The Pinebox Vendetta Read online

  Nice call on the over-packing.

  She buttoned the purse’s buckle and puckered her lips in the mirror.

  This is so insane, she told her reflection. Are you seriously doing this?

  Her mother came back with a baggie of toothbrushes and shampoo. “Heading out? Has the proper interval of time passed?”

  “Think so,” Joss said with a hollow chuckle.

  “Do you need cash?” Mom pointed to the jangly purse. “I could give you some, you could pick up a snack for the train.”

  “Um, thanks. No, that’s okay. The purse…I just, you know, was trying to look a little nicer.”

  Mom gave another I gotcha, no need to explain smile, and Joss felt another guilty pang.

  It passed.

  “And remember,” Mom said, “the train leaves at 8:32 p.m. Zero wiggle room.”

  “Got it,” Joss said.

  “If you get held up or need something, does he have a cellphone you could borrow to reach me?”

  “It’s okay to use someone else’s cell, just not my own?”

  Mom gave a wry grin, and Joss knew she was good. With all Mom was going through—Dad, Jamie Gallagher, the brick—deceiving her was cake.

  “Eight thirty-two,” Mom said again. “Zero wiggle.”

  “Zero wiggle,” Joss repeated.

  Leaving, she held her purse tight to her left side so Mom wouldn’t notice the bulky Zoom. She didn’t take a room key. She felt tingly from her belly to the base of her throat.

  The courtyard had gotten dark in a hurry. The tire swing’s rubber blended into night, and the square’s size—which had seemed ginormous to Joss only two days ago—didn’t faze her. The first time she’d stepped over these stones, she hadn’t been sure of her place here. She hadn’t been sure she belonged.

  She was sure now.

  Where can I find him? How long do I have before Mom comes searching? An hour? Half an hour?

  The first place she wanted to try was that windowless building Mom had pointed out, the Skull and Bones tomb. The Pruitts had deep ties there, she’d said. They might even have the brick there—but the brick wasn’t Joss’s main goal.

  Her main goal was Rock Pruitt.

  The tomb was in the same block as the ballet-physics classroom. Joss hurried, breathing hard, skipping ahead of a car preparing to leave a stoplight.

  The building was short and ugly, made of black, gray, and dark red bricks. Its two halves were separated by a small arch, the halves and arch all topped with smashed-triangle roofs. The structure took up its whole yard like some fat bully hogging the playground.

  Joss stepped over a low chain and walked up both sides.

  Yep, no windows, she confirmed.

  She walked back to the front entrance. The black door had a keycard reader like other campus buildings.

  Suddenly, Joss felt stupid. What had she thought, Rock Pruitt was going to be out for a stroll? That she would just slip in through some screen door somebody forgot to close?

  She didn’t have a watch or—clearly—a phone, but it felt like about twenty minutes she’d been gone. Mom would be getting antsy.

  Her next idea, actually her last idea, was the restaurant-drinking club Mory’s, which Rock had mentioned at lunch. Joss had no ID, but friends had told her she looked twenty-one. Maybe if they negged her, she could say she was just eating?

  She hurried away from the tomb, up the side street, left onto Elm Street. The sky had gone full dark. The dirty-yellow streetlights watched her. These people hanging around at the corner didn’t look like students. An older woman pulled her head back as though wondering why Joss would be out by herself.

  Okay, maybe she wouldn’t pass for twenty-one.

  Mory’s looked like some stately colonial home, white with forest green shutters. Is it even open? Half the windows were dark, but the entrance was lit so Joss hiked up the front path. The brass knob felt slippery in her palm.

  She’d been to the Yale Club of New York once with Mom, on Vanderbilt Avenue in Manhattan, and this place felt the same. Chandeliers with ornate fixtures, lead-lined windows.

  She stepped past a deserted hostess station and peeked into a side room that was lit.

  Somebody was slumped in front of an enormous silver cup, supporting his own head with both hands. His hair was black as oil.

  Rock Pruitt.

  Joss felt like her chest would explode. Fright, shock, exhilaration—she’d actually found him.

