Free The Lost Brother by Rick Bennet

says. He now looks, speaks, steadily, confidently, right at Ottaway.
    “You can undo this shit?” Ottaway asks.
    “Sure.”
    “How?”
    “You haven’t told me …”
    “I want out of trouble on the sexual harassment thing!”
    “Who set you up on that?”
    “You. And that bitch who works for you.”
    “That’s right.”
    Another moment passes. When Kellogg sees a look of conciliation come to Ottaway’s face, he says, “Sit down.” Ottaway does.
    “Here’s your story. You were working
with
us, Mr. Ottaway. We were doing an instructional video about sexual harassment and went to you for your professional assistance. You agreed to help us because it’s such an important issue to you. You used to be the kind of man who took advantage of women who worked under him, and as an act of contrition, and as a sign of your own raised consciousness, you volunteered your time. The photos I took of you and my operative at the bar that one night, that was just role playing.”
    Ottaway is thinking. He nods very slightly.
    Kellogg pushes a piece of paper across the desk. “This is a letter from Kellogg Investigations thanking you for working with us on this very important issue.”
    Ottaway picks it up. Reads it.
    Kellogg next pushes an eight-by-ten photograph over.
    Ottaway picks it up. It’s a picture of him and Passer having dinner. On the photo Passer has written, “Michael, thank you so much for your help. You know, you talked so much about your wife and daughters that I feel like I know them! They are certainly lucky to have such an enlightened man in their lives!”
    She’d signed it, “Gratefully, Catherine ‘Sheila’Jones.”
    Kellogg lets it sink in.
    Ottaway says, resigned, voice low, “So what do
you
want?”
    “I want to know why.”
    “Why they wanted the shit on me?”
    “Yeah.”
    Ottaway looks down. Says, to the floor, “No you don’t.”
    “Try me. Starting with who ‘they’ are.” Looking back up, Ottaway smiles and says, “Why?”
    “I don’t like being used. And I get the feeling I was. I get the feeling this isn’t about sexual harassment.”
    “No.”
    “Which means the woman over there just wanted something on you. Wanted a thumb on you. Used me to get it.”
    “Yes.”
    “A thumb not just on your job but on your life. On your marriage, which is pretty good in spite of you. On your career, which would be over if there was undeniable proof that you’re a sexist asshole.”
    “I’m not an asshole. I don’t treat women that way. It was just Sheila. Or whatever her name is. I never met anyone so … you know.”
    “She’s a pretty woman.”
    “No, I deal with pretty women all the time. She’s more than that.”
    “And all you could think to do was use your power to fuck her?”
    “It’s all she responded to!”
    Kellogg waves his hands. “Back to the thumb on you. Who wants it?”
    Ottaway takes a deep breath. The look of a man with a bursting secret comes over his face. Kellogg knows the look well. He saw it a lot as a cop. The look of a confessor.
    “I don’t know if you can handle it,” Ottaway says snidely. “You probably won’t believe it.”
    Kellogg is silent. Ottaway goes on.
    “You know what New Africa is?”
    Kellogg nods.
    “They’re in the other half of the building with us. BTN’s owner doesn’t have anything personally to do with them, doesn’t even like them. But some of the staff members do. The woman who hired you is a New African. Anyway, she’d approached me about helping New Africa because I’d said before that I liked Khalid’s message. She said they wanted to do a video surveillance, for security, but they didn’t know anything about the equipment. She asked me to help. I said get me when you need me. And then one day these three New Africans tell me they’ll need my help with this thing. I went along. Like all my talk about doing my part for the cause, like that talk had a momentum of its own. Okay, so they pull up their car and we