How to Lead a Life of Crime (7 page)

“You can’t keep me out.”

Peter Pan stamps his feet. “I don’t want your company! I want you to stay here and be happy!”

“I don’t deserve any of this, Jude. I was the reason you died.”

“No, Dad was the reason I died.”

“And Mandel has the proof! He said he’d give it to me!”

“If you let him turn you into our father.”

“How else can I be strong enough to beat Dad? You have to let me do it, Jude. Please don’t try to stop me.”

Jude doesn’t look pissed anymore. He looks like a terrified ten-year-old boy. “If you go, I won’t be able to go with you. You saw for yourself—all of the building’s windows are sealed shut. There’s no way for me to slip inside.”

“There must be . . .” I start to argue.

“No,” Jude insists. “I can’t go with you. You’ll have to leave me behind.”

“Just for a little while, then. It won’t be forever,” I promise. “I’ll see you as soon as I’m done.”

“How can you be so sure?” he asks.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE INCUBATION SUITES

T
he chip comes first. There are six new students—five others and me. I don’t have a chance to learn their names or commit their faces to memory. We’re met at the academy’s entrance and immediately ushered downstairs. I’ll admit it’s a bit of a shock. I wasn’t aware that there
was
a downstairs. It wasn’t on the tour I was given. I start to wonder what else Mandel didn’t tell me. But then I remind myself that it doesn’t make any difference. The only thing that matters is that he has proof that Jude’s death was no accident. I’ll go wherever Mandel wants me to go, as long as I get it.

Three stories underground, we enter a long hallway. A sign reads infirmary. To our right is a white wall with six doors. The left wall is raw Manhattan bedrock. The hall ends at a pair of steel doors that are secured by a biometric lock. There’s an unlabeled buzzer beside it. I’d love to find out if anyone’s home.

One by one, the five kids ahead of me disappear to the right. The white doors close before I can figure out what lies beyond them. Finally it’s my turn. The room I enter looks like a doctor’s office.

A man in a lab coat and surgical mask is scrolling through a file on the computer screen that’s anchored to the wall. “Take off everything from the waist up and sit here,” he orders, pointing to an examination table. Then he disappears and a woman enters carrying a metal tray. It holds a scalpel, a computer chip, a needle and thread, and a few other instruments I don’t recognize. She straps on a pair of plastic goggles and begins to swab my forearm with iodine. The operation can’t be as simple as Mandel made it sound if the lady’s worried she’ll get blood in her eyes.

“Are you allergic to lidocaine?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“We’ll find out soon,” she responds.

The anesthesia numbs my left arm from the elbow down. I watch as she chooses a scalpel from the tray. I plan to observe the entire operation.

“You’re not squeamish?” the woman asks before she makes the first incision.

“No,” I tell her, and she pauses to make a note on the office computer.

It takes about ten minutes to insert the chip. When she’s finished, I examine the three stitches in my forearm and the small, square bump beneath them.

“Keep it clean. Don’t try to remove the chip. You could rupture an artery and bleed to death.”

“Okay.”

She leaves the tray and instruments in the sink. As soon as she washes her hands, she passes me a paper gown. “Take off your pants, shoes, and underwear. Dr. Giles will be back shortly.”

I’m pretty sure that the strip searches in Singapore prisons are less thorough than the examinations here at the Mandel Academy. After the probing I receive, I half expect the doctor to climb onto the table and cuddle up beside me. But he’s not done yet. The first thing I thought he’d check, he seems to have left for last. He peels the filthy bandage off my cheekbone and begins to clean the gunk from my wound.

“Didn’t the doctor at the hospital warn you about infection?” he asks.

“I hate doctors. I always stitch myself up,” I lie.

“How long ago did you graduate from medical school?” There’s a subtle sneer in his voice. I pretend not to hear it.

“Are you trying to say that I did a great job?”

“I’m saying you’re rather young to have been trained as a surgeon.”

“Yes, well, I’m full of surprises. I’m shocked you didn’t find more during the rectal exam.”

“You’re lucky I didn’t,” the doctor replies humorlessly. “We don’t like surprises.”

I don’t get a new bandage. My stitches are left exposed. The doctor pulls a white box from a drawer. The typed label on top bears a six-digit number. Inside are four empty vials, some plastic tubing, and a blood-drawing needle. But he chooses a long swab with a ball of cotton on its end. “Open your mouth,” he orders.

“Do most schools require a DNA test?” I ask.

