The house was pretty fucking impressive all right: big, brick, and showy with a semi-circular cobblestone drive and white columns reaching only halfway to heaven. The low-slung hedges were perfectly trimmed and the dormant, carpet-like lawn was dotted with just enough leftover leaves to make it look as if they were placed there by the hired help to lend it an air of nature but without the mess. It was just the kind of lawn that screamed to someone from Brooklyn, “Piss on me.” And believe me, in the mood I was in, I was sorely tempted. I parked my gray rental at an awkward angle so it would discourage anyone else from coming up the drive. Like I said, I was in that kind of mood. Call me petty. I’d been called worse, much worse.
The front door chimes weren’t quite as loud as the Vatican’s on Easter Sunday, but they were close. The pope didn’t come to the door. Apparently, I didn’t even rate a parish priest. A chubby, rather pleasant-faced black woman in her forties in a nurse’s get-up came to the door instead.
“How can I help you?” Her voice lilted with the song of Haiti.
“Mrs. Barrows-Willingham, please.”
“Who is calling?”
“Just give her this, okay?” I handed the nurse a folded piece of paper and a business card. “She’ll understand.”
“ D’accord, okay. Ne quittez pas, just a moment, please.”
She disappeared, closing the door behind her and locking it. Nothing so welcoming as a closing door and a deadbolt clicking shut in your face. I wasn’t fretting over it. The lady of the house would be coming to fetch me soon enough. The deadbolt clicked open and the mighty glass and wood door pulled back once again. Standing there in all her pinched glory was Mrs. Sonia Barrows-Willingham, only she hadn’t come to fetch me. No, instead, she stepped out of the house, pulling the door closed behind her. She smelled of cigarettes and decay. I guess I half expected her to look scared at being found out. Wrong again. She looked positively thrilled… well, as much as a dour-faced woman could look thrilled.
“Oh, I’ve been a naughty girl, haven’t I, Mr. Prager? Have you come to spank me, to threaten me, or blackmail me? Whichever it is, please get to it, I’ve got a husband up on the third floor who insists upon dying by the inch and he’s in a particular amount of distress today.”
She was good, Mrs. Barrows-Willingham, very good. She was prodding me, probing to see just what kind of manipulation I was susceptible to. I wasn’t going to make it easy for her. This clenched fist of a woman who had the largest collection of Sashi Bluntstone’s works used her spare time to go online and rip Sashi apart. Her blog was called Sushi Cuntstone Cooks and offered recipes, the ingredients of which included raw bits of Sashi Bluntstone’s anatomy. And the dishes were served on trays and in Bento boxes inspired by Sashi’s paintings.
“Sushi Cuntstone, very cute, Mrs. Barrows-Willingham. I particularly like your recipes for Sashi-me.”
She laughed or made a little barking noise, which I supposed passed for laughter, and looked at me I was like a main course. “Candy told me about you, that she was thinking of hiring you. You know, Mr. Prager, I get the impression that she has a father fixation on you, but one with a rather disturbing sexual element to it.”
“We weren’t talking about Candy.” I made sure to stay calm. “We were discussing your twisted hobby.”
“Oh, do grow up, Mr. Prager. Welcome to the new millennium. Sashi Bluntstone as an entity is as much my creation as any of her paintings are hers. You might ask sweet Candy about that when next you two speak. I arranged for Sashi’s first showings. I bought her first paintings. I created a market for her work. Me, not that buffoon Max, not Candy, not that fool Randolph Junction. Me! And in this new age, there is no market without controversy. Yes, Mr. Prager, I even helped create that. Who was it, do you suppose, who whispered in the ears of people like Nathan Martyr, a man who in spite of his legendary shortcomings and lack of talent as an artist, worked and studied very hard to achieve whatever success he managed? Can you even imagine how painful it is for the many worthy artists in the world who toil in poverty and rejection to swallow the success of the Sashi Bluntstones and Thomas Kinkades of the world?”
“I think I can.” I wasn’t lying. I remembered the bitter taste in my mouth when guys who couldn’t find their own dicks without a road map made detective. No one said life was fair and the job was even less fair than the rest of life. So I had to swallow it as the parade of gold shields passed me by. Yeah, I knew exactly how those other artists felt.
