Into the Dark

by Alison Gaylin

  “A Bible-thumping, Spielberg-worshipping porno editor?”

  “He’s also a big Louise Hay fan,” Brenna said.

  “Multifaceted.”

  “You’re a good driver, by the way.”

  “You’ve driven with me before.”

  “I know. But I never really appreciated it. Trent drives like he’s being chased by a husband with a gun.”

  They were on the West Side Highway, passing the Chelsea Piers. “I’m still trying to figure out,” Morasco said, “what Lula Belle saw in Tannenbaum. I mean . . . you’re going to send one person that photo—and this is a long-lost family photo, no matter who Lula Belle turns out to be.”

  Brenna nodded. No matter who.

  “You’re going to trust that same person enough to let him get you a secret PO box where you receive secret money for your secret job—and let him put it in his name. You’re really going to choose the forty-five-year-old porno editor from Queens who lives with his mom and is stupid enough to borrow money from a guy who’s connected to Bo and Diddley?”

  Brenna turned to him. “Maybe she and Robin go way back,” she said. “And maybe he isn’t stupid—just hopelessly devoted.” She thought about Robin, packing up his winter clothes, taking his beloved film equipment, growing his beard to look like Spielberg . . . To look like someone else. “Maybe he borrowed from Pokrovsky because he needed the money in a hurry—to finance their new life.”

  “Weird,” he said quietly. “But I guess it’s possible.”

  “There’s only one way to find out for sure.”

  He looked at her.

  “You’re going to hate this, but I want to go back and see RJ’s mother. Get her to introduce me to Mr. Pokrovsky.”

  “Us.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I’m going with you. Not up for discussion.”

  Brenna looked at him. “Since when did you get so friggin’ tough?” she said. “Oh yeah, I forgot. You’re a cop.”

  “Actually, I prefer to be referred to as The Fuzz. I’m trying to bring that back.”

  Brenna grinned.

  They’d reached Brenna’s apartment a while ago. By now, Morasco had circled the block three times, with no luck finding a space, so he pulled in front and double parked. It was a little after 5 P.M. and already dark out—Christmas decorations twinkling on the streetlight in front of Brenna’s house. This time of year, Twelfth Street looked like something out of a nineteenth-century storybook. Brenna rarely had thoughts like this, but she longed for snow, for horse-drawn carriages and hearth light through bay windows. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” she said to Morasco.

  “Okay.” He gave her a smile. “Take care of yourself.”

  “You too.”

  As she got out of the car, a cold wind bit her face, made her black eye throb. She found herself thinking back again to O’Donnell’s parking lot. O’Donnell’s was in City Island. Brenna and Morasco had gone there after having dinner with Brenna’s mother, who had served her usual—chicken piccata with a heaping side of guilt. Evelyn Spector, who remembered things not as they were but exactly as she wanted them to be, with herself as the heroine—degraded, misunderstood. By the time they’d stumbled into the parking lot, Brenna had finished four beers in record time, yet still she couldn’t get it out of her system, that frustration . . .

  “And you know how my mother said the last time I visited her, Maya was still teething?” Brenna is drunk now, officially. Not tipsy. Drunk. At her height, she should be able to hold her liquor better than this. It’s a little embarrassing.

  “That’s not true, huh?” Nick smiles. Brenna is leaning on him and she can feel his lips moving against her hairline.

  “It was three weeks ago!” Her speech is thick and slurry. “If Maya was still friggin’ teething three weeks ago, she’s gotta be a friggin’ shark.”

  Nick laughs.

  “I’m serious. I better call animal control. Or . . . like . . . a top-secret scientific division of the navy. Tell ’em I’ve got some kind of chemical mutant shark-girl on my hands because my mother said she was teething and my mother is always right.”

  Nick laughs again. Brenna likes his laugh. She turns to look at his face and feels his fingertips on the back of her neck and around her waist and his lips . . . like that, yes, just like lips should be and she leans into him. It’s so easy, like melting . . .

  “You want me to wait here till you get your door open?”

  Brenna turned to Morasco, put on a smile. “Nah. I’m fine,” she said.