“This will go much faster if you remain silent,” he says, jamming the swab into the lining of my cheek.

Anything for the proof, I remind myself. You have to do anything.

After I’ve dressed, I’m loaded back onto the elevator. It travels one floor up. According to the sign that greets us as the gates open, we’re now entering the Incubation Suites. I wonder what they’re incubating as I follow my guide down an unusually wide corridor. It’s at least fifteen feet from side to side, and the ceiling must be twenty feet high. I’m left in a room with six desks arranged to face an enormous movie screen. Four of the desks are already filled with my fellow newbies. There’s no other furniture. The floor is concrete and the walls bare Sheetrock. It’s like a Hollywood soundstage before a movie set has been built. And it has one rather unsettling feature. There’s a glass-encased catwalk suspended from the ceiling. It runs the entire length of the room and appears to continue into the room next door. I’m pretty sure we’re being observed. But the glass is frosted, and I can’t see through. There’s no way to tell who might be watching us from above.

“Take a seat.”

I see a woman standing next to the movie screen, a stack of papers in one hand and a half-dozen No. 2 pencils clutched in the other. Everyone glances at me as I sit. The sixth desk remains empty. While we wait for its future occupant, I get my first real look at the other students. There’s a black girl with platinum hair and diamond-covered fingers. Her impressive cleavage is on full display. She sees me staring and blows me a menacing kiss. The girl beside her is from a far less fabulous planet. Stringy brown hair and watery blue eyes that stare off into space. She looks like an extra from Deliverance. The kid to her left smiles and waves at me. He seems a little hurt when I don’t wave back. He’s handsome, Latino. His clothes are expensive. The sugar daddy pedophile who bought them clearly had good taste. The guy to my immediate right could pass for twenty-five. He’s blond, burly, and wearing the kind of leather jacket that you only see in Eastern Europe. He turns slowly to face me. His eyes are dark and cold. He takes me in, then rotates his head just as slowly back toward the movie screen.

A man in a lab coat enters and has a quick word with the woman in charge. She nods, then strides to center stage.

“It seems we’re beginning this semester with a smaller class than usual. The sixth student has a medical condition that renders her ineligible for the academy’s program. So only the five of you will be moving forward. The next stage of your assessment focuses on personality.” As the woman passes a booklet and pencil to each of us, I try to recall the sixth student’s face. All I can remember is the back of her head.

“The booklet you’ve been given contains the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment. It is not a test,” the woman continues, interrupting my thoughts. “There are no right or wrong answers. Please feel free to begin as soon as you’re ready.”

Whenever someone insists that there are no right or wrong answers, I immediately assume that there are. It doesn’t hurt that I know all about the MBTI. You answer a bunch of questions that seem like total bullshit, and then it assigns you a personality “type” with a four-letter label. My father’s bank administers the test to every single person who applies for a job. The company claims the MBTI helps identify people who will “fit” with its culture. What it really wants to do is weed out the weaklings. I’m guessing that the Mandel Academy isn’t looking for warm, fuzzy, “feeling” types either. They must want leaders, and I’m eager to please, so I decide to be an ENTJ type (Extraversion, Intuition, Thinking, Judging). Just like dear old dad. I have no idea what I “really” am. I taught myself how to game the test back in grade school. I managed to take it twenty-five times online before my mother found out I’d been using her credit card.

So I tick all the right answers and wait for the other newbies to finish. There’s no clock in the room, but I’m pretty sure that big, blond Igor to my right has taken an hour longer than everyone else. It’s hard to believe that he’ll ever be Ivy League material.

He hands the woman his test, and I begin to slip out of my chair. My ass is numb.

“Please stay in your seats. There are a few videos we would like to show you,” says the woman. “You don’t need to memorize what you see. You won’t be tested on the content. We only want you to watch.”

I sigh and slump back down. The first video is a short clip of two men dancing a waltz together. The room stays perfectly silent. As soon as it ends, I raise my hand. The woman stares at me. I guess no one has ever had a question before.

“Yes?”

“Are you trying to test if I’m a Replicant or a homosexual?” I ask.

The black girl howls with laughter, which makes me like her. Any fan of Blade Runner is a friend of mine. I see big Igor beside me observing the girl with great interest.

“Let’s keep going,” says the proctor, tapping a note into a tablet computer.

