Black Wood Read online

  “In a closet down the hall. I was checking that they were unoccupied first.”

  “Don’t they have a woman to clean the ladies’ bathroom?”

  “We’re short-staffed at the moment. It’s just me. Now, if you’ll excuse me ...”

  And the funny thing was, she did. I couldn’t quite believe I’d done that. More self-actualization at work. I went into one of the cubicles and climbed up on the toilet seat. I crouched down and waited. The door opened and closed, and I heard Samantha’s voice.

  “Are you in here?”

  “In the cubicle.”

  “Open it.”

  I did. “What the hell are we doing?” I asked.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “If I get caught here ...”

  “You’re not going to get caught here. Now, shut up and let me in.”

  She came in and closed the door behind her, sitting down on the toilet with her back to me. I was crouched behind her, holding onto each wall for support. My legs were touching her back. I could smell the conditioner from her hair.

  “Did you know Charlie wasn’t going to show today?” I said.

  “Yeah. I was with him last night. I think he was hoping all along that he might get away with community service or probation. But he’d had a meeting with his lawyer. He told Charlie it wasn’t looking good. The prosecutor is pushing for a year inside, minimum. Charlie freaked out. He said, ‘What the hell is gonna happen to my grandfather if I have to go away for a year?’ The lawyer also told him that the prosecutor is going to try to have his bail revoked, saying he’s a flight risk. He said they’d fight it but it could go either way. Charlie couldn't take that risk. If he’s taken into custody, we’ll never get out of here.”

  “So, he split town?”

  “No, he’s in hiding. But it won’t be long before they find him. We have to finish this. Tonight. He needs enough money to take care of his grandfather and then we’re gonna take off. If he pays the home up front and puts his grandfather in there, there’s nothing the state can do about it. They can’t take him out again, it’s been paid for. And Charlie will be out of here.”

  “But what happens when the money runs out?”

  “Who knows if his grandfather will still be alive by then? That’s for Charlie to worry about later on down the road. Right now, he’s staring down a year in jail. A year in jail is a long time for an eighteen-year-old.”

  “I know. Jesus, I can’t imagine.”

  “Exactly. Which is why he’s going to have to take off. He can’t wait for this trial. He can’t be caught and brought into that courtroom. We have to get this sorted before he gets to the courtroom. We have to get the money for him.”

  She sounded more panicked than I’d ever heard her.

  “Alright, okay,” I said. “What do you want me to do?”

  “You need to ring my father. Tell him we want the money now. Tonight.”

  “He knows my voice.”

  “So? Disguise it, put on an accent. I don’t care. We can’t wait for any more letters. You need to ring him and arrange a meet tonight.”

  “Where?”

  “Where else? The Black Wood.”

  ***

  So, the plan sprang into action.

  We were getting the money from Harry Pierce that night. But there were so many elements involved that could go wrong. Firstly, there was the question of how we were going to go about telling him to bring $20,000 to the Black Wood.

  “I can’t call him,” I said. We were in my kitchen. She’d told her parents that we needed to brush up on something for a test.

  “Why?” she said.

  “I told you before. He’ll recognise my voice.”

  “You disguise your voice.”

  “I’m not very good at doing that. He’ll still know it’s me. At the very least, he’ll know my age, that I’m not an adult.”

  She looked annoyed, but I think she knew I was right. “Okay,” she said. “So, what do you suggest we do?”

  “Send him another letter.”

  “We don’t have time for letters.”

  “We’ll get it to him today. We could leave it on the porch for him to pick up.”

  She shook her head. “Somebody else could see it. My mother. If anyone else sees it, he’s never going to pay up.”

  “We need to get it to him directly.”

  “We can’t fucking hand it to him.”

  “A little less sarcasm would be useful now, Samantha. What about throwing it through the window?”

  “How?”

  “Attached to a rock.”

  “You want to throw a rock through his window? Sorry about the sarcasm now, but does the word ‘overdramatic’ mean anything to you?”

