Kat gave him a dagger stare. “I’m about to take out my gun and jam it in your mouth. What the hell is going on, Brandon?”
“Just tell me one thing first.” He pointed to the picture in her hand. “You know him, right?”
Her eyes dropped back to the picture. “I did.”
“So who is he?”
“An old boyfriend,” she said softly.
“Yeah, I got that. I mean—”
“What do you mean, you got that?” She looked at him. Something crossed his face. How had he found her? How would he know that Jeff was her old boyfriend? How would . . .
The answer suddenly became obvious. “Did you hack into a computer or something?”
She could see by the look on his face that she had hit pay dirt. It made sense now. Brandon didn’t want to come to a cop admitting he had broken the law. So he came up with this story about hearing that she was a good detective.
“It’s okay, Brandon. I don’t care about any of that.”
“You don’t?”
Kat shook her head. “Just tell me what’s going on, okay?”
“You promise it’s just between us?”
“I promise.”
He took a deep breath, let it out. His eyes were filling up with tears. “At UConn, I’m a computer science major. My friends and me. We’re good with programming and designing, that kind of stuff. So it wasn’t hard. I mean, it’s just a dating website. The sites with the serious firewalls and security? They deal with higher-ticket items. Only thing you can get off a dating site is maybe credit card info. So that they keep secure. The rest of the site? Not so much.”
“You hacked into YouAreJustMyType.com?”
Brandon nodded. “Like I said, not the financial stuff. That would take forever. But the other pages, well, it took us maybe two hours to get it. The files keep records of everything—who you click on, who you communicate with, what times, who you message. Even instant messages. The website keeps logs on all that.”
Kat saw it now. “And you saw mine with Jeff.”
“Yeah.”
“And that’s how you knew my name. From our instant messages.”
He stayed silent. But it all made sense to her now. She handed him back the photograph.
“You should go home, Brandon.”
“What?”
“Jeff’s a good guy. Or at least, he was. They found each other. Your mom is a widow. He’s a widower. Maybe it’s real. Maybe they’re in love. Either way, your mother is a grown woman. You shouldn’t go spying on her.”
“I wasn’t spying on her,” he said, defensive now. “I mean, not at first. But when she didn’t call me—”
“She’s away with a man. That’s why she didn’t call you. Grow up.”
“But he doesn’t love her.”
“How do you know?”
“He called himself Jack. Why did he do that if his name is Jeff?”
“Lots of people use aliases online. That doesn’t mean anything.”
“And he talked to a lot of other women.”
“So? That’s the point of the site. You talk to a lot of potential partners. You’re trying to find a needle in a haystack.”
Jeff talked, she thought, to me even. Of course, he didn’t have the balls to tell her he had already found someone new. No, instead he gave her that crock about being protective and needing a fresh start. Meanwhile, he had already hooked up with another woman.
Why not just say so?
“Look,” Brandon said, “I just need to know his real name and address. That’s all.”
“I can’t help you, kid.”
“Why not?”
“Because this isn’t my business.” She shook her head and added, “Man, you have no idea how much this isn’t my business.”
Her cell phone buzzed. She checked the message and saw it was from Stagger:
Bethesda fountain. Ten minutes.
Kat rose from the bench. “I gotta go.”
“Where?”
“Also not your business. This is over, Brandon. Go home.”
“Just tell me his name and address, okay? I mean, what’s the harm? Just his name.”
Part of her thought that telling him was a mistake. Part of her was still a little hurt that he had pushed her aside. What the hell. The kid did have a right to know who his mom was shtupping, didn’t he?
“Jeff Raynes,” she said, spelling it with the y for him. “And I don’t have a clue or a care where he lives.”
• • •
Bethesda Fountain was the heartbeat of Central Park. The towering angel statue crowning the fountain holds lilies in one hand while blessing the water in front of her with the other. Her stone face is serene to the point of boredom. The water she eternally blesses is called simply the Lake. Kat always liked that name. The Lake. Nothing fancy. Call it what it is.
Beneath the angel were four cherubs representing Temperance, Purity, Health, and Peace. The fountain had been there since 1873. In the sixties, hippies occupied it day and night. The first scene in Godspell was filmed there. So was a key scene in Hair. In the seventies, Bethesda Terrace became the focal point of drug trafficking and prostitution. Kat’s father had told her that even cops were scared of the terrace back in those days. It was hard to imagine now, especially on a summer day like this, that the place was ever anything but paradise.
Stagger sat on a bench overlooking the Lake. Tourists speaking every language imaginable floated by in boats, struggling with the oars before giving up and letting the nearly nonexistent current take them. On the right, a large swarm had gathered for the street performers (or were they park performers?) called the Afrobats. The Afrobats were black teens who did a show combining acrobatics, dancing, and comedy. Another street performer carried a sign that read: $1 A JOKE. LAUGHTER GUARANTEED. People statues—that is, people who stood still and pretended they were statues and posed for pictures with tourists; who was the first person to do this?—dotted the landing. There was a guy who looked like your favorite uncle enthusiastically playing the ukulele, and another guy wearing a ratty bathrobe pretending to be a Hogwarts wizard.
The black baseball cap on Stagger’s head made him look like a little boy. His gaze skimmed along the waterway like a flat stone. It was, in many ways, a typical Manhattan scene—you are surrounded and yet you find solace; you find isolation in the tornado of people. Stagger stared out at the water, looking bewildered, and Kat wasn’t sure what she felt.