  He gave her a quick wave and pulled away from the curb and she watched him go, still remembering that parking lot. God, she wished things had happened differently.

  Brenna glanced up at her apartment. The lights were on, the shades drawn, shadows moving behind them. Maya.

  She thought about finding a good movie on TV, ordering in pizza with Maya and eating in front of it. It felt like heaven. She was achy, exhausted. So exhausted, it wasn’t until she was heading up the stairs that it hit her: Behind the drawn shades, Brenna had seen not one, but two figures.

  She hurried up the stairs, shoved her key in the lock, and opened the door. Maya came running at her. “Mom!” She threw her arms around her and Brenna held her tight. My baby . . .

  “Is someone else here?”

  “I’m sorry,” Maya whispered. “I told him what happened to you. I was scared . . .”

  Brenna pulled away. She opened her eyes, and that’s when she saw him. Leaning against the wall by Brenna’s desk, as if he belonged here, as if . . . just like . . . No, no, no.

  “What happened to your eye, Mom?” Maya said.

  Brenna couldn’t answer. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t look at him, couldn’t say anything, except the name of the other person in the room. “Jim.”

  Chapter 11

  Errol Ludlow did not tolerate lateness. He viewed it as a sign of hostility—the unsaid implication that another person’s time is not valuable, and can be wasted at will. And though in Gary Freeman’s case he had every right to be hostile, it was definitely not in his best interests to keep Errol waiting. He’d given Freeman a specific deadline. Five P.M. And he’d blown it by seven minutes.

  Errol checked his cell phone, made sure the ringer was turned up. Maybe my phone is broken. He picked up the hotel phone and called his cell with it. Of course it chimed like St. Patrick’s on Easter Sunday.

  “What part of ‘You have until 5 P.M. EST’ don’t you understand?” He said it out loud, as if Freeman were here, sitting next to him on the king-sized bed at the MoonGlow Hotel on 108th and Second Avenue. Errol didn’t like the tone of his own voice, the pleading in it. He picked up his cell and prepared to call Gary Freeman, talk to him about this man to man . . .

  This, by the way, was why Errol Ludlow preferred to hire women. His critics—Brenna Spector being one of far too many—would say that he enjoyed having pretty young girls do his dirty work. But that wasn’t the case at all. Young, pretty, or neither, Errol preferred women because they behaved like human beings. Men were dogs—every last one of them, Errol included. Stupid, dirty, jealousy-driven animals who were all too prone to pissing contests.

  Freeman was a perfect example. Backed up to a wall, the fate of his marriage in Errol’s hands, and what was he doing? Making Errol wait by the phone like a love-struck schoolgirl. How logical was that?

  Errol’s phone chimed. He glanced at the screen—a number he didn’t recognize, but Freeman’s same Southern California area code. He crossed his fingers—literally crossed his fingers, on both hands. He hated himself for doing that. “Ludlow.”

  “Hello, Errol. It’s Gary.”

  Errol exhaled. “You’re late.”

  “I know, and I’m really sorry about that,” Freeman’s voice was surprisingly friendly, apologetic, even. “I had to get a new disposable phone, and I wasn’t . . . uh . . . I wasn’t able to safely get away and use it until now.”

  “I understand,” said Errol.
Well, he did. Who wouldn’t? He cleared his throat. “So, Gary, do we have a deal?”

  “Yes, we do.”

  Errol’s heart leaped.

  Freeman was saying, “I’m afraid, though, that I won’t be able to get you the first payment until Monday. I have to rearrange my accounts in order to make this work . . . you know . . . without it being noticed.”

  Errol grinned. “Not a problem. I will expect payment on Monday.”

  “You will?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, I’m so relieved. Thank you for being so understanding.”

  Was this guy for real? Was he suddenly on medication? Gary Freeman had been so cold during that earlier phone conversation—during all his phone conversations with Errol, come to think of it—and now here he was, bending over backward to accommodate him, complimenting him even, when basically what Errol was doing—not that Freeman didn’t deserve it, keeping such secrets from his wife—but it was, after all, a form of blackmail.

