“She needs to be admitted,” the lady replies without even glancing at me.
“What were you doing in the building at night?” I ask the arsonist over the paramedic’s shoulders.
“All questions can be asked after we help her.” She pushes me out of the way with her shoulder. “She just inhaled a lot of smoke. Inyourbuilding.”
For a second, I feel guilt. The woman, Mae, has been hurt, and all I’m thinking about is punishing her. I’ll check on her in the hospital and make sure she’s taken care of. We can talk about anything else later.
When the paramedic rolls her out the door, mine and Mae’s eyes meet across the room. She subtly lifts her handand shows me her middle finger with a giant smirk on her evil face.
That little shit!
I’m tempted to run after them and fight her away from the paramedics just so I can have her for myself to punish. Not sure how, but I’m tempted.
“We can follow them to the hospital and see what we can do tonight about getting her statement?” the chief offers.
I look around at the disarray of the place. Everything is covered in soot. The air is hard to breathe, and they’ve already put out the flames. She’s been here, all by herself. Probably scared out of her mind. Maybe really physically hurt.
The statement can wait until tomorrow.
When tomorrow comes, she’s out of the hospital. I know because I’m standing right here, at the reception desk, asking to see her. When they refuse, shoving the privacy policy into my face, I call for a favor and ask the police chief to come by. When he flashes his badge, the nurses turn more helpful but still not very willing.
Sending me an evil stare, they click the keyboard on their computer and print out the paper with the information they have on her.
Which is nothing. She didn’t leave her real phone number. Or an address. Or even a real name. And the hospital went along with it.
I contacted Jerome to see if her employer was more useful, but there, too, her number and address had changed—she was sleeping in my building after all.
The name he had is apparently a fake one too. It matches the one she used on her hospital papers. A quick search toldme it’s a name of a game character or a deer. But I already knew that before I even typed ‘Mae Doe’into the search bar.
Which brings me to the question of how Jerome employed her in the first place. Looks like the man was more incompetent than I had imagined.
I’m pissed. I want to find her. I have questions.
The coffee shop obviously has to close down, along with the whole building, until further notice. This is what the city tells me when three inspectors arrive the next morning.
I call builders to come and check the place. Per their reports, there’s no damage to the structure at all. The kitchen of the coffee shop was the only place that suffered from the actual fire, and the rest of the area mildly flooded due to the attempts to stop the fire from spreading. At first look, I thought I’d have to gut the whole thing. At closer inspection, it needs a good cleaning and the kitchen remodeled. Plus, some floor damage from the water. That’s about it.
It takes me only two days to revamp the whole thing and get it ready for reopening. The builder signs off on it, deeming it safe.
But the city has other plans. They shut me even further down during the following inspections. On day three, a whole artillery of five inspectors comes in and finds multiple nonexistent violations that wouldn’t shut down a whole building in fucking Manhattan otherwise.
But I know these are no ordinary inspectors. Their pockets are being filled by the board of my company. The company my brother and I should have inherited. I wonder if Lebovski has something to do with this and make a mental note to check which department exactly his brother works at.
Every passing day costs me hundreds of thousands of dollars. Which makes the board happy because it becomes easier and easier to take my company from me. Being a CEOof a real estate developing company and having one of my buildings ‘deemed unsafe’ taints the whole reputation. I already have a few people pulling away from deals and some companies requesting to break their leases early.
And she was there to start it all. The pink-haired woman I still know nothing about. Mae. I’ve been too focused on rebuilding the place to look for her. But I’ll change my focus after the building is back on track.
After knocking on a few doors with no results and bribing people with no luck, I’m left with the last resort. The thing I didn’t want to do the most. It’s time to make the fucking deal.
I pick up the phone and call Martin.
“Yes, Mr. King?”he replies on the first ring as usual.
“Patch me to Wrong on the phone.”
A pause.“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I grit out.
