Authors: Kamy Wicoff
Vinita laughed. “One of the tests I should run on you,” she said, “is to see how alcohol affects the time-traveled brain.” Vinita handed Jennifer a cup.
“I’ll take that test,” Jennifer said, sitting up, “as long as I never have to drink another Indian martini.” It took a moment or two for the coffee to begin to clear her head. She looked at the time. “Nine o’clock?” she said, shocked. “You let me sleep until nine o’clock on a workday?”
“You needed it, Jay,” Vinita said. “You haven’t slept properly in months.”
Jennifer whirled around, nearly spilling her coffee on her comforter. “Where’s my phone?” she said.
“Remember?” Vinita said, frowning a little. “You decided to sleep without it under your pillow for the first time in six months?”
“But did I charge it?” Jennifer said, getting up quickly. “Is it dead?”
Vinita picked up Jennifer’s phone from its place on the kitchen table, displaying it to her. “I pronounce this phone dead,” she said. “And good riddance!”
“Fine,” Jennifer said, walking over to grab it. “But this morning—Alicia was going to fax Bill in London. Remember? What if she’s been trying to call me?”
“You have a landline, don’t you?” Vinita replied.
“She doesn’t know that number! I don’t even know it. I never thought I would sleep this late.”
Frantic now, Jennifer searched for her charger. She found it, plugged it in, and quickly snapped the charger’s pins into their counterparts at the base of her phone. After what seemed like a long moment, the empty battery symbol with its thin red line appeared on the black screen, signaling her phone’s return to life. Jennifer sighed deeply, feeling as relieved as if she’d had to pee for fifteen blocks and had finally made it to a bathroom. Cradling her phone, she stared at it, waiting for it to fully awaken.
“We’re going to have to work on your attachment issues,” Vinita said, walking by and giving her arm a gentle squeeze.
There was a knock at the door. “Who could that be?” Jennifer wondered aloud, checking to make sure her flannel pajama top was fully buttoned.
Vinita opened the door. It was Dr. Sexton, holding a steaming pot of tea.
“I called, but I got no answer,” Dr. Sexton said, “so I thought I’d try the old-fashioned way. Though I did assume you’d be at the office by now.” Jennifer smiled, happy to see her.
“May I come in?” Dr. Sexton asked, an amused expression crossing her face at the sight of Jennifer’s unkempt appearance.
She was impeccably dressed as ever, in a black suit accented by a silk lavender shirt, wearing her trademark shoes—pumps today—one black, one red. She quickly deposited the tea on the counter and, turning, opened her arms to Jennifer.
“You see,” she said, “Jack
was
all right. You knew he would be.”
“Yes,” Jennifer said as she pulled away, “I suppose I did.”
Dr. Sexton smiled and turned to Vinita. “My dear Vinita,” she said, “I owe you an apology. I am very sorry not to have returned your calls these past weeks.”
“Diane,” Vinita said, leaning in and giving Dr. Sexton a warm embrace. It always took Jennifer aback to hear Vinita call Dr. Sexton “Diane” so easily, as she still said “Dr. Sexton” after all this time. “Jennifer told me about Susan. I’m so sorry.”
The two doctors discussed Susan’s diagnosis and treatment, Vinita inquiring about the hospital and the clinical trial Susan was soon to begin. It was brain cancer, and the prognosis, Jennifer gathered, wasn’t good. Beneath Dr. Sexton’s customary panache, Jennifer could see a drawn, tight tiredness on her face, a weary sadness that saddened her too. And then she had a terrible thought:
Thank God it’s Susan and not Dr. Sexton
. It was inexcusably selfish, but she felt it all the same.
“I’m going to get myself together,” Jennifer said, glancing at the clock. “I’ll be right back.” Just then, however, her phone sprang back to life. And as it did, a barrage of
ping
s poured forth. She walked over to the phone. “Alicia,” she said. “Shit.”
“What does she want?” Vinita said, without attempting to disguise her disdain. “Has she called the cops on you yet?” Vinita was indignant that Alicia had suspected Jennifer of doing anything wrong.
Jennifer ignored Vinita and read the first text aloud. “‘Spoke with Bill. Please call immediately.’” Then the next: “‘BT
flying back first thing after speech this afternoon. Please call.’” After that: “‘Are you coming in? Here with Tim. Call ASAP.’” And then the last: “‘Worried. Please call. Sorry I suspected you. It’s Bill.’
“Oh my God,” Jennifer said.
Vinita slapped the counter with her hands. “I knew it!”