  For the first time since he’d come up with the idea, Errol felt guilty about it. He’d get over it, of course. But still, something nagged at him . . . Maybe this was how Freeman had become such a successful talent agent—the ability to inspire this feeling in others.

  Errol said, “I will do my best to make sure your wife never finds out about Lula Belle.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line, a deep breathing, in and out. “Thank you,” he said. “I really appreciate that.”

  “It’s only common courtesy.”

  “Actually, you don’t know how uncommon courtesy really is.”

  Errol smiled at the phone. A kindred spirit. “Oh, now that’s where you’re wrong, Gary. I know. Believe me, I do.”

  “Errol?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think, under different circumstances, we might have been friends?”

  Errol sensed something in Freeman’s voice—a type of melancholy. Strange. He wondered if Gary Freeman ever felt the way he did—too big for his surroundings. It had nothing to do with Errol’s being six-eight, either. Most men—most people, really—could be so petty, so small. He saw it all the time in his job—not just the cheating husbands, but the wives, living and dying to catch them in the act. He’ll be sorry he ever messed with me, they would say, their eyes so hard and cold it would frighten Errol a little. More than a few of them had even suggested entrapment (Could you get one of your girls to . . . you know . . . and videotape it?) Not to sound like a sentimentalist, but weren’t these men and women who once pledged to love each other, above all else?

  Sometimes, Errol felt as though he’d spent his whole life searching for someone he could see eye to eye with, not physically but cerebrally, emotionally. Not a soul mate—that was a ridiculous concept. Just a fellow human, traveling through this dark, sick world, someone he could look in the face and say, Stinks in here, doesn’t it?

  “I do think we would be friends, Gary,” he said.

  “Thank you, Errol.”

  After he ended the call, Errol stood staring at his reflection in the bedroom mirror. He’d expected to feel elation, but instead he felt rather the opposite—as though Freeman’s melancholy were catching. He had an urge to make good on his promise to him—to keep him safe from the wrath of his wife, forever.

  A thought crept up on Errol, an ugly thought: What if he hadn’t warned Jill off as well as he’d thought? What if she’d called another number from her husband’s phone, and what if that person had told her the truth? No. That couldn’t happen. If his wife had found out, she would have gone straight to Gary, wouldn’t she? And Errol wouldn’t have a deal right now. Gary never would have called.

  But what if Jill Freeman is just biding her time?

  Just ask. Put your mind at ease. Without another thought, Ludlow called Brenna Spector. She didn’t pick up. “Damn it,” he whispered. He didn’t want to breathe a word of this into her voice mail, and so he ended the call, more melancholy than ever—and now paranoid to boot.

  He sighed. Part of it was this crappy hotel room, quite frankly. He’d suggested the Carlisle for the payday celebration, but Diandra had insisted on this fleabag—dark and noisy, with such a creaky old elevator and a lobby that looked like it hadn’t been remodeled since Cher had her natural nose. The room smelled of something, too. Errol wasn’t sure what—he shuddered to think at what a luminol test could bring out in here . . .

  In his early career, Errol had experienced more than his fill of rooms like this one. He didn’t even think he could count how many of them he’d holed up in alone after paying off desk clerks, snapping pictures through alleyways or through cracks in adjoining doors. So much depravity and filth and escape . . .

  But she’d told him that no-tell motels turned her on, told him over the phone in that purr of hers, hadn’t she, his Diandra? And who could say no to a purr like that?

  Let’s make the celebration dirty, Mr. Ludlow. Just remembering was enough to lift Errol’s spirits—in more ways than one. His paranoia started to fade.

  He looked at his watch. She was due here in half an hour, his flower of the gods. He had a bottle of Dom Perignon in an ice bucket, a black silk robe to change into, along with that . . . that ring she’d given him. You slip it on, like this. See? Oh, it’s snug. God, she was adorable.

  He had Viagra, because adorable as she was, Errol was also close to sixty and on prostate meds, so when it came to his own physiology, it was always best to call for backup. He popped one, and smiled. Errol had all these things—plus an extra $20K a month. And soon he would have Diandra. Repeatedly.

  There was nothing to be melancholy about. Absolutely nothing at all.

