The plan

Rémy saw the rather large package stuck halfway into the mailbox. He tried to extract it, but the outer brown paper was ripped. He pressed the contents slightly and felt rigidity. He noticed there was no return address. Only his name and address, written by hand. By hand? That’s odd, he thought, before realizing that in fact, he knew the handwriting.

“Benny? What the…”

He set the package on the kitchen table and took out his cellphone. He dialed Benny’s number and waited.

“Don’t call me, dude”, he heard Benny’s voice after a few rings.

“What the actual…?” tried Rémy, but Benny cut him short.

“Dude, you’ve got the package, I assume?”

“Yes…?”

“Well…”

“Well… what, Benny?”

“Did you open it?”

“I… not yet. I wanted to call you first to… ask you, I guess…”

“Don’t ask nothing, dude, just open it and… read, I guess.”

Benny hung up abruptly. What is happening? Rémy thought. He tore up the brown paper of the package and jumped, startled. A pile of money, attached with rubber bands to a black notebook, fell on the table. He leafed the money, then he leafed the notebook.

“What in the name of…”, he started, but stopped. He freed the money and counted it. Twenty thousand dollars. At the end of the pile, a piece of paper, neatly folded, read:

'Now it’s your turn. You are the last one. Be aware, your job is the most sacred: you must guard the secrets of four of your friends or free a fifth one. The payment is $20,000. Don’t blow this one. '

“What?”, Rémy muttered. “What the hell does this mean?”

He went to the fireplace and poked the logs to revive the fire. He took the black notebook. The leathery covers were slightly curved on the outside and he could see the pink pages inside. He leafed the notebook again and noticed the writing. He went to his desk and put his glasses on. The first page read:

'Intimate diary.'

Underneath, a list of names:

1. Lisa …………… 3

2. Craig …………. 9

3. Danny ………. 15

4. Benny ………… 29

Rémy turned the first page. On the next one he read:

'Lisa. An intimate diary with a twist.'

He took a biscuit from the box he always kept on the desk and set the notebook aside. He took the pile of money and leafed it. Twenty thousand, he thought.

“That would get me”, he said out loud, “a new chair, a new monitor, and… Hell, it’ll get me a new laptop. Or a computer. Or both! Ha-ha!” he laughed. “Twenty thousand!”, he yelled laughing, then he turned to the notebook. Shoving the money in his pocket, he picked the notebook from the desk and read:

'The friends that know and trust me, think I am this angel walking on Earth.'

Rémy smiled, took a bite from the biscuit and said:

“Who… The friends who know me, not that know me. When will you learn, Lisa?”

Then he continued reading.

'They think that nothing I do is remotely bad or ugly. Hence, what I’m about to write might come as a serious shock to the reader. '

Rémy’s smile disappeared. He frowned slightly, thinking: I actually know a few bad things you did, Lisa. Then he read some more:

'Of course, I’m not alone in this. I had... help? Or something. But...

I guess I should start with the beginning. It involves.... well, it involves everyone who helped me, and it involves our best friend and also, what we thought at the time to be his... dealer. '

Rémy straightened himself in the chair. Dealer? he thought. What is she talking about? He felt a chill enveloping him. Familiar chords were struck by these words. Suddenly he was afraid to read anymore. Hands trembling, he set the notebook aside and got up. What did you do? he asked Lisa in his mind. What did she do? What did THEY do? He turned back to the desk and grabbed the notebook.

'The 5 of us were always good friends, Lisa wrote. And we were together because if him. Because of Rémy. This is why we considered him our best friend. Not only the best of friends, but the best of US. So, of course it irritated us when he began hanging out with that... I guess I should call him by his name now, Robin.'

Rémy lifted his eyes from the notebook. With a hand he kept it open on the page he was reading, while with the other he took out a cigarette and lit it. Then he turned his attention back to the notebook.

'We tried. We tried to integrate Robin, but it didn’t work. He was beautiful and arrogant, and it only took him one afternoon to seize Rémy. On Friday the 12th, in April, they discussed for two hours, while Rémy waited for us to come around, and that was that. He was gone. Naturally, we assumed he would be one of us, right? I mean, this is how Rémy had recruited all of us. But Robin proved to be extremely resilient to our charms. So...

Anyway, one late October afternoon, after we discussed our options, we decided to separate them. We needed our Rémy back, right? Three things were clear:

1. We needed to make Robin look real bad. Rémy had to look at him like he was trash.'

“No, Lisa, you didn’t. What the hell did you think you were doing?” Rémy said out loud.

'2. We had to do it so permanently, that he wouldn’t have the guts, or be able to come back. And...'

“No, no, please…” Rémy murmured.

'3. We had to keep ourselves out of it. No one could know we were involved.

But we were, weren’t we?'

