Everyone's Dirty Little Secrets Read online

  “You awake, Princess?” he hears Siobhan say from behind him, hearing the soft pitter patter of bare feet approaching.

  He cranes his neck to look behind him, over the back of the chair.

  Siobhan is bouncing her way toward him, in a delicious white bikini. She looks stunning, as usual, even early in the morning and hung over.

  He realizes, with some embarrassment, he is naked.

  “Oh relax,” she laughs, smiling at him as he blushes, dropping into the chair next to him.

  “Who’d think you’d get so excited over a mimosa,” she chides, handing him the champagne with its splash of orange juice. “Have some medicine.”

  “Thanks,” he groans, drinking it in one gulp, dehydrated, feeling better as his blood starts to flow again.

  “I’ve got to go into the city tonight for a meeting tomorrow,” she announces, sipping her mimosa.

  He doesn’t say anything, closing his eyes to enjoy the sun and the warm buzz of the champagne. It’s not for him to question her schedule.

  This is established.

  “You want to come?” she asks.

  “I’ve got research to do,” he tells her.

  “About that caution tape and cop chaos weirdness?” she inquires.

  “Yeah,” he says, trying to downplay it.

  “Stop wasting my money on helicopters.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “I’m serious,” she insists. “I’ll cut you off, I swear.”

  “Somebody has to expose the danger of imposing order an inherently chaotic universe,” he insists with a grin, a little humor.

  “I agree,” she indulges him with a smile. “But not on my dime.”

  “Fine,” he concedes, “but I’m using the convertible at least, then.”

  “Whatever,” she indulges him again. “But maybe you should use something less conspicuous to spy on the police.”

  He ponders this, but is mostly incapable of pondering anything very seriously at the moment.

  “That’s actually a pretty good idea. Is the Mercedes less conspicuous?”

  “Dodge,” she snaps, tired of his bullshit, he presumes.

  “Yes, dear?” he asks.

  “I’m putting you back to work,” she tells him.

  “We tried, that, remember?” he reminds her. “Now I get pulled over every time I get behind the wheel.”

  Hence the helicopters.

  When Dodge goes to work for Siobhan, he doesn’t get a paycheck. It’s not the kind of work she wants a record of paying for.

  Digging up secrets.

  Everyone’s dirty little secrets.

  Including the cops.

  “Yeah, but look what you’ve turned into since you stopped,” she reminds him, clearly talking about the naked, hung over man waking up on the patio furniture. “This will help me and the company, but really, it’ll be good for you to do something with yourself again.”

  He can tell how serious she is. He figures it’s more important to defend his precarious position in life than make another wisecrack.

  “Sure,” he agrees, sincere. “You have a point.”

  “Can you come by the office tomorrow afternoon?” she asks.

  But it’s an order.

  “I will,” he promises, thinking how that gives him time still for a flight in the morning.

  The Monday commute is prime research time.

  “And Dodge?” she asks, standing up, starting to walk away, pausing only briefly.

  “Yeah?”

  “Stop thinking about my secretary.”

  She fixes him with a serious stare before pitter pattering off without waiting for a response.

  He’s already thinking about her secretary.

  J’aime tu.

  *****

  Observing the world from above – specifically, from the fishbowl of a Bell 206 JetRanger chopper - reveals an order that takes on a life of its own, imposed upon a wilderness, a means of traversing dangerous landscapes, of always knowing which direction one is meant to go.

  It’s not natural. More than nature abhors a vacuum, it abhors an order not its own. It unleashes floods on cities below sea level, burns houses built in its driest woodlands, drowns homes in mudslides built at the bottoms of its slopes, and levels buildings built upon its faults.

  What never occurs to us as we travel these highways is that we can just leave them at any time - that we don’t need to reach their pre-determined destinations. We can leave our cars on the side of the road and enter the wilderness and find less chaos in our lives.

  Find that this order is superficial, that our lives are no safer for its existence.

  That nature abhors nothing more than being denied.

  From the helicopter, Dodge watches a trooper car slip onto the Thruway below, reminding him of an alligator sliding into a river.

  Silently stalking its prey.

  All around the trooper, traffic suddenly changes. Drivers slow down, move without warning from the fast-moving left lane to the slower moving center lane. Brake lights spark to life in rapid succession from one car to the next. The distance between each braking car shrinks as Dodge looks back down the length the length of the Thruway through the lens of his video camera.