  “I’m so glad you’re all right,” Jim said.

  They’d been standing face-to-face for easily a full minute, Brenna and her ex-husband, yet she couldn’t bring herself to speak.

  “We’re both glad, Mom,” Maya squeezed Brenna’s hand, as though she was trying to anchor her here, in the present. Maya’s palm felt sweaty, and, Brenna noticed, she was shaking a little. It had to be so strange—her mother and father, together for the first time since she was in kindergarten. Brenna wanted to tell her, It’s all right, honey, yet she couldn’t get her mouth to open. Jim. What was he doing here? If he wanted someone to be with Maya, why not send Faith—and while we were at it, why wasn’t Faith here with him?

  “Faith is in Pennsylvania for an interview,” he said, reading her thoughts. “We had to talk her out of taking the Sunrise Manhattan chopper to Inwood Hill Park.”

  Brenna laughed, because she could actually see it—Faith charming the pilot into going a whole state out of his way, Faith leaning out the open door of a TV helicopter in one of her perfect suits, the wind rippling her blonde hair as she peered out over the Hudson, calling Brenna’s name through a megaphone. “I’m very glad,” Brenna said, “that Faith is on our side.”

  Jim started to say something, but it turned into a sigh. He watched Brenna’s face for a while, ran a hand though his hair. “Your eye.”

  “It’s from the air bag.”

  “You scared Maya.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m fine, Dad.”

  “You scared me.”

  She started to reply, but the way he was looking at her . . . her voice went to dust. It became August 9, 1994, and she was sitting with Jim in Madison Square Park. She could feel the cool metal bench beneath her legs again, the hot sun on her back. And she could see Jim, young Jim with his buzz cut and his skinnier build and that white oxford shirt with the fraying collar. She’s got his hand in her lap, and she’s tracing the lines. She’s pretending she knows how to read palms, but really all she wants to do is touch him. She wants to circle her fingers around his thick wrist, to bring the big hand up to her lips, those long, elegant fingers . . . Does he know? Can he read her mind? Jim Rappaport, reporter for the Science Times. His hands are amazing, powerful. She envies his keyboard, his steering wheel, the wallet in his pocket .
. . any object lucky enough to receive his touch.

  “Now this is your heart line,” says Brenna, full of crap. “It is very strong.” His skin is so warm.

  Brenna’s phone vibrated. It brought her back. She blinked at Jim a few times. “You changed your hair.”

  “Faith’s been taking me to her hairdresser,” Jim said. “Stylist. Whatever you’re supposed to call the guy. He cuts three hairs and rubs a bunch of gunk in it, and for that you pay seventy bucks.”

  “I like it,” Brenna said. She did. In particular, she liked that it was no longer the buzz cut she’d loved to stroke while he was driving their old Volvo and she was in the passenger’s seat, her arm curled around his shoulders. She liked that it probably no longer felt like velvet under your palms, that it laid smooth and flat against his scalp and covered the scar he still had from a seventh grade basketball accident. (Eight stitches in the left temple. Tripped by that jerk Joey Tablone just as Jim was going for a three-pointer and everybody knew it was on purpose.) She liked that the new length made the gray in Jim’s dark brown hair all the more obvious, that it played up the passage of time and made Jim so different, almost another person from the man Brenna had married, someone she was meeting only just now.

  Her phone vibrated again. She plucked it out of her pocket, looked at the number on the screen. Errol Ludlow. If that wasn’t ironic, Brenna didn’t know the definition of the word. She folded it up again, slipped it back into her pocket. Had to be a butt-dial.

  “You need to take that?”

  “Absolutely not.” She took a breath. Maya was still squeezing her hand. Brenna turned to her. “Why don’t you go order us a pizza? I’m starving.”

  “Okay!” Maya rushed into the other room like she’d just been released from a cage.

  “I can’t stay,” Jim said.

  Brenna called after Maya: “Order a large! Anchovies on half, please!”

  “Gross!”

  “Just half, it won’t kill you!”

  Jim smiled. “You still like anchovies.”

  “Yep.”

  “How about that Hostess obsession? Still can’t go three days without a Twinkie?”