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Good girls get into trouble all the time, but not Frank’s Amy. When he put her on a bus to Florida two years ago, she promised him she’d stay out of it; no more blackmail bullshit. Good girls like Amy keep their promises. She’s still with Terrence’s diving school and doing okay. So when Karen Page wants to talk to him the last person in the world he suspects the topic of discussion to be is Amy.
Karen throws him a bone, occasionally, when she catches the whiff of trash that needs taking out. Still doesn’t approve of his methods but she’ll always have a soft spot for him, and Frank’s got a lot of time for her. He makes the time to meet her when she asks.
“How’s Amy doing?”
“Amy?” Like Karen just lead with a non sequitur.
“You talked to her recently?”
Months ago, at Christmas. He got the gift she sent: a pair of skates. What the fuck does she think he is supposed to do with those? Cut someone’s throat open if he ever had to fight a pack of goons on a frozen lake? Amy said that was the thing she missed most about New York (besides him): the winters. She said she’d take him ice-skating at Bryant Park. But she never made the trip and Frank was secretly grateful he wouldn’t have to embarrass himself, falling on his ass, in front of the kid. He can’t skate for shit.
“Why?” They’re in Karen’s apartment, the days of clandestine meetings on the Brooklyn Heights promenade long gone.
“A couple of weeks ago I did a story for the Bulletin, on revenge porn,” she tells him. “A man named Crowder was convicted of publishing intimate photos of his ex-girlfriend online without her consent. A couple of days ago a girl—a young woman—read that story and contacted me. Let’s call her Teresa.” Karen fidgets with the label on her beer bottle. “Until a semester ago Teresa was a student at the University of Miami. She went to a party, got a little drunk, and a man named Brian Hunter filmed her, topless. He threatened to post the images and video on a website called Good Girls Gone Wild unless Teresa paid him. She didn’t have the money, so he posted them. She thinks he would have done it anyway. He’s that kind of person. And people saw them, Frank, people she knew. They watched the video. The bullying got so bad she had to drop out of school.”
“Okay,” says Frank.
“Okay?” Clearly Karen’s expecting more from him. Especially him.
“This Hunter guy sounds like a real piece of shit, Karen, and I feel bad for the girl, but maybe she shouldn’t’ve been drinking and taking her clothes off in the first place. It’s her own fault.”
“Really, Frank? You’re going to blame the victim in all this?”
“What did she think was gonna happen? You do dumb shit, dumb shit will happen to you. What does this have to do with me? Sounds like she should go to the cops.”
“What would you say if I told you Amy was in one of those videos?”
Frank snorts and takes a pull on his beer. “I’d tell you to stop talking out your ass.”
“Teresa showed me the website. There are thousands of images and videos of girls—young women, Frank—some of them underage, probably. All posted by people like Crowder and Hunter. Hunter’s got two dozen videos and half a million followers. Goes by the name FratBoi69.”
“Sounds real classy.”
Frustrated because she’s taking this so much more seriously than he is, Karen sets her untouched beer down hard on the countertop. “Here’s the thing, Frank…Amy is in one of Hunter’s videos.”
“Bullshit.” Not the kid. Not his Amy. “She’s way too smart to get caught up in something like that. She wouldn’t.”
“Smart kids do dumb things all the time, Frank. When I was her age I was out partying every night, getting high—”
“Not Amy. Kid used to censor swear words for Chrissake. You expect me to believe she…she took her clothes off for some pervert?”
“I get it, Frank, it’s hard to process, to accept that the people we know and care about are capable of getting mixed up in things like this. But I know what I saw.”
“Do you? You met the kid once, for like two minutes, two years ago. How do you know it was her and not some other girl?”
“Amy’s in trouble, Frank.”
“If she was, she would’ve come to me.”
“With something like this?”
“She would’ve told me.”
“Or, you know, maybe she knows she can’t. Maybe she’s afraid of what you’ll do about it.”
“Do about it? I’m not gonna do shit, because I don’t believe a goddamn word of it.”
“So watch the video, Frank,” Karen challenges, “and tell me that’s not Amy.”
“I’m not gonna watch that shit! I don’t need to, it’s not her.”
He leaves Karen’s apartment in angry denial, wanting to put her and the whole fucked up conversation out of his mind. But it’s all he can think about and it keeps him up until, finally, he opens the laptop. The first returned result for his search is the Good Girls Gone Wild website. The content is, literally, as Karen described it.
