How to Lead a Life of Crime

chapter TWENTY



FRANK





If there are really academy observers here, I’ve outwitted them all. I’m locked up in a detention center at JFK. The airport cops must not be part of the game. None of them seem very interested in me. I guess stealing phones doesn’t compare to being caught with bags of cocaine crammed in your rectum—or entering the country with endangered species tucked into your tighty whities. Plus, the guy I robbed didn’t have time to stick around and press charges. I was worried they might release me, so I informed the cops that I’m still a minor. They did exactly what I hoped they’d do. They made me call my father.

I wish I’d thought of this earlier. No FBI agent or newspaper reporter would ever take me seriously. But my father knows what really goes on at the Mandel Academy. He’s the headmaster’s enemy—the only one who can stop him. If I don’t graduate, my father will win his wager. If I don’t graduate, they’ll have to get rid of me. I’ll die, and that’s fine. I can’t rid the world of all of its monsters. But at least I can keep Lucian Mandel from murdering millions.

“I’ve been arrested at JFK,” I tell my father when he takes my call.

“Excuse me?” He sounds so polite. There must be other people around.

“I stole a phone.”

“I’ll have my assistant contact the academy,” he says.

“No. It’s over. I give up. I’m not going to help Mandel anymore. You have to come get me.”

There’s a pause. “Okay. I’ll be there in under an hour.”

I suppose I won’t be alive much longer than that. It’s a relief to know that my body isn’t going to be fed to the machines in Mandel’s lab. I should probably be reliving my fondest memories, but I keep thinking about the little boy in the pictures. My gut is still telling me that the kid was real. I wonder if Jude had something to do with what’s happened today. If so, I hope he approves of what I’m going to do. I won’t be able to avenge his death. I hope he’s not pissed off when I get to Never Land.

• • •

A lady cop unlocks the gate. “You’re free to go,” she says.

I’m shocked when I see my dad waiting by the front desk. He looks a few inches shorter and a decade older. It’s been less than a year since the last time I saw him. How could anyone age so quickly? His posture is still perfect. His suit looks brand new. But I see strands of gray in his chestnut hair. Crinkled skin around his eyes. A weariness inside them. For the first time since I’ve known him, my father actually appears to be mortal.

“Thank you for your trouble,” he tells the officers. “I’ll make sure that my son is properly punished.”

I follow him out the door. He stays three steps ahead of me. I’m so tempted to kill him. I could snap his neck with a single move. My brother’s murderer has his back to me. I’ve spent a year dreaming about a moment like this. Now it’s here, and I’m the one who’s surrendered.

My father’s car and driver are waiting at the curb. He opens a door to the backseat. “Get in,” he orders.

I slide inside. My father joins me. It feels like we’re observing a family tradition when we both keep our lips sealed. We’ve taken hundreds of silent car rides together, my father scrolling through his email while I watch the world pass by. But today his phone has stayed in his pocket and his eyes haven’t left the back of the driver’s seat. I don’t see any evidence, but I can tell he’s been drinking. The traffic is light and the man at the wheel is speeding. We’re approaching the Manhattan Bridge when I realize this may be my last chance to speak.

I lean toward my father and sniff the air. “You f—ing reek. Did you down a whole bottle of Scotch on the way to the airport?”

He doesn’t answer. But I can hear him sucking in air he doesn’t deserve, and it infuriates me.

“Must be hard living with yourself. Knowing you murdered your favorite son and all. Is that what’s got you drinking during the day?”

My father gazes out the window. “Jude’s death was an accident.”

“Tell that to someone who didn’t see his corpse. How many punches does it take to kill a sixteen-year-old kid, anyway?”

It used to be so easy to wind my dad up. When he sighs, I start to wonder if I’ve lost my touch. “I only hit Jude once. We were standing at the top of the stairs when it happened. The doctor said the fall broke his neck.”

“Yeah? And how much did you pay the doctor to say it? You know, I always thought you loved Jude.”

“I did. I . . . ” He stops without finishing the thought.

How dare he? How f—ing dare he lie to me now? He’ll suffer for that, I swear, even if the only weapon I can hurl at him is the truth. “Just as much as your dad loved you, right?” When he looks over at me, I make sure I’m smiling. “Mandel told me your dad loved you so much that you had to stab him to death.”