  From up here, the drama plays out like a movie. Cars dance around each other like props in an elaborate set piece, directed for action movie entertainment, not the decisions of dozens of drivers who can guess, but never really know, what everybody around them is going to do next.

  Most of the time, we’re right when we predict what everyone else is going to do.

  When we’re not, the raw nerve of the whole universe can be exposed.

  Below, vehicles cut to both left and right lanes from the middle to adjust.

  More cars brake.

  Trigger.

  Domino.

  Butterfly.

  Ripple.

  Doppler.

  Cause.

  Effect.

  Eventually the front of one car clips the rear of another as it cuts into the right lane, causing both cars to veer in opposite directions, one toward the shoulder, the other back to the center lane, where it hits another car. Both of those cars go into a spin. More cars collide. They pile up in the lanes, on the shoulders, metal frames suddenly looking more like accordions, people abandoning the safety of their cars, rushing to the aid of others - a macabre dance from above, played out to the soundtrack of sirens already making their way up the Thruway, more ambulances and trooper cars themselves creating ripples throughout a sea of unsuspecting traffic.

  Illusions are shattered - cars fleeing for the shoulders and the rumble strips as emergency vehicles rush past them, brushing them to the side to clean up the mess the cop car caused simply by existing, by doing its job.

  *****

  “Did you get that?” Jason asks, grinning wildly, circling the copter over the accident.

  “Yeah,” Dodge shouts, excited, not pausing the video camera. “The whole fucking ripple effect. The cop, the cars, the crash - everything!”

  “Unreal,” Jason says, shaking his head.

  “Actually, way too real,” Dodge tells him. “That’s the whole point. The cop caused that whole thing. I mean, not on purpose. Just incidentally. He doesn’t even know.”

  “Jesus,” Jason says. “And you got the whole thing?”

  “In all its raving, unnatural beauty,” Dodge assures him.

  “What now?” he asks. “Should I take her in?”

  “Yeah, I got to hit the office this afternoon. I’m going to head over early and try to catch Siobhan for lunch,” Dodge says, pulling his cell phone out and hitting the speed dial.

  “Right on, man,” Jason says, shooting him a sideways glance. “She pays the bills, after all.”

  “Fuck off,” he grumbles at the wisecrack. It hits a little too close to home.

  She might cut him off for this little escapade.

  Or so she says.

  But he and Jason both know it�
��s a bluff. Because Jason’s military past isn’t just useful for flying choppers.

  His experience working cybercrimes for the government comes in handy on the other side of the law.

  When you need a little dirt.

  So there’s a knowing grin between them when he talks about Siobhan paying the bills, or threatening not to. The helicopter rides are how they hide the payments to Jason.

  How they spied on the cops for Dressler. From above, and from within their computers.

  And how Dodge started to see the patterns in the traffic.

  How he got the idea.

  That order causes more chaos than it prevents.

  And today, he got the money shot.

  Unable to reach Siobhan on her cell, he tries the office.

  *****

  Jaime stretches her body out in Siobhan’s chair, commandeering her office while she’s gone. Siobhan would have her hide for this. But she’s not going to sit in a cubicle staring at walls when she can have Siobhan’s view. She’s not doing any work. She’s surfing the Internet, playing games on Facebook, texting pictures to friends of her sitting in the plush leather chair, feet kicked up on the desk.

  When the phone rings, she answers it. It’s her job, after all. And it could be Siobhan. She doesn’t want to be taken by surprise if Siobhan makes it back from the City early.

  She’s surprised - pleasantly surprised - to hear Dodge on the other end.

  “Jaime,” he says.

  He is almost shouting, the thumping of a helicopter pounding in the background.

  She loves the deep tone of his voice, thinks about holding him while he says her name like that, feeling it resonate through her.

  “Yes, darling?” she asks.

  He is silent for a moment. “Is Siobhan in? I have to come into the office, and thought I’d try to catch her for lunch.”

  Jaime snarls a little inside, but she’s careful there’s no bite in her voice. “She’s not here now, but she should be back by lunch. Why don’t you come on in, and I’ll try to reach her for you?”

  “Sounds good, Jaime - thank you!”

  “My pleasure.”

  He hangs up, and she pushes the receiver button down with her finger for a moment, thinking, before lifting it again and waiting for the dial tone.