Frank looks up FratBoi69. The guy’s videos have titles like Spring Break Slut and Naked Late Night Co-Eds, filmed at house or off-campus frat parties. College kids getting drunk out of Red Solos in dimly-lit rooms while the heavy kicks and deep 808s from hip hop tracks bang in the background.
Amy—Frank recognises her instantly in the thumbnail image—is sway-laughing with a dark-haired girlfriend at the top of a staircase.
The cameraman—Hunter—asks them their names and they volunteer them, smiling coquettishly. “Amy and Tanya. Those are pretty names. How old are you girls?”
“Eighteen,” Amy volunteers, acting like she’s twenty-two. The other girl says she’s nineteen.
“You having fun tonight?” The camera zooms in on Amy. “Are you a good girl, Amy?”
The kid laughs. Her cheeks glowing like a pair of ripe apricots, her eyes as innocent and glazed as the stained-glass windows of a church. “Not really,” she confesses, with inebriated honestly. “I once shot a guy.”
Tanya and Hunter laugh. Frank doesn’t. Jesus, if only they knew the kid wasn’t joking.
“How high are you right now?” asks Hunter.
Amy raises a hand to her head to guestimate her own height. “This high? I’m, like, five-seven.”
They all laugh and Hunter says, “You’re funny. And cute. Do you have a boyfriend?”
The kid shakes her head, her hair glinting like gold tinsel in the cellphone’s flashlight.
“A girlfriend?” Hunter prompts.
“Amy’s, like, eighty-five percent straight,” says her friend.
“More like seventy-five,” Amy chimes in.
“What’s the wildest thing you’ve ever done, sexually?”
And Frank can feel his blood boiling in his veins.
Amy rolls her eyes. “I’m not answering that.”
“Come onnnn,” Hunter goads. “Do you like anal, Amy?”
The friend giggles and Amy flips camera and cameraman off.
“Oh, you wanna fuck me, is that it?”
“I want you to fuck off.”
That’s the Amy Frank knows, and he’s proud of her in that moment.
Hunter chuckles. “I’m kidding. You’re really are very pretty, though. At least a nine.”
“A nine?” The kid acts offended. “Wow, okay. Hear that, Tanya? I’m only a nine.”
“I mean, could be a ten—an eleven, even—but I haven’t seen enough to decide. Show us something.”
“I’m not showing you anything.”
“Come on, just a peek. I dare you. Show us how a good girl like you goes a little wild.”
Frank pauses the video. He can go the rest of his life without seeing how it plays out, and he will. Instead he scrolls down to the comments posted beneath the video and they only make him feel more rage: Nice tits. And: Girl looks like she has the IQ of a McNugget. 10/10 would still hit that. Did Amy read that shit?
Frank is furious at her. At Karen, for bringing this to his attention. At the exploitive asshole behind the camera. At himself, for letting Amy out of his sight and sending her down to a shithole like Florida. As if that would’ve prevented all of this.
Worse, Frank doesn’t know what to do. He knows what he should do: go down there and righteously rip Brian Hunter’s spine out. But that still leaves Amy and the aftermath.
He calls her. “Hey, kid.”
“Frank? Is everything okay?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“You never call.”
“I call,” he argues, feeling guilty, because he doesn’t call enough.
“Yeah, once in a blue moon. What’s up?” She sounds normal. Fine.
“Been thinkin’ about you.”
“Aww, that’s sweet,” she says, genuinely touched, “but it doesn’t sound like you at all. Are you sure everything’s okay? You’re kind of freaking me out here. You’re not, like, terminally ill, or in jail, or something?”
“Do I have to be to wanna know how you’re doing?”
“I’m doing okay.”
And she sounds it, but maybe that’s because the kid’s a skilled liar. Maybe it’s because Frank wants so desperately to believe her. “You’d tell me if something wasn’t.”
Sensing a question, Amy answers, “Yeah, of course.”
“Because you could—you can. If something was wrong, I’d make it right.” Not a thing he wouldn’t do for her.
There’s a long pause on Amy’s end. “I know. But everything’s good with me, really.”
“I saw Karen,” Frank offers.
“Nice. Like on a date?” A teasing smile warms her voice. “Careful, Frank,” Amy adds, mock-warningly. “You go on one of those and you might actually end up getting a whole-ass life.”
You’re my whole life, he wants to tell her. “Yeah, she wanted to talk to me…Tell me about this story she was working on. Revenge porn.”
