Alice found herself thinking about the words her father had used to persuade her to call Arthur Cronin for help. He had quoted Malcolm Gladwell—something about “practical intelligence,” “an ability to read a situation. To know what to say and how and when to say it.”
“I know we can’t call my friends, but what about my lawyer?”
“Is this your boyfriend, Jeff? I guarantee you they’re pulling his LUDs.”
She didn’t feel the need to articulate the complications that made the word boyfriend a poor descriptor. “No. I told Danes the last time he tried to interview me that Arthur Cronin was my lawyer.”
“They wouldn’t have the balls to monitor his phone.”
“Then that’s who I think we should call.”
“Alice. Where are you? I’ve been trying to cover for you with the police, but what the hell is going on?” Based on his secretary’s urgency in transferring the call, Alice could tell Art had been waiting to hear from her.
“My friend Lily warned me the police were coming. I just couldn’t let them take me. You know that I’m innocent.”
“You don’t look innocent to them right now. We need to negotiate your turning yourself in. Their case is probably shit.”
“How are Mom and Dad holding up?” She wished she could make herself not care about her father. He was the one who’d created this predicament. But even though she knew he was a cheat and a liar, she had to believe that he had beaten whatever part of him had been with Christie Kinley that night when he had finally stopped drinking.
“I’ve got a public relations firm putting together a damage-control campaign about these old photographs, but he’s more worried about you.”
She noticed he was not denying that the man in the pictures was her father.
“I know about Christie Kinley, Art. I know she wasn’t a former employee. That lawsuit had nothing to do with plagiarism.”
“I’m sorry, Alice. I was the one who told your father I could get this mess straightened out without having to rehash these ugly details.”
“A fourteen-year-old girl accused my father of raping her. It’s more than just an ugly detail.”
“It wasn’t rape. The girl was drunk. Your father even more so. She was enamored with your father’s celebrity. She set him up.”
“I don’t want to hear any of that right now.”
“We should have been up-front with you, but your father wants to rectify it. He was absolutely convinced that the church protesting the gallery was behind this. He has given me a full waiver to discuss these matters not only with you but with the police or anyone else, if doing so would finally get you out of this jam. He’s willing to let the chips fall as they may.”
“Did you two know that Christie Kinley had a child nine months after that night in Bedford?”
“What? Where did you hear that?”
“Did you know or not?”
“Of course not! That was never an issue in the settlement. No one ever made such an allegation.”
She explained the timing of Gloria’s supposed pregnancy while Christie was sent away to boarding school. “It would explain why a red-haired woman who looks like me was spotted with Travis Larson. Can you please call the detectives and convince them they need to talk to this woman? Her name is Mia Louise Andrews. If they can prove a connection between her and Larson, that should be enough to convince them I was set up.”
“The only thing those detectives want to hear from me right now is that I can bring you in on the warrant.”
“Tell them I’ll turn myself in if they interview Mia.”
“The NYPD doesn’t usually take well to blackmail.”
“With your talents, Art, I’m sure you can get them to see it as a fair compromise.”
“I suppose if they arrested you without following up on this angle, someone like me might use it to excoriate them in the media. A rush to judgment. Shoddy investigation tactics.”
“See? I knew you’d come up with something.”
“All right. Let me give these schmucks a call and see what I can do. Where do I call you back?”
She mouthed the request to Hank, who gave her approval to recite the number of her disposable cell.
“I’ll call you back in twenty.”
She looked at her watch. Twenty minutes before she’d know whether she was going to jail or—well, she didn’t know the alternative.
Twenty minutes came and went in silence. After thirty, she tried Art, and then continued dialing every five minutes.
When her cell rang shortly before the one-hour mark, she picked up immediately, continuing her ritualized pacing of the narrow path between the foot of the hotel bed and the fake mahogany television stand. Art’s voice sounded hoarse when he apologized for the delay.
“Jesus. I hope a screaming match wasn’t involved.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Your voice sounds like you’ve been yelling.”
“No, but there’s something I need to tell you.”
“That does not sound good. The police wouldn’t listen about Mia? Hello?” She looked at the signal bars on her cell. The call hadn’t dropped. “Can you hear me? Art?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“Seriously, you sound weird. If there’s bad news, go ahead and give it to me. I can take it.”
When he finally spoke, he was all business. “Okay, you need to pay very close attention. I want to talk to you first about where we stand with the police. And you have to promise me that you’re going to follow through on whatever course of action we decide is best, no matter what. Can you promise me that?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t—”
“So here’s the deal. I talked to Danes. He sounded put out. And very skeptical. But I got him to agree to a knock and talk with Mia Andrews—check her out, see what she might have to say about this matter.”
“Thank God—”
“Not so fast. It was obvious he’s only shining us on, which means he might believe any story this gal hands to him. It’s always possible she’s going to say something that actually hurts you.”
“I’m willing to take that risk.”
“Plus his agreement to check out Mia was conditional. He’ll only question her if I produce you on the warrant.”
