by Cate Holahan
“Your mother’s?” His arms fold across his chest. “Without your phone?”
“I forgot it.” I push Vicky into our bedroom. It’s bright in here, not that she cares once she’s fallen asleep. Still, I walk to the window and lower the blackout curtain.
“I had no way to reach you.” Jake stands in the doorway, indignant.
I put my finger to my lips and point at the stroller. Then I brush past him again, a Manhattan native navigating around a midtown tourist, and reenter the living area. “You could have called my mom,” I hiss.
The bedroom door shuts. He follows me into the living room. “I didn’t know you were there.”
“Where else would I be, Jake?” My feet ache from hours of walking in cheap flip-flops. I am tempted to take off Colleen’s shoes and massage my arches, but I can’t draw attention to my footwear. Instead, I sit on our fabric couch and pull my legs up to the side, tucking my feet beneath me so Jake can’t see the shoes. I’ll need to dispose of these. Trash collection is tomorrow. Perhaps I’ll take Vicky on a stroll through Battery Park later and toss them in a garbage can, somewhere far enough from my building that they could never be traced back to me. Maybe by the Staten Island Ferry terminal. Tens of thousands of people pass through there each day. If I go around rush hour, no one will notice me.
“I don’t know where you’d be.” He stands behind the coffee table. “There are hundreds of places: a friend’s house, a hotel. In a ditch somewhere.”
A yawn swallows my face. Now that I’m sitting, my body is acutely aware of my all-nighter. The adrenaline is gone. I could pass out this instant.
“I mean how could you be so irresponsib—”
“You cancelled on me.” I rub my hands over my face, trying to wake up for this conversation. It’s important that I sell Jake on my alibi. “Obviously, if I’m not here waiting for you, I’d be with my family.”
He bends toward the glass table and picks something up. He brandishes the items like a trial exhibit. A stone glints in the sunlight flooding the living room window. “I found these.”
My rings. I fight a smile. Knowing that I’d thrown them on the floor or fearing they’d been wrested from my fingers would have made last night that much worse for him. “I was upset.” I shrug. “I told you that I wanted to talk and stressed that it was important. And you still canceled.”
“A work thing came up.”
I close my eyes so he can’t see me roll them. The action spurs another yawn.
“I was worried.”
Not worried enough. Jake’s big blue eyes shine with little boy hurt. They remind me of Vicky’s. A swirl of emotions suddenly overcome my fatigue. Anger, sadness, fear, regret. Love. They bang into one another like subatomic particles at high speed, fusing together, leaving empty vacuums in their wake. For a moment, I fear I might explode with screams and rage and tears. Then Jake’s brow lowers, and a strange calm descends. It’s as though I’ve been drained of all the muddled emotions that define the human experience. I feel detached. I am watching myself huddled on this couch, lorded over by my self-righteous spouse. The distance gives me clarity.
I don’t love this man anymore. I’ll also never love any man the way I loved him. Never again will I be a twenty-one-year-old ingenue so enamored of the idea of someone finding me special that I refuse to see this other person for who he really is. No one loves selflessly. I won’t do it again.
A knock on the door stops my thoughts. Every muscle tightens. I glance at the window. Newer buildings don’t have fire escapes.
“You expecting anyone?”
A SWAT team? “No.” I cover my fear with annoyance. “I just got home. Are you?”
Jake’s walk is stiff as he approaches the door. I realize with a twinge of schadenfreude that he thinks Colleen has come for a visit. His stomach is probably somewhere in his colon right now.
The door pulls back. A blue uniform peeks above Jake’s shoulder. “Excuse me, ADA Jacobson. Sorry to bother you at home like this. May we come in?”
I tuck my feet farther beneath my bottom.
“I called out today. What is it that can’t wait until tomorrow?”
“It’s about Officer Landry. Officer Colleen Landry.”
Here it comes. I feel as though I am in a car traveling eighty miles per hour toward a brick wall.
“What about her?”
“She’s been reported missing.”
