Page 117 of Long Way Down

“Throw in some Pepto-Bismol for the after party, huh?” Pongo muttered, and stepped up behind the guy to peer at the screens. “Have you found Waxman yet?”

The Scribe appeared wholly unbothered by the stranger in his den. He hitched his glasses up with a knuckle and said, “Yes. He’s what you’d call obscenely wealthy. Here’re his insurance policies.” He had them pulled up on the first monitor. Pongo counted five cars, three homes, and a whole mess of jewelry for the wifey; along with ATVs, a boat, jet ski… Scribe kept scrolling and the personal property kept adding up.

“Jeez,” Pongo muttered. “Must be nice.”

“Here he is.” On the second monitor, a photo taken for some sort of socialite publication, the whole Waxman family. There was Donald in the center, a man completelyaveragein all aspects. Average height, average weight for a guy in his fifties. Average salt-and-pepper hair in an average rich-guy haircut. Glasses, non-handsome, but non-offensive face. He wore an expensive suit, and had his arm around a woman much too beautiful for him. The happy couple were flanked by two young people: a daughter who resembled her mother, pink and blonde and megawatt smile. And a son hiding his dad’s unremarkable features with a swooping haircut and a lot of rumpled, layered clothes far too casual for the event they were attending. He stood a few steps apart from the others, his expression dull and disinterested, mouth slack, eyes red-rimmed.

Pongo hated the look of him straight off. Like one of those sullen, furious teens he’d gone to rehab with, rich as fuck and angry as hell; boiling with hate because they were so insulated from all responsibility that they would do anything to relieve the numbness of their charmed lives.

“Who’s this shithead?” he asked, leaning over Scribe’s shoulder to point at the screen.

“It says here,” a small finger brushed his own gently aside to follow the photo’s caption, “‘Douglas Waxman, studying art at NYU–’”

“Art?”

Last night seemed forever ago, Dixie soft, and sated, and sleepy, her head on his chest. He could feel the heat and weight of her, now, hear the reluctance, but the trust, too, in her voice as she confided, “The two girls on record are art students at NYU.”

“Shit,” he said, this little triumph tempered by the fact that he couldn’t very well help her, at least not on the record. But damn it, he wasn’tnotgoing to give her a boost if he could. “I gotta call Dixie. It’s him.”

~*~

She herded the two younger boys out into the hallway and far enough from the door to prevent eavesdropping. Tucked between a massive, smudgy impressionist painting of a nude woman reclining on a couch and a modern piece composed of streaks and splotches, was a padded bench and two vending machines: coffee and other hot drinks, and snacks. Daniel and Doug plopped down on either end of the bench, and, wanting something to do with her hands, Melissa plucked a paper cup from the sleeve provided and bought a coffee.

“I’m surprised there’s food and drinks in here, honestly,” she said, as the machine sputtered and groaned and black coffee gurgled down into the cup. “What if someone spilled tea all over a masterpiece or something?”

“I think some of the professors tried to keep them from being installed, originally,” Daniel said, suddenly right beside her. She cast him a sidelong glance and saw that he stood with his hands in his pockets, staring at the brightly-wrapped snack selections in the other machine. “But since the building’s being used for classrooms instead of a real gallery, the administrators insisted.” Change clinked in his pocket and then his hand before he fed it into the slot. “A girl in my oils class is diabetic, and her insulin got real low. She has one of those…” He slapped at his hip, frowning.

“Implants?”

“Yeah, one of those.” He pressed three buttons and the little curly arm started spinning in front of the Twix bars. “Anyway, she got all weavy, and fluttery, and we thought she was gonna pass out. Her friend ran out here and came back with some peanut butter crackers, and, like, totally saved her.” He shrugged and bent to retrieve his candy bar. “Well. Saved us from having to call an ambulance, anyway.”

The last drip fell into her cup and the machine hissed as it finished its cycle. Melissa picked up the cup and held it beneath her nose, grateful for the fragrant steam and the heat bleeding into her palm. She watched Daniel unwrap his Twix and take a bite, contempt sour in the back of her throat.

Chewing, he titled the bar toward her. “Shit. Did you want one?”

“No, thanks.”

He nodded and took another bite – this time of the second bar, so he was eating both down at the same level, together, like some kind of animal, rather than consuming left and right separately. “Honestly, I’m surprised Lana came back.”

Melissa took a sip of her coffee; it wanted a little cream, but wasn’t as terrible as she’d feared. “Why’s that?”

He was a sloppy chewer, mouth half-open, chocolate wallowing around wetly inside. Some rich kids were fastidious, she thought, and others lived so securely in the knowledge that they could buy their way into or out of anything that they never bothered with mundanities like manners.

“It’s soon, is all,” he said, a fleck of chocolate at the corner of his mouth. “I mean, she tried.” He gestured to his own face. “All the makeup, but you can still tell she got beat up. If it were me, I would have at least waited to come back until after everyone had stopped talking about it so much.”

“It won’t everbeyou,” she said, frostily.

Her tone kicked his head back. His eyes widened. “Oh. Uh. Yeah. Guess not. I only meant–”

“That she should be ashamed to show her face? After someone attacked her? That someone else’s violence against her is a reason to hide? To be gossiped about?”

“Whoa.No. No, that’s not what I meant at all.” He held his candy bar out between them in an attempt to stave her off.

“Because I gotta tell you, Daniel,” Melissa pressed, taking more pleasure than she should have in watching him squirm, “the way you’re talking about Lana isn’t making you look innocent.”

“What?” His brows shot up. “What? No, I didn’t – that’s not–”

She wasn’t supposed to interrogate either of them out here in the hall, by herself. She and Contreras hadn’t discussed strategy – but, then again, they hadn’t discussed strategy with Tobias, either. Contreras had doubted her, and pulled rank on her, and left her out here with this uppity, sexist little shitbag. So she said, “What I can’t decide, is if you’re talking about her this way – this coldly – because you’re the one who raped her, or because you’re just that much of a pig and you can’t pretend not to be, even when you’re talking to a cop.”

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