Chapter 101: Another Stalker?
Getting Christie into summer camp had taken three days.
The problem wasn't the camp itself — Andrew had found a well-reviewed program through the parks department, the kind that ran out of a proper facility upstate and had been operating since the seventies. The problem was the registration desk, and the specific look the woman behind it had given Andrew when he'd shown up without a parent, without a legal guardian designation, and without anything that established a formal relationship between himself and the seventeen-year-old standing beside him.
The look said: explain this.
Andrew had tried. The explanation was complicated and did not improve with elaboration.
He called Charlie.
Charlie Harper had become, over the preceding months, a regular feature of Andrew's late evenings in the specific way of people who called at eleven and talked until one. The calls were variable in content — sometimes Charlie was coherent and genuinely interesting, full of music industry observations and the particular insider knowledge of someone who'd been operating at the margins of that world for two decades. Sometimes Charlie was three drinks deep and wanted to talk about Evan.
He did that a lot, actually. Talked about Evan — the early years, the Nashville period, the specific quality of Evan's talent before the drinking had softened its edges. Andrew listened to these conversations with the patience of someone who understood that the person on the other end needed to say the things out loud and that listening was the useful contribution.
Occasionally Charlie called to ask if Andrew remembered what he'd said about his keys, or his jacket, or a specific conversation from the previous Thursday, attempting to reconstruct through Andrew's memory the portions of his own evenings that had been lost to the fourth drink.
Their relationship was, accounting for all of this, genuinely decent.
Charlie showed up at the summer camp registration office the next morning with a button-down shirt, a recent haircut, and the easy social confidence of someone who had been in rooms that required social confidence for thirty years. He charmed the registration woman in approximately eight minutes, signed the relevant forms as Christie's emergency contact — technically accurate, practically sufficient — and had the whole thing processed before Andrew had finished his coffee.
In the parking lot afterward he looked at Andrew and said, "You need to get your paperwork situation sorted."
"I know," Andrew said.
"I'm not going to be available every time you need an adult signature."
"You were available today."
"Today I had nothing going on." Charlie put on his sunglasses. "Next time call ahead."
He drove away in a car that was slightly too nice for the occasion.
Christie watched him go. "He's your father's friend?"
"Yes," Andrew said.
"He smells like bourbon."
"It was ten in the morning," Andrew said. "That's impressive, actually."
Christie picked up her bag, unimpressed by this framing, and went to find her cabin.
Andrew watched her go with the specific feeling he got around Christie — not parental, exactly, but adjacent to it. Something responsible.
He'd thought about it, in the abstract way he thought about things that had long-term implications. Formal adoption, legal guardianship, some arrangement that would make the registration-desk situations easier and more permanent.
He'd decided against it, at least for now. The relationship they'd built worked because it was balanced — Christie contributed, Andrew contributed, neither of them owed the other in a way that created obligation or resentment. Formalizing it would shift the geometry. He'd become responsible in ways that went beyond what he currently was, and Christie would become dependent in ways that conflicted with the independence she was actively building.
She was almost eighteen. Smart, increasingly self-sufficient, getting clearer about who she was. The best thing he could do for her was not change what was working.
He drove back to the city and thought about what he was going to do with a summer that had, for the first time in a year, some actual space in it.
The visit to Aldrich's house in Brooklyn Heights was the first thing he'd scheduled.
Aldrich kept a townhouse on Pierrepont Street — the kind of property that had been in the same hands long enough that it didn't look like money, just permanence. The neighborhood was quiet, residential, the sort of block where you'd walk past and not think anything particular was happening inside any of the buildings.
Andrew had been here three times. The ritual was always the same: coffee in the front sitting room, Aldrich asking questions that were interesting enough that Andrew answered them more fully than he'd intended, the specific quality of a conversation with someone who had been paying attention to the world for sixty years and had developed strong views about what he'd observed.
He'd come to say thank you. The Garrett situation — the recognition, the deference, the way the tank-top man's debt had been quietly absorbed into the general atmosphere of this is not a situation we're pursuing — that had happened because of Aldrich's name, and Aldrich's name meant something because of Aldrich. Acknowledging that directly was the right thing to do.
They'd been sitting for perhaps ten minutes — coffee, pleasantries, Andrew working toward the point — when one of Aldrich's men came into the room and said something quietly near his ear.
"One moment," Aldrich said. He stood, unhurried, and went into the corridor.
Andrew sat and looked at the room. Bookshelves, actual books on them and clearly read. A framed photograph on the mantel — Aldrich younger, somewhere coastal, a woman beside him. The specific decor of someone who had furnished a room to live in rather than to be seen living in.
Aldrich appeared in the corridor doorway.
"Andrew. Come here."