“Oh?” Jake looks at me over his shoulder. “Maybe we should talk outside? My six-week-old is sleeping in the bedroom.”
The officers step back into the hallway, giving Jake room to go outside and close the door behind him. If they were here to arrest me, they’d never leave me alone with a child in the apartment while they talked to my husband. They don’t suspect me . . . yet. I have to know what they’re thinking.
“Jake, you can invite them in. As long as we all keep our voices down, we won’t wake Victoria.” I approach the door and reach around Jake to extend my hand. “I’m Jake’s wife, Beth.”
The officer is a wall of a black man. Broad shoulders, broad torso. He gives me a guilty smile and steps into the room. His partner, a middle-aged blonde woman with wide shoulders and deep frown lines, follows behind him. “What’s wrong?” I ask.
“An officer, Colleen Landry, is missing. A neighbor called this morning after seeing blood in the hallway outside her apartment. It’s Colleen’s. And there was a lot of it.”
Jake blinks at the man as though he hasn’t understood him. After a beat, he scratches the stubble on his cheek. “Have you checked with family? She has a sister in the Bronx.”
“Her sister hasn’t heard from her,” the female officer says. “Neither have her pals. She was meeting up with a girlfriend last night for late drinks and never showed.”
My gut twists. Colleen hadn’t been headed to chase down Jake and confront me after all. I let my jaw drop. “Is that the policewoman who was in your office yesterday? The one you were working that case with?”
Jake’s hand rakes down his mouth and drops to his side. “Yes.” He clears his throat. “She was a witness on a prior case, and she was in my office.” He glances at the male officer. I wonder what he might be trying to communicate with his eyes: Please act as though our relationship was professional.
“Helping with a current case,” I offer. “The one about the socialite who backed her car into those people.”
He gives a sheepish smile to the two detectives as though they know something by virtue of being here. Maybe the whole police department is aware that Jake and Colleen were lovers, that I was the stupid wife with an infant at home.
“Can I get you anything?” I ask while walking into the kitchen. “Water? Juice.” If it weren’t for Colleen’s shoes on my feet, I might be enjoying Jake’s distress. He’s so close to being outed.
“No, thank you.”
The female officer eyes my husband. “Officer Landry’s friend said that Ms. Landry was meeting with you before she failed to show for drinks.”
My husband glances at me. I try to keep my wide-eyed, curious expression intact. “We had dinner,” he says. “I wanted to pick her brain on a case.”
I stare at him, doing my best to feign what I would be feeling if this were my first hint that my husband had been cheating. The gut-wrenching emotions I felt when I first saw Jake’s hand on Colleen’s back are inaccessible to me. Still, I blink at him and let my lips part, pretending to be suspicious yet hopeful that maybe there’s an innocent explanation.
“Where did you go?” The female officer looks at me as she asks. Is she trying to tip me off to my husband’s affair? If she is, then she can’t think I had anything to do with Officer Colleen’s death. Then again, she could simply be gauging my reactions. I focus on Jake, pretending to be interested in the answer.
He clears his throat for the second time. All the moisture in it must have evaporated. “You know, I think I’d rather do this at the precinct. I have work to catch up on, and
that way, I’ll be near the office.”
“Jake worked late last night.” I pump earnestness into my voice as though all I want to do is be helpful to my husband. “We had dinner plans, but this case kept him.”
The male detective nods as though he doesn’t know my husband has been feeding me a crock of horseshit. “And what time did he get off work?”
“She wasn’t here,” Jake snaps.
“I just came in five minutes ago, actually. When Jake had to cancel on me because of the case, I went back to get our daughter from my mother’s house and ended up spending the night.”
“What time did you get in?” Again, the female officer asks Jake for a direct answer.
In response, he walks to the coat closet and grabs his suit jacket. “As I’ve said, I’d prefer to answer these questions downtown, detectives.”
The detectives nod and follow Jake out the door. Before the female officer leaves, she passes me a business card. “If you think of anything,” she says cryptically.
I nod at her, doe eyed, as though I haven’t any idea what she means.
