Beautiful Lies rj-1

by Lisa Unger

  He put the picture back on the shelf and turned me away by placing his hands on my shoulders. “Anyway,” he said, “that’s all ancient history.”

  I sat down on the couch across from his desk and felt absorbed by it, it was so plush. He sat in a large ornate chair that looked more like a throne with its brocade seat and back, its blackwood arms that ended in fierce lion heads.

  “So how about I call you a car to take you home to your parents’ place,” he said, reaching for the phone beside him. “You can get some rest. I’ll deal with the NYPD. A week from today, it’ll be like this never happened.”

  I looked at him. He could make it go away. I knew he could. He had that look about him, the look of a man who could give your problem a pair of concrete boots and make it sink into the East River. Just don’t ask too many questions about his methods. You don’t want to know.

  “No,” I said. “Don’t. I’ll take the train.”

  “Don’t be silly,” he said, lifting the receiver.

  “No, really. I need the time to think.”

  He paused, holding the phone in his hand, looking at me with skeptical eyes. “But you’ll go home to Ben and Grace?”

  I nodded. “Where else can I go now? You’re right. I need a break.”

  He put the phone down and I rose.

  “My parents can’t know about this, Alex,” I said. “Not yet. It’ll just frighten them.”

  “Attorney-client privilege, kid,” he said, standing up. “Everything we’ve talked about today stays here. I’ll leave a message for you at your place when I’ve talked to that detective. You check your messages? Check your messages.”

  “I will.”

  “Trust me,” he said, putting an arm around my shoulder. “This time next week? Never happened. You did the right thing coming here. Your uncle Max wanted to know you’d always be taken care of, you know?”

  I nodded, turned, and shook the hand he offered.

  “Thanks, Mr. Harriman.”

  I am not a very good driver. Partly from inexperience and partly because of the tendency of my mind to wander. I got into a bunch of accidents as a teenager. Minor stuff, always my fault, leading my father to lament, “Ridley, do you ever leave the house and not hit something?” Their insurance went up, the repair bills were not small. But I think their major concern was how much worse it could get. Every fender bender was a reminder of the frailty of my life and how my independence meant that they could no longer be on the lookout for dangers that might befall me. They represented a loss of control.

  I rented a black Jeep Grand Cherokee (unbelievably expensive) in the West Village later that day and headed out of the city. I crawled up the Henry Hudson through a gauntlet of construction sites (which I swear have been under way for more than fifteen years) and I finally broke free of the snarl at the exit to the George Washington Bridge. I was headed to Jersey. Not to my parents, as I’d promised Harriman. No. I couldn’t have done that, good as it sounded. There was no going home now.

  I’m no private investigator, unlike some people, but I am a writer. Which means I’ve followed up a few leads, tracked down a few people over the years. I’ve convinced a few reticent people to talk to me. After leaving Alexander Harriman, I’d returned to my place and sat on the couch with a giant cup of coffee and stared out my window at the concrete wall and dark windows that were my view. I thought about my story. And I asked myself something that I often wondered when I was writing an article or a profile: If I was reading this story, what would I want to know next? What are the big questions left unanswered so far?

  I had no intention of going home to my parents or of pretending none of this had ever happened. It wasn’t an option. The point of safe return had passed when I agreed to meet Christian Luna in the park. The path back to my old life was closed completely and there was nothing to do but move forward.

  I felt unbelievably calm. You’d think I’d have been a complete basket case, but I remember something a psychologist once told me, someone my parents and I saw after my uncle Max died and my father decided we all needed grief counseling. She said that grief is not linear. It’s not a slow progression forward toward healing, it’s a zigzag, a terrible back-and-forth from devastated to okay until finally there are more okay patches and fewer devastated ones. The mind can’t handle emotions like grief and terror for any sustained period of time, so it takes some downtime, she’d said. I’m not sure that I was in a state of grief, but maybe. Christian Luna, a man who believed himself to be my father, was dead. Jake was a stranger who’d lied to me. And I wasn’t sure who I was any longer. But somehow I was transcendent, able to compartmentalize my fear and think about the questions that needed answering in this, the story of my life.