“What’s going on?” Dr. Sexton asked, furrowing her brow.
“Somebody has been skimming off of the residents’ paychecks,” Jennifer said, “the ones we hired through my boss’s foundation to work on constructing the centers. It could be a half a million dollars or more.” She was scrolling through her e-mail as she talked, looking to see if there was any more information to review from Alicia before she returned her call. “And it sounds like my boss, Bill Truitt, is the one behind it. Which, on the one hand, doesn’t surprise me at all, because he’s kind of a sleazeball, but on the other makes no sense because he’s, like, a billionaire sleazeball.”
“It isn’t about money for those guys,” Vinita said. “It’s always about something else.”
“That could be devastating for the center,” Dr. Sexton said, distraught. “Will the whole program suffer as a result?”
“Suffer?” Jennifer said as she listened to Alicia’s cell phone ring, confused by the fact that she didn’t immediately pick up. “It will die.” She was about to leave a voice mail, when the intercom next to her front door buzzed. The doorman’s voice came through.
“An Alicia here to see you?” he said.
“Send her up,” Jennifer said, hanging up her cell phone.
“Let her in?” Jennifer asked Vinita and Dr. Sexton. “I won’t be a minute; I promise.”
“Of course,” Dr. Sexton said. Jennifer was scurrying down the hallway when she heard Dr. Sexton call after her. “Should I cancel your Wishful Thinking appointments for today?”
Jennifer hadn’t thought of that. “Yes!” she cried. “All of them.”
“Not just for today,” she heard Vinita say to Dr. Sexton. “For good.”
A
FTER A LIGHTNING-FAST SHOWER
, despite the usual limp water pressure—no small feat—Jennifer was dressed and reasonably presentable when she returned to her kitchen/living room. She arrived to find Alicia chatting, if a bit awkwardly, with Vinita. Dr. Sexton was busying herself at the sink, humming as she wiped clean a martini glass. As soon as she saw Jennifer, Alicia fixed her with an anxious but slightly accusatory look. “Where have you been?” she said.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I had a long day yesterday. I thought Jack was in danger. That’s why I ran out of our meeting to use the app. But he’s all right.”
“She knows about the app?” Dr. Sexton said sharply, whirling around.
“Who are you?” Alicia said, turning to face her.
“Dr. Diane Sexton,” Dr. Sexton replied. “And the app is my invention.”
“Of course it is,” Alicia said, looking Dr. Sexton up and down, her gaze lingering meaningfully on her shoes.
“I didn’t realize we’d brought somebody else into our circle of confidence,” Dr. Sexton said to Jennifer stiffly.
“She saw me,” Jennifer said. “At work. In my secret bathroom.”
“How careless,” Dr. Sexton replied.
“You could say that,” Alicia said. “But, believe it or not, there is something I’m more worried about right now than trying to understand how—or why—anybody would want to get sucked inside her phone to beam herself all over town and, to top it off, lie to everybody about it.” Dr. Sexton was about to
object when Alicia turned to Jennifer and put a hand on her arm. “Bill is getting on a plane now,” she said urgently. “He lands at five o’clock New York time. Tim is at the office, waiting for us to tell him what we want to do.”
“How do you know Bill is the one who has been embezzling from the residents’ paychecks?” Dr. Sexton asked.
It was Alicia’s turn to question Jennifer angrily. “She knows about this?”
“Apparently there are overlapping circles of confidence in this room,” Dr. Sexton said pointedly. Vinita sighed and took a sip of her coffee. “Ladies,” she said, “aren’t we all on the same side here?”
“How
do
you know, Alicia?” Jennifer asked. She was hurriedly packing her briefcase.
Alicia pursed her lips and directed a warning look at Dr. Sexton, then lowered her voice. “This morning,” she said, “after I sent the documents to Bill’s hotel, he called me. And the first thing he asked me was, ‘Have you taken this to the OIG?’”
“Office of the Inspector General,” Jennifer explained to Dr. Sexton, who, she observed, was listening rather intently, much to Alicia’s irritation.
“Then he told me he would take care of everything,” Alicia continued, “and make sure the residents were paid. Said it must be an accounting error with his payroll company. When I said it seemed like a pattern, not just a mistake, he just said, again, that he’d take care of it.”
“Not exactly an admission of guilt,” Jennifer said.
“No,” Alicia said. “But then I said I thought we should take it to the OIG. To see what he would say.”
“And?”
“He mentioned our bonuses.”
“What about them?”