The yard behind the townhouse was a proper garden — mature trees, a stone path, the kind of space that required someone to tend it regularly. In the center of the path, face-down on the flagstones, was a man in a short-sleeved shirt being held efficiently in place by one of Aldrich's people.
"My man picked him up two blocks from here," Aldrich said. "He's been following you since you got off the subway."
Andrew looked at the man on the ground.
The man on the ground turned his head as far as the grip on his neck allowed.
Andrew recognized him.
"Officer Ned," he said.
Ned Lavie. He'd seen him twice before — once dropping Lola off for the SAT, once briefly in passing. Mid-forties, the bearing of someone who'd been law enforcement long enough that it had become structural. Currently pressed into Aldrich's garden path with his hands behind his back, looking more annoyed than alarmed, which said something about his composure.
"You know him?" Aldrich said.
"He's connected to someone I know," Andrew said.
One of Aldrich's men was holding a small notebook and a manila envelope — taken from Ned during the search. He held the notebook up. "He's a cop. Off-duty. He's also got notes — looks like background research. Your address, your work history, your associates."
Andrew looked at the notebook, then at Ned.
"Why?" Andrew said.
Ned's response was limited by his current position. "Could someone help me up? This is hard on my neck."
Andrew looked at Aldrich. Aldrich deferred to Andrew with a slight gesture — your call.
"Let him stand," Andrew said.
Aldrich's man released the hold and stepped back, though he stayed close.
Ned stood, straightened his shirt, and rolled his shoulders. He looked at Andrew with the specific directness of someone who'd decided that dignity was the only remaining asset worth protecting.
"My nephew," Ned said. "He's seeing someone. He thought you might be — a problem. In relation to her."
Andrew processed this. "Your nephew."
"He came to me concerned. I looked into it." Ned's tone was matter-of-fact — not apologetic, not aggressive, just explaining. "I had some prior awareness of your name from working with Lola on a case. That made you easier to background."
"So you investigated me because your nephew's girlfriend knows me."
"Because my nephew was worried. I was establishing whether the worry was founded."
"And?"
Ned was quiet for a moment. "It isn't," he said. "You're unusual, but you're not a threat."
Andrew looked at him steadily. "Officer Ned. You ran an unauthorized investigation on a private citizen based on your nephew's feelings about his girlfriend's social circle. You've been following me. You were found doing this on the property of—" He paused, because naming Aldrich's full context in Aldrich's own garden felt unnecessary. "—a private residence where you had no business being."
"I understand that," Ned said.
"Do you?"
Ned met his eyes. "Yes."
"Good." Andrew looked at the notebook and the envelope in Aldrich's man's hands. "Is that everything?"
"Everything I collected," Ned said. "I'm not interested in continuing this."
Andrew took the notebook and envelope. He didn't look through them — not here, not in front of Ned.
"You should know," Andrew said, "that New York is actively developing its stalking statutes. California enacted theirs in 1990. There's federal legislation being drafted. What you did today would, in a few years, be straightforwardly criminal even with a badge." He held Ned's gaze. "I'm noting that for the record. My record."
Ned received this without flinching.
"Am I free to go?" he said.
Andrew stepped aside.
Ned walked back through the garden, through the side gate, and down the street. His gait was even and unhurried — the walk of someone who had been in uncomfortable situations before and knew how to leave them without running.
Aldrich watched him go.
"A cop," he said, with the tone of someone noting an irony.
"Off-duty," Andrew said. "Acting on family feeling."
"Still."
"Yes," Andrew said. "Still."
He looked at the notebook in his hand.
"Come inside," Aldrich said. "There's more coffee."
They sat back in the front room. Andrew drank his coffee and thought about the nephew — he'd have to work out who that was, which of the people in his orbit had an uncle who was a cop and a lawyer and the specific combination of protective and overreaching that had produced this afternoon.
The list of candidates was shorter than it might have been.
He'd think about it later.
"Thank you," Andrew said, which was what he'd come to say. "For Garrett recognizing your name. That situation could have been more complicated."
Aldrich waved it off in the way of someone for whom the favor had been small. "You're interesting company," he said. "Interesting company is worth maintaining."
Andrew looked at the bookshelves.
"I'm starting school in the fall," he said.
"Good," Aldrich said, with the tone of someone who had opinions about education and was not going to volunteer them unprompted.
"I'll be less available," Andrew said.
"You'll be appropriately available," Aldrich said. "That's different from less."
Andrew finished his coffee and thought about what the fall was going to look like — school, the music, the food truck winding down, the particular shape of a life that was changing from what it had been into what he'd been building toward.
He was ready for it.
He was also going to find out which of his friends had an uncle named Ned Lavie who thought protecting family meant following people into Brooklyn Heights.
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