Rémy slammed the notebook on the desk and said in a low voice: “You shouldn’t have Lisa, you shouldn’t have.”

He dragged from his cigarette.

“What?” he asked the notebook. “What did you do?”

He started pacing up and down his room, his anxiety growing with each step he took. When he finished the cigarette, he took out another one, lit it and inhaled deeply.

“Damn!” he said and sat down again. He continued reading:

'So... we did what we had to do. It was Benny who devised the plan. And I don’t really know much, to be honest. I know my part: I was the one who called Rémy.'

“Benny…” Rémy whispered. He remembered Lisa’s call. Her voice was hasty. She was panting like she’d been running.

“Rémy? Listen... you won’t like it, but... I think they've got him. Robin, I mean.. He’s... erm, Rémy, he’s a pedo...”

Rémy remembered the utter shock he felt then. How could this be? he kept asking himself.

He leafed through the pages. He turned to page 9 and read:

'Craig. A confession.'

Skipping the first two or three paragraphs, Rémy read:

'My part in Benny’s plan was this: I had to be the one to discover everything. This is how it played out: I went to the restaurant... I’m not sure who set up the meeting, but I went there, as settled. I had the modem with me. Honestly, to this day I have no clue where the damn thing came from – well, I’m lying, of course; I know Daniel built it, but I don’t know how it worked. All I know is I turned it on, I stuck it with duct tape under the table and I waited for Robin. When he came, I talked him into showing me something on his phone. From there it was a simple accidental pressing of an icon, and voilà. Guilty as charged. Pictures of naked little boys and naked little girls appeared on his screen. I jumped, scared – I only played scared, of course – and I called the police. The rest... is history.

That’s my confession. Although... There’s more. A context for the entire situation is missing.'

Rémy extinguished the cigarette and set the notebook down. He lit another one and dragged in.

“Goddamn!” he said, barely audible. “How’s life playing tricks on everyone…”

He leafed through the notebook until he came to the third confession.

'Danny. My confession.

I was, like everyone else, angry. Robin had stolen our Rémy. We wanted him back, so, I did my part. It’s no secret I’m an IT wizard. I can hack anything, be it phone, laptop, or network. For this plan, all I needed was an app – I built it in just a few hours – and some pictures. I could use some of mine, but they’re not so incriminating. We needed really illegal stuff. So, I hacked a few computers. What’s interesting is that the pedophiles keep their materials handy and they actually make their needs public. It’s so easy to get a hold of their stuff... I gathered all the material I needed in under an hour. After that, it was child's play. All I had to do was load the app on a relay – a small raspberry pi – and have someone get it close to Robin’s phone. Craig was the one to deliver. And he was majestic.

This is how I built the app: I started with...'

Rémy closed his eyes and put the notebook on the desk.

“The crazy bustards!” he whispered.

He lit another cigarette and sipped from his coffee cup.

“Damn!” he said and picked up the notebook. He leafed through the pages until he saw Benny's name.

'It’s all about planning. I realized, and I was the first one to do so, that Rémy’s in trouble. No one agreed with me at first but… I mean it wasn’t really difficult, was it? He was, indeed, happy but forcefully so. He displayed his usual joyfulness, but it was rather stiff and without reason or purpose. He was as energetical as he could ever be, but just a tiny bit too much so. It was obvious: he needed our help. And so, I devised The Plan. '

“I had no idea I was so easily read”, Rémy mused. “Like a damn open book. Just lay your eyes upon me, and you know everything. At least, that’s true if you’re Benny.”

'It was an easy enough plan, provided each and every one of us played their part perfectly. My part of the plan, I mean beside being the mastermind behind it, was to set the meeting between Robin and Craig. Yeah, I know, it doesn’t seem much, but knowing Robin… '

Rémy sighed and crushed the cigarette butt in the ashtray.

“What did you do, guys?” he asked the notebook.

A question that nagged at him this whole time made came into focus: who was it that sent the notebook. And how had anyone convinced his four friends to write their confessions in it anyway? He leafed through the pages and stopped at the last one, where he saw a paragraph, not written by hand, but typed:

'You now have the money, it read. You could save your friend by hiring a lawyer and using the confessions in this notebook, but that would mean betraying your other four friends. Or use the money for whatever you want and leave your friend to rot in jail for a very long time. You chose. '

He read the last words again and smiled.

“Save my friend?” Rémy said. “That would imply that Robin was my friend. And he wasn’t. In fact, Benny saw it truthfully: I was in serious trouble. I was being blackmailed…”

He threw the notebook in the fire, took out his phone and wrote a text:

'Even if you didn’t know it at the time, you did me a great service. I want to thank you. We should meet. After all, we have $20,000 to spend. Rémy'

He sent it to all of his four friends and waited for the replies. Only one came back.

From: Unknown

'It’s not that hard to create another notebook', it read.