Chapter 10: The Dorian Collective
They're a Tidal Wave, Harvey
“That was quite the scene you made at the airport,” a voice spoke from across the room. “We weren’t expecting that.”
A haze filled the space. Harvey’s eyes refused to work.
“Where am I?” Harvey managed to ask.
He cleared his throat, but the rasp huddled deep in his vocal cords gave him more of a robber baron growl than he would’ve liked in a moment like this.
“Somewhere safe,” he answered, noticing Harvey pulling at the cuffs intertwined with his chair. “Those are just precautionary. Things were a little too...unpredictable...back there.”
As the memories returned—as distant as they felt—so did the panic and the fear.
“What are you doing to me?” Harvey spat. A wild instinctive look widened his eyes. “What do you want?”
“All I ever wanted was to talk. Please, Harvey. Calm down.”
Harvey blinked to clear the haze from his vision, but it refused to die. His panic only seemed to make it worse. The man crept closer, nothing more than a shadow haloed by lamplight.
“They’ll come asking questions!” Harvey screamed, ripping at his restraints. “My wife, my brother, my parents—they’ll come looking for me! Don’t kill me!”
It wasn’t until the comfort of a hand on Harvey’s shoulder that his hammering heart slowed. He brought his breathing back to normal range and settled his flailing arms long enough to catch a real glimpse of who he was dealing with. Directly in front of him knelt a familiar face—one he hadn’t seen in over ten years.
“Detective—?”
In his panicked stupor, the name lodged somewhere deep and unrecoverable inside Harvey’s brain. He sat there breathing heavily, staring through the detective’s sympathetic grin without a clue as to what to say next.
“Actually, it’s Agent Manetti now. See?” He pointed to a framed certificate positioned at eye level, centered on the adjacent wall. “I’m with the Bureau now.”
The sudden spike in adrenaline filtered from Harvey’s bloodstream, repressing the pounding in his ears enough to hear Manetti’s soft-spoken voice.
“This was all you?” Harvey asked. “You drugged me?”
Manetti shrugged. His rugged jawline hadn’t changed, but the wave of inkjet hair that fell to the point of his neck now sported streaks of gray that complimented his aging authoritative look. Flicks of gray were beginning to find his more-than-stubble beard, as well.
“You didn’t leave us with much of a choice, Harvey,” he said. “To be honest, you’re stronger than you look. We sedated you because—well—we had no other option.”
Harvey lowered his eyes. The wearing off of foreign drugs in his veins, adrenaline overload, and sheer overwhelming panic heavied his eyelids and dizzied his thoughts.
“Here. Eat this.”
He handed Harvey a granola bar and a bottle of water.
“Sugar’ll do you good.”
Harvey unwrapped and chewed while Manetti found a seat at the point of his desk.
“Be honest, Harvey. If my hunch is correct—and it usually is—you were running away from them, weren’t you? The Collective.”
Harvey delayed his answer, scanning Manetti for ulterior motives. He found nothing out of the ordinary hidden behind his altruistic veneer.
“I wasn’t about to take any chances,” answered Harvey. “If you were them.”
Manetti adjusted his narrow black tie. It tucked into the buttons of his suit jacket and disappeared neatly underneath.
“We had ears at the funeral, you know,” he explained. “If there was ever a place to catch audio of those people, it would’ve been there.”
“So you know? You know they were the ones that killed Dom?” Harvey asked. “How? They fooled everyone, including his own family.”
“And they’ll continue to get away with it until someone steps up to stop them,” said Manetti. “Dom was attempting to do that. They were just one step ahead of him the entire time.”
Harvey felt the strength returning to him, enough to motion to the restraints.
“Do you mind?” he asked.
Manetti obliged, talking as he worked the key into the heel of the cuff.
“When they ID'd the body, I knew right away it wasn’t a normal case, but when I saw that you were visiting him in New York that same night, it was more than clear that this was not a coincidence.”