“I don’t want to turn myself in on the warrant until after they see Mia. What if I turn myself in, and Mia’s off in Mexico with a fake name, never to be seen again?”
“Which leaves us in a standoff. Here’s what I was able to negotiate: you agree to return from wherever you’ve been hiding. Once we’re together in the city, Danes and his partner will reach out to Mia. Once the interview is over, he calls me, and I deliver you to them.”
“What if they can’t find Mia?”
“Then I made no promises. They’ll have to keep looking for you themselves. What do you think?”
“What other choice do I have?”
“I can get one of my own investigators on it. We could put together what would eventually be our defense case, and present it to the DA’s office to try to preempt an indictment. In the meantime, the longer you go without turning yourself in, the less likely it is they’ll be willing to help you out. And to be honest, police pressure can be a lot more effective in getting a response than a private investigator.”
“So basically I should turn myself in anyway, and if we go with Danes’s deal, the police will at least be the ones asking Mia questions?”
“That’s how I see it.”
“All right. Let’s do it.” She swallowed, realizing that tonight she would probably be sleeping in a jail cell. “What’s the next step?”
“Can you be in Williamsburg by six o’clock?”
That would give her nearly four hours.
“No problem.”
“I didn’t know how far away you were, so I asked for some time to make you available. Danes wants you near Mia’s house so you can turn yourself in as soon as the interview’s over.”
“That quickly, huh?”
“They’re worried you’ll renege. I’ll meet you down there. I think it’s good for us to be close by. Hopefully, something will come of their talks with Mia, in which case we might be able to help tie up some loose ends. I’m looking at a map now. There’s an intersection about a block from Mia’s address. Rutledge and Lee. I’ll meet you there a little before six. Now are you sure this is what you want to do?”
Of course it wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted her life back. She wanted anything else but her current circumstance. “Yes. I’m sure.”
“Okay, now remember that you promised not to change course, no matter what.”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“Because your father called me. He begged me for your number so he could tell you himself, but I was worried he’d lead the police right to you.”
“You’re really scaring me. Are they okay?” Hank mouthed a silent What? from the threadbare chair in the corner of the hotel room.
“They’re fine, but it’s Ben. His sponsor hadn’t heard from him for a while and got worried enough to go by his apartment. He found Ben in the bathroom. There’s no easy way to say this. Your brother was using again. He overdosed.”
“Where is he? Did he go to the hospital? Is Down with him?” Despite Ben’s at least initially regular attendance at NA meetings, he’d never found anyone with whom he was as comfortable discussing his addiction as Down.
“It wasn’t just an OD. Ben’s dead. They think it happened sometime yesterday. Heroin. I’m so sorry.”
She remembered Ben’s unlocked apartment. The unoccupied loft. The cracked bathroom door that she had never opened. Her ugly rush to grab his money and cell phone. Maybe if she had nudged that door. She imagined rubber tubing around her brother’s bare arm, a syringe still hanging from his vein.
“Alice, I’m so, so sorry. You had a right to know immediately, but remember your promise. You need to focus on yourself right now—for the sake of your parents, if nothing else. They can’t lose both of you.”
From his choked-back sob, she knew he’d been holding himself together for her benefit, playing the role of the unflappable lawyer who was going to take care of everything. Practical intelligence, her father had called it.
She felt the phone slip from her hand before Hank grabbed her shoulders to break her fall.
Chapter Fifty-Three
It was nearly four o’clock, and Jason was still pissed at those fat-slob NYPD-ers who had fucked him over. He also had a crick in his neck from spending the entire night tossing and turning on Joann Stevenson’s sofa, unsure whether the lack of sleep was from the fact that he hadn’t slept on a couch since college, or because he knew he had no business being on that particular one.
To top it off, Nancy had to go and say something about the fact that he looked exactly how he felt. “Holy moly, Jason. You’re much too young to have bags under your eyes the size of mine. You’ve got to take care of yourself, honey.”
“Just allergies, Nancy. Nothing to worry about.”
He’d been steaming all day, but decided he had to draw a line in the sand with those detectives in the city. Willie Danes picked up after two rings.
“Danes.”
“It’s Jason Morhart from Dover. My victim’s mom heard about your arrest warrant on the news last night.”
“Now if only we could find the defendant.”
He emphasized the last syllable to rhyme with ant, the way Jason noticed lawyers often did. He always thought it was a person’s way of trying to sound like an expert.
“You should have kept me in the loop, Danes. Our departments had an agreement. Full exchange of all information. And you never told me anything about that woman’s father being in some of those photographs. That’s got my victim’s mom all worked up about the pornography angle again. Her daughter being missing is bad enough. She doesn’t need to worry about naked pictures of her getting distributed all over the world.”
“Sounds like you’re the one who’s got yourself all worked up about the feelings of that girl’s mother, Morhart. This is a criminal investigation.”
“And it’s supposed to be a joint one. Forget about the girl’s family. I shouldn’t have heard about a major development from the television. Did you forget who it was who told you George Hardy is Becca’s father? Or who told you to look for Becca’s fingerprints in the first place?”
