with Frank's things.” said Ruth. “Yancy has the other one.”
“What?” said Kathy. “Why?”
“Kathy.” said Frank. “You need to leave now.”
Ruth said to her, “Do you know Yancy?”
“Not really.” said the dancer. “I work for him, but I don't know him.”
“You should leave.” said Frank. “Please, take James and go. Party's over.”
“Sure.” she said. “Come on, Jimmy.”
Majestic tugged on the seated man's sleeve. He stood and followed her as she left.
At the door she said to Ruth, “I don't know what trouble he's in, but for what it's worth I think your guy did a great thing tonight. He saved a marriage and that's saying something.” She turned to Frank and said, “You only have the room for a few more minutes.”
When the other two were gone, Frank become more belligerent.
“You brought our son here because you thought I was sleeping around?”
“You're doing more than that as I understand it.”
“Did he threaten Jason?”
“In so many words, yes.” said Ruth. “He knows you're not his brother. You work for him.”
“Ok.” Frank sat down on the red couch. “Fine, so I do security sometimes.”
“Where?”
“Here. At the club. You heard Kathy; he owns this place. It's legit, even if Yancy isn't.”
“Why not tell me then?”
“Come on, Ruth.” said Frank. “Would you have agreed to this? But I have no choice. Our son is going to need a lot of help as he gets older and someone's got to pay those bills. Don't talk to me about the state programs. Our son deserves better.”
“Don't pretend to be a hero.” said Ruth. “Yancy said stay away from the girls.”
“And you think the girls are the real reason I'm here?”
“Yeah Frank I do. That and the chance to put the knife in Sergeant Keller.”
“Right!” He stood up as if struck by a revelation. “So you know. For years that man has been on the take with this mobster, and we have a chance to get him what he deserves.”
“You're on the take with a mobster.” said Ruth.
“Oh it's nothing like what Keller does. All I do is look after the dancers. And besides, I already told you why I do it.” He reached for his son and Ruth backed away. “I have a reason. Keller has no family. He has no friends that I know of. What's in it for him besides simple greed?”
Ruth said, “What about the earring?”
Her husband switched his voice to an “are you stupid?” tone that made her want to taser him.
“How do you think?” he said. “The dancers change costumes all the time. I stay close to them. Sometimes, their stuff falls in with mine.”
“Yancy seemed pretty sure.”
“Well,”
“Frank.” said Ruth. “Yancy wants to kill you. And if he doesn't I just might.”
“You're not going to listen to anything I have to say, are you?”
“Get yourself out of this mess.” said Ruth. “I could pack my bags and leave tonight.”
“Ok, Ruth. I will think about it.”
“Think hard, Frank.”
She left the room. She walked back through the dark hall and pushed aside the black curtain. She carried her baby through the club and back onto the street. The idiot and his friends were still out there, but this time they let her go without so much as acknowledging her presence. A few minutes later, Jason and Ruth were home. Her father was no longer on the couch. She figured he had gone back home. Ruth put Jason back in his crib.
The baby tossed a bit and begun to fuss. Ruth remembered her father's comment about the princess and the pea. She picked Jason up again and pulled the layers of blankets off the bottom of his bed. Under the last one there was a small plastic square. It was a flash memory card. Her first thought was, this is the missing recording. Frank had forged her name to check it out of the evidence vault and hide it here. Ruth put the blankets back and put Jason down. He sorted himself out and went back to sleep.
Ruth slipped the card into her computer and put the headphones on.
Yancy's voice said, “You've done well. I have another job for you.”
“What kind of job?” said Frank.
“Well, same kind of job. A security detail. But this time it's not at the club.”
“You want me in on the show?”
“I do.” said Yancy. “I have a shipment at the Allston rail yards tomorrow morning.”