  I mentioned that I thought the biggest question was: Who killed Teresa Stone? Like I said, I thought the answer to that question would answer a lot of the others. The way I saw it, there were a couple other biggies. Tell me if you agree. First was: Who the hell is Jake? But I couldn’t answer that without talking to him, so the answer was going to have to wait, since PI Jake/Harley was currently MIA. The second question was: Who killed Christian Luna and why? Again, I was at the wall on this one. I had no way of knowing or even beginning to find out. Then last: Did Christian Luna tell the truth? Was I his daughter? And was he innocent of the murder of Teresa Elizabeth Stone?

  I read through the article that Jake/Harley had found from the New Jersey Record. Maria Cacciatore was Teresa’s neighbor, the woman who had taken care of Jessie while Teresa worked. I booted my computer, dialed up the Internet, and went into LexisNexis. Within seconds, I had telephone numbers and addresses for three M. Cacciatores in Hackettstown, New Jersey. I also found a number for the management company of the Oak Groves apartment complex. “Clean, safe, affordable apartment living!” hailed the Web site. I’d never thought of the words clean and safe as superlatives to be used in advertising, but I guess you worked with what you had. From the pictures, the complex looked like low-income housing, which I guessed made sense, considering Teresa’s situation when she was murdered. I figured if I couldn’t locate Maria Cacciatore, maybe someone in the management company could turn me on to someone who had lived in the apartment complex back in the seventies.

  You might think I would have made these calls before heading out to Jersey, but sitting around making phone calls that might or might not be successful did not seem like action to me. I know I was supposed to be careful, but I figured that since Jake/Harley had lied about his name, his profession, and who knows what else, then I was released from the promise I’d made him to be careful. So I headed to New Jersey.

  I was the only person in New York City who didn’t own a cellular phone. It wasn’t really a philosophical decision. It was just that I worked from home and was pretty easy to reach. I didn’t drive usually, so it wasn’t as if it would come in handy in the event of a breakdown. Cell phones didn’t work on the subway, which was the only place I could imagine one being useful, as in “I’m stuck on the train, running late, et cetera.” And frankly, if you couldn’t reach me, it meant that I didn’t want to be reached. My friends and family bitched endlessly. Naturally (you should be getting to know me by now), that only made me want one even less. But I pulled off of Route 80 at the Rockaway Mall and picked up a phone at one of those AT&T kiosks. I could envision a need for one on this errand. I got a tiny red Nokia, barely bigger than a pack of Chiclets. I also grabbed a Cin-a-Bon and an Orange Julius while I was there, which I ate and drank in the parking lot while examining my new toy. God bless America.

  I know it sounds like I was pretty solid and clear headed, if a little rash, a little reckless, and I guess I was. I was scared, still rattled from the night before, which flashed with sickeningly vivid clarity. But I felt like, maybe erroneously, I had taken control of the situation. Maria Cacciatore was my only link to a past of which until a few days ago I had been ignorant. If she was still alive and I could find her, then maybe the truth hadn’t died la
st night with Christian Luna. I was infused with hope and the purpose of my mission to find out who killed Teresa Stone, what had happened to Jessie, and what it meant to me.

  I knew it was a long shot, but at the same time I had a feeling I was going to find her. The universe conspires to reveal the truth and to make your path easy if you have the courage to follow the signs. And I was long on courage that day. Short on foresight, maybe, but long on courage.

  When I got to Hackettstown, I pulled into the parking lot of 7-Eleven and started making calls.

  The first two calls didn’t go well. Maybe it was our alienated, postmodern times, maybe it was all the previous telemarketers that had been fended off before my call. Or maybe the Cacciatores were just a very unfriendly clan. Martino Cacciatore suggested that I pull my head out of my ass and stop calling people who weren’t interested in my business. I’d interrupted the game show he’d been watching and now he’d never know what the correct price bid for the Caribbean cruise had been. Margaret Cacciatore was hard of hearing and after ten minutes of our yelling back and forth to each other, she issued an angry grunt and just hung up on me and didn’t pick up when I called back. I dialed the last number.