“Sounds heavy.”
“She met with this girl, Teresa. Used to be a sophomore at UM. That’s near where you live.”
“Okay…?” Like Amy truly doesn’t know where Frank’s going with this.
“She got into some trouble. Was under the influence at a party. And some guy filmed her taking her clothes off.” He swallows. Talking about this, especially with Amy, is all kinds of uncomfortable. If he had this conversation with Lisa, how would it go? “He tried to blackmail her. Posted pictures and video of her on a porn site.”
“That sucks.” There’s a noticeable lack of empathy in her voice and that’s how Frank knows. Kid’s trying her damnedest to disconnect. “She should go to the police.”
“She’s embarrassed, and scared. A whole lot of people saw her and her family’s pretty conservative.”
“Yikes. Well, I hope everything works out for her.” Amy attempts to wrap up the conversation. “Don’t know what that has to do with you, or me—”
“She showed Karen the website.” There’s a terrible silence on the other end of the phone. “Amy?”
When she finally speaks, the kid sounds small and frightened and very far away. “Did you watch the videos?”
“No,” he half-lies. “Karen did. She says you’re in one.”
Amy’s laugh is forced and frail. “That’s bullshit.”
“I believe her.” Wouldn’t if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes.
“Well, you shouldn’t. The New York Bulletin isn’t exactly high-brow journalism, Frank. It’s like TMZ for old dudes. Never thought much of Karen Page anyway.” That’s a blatant lie. And Karen isn’t the enemy here. “You can do better.”
“This isn’t about Karen, or me,” Frank says, firmly.
“Well, it isn’t about me, either. I don’t know who she thinks she saw, but it wasn’t me.”
“I need you to be honest with me, kid. After everything we’ve been through together, I deserve that.” He sounds broken.
“You’re going to be mad.”
I’m already mad. “I wanna hear your side,” he tells her calmly.
Amy exhales like a gale into the phone. “I met this girl at work, Tanya. She seemed really cool. And she invited me to a party over Spring Break. I’m not really into those. Mostly it’s drunk assholes, but this one was really chill. I guess I took too much…Then this guy—Ryan, or Brian, or whatever—showed up. He was kind of a douche—real frat-boy vibes—but older and harmless, you know? He said he wouldn’t show anyone the video, or photos.”
“And you believed him.” Like an idiot. Frank can’t keep the disappointment out of his voice. Like a father who’s shocked to discover his daughter is also a human being.
“A week later I got a Snap from him, and we chatted—totally normal stuff. Then, out of nowhere, he tells me about this website and how he’s going to upload everything unless I pay him.”
“How much?”
“Five grand. It’s, like, the max you can Venmo. So I did…I paid him the money. He posted everything anyway.”
“Where’d you get the money?” She sure as shit hasn’t asked Frank for anything since she climbed on the bus and Terry would’ve told him if the kid had asked for a loan.
“Just some guy.”
“Jesus Christ, kid. As in a legitimate credit guy or a loan shark kinda guy?”
“I didn’t want to ruin my credit!”
“No, just the rest of your life!”
“Don’t yell at me!”
“I’m not—!” But Frank is yelling and he makes a conscious effort to tone it down. “I’m just…concerned. You’re a shit-magnet, kid.”
“Wow, thanks a bunch, Frank. That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy and better inside. Don’t you think I feel like crap already?”
“How much d’you owe? When do you have to pay it back by?”
“Ten grand, by Monday. Or else.”
“Jesus.” That’s less than a week away. “You want a face full of acid?” Because that’s ‘or else’. “That’s what men like that do to girls like you, Amy.”
“I’m sorry, okay?! It was one party. I—I can’t believe you’re trying to lecture me on morality. You kill people, Frank—murder them. You play judge, jury and executioner. All I did was get taken advantage of. You told me to go be a kid and that’s exactly what I was doing.”
“I meant go have fun, not flash your tits for a bunch of strangers all over the internet like some goddamn whore.”
Shit. He regrets it as soon as he hears himself say it. But it’s too late to take the cruel words back. The damage is done. He can hear it over the line, the wounded silence. Can picture the look on Amy’s face: the hurt and betrayal.
“Christ, kid, I’m sorry.”
“Fuck you, Frank,” she says, miserably, fighting to keep the tears and waver out of her voice.
“Amy…”
“I hate you.”