Ruth stopped the playback. She told herself that it was possible that Frank hadn't accepted the offer. After all, she was not the first person to hear this recording. Sergeant Keller had asked her to transcribe it. If he'd already heard these details, wouldn't he have taken action against Frank? The only way her husband could have accepted this offer and still be walking free to attend stag parties is if he had gone even deeper undercover. There was always the possibility that Keller and the department leadership had known all along that Yancy would figure out that Frank wasn't who he said he was and use that as leverage to draw him in. This could open up new and more significant lines of investigation, such as what was going on at the Allston rail yards tomorrow morning.
And yet, if that was so, why would Keller give her the task of transcribing this meeting without telling her about its contents before hand? She concluded that it was because what Yancy and Frank said was true. Keller was on the take. Yancy wasn't turning Keller over in favor of Frank, he was using both men to exact revenge on the department. At the door he'd said that he'd offered Frank the opportunity to catch a crooked cop and look like a hero. Perhaps he'd made the same offer to Keller and set up this meeting for Keller to record. This would be consistent with the sergeant giving Ruth the tape. The man did have a sadistic side, after all.
For Yancy, there was always another twist. Having used Keller to dispose of Frank, he would use information Frank had gathered to expose Keller. They would both catch fire and the entire department would find itself distracted and hog tied by the ensuring controversy. That would of course mean that the event at the rail yard was a ruse.
Ruth couldn't take all the speculation. Today had been long enough without her working out every possibility. She'd had enough and it was time to sleep. She slept without finishing the recording, only to awake a few hours later. She didn't know why she bolted out of bed. There was no sound or light. All she had was the sense that someone was in the room with her. Ruth reached for her sidearm and turned on the nightstand lamp. There was Frank, sitting in the half light at the end of the bed. The part of his face she could see was bruised. He wore a brace over his nose.
He said, “I just got back from the ER. Your dad isn't always a nice guy.”
“He must have followed me.” she said. “I suppose you filed charges?”
“No.”
He stood and went to the bathroom. He sat on the toilet and his phone rang.
“Yeah.” he said. “I'll be there.”
Frank hung up. He stood and flushed.
“Was that Yancy?” said Ruth.
“Take a look for yourself.”
He came up close to where she lay in the bed and handed her the phone. She pulled up the call history and saw the photo of the person to whom Frank had just been speaking.
“Majestic.” she said.
“You were right.” said Frank. “There's nothing more to this.”
“What is she, your girlfriend?”
“I don't know. I'm sorry Ruth. I'll understand if you want me to go.”
“No.” she shook her head. “That can't be all this is about. There's more to it than an affair.”
“There is nothing else. Look.”
He sat down next to her and scrolled through the rest of his call history. There were dozens of women in there. Several of them were faces she'd seen on stage at Centerfolds.
Ruth said, “All of them?”
Frank's voice was very quiet when he said, “I'm impulsive. You know that.”
She tried a chuckle. “I don't believe they'd all sleep with you.”
“Only a few did, but I got somewhere with most of them.”
“Frank-”
“I'm going now.”
He walked out the door and was gone. She didn't chase after him. Instead, she pulled out her computer again and listened to the rest of the recording. Frank agreed to the job. It was in just a few hours. There was, however, something strange about the sound. She heard something in the background. It was a man's voice, but she couldn't make out the words. Ruth played the file through her enhancement software. After trying a digital few knobs, she managed to get a decent lift.
The voice seemed to be saying, “Make sure you substitute the manifests.”
She didn't think much about the words at first. She was occupied more with the speaker. It was Sergeant Keller. He had been there with Frank and Yancy and who knows else. Then her thoughts turned to the words. Substitute the manifests? The manifests for what? He could've been talking about freight manifests. He could've been talking about the rail yard.
Ruth listened to a little more and the story cleared up. Keller's background conversation was indeed about the freight manifests at the Allston rail yard. It was happening. It was real. Whether or not Frank had been cheating on her, there was more to it than that. Ruth looked at the clock on her computer. It was happening in a few short hours. She set an alarm and put her head down, but that was no use. She didn't sleep at all.
The next day she saw him for the last time, collapsing in frames made by the gaps between moving train cars,