Good as Dead(15)

I described the scene for Jack the best I could without letting myself get emotional. The man had likely died on impact. The woman was knocked down and rendered unconscious, with a head injury. “I don’t imagine she saw much,” I said. “And she has a concussion, so even if she did, her memory will likely be unreliable.” I tried to sound clinical, detached, unaffected. The performance was not just for him.

He nodded, then asked, “What about witnesses?”

So far, no witnesses had come forward, but I was still holding my breath. “There were fourteen bystanders on the scene when I got there,” I told him. “It’s unclear if any of them witnessed the collision, but I’ll keep an eye on it.” I thought about the man with the camera phone but decided not to mention it. The video had not gone viral yet, unlikely it would now.

Jack nodded again. I could tell he was concerned—we both were. But I had a good handle on who was there. I had videoed the crowd on my phone, making sure to document the faces and cars of every onlooker in the vicinity. We were fortunate that there were no banks or government buildings within line of sight that might have had surveillance cameras near the intersection, I’d made sure to check.

“And the dashcam?” he asked somewhat reluctantly. “What’s the plan for that?”

The existence of a video was problematic. And the fact that it was in the hands of a teenage girl was more troubling still. I knew how these teenagers are, every damn moment of every damn day winds up on Snapchat or WhatsApp or whatever platform they’re using now. If Savannah ever decided to post that dashcam video, things would get ugly real fast.

“The girl gave me the camera and the original data card, but—” Jack stopped me with his hand. We both knew she was smarter than that. In the digital age, if there was one copy, there were a thousand. Savannah probably already had it saved on multiple devices and a cloud or two. There was only one way to keep that video from seeing the light of day, and that was to keep Savannah happy.

“Yeah, I know,” Jack said. “It was a stupid question.” Jack ran his hands through his graying hair. It was still thick, and his hairline mercifully hadn’t budged. He tamed it with pomade that smelled like oranges. I noticed how he spiked it in the front to give the illusion of height. It was still standing tall—unlike the man who’d styled it.

We were doing a bad thing, but Jack wasn’t a bad man. In fact, he could be quite generous. If his wife identified a worthy cause—home for battered wives, local boys’ clubs, school drama program—he gave generously and anonymously. He had worked hard to build a good life for himself and his family, he was not going to let it be destroyed by one unfortunate accident. Shit happens, and people make mistakes. The world was not going to come tumbling down—he had me to make sure of that.

“The woman,” Jack started, “she’s OK with, y’know . . . burying the video?”

“It was the teenager who nabbed the dashcam,” I said, sidestepping the question. “And it’s a damn good thing she did,” I added to remind him how much worse things would be if she hadn’t.

There was of course another way this could leak. But I didn’t dare mention it. Jack already knew about this other potential loose end, and I had to assume he had it handled.

Jack looked up at me with weary eyes, then said something that surprised me. “Do you think we’re doing the right thing?”

I didn’t answer right away. What we were doing was morally and criminally wrong, we both knew that. So what is he really asking me?

I was careful with my answer. “I think what happened is a terrible tragedy, and that we are doing the best we can under difficult circumstances,” I said. “Taking aggressive steps to control the damage is in everyone’s best interests,” I added.

And then he looked at his hands and said, “As long as we don’t get caught.”

If I believed in God, I might have said, God willing. Luckily, I don’t. Because if I did, I’d have to accept that we were probably both going to hell.





CHAPTER 8


I scooped up the paperwork and tucked it in my briefcase. All the i’s were dotted and the t’s crossed, but in the end, it really didn’t matter. Our contract was only a Band-Aid on a deep and fragile wound that would have to be tended to carefully and indefinitely. The statute of limitations on vehicular manslaughter was only six years in California, but the unearthing of this crime could create problems way beyond that. Yes, it was a crime, I had to call it what it was. Not the hitting—that was an accident—but the running. There were layers to this incident that went beyond Jack and me, things that could unravel whole lives. I understood Jack’s reasons for trying to cover it up. But that didn’t mean I agreed with them.

I phoned Jack to tell him the deal was closed. He was pleased but not wholly relieved. I reminded him that, at this point, Holly and Savannah were as guilty in the cover-up as we were. For better or worse, we were in this together. To come forward after signing the NDA would cost them literally everything they had. That, of course, was the whole point in doing it.

Driving home, I thought about how it came to be that I, a nice kid from New Hampshire who played lacrosse and graduated summa cum laude from Yale, came to be a fixer. I had a job my former classmates could understand—personal lawyer—but if they knew what I actually did, they would be appalled.