What Nolan Had in His Phone
I expected a slammed door of a young man. What I got was the thing I had not been brave enough to hope for.
Nolan Frisk sat down on my grandfather’s porch step beside the dog, put his head in his hands, and said, “I thought it was legal.”
Deputy Vickers sat down next to him, not too close. She told him plainly that he was in serious trouble and that she could promise him nothing. She told him the best thing a person in his position could do, today, was tell the truth and keep telling it.
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He told it, in a flat, shaky rush. He had answered a job ad on a gig board, “Courier Associate, flexible hours, $250 per delivery.” He had been interviewed by text, and given a rental car in his own name and a list of addresses each morning.
He picked up sealed envelopes and drove them to a parking garage in Denver, where a man in a cap took them without a word. Two hundred and fifty dollars to his phone, every time.
“I never opened one,” he said. “They told me it was court documents. Bond paperwork. I’ve got a car payment, and my mom’s rent.” He looked up at my grandfather, and his eyes were red. “Sir, I swear I thought I was helping people get somebody out.”
“Son,” my grandfather said. “How many envelopes?”
Nolan was quiet a long moment. “Eleven. In two weeks.”
Then my grandfather did the thing I am proudest of in my whole life.
He sat down on the step on the other side of Nolan Frisk. He looked at that frightened, skinny kid for a long time, and he said, “Nolan. Do you have the address of every one of them? The people you picked up from?”
“They’re in my phone, sir. They give me the route every morning.”
“Then you can do something about those houses,” my grandfather said. “If you’re willing. If you aren’t, that’s your choice. But if you are, you can go home to your mother and tell her the worst thing you did, you began to fix the same day.”
Nolan looked at him as though he had been handed a rope.
“Yes sir,” he whispered. “Yes sir. Please.”
With Nolan’s permission and his signature, Deputy Vickers took the phone. Within the hour a state investigator was driving in from Limon. She also made one call from the porch, to the number in the message thread, with Nolan’s voice on the line. It rang once and was cut off. Whoever Mr. Pell was, he had learned the road was closed.