The handcuffs released with a zip and Harvey broke free, rubbing at the irritated skin across his wrists. He certainly remembered Manetti as the same scruffy, clean-cut G-man that stood before him, but the way he held himself now made him even more persuasive and—presumably—wiser, at least at face value. It was clear the Bureau suited him well.
“The new office is certainly a step up from what I remember at Boston PD,” Harvey jabbed.
Manetti smiled.
“I’ll tell you what—I don’t miss those cubicles,” he said, “but I do miss the windows.”
Harvey scanned the room—four walls, a high ceiling, but Manetti was right—no windows. The air suddenly felt predictably claustrophobic, a box of stale oxygen.
“Who needs windows when you have all of this space.”
“And it’s bug-proof. Take a look.” Manetti lifted a panel of wood from the wall behind his desk, revealing a thick layer of metal underneath. “The whole room’s locked tight. You’re standing in an office-sized Faraday cage. No transmission in or out. It’s a work of art if you ask me.”
So that was it—no windows meant ultimate privacy.
“Can’t be too careful, I guess,” answered Harvey.
“You don’t know what’s out there. It’s a mess, precautions or no precautions.”
Manetti watched as Harvey toured the room, setting his focus on the wall-length bookshelf that rose from the baseboard to hip-height.
“You’re a reader?” asked Harvey. “No offense, but I never took you for someone with the time for something like that.”
Manetti joined him. He slid laterally across the titles until he found what he was looking for, then slipped the hardcover from its topmost shelf and raised it into the light for Harvey to see.
“Most people get their news from TV these days,” he said. “It’s convenient—sure—but there’s something different about a book, you know? It’s enduring. Someone poured years of their life into this. I don’t know…”
He paused enough to make the room a bit too cold.
“I guess it just holds more weight.”
Harvey drew closer to the book, squinting to read the author’s name in embossed gold lettering.
“Bertrand Anderson. Why does that name sound familiar?”
Manetti redirected the cover to himself, admiring the sheen of the scripted title across a backdrop of sunset colors—brushes of deep golds, peach, and diluted reds.
“I’m impressed. Not many people recognize his face, let alone the name.”
Manetti allowed his words to sit. Harvey would remember if he let it marinate.
“He’s the professor who stalked all those girls, isn’t he?” Harvey asked.
Manetti nodded, but in a careful and quick sort of way. He replaced the book where he’d found it and turned back every ounce of attention to Harvey’s curious stare.
“Sentenced to fifty years in a facility upstate,” Manetti answered, “like a goddamn criminal.”
A mild chuckle left Harvey’s lips before he realized Manetti wasn’t joking. The chuckle turned to pinched lips and silence.
“Are we talking about the same guy?” Harvey asked. “You know he hurt a lot of people, right? He deserves what he got.”
Manetti relaxed the muscles in his face and, suddenly, the entire conversation deflated.
“I don’t blame you for believing that. After all, there’s no proof otherwise. The case came and went. People move on with their lives when there’s no longer a narrative to follow. No one cared to keep digging for the truth.”
He paused for momentum.
“But what the news says about Bertrand Anderson is not right, Harvey. The professor is innocent. I know it. And it was the Collective that set him up.”
The name had fallen from Manetti’s mouth several times now since Harvey came to, but this time, it felt less strange, more vilified, echoing deeper into his thoughts until it became a mantra, a memory.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read that book. Bertrand is one of the most brilliant social psychologists this world has ever seen. It’s a shame no one’ll ever take him seriously ever again. The Collective made sure of that.”
A ball of nervous energy formed in Harvey’s gut—a sickening feeling of which he couldn’t rid himself.
“I’m a little confused,” he answered. “Why did you bring me here? I’m sure it wasn’t just to defend pedophiles, was it?”
“I was wondering when you were going to ask that,” Manetti answered. “We’ll table the Bertrand talk for another day.”
Harvey had no intention of adding heat to the conversation, but his mind had other plans.
“Listen, Detective,” he began.
“Agent, actually.”
“You ambush me at the airport, drug me, then bring me here to what? Small talk? I hardly believe that’s the case. Spit it out.”
