Four Thrillers by Lisa Unger

by Lisa Unger

“Well, let’s see if we can find a way to talk to this woman,” I suggested.

  “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, Ridley,” said Jake, swiveling around to look at me.

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s obviously a nutcase.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Um, because she murdered her husband?”

  I shrugged and moved back over to the couch. “Just because she killed someone doesn’t mean she doesn’t have information that might be helpful. She’s the only parent alive.”

  Jake sighed. “I just think it’s irresponsible at this point to dredge up the past for this woman without more pointed questions. It’s going to be a painful conversation, if she agrees to see us at all. The woman is spending the rest of her life in prison; her son was abducted and never found. Try to imagine that. Do you really want to cause her more pain?”

  He was right. And I felt like a shit, someone so selfishly in pursuit of my own answers that I’d lost compassion for someone else’s suffering.

  “Then where do we go from here?”

  “I don’t know,” answered Jake.

  Around eight o’clock, Jake went out to get us some dinner and I sat flipping though my notebook trying to figure out why it had seemed so important to me to find these people. What had I hoped to learn? Where did I expect it to lead me? I thought about what Linda McNaughton had said. I flipped through the pages of my notes, found her number, and dialed again.

  “Ms. McNaughton?” I said when she picked up.

  “Yes,” she said, fatigue and annoyance creeping into her tone as she recognized my voice.

  “This is Ridley Jones. I’m so sorry to bother you again, but I had another question about something you said.”

  She sighed. I heard the click and hiss of a butane lighter and she inhaled sharply. “This is not easy for me, Miss.”

  “I know and I’m sorry,” I said as gently as I could, remembering Jake’s words. “But please, just one more thing.”

  “What is it?”

  “You said that your daughter tried to give Charlie up after he was born.”

  “That’s right,” she said, sounding defensive. “I tried to stop her. But we were all struggling financially. She thought it would be best for him.”

  “So…she took him to an adoption agency?”

  “No,” she said, and another sharp inhale was followed by a long pause. “You have to understand, with Michael being an addict and all, she didn’t think they’d be good parents.”

  “I understand,” I said. “But where did she take Charlie?”

  “She…left him at one of those places.”

  “What places?” I asked. My blood was thrumming in my ears.

  “One of those places that take your baby, no questions asked. You know, they don’t want people to leave their babies in a Dumpster, so you can drop them, ring a bell, and take off. You have three days or something to go back if you change your mind.”

  “Ms. McNaughton,” I said, “did she take Charlie to a Project Rescue facility?”

  “Yes, that was it. That’s what it was called. But like I said, she went back and got him. They were kind to her, gave her some counseling. She felt better after talking to them, like she could handle being a mother to Charlie. But you ask me, he knew she didn’t really want him. Colicky like you read about, screamed his head off night and day.”

  But I barely heard the rest. All I could think about was Ace and what he had said to me that night. Ask Dad about Uncle Max and his pet projects.

  I thanked her and hung up the phone. What did it mean? I had no idea. But I kept flashing on the brochures Dad had given me, seeing the images of the cold, filthy Dumpster and the warm blanketed arms of the nurse.

  A thought danced through my mind, one that I immediately pushed aside as preposterous. But it kept pirouetting back and forth and I was unable to still it.

  “What’s wrong?” said Jake, entering the room with aromatic bags of Chinese food from Young Chow’s. We were just out of range of their delivery service, but Jake and I both agreed they had the best garlic prawns in the East Village, well worth the walk.

  “Nothing,” I lied. “I’m just zoning out. I feel pretty wiped.”

  “I bet,” he answered, looking at me. I think he knew I was holding something back, but he let it go. I wasn’t ready to tell him what I was thinking. Hell, I wasn’t even ready to think it.

  “Find anything else out?” he said, nudging a little, I thought.

  “No. Nothing.” I rose and walked over to the table, started unpacking the takeout containers.

  He walked into the kitchen and after a few moments returned with plates, silverware, napkins, and, under his arm, a bottle of white wine.