The next video is footage from the scene of a car accident. When the camera pans across the mangled victims who’ve been hauled from the wreck, Igor starts to laugh. I’m watching as he glances at the black girl again. She raises a carefully tweezed eyebrow, as if to say WTF? When Igor realizes she’s not laughing, he abruptly stops. He studies her face for the remainder of the clip. Stupid and psycho. What a fabulous combination. Mandel missed the mark by a mile with this kid.

Four more videos follow. A little boy lost in a shopping mall. A couple passionately kissing. A wolf catching and ripping into a rabbit. A woman screaming insults at her teenage daughter. The film festival ends, and I’d like to throw up. But I force myself to look bored instead. Almost everyone else seems to have caught on. Only the Latin lover seems shell-shocked.

The lights come on. By the time my eyes have adjusted, Lucian Mandel has appeared.

“Excellent work!” he tells us. “You’ve all made it through the most difficult part of the assessment process! Give yourselves a big hand.”

A few halfhearted claps echo around the room. If our lack of enthusiasm disturbs him, Mandel doesn’t show it. He’s too wrapped up in his own performance. Today, he appears to be playing the role of everyone’s favorite uncle.

“My name is Lucian Mandel. My family has run this academy for over one hundred years. Since the very beginning, we have devoted our lives to helping talented but disadvantaged young people enjoy new beginnings. Each of you has come here to make a fresh start. After lunch, you’ll be casting away your old clothes, and by the end of your three-week stay here in the Incubation Suites, you’ll have cast away your old lives as well.”

My hand shoots up. Three f—ing weeks? Mandel ignores me.

“The first step toward assuming your new identity is answering to a new name. We have chosen first names for everyone. New surnames and government ID will be distributed at graduation.” The female proctor hands Mandel her tablet computer. He glances down at the screen. When he looks up, his eyes fall on the black girl. “You’re Ella,” he says.

Deliverance girl is now Aubrey. The Latin lover is Felix. Igor becomes Ivan. When Mandel reaches me, I speak for him.

“Flick,” I say. “My name is Flick.”

Mandel pauses. I can see the irritation beneath his smile. “You must have psychic abilities. That’s exactly what it says here.”

He passes the tablet back to the woman. “The next step of the process may be a bit painful for some of you. But it’s critical that you don’t drag any ghosts from your pasts into the Mandel Academy. We have no secrets inside this building. Each and every one of you has led a difficult life. We didn’t choose you despite the things you’ve seen and done. We chose you because we believe that such experiences can make people stronger. At other schools, you might feel the need to keep your skeletons tucked away in a closet. At the Mandel Academy, we want you to bring them all out and embrace them.”

Once again, he starts with Ella. She’s watching him with eyebrow raised and arms crossed.

“We’re very fortunate to have Ella with us. Despite her lack of formal training, Ella was an accomplished businesswoman long before she was accepted into our program. She has a pragmatic mind and a gift for mathematics. To this day, law enforcement officials remain unaware that she was once a major player in a drug empire that controlled most of the South Side of Chicago. Her mother’s only brother was the face of the organization—but Ella was the brains. As she got older, her uncle began to view her as a threat. When he tried to diminish her role, Ella lured the man into Marquette Park one night and shot him four times in the head. The assassination was captured by a wildlife camera, and that is how Ella came to be with us today. Did I leave anything out?” he asks the girl.

“I’m a Virgo,” she quips.

“That wit will come in handy,” Mandel remarks. I agree—Ella will do well.

He saunters up to the basket case sitting beside Ella and takes one of the girl’s limp hands. “We’re hoping Aubrey snaps out of her funk sometime soon, but we’re going to give her a little more leeway than most during the Incubation Stage. We checked her out of rehab a bit earlier than recommended so that she wouldn’t need to miss another semester here. By the end of this three-week period, she’ll have had ample time to physically recover from her methamphetamine addiction. If her mind mends as quickly, Aubrey will be a valuable addition to our student body. She too was once a budding entrepreneur, but she made two mistakes that Ella wisely avoided. Aubrey sampled her own product. And she brought her work home with her. She and her boyfriend built a meth lab in her basement bedroom. When it exploded, both of her parents died in the blaze.” He gives the girl’s hand a tender squeeze, then places it back on her desk. “Here at the Mandel Academy, we believe that the lessons one learns from such tragedies can inspire personal triumphs.”

Aubrey doesn’t look like she’s heard a single word. She’s still gazing into the distance when Mandel moves on. “Felix is a prostitute.”

The Latin lover gasps.

“I’m sorry,” Mandel says. “Have I been misinformed?”

“I was a . . . a . . .” The boy can’t finish the sentence.