The patience in Manetti’s eyes drained.
“Your friend is dead, Harvey.” He spoke so matter-of-factly that Harvey had no choice but to crumple into the nearest chair. “Let me be clear. The same people who framed the professor are about to do the same to you. And you have no idea it’s about to happen.”
“You mean the Dorian Collective?”
Manetti leaned into his desk, hands pressed hard enough into it to make divots in the wood.
“I need you to listen to me, Harvey. I’ve been doing this for a very long time. I’ve chased ghosts, followed cold cases, gone down paths even the most sensible of people would shoo away as lunacy, but of all my years, nothing compares to these people. You hear me? Nothing. It always ends in disaster when it comes to them. Believe me—I know better than most.”
Harvey cracked his parched lips to speak, but Manetti stopped him with an upturned hand.
“Somehow, you’ve gotten out ahead of this. I don’t know how or when, but you made it happen. Perhaps it was Dom. And, because of that, maybe we stand a chance in finally taking them down. Make no mistake, Harvey. They’re a tidal wave. They’ll destroy everything they touch if they can.”
“Why?” Harvey asked. “What’s their endgame? To watch the world burn?”
Manetti teetered a bit, just enough to be noticed.
“The answer to that question,” he answered, “is why they killed Dom. He was too close to the source.”
Harvey straightened his shoulders, propping himself up against the back of his chair.
“Okay, okay,” said Harvey, backtracking. “Let’s assume you’re right. Didn’t the coroner rule Dom’s death a suicide? He took a taxi to the George Washington Bridge and flung himself over. That’s what the report said. So the coroner is in the Collective’s pocket?”
“The report was fudged, wasn’t it?” Manetti nodded. “Everybody believes what they’re told, so we just go with it.”
Manetti’s theory sat like rotten food in Harvey’s gut. If they had people in the New York Police Department and somebody working with the coroner, this had potential to be something bad, something very bad.
“So just to be clear,” Harvey asked. “You think the coroner is in on it?”
“Everyone’s in on it, Harvey. Every position of power in every line of work. They’ve infiltrated it all.”
Harvey stood upright, pacing the room more maniacally than he meant to move.
“Listen,” Manetti continued. “You’re a smart guy. I think you know you’re wrapped up in this just as much as I am. Look me in the eye and tell me that Dom’s death was a suicide.”
Harvey stewed in the pause as Manetti stared through him. The friendliness that had once been there had vanished, replaced by an unsettling calm that consumed the room.
“You know I can’t do that,” Harvey said.
“That’s what I thought,” Manetti continued. “Deep down you know this isn’t a coincidence. You and I both know the Collective is alive and at work.”
“Take Dom out of it,” Harvey answered. “You honestly believe the Collective has its hands in every facet of life? And Dom knew about it?”
Manetti shrugged, nodding in tandem as if it were the only thing left for him to do.
“Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they’ll just leave you alone,” he pushed, “but I don’t think that’ll happen, Harvey. I’ve seen a lot of shit since I started following them and never—not once—has the Collective forgotten about their loose ends. I don’t think they start forgetting with you—a kid who never lived up to his side of the bargain.”
A sharp pain dug into Harvey’s lungs. He lowered his gaze to hide it, but he feared the damage had already been done.
“Bargain?”
Manetti chuckled.
“There’s always a give and take with these people, Harvey. They wouldn’t be coming after you like they have if you hadn’t made a deal that night in the hospital with Dom,” he answered, “after I left you. Don’t you remember?”
Harvey nearly swallowed his tongue.
“Let me guess,” Manetti continued. “It was something about keeping secrets, mostly keeping Dom quiet, too.”
Blood drained from Harvey’s face. A quiver spasmed his lower lip.
“How could you possibly know that?”
Another shrug.
“Like I said, not my first rodeo,” Manetti said, “and you suck at lying.”
Harvey’s head began to float. The room began to close in around him.
“Take a breath, Harvey. It’ll pass.”