LIZA
Someone is chasing me. I run from them all night, racing through unfamiliar alleyways, sweating in a black tank that I’ve never owned and ill-fitting jeans. I flee my pursuer into the subway, diving into empty cars. I speed away in a vehicle, right foot pressing the gas pedal to the carpet, yellowed knuckles gripping the steering wheel. Still, there is no escape.
I wake in a confused fever. Where am I? Who am I? What is real? Sunlight, too pale for the afternoon, pours through my bedroom window. Its visual alarm reflects off my laptop’s metal shell into my tired eyes. The end of the month will be here before I know it. Trevor won’t give me an extension.
The blanket is still pulled tight to the headboard on David’s side of the bed. He didn’t come home. Likely, he crashed on his office couch. Or he went to Cameron’s apartment, Beth says.
“Right now, that’s the least of my concerns.” I answer her aloud, comforted by the familiar sound of my scratchy, gravely morning voice. David wasn’t sleeping with anyone in his emotional state. He probably didn’t sleep at all.
I roll from beneath the covers and head to the bathroom. Last night’s vomiting has left me dehydrated. There’s barely anything to evacuate. Still, I go through the motions: toilet, shower, brush teeth, dress. The acts feel superfluous. My husband might have killed a man. What does it matter if my breath smells?
Yet what else is there to do besides go about my day? I can’t sit around waiting for officers to arrest my husband. And there’s still a chance that David didn’t do anything at all and this is all in my head.
In the light of day, my murder theory seems less plausible. David and Nick were getting hate mail after that big judgment. Perhaps David took my gun because he feared that whomever had hurt his law partner was coming for him next. Maybe he hadn’t asked me for it because he hadn’t wanted me to worry. For all I know, my gun is in his desk drawer.
The thought that David might be innocent barely comforts me. Alone in the apartment, with only my imagination for company, I can invent too many reasons for my husband to have wanted his business partner dead. I can devise too many ways for him to have done it.
So go out, Beth admonishes me. A woman of action, she would not stay here like a polite chess player, waiting for her opponent to make the next move. She would meet someone. Do something. But what?
The bar. Again, the suggestion comes in Beth’s voice. When her husband stood her up, I sent her to a local pub. But I think the idea is about more than my story or drowning my sorrows. Given Sergeant Perez’s brief description, Nick had likely gone to the bar where he’d taken Christine before his disappearance. An upset woman had asked about him. Maybe that woman was involved. Maybe, if I figure out who she is, I can give the cops—and myself—another suspect besides my husband.
I don’t know the name of the place. Christine hadn’t remembered it, and Sergeant Perez had probably withheld it deliberately. Still, it’s possible to find out anything on the Internet with a few scant details. I open my laptop and search for a list of descriptive phrases that I remember from Christine’s story: “Brooklyn.” “Marie Antoinette.” “Speakeasy.” “French.” Within seconds, Google returns a customer review page for Le Bonhomme. There are photos. Red leather banquettes line one wall. Massive mirrors with ornate frames coated in gold leaf are posted above each table. This must be the place. The web page has a phone number and hours: 4:00 PM until 4:00 AM.
No one will answer if I call now. I resolve to head into Brooklyn for an early dinner and close my browser. My manuscript lies behind it. I see the cursor flashing beside the period of the last sentence. Obsessing over my husband’s possible guilt isn’t helping anyone. Time for me to write.
*
I work all day, stopping only to slurp up a bowl of watery instant oatmeal and refill my coffee mug. By three o’clock, I have been staring at the computer screen for so long that my vision is blurred. The objects in my apartment have a hazy quality, as though plopped onto a green screen. I save the latest version of my novel and e-mail myself a copy. If I want to get to the bar before it gets crowded, I need to leave soon.
I bump into my ottoman en route to my closet, forgetting that the layout of my bedroom is tighter than the one in Tyler’s imaginary studio. Nothing that I own is trendy enough for any place that Nick would have frequented. I settle on a pair of last season’s skinny jeans, sans this season’s factory scuffing around the knees, and a white V-neck blouse. My go-to black heels would help dress up the outfit. Unfortunately, I haven’t put them in their usual place and don’t trust myself to recall where I left them. Instead, I grab a pair of black sneakers. The woman in my full-length mirror seems as though she doesn’t care. Strangely enough, this makes me look hip.
