“Family is what makes us strong, senora,” he says, unwrapping the towel and wincing at my red, swollen thumb. “Let me get you some ice.”
“I already have some,” I say, indicating the full ice bucket on the coffee table. “It’s not so bad . . . I just . . . I was hoping to get this all done because my children are visiting tomorrow and I want them to see how much I love them. That even though their father is gone, they still have a family.”
I don’t have to fake these tears. I should have Emily and Whit to visit, I realize. I should be reassuring them that we’re still a family.
“Here,” Hector says, “take it easy. I’ll get these up in no time.”
He pats me on the shoulder and gets up. When he removes the first crooked photo from the wall he pauses and takes off his jacket.
“Let me hang that up for you,” I say, popping to my feet. “You don’t want to get your uniform wrinkled.” He nods, staring at the wall and the pictures, measuring with his eyes. I carry his jacket to the hall closet, slipping the keys into my hoodie pocket. It’s all I can do not to sprint up to Joan’s, but I make myself go to the kitchen, pour a glass of spring water, and send Joan an email from Simon that he’s delayed but will be there soon. Then I return to the living room, where I lavish praise on the first two photographs he has hung on the wall.
“Bravo!” I say, “That’s so much better—and look how quickly you’ve done it! I bet you’ll get these all done in no time . . . oh damn!”
“What’s the matter?” he asks.
“Oh, I just realized there are two more I wanted to hang that are still down in the storage unit . . . would you mind . . . it will only take a minute . . .” He barely glances at me as I walk to the back stairs, shouting over my shoulder, “Back in a few!” Then I am sprinting up the stairs, clutching the keys to keep them from jangling.
The key turns, but the door doesn’t open right away. There’s another lock. Using my phone’s flashlight I see there’s another keyhole above the original lock. Joan has installed an interior bolt.
I nearly weep with frustration, but then I look at the ring of keys in my hand. The co-op board specifies that the doorman must have all keys to the apartment’s backdoor. A rule I’d readily break, but I’m betting Joan’s a rule follower. And there is a shiny new key on Hector’s ring. I try it in the new lock and it turns.
“Well done, Joan,” I whisper as I open the door and start down the hallway. “You keep to the straight and narrow. It will get you . . .”
My voice dies as I reach her living room. The only light is the gooseneck lamp on her desk. Its metal neck is wrenched to the side, lighting up the wall covered in sticky notes. They rustle in the breeze from the open window like a flock of pigeons agitated at my approach. I shake away the unsettled feeling I have that they will fly away if I startle them and concentrate on the laptop sitting in the middle of the desk. It chimes when I open it and the screen goes from black to a grainy newsprint image so enlarged that it’s unclear what it is at first. A face maybe? Not worth altering to find out.
I take my flash drive and insert it into the USB port on the side. The laptop buzzes angrily at the intrusion and I half expect it to spit out the foreign body. Maybe Joan has installed anti-spyware software. But then the buzz turns into a contented hum and an icon of a stylized Greta Garbo playing Mata Hari. A bit much, if you ask me, but I suppose that’s what you get when you pay top dollar. I tap on the trackpad and a box appears, asking me if I want to install MataHari 2.2 on this computer. When I tap Yes, another box opens asking me to certify that I own, or have permission from the owner of, this computer. I click the box without a second thought . . . and then it asks me for my password. Crap. Of course Joan’s computer requires a password before downloading an application. Why hadn’t I thought of that? And it’s not like I know enough about Joan to guess like I did with Cass. . . . But then looking around the desk I notice a pile of folders under an address book with a Monet painting on the cover and a logo of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Why does someone Joan’s age even have an address book? It was probably a gift from her mother. Still, why keep it on her desk, unless . . . I reach for it and open it to the last page, which is where I would keep important numbers, and there it is: a list of passwords including the one for her MacBook. I type in the password and an image appears of a 1940s dame smoking a cigarette. As Greta’s cigarette burns down a number appears on the screen telling me what percent of the download is done.
Very clever. I just have to hope the whole thing doesn’t go up in smoke. To distract myself I look at the wall of sticky notes.