Manetti offered Harvey his own half-drunk water bottle, to which Harvey sipped to distract himself from imploding.
“Good,” said Manetti. “Small sips.”
“They nearly killed me in the street, you know.”
“We figured they would,” answered Manetti, “and they’ll do it again if they have the chance. The way I see it? You have two options—ignore the danger all together and hope they leave you alone—”
Manetti leaned over the desk, shoulders bulging through his suit.
“—or face it head on with me. Either way, there’s no going back now. You’re in.”
Tears welled in Harvey’s eyes, enough to swell the under portion of his overworked lids. The rage in his chest had grown claws, ripping at him from the inside out. He wanted to bust through the door behind him and run as far away as he could, back home where things felt safe, controlled.
“My wife, my little girl,” Harvey anger-whispered. “What happens to them?”
Manetti sighed, leaning forward even more to keep his eyes firm, his lips pursed. Everything about the exchange felt purposeful, more real than not.
“Harvey,” he said. “If you’re in, they are too. The Collective will find a way to use them against you. And God forbid you resist? They won’t stop until you’re dead. I think you know what that means for them.”
Harvey lowered his eyes to the floor.
“Tell me what I need to do.”
Manetti circled the desk and knelt beside Harvey’s slumping frame.
“Help me take them down, Harvey. It’s the only way to protect those you love. That’s why I brought you here. I need to know what you know about these people. You know more about these people than I do. The truth? I need a partner.”
Harvey rubbed at the soon-to-be stubble shadowing his jaw. Manetti stood frozen, waiting for an answer.
“It’s now or never, Harvey,” said Manetti. “I need an answer.”
Manetti sucked at his teeth from behind his lips. Everybody had their nervous tics.
“Fine,” answered Harvey, “but you’re paying me. If I’m risking my life for this, I want my family taken care of. They deserve that, at least.”
“Deal.”
Manetti took to his swivel chair and leaned back as far as the hinge would take him, a coy stretch of a grin across his usually sallow expression. It lasted only seconds before a knock at the door stole him from the moment.
From the slice of open door frame, a second suited gentleman poked his head through the space to the bend in his shoulders. The thin-wired frames of his glasses glistened in the lamplight within.
“You know the Emerson lawyer you’ve been tracking? The one from the Warwick case?”
Manetti nodded, pushing himself upright to, once again, lean across the desk.
“What about him?”
“He’s dead. Single shot through the side of the head about half a day ago. Looks self-inflicted, but nothing’s confirmed yet. Thought you should know.”
“Thanks,” answered Manetti.
Manetti peered across the desk at Harvey, who seemed to be noticeably shaken. As the door closed behind him, so did Harvey’s windpipe. It took work to open it slightly, but he found the strength to spill the name.
“Robert Emerson? West Harding Road, New York?”
Manetti’s eyes lifted wide. Genuine shock consumed the entirety of his face. To hear that name fall from Harvey’s lips meant…
“You knew him?” Manetti asked. “Under what circumstances?”
The bile in Harvey’s throat loomed. This time, swelling into waves of acidic lava just below the curve of his esophagus.
“I was with him,” Harvey said, “just before he died. It was a will reading for Dom.”
“For you? No one else?”
It was an impossible question. The room fell silent until Manetti pulled himself from his chair and stomped to the door.
“Well,” Manetti said, breaking the quiet. “Buckle up, Harvey. We’re in for a long night.”
“Why?”
This newfound calm in Manetti’s gait terrified Harvey. It was as though calm was all he needed for a new plan of action, knowing full-well there was no time for it.
“I need to call my wife,” said Harvey, “let her know I won’t be home tonight, at least.”
“Your wife will have to wait.”
“Come on, Manetti. You’re being—”
“Harvey!” he screamed. “Who’s fingerprints do you think they’ll find on Emerson’s gun? I’ll give you a hint—they won’t be mine.”
Harvey’s stomach dropped.
Oh my God he’s right, Harvey thought. This is it. This is where they frame me.
“Grab your coat,” Manetti said. “Let’s go.”