Empty ever after mp-5

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  Perhaps the strangest aspect of the whole experience was the parting. We had, it seemed, used up all our awkwardness in our twelve hours together. Our farewell was almost business-like: pleasant, courteous, distant. There were no hard feelings, no angry words, no accusations. Pulling down the driveway, I could see Connie in my sideview mirror. She stood at the edge of the portico, giving me a goodbye wave so slight it was barely noticeable. The look on her face was unvarnished and predatory.

  Is this, I wondered, what being alone did to you? Had Connie played out this scene over and over again with any number of men? Had they all disappointed her? Was she disappointed even before they showed up? Is that why it was, in spite of all the heat, so empty an experience? Christ, it was all so very odd. Heading back to Brooklyn, I didn’t find myself missing Katy so much as the marriage itself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I knew the second I walked through the condo door that the world had changed when I wasn’t looking. My phone machine was flashing without pause. I’d never seen anything like it. Reflexively, I reached for my cell and remembered the deal I’d made with Connie Geary about leaving distractions behind. The second I turned it back on, it buzzed. It was an easy choice for me between answering machine and cell. I preferred hitting one button to cell message retrieval.

  First message:

  “Dad, it’s Sarah, listen… We’ve gotta talk. Something’s up with Mommy. I…I think she’s losing it. I think she’s seeing Uncle Patrick again. Please call me back. I’m supposed to leave for Ann Arbor tomorrow, but I don’t really want to leave with Mommy like this. Call me back as soon as you get this.”

  The second and third messages were much the same only more frantic. Sarah was increasingly worried not only about Katy, but by her inability to reach me. The fourth and fifth messages were from Aaron and Carmella, respectively. Both had gotten calls from Sarah concerning my whereabouts and why I wasn’t picking up my cell phone.

  Next message:

  “Yeah, Prager, this is Detective Feeney. We got a location on Mary White. She never made it outta the Ohio-Kentucky area. The airport cops found her in the trunk of her car in the short-term lot. The tags had been switched. Preliminary report is the old lady was strangled. Give me a call.”

  There was another round of calls from Sarah and Aaron, alternating between panic and anger.

  Next message:

  “Hey, boss, it’s Doyle. It’s weird, but no one on Manhattan Court can ever remember seeing Martello. I even showed his picture around. Nothing. But the minute I mentioned the guy with the eye patch, like ten people knew who I was talking about. And here’s the really weird thing, two or three of the neighbors remember the guy with the eye patch being there the night the kid bought it. Gimme a call. Whadaya want me to do from here?”

  I picked up the phone and dialed Sarah’s cell, half listening as the messages continued playing. One ring. The next message was from Sheriff Vandervoort. Second ring. Sarah had called the sheriff’s station and was panicked. Third ring. When Sarah got up and went to check on Katy, she was gone: her bed unslept in. Her car still in the garage. Fourth ring.

  “Dad, where the hell have you been? Mommy is-”

  “I know, kiddo, I’m listening to my messages.”

  “Where have-”

  “It’s a long story, Sarah. Tell me what’s going on.”

  She pretty much repeated what Pete Vandervoort had described and then started losing it.

  “Shhhh, Sarah, calm down, calm down. It won’t help anyone if you lose control. You said you thought Mom was seeing Uncle Patrick again. What makes you say that?”

  “She was acting weird, like… like she was before she tried to-”

  “Weird how?”

  “She was all nervous, always looking over my shoulder when we were together. She started staying in her bedroom all the time, smoking cigarettes. I could smell them through the door. She tried to get me to stay at Robby’s or to come back to your place. Dad, I’m really scared.”

  “We’ll take care of it. Your mom’ll be fine,” I said, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. “I’ll be up there in a few hours. In the meantime, put in a call to her shrink, okay? I’m on my way.”

  I stayed and listened to the remainder of the messages. They were from Aaron and Carmella, another one from Pete Vandervoort. All wondered where I was and why I still hadn’t picked up my cell. Walking to my bedroom to change, I half-listened to another message, the last message. It was mostly silence, a vague, familiar silence, a chilling silence. Then a snicker.

  End of new messages.

  I have seldom in my life been thankful for traffic. Being thankful for traffic is akin to joy over an exit wound, but I was thankful for it that day.