One says: MJ/AJ? Tea Shop Village, Nolita, SoHo? Cartoonist. Bird Logo.
There’s also a drawing of a rose on the bottom.
Another says: Assault at the Hi-Line Club witnessed by AJ?
So Joan is looking for someone named AJ who worked at the May fundraiser at the Hi-Line Club. The same event that Simon had alluded to in his threatening email to Cass. Joan also thought something happened at that party—but she doesn’t mention anything about an underage girl. There’s a fan of red ribbons extending from an index card with “Hi-Line Club” written on it.
I pull back the lamp to widen its circular glow and see that the notes extend over the whole wall. There’s a card with Amanda’s name that is attached to note cards with police precinct phone numbers and the question: officers on duty 5/15/15? My skin prickles in the cool breeze from the window. Joan is looking for a local police officer on duty at the time of the party. Did Cass have a run-in with the police? Surely I would have known about that. There’s no record of an arrest on Cass’s computer. No, this must be a wild idea of Joan’s. But just in case, I’ll take pictures of the wall. It will take forever moving the lamp over each section, though, so I walk to the front door and turn on the overhead lights. When I turn back I gasp. It’s like when you notice an ant and then another and then realize there’s a whole swarm. Not only is the entire wall covered with sticky notes and index cards and cut-out pictures, they are also all connected by string spiraling out like a spider web. It looks like the work of a crazy conspiracy theorist. And when I move closer and look at the pictures I see that in addition to photos of Cass there are also photos clipped from old newspapers that seem to come from the 1940s. There’s one of a woman captioned “The Kiss of Death Girl,” another of a thuggish hoodlum named Abe Reles, a picture of the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island, a logo for the Stork Club, and an illustration of a pretty girl in a ’40s hairdo identified as “The Legendary Black Rose.”
“What the hell, Joan,” I say out loud. “What does this have to do with Cass?”
But the answer is obvious. Joan Lurie has lost her mind.
I take a panoramic shot of the whole wall and then closer shots. I may need this one day to prove she was insane. Although I’m not sure how I’d explain what I was doing in her apartment. I’ll worry about that later. The computer has stopped whirring and Mata Hari’s cigarette is ash. “Mission Accomplished” scrolls across the screen. I take out the flash drive and the grainy picture reappears and I see now it’s a detail of one of the pictures on the wall. Rose O’Grady—the Legendary Black Rose.
I wonder what Joan thought when she got the email from “Simon” asking to meet at the Black Rose. Now that I know Joan’s obsessions I might be able to use them to drive her further over the edge.
I’m startled by a distant crack. It almost sounds like a gunshot. Instinctively, I head to the surveillance camera. The lobby is empty, of course, because Hector is in my apartment hanging pictures. Uh-oh, I think, what if a marauding gang chooses this moment to storm the Refuge? Then, as I watch, the lobby door swings open. It’s Joan. Her clothes are disheveled, her hair is loose and wild, and her face is panicked. I feel a pang of guilt that something bad has happened to her when I was the one who sent her out. Then that feeling changes into something else entirely when I notice that she’s not alone. Simon Wallace is with her.
Chapter
Seventeen
Joan
I’M FEELING NERVOUS about tomorrow’s meeting with Simon and need to occupy my mind. I decide to fill in the chart that I started with AJ’s Post-it and try to map out what I know about the events from three years ago. Maybe if it’s all laid out in front of me, I’ll see things more clearly and will know what questions to ask him and how to describe all the clues.
I write the name of the Hi-Line Club and the date 5/15/15 on an index card and tack it above AJ’s name. Then I make a card for Amanda that says, “Witness at the Hi-Line?” and “Trouble with the police?” and “Police record?”
“Bot,” I say, “Tell me what police precincts are near the Hi-Line Club.”
Bot lists three. I copy down the names and phone numbers and make a note to find out who was on duty the night of May 15, 2015. Then I attach red ribbons from Amanda’s card to each of these and stand back again to see the connections.