  She got up from the table and went over to the fridge, taking out a carton of orange juice and drinking straight from it. She had – at this point – made herself very much at home in my parent’s house.

  “I meant an open window ...” I said. “Never mind.” I thought about it for a minute, and then I had a ‘Eureka’ moment. “We could put it in his briefcase.”

  “How?”

  “Don’t you see? It’s perfect. He’ll only see it when he gets home from work, so he’ll think someone from work put it there. That they found out about his work affair.”

  She stared at me for a moment. I could see she was impressed. “That’s actually not bad,” she said. “It diverts attention away from us.”

  “Does he open his briefcase in the evening when he gets home?”

  “Yeah, if he’s got work to finish. He takes his files out and leaves them in his study to do later.”

  “Great,” I got up from the table and started pacing around the kitchen. “So, we just need to leave it somewhere prominently in his briefcase. What does he do exactly when he gets home?”

  “He comes in and leaves the briefcase and his hat and keys on the table in the hall. Then, he comes in to say hello to us all, has a word with my mother. Goes back out and gets the briefcase and brings it into the study. Takes out whatever files he needs, puts the briefcase away and goes to get washed up for dinner.”

  “Okay. So, while he’s in speaking to your mother, you put the letter in his briefcase, so he’ll see it as soon as he opens it. He’ll be home by six. We’ll tell him to drop off the money at nine. He’ll have three hours. Plenty of time.” I thought of something else. “Of course, that’s presuming he’s got the money.”

  “We told him to have the money ready in the last note. He’ll have it. He hasn’t told anybody or contacted the police, and he’s not going to. He’s going to do this.”

  She put the carton back in the fridge and sat down at the table, her back to me. I stared at her from behind for a moment and I suddenly felt an ache in the pit of my stomach. A kind of loss.

  “And what then?” I said.

  “What, what then?”

  “You’ve got $20,000. What do you do then?”

  “I find Charlie and we get the fuck out of here.”

  “And what about me?”

  “You get to write your book and become famous. We disappear. Make us into folk heroes. Or make us into villains. I really don’t care as long as I’m out of here.”

  I sat down beside her again and stared straight into her eyes. “I don’t know if I want to be the one who’s left behind,” I said.

  She glanced up at me but shook her head. “Okay, we’re not doing this now,” she said. “Time is a factor here.” And then added: “You knew what you were getting into.”

  “Alright, alright,” I said. “So, how will we get the money from him?”

  “We tell him to leave it in a specific place. We leave a marker and tell him to leave it there.”

  “And we know he’s not going to turn up with Sheriff Blunt because ...”

  “Do you think Sheriff Blunt, or anyone else in this town for that matter, knows about his secretary?”

  “I don’t know. It’s possible.”

>   “No. Trust me, I know my father. Nobody knows about her. And that’s the way he wants to keep it. That’s why he’ll turn up with the money.”

  “You’re so sure,” I said. “I wish I could be. So, we tell him to leave the money where?”

  “In one of the clearings in the Black Wood.”

  “Which one?”

  “I’ve already arranged it with Charlie. We picked a clearing on the other side of the wood from where we meet. There’s no way of tracing it back to us.”

  “What about the fact that we’re doing this in the Black Wood in the first place? Won’t that be a giveaway?”

  “No. It won’t be the first time the Black Wood was used for something illegal. He’d never guess just from that that it was us. We’ve never been there.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So, we need to go and put a marker on one of the trees. Something that he’ll be able to see in the dark.”

  “White chalk,” she said.

  I nodded. “I’ll go do that now.”

  “No, we should both do it.”

  “What? You don’t trust me?”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake. This is more important than your bullshit. We go to the Black Wood together to check out the clearing, leave an X on one of the trees in chalk, and then I go home and wait to put the letter in his briefcase. Job done.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “Why would he tell you that he wasn’t the blackmailer?” I ask Samantha as her car speeds down the West Side Highway.

  “I don’t know ... because he’s an idiot. What does it matter?”

