Two Girls Down(98)

Vega wiped tears from her cheeks, forgetting about the raw skin, and twitched at the pain. Her breath was choppy, a washboard in her throat. She fumbled for her phone in her inside pocket and skimmed over about twenty texts. She tapped her brother’s name. His read, “Saw you on TV. Kick all kinds of Ass ;)”

Vega smiled, and that hurt her face too, and she wrote back, “Shut up.”

There was also one from her father, but she skipped it, went straight to Cap’s: “Can your guy get financials on Toby and Erica McKenna quick?”

“Probably. Why?” she typed back.

While she waited for his response, she sent an email to the Bastard, and then Cap’s text came back: “I think they have too much money and look too good.”

She was about to write him back when Stacy returned holding an orange shoebox. She sat on the couch and placed the box on the low table between them. She didn’t open it right away.

“This has pictures from ballet class, I think,” she said. “You can take them with you if you want.”



“Are you sure?” said Vega. “I can look at them here.”

“I can’t,” said Stacy. “Please take them. You can bring them back.”

She ground and snapped her teeth in the front now, incisors on incisors. Vega stared at them, glowing white.

“You have really nice teeth,” she said.

“I should,” Stacy said, a laugh crowding her throat. “They’re all crowns, every one of them. My ex paid for those too. I wear these mouthguards at night, used to just wear one up top, but I chewed through it like a dog. So now I wear top and bottom.”

She continued to talk about the mouthguards, how she put them in the dishwasher once and then her ex-husband paid for replacements, and she hadn’t felt silly because the dentist told her the mouthguards were silicon, so why shouldn’t you be able to put them in the dishwasher? It seemed to calm her, talking about the teeth, so Vega spaced out a little and tried to remember something from Ashley’s file.

“I’m sorry, what does your ex do for a living again?” she said.

“He’s a floor manager at a Game On, down in Philly.”

“He’s done that awhile?”

“Yeah, about ten years I guess.”

Vega leaned forward, tried to get deeper into the blackness of Stacy’s eyes, searching.

“You have a nice home,” she said. “And nice teeth. Does your ex make that much money at Game On—that’s sporting goods, I’m guessing?”

“Oh no way,” said Stacy, unoffended. “He had this aunt I never heard of, died and left him a wad of cash a couple years ago. And he felt guilty, you know. Only thing that worked out the last four years.”

Vega thought of the impalpable entity that was a wire transfer, imaginary money rattling through an imaginary pneumatic tube in the sky. Her phone buzzed and kept buzzing against her ribs as she watched Stacy’s mouth moving, showing off the crowns, flawless and counterfeit.

—

Cap paced, didn’t realize he was pacing, alone in Junior’s office. He was aware he was talking to himself aloud, but only with words here and there, fragments of thoughts, sometimes his tongue suctioning air off the backboard of his teeth.

Finally, Vega’s message came through. He read it once quickly, eyes jumping to the numbers. He tapped the screen to zoom, then realized he had to see the whole thing at once. He went around Junior’s desk and pressed the space bar and got a prompt for the log-in and password. Then to the door and stuck his head out, saw Junior at the end of the hall talking to Ralz and called to him.



Junior jogged to him.

“I need your password,” said Cap.

“Why?” said Junior, immediately defensive.

Cap stared at him.

“I’d like to download some pornography.”

“Mature.”

Junior came to the desk, typed in his password, and got out of the way. Cap found the email from Vega and blew it up on the screen.

“Take a look at this,” he said.

Junior looked.

“What is this, financial records?”

“Yeah. Sydney McKenna’s parents’ checking account.”

“Don’t you need a subpoena for that?”

“You do,” said Cap. “I don’t.”

Cap put his finger on the screen, said, “This is from a year ago, almost a year exactly after Sydney disappeared. Look at that.”

“A hundred fifty K,” said Junior. “Isn’t he a cabdriver?”

“He was. A year ago. Now they run their own car service.” Cap scrolled down the page and hit the screen lightly with his fist.

“Look at that,” he said slowly. “One week after the wire, forty goes to Lincoln Central in Harrisburg—that’s enough for a sedan outright and down payments on what, four or five others?”

He kept scrolling, looking for big numbers. He saw a cluster of them, and he and Junior both leaned in as close as they could without the figures blurring.

“Doctors,” said Junior.

“I will bet you my car those are plastic surgeons. He’s got new eyes; she’s got a new nose. You’ll find tanning salons on there too, personal trainers, gyms.”

Junior listened to all of it, said, “Your car’s a piece of shit.” Then he stood up straight, stretched his arms behind his back. “So you think they sold their kid so they could get cars and tans?”