There’s something about this pattern I’ve made that feels familiar. I stare at it until it’s burned onto my retinas, but I can’t grasp it. When I give up and go to bed the shapes pulse and jitter beneath my eyelids. In my dreams they transform into a girl fleeing down a dark corridor, her retreating back flickering in and out of diagonal slashes of light. When I try to catch up to her my feet sink into cold, wet sand. We’re not in a corridor though; we’re under the boardwalk. I can hear the roar of the sea and a rhythmic pounding, which I realize are the footsteps of someone up above us on the boardwalk, tracking our movements, waiting until we reach the end to catch us. The girl ahead of me must hear it, too, because she starts to run. I run, too, because I know that our only chance is to reach the end of the boardwalk before he does. The slashes of light flicker faster, speeding up like an old-fashioned zoetrope. It makes me dizzy and I begin to fall, the sand rearing up in my face, filling my mouth with the sweet smell of chloroform.
I wake up with my heart pounding, drenched in sweat, my mouth as dry as sand. I get up and stumble toward the kitchen for water but am arrested by the pattern of moonlight coming in through the slatted blinds, streaking the walls, creating the same pattern of light as beneath the boardwalk in my dreams. Only now I’m staring at it as if from above, as if I’m lying on the boardwalk looking through the cracks, and the pounding in my head is the footsteps below me. I lie down on the floor and press my face to it, listening. . . .
I wake up on the floor of the living room in the slatted sunlight. For a moment I think I’m back on Avenue A waking up after the attack and the months since have been a dream. The book deal and fancy apartment are just the wish fulfillment of another aspirational reporter.
But then I feel the cool river breeze on my skin and hear the ruffling of paper. There are sheets of paper all around me and squares of yellow and orange and pink scattered over the floor. When I get to my knees I see that the leaf litter of Post-its stretches across the floor and climbs up the wall, where it has overrun the chart I began last night.
I have no memory of putting them up.
But I must have. Who else, I ask myself as I look closer, would have written Lillian and Rose and Abe Reles and The Half Moon Hotel and Assistant DA Frank Maloney and Murder Inc. on Post-its and index cards and arrayed them over the cards for AJ and Amanda and the Hi-Line Club? I’m not sure what’s worse: that I did it, that I forgot I did it, or that, staring at it now, it sort of makes sense.
A LONG SHOWER and several cups of black coffee later, the cobwebs have been pushed out of my head. I get to work and spend the rest of the day fine-tuning my wall. I feel like one of those scrapbooking Martha Stewart types my mother is friends with, cutting out pictures from magazines to make decoupage trays and keepsake boxes. Frustrated artists, I used to call them, until I realized it hurt my mother’s feelings. She’d wanted to go to art school but her mother insisted she go to teachers’ college instead so she’d have a dependable career. You have to remember she grew up in the Depression, my mother would say when I accused my grandmother of crushing her dreams. You can’t blame her for being risk-averse.
Now I can see the appeal in collaging. My floor is littered with pictures printed off the Internet. Abe Reles’s ugly pug-nosed face next to Caspar Osgood’s urbanely handsome one, the sleek modernity of the Hi-Line next to the Art Deco curves of the Stork Club. I even find an illustration of the notorious “Black Rose” that looks a bit like Lillian.
I can’t explain why I’m doing it or what I hope to accomplish, but I feel as if I’m moving around pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that got scattered when I was hit over the head. When I get them right I’ll know what AJ saw at the Hi Line and my brain will be fixed. Or maybe Simon will know. He said that he wanted to talk about what happened at the club, but I don’t know if he wants to find out what I know, or to tell me what he knows. Either way, it must be something sensitive in order for him to want to meet in private after all these months.
As I get dressed I feel a flutter of tension in my stomach. Is it the prospect of meeting with my boss outside the office? I wonder. After all, that’s how so many of the women I interviewed say their trouble started. He asked me to meet for drinks. He wanted to talk about my career over dinner. But no, I tell myself, Simon’s always behaved completely aboveboard. I’m just nervous because the last two times I tried to go out were disasters. To gird myself I dress as if I’m a ’40s-era spy going on a mission: black turtleneck, high-waisted wool trousers, and a tan trench coat. I put on heels but think better of it, remembering how unsteady I’ve been on my feet, and change into heavy black boots. The only thing I need to complete my ’40s noir look is a handgun. I settle for the can of mace that my mother gave me when I moved to the city (she couldn’t help but inherit some of my grandmother’s fears) and retrieve Lillian’s locket from the paper-clip dispenser on the desk. It feels cool and reassuring against my throat, tucked safely under my turtleneck.
