Kathleen had prepared some words about Sharon and spoke to the crowd for a few minutes. Then a woman named Brittany, who said she’d originally introduced Sharon and Kathleen, took a turn at the podium. In her late forties, built like Dolly Parton, the caramel-skinned woman told of meeting Sharon at an after-hours club in Chelsea when Sharon was in college and tricking part-time. Emily listened, fascinated, hearing of a glittering but gritty world she’d barely known existed.
Brittany said she’d swooped in to grab Sharon just as a pimp was eying her. If a pimp got hold of you, you could count on ending up broke, beaten, and saddled with a dose of posttraumatic stress or addiction. “I brought Sharon to Kathleen … where I knew she’d be safe. It became a lifelong career for Sharon.” She wiped away a tear. “But I think you’ve got to know when your time is up.”
After the speakers were done, everyone filed outside and down a flower-lined path. Tombs the size of safe-deposit boxes, meant for ash urns, filled the outer walls of the building. Sharon’s box was fronted by curtain-covered wood. Emily figured the door would be engraved like a tombstone to mark the resting place later.
One of the women began to sing “Amazing Grace,” a cappella. Emily looked over in surprise at the beauty of the woman’s voice. Kathleen was weeping.
An attendant placed the urn in the box, and the women took turns saying a few words to Kathleen, who held Emily’s hand. Emily felt comfortable and honored by the way Kathleen claimed her. She brushed away the memory of all the negative things her mother had said.
Brittany approached Kathleen. “It was a beautiful service, Kat, really nice. You did a good thing here.”
“Thanks. She deserved it,” Kathleen said. “Tell me, do you know anything about her girlfriend, Angela?”
“No. The last time I saw Sharon was—jeez, must have been twenty years ago. In the East Village.”
Kathleen nodded sadly.
“I was going to an AA meeting on Saint Marks Place. I remember it clear as day. It was hot as hell out there that day. One of those fry-an-egg-on-the-sidewalk days. And who did I see? Waddling down the block? At first, I couldn’t believe it. Sharon. She was pregnant as all be. She told me she was nine months. Glowing. She was so beautiful. She said she’d stopped working and was back in school.”
Kathleen’s face froze. “She was pregnant?” Emily could see Kathleen’s mind going from surprise to trying to figure something out.
“I’d hoped to see her baby here, all grown up,” Brittany said. “But I guess not. Untoward stuff has a way of happening to us. I hate to ask what happened to that baby. This thing here is sad enough.”
CHAPTER
29
KATHLEEN NOTICED THE beauty of the summer afternoon. A breeze rustled through the leaves of the trees. The temperature was comfortable in the shadow of the apartment buildings that stood between her and the western sun. Emily had gone to work for the afternoon, and Kathleen marveled that she had shown up for a memorial for someone she didn’t know. Kathleen knew she had no right to feel proud of Emily, but she did.
Kathleen’s thoughts turned to Sharon’s pregnancy. Sharon had never told her. There had been a gap year in their relationship. Sharon had quit hooking and returned to school, or so Kathleen thought. Then she’d returned to Kathleen, saying she’d given up on school and wanted to come back to work. Kathleen had to revise her whole understanding of Sharon’s life. Sharon had been pregnant while she was away. They’d worked together for a decade after the pregnancy and had remained friends after that, but Sharon had never said a word.
Kathleen imagined her friend walking on Saint Marks Place in the East Village. Kathleen had waddled on that very sidewalk when she was pregnant, glowing and hopped up on mommy hormones. Kathleen remembered passing the hippie stores selling records and handcrafted items in displays set up out in front of the tiny shops there. Michael drank too much sometimes, but they were relatively happy in their modest lives. Michael worked as a sound engineer at an East Village recording studio, and she worked clerical jobs in the Garment District while going to Hunter College part time. She remembered walking from the subway stop at Astor Place toward their home a few blocks east. The cement’s heat bathed her swollen legs and she was short of breath because the baby took up so much of her breathing room. But she hadn’t cared at all about the discomfort. She’d never been more content.