He stares at me until my smile is gone. “Lucian read my file, but he doesn’t know the real story. My father never drank before my mother abandoned us. I watched him fall apart. By the time I turned twelve, he was just a penniless drink. We needed money for food and rent, so I had to look for odd jobs. I thought my dad would be proud the first time I came home with a bag full of groceries. He knocked me down as soon as I stepped through the door. I couldn’t understand why he did it, and from that moment on, I despised him.”

“And then you grew up to be just like him. How ironic.”

He nods. He knows it’s true. “I tried to avoid it. That’s why I was thirty-five before I took my first sip of alcohol. But once I started, I found out why my father was never able to stop. I don’t even remember the first time I hit you. Or why I did it. That’s how much I’d been drinking. But when I woke up the next morning and saw what I’d done, I could tell that I’d lost you. And when your mother confronted me, I knew that I’d lost her too.”

“But you still had Jude, isn’t that all that mattered?”

“He was my last chance to get it right. And for a while I thought I had. Then I found out Jude hated me just as much as you do. I suppose he was just better at hiding it.”

Is that really what it was? When I was younger, I’d make Jude stand beside me in front of my mother’s closet mirror. We looked so much alike. I couldn’t see what the difference was—I couldn’t understand how my father could love one of us and loathe the other.

“Gee, Dad, that almost sounded sincere. If you weren’t the world’s biggest liar, I might actually believe a bit of your sob story. But do me a favor. Just kill me already—don’t bore me to death.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says. “I’m not going to kill you.” He sounds exhausted.

“Why not? You bet Mandel that I’d never graduate from the academy, and we all know what happens to the kids they ‘expel.’ You bet on my life, Dad. I have to die in order for you to win the wager. So why draw things out any longer? I give up. I’m letting you take the prize. Just do me a favor and don’t let Mandel get his hands on my corpse. The way I see it, you owe me that much.”

“You’re not allowed to give up,” my father explains patiently. “Not yet. When we formed our agreement, Lucian said he might need two semesters. As you know, there’s a great deal at stake here. I must honor our deal. If there were any other way to dispose of Lucian, I would have done it long ago.”

“But you can’t because he’s got the goods on you. What I don’t understand is why Mandel would even bother with a wager if he could have your ass sent to jail for Jude’s murder.”

“He’d like to, but I have half the alumni behind me. Neither of us would benefit from a civil war among the graduates. Lucian can’t afford to lose half the people who pay his bills. And I refuse to put the Mandel Academy at risk.”

“Seems like you’ve got your priorities in order. Nothing’s more important than protecting a school that kills its own students.”

When he spins around to face me, I finally get a glimpse of a father I recognize. The one who always looked at me like I was a hideous boil on the ass of humanity.

“What do you know about priorities?” he spits. “For your information, every student the academy has ever recruited would have died without it. They had no families. No friends. They would have overdosed or been murdered or thrown themselves off bridges. The academy helps as many as it can. It gives them a chance to survive. That’s what people like you and Lucian can’t understand. You were both born with everything. You don’t know what it’s like to have nothing.”

“I had everything? You mean money and a big house? Is that what you call everything?”

“I made sure you had food, shelter, and warm clothing!” The volume of his voice rises a little with each word. “That’s more than I ever had!”

“So you think the Mandel Academy rescued you?” I ask. “I thought only weak people had to be saved.”

I brace myself for my father’s response, but his anger seems to have withered away. “Beatrice gave me something to fight for. I was the one who saved myself.”

“Beatrice? Beatrice Mandel?” Lucian Mandel said his mother and my father were close. She was his mentor. He was her masterpiece.

“After my father died, Beatrice brought me to the academy. It was a different place in those days. They didn’t put chips in our arms—or give us drugs that made us easier to control. Beatrice never toyed with us or treated her students like lab rats. She respected us. We were told that some of us would make it—and some of us wouldn’t. It wasn’t a game to Beatrice. It was life or death.

“When she offered me a place at the Mandel Academy, Beatrice made it very clear that the only thing I’d be given at the school was a chance. If I wanted more, I’d have to fight for it. At first I didn’t think I’d ever have what it took. But then Beatrice pulled me aside and encouraged me to observe the other students. Some were strong. Some were weak. And the only difference between them was a choice. Fight or give in. And that choice was mine. All mine. No one else could make it for me—and no one could ever take it away. In the end, I chose to fight.”

“Lucian Mandel would just say that your gene had been activated.”

