A Girl Named Digit (9 page)

We gave up for the day and decided to go to bed. We took turns in the bathroom and crawled into our sleeping bags on top of our air mattresses. The past few nights we’d both immediately turned to face away from each other, a weak grasp at privacy. But that night I didn’t hear him turn. I flipped back over to find him lying on his back, head resting in hands, staring at the dark ceiling. “Aren’t you going to sleep?” Great, I’m his mother now.

“I’m just thinking about Scarlet.”

Creepy. “What about her?”

“Not her really, as much as her name. It’s probably because I just really want it to be her, you know to solve this thing, but Scarlet is just such a good name for a suicide bomber.”

I wondered what Farrah was a good name for. “Is that like a thing in the baby books? Suicide bomber names?”

He laughed and turned over to look at me. “It’s just kind of a violent name. Like the color of blood. In the Bible it’s used to symbolize sin, and in
The Scarlet Letter
too. Or in mythology it’s the color of the Phoenix’s wings. And a suicide bomber is a little like a Phoenix, right?”

Uh, hello, clueless here. “The Phoenix’s wings? Because they fly and . . . the bombing was at the airport?”

He laughed again. I wasn’t sure if it was because I was becoming increasingly goofy or what, but he’d been laughing a lot more easily. “No, the Phoenix is a mythological bird, a fire spirit, with scarlet wings and a gold tail. It lives for like five hundred years and then builds itself a nest that bursts into flames. The Phoenix and the nest burn violently until they are just ashes. And from the ashes comes a new Phoenix, gloriously reborn. I guess it’s just the deliberate burning of oneself for a cause. And the scarlet wings.”

“It sounds like a stretch, but I like the story.” We lay there looking at each other in the dark, then looking away because we’d been looking at each other. I’ll have to measure it, but there is an exact amount of time you can look at someone silently before it’s weird.

John kept talking. “Or Dido . . .”

“Who?”

“That would be another one for your baby book of suicide bomber names. Dido? You know who burned herself on a pyre? After Aeneas left her? Nothing?” I shook my head. “Okay, good night, Fa . . . Does anyone ever call you anything besides Farrah?”

“Nope.”

“Okay, good night . . .”

In the morning we got back to work.
We assumed our regular positions in our armchairs, sipped our coffee, and started reading. There were tons of pages of these conversations, most of them romantic, making and then canceling plans to meet. Scarlet seemed a lot more into Luke than he was into her, if you ask me. The final transcripts got a little desperate. It seemed like they’d been unable to meet for a while and Scarlet was freaking out.

Scarlet: Where have you been?

Luke: It’s been impossible to call.

Scarlet: I’ve talked to Britney. She knows we know. I’ll explain it all when I see you. But she’s terrified and has agreed to pay. This all falls on you now. You’ll have to get the money where it needs to go. You have to promise me.

Luke: You know I will. I know how to reach them. You just have to get me the bag.

Scarlet: Oh, honey, I can’t stop thinking about seeing you. I have to make that happen.

Luke: I know.

Scarlet: I keep remembering the night we walked down Grace Church Street, holding hands and looking up at the city lights. I loved being with you then.

Luke: Uh-huh. I love you too, but what about the bag?

Scarlet: And now I think about that night and wish I were back there, but without all the burdens I am carrying around. I feel so lost when I am not with you. I just really need to release the past and find a future with you.

Luke: Yeah, honey. Me too.

Scarlet: You’re not listening to me! You have to listen. I am lost without you; we have to find more time together. Do you hear me?    Luke: I’m out of time here. I have to hang up.

John started laughing and was definitely messing up the moment. He delivered all of Luke’s lines while placing an imaginary gun to his head. “I’m sorry, but I’m really starting to hope these people are terrorists. They’re obviously blackmailing Britney with whatever’s in that bag. But what is all this random where-are-we-going-let’s-analyze-our-relationship talk? I’ve heard my fair share of this stuff, and this isn’t how it sounds in real life.”

Really? Because you’ve had a lot of relationships with desperate women? Like, are you in one now? And are we defining a desperate person as one who really needs you to sit back down in your chair so that your forearm might have the chance to come within a half inch of mine while we read?? Because I can feel that, just so you know.

“That’s not fair. She’s having a hard time. They can’t be together, and they’re in love. Maybe.” I don’t know why I was getting so protective about Scarlet. Or why I was clinging to this obviously fake romance. She didn’t seem like love-struck/desperate, more like desperate/desperate. I decided to try to make poor Scarlet seem a little cooler by saying her lines in my coolest, most indifferent tone. But she wasn’t helping at all.

By night six we’d gotten a new box of documents, roast beef sandwiches on rye (rejoice!), a Corona with a lime for John, and a Coke for me. We celebrated by doing all of our reading on the fire escape.

Scarlet: I can’t go through with it. I just feel so selfish
.

Luke: Listen to me, they’re so close to finding us out, you have to act now. Remember you are doing it for the baby, for all babies
.

“This is getting so heavy.” I was really starting to feel like I knew these people. “What is this baby? This makes no sense. Even if she is a suicide bomber, what kind of terrorist blows up a family to save the children?”

“I know, but there’s more. Keep going. Get to the ones that are time stamped 0700 on the morning of the suicide bombing.” Because John had done the translating, he was always one step ahead of me. Annoying.

Scarlet: I just can’t believe this is how it’s going to end. You can go get the bag.

Luke: That’s my girl. Now listen carefully and I’ll tell you where to drop it.

Scarlet: I already told you where I’d drop it. It’s already there. And my ride’s here. I have to go. I’m out of time. You idiot, you wouldn’t be able to read it, anyway. I thought you were a professional.

“A professional? Then what?” I wanted to rip the pages from his hands. Was he really going to keep the end of this story from me?