She’d needed a C-section when Lauren was born, because Lauren had never turned head-down—always an independent-minded child, even before birth. The obstetrician had given the baby to Michael after cutting the umbilical cord and Michael had grinned, the tiny baby cradled in his long hands.
Now, as Kathleen approached her home, she knew immediately that something was amiss. She sensed it before she saw her apartment door ajar. It was the breeze in the hallway. She stopped and took a step back, her heart thumping, then proceeded cautiously toward the door. Was it possible she’d left it open?
She heard voices. They didn’t sound as if they were hiding their presence. She took another couple of steps closer, almost near enough to push the door inward. She heard a female voice. She recognized it, grasped the doorknob, and walked in.
Detective Luna turned from the vestibule of Kathleen’s apartment and met her eyes.
“What are you doing here?” Kathleen asked.
Luna pushed a piece of paper toward Kathleen. “Search warrant. I assume you know the drill.”
Kathleen walked farther inside, edging past the cop, furious. Her living room was a shambles. The cops hadn’t even tried to minimize the damage. She felt a burning behind her eyes and a familiarity, too, almost a déjà vu to her old life, when cops and corrections officers had complete power over her. But she was clean now, of sound mind, not doing anything against the law. She hadn’t been prepared for this.
Kathleen tried to keep her cool. “What are you looking for?”
Detective Luna signaled to her partner, who moved forward.
“As it turns out,” Luna said, “we only recently learned that you were Sharon Williams’s madam. We think there’s a whole world of stuff we don’t know about your … business. A lot of information relevant to the murder. You haven’t exactly been forthcoming.”
Fear gripped Kathleen. She didn’t know what they could accuse her of doing. There was, of course, no evidence that she’d been involved in Sharon’s murder. They’d interviewed her at length that first day when they’d asked her to come to the precinct. She’d told them the truth about Sharon dancing and working as a call girl and about Sharon being her friend. There had been no reason to tell them about her own former profession. But she had zero faith in the justice system after doing five years for supposedly killing her husband. “I’m not a madam. I’m a retired old woman, and you’ve destroyed my apartment.”
Detective Banks shoved his way closer. “You don’t even qualify for social security, not a year of legal earnings on the books. So enough with the retired-old-lady bullshit.”
Detective Luna added, “She was here. We want to know who she was meeting and everything about the date. We don’t care how you went from ex-con to real estate magnate, but—”
“Oh, you really are a piece of work, the both of you,” Kathleen spat, her anger drowning out her drumbeat of fear. “Sharon wasn’t here for a date. She was coming to visit. Do your jobs. I’ve been in this neighborhood for years. I own this building. The building’s small profit supports me. You will never find a witness to say I’m running prostitutes. This is ridiculous.”
“We’d like your consent to check your telephone records.”
“You’ll have to deal with my lawyer,” Kathleen said. “You’re headed down the wrong path. Don’t ask me to help you on it.”
* * *
Even after the trauma of the police searching her place, Kathleen couldn’t get the question out of her mind: where was the baby? As she assessed the damage and started returning books to shelves, she counted back the decades in her head. Twenty-one year
s ago, before Sharon left for the year, Kathleen had already been well established in her business. She had a long client list of wealthy and often powerful men. Sharon was nearly the last girl in Client 13’s pied-à-terre. A couple of months after Sharon’s stint, he told Kathleen he wasn’t going to need the apartment anymore, and Sharon stopped working for Kathleen. The two events hadn’t seemed related, but maybe Sharon’s pregnancy had scared Client 13 away from what had, until then, seemed a low-risk activity.
When Sharon returned a year later, saying she missed the money, Kathleen had assumed she’d met someone and tried to leave the business but the relationship simply hadn’t worked out. Kathleen had wondered at the time whether it was Client 13. Women as beautiful and smart as Sharon sometimes found wealthy clients who pulled them out of the Life. Some even married them. Of course, Client 13 was already married.
