” he said. “There are real advantages to being Jewish. We give each other one present and quit while we’re ahead. Grandma calls it Chanukah gifts, but it’s really just a nod to the rest of society.”

“I have to get presents they’ll like, as if I could afford anything that Rosemary would really want. But it’s a way of ingratiating myself.” Strangely enough, Rosemary actually did care for presents. Melissa imagined that in the lower-middle-class family in which her mother had been raised, presents had been severely practical. Mittens, gloves, scarves, socks. Rosemary loved jewelry. How could she find something her mother would feel was a worthy present? Rosemary wasn’t the sort of mother who cooed over her children’s lopsided bowls made in pottery class or their daubs from art class. Back when she had been in a Brownie troop, she had given her mother an apron she had sewn out of blue calico for a merit badge. Rosemary had barely been able to hide her displeasure. An apron! Melissa had been crushed.

She had to find something to give each of them that would put them in a good mood. She tried to explain the problem to Blake, but he didn’t understand. He tended to give his parents books he was sure they’d find interesting. She couldn’t imagine giving Rosemary or Dick a book. Or Rich or Laura or Billy. Perhaps Merilee. No, she had to come up with something that would curry favor. It was going to be a big project.

It was going to empty the cash reserve she had, but she could put expensive items on her credit card. By the time the bills came in, the crisis would have been resolved one way or the other, one way or the other.
Emily could understand. Melissa enlisted her and her car in the search. In an antiques barn two towns away, they found a necklace that Melissa thought Rosemary would approve of. She also found a World War II cartridge box she thought Dick would like. For Rich she got cuff links; for Laura, earrings; and for the baby, a stuffed toy. Her credit card was going to be maxed out. Billy was easy. She got him some CDs. Merilee would receive a burned-out-velvet scarf. What about Alison? She had to get her something. Every year Alison joined their Christmas. She ended up getting her a scarf too. A Middletown woman made pretty ones. She was out of ideas as well as money. It was bribery, but she needed every bit of goodwill she could muster from her family.

BLAKE JUST DIDN’T
get it. “You think giving your mother a necklace from the twenties is going to fix marrying me, you’re thinking upside down.”

“I think we need every bit of edge we can find. It’s going to be murder.”

He was sitting on a bench next to her, kneading a snowball in his gloves. Then he let it fly against an oak, stripped for the winter to a few raggedy leaves still clinging like torn paper bags to its hefty limbs. He hit the oak trunk dead center.

“Good shot,” she said, trying to defuse things.

“You really think we’re going to get someplace with your parents? By suddenly persuading them how nice we are?”

“I think a combination of polite blackmail about scandal and trying to persuade them how cute and puppylike we are is the only way to go.”

“The case has dropped out of the papers. Nothing. I think King Richard’s going to get away with it. We had him dead center, and nobody cares.”

“Blake, we’ve got to let that drop. We must! You don’t want to go to prison. I don’t want you to go to prison. I sure don’t want to go. We took it as far as we could. We’re just a couple of college kids, not detectives, not investigative reporters with a national newspaper behind us hiring lawyers.”

He did not answer. He scooped up more snow, shaped it hard and let fly again, hitting the same oak.

“Promise me, Blake, that you’ll try to let this go, at least for a while.”

Another snowball hit the oak. “I gave it my best shot. I thought we had him. I thought we did.”

“Blake, if you try to continue, we’ll end up in worse trouble.”

“You really want to try throwing ourselves on their tender mercies?”

“I don’t see another way to go. They
are
my parents.”

“We’ll be in Philadelphia, the whole cast assembled. You, me, Phil and his father, Dick and Rosemary, your siblings, Si and Nadine, all of us. All there gathered round full of holiday spirit. What a cozy thing to look forward to.”

“If we end up getting through this free and together, it will be. We just have to feel our way very carefully.”

“Careful,” he repeated. “Full of care. That’s how I feel. Really overstuffed and loaded with care. Four more days and we all go to the City of Brotherly Love.”

She looked sideways at his guarded face, praying that she had got through to him and he wasn’t going to persist in a mad scheme of exposure and revenge. She could imagine an afterward when they were free just to be who they were, husband and wife together, openly. If this was close to hell, that looked to her close to heaven.