“Well, then you must understand the need and inevitability of blogs like Sushi Cuntstone Cooks and all the others. Resentment, jealousy, envy are in endless supply and they help drive the market. It’s part of an investment strategy, nothing more.”
“Okay, I get that. I also get that Sashi’s paintings have plummeted in value over the last years and I look around and I see who has the most to gain from her disappearance. That would be you, Mrs. Barrows-Willingham.”
“Indeed. An astute assessment on your part. My collection is now valued almost as highly as it was before the disappearance. In fact, I’ve recently added to it.”
“I know,” I said, “Forty grand worth.”
That caught her by surprise. “How could you know that? Did that ass Junction-”
“No, I was standing right there in the gallery, a few feet from you as the two of you bargained. I agree with you, that painting you bought is no ‘Red Waves.’”
“I underestimated you, Mr. Prager. Maybe Candy was right to seek your help. You seem a resourceful man. Try not to be big-headed about it, though. My husband was once a most resourceful man. Now he defecates into a bag and has a catheter shoved into his bladder through his penis.”
“Fair enough, so let me just ask. Did you-”
“No, I had nothing to do with Sashi’s disappearance. Once she was a delightful little girl. She has, however, become a rather dreadful and morbid child. I confess to feeling that about her, but I have no wish for harm to come to her, however much I might profit from it.”
“Oh, so you have your limits?”
“Some, yes. As much as I would profit, the money is almost beside the point. The ground under the garage on this property is worth more than all of Sashi’s paintings at their highest value. My husband is quite wealthy and I didn’t exactly enter the marriage as a pauper. So, no, Mr. Prager, I do so hate to disappoint you, but I had nothing to do with Sashi’s going missing.”
“Did you know that she was kidnapped, that there was a ransom demand?”
Again, she seemed caught off guard, as if she were looking for a left jab and I landed flush with a straight right to her liver. “I’ve heard nothing about that.”
“You will. My guess is the story will break later today. Even so,” I said, “it means she may not be dead and all the value that got built back up will vanish.” She didn’t like that and I piled it on. “What’s the matter, Sonia, I thought it wasn’t about the money?”
“Please excuse me, I have to get back inside.”
“One more thing.”
“If you must.”
“If Candy came to you for ransom money, would you help her?”
A crooked line appeared where Barrows-Willingham’s mouth used to be. “We will just have to see about that, won’t we. Good day to you, Mr. Prager.”
I stood stone still and watched her retreat back into her house. I actually reached around and touched the butt of my. 38. I thought about shooting her through the door, but realized that as much sawdust would come out of her when the bullet passed through as would come out of the door.
TWENTY
Jimmy Palumbo was waiting out front of his house at four so we could head into the city without wasting time. While his place was a bit worse for wear with several mismatched cedar shakes on the front facade, a missing downspout on the garage gutter, the lawn ragged, and the bushes untidy and overgrown, it wouldn’t take much to get it back into nice shape. And though it wasn’t in the same class as the Barrows-Willinghams’ massive
Gold Coast manor, Jimmy’s house was on a fairly secluded, lovely street south of Montauk Highway in Babylon. It was also appealing because all the lots down here had docks in their backyards on West Babylon Creek that led out past Santapogue Point and into the Great South Bay, Fire Island, and the Atlantic beyond. I knew the area pretty well because one of our biggest wine customers belonged to a nearby yacht club and had taken Aaron and me out on his boat a few times.
“Nice location,” I said.
“Needs a lotta work, but since the divorce…” He didn’t explain further and he didn’t really have to.
“Got a boat?”
His face, somewhat sour when discussing the house, broke into a big smile.
“Only reason I still live down here.”
“Tell me about her.”
“A Chris-Craft forty-two-foot Continental that I bought with part of my signing bonus. Three hundred and twenty horsepower twin engines. She’s a beaut. She needs some work too, but not as much as the house. The house and the boat were the only things I got in the divorce. My wife pretty much took everything else. She even turned the girls against me. They never call or write and when I make plans to visit, they’re always away.”