The line goes dead and a subscriber unavailable message greets Frank whenever he tries calling back. His texts go unread. Fucking Christ. He’s going to have to go down there. To fucking Florida.
Frank catches the next flight out of New York under the name Pete Castiglione and shows up at Amy’s door with flowers—blushed white lilies and rose peonies—and an apology.
“I’m sorry, kid.” Best he can do, but he means it. He’s never been sorrier for anything in his life.
She clings to him like he’s a life raft and she’s drowning in a world of hurt and sadness and pain.
“You wanna try talkin’ to me?” he asks, gently.
So she invites him in. Kid looks unkempt, like she hasn’t showered or slept in days. Half eaten depression take-out meals litter the apartment. What must her roommate think?
“Terry said you haven’t been down to the dive school in a couple of weeks. He’s worried about you.”
“I don’t feel like going out, or people.” Amy fusses aggressively with the flowers at the kitchen sink, like she might throw the vase at Frank. Still a little mad at him. “I don’t even feel like you. And I really don’t feel like another lecture…”
“Didn’t come here for that.” He came because he was worried. “I care about you, kid.”
“You have a funny way of showing it. Shaming me?” Calling her names that don’t even bear repeating.
“I was out of line. I was pissed off and looking for some place to put it. Should’na been on you. I’m just…” Heartbroken for Amy and furious at the man who put her in this position. “I want to know what you wanna do about it. I know what I wanna do.”
“Why’re you even asking me, Frank? Since when have you done anything besides what you wanted to do?”
“Because it’ll give you some of your agency back?” he suggests. That was Karen’s idea. Christ, he thought it was a fucking awful one at the time, but he can see the sense in it. “You gonna go to the cops? They ain’t gonna do shit. Or this guy…he’s gonna get a slap on the wrist and walk. I been reading about this stuff, Amy. Half these guys lay low for a couple of years and then they go on some other app or website, doing the same shit, to other girls and women.”
“I’m not going to kill Brian Hunter, no matter how much I hate him.”
“You don’t have to kill anyone.”
“And neither are you, Frank. Seriously.” Things are bad enough as is.
Frank nods along in reluctant agreement. If they don’t do this Amy’s way then they don’t do it at all. “Okay, so we don’t kill him.”
“We?”
“It’s up to you, kid.” Either she’s all in or he’s all out.
“So some other girl doesn’t get hurt?”
When Amy left New York Frank told her that he didn’t want her on his conscience. But she’ll always be there. For better or worse, she’s like a daughter to him and, right or wrong, he’ll always feel responsible for her. “I don’t care about some other girl. I only care about you.”
It isn’t hard to track the guy down. They have a name and it’s not like the guy’s in hiding. He even has a goddamn Instagram, where he touts himself as a “party scout” and a “cryptobro”. Brian Hunter lives in a Coral Gables condo and Frank stakes the place out for a day before he lets Amy tag along.
“That him?”
Amy nods and Frank checks the chambered round in his pistol. “Stay in the car.”
“Frank.”
“I’m not gonna shoot him.”
“Well, what are you going to do?”
“What we agreed on,” he says, sounding vaguely hurt. Doesn’t she trust him?
Amy glances nervously up and down the street for nosy-neighbour witnesses and patrol cars. “Be careful.”
Frank accosts Hunter at the entrance to his building, in broad Miami-Dade daylight; gets the fratboy-wannabe in a chokehold and steers him inside under the duress of a gun to his temple. “Shh-shh-shh-shh, easy, easy. We’re just gonna have a little talk.”
When Amy slips inside the apartment, Brian Hunter is clocked out cold and duct-taped into a chair, a cloth gag cutting into his mouth.
“Wakey, wakey, Brian,” Frank cooes, slap-patting the man’s cheek.
He comes around and struggles, futilely, when he sees Frank with a knife, the gun tucked into his jeans. Stills only when he spots Amy. She looks braver than she feels, standing off to the side, arms folded protectively around her.
Hunter stares in recognition and is rewarded with a vicious open-handed strike across the face. “Hey! Don’t look at her!” Frank yells. “You don’t ever get to look at her again.”
The man gasps when the gag is removed. “What…What is this? Who are you? Are you…are you her dad, or something?’
Or something. “I’m your worst fucking nightmare, Brian.”
“How do you know my name? How did you find me?”