“A lot of good that’s done us. We’d actually have a pretty nice and neat case if we didn’t have to explain what the hell your girl’s prints are doing in that gallery.”
“Jesus, Danes. Listen to yourself. I’m sorry if the truth is interfering with the tidiness of your murder case.”
“Aw, crap. I’m being a jerk because I know we blew it. We got sucked into the momentum of things and were working overdrive on the arrest warrant. We didn’t think to call you. Sorry, man. Honestly, though, we got nothing but conjecture about Becca. Our best guess is that Larson was grooming her for the camera, but either something went wrong and she wound up getting hurt, or hopefully she got spooked and ran off. Once we get Humphrey in custody, maybe we’ll get a better read on the situation.”
“Any thoughts on when that might be?”
“With any luck, it’ll be tonight. Look, do you really want to be involved in this, even if it’s not taking us directly into Becca territory yet?”
“We did have a cooperation agreement.”
“I’ll tell you what. I worked out this cockamamie agreement with Humphrey’s lawyer for her to turn herself in, but first I promised to chase down some girl she thinks is her secret identical half sister or something.”
“Her what?”
“It’s nonsense, man, but that’s the way this girl’s been yanking our chain from the beginning. It’s a box I got to check off, though, and Shannon’s probably going to be tied up with the DA. We’re trying to figure out whether we have any charges against the father, and then we can use those as leverage with the daughter. Think you can meet me in Williamsburg by six o’clock? Take a run at this mystery witness with me? It’ll be a waste of time, but if you want to be in the loop, you and I will play Murtaugh and Riggs tonight.”
“Only if you’re the Mel Gibson one. Without the phone rage.”
“Deal.”
“Where’s Williamsburg?”
“In Brooklyn, man. That’s one of the five boroughs of New York City?”
Part IV
Mia
Chapter Fifty-Four
Alice’s disposable phone rang at 5:58 p.m. She recognized her surrogate uncle and now-attorney’s voice.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Outside a fruit market on Rutledge and Lee.”
“Are you holding up all right?”
“No, but I’m here.”
She had spent another two hours in the hotel room, overtaken by uncontrollable sobbing. Just when she thought she had no more left to give—the tears losing steam, her breathing returning to normal—she’d succumb beneath another oncoming wave.
It was Hank who had finally forced her into the car. He spoke more words during the drive to Brooklyn than he had since they’d met. He’d lost a sister. Her name was Ellen. He talked about her death and the way it tethered him to Travis Larson. About the phone call from the state police after Ellen’s accident. About how he had to hang up on the trooper before learning the location of her body so he could run to the bathroom to be sick.
And then he said he’d never gotten past the guilt. That the responsibility for someone else’s pain was a weight that could never be eased. You feel responsible for Ben, but your parents feel responsible for you. Don’t do this to them, Alice. Don’t give up on yourself. Don’t let them go to bed every night, knowing you’re either a fugitive or in prison, and feeling like it’s all their fault.
So just as she had promised Art she would, she had pulled herself together—for tonight. For now. Grieving the loss of her brother would have to com
e later. Hank had dropped her off at the intersection where she and Arthur had agreed to meet. There was no need to advertise to the NYPD that her plan had been assisted by an FBI agent. He promised he’d be circling in the neighborhood, waiting for her to call.
Art had apparently pulled himself together as well. “I got stuck in traffic trying to get out of Manhattan. I’m crossing the Williamsburg Bridge now. I don’t want to risk screwing anything up, so I’ll call Danes and let him know you’re in place standing by. I’ll be right there. If we’re lucky, Mia will either come clean or at least act hinky enough for Danes and Shannon to clue in that she’s behind this.”
As uncomfortable as she had been with the status quo, she felt sick knowing that something was going to change tonight. Either the police would see her in a new light, or she would officially become a criminal defendant. “How are my parents?”
“It was, well, I’ll go ahead and say it—it was a fucking hard day. But we’re going to try to have something resembling good news for the Humphrey family soon, okay? I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
She squared her shoulders and let the cold in, just like Ben had taught her when she was little.
Jason was growing frustrated with the snarl of one-way streets that threatened to take him farther and farther from the address where he was supposed to have met Willie Danes two minutes earlier at 5:55.
He finally gave up and pulled in front of a fire hydrant on the corner outside Mia Andrews’s building. If he got a ticket, he’d send it to the town to pay. Only one shoe had hit the asphalt before he heard a voice beckon from across the street.
“Dover can’t buy you an official ride, Morhart?” Willie Danes stepped from a white Crown Vic.
“I like my own car.”
“Whatever, man. Let’s do what we got to do.”
“So who’s this lady again?”
“You know those old sex pictures taken in Frank Humphrey’s house? The ones that got you all pissed off?”
Technically, the pictures were not the source of Jason’s aggrievement. It was the NYPD’s failure to tell him their significance. Whatever. He nodded.
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