I bring my laptop with me for the long subway ride. There are four stops between my apartment and Fifty-Ninth Street. There, I will switch trains to head into Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
The trip will give me another hour to work. Editing also has the added bonus of keeping anyone from talking to me. Tourists seeking someone to take their hundredth picture or strange men wanting to know if a clearly vacant seat is “taken” won’t bother asking a woman with her head behind a computer screen. Too much is happening for me to navigate polite conversation.
*
I emerge above ground in an area that looks like the bastard child of Manhattan’s Chelsea and the Bronx. Brownstone-lined streets intersect avenues of bodegas selling ethnic cuisines. In the distance, a glass skyscraper nears completion beside what I am pretty sure is a row of abandoned factories. Most strikingly, there’s graffiti. As I approach the waterfront, brick facades are splashed with blue-and-white bubble letters. Illegible scripts shout garbled messages on shuttered doors. The scrawled writing is more sad than threatening—a last FU from the struggling artists being pushed out of any neighborhood within five miles of the city. The Nicks of the world have arrived. No doubt the spray paint will soon be sandblasted, perhaps replaced by the high-priced art of a Banksy rip-off, though only if the developer decides that “edginess” drives up prices.
I walk down the street listed on the website until I see a gilded door, curved like the entrance to a castle and slapped on the brick face of one of the abandoned-looking factories. There isn’t any sign, and the door doesn’t have a knob or a handle. This must be the place.
I rap my knuckles against the fancy entrance, more annoyed with the gimmick than thrilled by the faux secrecy. The door retreats with the screech of rusted metal, probably for effect. A shirtless man in a gold bowtie, like a male version of a Playboy bunny, peers around me. When he doesn’t see anyone, he welcomes me to Le Bonhomme.
Christine has a knack for descriptions. The place does resemble a French queen’s chambers, only with booths instead of beds. More accurately, it seems to be fashioned after the sitting room where courtesans entertained before heading to more private quarters. It
smells like a heavy male cologne, something with absinthe and rosemary.
The hour is too early for the after-work crowd. Only one of the several booths hosts patrons. Two men. Perhaps a couple. Their presence alone, sitting across from one another, does not make this a gay bar. The bartender’s work attire of a silken red scarf and tight black pants, however, strongly hints in that direction. The man could bench press me. Another clue.
I take a seat on a red velvet stool and request a tequila gimlet. It’s the only mixed drink I can come up with while still struggling to digest the decor. The bartender looks at me like I am in the wrong place and hands me a menu. All the cocktails are special to the restaurant, he explains. He doesn’t do plain old tequila and lime.
I point to the first one. It has an accent over the vowel and raspberry listed in the description. It doesn’t matter. I’m not drinking so much as I am trying to create a financial transaction involving information. If I am tipping this guy, he might be more forthcoming.
As the mixologist starts taking bottles from the back bar, I slide my phone from my purse and scroll to the picture of Nick and David. “I am sorry to bother you, but I am hoping that you may have some information on a friend of mine.” Surprisingly, my voice doesn’t sound all squeaky. The stress of the past few days has forced me to get over some of my social anxiety.
The bartender squints as though I might be a crazed stalker or badly cast bounty hunter. He doesn’t say anything.
I place the phone on the bar. “His name is Nick Landau. The man on the right.”
The bartender pours raspberry vodka into a shaker with one hand and red raspberry juice in with the other. He glances at the screen.
“He’s my husband’s best friend and law partner. He disappeared about a month ago. His name has been in the paper. Apparently, he was last seen here.”
The bartender keeps looking at the image. His lips remain shut. He adds another liquor to the shaker before vibrating it above his shoulder like an odd instrument.
“We don’t want money or anything from him.” I cough. “We just want to know what happened.”