“Wasn’t hard. Turd like you leaves a stench. I know a lot about you.” Frank toys with the knife. “What I don’t know is why you enjoy posting videos and pictures of teen girls on the internet…threatening them. For what? You’ve got money. Power? Maybe you just hate women.”
Hunter looks at Amy again, and Frank pinches the man’s face in a rough vice grip. “Hey. What did I say? Eyes on me.” He palms the guy’s phone. “What’s the passcode?”
Suitably scared, Hunter sacrifices the number and Frank hands Amy the phone. The kid starts scrolling through the device. “Any videos, pictures on there besides yours?”
Shocked and mortified, Amy whispers, “Like, so many.”
“You back that thing up, Brian? You send those to anyone else?”
“No?”
Frank’s fist connects with Hunter’s cheekbone. “Let’s try that again. Just one more time.” Guy’s not going to be so pretty once Frank is done with him. “I want names,” he demands. “Know what I’m gonna do when I find ’em? I’m gonna go over there and fuck their shit up just like I’m about to fuck up yours.”
“Please—”
“Nah, nah, nah—too late for that. You were fucked the minute you started filming.”
“She consented!”
“Uninformed consent!” Amy snaps back, angrily. “You knew I was out of it! And you didn’t tell me what you were going to do! How is that okay? How is it okay for you to do this to people?”
“I—I won’t ever do it again, I swear.”
“Goddamn right you won’t,” Frank growls.
“You—you can’t do this. This is assault—home invasion. I could call the cops on you.”
Frank snorts. “Assuming you have the fingers to dial 9-1-1.”
“Fingers?”
“Gonna be pretty hard to operate a phone without those,” Frank laments. “We’ll get to that. First you’re gonna give me names and take down the video.”
“I don’t know their real names! I sent the screenshots via Snap. One of them’s a dude, from Jersey, I think. He’s into younger girls. The other’s some gamer girl who sells other people’s nudes. She lives out in California. Do you even know how the internet works, old man?”
“Who’ya you calling old, fuckboy?”
“They’re not here!”
They could be bivouacked on the Kamchatka Peninsula for all Frank cares. He would go to the ends of the earth to avenge Amy.
“Listen!” Hunter pleads. “I’ll delete the photos and the videos, all right?”
“All of them,” Amy demands, “not just mine.”
“Done!” Hunter gets to work as soon as Frank sets the laptop down in front of him and frees his right hand. “See?” He looks imploringly from Frank to Amy.
“Now his fingers, Frank.” There’s a grimness to Amy’s features, like she had at the Schultz’s mansion back in New York. Kid is so fucking done with all the bullshit.
“Right.” Frank flips the knife. “Which one should I cut off first?”
“Wait, wait, wait!” Hunter protests. “You’re not seriously going to do this?! I did what you asked!”
“No guarantee you won’t do it again. You want me to take your word for it?” Frank scoffs. “Anyway, it was the kid’s idea. I just wanted to kill you.”
“I can pay you back! Double what she paid me. You know, for damages—emotional suffering, that kind of thing? I have money, like you said.”
Frank cocks his head, feigning interest. “Yeah?”
“Ten grand.”
“You lowballing me, Brian? I was reading about this Crowder guy. Court said he had to cough up millions.”
“And you’d never see a cent. I can get you cash, right now.”
“Nah.” Frank takes a step toward Hunter and the man’s screams are silenced as he replaces the gag. “I like the kid’s idea better.”
Frank strolls casually from the apartment building with all the could-give-less-of-a-fuck calm of having just dismembered a predator, Amy in tow.
“Frank,” she says, as they climb into the car, “what if Karen runs the Good Girls story and the cops get involved? They’re going to question Hunter—me.”
“Told Karen I’d take care of it. She knows I will. No one’s coming to question you, kid.”
“What if Hunter goes to the police?”
Little bitch like that? “He won’t. He’ll be in just as much trouble. Anyway, it’s just one finger.” Frank retrieves the freshly severed digit, a right thumb wrapped in a bloody paper towel, from his pocket. “Souvenir?”
“Ew, gross.”
“Should’ve let me take all ten.” Frank’s only half-kidding.
“Overkill much?”
“Right. Forgot how much you hate that.” He tosses the thumb out the window and looks over at her. “You okay, kid?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure how to feel.”
He’ll ask her again after they go take care of her loan shark problem. Frank starts the engine. “Seat belt.”
Amy plumbs it in. “Thanks, Frank. I mean it.”
“I know you do.” Any time, kid. He means that, too.