The Little Black Book

I always had a distrust of food carts. Manhattanites in general tend to be germaphobic, but I inherited a compulsive tendency from my mother to sanitize, bleach, and purify anything that came within two feet of me. My best friend, Jess, on the other hand, did NOT receive this genetic resistance to grime, and was the kind of person who would drag you on her adventures Whether You Liked It Or Not, so there I was. You see, Jess was searching for The Best Gyro In The City, and was certain to have found it right outside our company’s Wall Street office.

I tried to tell her that my boss was riding my ass about putting together a spreadsheet for his afternoon presentation, and that I really had no time for lunch, but trying to tell Jess “no” is like trying to lick the back of your elbow: virtually impossible. As interns, we really only had about 20 minutes for lunch on a good day, so when we both had an open window, we scurried down to the Halal Cart on Pearl Street. Luckily, there was no line, but that’s about where my luck ended. Jess held our food while I paid (it was my turn, after all), and minutes later, we stuffed ourselves as we clamored back to the office.

“Walk and eat, Nat!” Jess commanded.

“I’m trying,” I said, as I dropped my gyro and it grazed my navy suit jacket, hitting the ground with a thud.

“Dammit,” I lamented, reaching for a napkin and tossing the now-ruined sandwich in the trash.

My boss, Bruce ‘The Brute’ Tomlinson, was notorious for humiliating any staff member who wasn’t up to snuff, which included being perfectly groomed at all times. Bruce despised human emotion, sloppiness, and smells of any kind. One of his greatest joys was making interns cry. The most famous anecdote surrounding this proclivity was that of Lucy, an intern who was hired and fired on the same day for reheating salmon in the office microwave. She left in total shame, mascara streaming down her face as onlookers shook their heads dolefully.

I was lucky to have this internship, I knew. After working hard to maintain a perfect 4.0 GPA through college, I had gotten this job mainly because Bruce only hired interns from his alma mater, Wheaton College. If you could survive The Brute for one whole year, you were rewarded handsomely with your choice of just about any entry level job on Wall Street. “Survive” was the key word here. This was an industry in which interns were so overworked that it was not uncommon for one or two a year to literally die from exhaustion. Thankfully, I was one of those rare humans who could thrive on little sleep. My one downfall was my propensity for messes, but I was working on that. All I had to do was keep up the illusion of perfection for two more months, and the job of my dreams was within reach.

Skidding back inside our office building, Jess and I scanned our security badges and hopped on an elevator. She dropped me off at floor nine and proceeded up to the tenth floor, where she served as intern to Susan Rosenstern of Rosenstern Securities. Jess was lucky in that Susan understood what it was like to be a woman in an industry of men. Thus, Jess got treated preferentially, and could occasionally get away with a late arrival in the morning, or a long lunch in the afternoon.

The second the elevator hit floor nine, I sprinted to the bathroom to dig in my purse for a Tide pen. There was no way The Brute could see me with a stain on my lapel. Nothing was going to ruin my chance at a job this summer. As I dabbed at the stain, however, I began to notice a deeply unsettling feeling in the pit of my stomach. I had been a bit sweaty from running down to lunch, I thought, but now I realized that it was a cold sweat, undoubtedly caused by the same nuisance paining my stomach. A wave of nausea swept over me, and I grabbed the counter, struggling to stand.

At that instant, the bathroom door banged open and in walked Casie Phelps. Casie was Bruce’s other intern, and consequently, my archrival. She was also, conveniently, Bruce’s niece. Tall and blonde and perfectly put together, she never had a bad hair day or bloated after drinking at one of our company’s social events. It was generally assumed that, by the end of the year, one of us would be prey to Bruce’s firing whims (likely me, since I didn’t benefit from nepotism), but so far, we had both stuck it out.

“Oh hi, Natalie,” she purred, scanning me for weaknesses.

“Hi Casie,” I squeaked, trying my best to remain upright.

“Oh, dear, are you not feeling well? You look a little pale. I know Uncle Bruce is counting on you getting those numbers in by four o’clock. Better hit the Duane Reade and grab some meds.”

“I’m fine,” I retorted unconvincingly.

My stomach lurched. Suddenly, I was presented with a problem: there was no way I could throw up with Casie in the vicinity. She would, undoubtedly, report it to Bruce, and, as with other forms of human imperfection, sickness in our office was not only discouraged, it was forbidden.

“See you later, Casie,” I managed to gasp, as I headed for the bathroom door.

I opened it and looked left and right. There were no good choices, as being sick in front of anyone would probably get me fired. In a blind panic, I ran down the hall to the elevator and mashed the button repeatedly. Mercifully, the elevator car arrived, and the doors opened with a DING. The car was empty, save for a random pink children’s backpack. I jumped inside and mashed the down button.