“And there are many things I might say about Lucian Mandel, but I wouldn’t want to jeopardize our deal. I will tell you that Lucian has never faced the kind of choice I described. If he had, he’d know his little theory is wrong. If a gene were responsible, the choice would be easy. It wasn’t. I was ranked last in my class, and the instructors were lobbying to have me expelled. Beatrice Mandel made me an offer. I would be given another semester to prove myself—if I disposed of the student ranked second to last. His name was Franklin, and he was my only friend. I don’t think I’d have survived the first few weeks at the academy if it hadn’t been for him.”

Franklin. Franklin. The name means something. Then I remember the night I got punched for watering his fichus with a decanter of Scotch. Before my dad left me for dead, he’d whispered a name. “You killed Frank?”

“I had to choose between my life and his. It was the hardest choice I’ve ever faced. I knew he’d die anyway. Even Frank realized he had no hope of graduating. I struggled with the decision for days, but once it was made, there was no going back.”

So Beatrice Mandel took away my dad’s last good thing and replaced it with something rotten. But he’s so convinced that the evil bitch saved him that he’ll do whatever it takes to protect her legacy.

For a moment, I almost pity the man sitting beside me. But then I realize my father was right. He was given the option to fight or give in. The choice was his and his alone. And he chose to kill Frank. No amount of Scotch will ever help him forget it, and there’s nothing he could say that would ever make me forgive him for the things he’s done since.

“Wow, you’ve really racked up quite a body count. Anyone else you’ve had to murder?”

The sneer is back. “Of course you wouldn’t understand, you pampered little shit. It was me—or Franklin. I saved myself. What would you have done in my place?”

“Something else.”

“I’ll tell you what you would have done. You would have died. You’ve never had any fight in you. Remember when you were ten years old and that kid at school stole your bike? I ordered you to get it back, and you tried to convince me that you’d loaned him the bike. Your little brother had to fight the boy for it.”

That’s the story he’s been telling himself all these years? I loaned my bike to one of the townie kids in my class when I heard that a boy had been kidnapped on his walk home from school. My mom picked me up every day at four. I didn’t really need a bike, so I let the kid borrow mine. I figured his trip home would be safer on two wheels than it would be on foot. And Jude didn’t fight the kid to get the bike back. He asked our mom for the money to buy the boy a new one. I’m tempted to set my father straight, but he’d only call me a liar. Still, I’d like to see him slap me the way he did when I was ten.

“You always were your mother’s son,” I hear him saying. “That’s why I accepted the wager Lucian proposed. Even though so much was at stake, I knew it would be a safe bet. Your mother did her best to keep you sheltered and soft. Someday soon, you’ll face a choice just like mine. When that time comes, you won’t have what it takes to survive. Lucian will lose the wager, and I will win control of the school. I wish none of this were necessary. I really do. But I can’t allow Lucian to destroy the Mandel Academy. Your death will save hundreds who deserve to live.”

“Hundreds of kids like you? You know, Dad, you may be right. I don’t think I’ll be able to fight like you did. But just so you know, if Jude had been in your shoes thirty years ago, he wouldn’t have killed his friend either.”

My dad’s glare softens until his eyes don’t seem to be focused on me anymore. “Probably not,” he finally concedes. “But I think you’ll agree that Jude’s ‘something else’ would have been spectacular.”

“Mine will be too. I promise you that.”

My father leans forward and raps on the dark glass barrier between the driver and us. The car slows down and pulls to the curb. I look out the window. We’re already downtown.

“There’s something I need to ask you before I go,” my father announces. I hear something new in his voice. If I didn’t know better I’d call it concern. “I need you to answer me honestly. Have they put you on any medication?”

That wasn’t the kind of question I was expecting. “What? You mean the doctors at school?” I ask, and my dad nods. “No.”

“If they try to, don’t take it. And don’t mention any of this to Lucian. I’ve told you much more than I should have.” My father gets out of the car, but he doesn’t shut the door. He pauses, then turns and pokes his head back into the vehicle. “Consider yourself lucky. You still have a chance. Let’s see what you do with it.” Then he slams the door.

The handle won’t open my door. I can’t find a way to unlock it. I bang on the barrier between the driver and me. My fists can’t crack it. The engine starts.

I sit back and wonder what my father meant. I still haven’t figured it out when the car pulls up outside the Mandel Academy.