  Alone.

  Drunk. Wallowing in something.

  It couldn’t be more perfect.

  She looked in a mirrored wall and reflexively tugged her skirt down. She sawed her lips side to side, feeling the stick of lipstick.

  Nobody was eating in this main room. The tables had cream cloths and exactingly-placed silverware.

  A bartender who looked eighty—at least—stopped polishing a beer tap.

  “Kitchen’s closed,” he said.

  “O—okay actually I’m not eating,” Joss said. “I’ll just sit if that’s okay?”

  His wrinkled face got wrinklier. “We aren’t a sitting club, Miss. We’re a drinking club. And you’re not of age.”

  Well, that settled that.

  “I can’t order, like, a Coke? Or a glass of water.”

  The bartender breathed, making himself taller. Joss snapped her heels together to seem, she guessed, more grown-up.

  The bartender wasn’t reaching for a glass.

  “Hey, hey—it’s Jamie Gallagher’s friend!” called a warbling voice. “There y’are for a surprise. A damn fine delightful surprise.”

  Rock Pruitt staggered in from his side room. Grinning. Trying to leer downhill at Joss, but his eyes couldn’t hold their focus. One tail of his pressed white shirt flapped loose. His fly was down.

  The bartender looked from Rock to Joss, then back to Rock. “I was just showing this one the door. Kitchen’s closed.”

  Rock farted with his lips. “She didn’t come for food. Food sucks here anyway.” The f words ran together with his slurring. “Did you?”

  Joss felt the impact of his eyes and ragged voice together, like a dirty rake reaching across the room.

  Still, she said, “I was actually looking for you.”

  He spread his arms wide. “Well come on, then. I have a whole”—he hiccuped—“big whole room to myself. Please join me.”

  It was unreal, Joss thought, how easily he’d accepted her presence here and the ridiculous idea that she—or anyone—would want to be with him in this state. It said so much about his ego.

  It said so much about why he had to be stopped.

  Joss looked to the bartender, who’d started polishing taps again. His gray, lipless mouth moved without making words. A dishrag squeaked under his thumbs.

  He seemed to want to stop Joss—to stop them both. But when she started for Rock’s room, he stayed behind the bar.

  She passed underneath a nameplate that said Governors’ Room in gold letters. The room was wrecked. Chairs on their sides with legs tangled. Those big silver cups tipped over, red or orange or purple liquid dribbling out. The wooden table was covered in jagged carvings like the tables at that pizza place. One groove near where Rock plunked down was full of white dust.

  Joss had only seen cocaine once, at an older kids’ party in Queens. This looked the same.

  “Pardon my mess,” Rock said, picking a chair off the ground for her. “Been blowing off steam. Inherently, that’s gonna be messy.”

  Joss’s nostrils pinched reflexively. She examined the chair’s upholstery and smoothed her skirt.

  Rock said, “Scout’s honor, I didn’t puke on it.” He scratched his neck. “To the best of my recollection.”

  She sat.

  When he pulled over a cup and tipped it high for a drink, obscuring his face, she pulled the Zoom from her purse—the snap gave her trouble but only for a second—and set it on the next chair, which was pushed underneath the table such that Rock couldn’t see.

>   Then she pressed Record.

  “Why are you blowing off steam?” she asked, hoping it sounded casual.

  Rock looked at her blurrily, red spittle on his chin.

  She prompted, “You said you were blowing off steam?”

  “Oh yeah, yeah yeah—I was. Am.” He thunked the side of the silver cup, smiling. “Family crap. Word of advice, never count on family. Families will”—he swore—“you over every time.”

  Then he told this weird, rambling story about being denied the chance to run for the Virginia Senate seat. Joss remembered Mom’s friend saying Rock had won that “Choosing” contest, but apparently not.

  It was hard to figure out exactly what had happened—Rock would repeat parts, then skip way forward in time—but the basic idea was that another Pruitt relative had beaten him.

  As he scowled and groaned on, Joss thought about how to get him talking about Derek Dickerson. Rock was bitter about how his family had treated him, and the root cause of this unfairness (in his mind) was Dickerson.

