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Taking my phone with me, I push my car door open and step out while my driver sits back and prepares to wait. I slide the phone into my pocket, lean back against the side of the car, cross my ankles, and then I do what I’ve always done when it came to Libby Tate – I stare.
Who is she now?
She was my ally in that club. She was the only person I had on my side, and though I could tar her with the Tate brush and assume she’s one of them, the same could be said of me. My heart pumps Bishop blood whether I like it or not.
Is she like them; dirty and shameless when money exchanges hands? Is she like me; a mutiny upon her own blood, determined to make right all of the wrongs our fathers committed before us? Or is she Switzerland; uninvolved, untainted, separate, just as we stood in Switzerland at the top of those stairs all those years ago?
I intend to find out.
There’s no flickering TV coming from her apartment windows. No light from a laptop or phone. She lives on the third floor of a five-floor walk-up on the south side of town, halfway between Main Street and the retirement village by the lake. It’s neither a good street, nor a bad one. The drugs are kept away from this complex, though not too far away. A cop lives here. Whether she’s dirty or straight, they see a uniform, so they would have packed up business and relocated the day she moved in.
There’s minimal security, and for a stranger passing through town, it wouldn’t be a terribly smart idea to loiter outside, but for the most part, my protective instincts don’t worry for her safety here.
Something tells me the other tenants considerherthe security.
Digging my hands into my pockets, I jiggle keys in my right hand and consider my next move.
I need to go to her, to decide whose team she plays for. If she’s in Bishop’s pocket, then, well…
I shake my head. “Fuck.”
If she belongs to a Bishop, then she’ll be removed from society just like they will be. After twenty years of ignoring her existence as a type of self-preservation, will I be forced to see her one last time mere seconds before I take her out?
I hope not.
If she’s as clean as she’d have everyone believe, then I’ll bring her on my side and have her play for me. It’ll take some convincing, I’m sure, but so few have said no to me in the past.
Soon, it’ll be time to make contact with the Bishops. I don’t want a war. Just like with Libby, I want them to be an uprising. I want them to be a new wave of clean unlike our fathers, but the evidence leaning against them is so much heavier than that leaning against Libby.
Which is why I’ll go to her first. On paper, she’s the safer bet.
Nodding, I jiggle my keys one last time, then step up to the driver’s side window and tap it until he opens up.
“Sir?”
“I’m going inside. You know the protocol; buzz me if something isn’t right. I’m not sure how long I’ll be. Maybe ten minutes, maybe an hour. Stay sharp.”
“Got it.” He waits for me to cross the street before winding his window up and settling back to get comfortable.
Pushing through the glass double doors at the front of the apartment block, I make my way past a wall of mailboxes and an out-of-order elevator. Most of the tenants here are awake – televisions make the walls vibrate, and muted laughter follows me as I move up the stairs. The folks on level one like to cook with spices, and the folks on level two like to fuck.
Loudly.
Against the front door.
I stop on three, 3A, then 3B. I study each door, then stop at 3C. My hands remain in my pockets, lest I touch something I shouldn’t. I have to remind myself I’m standing at a cop’s door; not a little girl from an empty club, not an engineer with a shitty attitude, and not a woman who enjoys expensive gifts and her Christmas bonus each year.
If I get caught letting myself into a cop’s home without permission, shit could go bad, and everything I’ve worked for could unravel. I’m not into buying cops, so I can’t buy my way out of trouble the way Colum did. I’d have to use other means to get out – and usually, those means include running from bullets. But I don’t have the luxury today that I had back when I was eleven. I can’t change my name and make myself disappear the way that boy did. If I’m caught, my troubles will follow me.
And yet…
I take a pair of rubber gloves from my back pocket and slide them onto my hands. It would seem that I came prepared for a little breaking and entering. Premeditation; that’s what the cops call it. Glancing down the hall, I make sure no one is watching, then I lean in close and slide my pick into the lock, straining my ears to listen as I go to work breaking into the home of the girl to whom I promised a lifetime of loyalty, of love, of family. She’s the girl who was once short and chubby and had dimples on her knees.
Jesus, for that one hour of my life, even knowing my mom was in a dangerous place, my world was kind of simple. I got to talk to Elizabeth Tate. She was smart, stubborn, cute, and sassy as fuck. She was forced to take shit from girls she hated, but she wanted to fight back. She wanted to fight against the hierarchy that had ruled her life until that point.
When the locksnicks, I inch the door open, pocket my pick set, and step into the dark. Libby’s home is pitch black, just as it was when I was outside. I allow my eyes a moment to adjust to the dark, something I was able to hone and learn when I lived on the streets, until a long counter materializes on my left. A galley kitchen. A couch. A television. This place is small, so if I thought she was hoarding her dirty money and living a life of luxury behind closed doors, that idea escapes like water through a sieve.
There are no valuables lying around. The TV is a modest forty-inch, and the couch has a long tear along the far cushion from overuse. I take slow steps through her living space and look everywhere at once. There are no ornaments by the TV, no jewels carelessly tossed aside after a long evening amongst the rich and self-proclaimed elite.
