Little Black Bait

With one spider-like leg already out the window and the other ready to launch herself from the hotel bed, Estie pushed with haste and braced for the fall, as she flung her body into the warm summer’s night.

She landed in the dewy grass with a thud. She wore a plain black t-shirt and fitted black basketball shorts, a decisively discreet uniform that gracefully hid the perils of her night. Her wispy, sunset-gold curls, on the other hand, grew increasingly restless in the thick humidity, like unruly children eager for affirmation. In her arms, she held closely the tattered black book. Finally, she thought, tonight will be the night it all makes sense. She would’ve opened it right then and there if it weren’t for the fact that she was already running late thanks to excess traffic on her cab ride in—and for the eerie sense that her father and his business partners somehow knew what she was up to.

Don’t be paranoid, she told herself. She quickly fastened her wilting ponytail and processed the reality that her own hotel was about a 10-minute run by foot. In the weeks leading up to this “shopping trip” to Chicago, as she’d told her family, the danger she knew awaited her had seemed trivial compared to the rush of holding the long-awaited truth in her hands—until now. These were no small fish Estie had decided to mess with, and this realization hit her in her gut, as she stood alone beneath the hazy moonlight of the city to face the last obstacle of her journey.

Estie had done as much as she could to prepare for this. A few years ago, when she first noticed that her dad’s website continued to post after he died, she figured it must be a fluke, that somehow a different entity had been accidentally assigned to BCConsulting.com upon his passing. Or maybe, she told herself, he had sold it to someone not long before he died. After all, the posts were now in Dutch, her dad’s brand was removed from the site, and the new owner had a username of “Erik_EDO,” no longer BobCarlton1970. But little did Estie know that a bit of tech savvy and some deep-diving into her dad’s website history would open her eyes to a world she never thought she could be connected to—including the story of the little black book.

In fact, if anything about her dad’s life was intriguing to her, it was that, despite leveraging his training in computer programming for the US Army and his connections to the Chicago mob to abandon his family for money, her dad still cherished a handwritten, childhood diary, and continued to write in it as an adult. Estie smiled at the memory of her dad instilling in her his love for words.

“Movies and TV shows are their own art form, but reading is magic,” her dad told her, her 8-year-old imagination illuminated with possibility.

“Why, daddy?”

He thought for a second, as he always did when Estie probed him about life. He had black curly hair that he kept short and professional, paper-white skin, and a long, crooked nose that looked just like hers. Estie could see in his eyes that he wanted to get this right.

“When you read something, it takes your mind deeper than anything else you consume. And when you write,” he explained, “you have the power to change someone’s mind...if what you have to say is powerful enough to change their hearts.

“And you, Esther the Brave?”

She leaned in.

“You are an incredible writer.”

Estie blushed, her heart full. She knew her dad was the true writer, both prolific and also the winner of countless writing contests throughout the years. But she clung tightly to his words, both then and now, his black notebook seeming to gaze back from her tight grasp with eyes full of promise. She needed to get back to her hotel room.

Though enchanted, Estie did not arrive here to pursue her father’s diary unprepared. She knew it was technically wrong to read (and, she supposed, to steal) her dad’s personal journal, but she deserved answers, and she was finally ready to search. She spent months scouring the contacts of Erik den Ouden, and from there researching the habits of his business partners in order to pinpoint their coming and going on this heavy July night. She had thoroughly studied this area of the city and had planned her potential escape routes. She did wish she could have told someone what she was truly doing on her weekend away, maybe even to ask for help. But she couldn’t in good conscience jeopardize anyone else in the danger posed by her father’s business partners—and perhaps, she feared, even by her father himself. The few individuals who knew her father’s story had little desire in finding the closure Estie longer for—quite the opposite actually. Regardless, now that she was running behind schedule with her father and his partners set to arrive back at any moment, she couldn’t risk catching a cab on the busy roads nearby.

Estie knew that behind the hotel was a steep hill that, upon scaling, would lead to a few blocks of business buildings that would surely be empty at this hour. From there, her hotel would be just 2 blocks north.

She quickly surveyed the area to be sure she was still alone, then darted for the hill, careful to stay low and behind a line of bushes that blocked the view from the hotel windows. She flicked on a small red pocket flashlight so as not to drain her phone battery, and began her upward trek.

She’d made it a couple yards up the large hill when she thought she heard the distinct crunch of brush that can only be produced by the willful footstep of a fellow human. She quickly flashed her light behind her, then towards the bushes to her left, and then towards the expanse of hill to her right. Nothing. Estie waited a couple minutes more, then continued to ascend.