  If she could just nudge him there, nudge him into discussing that incident…

  “But you know what I say, honestly?” he said. “No spin, no bull—but honestly?”

  He swooped closer to her, then farther away. A dress shoe fell off. He left it off.

  “I say piss on ’em. The whole bunch. Even Marshall. Wants me to run his spy scraps,” Rock mumbled at his collar, then abruptly jerked back. His other shoe fell off. “Piss on ’em. Piss on every last one of them.”

  He shoved a silver cup over to Joss. “I’ve been hogging. Here, you go ’head. That’s Velvet. Best one they do. I re-sampled them all to be sure.”

  She looked over the cup’s brim. Inside, it was like a small swimming pool of peach-colored, sharp-smelling liquid. Some hair or fuzz floated on the surface.

  If I don’t drink, he’ll know I didn’t come for the company. He probably already knows on some level. Maybe he figures it doesn’t matter—if he gets me to drink enough.

  She lifted the cup using its wide-apart handles. The liquid inside sloshed toward her, then away as she tipped, then back toward her, Joss struggling to sip without spilling.

  She managed a small drink. It tasted like the hard cider she’d had at her friend Ryder’s over spring break, only stronger and sweeter. She kept the cup held at that angle—her arms shaking—and gulped twice to make it look like she was chugging.

  “Dang!” Rock said as she pushed the cup back his way. “Who says the youth today’re all soft?”

  He leaned low over the crack in the table and snorted violently, sucking up white powder. His eyes fluttered and popped.

  “That’ll cure what ails you,” he said. “Where are my manners? Here, here y’go. It’s world-class blow.”

  Rock scooted over, inviting her to try. Joss shook her head. She didn’t think refusing hard drugs blew her cover.

  “Suit yourself,” he said.

  There was silence now. Joss laced her fingers together, pushing them out in front of her.

  This is the time. Do it—now!

  “So…there was this thing Jamie told us,” she began, speaking from the sketchy rehearsals she’d done on the way to Skull and Bones. “It was about, um, something that happened a while ago.”

  She paused to let Rock catch up. He’d started to wobble in place, tipping between opposite legs of his chair.

  “Don’t believe a word out of Jamie Gallagher’s mouth. You have Gallaghers, and you have reality.” Rock made two circles with his fingers and held them apart. “Mutually exclusive, okay? Never met a lazy poor person, or a banker who wasn’t a crook. If only we turned it over to the commies, you’d get peace and love and unicorns sledding down rainbows…”

  He tipped back and gestured airily at the ceiling. Then seemed to lose track of what he was saying.

  Joss coughed lightly and was about to try another question when Rock seized her arm.

  “How d’you know Jamie Gallagher, what’s your connection?” he demanded. “Why are you here?”

  Joss tried to free herself, but his grip—even drunk like this—was iron. Her knee knocked against the adjacent chair, and she worried the Zoom might fall. Luckily she didn’t hear a clatter.

  “Like I said, I came to see you, to talk!” she said. “That’s all! I like to think for myself, and Mom—er, my mom and Jamie Gallagher—I’m not going to just believe everything they tell me. I wanna hear the other side, other perspectives.”

  This had been part of her script, too. She’d figured it would be smart to appeal to his vanity—to his belief that his ideas were superior to everybody else’s.

  And Rock’s face did relax now. Lines in his neck softened, and he let go of her wrist—but not without dragging his finger suggestively through her palm.

  Joss choked back disgust. “So Jamie—yeah, he and my mom were talking about freshman year. That, um…thing? That thing that I guess a lot of people talk about? With you?”

  His face changed again, but she couldn’t read the change. Miffed?

  Had she pushed too far?

  He pulled the cup over one-handed and found it empty. “Johnston, my good man! We need another of the Velvet!”

  From the main room came the sound of the bartender’s shuffling shoes.

  Rock lowered his voice. “Derek Dickerson? You came to talk about Derek Goddamn Dickerson? Get out. Get the”—he swore—“out now, before I throw you out by those chintzy little bra straps.”

