Paul Zhou
PAUL KICKED A small gray rock. It skipped across a patch of drying mud outside the warehouse. He looked up and watched as the sun peeked through the clouds. He was so full of nervous energy and anticipation he felt like he was floating above the ground.
John, Susan, and Kat were inside. Daisy was with Hanlon. It was an arrangement Paul wasn’t thrilled about—he’d rather have gone himself—but Hanlon was pretty adamant, and anyway, Daisy would only be driving. Hanlon insisted that, this time, he wouldn’t let Scott get away.
Hanlon’s thinking, at least, was sound. Scott had to know he couldn’t go home. He would feel cornered. He didn’t have any family and didn’t seem to have any friends. It made sense he would go to the lawyer’s office, looking for a way out.
They’d get the drop on him, get him in the van, and come here.
And this nightmare would be over.
Paul walked across the front of the warehouse, running his hand along the crumbling façade. There were no sounds but the rustling of the high grass and the lapping of the waves in the Arthur Kill, the narrow body of water separating Staten Island from New Jersey.
Across the water was a collection of refineries. Hanlon had picked a great spot. This didn’t feel anything like the most populous city in America. It felt like the middle of nowhere. The kind of place you could scream your head off and no one would come along to help you.
He sighed. Closed his eyes. One moment he was sure they were doing the right thing. After being stuck in the car with Scott, being so close to him, he felt it down to his DNA. This man needed to pay. But in the harsh light of day, free from the adrenaline, his brain fuzzy from lack of sleep, he wasn’t so sure anymore.
There was only one thing he was sure about: Something terrible was about to happen, and it would happen whether he wanted it to or not. So maybe best to just go along with it. The only thing that mattered was getting home to Jian. Pammy had reluctantly agreed to stay through the day, but by dinnertime, she needed to leave for her study group.
He wondered what Jian was doing. Reading, hopefully. He preferred Pammy read to his son rather than watch television, though he was sure she sneaked in some cartoons here and there. It made him ashamed, thinking about his son while he stood in a field preparing to kill someone. He’d tried to be a good father.
Did this make him a bad one?
Paul didn’t have time to dwell on that, because he heard a crunching sound in the distance, and then the whir of an engine. The van appeared from the high grass bordering the muddy roadway. Daisy was driving and Hanlon was sitting shotgun.
Immediately Paul knew something was wrong. Even this far away, even with the sunlight glinting off the glass, there was something about the expression on her face. It was the same look of concern she got when one of the kids talked back or there was something around the house that Paul had forgotten to fix.
The van pulled in next to Hanlon’s car and the pair got out. Daisy moved quickly toward Paul, clearly wanting to tell him something. They were about a hundred feet apart and she waved at him to come closer as Hanlon walked around to the side and opened the sliding door. Paul jogged to meet her.
“Paul—” Daisy said.
There was a banging sound behind them. John came out of the warehouse, swinging the door a little too hard against the brick wall. His sleeves were rolled halfway up his thick arms and he was wiping the sweat off his forehead with a handkerchief.
And he was smiling.
The smile of a man without a care in the world.
Paul turned back to Daisy. Hanlon had already pulled out Scott. The man was kneeling in the mud, his hands bound behind his back with white plastic zip ties. Strips of white cloth were tied around his head, constricting his mouth.
“I didn’t think he was going to do it,” said Daisy.
“Do what?” Paul asked.
Hanlon pulled another body out of the car, dragging him down into the mud. It was Amato, in a pink dress shirt, navy pants, and expensive brown shoes. He was trussed up the same as Scott. Hands behind back, gag in mouth, his perfect hair askew.
“He said we had to take the lawyer, too,” Daisy said, her voice heavy with concern.
Paul stepped around her, putting his hand on her shoulder as he passed, and approached Hanlon. “What the hell are you doing? This isn’t what we agreed on.”
“Shut up,” Hanlon said, his voice calm as he held his revolver in his right hand. Not pointing it, not even lifting it, but clearly meant to keep Scott and Amato docile. Scott was shaking and Amato’s eyes were rimmed in red, like he’d been crying.
Paul got the sense that maybe the gun was meant to keep him docile, too.
Amato looked up at Paul and tried to speak through the cloth binding his mouth, but before Paul could make anything out, Hanlon yelled, “Hey!” The lawyer immediately fell quiet. Hanlon looked past Paul to John. “Help me with them?”
“No, first we have to talk about this,” Paul said.
“Nothing to discuss,” John said, gripping Amato under the arm and pulling him to his feet. “This man was going to enrich himself personally and professionally by helping a child-killer get out of jail. To my mind, that makes him just as bad.”
Paul didn’t know what to say. He stood between everyone, shocked at what he was seeing. That Hanlon and John were so callously preparing to kill a man who’d done a bad thing, but not a thing in the same league as what Scott did.
“We need to talk about this,” Paul said.
“It’s too late,” John said, shaking his head, speaking to Paul like he was a child. “He’s a witness now. What are we going to do, leave him here and hope he doesn’t tell anyone? He’ll go straight to the cops and we’ll all go to jail. Try being a father to your kid behind bars.”
Hanlon nodded and tightened his grip on the gun. It made a little clicking noise, metal on metal. Whatever the sound was, it made the point.
So it’s like that, Paul thought.
All that doubt and fear that Paul had felt at the beginning, inside Scott’s apartment, came rushing back. It was like someone had turned on a light switch and he could finally see the entirety of what they were doing.
This was wrong.
Hanlon and John led the two bound men toward the warehouse. Paul put his hand on Daisy’s arm and pulled her away. He lowered his voice. “We can’t do this.”
She nodded, her eyes vacant. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I know what we can do,” Paul said. “We go in and try to talk some sense into everyone. And if things go south, you run. Get in the car and drive away. You will not look back. I will take the fall for this and I will swear you had nothing to do with it. If anyone names you, we’ll both say I forced you into it.”
“Paul…”
“No. Jian lost his sister. He is not losing both of us, too.” Paul felt a lump in his throat. “We’re too far into this now. I will do whatever it takes to protect this family. To protect you.”
Daisy looked at him and smiled. Tears cut down her cheeks. She lifted her chin up. She was six inches shorter than him, and this had always been her sign that she wanted a kiss. Paul obliged, lowering his head down and pressing his lips on hers. He savored it, afraid that it might be the last time he’d have the opportunity.
“I love you, Paul,” she said.
“I love you, too, Daisy,” he replied. “Now let’s get in there and fix this.”