“We’ve been getting those directly from BTE for Good, remember? Apparently they’ve been off the books too,” Alicia said. “He said unless we want to explain those ‘illegal’ disbursements to the OIG, too, we should back off and let him take care of it.”
“Great,” Jennifer said, sitting down heavily at the kitchen table. “I knew those bonuses were too good to be true. He wanted it to look like we had our hands in the pot, too, in case he ever got caught. Which means he was planning this from the beginning. Or at least from when he accelerated the timetable on building the center.” Alicia nodded. “Now what?”
Alicia’s phone rang. “It’s Tim,” she said, picking up. She listened for a moment, then turned to Jennifer, holding her hand over the receiver. “Bill just cut off all Tim’s access to Bill’s e-mail, calendars, everything,” she said. “He had someone from the department lock up his office too.” Turning her attention back to the phone, she listened. “Wait,” she said to Tim. “Jennifer should hear this.” She placed her phone on the table, put it on speaker, and sat down. Vinita excused herself, walked over to the sofa bed, and began folding it up. Dr. Sexton, however, took a seat at the table too. Alicia glared at her. Dr. Sexton smiled serenely.
“Tell Jennifer what you just told me,” Alicia said into the phone.
“Well, I don’t know if it’s anything,” Tim began, “but you know how Bill has been having me help him with a lot of … personal errands? And Mrs. Bill too?” They did—the week before, Mrs. Bill had had poor Tim stuffing confetti-filled party invitations for her sixteen-year-old daughter’s birthday cruise on the Hudson. “Well, I’ve spent a lot of time at their apartment, in the high-rise, you know. And I noticed that Bill has a locked file cabinet in his office, under his desk. He never
lets me near it and never lets his wife near it, either. He’s always filing stuff in there.”
“And?” Jennifer said.
“Last week, I saw Greg Schloss drop off the payroll report. He handed it to Bill personally. And Bill told him he would review it, as always.”
“But I’ve been getting them electronically,” Jennifer said. “Directly from Greg.”
“From Greg’s e-mail account, yes,” Tim said. “But how do you know Bill isn’t the one writing up the false reports and then e-mailing you from Greg’s account? Why would he tell Greg to deliver him a copy by hand?”
“Where did he put the report Greg gave him?” Alicia said.
“In the file cabinet. And I know where he keeps the key.”
“You naughty boy,” Jennifer said, smiling.
“He can’t get to it until he gets back from London,” Tim went on, his not-quite-broken-in-voice quavering. But then he paused. “Not that it matters. You can’t get into that apartment building without being checked out by five different doormen, and Bill and his wife have never let me have a key. Plus you need a key for the elevator. Plus you can be sure he’s told them not to let anybody in today. So even if there is something in there, we’ll never get our hands on it. Which is why I didn’t say anything in the first place.”
“Is Mrs. Bill usually home during the day?” Jennifer asked.
“Sometimes,” he said. “But she left this morning to see her sister in DC.”
Jennifer and Dr. Sexton exchanged a look. Vinita, who had evidently been listening in from her seat on the sofa, walked back over to the table, frowning.
“They’re redoing the bathroom, though,” Tim added. “There’s a whole crew of construction guys there all day today.”
“What time do they usually leave?” Jennifer asked.
“Five o’clock on the dot,” Tim said. “Those guys never stay a minute more.”
Jennifer looked at Alicia. Alicia was staring at Jennifer’s phone, which was sitting next to Alicia’s on the table.
“Let us call you right back, okay?” Jennifer said. Tim agreed. Alicia hung up.
“Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?” Vinita said, her hands on her hips. “You
promised
me, Jay,” she said. “You promised me just last night!”
“It’s true,” Jennifer said, looking at Dr. Sexton resignedly. “I’ve been using the app way too much. More than we agreed to. More than you know.”
“More than you’d believe,” Vinita said sharply. She turned to Dr. Sexton. “I’m going to run some tests on her tomorrow,” she added. “And I should run them on you, too, Diane.”
“Perhaps,” Dr. Sexton said briskly, squaring her shoulders. “I’ve recently decided to stop using the app, too, at least for the time being.”
“Why?” Jennifer asked.
“Because of Susan,” Dr. Sexton said simply. “Her illness. It just doesn’t seem right, somehow.”
For a moment, everyone was silent. Then Alicia slowly rose to her feet. “I know I’m new to this,” she said, “and God knows I think it’s crazy. But if using that app is the only way to bring Bill Truitt Jr. to justice for stealing money from public-housing residents, some of whom are my friends, and all of whom have worked every bit as hard as we have to build One Stop, I say use it.”