“That’s it. All contact ends there at seven a.m. on the morning of the bombings. This has to be them.”

“We missed something about the bag.”

“And so did Luke.”

“Okay, I’ll admit this doesn’t make sense as a romantic drama. And there’s some sort of evidence against Britney in that bag. Who’s probably a terrorist too, right?”

“But she says Luke wouldn’t be able to read it without her.”

“So she’s the brains of the operation.”

John gave me a sideways smile and clinked his Corona bottle against my Coke. “Poor Luke. I know just how inadequate he feels.”

“Ha-ha.” I knew he was kidding. We’d been complete partners over the past few days. I bet he’d never felt inadequate once in his whole life.

We were both staring down into the alley for answers, a habit of ours since there was really no place else to look on the fire escape, except at each other. We’d learned the hard way that, given the width of the fire escape, if we both turned our heads toward each other at the same time, we were practically nose to nose. As appealing as the idea was, I slipped into a panic each time it happened, quickly turning back to watch the alley like it was my job.

After a while I said, “So, is it time to call Steven and tell him that we’ve caught the bad guys? How does that work?”

“Feels like it, right? But there’s so much evidence that points to them, and really no evidence at all. I mean, it fits that it could be them, but it could also be that they are having an office romance and they found an e-mail linking Britney to the male receptionist, so now they are going to blackmail her into giving the whole office an extra week of vacation after they’ve quit.”

“Yeah, John. That’s probably it.” I rolled my eyes and went back to work staring at the alley.

“I know it’s them, but the information ends here. We have no more transcripts. We need the bag. Even if we call Steven, there’s no place to go from here. Unless there’s forensic evidence that we don’t know about at the crime scene?” He shrugged hopefully and pulled out his phone to call Helen, Steven’s assistant.

“Could you look and see if there is any information not released to the press about the suicide bomber? Yeah, use my password. Sure, take your time. That’s it? Okay. Thanks.”

Sounded like a dead end again, but John was smiling. I mean full smile: both corners of his mouth up, eyes sparkling, smiling.

“What? There’s no information, right?”

“That’s not exactly what she said. She said the bomber had been posing as a flight attendant. And the only thing left of her was her right foot. It had a Phoenix tattooed on the ankle. Nothing else.’”

“
Her
right foot? With a Phoenix. What are the chances?”

“Scarlet was definitely our suicide bomber. We’ve got to find that diaper bag.”

We stayed up late that night. We pushed our air mattresses together and lay down, passing pages back and forth, looking for the conversation where she told him where she was going to put the diaper bag. At least where she thought she told him. And if we were right, Luke never figured it out—not having the benefit of the complete transcripts of their conversations and nothing else in the world to do but review them—and the bag was still where she left it.

John put the transcripts down and propped himself toward me on his elbow. “Okay, let’s review what we know. Scarlet and Luke are pretending to be lovers for the sake of whoever is listening. Someone named Britney has been helping them with whatever they’re doing, but Scarlet has turned against her because of something she’s found out about her in an e-mail that Britney sent her. And she has proof of whatever Britney did wrong that she’s using as blackmail and plans to hand over to Luke. In a diaper bag.”

“Right. And she’d need Britney to pay Luke, because Scarlet was going to be dead. And Luke was going to use the money to take care of someone. But Luke needs the bag to keep blackmailing Britney. And then on the morning of the bombing, Luke is going to tell her where to leave it for him. But Scarlet is pissed because she already told him where she was leaving it.”

John gave me the transcripts, lay back down so we were head to head, and told me to keep reading. We murmured under our breath as we read. “Miss you, meet me, love you, the baby, blah-blah . . .”

“Poor Luke. I bet he’s feeling like a real jackass right about now for not listening to his woman.” John sounded like he was half kidding.

Of course. “That’s it. Give me the last thirty pages. Remember at the beginning when they were seeing each other all the time, their conversations were more relaxed in a I’ll-tell-you-later sort of way? And then at the end when they couldn’t see each other, there was all that relationship babble? It was all so random, and she was mad because she felt like he wasn’t listening. There’s got to be something in there.”

I went through that conversation again and again. “Try to see if you can get a Google map of Grace Church Street in any borough of New York City.”

He pulled out his phone. “None.”

“Expand it further.”

“Okay, there’s a Grace Church Street in Westchester County. It’s the suburbs outside of New York City.”

“So is the bag there? Sitting on a suburban street? That doesn’t make any sense, plus she said they were looking at the city lights.”

“I’ve been to Westchester—it’s all trees, no lights.”

I threw my papers on my bed. “I don’t know. I’m going to take a ‘shower.’” It’s true that I made air quotes every time I mentioned the showerless closet in the corner of the room with just a sink and a faucet that dribbled out tepid water. Toothpaste had been key, but better soap would have been welcome.

I had the water running and was hoping for a spontaneous hot water connection, when I got it. Not the hot water, but I got “it.” I ran back to the transcript and plopped on my mattress.

“Quick ‘shower.’” John fished for an explanation for this sudden change of heart.

“Grace Church Street. GCS. Grand Central Station. Do you guys ever pay attention to anything we say?” I was smiling now, because I knew I was close. I was a little kid with a 3-D puzzle of the Empire State Building, and I’d just found the last corner.

“Let’s do this again.” We both lay down on my mattress, and I held the transcript over our faces. “I’ll read her lines again. ‘I keep remembering the night we walked down Grace Church Street, holding hands and looking up at the city lights. I loved being with you then.’”

“Okay, could be the location drop, Grand Central Station, and then she moans about the relationship.”

“Fine,” I said. “Let me go on. ‘And now I think about that night and wish I were back there, but without all the burdens I am carrying around. I feel so lost when I am not with you.’ She wants to get rid of the burdens, maybe something she’s sick of carrying around.”