Two Girls Down(21)

“I’m gonna sue the shit outta you, bitch. I’m gonna fuckin’ rip your face off and beat the shit outta you and get your ass thrown in jail—”

She took the apple back from Cap and shoved it back into Haas’s mouth.

“He’ll just keep going like that,” said Vega. “So how long do you need to take care of this? Couple of hours?”

Cap shrugged, a little stunned, said, “Probably.”

“Help me get him out,” she said.

Before Cap could agree, she threaded her arms underneath Haas’s armpits and started to lift him. Haas wriggled and flapped his elbows around. Cap grabbed his ankles. Haas tried to kick him.

“Hey,” said Vega to Haas, gripping his face in her hand like he was a dog she was trying to housebreak. “Stop it.”

Haas paused briefly and then kept trying to buck. His T-shirt hiked up, exposing his stomach, white and sagging.

Vega dropped him from a few inches above the street and he landed on his shoulder blades with his head craning up. Cap dropped the legs, and Haas rolled back and forth.

“What does your voice mail say?” Vega asked Cap.

Cap was out of breath.

“Just that I wanted to have a conversation.”

“I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” she said. “For a conversation.”

She looked down at Haas like he was a traffic cone, then back to Cap. The very small trace of flirtation from earlier had gone. That had not been the real woman, Cap realized. This was her now, and she was working, and that’s all there was.

She shut the trunk, walked around to the driver’s side of the car, and got in. She did not look at Cap in her side mirror as she started the car, no thumbs-up or wave. Then he watched her leave again.



He was left with Haas, who’d worn himself out and was now just lying at Cap’s feet, making halfhearted grunts.

“Mr. Haas,” said Cap. “Someone who owes as much money as you do and has a bench warrant out on them shouldn’t be threatening to sue anyone.”

Haas made a sound that was like someone talking in his sleep. Cap squatted over him and pulled out his phone.

“So who’s it gonna be first?” he said. “Your ex or the cops?”

Haas’s eyes rolled toward him and blinked. Cap took the apple out of his mouth, and Haas took a breath like he’d been rescued from drowning.





4

Cap had fifteen minutes to clean the shit out of his office before Vega would be back. This was after Hayley Haas’s trashy lawyer had left with a signed IOU from Haas, and Cap had called a cab to take Haas to the hospital to have his dick iced.

He shoved every loose-leaf sheet of paper into a big black Hefty bag and tried to make the stacks on his desk look more like papers that were about to be filed instead of papers that were about to be shoved into a big black Hefty bag.

He thought only briefly about what exactly he was doing, why he was meeting with Vega again, what he would say to her when she arrived. He knew himself well enough and had had enough sessions with a shrink to know that the reasons that he did things were not immediately accessible to him until sometime later. Then, like seeing something on the street that he’d seen in a dream the night before, it would click. So that’s why I did that.

He put his hands on his hips and surveyed the room. The motion sensor light in the driveway came on, and he could hear her coming, then the knock. He took a breath and held it.

—

He sat on the leather loveseat, Vega in a wooden chair, perched on the edge again. She leaned over her laptop on the low coffee table, started tapping various keys.

“Here’s the feed from the parking lot, eleven forty-eight,” she said, swiveling the laptop toward Cap.

Cap watched. The car containing the Brandt girls was not directly surrounded by any other cars. The lot was fairly empty. Spring Fest, thought Cap. One of the girls was in the front seat, passenger side, and he could see her shape but not her face. The feed was black-and-white, the camera probably thirty feet from the car and slightly to the left. The face flickered with movement, became lighter.



“She’s turning her head,” said Vega.

“Talking to her sister in the backseat,” said Cap.

The face continued to flicker, back and forth, agitated.

“They’re arguing,” said Cap.

More angry flickering, then the girl in the front seat gets out. The girl in the backseat follows. Her dress shines: glitter, sequins, beads. Cap had put Nell in a hundred of them through age nine. The two girls go out of frame.

“Here,” said Vega, typing.

Another square screen on the laptop opened, and new footage: an ice cream shop. The camera was a foot and a half or so above the counter. A woman, two kids, and a baby sit at a booth. The Brandt girls enter, led by the older one. The girl behind the counter gives them both miniature spoons with samples, and they eat. The older one licks her spoon, front and back, keeps asking for another. After five, the girl behind the counter tells them to pay or get lost. The older one says something smart-ass. (Cap could tell by the look on her face.) Squints her eyes and smirks, looks much older than ten. Then they walk out of the frame.

Vega closed the window, opened another. The parking lot entrance. The older one walks out, toward the street. The younger one stops, says something. The older one keeps going. The younger one runs to catch up. Out of frame. It is 12:02.