My stomach lurched again. With absolutely no thought, I grabbed the backpack, unzipped it, and retched into it.

Too soon, the elevator DINGED. I quickly zipped the bag back up and held it at my side. A stern-looking older man stepped into the car beside me. He said nothing and barely looked at me until the smell hit him, at which point he eyed me curiously and began inching closer into his corner. He would have faded into the dark wood paneling of the elevator if he could have. I summoned a placid smile. The doors opened with another DING and he leapt off and walked swiftly away.

At this point I had a choice to make: should I go back up to the office, or should I make an excuse and go home? My stomach was feeling untrustworthy, so I decided to leave. I stepped off the elevator and realized I was still holding the bag. I couldn’t exactly hand it over to the guys at the front desk, since I had barfed into it. I decided that I would take it home, clean it, and turn it in at the front desk once I was done. Assuming that there wasn’t a bomb inside. Oh, God, I hadn’t even thought of that. I quickly rummaged through the front pockets. The only thing I found was a small black Moleskine notebook, with a pen beside it. Then I peeked into the barfy main compartment. It contained only a small children’s lunchbox.

“Whelp. This gives a whole new meaning to ‘losing your lunch,’” I thought.

I fumbled through my purse for my cell phone and texted Bruce, lying about a family emergency, and reassuring him he would get his spreadsheet by four o’clock. Then I headed for the door. I didn’t want to be seen with the backpack, in case it belonged to someone’s kid. There would be no way of explaining what awaited them if they opened it.

The fun thing about New York is that, if you are a grown woman carrying a child’s knapsack, no one looks at you funny. So I stumbled the few blocks to my apartment, still feeling a bit shaky, holding the bag full of puke.

When I got home, I dumped the backpack in the tub, emptied the contents, and gave it a good scrubbing. While sponging off the lunchbox, the latch came open and I almost dumped out what was inside. My eyes were a bit bleary from the food poisoning, but my vision sharpened at the sight. Inside were stacks of hundred-dollar bills. I sat the newly cleaned box on my coffee table and began to count them. They totaled to twenty-thousand dollars.

Stunned, I rifled back through the front pocket for the black notebook. I thought, perhaps, it might offer some clue as to the backpack’s owner, but when I opened the front cover, the only thing written was a list of names. Each name was crossed through, except for the last one: my own. I nearly dropped the book. Why was my name in a list in some random backpack?

I grabbed my phone and did a quick search of the first name on the list: David Chu. The top search result was an obituary. I skimmed the listing, looking for clues. The only commonality was that David was also a Wall Street intern. I quickly searched the other names on the list: Zachary Etweiler, Liza Jenkins, and Nathan Skune. All young Wall Street interns. All dead.

A knock on my apartment door surprised me, and I jumped as I struggled to quickly put the bag’s contents back inside. It was Jess. She stood outside my door holding a plastic tub of soup.

“Hey, heard you made some B.S. excuse about a family emergency, and figured you were sick, so I brought you this. It’s from the deli on the corner. Matzo ball soup cures all ills,” she said.

“Oh my God, you’re a lifesaver,” I replied.

Jess took her familiar spot on my couch.

“If you wanna sleep, I’ll be here for you. I took the rest of the day off, and can get you whatever you need,” she said.

“I don’t deserve you,” I replied, and curled up next to her, covering myself with a blanket, and dropping off to sleep.

I awoke to the creaking sound of floorboards, and figured that Jess was just stepping out for air, but when I opened my eyes, she was holding the pink backpack. And a gun.

“I tried to do this the easy way. A few drops of cyanide in your lunch should have finished you off, but you didn’t eat the whole thing!” she snarled.

“But why would you want to kill me?!” I blurted.

“Think about it! You work in one of the world’s most competitive fields. And I get paid to clear out the competition for those who are rich and ambitious,” she explained.

I thought of Casie Phelps. Then, glancing down, I noticed that Jess had left the small black notebook on the couch in her haste to retrieve the money.

“Forget something?” I asked as I hastily grabbed the black book and used it to knock the gun out of Jess’s hands.

The gun hit the ground with a thud. Jess tried to make a play for it, but I jumped over the back of the couch and blocked her. She lunged around me quickly, and we both grabbed the gun at the same time. I tried to pull it sideways, and suddenly it went off with a bang. Jess staggered backward. Blood spread from a wound right above her knee. I grabbed my phone from off the couch and dialed 911. Jess tried to run but could barely hobble.

“Stay right there,” I said, pointing the gun at her.

“And I’m so glad you left this as evidence,” I smirked, pointing to the little black book.