  Joss felt a flash of fear, but also desperation at being cast away. “No, not like that! I’m not saying—I mean, you paid the price already. Your family—like you said, you paid the price for everything that happened or—or didn’t happen.”

  He looked at her. He wasn’t having trouble focusing now.

  She continued, “I understand what it’s like. Something happened to me, too, last year. I—one of my friends died and I was involved. I didn’t…I mean, it happened real fast and stuff just got out of control, and none of us intended for her to…”

  Joss stared into the table, trying to look anguished.

  Rock Pruitt said, “People die every day,” and touched her bare knee.

  Joss’s stomach turned into a pit of sludge.

  The bartender entered now. Carrying its handles with handkerchiefs, he delivered another full cup.

  He kept his eyes pointed away from the powder. “How are we doing here, Mister Pruitt?”

  Rock was watching Joss intensely. She felt a sob starting behind her nose—partly going along with her phony story, partly from real fear.

  “We’re good,” Rock said.

  “Will the young lady be requiring a taxi?”

  Rock still wouldn’t look away. He grabbed the new cup with one hand but didn’t drink yet.

  “No taxi,” he said. “I’ll see her home safe.”

  The bartender seemed to be fighting himself. His temple twitched. One elbow tugged back toward the main room while the other stayed at his side.

  Rock said, “I will see her home.”

  The bartender left.

  When Rock asked Joss to join him in “drinking away the wrongs done unto us,” she felt again she had to agree. It was hard faking sips with a full cup, and she took in more than she’d wanted to—more than she’d ever had in one sitting.

  “Tell me ’bout this friend of yours,” Rock said. “Who died. Y’say you understand.” He swirled the word around with his tongue. “I wonder if you do. Truly.”

  So Joss told her made-up tale, and drank more.

  She lost track of the Zoom, where it was, how long it could record. The link between her brain and her mouth sputtered, but luckily she knew the story’s details cold—because it was true. It had just happened to someone else, another girl at her school who’d spent two years in a juvenile facility after pushing a friend off a cliff in Trenton Falls.

  “…said it was safe—it was safe, I jumped off myself! But now this thing follows me my whole life.” Her eyes watered.
She heard her voice soaring and sinking. “I feel awful literally every single day. What c’n I do? Whadda they want me to do?”

  She had fallen into Rock’s fuzzy speech. He was hunched close, leaning into her space like some ogre stealing her breaths.

  The bartender poked his head in again.

  “Another group has arrived,” he said. “The crew team from oh-six. I thought for them, perhaps, the Cup Room.”

  Rock sniffed, seeming annoyed to be interrupted. “Swell, carry on.”

  The bartender looked out the window, fingering his collar. “Were the club to lose its liquor license, it would be a blow. Mory’s might cease to exist.”

  Rock gritted his teeth but did pull away from Joss’s chair now.

  “Hell, you old ninny. Close the door if you want.”

  Johnston backed off. As he began moving away, he swayed in Joss’s field of vision. She’d been grateful for his brief appearances—which made her feel protected, like there was another set of eyes here—but she had the sinking sense now he wouldn’t return.

  She watched the bartender pull a door she hadn’t known existed from a wall recess. It clinked closed.

  “So. You shoved her off a cliff?” Rock said, sounding almost sober. “That’s rotten luck. But very different from what I did.”

  Joss squirmed away from his hand, which had found her knee again. “H-how so?”

  He leaned in close—so close and so low to the table that if she’d had all her sense, Joss might’ve worried he would see the Zoom two seats over.

  He whispered, “I never laid a finger on mine.”

  Chapter 18

  Sam breezed through the dorm, checking sills and drawers for forgotten items. The bags were heaped by the door and ready to roll. They wouldn’t make Brooklyn until eleven or so, which had bugged her while planning the trip—arriving so late on a school night—but didn’t bother her one bit now. It would give Abe a head-start back at the apartment, a chance to fall asleep first. Or move.

  She found Joss’s Chapstick and stashed it in the duffel’s side pocket. Then she checked the time. Seven-thirty.