Transparency by Charles Royce (children's books read aloud txt) 📕

C h a p t e r   2 6

MICAH CLICKS THROUGH the photos of his condo online, then peruses the sample listing. He’s hired the real estate broker Haylee recommended, but isn’t going to buy in the Connelly’s neighborhood.

No. He has other plans.

He won’t dive into the account money he stole from Jenna’s closet just yet. Too risky, especially with other people having access to the old account number, the old password. No. First he’ll go on the vacation Lennox had planned for them. Then, since he’s an official co-owner on the deed of their condo, the real estate broker will sell the home for three million more than Lennox paid for the place not two years ago. Only then will Micah be free to travel the world in style. He’s done with Manhattan.

And then there’s the problem of that pesky little photographer.

He can’t be sure, but the man who tried to take his photo with the cop, who followed him and Haylee to Lamaze class, is the same man he’s just spotted down the street—gray shirt, dark jeans, Nikon around his chubby neck. He thought he’d seen him yesterday, too, in the stairwell of Jenna’s building across the street, snapping photos. He could almost hear the clicking. The man had spotted him, stopped, then ran down the stairs to the front entrance, turned around, took a photo of Jenna’s building.

A ruse.

He puts the computer to sleep, checks outside. Pesky isn’t there.

Or is he? Who’s that little bulky man in front of his building?

Now the man is opening the glass doors to his lobby.

Micah throws on a shirt and presses the button for the elevator. It takes a few moments to arrive.

Ding.

The elevator chugs down seven floors.

Ding.

As the elevator doors open, Micah sees the lobby’s glass door closing. He looks down at his bare feet. He sees a screwdriver on the floor underneath his mailbox. It’s still wobbling.

Micah flings open both sets of glass doors, looks to his left, then to his right. Gray shirt, blue jeans, running around the corner. Micah bolts after the man, the concrete cold on his toes. Past the corner storefront, past the bodega. He turns a second corner.

No Pesky.

Micah rushes back to Rutgers, the main street that intersects his. He sees the man in between the fruit stand in the grocery across the street. He runs inside, sees the man in the back of the store, opening a refrigerated cabinet and grabbing a Dr. Pepper.

Micah reaches across the man’s chest, grabs the camera by its strap. The force of the grip causes the man to drop the can and stumble backward onto a stand of potato chips. The stand falls to the ground, alerting the store clerk to peek down the aisle.

“Who are you working for?” Micah says in a grunt, while pulling the strap tighter around the man’s neck. “Huh?”

“Sh-sh—” The man is spewing spit, trying to catch his breath. “Sean. Sh—Sean Connery.”

“You’re working with Sean Connery?” He pulls the strap even tighter. “Try again.”

The man grabs Micah’s forearms, pounds them with his fists. “I-I—”

“Is it West?” Micah squeezes tighter.

The Nikon releases from the strap and falls to the ground, busting into pieces. The momentary relief gives the man a chance to talk.

“Elaine,” he says. “Elaine Holcomb.”

Micah lets go.

“Shit, dude.” The man coughs, massages his neck, looks at what’s left of his camera on the floor. “Oh, you’re gonna pay for this, you cunt.”

Micah jabs his finger in the man’s chest, while clenching his jaws. “You tell Elaine to go fuck herself!”

Micah steps back, smooths his shirt, walks toward the exit.

“She knows you killed her son!” he hears the man say.

Micah addresses the clerk on the way out. “All good here, Mr. Wong. I’ve caught this prick snooping around our neighborhood on more than one occasion. Sorry about the mess.”

“It’s okay, Mr. Micah. I’ll clean it up.” Wong looks at the man, who is picking up the lens cap, the broken pieces of plastic, the glass, the memory card, the battery. “Go on! Git!”

C h a p t e r   2 7

“GO ON,” JOSH says. He’s trying to acknowledge Phish but can’t really see his face. The young man’s vintage-Bieber swoop of white-blonde hair flows in waves from his forehead like a frosted shower curtain, offering only peekaboo glimpses of his eyes. Phish’s lips are tiny—slits, really—accompanied by a man-boy’s voice at a timbre that seems to be interfering with Josh’s nervous system. “Can you repeat that, though, in a language I can understand? I don’t really speak computer jargon.”

Josh appreciates the way Phish owns his nerdlike demeanor. Fishbowl glasses, a short-sleeve button-down tucked in with no belt. Apparently the great defense lawyer Shawn Connelly swears by this man at the computer in front of him, so who is he to argue? He’s Josh’s only hope of opening these encrypted files on his weird oval, light-encrusted SSD.

“The file marked 4JFK is coded in a World War II Navy codex, meaning it’s fairly simple to open once the program can figure out the right key.” Phish drags the folder onto an app. A status bar appears, counting down a percentage of completion.

“Is it opening?” Josh asks, palms sweating.

“Yes.”

“Holy shit.”

“It’s pretty big, so it might take a few seconds.”

“A few seconds? This would take forever on my laptop.”

“That’s why you came here.” Phish uses his hands to unveil his shop, a basement-level tech graveyard in the Bowery, packed with outdated computers and chunky monitors. Behind them is a single row of newer laptops and external hard drives, viewable from the small window as New Yorkers walk by on the street above. Cardboard signage is taped to the cracked glass, unreadable from inside.

“What do those signs say?”

Phish looks up at the window. “Sale prices. We’re cheaper than the Mac Store.”

“Quite impressive.”

“Done,” Phish says.

“No way,” Josh says. “How about the other file?”

“This underscore symbol? I’ve never seen a file named with just an underscore before.” Phish studies it, double clicks the