With every passing second, Estie fought to fend off fatigue and the growing fear of her father. This fear wasn’t new, only amplified now by proximity. It was a fear that had silently permeated both her existence and that of her family since the confirmation that he was, indeed, still alive. Not long ago, Estie had mentioned to her mother that there was evidence her dad was still keeping the same journal he had kept since he was a child.

“You mean that little black thing?” Her mom responded.

“The one he always kept at the bottom of his suitcase.” Estie told her, nodding. “Maybe he thought no one ever noticed, since he posted a picture on Instagram. It’s the only thing he’s ever posted from his old life.”

At that time, it had been a couple years since Estie had first showed her mom pictures of her dad living a new life in Europe, alive and well, albeit refreshed with a hefty amount of plastic surgery—including a brand new, straight nose. It was the day when Estie finally decided to look into just who “Erik_EDO” really was. After locating his social media accounts, it didn't take long to piece together the chapters of her past that for so long had seemed mysteriously fragmented.

When her mother, Kendra, first set eyes on photos of the husband she’d tried so hard to convince herself was dead, her rosy pink cheeks turned as pale as Estie’s. Estie later came to find out that her mom and grandparents had originally questioned a number of circumstances surrounding her father’s death. From his persistent threats to “just disappear,” to the strange difficulty the funeral home had with fitting “her dad” into his burial clothes and casket, to the odd timing of a receipt for wine that her dad had purchased a few hours after his official time of death, there had long been suspicion of foul play.

But the medical examiner became defensive when Kendra had questioned him about Bob’s time of death, and she feared that any evidence of unsavory events could be manipulated to frame her if she questioned things too much. So when Estie’s investigation surfaced the truth, Kendra was filled with deep anger, and a kind of sorrowful validation. They’d been having marriage troubles for years. And, yes, her husband had been learning German, but he also regularly travelled internationally for the military. Sure, her husband often carried large amounts of cash in his car and would sometimes disappear for days on end while refusing to give any sort of explanation, but Kendra had always chalked it up to his gambling problem. Now, however, the painful instinct that something darker was brewing could no longer be relegated to the back of her mind. Yet, with time, Kendra and her parents came to terms with Bob’s crime, all of them pleading with Estie to “just leave him there,” citing a fear of what he may be capable of.

Kendra barely considered Estie’s words before sharply reminding her, “If he was able to just desert his family without a second thought, do you really think he’s writing about you in his diary? Don’t idolize him.”

Estie stopped abruptly. She felt the tension of the memories of her father pull her to the ground. She sat right where she was, in the dark shelter of the bushes, not far from the top of the hill. Estie shifted the beam of her flashlight from the unbeaten path before her to the scarred leather of the little black book.

Maybe he had a good reason for doing what he did. She gripped her precious plunderage with wet palms, her heart pulsating impatiently against its cage. God, please tell me he had a good reason.

She took a deep breath and opened the cover of the book, allowing a thick envelope to fall from its clutch to the dirt beneath her. Her mouth dry, she swallowed and glanced at the diary first. On the first page, there appeared to be a sentence that had been whited out, perhaps the original declaration of the journal’s ownership as Bob Carlton.

Estie almost turned to the next page, but wondered what sacred souvenir of life her dad was keeping tucked away in a package in his diary. She retrieved the envelope from the ground and held its Manila skin in her fingers. Its contents felt to Estie like a lifetime of handwritten letters, or maybe a large collection of artwork created by her and her brothers when they were children. She slowly unfolded the envelope’s triangular lip and promptly felt the blood dissipate from her limbs.

Inside the envelope were hundreds upon hundreds of $100 bills, crisp and neatly secured in various piles with rubber bands.

Estie’s stomach tightened with horror. What is this for? What have I done?

Of course her dad’s business partners were dangerous, but she had justified her mission using her right to answers, and maybe also a deep longing to connect with her estranged father. After all, it was only a journal. Stealing $20,000 was never part of the plan.

Estie closed her eyes and hung her head. She was no longer sure what the end of this journey would look like, but she quickly realized it was now far from over.

She heard the treading of brush for a second time as her breath abandoned her, frozen by the shock of a voice she hadn’t heard in more than a decade.

“You always were a smart one, Esther.”

Her father stood before her with an uncanny composure, his ghostly skin glowing in the yellow of her flashlight. She couldn’t be sure, but through the shadow of the trees he appeared to be smiling.

“This,” his words shook her soul, “could be the start of something marvelous.”