“Why not sell the house? Even with the downturn in the market, you could get big money for it.”
“What would I do with my boat? You know how much it would cost me to keep her somewheres else?”
I dropped it and turned on news radio. I could see the conversation was upsetting him and I needed him to be on his game. On the other hand, a bit of surliness probably wouldn’t hurt since I had no intention of making nice to the people on Martyr’s list. If we needed to twist arms, we weren’t going to do it metaphorically. I told Jimmy as much. He didn’t blink.
The radio filled the car with the usual background noise. Retailers were hoping for a big holiday shopping season. There was that phrase again. There was a war in Iraq. No kidding? Another one in Afghanistan. Gee, I almost forgot. John Lennon was dead for twenty-six years. I paid attention to that story. Lennon used to shop at City On The Vine when he wanted to buy gifts of fancy wine for friends. I remembered the time he came into the store near closing and playfully ripped Paul McCartney’s songwriting skills. I keep the picture of John and me on the wall in my office. I hadn’t looked at it for a very long time. I needed to look to remind myself that time passes and we leave things behind, even some things we shouldn’t. Then, I thought, that wasn’t really true, not for me. That’s what other people did. I never really leave anything behind, ever. On more than one occasion, I wished I could.
What I didn’t hear on the radio was anything new about Sashi Blunt-stone. I knew Sarah hadn’t lied to me, but I wondered if she had been lied to. It was pretty clear to me that Max and Candy weren’t exactly reliable and were fairly desperate. Generally speaking, that’s not a good combination. Was it possible they were so hard up for money that they concocted the ransom demand just to squeeze cash out of their friends? Everyone else seemed willing to use Sashi’s disappearance to their own ends, why not her parents? In my life I had seen the best in people, but I’d seen plenty more of the worst. If Max and Candy had manufactured the ransom demand, it would set an all-time low and would go a long way in convincing me that the bottom is much deeper than the top is high.
Then my cell phone rang and McKenna saved me from myself.
“Yeah.”
“Your hunch was right on, Prager. They paid fifty grand. Dropped it in a garbage can up in a state park in Huntington.”
“Why aren’t I hearing about it on the news?”
“We’re going big with it tomorrow: a 1:00 PM press conference, new AMBER Alerts, whole nine yards. You wanna be there?”
“Nah. I’ve been a part of those circuses before and it always comes back to bite me.”
“I figured I’d ask.”
“And I appreciate that. Aren’t you even a little worried that this may force the guy’s hand? He may panic and-”
“Wasn’t really my decision. The brass took it upon themselves to make the rest of the world think we’re doing something besides chasing our own tails. Anyway, my bet is the kid’s dead and no matter what we do or don’t do, it won’t matter, but maybe this way we can at least flush the bastard out of hiding.”
I said, “You may be right.”
“But what if I’m not?”
“That’s the big question, isn’t it? If it’s any comfort to you, McKenna, I know what that particular purgatory is like.”
“I’ll let you know if it helps. By the way,” he said before I could click off my Bluetooth, “if you think I believe in hunches, look under your pillow tonight and maybe you’ll find five dollars.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you should thank your daughter for standing up and you have my word I’ll keep her name out of this.”
He hung up.
“What’s going on?” Jimmy wanted to know.
“I guess I might as well tell you since the story’s gonna hit tomorrow.”
“What story?”
“Sashi Bluntstone’s disappearance was a kidnapping after all. There was a ransom demand and a partial payoff that the parents didn’t bother telling the cops about. We better get lucky tonight, because things are about to change. The cops are gonna try and flush the kidnapper out.”
Jimmy fell silent. He understood what I understood. This might be our last best chance to make things happen before all hell broke loose.
Well, so much for brick manor houses and nice suburban homes on secluded streets. John Tierney’s place gave shitboxes a bad name. Way at the ass end of Gerritsen Beach, the water lapping at the back deck, the deep color of the siding more a product of black mold than of dark paint, the rickety old house looked to be a single snapped nail away from total collapse. Jimmy took one look at the state of the house, the aluminum foil covering the upstairs windows and the plywood covering what should have been the downstairs windows and doors, and said: “Abandoned?”