  “Hello?” came the voice of an older woman.

  “Hi. I’m looking for a Maria Cacciatore,” I said tentatively.

  “I’m not interested,” she said, and the line went dead. I dialed the number again.

  “Hello?” she said, her voice wary and annoyed.

  “Ms. Cacciatore, I’m not a telemarketer.”

  “I know, I know. I’ve won a sweepstakes for a free two-night stay in Orlando, right? I’m under no obligation to buy anything, right?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m really not selling or offering anything.”

  “Well,” she said grudgingly. “What do you want, then?”

  “Are you Maria Cacciatore?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said with a sigh. “Look. What is it?”

  “Did you know a Teresa Elizabeth Stone and her daughter, Jessie?”

  There was a pause here and I thought maybe she’d hung up. Then I heard her breathing. “Yes,” she said finally. “A long time ago. Teresa…she died. May she rest in peace.”

  “I know, Mrs. Cacciatore,” I said. “I have some questions for you about her. And about Christian Luna. Can you help me?”

  “Who did you say you were?” She sounded upset, angry, as if I had forced her to recall something she would have been happier forgetting.

  “My name is Ridley Jones. I’m a writer doing a story on missing children who were never found. I came across your name in an article published in the New Jersey Record back in 1972.” Okay, maybe I’m a better liar than I said. I was getting a lot of practice. Anyway, it was only a partial lie.

  “What publication do you write for?” she asked. Good to know she had her wits about her.

  “I’m a freelance writer, ma’am. I haven’t sold the article yet.”

  She seemed to consider that for a moment. I figured she’d probably turn me down. But then she said, “You can come by the apartment if you want. I don’t like to talk on the phone.”

  She told me how to get to her place and that I could come at four o’clock. “It was a long time ago,” she said before we hung up. “I don’t know how much I’ll remember.”

  “Well, you just do your best, Ms. Cacciatore. That’s all anyone can ask.”

  I had some time to kill and I could see the clerk at the 7-Eleven looking suspiciously at me out the window. I pulled out of the parking lot and drove until I found a Barnes & Noble. I figured it was only a matter of time. Has anyone done any research on that? On how many miles you can drive in any direction before running into a Barnes & Noble or a Starbucks or both? Anyway, I was glad for an iced chai and a comfortable leather chair to sit in while I waited, thumbing though a copy of that day’s New York Times.

  It was a few minutes before the uneasy feeling that had leaked into the periphery of my consciousness got my full attention. I felt eyes on me. I shifted in my seat but didn’t raise my gaze from the paper. After a second, I put the newsprint down and stretched, casually looking around. A man stood in the Mystery section to my left reading the back cover of a paperback. He was a stocky guy in sunglasses, as big and solid as a slab of slate, baseball cap over a shaved head, an olive bomber jacket and cleaned, pressed denims. He had on a pair of heavy black boots. He glanced up at me, saw me looking at him. Did he smile, just slightly? He returned the book to the shelf, turned his back, and walked away. There was something ugly about his face. There was a cold meanness to his aura.

  It wasn’t just some creepy guy staring. The thing was, he looked familiar to me. I’d seen him before. Oh, shit, the thought seized me, was it the same man I saw on the train?

  My heart was fluttering. I took my chai and left the store as quickly as I could without running. The baseball cap and the sunglasses made it hard to tell if it was the same guy. Back in the Jeep, I sat breathing hard and watched the door in my rearview mirror, wondering if he’d come out after me. For some reason, I remembered the conversation I’d had with Zelda about the man she told me had been looking for me. I also flashed on what Jake had said and even what the detective had implied, that someone might have trailed me to get to Christian Luna—and that they might still be following me. I pulled the Nokia from the pocket of my coat and called Zelda.

  “FiverosescanIhelpyou,” she answered. Her voice was gruff and muffled, as always.