  “Let’s eat,” he said, pulling out a chair for me. “Everything seems better after a good meal and a good bottle of wine.”

  I smiled at him, hoping he was right.

  twenty-one

  Looking back at things now, I’m amazed at myself, really. I know they say hindsight is twenty-twenty and all that, but honestly, there were so many things about my past that I just accepted on face value, never questioned, never even wondered about. It’s mind-boggling. On the other hand, doesn’t everybody accept the life they’re dealt at face value? Shouldn’t they be allowed to? There were signs, though, I think. I’d always internally slagged on my mother for her dogged denial of anything and everything that came close to disturbing her concept of herself and her life, like her ability to pretend that Ace had never existed. But it was a trait I had inherited from her without even knowing it.

  Is it strange that I have never once in all this time thought back on the last night I spent with my uncle Max? His death was so shocking that all the events following the phone call to our house announcing Max’s car wreck had taken over all other memories of that night.

  It was a perfect Christmas Eve. A light snow fell and all the houses on the street were glittering with tiny white lights. (It was a town ordinance that no multicolored-light strands could be used; that’s how precious it is there.) All the neighbors had been saving their gallon milk and water jugs for weeks, and now they lined the streets, filled with sand and votive candles. The effect was magical, roads lined with glimmering white candles, protected by the plastic containers. After dinner, families would take to the streets, where the gaslight street lamps had been dimmed for the evening, and stroll off their heavy meals, stopping to chat with neighbors and friends amid the candlelight. It was nice. Even a hip, jaded New Yorker like myself had to admit there was simple beauty to it.

  Nobody except me seemed to notice that Uncle Max showed up drunk. Well, maybe my parents noticed but nobody acknowledged it. Are you starting to get how it is with my family? I am, finally. Ugly or worrisome things are ignored. It’s such a Waspy cliché. Not that we’re actually Wasps. But the ignorance of these things was so deliberate, so total, that mentioning or discussing them would be tantamount to setting the house on fire, met with alarms and pandemonium. Denial, she’s a fragile bitch, isn’t she. So brittle and self-conscious, she can’t stand the sight of herself.

  Uncle Max was a practiced, functioning alcoholic. Maybe if you didn’t know him, you wouldn’t hear the lilt in his voice, see the glitter in his eye, the teeter in his gait. We had a house full of guests. Some of the young doctors my father worked with and their spouses, as well as Esme. Zack was also there; we were at the beginning of our relationship; it was still new, still promising, and though not thrilling, exactly, at least pleasantly tingling. Some of our neighbors had joined us. My mother had slaved to make everything perfect, from the flowers to the food. She was running around like an overstrung wind-up doll, marshaling the perfection, her face a grim mask of concentration among the sea of flushed and smiling ones. I remember Zack saying to me, “What’s up with your mom? Is she okay?” I looked over at her. The tension was coming off her in waves as she straightened and served, moved quickly to and from the kitchen.
“What do you mean?” I asked over the din of carols and conversation. “She’s always like that.” In that moment I really didn’t see the problem. My mother was a basket case in her frenzy to have everything perceived as perfect; any flaw in the evening would be seen as a disaster and would be met with her total emotional withdrawal from everyone around her. And that seemed absolutely normal to me.

  Looking back, I realize my father stayed as far away from her as possible. I remembered her scolding him for removing an hors d’oeuvre tray from the oven with a dishrag instead of an oven mitt, for overfilling the coffee filter, making the coffee too strong, any number of minor things. She’d scold him quietly but in a tone sizzling with white-hot disdain. By a certain point, he’d just learned to stay out of the line of fire. Again, none of this seemed odd to me. My obliviousness was total and I was having a perfectly lovely time.

  Max blew in like a gale-force wind, all smiles and arms full of shopping bags filled, I knew, with impossibly extravagant gifts. He was a magnet and all the partygoers swirled around him like metallic dust. I don’t know if it was his personality or his money or the powerful alchemy of those two things that drew so much attention to him, but from the minute he entered the room, he was its center and the joviality level increased tenfold. His booming voice and laughter could be heard over all the other auditory confetti. Even my mother seemed to relax a bit, the attention drawn away from her performance as hostess.