“Seems that way,” I agreed, but shook my head no, pointing up at the nearest utility pole. It didn’t take an electrician to see that somebody had hacked into the local electrical supply and cable service. “Come on, let’s go,” I said loud enough for anyone in the house to hear.
We got in the car, drove down the block, and turned the corner. We parked.
“Doesn’t make sense,” Jimmy said. “If this is the guy’s address, why’s he living like a squatter?”
“Good question. Let’s go get some answers.”
Two minutes later, Jimmy Palumbo and I were working our way back down the street on foot, using parked cars and light poles for cover. When I reached the corner of the vacant lot abutting Tierney’s shithole, I cut towards the water and crept along the shore towards the back deck. From there, I moved to the side porch. I hadn’t grown up very far from here. In fact, I didn’t live more than ten minutes from where I now stood, but Gerritsen Beach had always been a bit of a mystery to me, kind of like Breezy Point in Rockaway. My dad used to call Breezy Point the Irish Riviera because it was a tight-knit enclave of cops and firemen on the water at the western end of Rockaway. It was a different world. This part of Gerritsen Beach had been blue collar Irish when I was a kid. And not unlike Jimmy Palumbo’s house, the places around here had access to the water and the Atlantic was just on the other side of the Belt Parkway.
The plan was for me to get into the house and either grab Tierney or flush him out into Jimmy Palumbo’s welcoming arms. Too bad Tierney had different ideas. When I was about two steps up on the stairs to the side porch, a human tornado bowled me over, sending my. 38 flying and my head bouncing off the railing.
“Fuck!”
Then there was a splash. I turned and saw someone swimming furiously in the dark water. With my brain rattled and night having fallen, keeping track of the swimmer wasn’t easy. Jimmy tore past me, dropping his Sig by me as he went. Christ, I thought, he must have been treme
ndously fast for a big man when his knees actually worked. There was another splash, a louder one, and he too disappeared into the darkness. I got up, brushed myself off, collected the guns, and tried to get my head back on straight. I was too old for this shit. I had a nice lump under my hair, just above my right ear. Less than a minute later, Jimmy emerged from the water, dragging the exhausted John Tierney by the scruff of his neck.
“Come on, bring him inside.”
The interior of Tierney’s place was a time capsule, an eerie cross between a crypt and cathedral. It reeked of mold and mildew and it was cold enough so that we could see our own breath. The furniture was turn-of-the-century stuff, but in immaculate shape. The seat cushions were protected by heavy duty plastic slipcovers that had yellowed with the years. There were delicate lace curtains hanging on the inside of the boarded windows, dusty fringed lampshades, and white lace doilies under porcelain knickknacks. And there were crucifixes… everywhere. Jesus Christ suffered a lot in here. His passion was the central design theme. Every available inch of wall space was covered in paintings of haloed saints, all with appropriately beatific smiles and prayerful hands. Only these saints all bled from the ears and their eyes were solid black. John Tierney’s handiwork, I imagined. We dragged Tierney upstairs, but he was getting some of his strength back and struggled a bit. One smack in the back of the head from Jimmy calmed him right down. Tierney babbled incoherently and crossed himself constantly. The babbling was a jumble of Latin prayers sprinkled with a few recognizable words, names, and phrases. He seemed rather fond of the CIA, FBI, Hamas, Satan, and, incredibly, the name Sashi. That stopped us in our tracks.
We sat Tierney down in a chair in a bedroom that had an electric heater going full blast against the chill. I told Jimmy to go stand by the heater and dry off as best he could. There was a flat screen TV. The TV was on but aimed so that the screen faced the aluminum-foiled windows. There was a shortwave radio, an old police scanner, and a laptop computer, but only a computer. There was no printer, no fax, no phone. The walls, ceiling, and floor were flat black and on each surface Tierney had painted a huge, bloody-faced Jesus, his eyes as black as the saints. I’d be lying to you if I said the Jesus heads didn’t creep me out.
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