At ten minutes to eight I leave the apartment, double-locking the door behind me. I pause outside Lillian’s door, wondering if I should ask if she needs anything, but decide she’s probably asleep.
I take the elevator down, cross the lobby, wave at Hector. I picture how I would look to someone watching on the surveillance camera: Intrepid reporter Joan Lurie out on assignment. I remember what Lillian said about how she was able to be braver when she was pretending to be Rose. I pretend I am young Lillian, spying on mobsters for the DA’s Office, and it gets me out the door. I almost stop to light an imaginary cigarette I’m so into the role, but instead I touch my throat to feel Lillian’s locket there, put my collar up against the chill, and stick my hands in my pockets, curling my fingers around the can of mace. I stride down the hill, breathing in the brisk October air. Dead leaves crunch under my feet, crisp and reassuring. Not at all like the wet sand in my dreams.
I make it past the church and turn left. The Black Rose, according to Google Maps, is on a side street called Indian Road that curves off Seaman Avenue following the border of the park. Perhaps it was an Indian footpath when this part of Manhattan was still untracked wilderness. It’s easy to imagine oneself outside time here at the tip of Manhattan. Ahead I see a glint of water, an inlet where the Harlem River flows into the Hudson. Across the water I can see the cliff where the Columbia crew team has painted a giant C, and the Metro-North tracks. Warm yellow light spills onto the sidewalk as a door opens, accompanied by laughter and voices and the smell of beer and french fries.
Maybe I’ll have a burger and a dark ale.
Inside, the tavern is warm and welcoming, paneled in dark wood and lit by stained-glass lamps. The liquor bottles behind the bar gleam like a banked fire and an actual fire in a real fireplace crackles in a side room. I look around for Simon but he’s not here yet. I pick a table in a corner near the fireplace, where I can watch the door. My server asks if I’m here for Irish folk music night and I laugh, thinking I’ll bring Lillian down to hear the music sometime, and order a Guinness Stout. My phone pings and I see an email notification flash across
my screen. From Simon: Delayed. Be there in fifteen minutes.
While I wait I read the back of the menu, which tells the history of the bar. Most of it I’ve already read online, but there’s an extra bit here that’s not on their website.
The legendary Black Rose hid in the Magdalen Refuge until her hiding place was discovered. Some surmise that her whereabouts were sold to the gangsters she was running from. She vanished from the Refuge on a cold winter’s night in 1941. Was she killed by the mob and dumped in the river? Or did she escape on a passing northbound train and live out her life in anonymity in some small town? Perhaps we will never know.
I wonder if Lillian is the Black Rose. Did she keep Rose’s name when she entered the Refuge? I take out my notebook to make a note to ask her—and hear a familiar voice.
“Always working, I see.”
It’s not even been five minutes since his email, but here he is, his face ruddy in the firelight, handsome rumpled tweed and loose-collared Oxford shirt. I’m glad I dressed down.
“You told me once that a good reporter’s always working.”
“That I did.” He sits down and motions to the bartender to bring him a Guinness as well. Then he looks closer at me and frowns. “From the looks of you, I’d say you’re working too hard, Joannie. Have you been sleeping? Is it the book? You know . . .” He looks over his shoulder as if checking to see if anyone is listening to us. A man in a baseball cap shifts a few inches away and turns to watch the musicians setting up. Simon moves closer to me. “Sometimes a story is so dark it can wreck you. Is there something you found that’s bothering you? I have to admit I was worried when I got your email.”
I begin to tell him that I’m afraid that this story is taking me someplace dark when I register what he said. “What do you mean when you got my email. You emailed me!”
The Stranger Behind You Page 20