He was not only married; he’d also started to have an interest in politics. In those days, a sex scandal would have doused his political ambitions. She imagined he wouldn’t have been too happy if Sharon refused to get rid of the baby. And that much Kathleen knew about Sharon—she would not have had an abortion. She might have been a hooker, but she was also Catholic. She’d told Kathleen that she thought abortion was a mortal sin.
There had been a sadness to Sharon’s return to Kathleen. Kathleen hadn’t asked any questions at the time. Women in the business didn’t have to explain their choice to do sex work, nor the disappointments, heartbreaks, or hopes that had led to their choices. If they wanted to talk about it, Kathleen was there, but she would never push it. Her business model was all about respect. As Kathleen thought back on it, though, she wished she’d pressed Sharon to tell her about what had made her leave and return. Sharon had been young when she’d come to Kathleen. Not a minor, but young enough for Kathleen to feel a maternal duty to make sure she was okay.
So, where was the child? Kathleen imagined that Sharon had given the baby up for adoption. She clearly hadn’t raised the child. And Kathleen doubted Sharon would have had her family raise her baby if she refused to have anything to do with them herself. It hit Kathleen: who would have been the attorney on a very private adoption of Client 13’s love child?
* * *
“I was surprised to hear from you today,” Wayne said to Kathleen when his secretary had left and closed the office door behind her. His manor was bedside-mild, as if their last interaction hadn’t been dicey.
“The police searched my apartment this morning,” she said. “I don’t think I need an attorney on that yet.”
He smiled slightly. “Well, you know I’m always here for you, if it comes to that.”
Kathleen had no intention of hiring Wayne if she was charged with anything criminal regarding Sharon, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. The prospect of a payday would buy her quite a bit of loyalty from a guy like him. She didn’t mind playing that card for what it was worth.
“Sharon’s baby would be grown up now,” she said.
Wayne looked surprised. “Baby?”
“Sharon must have had an NDA about that too. Our client never left things like that undone. He didn’t mind spending money for peace of mind.” Her voice hardened. “It was his baby, wasn’t it?”
“Kathleen.” Wayne said her name reproachfully, as if she should know better than to ask. She assumed it was the gangster code of ethics, not the attorney one, that silenced him.
“Let’s go over this again. Why did she call you on the night she died?” Kathleen waited as Wayne took in the question.
“You’re cross-examining me?” He laughed, leaning back in his seat. “I don’t know anything about a baby. I don’t know why she called me. And I don’t see what a baby has to do with what happened to her.”
“I wonder whether they have any suspects in her murder,” Kathleen said. “I could think of one. She called you and me, and we both know who’s the only nexus between the three of us. Next thing, she winds up dead.”
“You’ve been reading too many crime novels, Kathleen. If it were even true that our guy had a kid with Sharon, do you think rich men, political guys, would kill to keep a love child quiet? In the age of philanderers like Trump? Decades after the supposed child’s birth?” He leaned forward, and his tone grew cold. “You ask whether there are any suspects? I’ll tell you. Only every horny dude in the city.”
Kathleen’s jaw clenched. She measured her words. “Sharon’s dead. Do you think now is the time to insult her for doing sex work?”
“Since when are you so sensitive about the topic of sex work? The lifestyle is a killer. She was over forty. Way past the expiration date for a hooker.”
“Wayne, I—” Kathleen took a breath, forcing herself to pause before she said more. He was trying to shift the tables after her jab the last time about him being a john. Or maybe his belligerence was something more.
His expression softened with false sympathy. “There is one thing I know: some people don’t like being messed with. I also know that there are risks beyond violating your NDA … even after one’s life of illegally promoting prostitution is long over. Lifelong risks. For you. Besides the million-dollar penalty.”
Kathleen’s spine pressed back against her chair.
