Empire of Lies

Serena for Dinner

The alarm went off when I let her in. I was so shaken by the sight of her I had forgotten to disarm it before I opened the door. It gave a high-pitched warning whistle, a noise like a teakettle programmed to sound for sixty seconds before the system let fly with the real clanging blast. Even as Serena stepped into the foyer, I hurried away from her, back into the kitchen to key in the code to turn it off.

When I was done, I returned to the hall. There she was, standing at the other end of it. She was wearing cargo pants and a T-shirt and a hoodie sweatshirt. She had her hands stuffed in the sweatshirt pockets. She looked slumped and withdrawn and small. I couldn't really make out her face in the dim foyer light. It was only when I approached her that I got the full picture.

She had a black eye. She'd tried to cover it with makeup, but it was unmistakable. And she had scratches on one cheek and a red mark on her neck, too. Plus her lower lip was swollen.

One sympathetic glance from me and the tears came to her eyes. I took her chin in my fingers and gently turned her face so I could get a better look at the damage.

"I'm not going to the fucking police," she said.

"Ssh," I said, looking her over.

"All right?" she said.

"Just take it easy. You want something to eat?"

She shrugged sullenly.

I locked up the house again. Brought her into the kitchen. Turned the alarm back on. I sat her down in the breakfast nook, at the same table where we'd eaten before. Luckily, the refrigerator was still pretty well stocked.

"How about a turkey sandwich?"

"I'm a vegetarian."

I laughed. "No kidding? Is Ecstasy a vegetable?"

"Ha ha."

I slapped a few slices of cheese onto some rye bread. I poured her a 7UP on ice. She ate like what she was: a ravenous teenager. She ripped great chunks out of the sandwich and swallowed them in great gulps. I sat at the table across from her. Watched her till she was nearly done.

After a while, gaining strength, she glared at me, her cheeks bulging with food. "I only came here because I don't have anywhere else to go," she said. The words were muffled in her mouthful.

I didn't argue with her. I knew why she'd come. A good father is hard to find. "How'd you get here?" I asked.

"Took the train, then walked."

"All the way from the station?"

She shrugged. She picked slyly at the crust of her bread. "I'm a good walker," she said.

For some reason, this more than anything-more than the shiner, more than the fat lip-hurt my heart and made me feel for her. She wanted me to be proud of her, see. She wanted me to think well of her, and that was all she had, all she could think of to brag about: I'm a good walker.

"You must be. That's quite a way," I said.

"I walked all the way into Manhattan once."

"Wow."

"It's, like, five miles or something." She stuffed the rest of her sandwich into her mouth. Chomped on it like a cow on grass. "Can I ask you something?" she said, offering me an excellent view of the chewed food. "You can ask."

"Did you really do all that sick shit my mom said?"

I smiled. We were back to the teenager games. "That's not really any of your business, Serena," I said. "Now tell me about your black eye."

She got that look on her face that people get when they want you to take charge of them, but they don't want to admit it: that smile at the corner of the mouth they try to pretend is ironic but isn't. She buried herself in her 7UP glass to hide it. When she came up for air again, the smile was nearly gone.

"You'll just try to make me go to the police again. I'm not going. I mean it."

"Did your boyfriend do it? Jamal?"

Her mouth turned down in a frown and the tears welled in her eyes again. "He's such an asshole."

"Did it have to do with what happened to Casey Diggs in the swamp?" I asked her. "Did it have to do with what you told me about last time?"

She looked away. "No. No, that was just… Forget about that. All right? That was just me being stupid. Anyway, I don't want to talk about it anymore."

I felt something-a slight drop inside me-like a pebble falling into a pond. It was a hint, an intimation of what was coming. All afternoon, ever since I'd talked to Patrick Piersall in the Ale House, I'd been telling myself that Casey Diggs was crazy, that Piersall was a useless drunk, that their conspiracy theories were nonsense. There was no urgency to the situation, even if tomorrow was Friday, the day Casey said Rashid would attack. There wasn't going to be any attack. That's what I'd been telling myself.

But when I mentioned Casey Diggs's name to Serena, she didn't say Casey who? She knew exactly who I was talking about. She didn't even try to convince me the story about the Great Swamp was a lie. I felt that little pebble drop inside me and the ripples spread out from it like echoing whispers: It's all true, it's all real, it's all happening…

Serena must've sensed what I was thinking. She stole a glance at me and I saw an expression on her face, a look composed of guilt and fear, desperate appeal and naked longing. I knew that look. Every father does. She was hoping that just coming to me would make it all better somehow, that I would uncreate the disaster.

"I can't help you if you don't tell me the truth," I said.

"Can't we just go away somewhere?" Serena said. All at once, she was pleading with me, her voice trembling. "Mom says you're rich. Can't you just take me somewhere? They'll kill me if I tell."

"Jamal sent you into the club that night, didn't he?" I asked her.

She began to cry. "He got me so fucked up."

"He gave you drugs?"

She nodded, wiping her nose with her hands. "E. And all these White Russians."

"Then he sent you inside to get Casey."

"He said he just wanted to talk to him."

"You went in and asked Anne, the girl behind the bar, to point him out."

"He told me to. He said she was waiting for me, she was his friend. I just did what he said. I was so fucked up. I didn't know what they were gonna do to him. That's true. I swear. That's true."

"And the rest of the story you told me? Out at the swamp. That's how it happened."