  “Well, it doesn’t ... I’m just saying.”

  Samantha has become slightly obsessed with the blackmailer. It’s a little worrying. We’re driving in her car, three cars behind the guy she’s just met in the mall. She’s babbling on about forensic evidence or fingerprints, I don’t know.

  “It seems to me the blackmailer isn’t going to be that stupid,” I tell her. “We weren’t when we were eighteen. Whoever this guy is isn’t going to be any less stupid than that.”

  But for Samantha, that’s a worst-case scenario. She knows a cop, she tells me, a detective. She’d dated him for a while after the divorce. It ended amicably so she figures he might help her out, pull some strings. I thought that was something that only happened in movies, but I say nothing.

  She’s hoping it’s not going to come to that anyway. That’s why we’re following this guy; she’s hoping he’s going to lead us straight back to the blackmailer. Again, I tell her, I don’t think he’s that stupid. The go-between might be meeting the blackmailer at some stage, but it would hardly be straight after a meeting with the blackmailee. Of course, there’s no telling Samantha any of this. She’s convinced he’s on his way to meet the blackmailer, and so we’re following him. We drive down the West Side Highway, and through the Battery tunnel, onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. We’re in Brooklyn now, which I don’t like.

  “Samantha, we’re in Brooklyn now,” I say.

  “So?”

  “If you’re right, our blackmailer lives in Brooklyn. That’s not good.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s Brooklyn. You know how many dangerous gangs there are in the borough? Do you know how many dangerous neighbourhoods there are in this borough?”

  “You’ve been watching too much Sixty Minutes.”

  “That may be, but what they say on Sixty Minutes is true.”

  “That was years ago. Brooklyn’s not like that anymore. I’ve been to lots of parties in Brooklyn.”

  For some reason, I have a flash of Samantha in a tight, short black dress, going nuts on a dance floor.

  “We’ll see,” I say.

  “Will you stop talking? I don’t want to lose this guy.”

  I go back to watching it all unfold though the windscreen. It’s all slightly surreal, sitting there in her car, Samantha driving, following some blackmailer. It reminds me of back in that summer, how surreal it all seemed.

  At this stage, we’ve been in the car for over an hour. Samantha drops back a bit further.

  “What if he doesn’t actually lead us to the guy?” I ask her.

  “He will. Trust me. I have a gut feeling about this.”

  “But what if he doesn’t?”

  “If he doesn’t, we’ll still know where this guy lives. We’ll be able to tail him. He’s eventually going to have to meet him, and it’ll have to be soon. The blackmailer is going to want to know what happened at the meeting, and where his money is.”

  “That’s a good point, but he’s not stupid. He’s not going to make some rookie mistake and get caught.”

  “I think you’re wrong. I think that’s exactly what he’s going to do. He’ll make some stupid mistake because he’s overconfident. And that’s how we’ll catch him out.”

  “And what would you do if you did catch him? He still knows about it. Just because you confront him doesn’t mean it’s going to go away. He can still tell anyone at any time. He’s still going to want his money.”

  “Well, maybe he can be persuaded otherwise.” The way she says it reminds me of that study night when we were sitting in my back garden.

  Guys are such pussies. They can be made to do anything.

  “Persuaded how?” I say, although I know I won’t get an answer.

  “Admit it,” she says, “you’re enjoying this.”

  “Hardly.”

  “Really? So, you’d prefer if it all ended right now? You’d prefer if I just went away?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If I pay up, this all goes away. I go away. Are you sure that’s what you want?”

  “Why are you saying this to me now?”

  “Oh, come on. Let’s cut the crap. We both know you like being around me. You always did. In High School you wanted to be part of what Charlie and I had. It wasn’t just about writing your book. You wanted to be part of us, right?” I don’t answer. “You’ve always wanted to be part of my life. I think you probably wanted to be Charlie, so you could be with me. Am I right?”

  “Maybe.”

