22
The room behind Agent Sharp is dark. He leans into the door, holding it open, rubs his eyes with one hand, and attempts to flatten his wild bedhead with the other hand. He’s also not wearing a shirt. Just gym shorts.
“Good, you’re up.” I push past him and wedge my way into his room. I feel around for a light switch and flip it on.
“Why aren’t you at NYU, sitting in on a class?” He snatches a T-shirt from his suitcase and pulls it over his head. He knocks softly one time on the adjoining doors between his and Sheldon’s room. “You up?”
I wait while Sharp is in the bathroom, probably wetting his hair, because he returns with it combed, a toothbrush in his mouth. Sheldon appears a couple of minutes later. Unlike Sharp, she’s dressed in her standard FBI outfit of black pants and a white dress shirt, her hair in that stiff bun like always.
“I want to talk to my mother,” I repeat, before Sharp tries to translate. After that fight with my dad today, I can’t—I won’t—offer him something in order to repent my guilt for what happened to Mom. He’s a free man, when he should be in prison. He’s already gotten something out of this deal. So have I. Mom is the one who drew the short stick.
“We can’t take that risk,” Sheldon says. “We don’t know who she’s in communication with. Prisons have their systems often outside the law. She’s a master manipulator; she’ll have no problem earning sympathy with a guard or two, someone willing to get messages to the outside or put her on the phone with your family under the cloak of a lawyer call. If she told anyone why you’re here, our operation is done. Ruined.”
“I’m not going to tell her anything about New York City,” I say firmly. “And I’m not doing anything else until I talk to her.”
We’re at a stalemate, as we seem to be nearly every time I ask the FBI for something. Agent Sheldon turns to Sharp, who’s now drying his face with a towel. Silent conversation seems to flow between them, until finally Sheldon says, “All right. But you’ll talk to her right here, under recording, understood?”
I swallow back a lump of apprehension. Not exactly the audience I’d wanted to rid my guilt in front of. “Fine.”
The process of getting a prisoner on the phone turns out to be quite lengthy. I sit in the desk chair in Agent Sharp’s hotel room for forty-five minutes. Every possible movement I consider making is too much like fidgeting, like nerves, and I’m not one to show nerves openly.
I draw in a breath and force my hand to remain steady when Sheldon holds out her cell and I reach up to take it. Despite the demand that this conversation take place in front of them, both agents walk into Sheldon’s room, at least offering me the appearance of privacy. The door is still open between the two rooms.
A voice I haven’t heard in what feels like a lifetime, a voice I thought I’d forgotten, offers me a confused hello, and I nearly hang up right then. What am I doing? Why did I think this would be a good idea?
“Hello?” she repeats.
I jerk the phone from my ear, my finger hovers over the End Call button, but then I remember that I have to face Dad and this job again tomorrow, and how am I supposed to gather evidence against him if I’m still overflowing with guilt over the last family job we did together?
“Mom?” It comes out in barely a whisper. I clear my throat and try again. “Mom, it’s me…Ellie.”
The long beat of silence lasts an eternity. “Are you okay?”
The warmth in her voice envelops me. I pull my knees to my chest, rest my forehead against them, and close my eyes so I can pretend there aren’t two FBI agents within earshot. “I’m okay. What about you— Is it— I mean, what’s it like?”
“Well, it’s not exactly a Gatlinburg vacation, but I get along just fine.”
I hear mostly truth in her voice, but this is my mother. Not only is she a gifted liar, but she’s also bound by maternal instinct to ease any of her children’s worries.
Silence fills the miles between us again. I glance at the stopwatch Agent Sharp left on the table counting the ten minutes we have to talk. “I heard about the sentencing,” I say, forcing the words out. It’s surprisingly freeing. More words bubble up toward my throat with ease. “Mom, you have to appeal. If you tell a judge about—”
“Honey, stop right there.” She cuts me off. “This isn’t a conversation I can have right now, and besides, it’s pointless. Tell me what you’ve been up to. It’s been so long. I know you didn’t call just to ask a question you already know the answer to.”
True. I did know that she’d never turn in my dad or anyone else, even if it’s obvious a job like the Dr. Ames one could never be a single-person con. Nearly five minutes have passed, and I haven’t said what I called to say. “It’s my fault you’re there… I did something—” I stop before “FBI” gets dropped between us. That’s on the list of forbidden topics. “I wasn’t like you. I couldn’t just keep quiet and let myself get caught.” Come on, Ellie, pull yourself together. “I wanted to see Harper, and all I had to do was hand over information about what we were doing at the bank in Charleston. So I did. I’m sorry, Mom. I’m really sorry. If I knew it would be ten years—”
“Okay,” she says. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me anything else. I’m sure you did the best you could.”
No, not really. The corners of my eyes are wet. I hadn’t even realized I was crying. I swipe them with my sleeve, pull myself upright. “I’m going to fix this. You’re not staying there ten years. I swear to God I will—”
“No, Ellie, don’t do anything,” she warns. “You’ll just get yourself in trouble.”
The stopwatch hits ten minutes, giving me an excuse to go before I’m asked to promise her anything. “My time’s up; I’ll be in touch.”
Without any hesitation, I hang up.
Sheldon and Sharp reenter the room right away, clearly having heard every word of that call. I hand Agent Sheldon—the woman who pounced on my mother, cuffed her, and read her her rights—her cell phone and, wanting to avoid any chat about my emotional state, I shift topics. “My dad’s coworker Bruno is a member of the Zanetti family. Apparently my family is collaborating with the mafia.”
I fill them in on the details. It’s a great distraction from that phone call. Agent Sheldon grows wearier and wearier by the second. Sharp has his fingers linked behind his head; he looks more shocked than his partner. When I finish talking, Sheldon immediately heads for her room.
“I have to call this in.” She points a finger at me. “Don’t leave this hotel, understood?”
The door between rooms swings shut, and I shift my attention to Agent Sharp. He’s tense, his jaw flexing like maybe he’s grinding his teeth. In one quick motion he swipes the key card from the table in front of me and heads for the door. “Come on.”
I stand and follow him out into the hall.
“Go change,” Sharp says, sounding pissed off. “Meet me in the gym in five minutes.”
The gym?