“For instance, did you know there’s no statute of limitations on tax evasion?” Wayne went on. “You failed to file your taxes during several of your spa’s best years. The income you reported for taxes pales in comparison to all the assets you possess.”
Electricity rolled up Kathleen’s vertebrae to the base of her skull. Her feet were planted firmly on the carpet, but she felt as if the floor were rolling under her.
“Tax evasion is always low-hanging fruit for prosecutors. But you know that.” He smiled smugly. “My suggestion, Kathleen, is that you continue to do what you’ve been doing the last few years. Mind your business and go quietly into the night until you die of old age. I like you, Kathleen. I always have. I don’t want to become your defense attorney, or see something happen to you.”
Her face burned. “Are you saying you’d drop a dime to the IRS? Need I remind you of attorney-client privilege?”
“I wouldn’t be the one dropping the name.” He leaned back in his chair. “And that might only be the beginning. You’re screwing with the wrong people, Kat.”
CHAPTER
30
EMILY LEFT THE subway at the last stop on the A. The sky was gray with clouds and tinged amber by the setting sun. The pavement was wet, rain puddling on the concrete. It had rained while she was underground. She walked west, inhaling deeply, taking in the scent of the damp trees and meadows of the park two blocks away. At a green light, she crossed the street in front of a car that had paused to make a turn. A second car pulled out of a bus stop on Broadway where it had been idling. It made the turn as well. It was a black SUV, like the ones the mayor used with his security detail. She wondered whether a City official was riding in there, but it was more likely an Uber.
She walked past a church. Children on three-wheeled scooters whizzed by. Their mother carried a pizza box. The mother called out to remind them to stop at the corner and wait for her before crossing the street. Seeing them, Emily missed Skye. She appreciated having free time but often felt a tug of yearning on Hector’s nights.
When Emily turned onto Seaman Avenue, she noticed the black car was still with her. It didn’t take much for a woman to feel vulnerable on a darkening street, and the street was empty now except for her and the car.
Emily’s mind flashed back to Sharon, the moment she turned back to speak to a man who approached from a car. It struck her that this might be the exact route Sharon had walked that night.
With a force of will, Emily coached herself not to look for the suspicious car to see if it was him, the stocky man with dark hair who had taken Sharon.
The black car passed her, and she exhaled. Nothing to worry about. She took a couple of easy breaths before she noticed a gray SUV now traveling slowly up the block, seem
ing to keep pace with her. Damn.
She knew law enforcement used multiple cars if they wanted to remain incognito when following you. So, it wasn’t out of the question that more than one car was following her. On the other hand, they weren’t making much of an effort to remain incognito, if she’d spotted them so easily.
She chided herself for her paranoia. The driver of the gray car was probably looking for parking. Her fear had to be a delayed reaction from seeing the man pick up Sharon. Maybe she’d been more affected by what happened than she’d realized.
Emily tended to stuff down her feelings about traumatic events, forcing herself to keep her focus on the next tasks that needed doing. She was always busy, even overscheduled. After her father died, she’d made up for her bad GPA that semester by maintaining perfect grades and tons of after-school activities. It had helped her get into a good college, but more than anything, it had kept her from dwelling on her father’s death. Her propensity to drown her feelings in work and extracurriculars had never lifted completely.
Emily could still sense the gray car following. Calm down, she ordered herself. There was no reason for a team of people to follow her. Whatever trauma she’d experienced was mushrooming into irrational anxiety.
But Emily made a snap decision. She turned down a one-way street, where cars flowed toward her. If the gray car was following her, it couldn’t turn onto the street going the wrong way. If it wasn’t, no one had to know how neurotic she was being.
Emily found herself finally alone, no cars, no pedestrians. She turned another corner and saw her building ahead. No one was following, but she couldn’t get home soon enough. She keyed the lock to her building and walked into the vestibule. She paused, her lungs an untied balloon.
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