  “So, I moved away ... maybe you thought you’d never see me again. And now, here I am. Back in your life again. And you want to tell me you’re not getting some kind of kick out of that.”

  “I like being around you ... I’m not going to deny that.”

  “That’s stating the obvious. I’ve known that about everyone since I was 18. Younger than that. Especially boys. They always want to be around me. And that’s never changed.”

  “Yeah, but this is different.”

  “How?”

  “It ... it wasn’t just about that.”

  “Look, it doesn’t matter. You want to be around me, fine. You help me sort out this mess.”

  “Just like High School, huh?”

  “If you want to think about it that way, that’s fine. This is your problem too. So, you’re only helping yourself.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “You help me follow this guy, find the blackmailer and deal with him, you get a bit more time around me. It works out in your favour. It works out in my favour because I don’t have to pay twenty grand. Wait, he’s turning off.”

  “Hang back,” I say to her. “Slow down a bit. Make sure he’s well in front of you before you take the exit. If he looks in the mirror and sees us, that’s it.”

  “I know. I know what I’m doing.”

  She does as I say and slows down, and then, turns slowly off at the exit. When we come onto the main road, he’s slowed down as well. She pulls in and waits for him to get a bit of distance again. It’s quiet around and there are no cars. He might already know what Samantha’s car looks like. We could be spotted too easily.

  “You think he knows what your car looks like?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “Because, even if he doesn’t see us in the front seat, he sees the car and knows it’s yours, he might try something.”

  “I’ll hang b
ack as long as I can.”

  As we sit there, I look around. Everything is green. It’s quite a shock to the system after leaving Manhattan so abruptly and now to be out amongst all these trees. Samantha starts the car and starts to crawl slowly forward. He’s turning off. He takes a road that leads right into the heart of the trees.

  “Samantha, I don’t like this. We need to turn back.”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  “No,” I say, in my most commanding voice. “It won’t. He could be leading us into a trap. We need to get out of here.”

  “Oh, stop being such a drama queen.”

  “Okay. You want to do this, you’re doing it alone. You can let me out of the car.”

  “In the middle of Brooklyn?”

  “I’ll find my way back. Safer than following this guy. I’m serious. Let me out.”

  She stalls the car but doesn’t look at me. She thinks I’m bluffing but I know she won’t go on alone.

  “Fine,” she says, finally. “But, for the record, I think this is a mistake.”

  She turns the car around and drives in silence back to my apartment. I don’t bother trying to make conversation. When I get out of the car, she drives away without a word.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  That evening – twenty years before – when I said goodbye to Samantha, it was the last time I saw her really. I saw her again, but not the Samantha I’d come to know for all those weeks and months. The Samantha I would see the next time we would meet would be a very different Samantha. And you’d swear I knew, because I stood there a little longer than usual watching her. She was about to turn away when she looked back at me and gave what looked like a smile. I realised later it was probably a smirk of knowing satisfaction, knowing what she was about to do. But I didn’t realise that at the time. I thought I’d finally broken through to the heart of the Ice Queen. I smiled back, and she turned away and walked out the door. “I’ll see you at nine,” I called after her.

  What was left of the day went by like a prison sentence. When I left the Black Wood it was nearly five. I had another four hours to wait before the fateful meeting. I went home, went straight upstairs to my room and lay down on my bed. I thought about what Samantha had said about the book: “You get to write your book and become famous”. Is that ultimately why I was doing this? Why I let it get this far? What other reason could there possibly be? It was crazy, thinking about it, what I’d done. I’d helped them blackmail her father. I could go to jail. Hard time. Yet, I’d done it without blinking an eye. I mean it had cost me a thought afterwards; it had cost me sleepless nights. But when she asked me to do it, I didn’t hesitate. Just like today. She asked me to write that note to meet her father, and I just said yes. Why? What was I getting out of it? I’d gotten into their circle. Now they were going to leave me here alone. So why continue to do it? I guess it was like a drug. The attention I got from her, the feeling of knowing that I was at the centre of their relationship.