  Zack and I disappeared into the kitchen and sat at the table, eating from a box of cookies someone had brought as a gift to my parents. From our position, we could still see all the party activities but we had stolen ourselves a quiet spot to sit alone and talk. We ripped open the decorative red cellophane and found these luscious little bow-tie cookies filled with raspberry jelly and dusted with sugar.

  “Man, your uncle can put it away,” Zack said.

  “Hmm?” I said. “What do you mean?”

  He looked at me. “I mean he’s had five bourbons and he’s only been here an hour.”

  I shrugged. “He’s a big guy.”

  “Yeah, but, Jesus, it’s barely had an effect on him.”

  I shrugged again, intent on the cookies in front of me. “That’s just Max.”

  That’s just Max. As if I even knew him.

  A couple hours later the house was quieter. Esme and Zack had left. My father had led a group out for the annual neighborhood candlelight stroll. My mother stayed behind, was furiously scrubbing pots in the kitchen, rebuffing all of my attempts to help her with the implication that no one could do it the way she could. Whatever. I wandered into the front room in search of something sweet and found my uncle Max sitting by himself in the dim light of the room before our gigantic Christmas tree. That’s one of my favorite things in the world, the sight of a lit Christmas tree in a darkened room. I plopped myself next to him on the couch and he threw an arm around my shoulder, balancing a glass of bourbon on his knee with his free hand.

  “What’s up, Uncle Max?”

  “Not much, kid. Nice party.”

  “Yeah.”

  We sat like that in a companionable silence for a while until something made me look up at him. He was crying, not making a sound, thin lines of tears streaming down his face like raindrops on glass. His expression was so unlike anything I’d ever seen on him, almost blank in its hopeless sadness. I think I just stared at him in shock. I grabbed his big bear-claw hand and clasped it in both of mine.

  “What is it, Uncle Max?” I whispered, as if afraid that someone would see his true face exposed like this. I wanted to protect him.

  “It’s all coming back on me, Ridley.”

  “What is?”

  “All the good I tried to do. I fucked it up. Man, I fucked it up so bad.” His voice was shaking.

  I shook my head. I was thinking, He’s drunk. He’s just drunk. But he grabbed me then by both of my shoulders, not hard but passionately. His eyes were bright and clear in his desperation.

  “You’re happy, right, Ridley? You grew up loved, safe. Right?”

  “Yes, Uncle Max. Of course,” I said, wanting so badly to reassure him, though at a total loss as to why my happiness meant so much to him.

  He nodded and loosened his grip on me but still looked me dead in the eye. “Ridley,” he said. “You might be the only good I’ve ever done.”

  “What’s going on? Max?” We both turned to see my father standing in the doorway. He was just a black form surrounded by light. His voice sounded odd. Something foreign had crept into him, something dark and unrecognizable. Max released me as if I’d burned his hands.

  “Max, let’s talk,” said my father, and Max rose. I followed him through the doorway and my father placed a hand on my shoulder to stop me. Max continued and walked through the French doors that led to my father’s study. His shoulders sagged and his head was down, but he turned to give me a smile before disappearing into the room.

  “What’s wrong with him?” I asked my father.

  “Don’t worry, lullaby,” he said with a forced lightness. “Uncle Max has had a bit too much to drink. He’s got a lot of demons; sometimes the bourbon lets them loose.”

  “But what was he talking about?” I asked stubbornly, having the sense that I was being shut out of something important.

  “Ridley,” said my father, too sternly. He caught himself and softened his tone so quickly, I believed I’d imagined the harshness just a moment before. “Really, honey, don’t worry about Max. It’s the bourbon talking.”