  “It’s Ridley.”

  “You want a slice?”

  “No. Zelda, remember you said someone was looking for me the other day? What did he look like?” I heard the background noise of the restaurant, the ka-ching! of the register. I kept my eyes on the rearview mirror, watching the door.

  “Akkch,” she said. “I can remember? WhatamIEinstein?”

  “Zelda. It’s important.” I knew she could remember every detail about the guy if she wanted to. She just couldn’t be bothered. Talking was not her favorite thing to do.

  “He looked like trouble. That’s what he looked like.”

  “Was he a medium-sized older man, dark hair, dark eyes, base-ball cap?” I asked, hoping she’d say yes and I could go back to thinking it had been Christian Luna asking for me and forget about the B&N skinhead, chalk my fear up to paranoia.

  “Nononono. That’s not him.” I waited for elaboration but none came. “Twelve fifty-five,” she said. Ka-ching! “Your change. Have a nice day.”

  “Zelda,” I said.

  She heaved a sigh. “Big guy. Bald—you know, shaved head. He was a punk, I’ll tell you that. Ridley, what kind of trouble are you in?”

  My heart sank. “I don’t know,” I said.

  “I don’t want any trouble in this building,” she said, her voice stern.

  “Okay. Bye, Zelda.”

  I ended the call and slunk down low in the driver’s seat, still watching the door. If he came out after me, then…I don’t know what. Then I was fucked, I guess. I caught sight of myself in the sideview mirrors because I didn’t have them set properly. I looked silly, wide-eyed like a spooked horse, hunched down, chewing on the end of my straw. “You’re paranoid,” I said to my reflection. But just as I was about to laugh at myself, I saw him come out of the double doors and gaze around the parking lot as if he was looking for something. I couldn’t tell if it was the guy from the train or not. They looked similar, but that didn’t mean anything. He turned and started walking away from the Jeep, disappeared into a crowd of people coming and going from the store. I pulled from my spot quickly while he wasn’t looking and left the lot. After driving around for a bit, with adrenaline making me shaky and distracted, I was satisfied that no one had followed me and I went to see Maria Cacciatore.

  eighteen

  I guess it was unrealistic of me, but I kept looking out for the Firebird while I was driving with a heart conflicted by hope and wariness. I fantasized ways that Jake could have tracked me. He could be follow
ing in another vehicle, not the Firebird, to protect me from whoever it was who might be following me. Maybe he had a way to track my credit-card usage; he’d know I rented a car, bought a cell phone in New Jersey, charged something at Barnes & Noble. PI’s could do things like that, couldn’t they? But, of course, that was just me being a dork.

  I held a picture of Jake in my mind and the memory of our nights together washed over me. Whatever else he’d lied about or omitted, that had been true. There was no way to fake that kind of intimacy. Was there? Does it sound like I was kidding myself? Normally even the slightest hint of dishonesty and I walked. But in my new universe, I felt like Alice in Wonderland. Everything was strangely off and the usual rules didn’t seem to apply any longer.

  When I got to the address Maria had given me on the phone, I parked the car and looked uneasily in my rearview mirror for the subway/B&N psycho. I didn’t see anyone and I laughed a little at myself then. I was really becoming paranoid. There were millions of stocky guys with shaved heads walking around, and absolutely no reason for me to suspect that the man Zelda spoke to, the one I’d seen on the train, and the B&N freak were the same. In fact, it was downright preposterous. Right?

  I walked along an exterior corridor exposed to the outside, looking at numbers on the doors. When I came to apartment four, I knocked. There was a long silence inside and I wondered if Maria Cacciatore had changed her mind. I knocked again.

  “Hold on, for crying out loud,” a muffled voice called from inside. “I’m coming.”

  I heard a toilet flush, then water running, then heavy footfalls on the floor. The door swung open and a frowning round woman in a bright blue muumuu and matching turban stood before me.

  “Ms. Cacciatore?”

  She looked at my face and her frown dropped, was replaced by a look of awe. “Sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she said, stepping back from me.