She dug the heel of her palm in one eye then the other, trying to stanch the tears. The tears kept coming. "They just killed him. They just fucking, like, cut his throat. It was so horrible."

"But not you."

"What?"

"They didn't kill you."

"Jamal wouldn't let them."

"Because he thought you were sleeping…"

"Because he loves me. He says he loves me, anyway."

Right, right. Love. There's a word for you. It's the only action people think they can take without actually doing anything. All right, so he loved her-or wanted her, or whatever it was. And he figured he could control her, that she would keep quiet, do whatever he said. Which she did for the most part. But after she witnessed what happened to Casey, the guilt ate at her. She thought if she kept drinking, kept partying, she could make it stop. Then, when I took her out of The Den that night, when I took her home and she spent that morning with me, the truth came out of her-a version of the truth, anyway. She told it to Daddy to get it off her chest. But when I threatened to take her to the cops, she got scared, she bolted. She went back to her man.

"What happened tonight?" I asked her. "You got in an argument with him?"

"Yeah. I mean, he treats me like shit sometimes." She said this as if she were trying to explain herself, justify herself, as if I were going to blame her for getting beaten up. "And he's just always with his friends. Like they're this secret club. Whispering. Their big plans. Always closing the door on me. He doesn't tell me anything. And he sends me out of the room like I'm a child or something. It's, like, he snaps his fingers and I'm supposed to do whatever he says."

"But you knew they were planning something."

She went on rubbing at her eyes. I gently pulled her hands away from them. The sockets were starting to look as red as raw meat. "Big criminal masterminds," she said bitterly. "His friends are such assholes."

"So is that why he hit you tonight? Did you try to get him to tell you what they were going to do?"

"No-o," she whined, again as if I'd accused her-as if I might take Jamal's side. "I don't give a shit about their big… fucking thing, whatever it is. Their big ideas. Like they're some important… y'know, big thing. I just wanted him to spend some time with me, that's all. He can't just treat me like 'Do this, do that.' I'm a person, too. I fucking told him that, too." She drank her 7UP defiantly. "I did."

I bowed my head against my hand, rubbed my forehead. "Oh, Lord, Serena," I murmured.

"What?" she said.

Those whispers in me were spreading, echoing, louder now. I felt the urgency rising out of my belly into my throat. I had to call the cops-not tomorrow-tonight, now. But again-again-I hesitated. I felt a sickening certainty they wouldn't believe me. They hadn't believed Casey. They hadn't believed Piersall. I needed more information to bring to them. I needed to hear everything Serena had to say, everything I could get out of her.

"Serena," I said slowly, lowering my hand, pressing my two hands together in front of me. "Serena, you must know something, you must've heard something. About what they're planning. When they sent you out of the room, you must've been curious-angry-you must've tried to listen in sometimes."

She made a sad little gesture: a wave, a shrug. "I just know it was supposed to be some big deal. Some 'major victory' or something. Like it was so important."

"But you don't know what or where?"

She sniffled, shook her head. She'd managed to stop crying now. "I think it's tomorrow, though." I forced down a curse. "What else?"

"Nothing."

"You're sure?"

"Yes!"

"All right," I said. I tried to bring her back to her story. "So tonight. You told him you wanted him to pay attention to you-"

"I just want him to be nice to me sometimes."

"And that made him angry. He yelled at you."

She made a childishly mocking face, a childishly taunting voice, imitating Jamal. "'You don't understand. You're just a stupid girl. It's so important! It's so important!' Blah-de-blah. I was, like: 'Fuck you, y'know? I don't care how important you are. I'm important, too.' And he was, like-" that taunting voice again-" 'You're nothing. You're just a stupid female. I'm the master of the universe.' And I'm, like: 'Whatever.' I'm, like: 'You dumb fucking Arabs treat girls like shit, y'know that?' And so then he, like, just hits me, like, with his fist." She moved her fist as if it were a hammer. "I mean, he's such a little wimp, it's not like he's strong or anything. And I'm, like, 'Yeah, well, you and your big plans are all bullshit anyway because I told Jason and he's investigating everything now and he's gonna tell the whole story to the police.'"

It was a second before I registered what she was telling me, before I could bridge the gap between her childlike tone, her childlike inner world, and the terrible meaning of what she said.

"You told him about me? You told him you were coming here?"

She gave me a sort of sidelong glance, a sort of conspiratorial smirk. She was trying to please me, flatter me, enlist me to her side of the fight against her boyfriend. "I told him you were my real father. I said, like, you were this rich, important guy from, like, the Midwest or something, and you were, like, totally in with the police and you were really pissed off that he was bossing me around and giving me shit all the time. I was, like: 'I told Jason all about what happened in the swamp and now he has the police investigating the whole thing and if I get hurt he's gonna find out about it and come after you.' I was, like: 'You're not so important after all, are you?'"

"My God," I whispered.

She just went on, frowning again, near tears again. "And he was, like, choking me. Motherfucker. I fell down. He, like, threw me down. I think I hurt my back. I did! I think I, like, sprained it or something. And then he said, 'You're going to see how important I am.' And he starts calling his stupid friends."

I stood up quickly, my heart beating hard.

"He was, like, so into it, he never even saw me sneak out," she went on proudly. "Like I was just gonna lie there and do whatever he said. Like, bullshit. Where are you going?"

My cell phone was still in the television room. I went to the phone on the kitchen wall. I snapped up the headset. I started to dial 911.

But it was too late. The teakettle whistle of the alarm warning began again.

They were already in the house.