  He walked away from me and disappeared behind his study doors. I hovered there a minute, heard the rumbling of their voices behind the oak. I knew the impossibility of listening at those doors; I’d tried it many times as a kid. Those doors were thick. You had to stand with your ear against them, and the people inside had to be yelling to hear anything. Plus, I’d run into my favorite aunt in the hallway. You remember her, Auntie Denial. She wrapped her arms around me and whispered comforting sentiments: Just the bourbon. Just Max’s demons talking. You know Max. Tomorrow he’ll be fine. As fragile as she is (she can’t take a direct assault, you know), she’s just as powerful when you cooperate with her, when you let her spin her web around you. Yes, as long as you don’t look her in the face, she’ll wrap you in a cocoon. It’s safe and warm in there. So much nicer than the alternative.

  That’s the last time I saw my uncle Max. His face still wet with tears and flushed with bourbon, his sad smile, his final words to me. Ridley, you might be the only good I’ve ever done.

  Oh, God, I thought now as I watched the ebb and flow of traffic down on First Avenue from Jake’s window. What did he mean?

  Jake was loading the dishwasher in the kitchen and I could hear him humming something. I loved that he got dinner and did the dishes. Zack had been such a mama’s boy. Esme had always done everything for him, even picked out his clothes every morning until he went off to college. With a man like that, even if he’d learned at some point that not all women existed to tend to his needs, there was still the scent of resentment wafting off of him when he was doing something he secretly believed was beneath him. Jake knew how to take care of himself and didn’t mind taking care of others. Maybe even liked it a little.

  You’re probably wondering, When is she going to bring up the things Detective Salvo told her? First, Jake’s criminal record, and how the shot that killed Christian Luna came from the park where Jake had been hiding and not from the rooftop, as Jake implied that night. No, I hadn’t forgotten about those things. And I knew I’d waited long enough to ask the questions to which I wasn’t sure I wanted answers.

  I felt him come into the room, rather than saw him, since I was staring out the window. He moved in close to me and wrapped me up in his arms. I waited for him to ask me what I was thinking, but he didn’t.

  “Detective Salvo says you have a criminal record,” I said quietly.

  He exhaled close to my ear but didn’t release me from his arms. “You tend to get in trouble
when you do PI work. It’s not like the movies; cops don’t like PI’s. You get in the way, they bring you up on charges. None of it sticks. Anyway, I don’t actually have a record, per se. It’s not like I’ve done time, for Christ’s sake.” I could hear the laughter in his voice and it made me smile.

  “You like the bad boys, huh?” he said, kissing my neck.

  “You’re my first one.”

  I was about to ask him about the shot fired in the park when I felt him stiffen and go quiet suddenly. I turned to look at him, wondering what I’d said. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking out the window. He nudged me gently to the side.

  “What do you see?”

  “That guy standing in the doorway over there. Is that the man who’s been following you? He was there when I came back from getting the food. And he’s still standing there.”

  I peered over his shoulder and saw a form looming in a dark doorway. But I couldn’t see a face, could make out only a leg and a black boot.

  “I don’t know,” I said, feeling that flutter in my chest. “It could be anyone.”

  “I have a strange feeling.”

  “Yeah, shady people lingering in doorways in the East Village…that’s really weird. Not normal at all.”

  “I’m going to go check it out. Stay here.”

  He’d grabbed his jacket and keys and was gone before I even finished saying, “What do you mean, check it out? That’s ridiculous.”

  I heard him hammering down the stairs. I figured by the time I put pants on (I was wearing one of Jake’s Tshirts and a pair of white socks) and followed him onto the street, he’d be back. So I stood in the window and watched the man across the street.

  twenty-two

  Before Jake reached the avenue, I saw the form move from the darkness and take off down the street. It wasn’t the man from the train and Barnes & Noble. It was my brother.

  What was he doing there? Waiting for me? I opened the window and yelled his name but the traffic noise took my voice away. I hurried to get dressed, and as I pulled on my jeans, I heard an odd ringing, muted as if coming from beneath layers of fabric. I realized it was coming from beneath the pile of my clothes on Jake’s bedroom floor. I dug through it until I found it in the pocket of my coat—my new cell phone. I fished it out and looked at the number blinking on the screen. I didn’t recognize it. I hesitated, wondering if I should bother answering it since no one I knew even had this number. Finally my curiosity got the better of me.