  *****

  Siobhan is on the train back from the City when she feels her BlackBerry vibrating once more. If it’s Dodge again, she might answer it just to give him hell. She ignored his last call, not wanting to make it easy for him to cancel showing up at the office this afternoon, which she knows he inevitably will.

  Besides, she can’t stand shouting so he can hear her over the helicopter.

  She knows he took a helicopter out again that morning. His antics amuse her, but she has to get angry with him for disregarding her, and right now, she’s working while riding back to the office and doesn’t want to get distracted by Dodge’s tomfoolery.

  She checks the BlackBerry, and it’s Jaime. She takes the call.

  “Hi Siobhan,” Jaime says. “I’m sorry to bother you.”

  “No problem,” she tells Jaime. “Everything alright?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Jaime assures her. “Dressler called, though, and wants to do lunch.”

  Siobhan thinks for a moment, she wants to make sure she’s free when Dodge comes – if he comes. She really has something she wants him to work on. He’s quite good at what he does.

  Maybe too good – at least at digging up dirt on the local police for Dressler that last time.

  Sheriff Broonzy still hasn’t quite gotten over that.

  “Have you heard from Dodge, by any chance?” she asks. She still doesn’t want to have to call him back yet.

  “I did, actually,” Jaime says. “He’s coming by later this afternoon - he said he’s on some assignment right now.”

  Siobhan grunts internally. On an assignment. She shakes her head.

  “So I think you have time for lunch,” Jaime continues.

  “OK, that’s fine then,” Siobhan announces.

  “Great! He made a reservation at Maxine’s, looking at the park. You’ll probably have to go straight from the train station.”

  “Alright, thanks Jaime,” she says, before hanging up.

  She doesn’t know whether to laugh or scream at Dodge, but she can’t help herself and allows herself to smile.

  For now.

  *****

  Dressler strikes a kung fu pose.

  Snorts a line.

  He’s not sure what has him more excited.

  The dirty things he told that secretary Jaime he wants to do to her, while she just smiled over the phone and took it.

  Or the dirty things he’s going to do to Siobhan after their lunch meeting.

  He’s surprised Jaime called to schedule it.

  That Siobhan wants to meet.

  He has her on retainer, but he’s been good since the whole drug dealing debacle.

  Since has father damn near cut him off.

  She feeds the news a couple of positive stories about him, or the family, every few weeks.

  But nothing’s going on like the scandal she put to bed for him.

  Thank God for her slacker husband digging up that shit on Broonzy.

  Dirty, dirty cop.

  Dirty secrets.

  Dirty town.

  Dirty streets.

  He’d like to chop that punk Dodge right into next week, right out of the picture - so he could just have at Siobhan, he fantasizes, as he executes a perfect oi-zuki punch toward his own face in the mirror.

  That karate lesson continues to pay off.

  Siobhan is one sweet babe.

  He just needs to get her husband out of the way.

  Though, really, he appreciates what Dodge did.

  What Dodge does.

  Dressler couldn’t have hoped for that kind of blackmail material.

  Maybe it’s just better now if Broonzy keeps his job now.

  Dressler’s got him in his back pocket at this point.

  Hell, he could even keep running coke through the strip club if he wants.

  Not that he needs the money.

  Daddy’s rich.

  He just likes having the strippers in debt to him.

  If he doesn’t need the money, he doesn’t need the hassle, he tells himself.

  Besides, he’d give up all those strippers for one crack at Siobhan.

  Or even her secretary.

  Or both together.

  So he keeps her on retainer.

  And now she’s calling him up for lunch.

  Maybe it’s time he drummed up a little more trouble.

  Give her an excuse to start working for him more.

  He wants to make her work.

  Time for another scandal, he thinks, spinning on his pivot foot to deliver a perfect roundhouse into the mirror.

  Time for another scandal.

  *****

  The building where Siobhan leases the office space is a modern brick monolith downtown, a testament to new money in an old town nestled in the Hudson Valley. Antique stores and apple orchards sprawl in spitting distance of the capital of the world.

  The slow creep of the metropolis.

  Dodge strolls into its air-conditioned sanctity like he owns it, greeting the building’s receptionist, Marie, whom he knows disapproves of him.

  He is, after all, a loafer.

  A rabble-rouser.

  Privileged.

  Through no effort of his own.

  A lot of people don’t like him around this town.

  Receptionists.

  Cops.

  Mayors.

  Men.