Naive by Charles Royce (world best books to read .txt) 📕

separate incident involving one of Élan’s consultants being gunned down on the street near Union Square the same night as Lennox was found stabbed and left to die. Aside from both of them working for Élan, the two were deemed unrelated in the press.

“Wait, the papers said the two have nothing to do with each other. One was a random man caught in the crossfire of something he wasn’t a part of, and the other was Lennox, which the papers called a domestic homicide, which we all know isn’t true.” Shawn pauses and squints while raising one eyebrow. This is why I felt something was off.

“But what if they’re related?” she asks. “Listen, it’s complicated and weird, and I know things, and I’m still trying to make sense of it.”

“Okay, Jenna, now you’re talking. What do you know?”

“Well, before the other night, all I heard was rumblings. People who’d been fired and never heard from again. Like never again. I’m not talking about killing people, but there’ve been conversations around the office both at Élan and Cooper Harlow about Élan bugging phone conversations, following and documenting people’s private lives, employees being shipped overseas to work in remote foreign offices, stuff like that. But now not just one, but two people were killed that worked for Élan? In the same night?”

“Ahhh, that’s what you mean by ‘sinister’ stuff.”

“Exactly! Which is why I knew I needed to say something. If Lennox was in under his head, and God forbid he flew anywhere outside the lines, the company would nip it in the butt.”

Ignoring Jenna’s hodgepodge of metaphors and idioms (something she does quite often when she’s trying to make herself sound more American than French), Shawn looks out and sees he has arrived at the W Hotel. Police are placing Micah, who is wearing handcuffs, in the back seat of a squad car.

“Shit, shit! I wanna talk more about this, Jenna, but I’m at Micah’s hotel.” Shawn leaves the car and runs into the downpour.

“Okay, but that’s really all I know. But I’ll just bet, if you get access to Lennox’s bookkeeping files, you might make more sense of it.”

C h a p t e r   1 4

Shawn is too late. He rushes back to the limo and tells the driver to follow the police car. They head across town, then down Avenue A, maneuvering through the outskirts of Micah’s neighborhood. They pull into NYC’s Seventh Precinct at the corner of Pitt and Broome.

Shawn looks at the Williamsburg Bridge in the background, and for a second, he thinks of telling the driver to just keep going straight, to take him home to his wife in Brooklyn. But Jenna’s revelation has hit him hard. He’s committed.

“Just bill it to my account, add 20 percent.” He gets out of the car with his navy-blue jacket serving as his umbrella. He moves toward the building with increasing intensity.

Such an odd squatty building for New York City, Shawn thinks, only four stories high, such a waste of space. He’d been here the night before to see Micah, but was too shaken by what had happened to Lennox to pay much attention.

He runs up the handicapped entrance, a curved, brick-walled path that leads up to the dark-red brick building. A looming canopy with huge metal letters that reads “New York City Police Department Seventh Precinct” covers the top of the entrance. He bolts through both sets of heavy, metal-and-glass double doors and enters the brick waiting area.

“So much fucking brick,” he whispers to himself.

“Can I help you?” the young pimply-faced policewoman asks from behind the desk. She is low to the ground, like a character from The Princess Bride in some sort of brick pit, which makes Shawn laugh out loud.

“Shawn, Shawn Connelly. Here to see Micah Breuer.” He brushes the rain off his shirt with his drenched coat. “They just brought him in.”

“And you’re his lawyer, I’m assuming?” she asks, looking at the sign-in sheet.

“Yes.”

“Since he was just brought in, you’re gonna have to wait. Probably a while.”

Grabbing the ledger, Shawn nods and writes his name just under Micah’s, and then searches for a place to sit. He sees a set of four green, mid-century fiberglass chairs connected by a silver stainless-steel base.

How could I have missed these last night? He wonders why he hadn’t noticed such a prime example of his favorite type of design. Looks like this was ripped directly out of a 1960s airport lobby.

He pulls out his phone and goes to work. All of the chairs are scratched, beaten up, worn down from other people’s boredom, with carved initials, filthy suggestions, and phone numbers etched along each curve. The thick humidity outside intensifies the putrid stench of sweat and blood that continues to cloak these halls, despite the top layer of disinfectant.

“Call Wallace Holcomb.” Shawn speaks into his phone. He mentally justifies talking with Lennox’s father in two ways: one, Wallace Holcomb is by far the more rational and civilized of Lennox’s parents, and two, Wallace isn’t a lawyer. Okay, that’s redundant.

“Aw, hell no,” says the woman deep within the masonry, pointing to the sign above Shawn’s head.

He turns around.

NO CELL PHONE DISTURBANCES IN THE LOBBY.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Shawn says out loud, forgetting to end the telephone call he’s just made.

“I shit you not. You think I wanna sit here all day underneath this fluorescent nonsense, going through this mountain of fuck, and try to ignore people’s phone conversations?” the young woman behind the counter answers, making Shawn wonder if she’s rehearsed this retort before. “You can go outside and talk all you want.”

“Jesus. Ma’am, can you at least let me speak to the detective in charge?”

She looks up at him blankly.

He realizes his rudeness. “Please.”

She pauses. “I can tell him you’re here.”

“Thank you.” He grabs his computer bag, then mumbles, “This is why I live in Brooklyn.”

Annoyed by the interruption, yet happy to breathe fresher air, he opens the first set of double doors and