  With the Belt Parkway jammed in both directions, I hadn’t even gotten out of Brooklyn. And given all that was going on, I’d’ve thought my mind would be cluttered by fear over Katy’s disappearance, worry for Sarah, the news of Mary White’s murder. Then there was the peculiar nature of what Brian Doyle had said about no one having seen Martello on the night of the kid’s murder. Never mind the call from the snickering ghost.

  Yet, there in the traffic, the radio blasting “Black Coffee in Bed,” my progress measured by inches, not in miles per hour, all I could think about was Connie Geary and the expression on her face as I drove away that morning. I looked at my sideview mirror as I had earlier, trying to recreate her face with the paint of memory. Her expression was predatory, almost feral. Again, I wondered where it had come from. I wondered if she meant for me to see it. It was always the small details: Connie’s expression, the kid lying to me about his name, Katy seeing… Suddenly, I was short of breath and then the world went away.

  Things became so clear to me that I hurt, I ached. I wanted to peel my skin away from my muscle, tear my muscle away from my bone, wrench all feelings away from my heart. Horns filled the air, but I could not move, could not blink, could not… All senses deserted me. I was numb and deaf, dumb and blind. The only thing I tasted was my own bile. I heard the horns again. They were angrier now, even vengeful. Beneath the blare was a distant tapping. Still, I could not move. The tapping grew more insistent.

  “Hey, buddy… pal…” The tapping had a voice. “Buddy, you okay?”

  The world rushed back in as I turned to see a man’s face pressed against my window. I looked ahead and the traffic had broken up.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry.”

  He shrugged his shoulders, hitched up his eyebrows, the corner of his mouth. He tapped the window one more time and said, “Okay, then let’s go.”

  I stepped on the gas and drove blind.

  ALTHOUGH IN MY heart I now knew who had been pulling the strings all along, I wanted some confirmation, something tangible I could show Feeney and Pete Vandervoort. Too many times in my life I had operated on whims and hunches. Not this time, because if what I suspected was true, was true, then Katy’s life, Sarah’s, and mine were in real danger. Everything, even the murders of Mary White, the kid, Martello-yes, Martello-had been the preliminaries, the overture and first two acts. Before I went rushing upstate, I needed to know for sure.

  I called ahead to Vandervoort and Sarah and warned them I might be delayed in getting to Janus. Car trouble, I’d said. The sheriff knew I was full of shit and Sarah believed me out of desperation and habit. I considered telling Vandervoort the truth, but changed my mind. There was too much to explain and if I was wrong, I didn’t want to risk the sheriff shifting the focus off the search for Katy. If I was right about who had her, she’d be safe for now. The last act required me as audience.

  Devo was already in the office waiting for me.

  “I have it queued up for you, Moe.”

  The lights in his office were dimmed and he had me sit in front of one of his computer monitors. He stood behind me to my right.

  “The view, I am afraid, is far from sharp, but you can make out a face,” Devo said, then began explaining the mecha
nics of how he had coaxed the image from the gas station’s security video.

  “Just show it to me.”

  “What you will see is a continually sharpening image. When the image is at its highest resolution, the frame will freeze.” He touched the mouse.

  There on the monitor was the image of a slightly tinted driver’s side window of a 2000 GMC Yukon. Click. I could barely make out the ghostly silhouette of someone in the driver’s seat. Click. Click. Click. In tiny increments the window tinting seemed to brighten and, as it did, the silhouette became less and less ghostly. Click. A human face began to emerge out of the darkness. Click. A few seconds later I could make out a black bulge over the left eye of the emerging face. Click. Then, just before the frame froze, I recognized the face of the mystery man. In that brief second before the fear and resignation set in, I smiled. For now I knew where a bullet I fired in Miami Beach in 1983 had landed. I’d shot out Ralphy Barto’s left eye.

  Mira Mira had almost been right. While Ralph Barto wasn’t a cop, he had been a U.S. marshal and a PI. Bullet wound or not, this wasn’t about revenge for his missing left eye. After all, the prick was trying to kill me when I returned fire. No, Ralph Barto was a professional lackey, not a master of the universe. Dead roses, ghosts, and graves were not his franchise. If Barto had wanted revenge, he’d have sought me out long ago, stuck a gun in my mouth, and made like Jackson Pollock. This wasn’t about Ralph Barto, at least not directly, but about his boss, a man who had murdered a little boy and a political intern in coldest blood.

  In 1983, Ralph Barto had two bosses: Joe Spivack and Steven Brightman. Spivack, another ex-U.S. marshal, had owned a security firm in the same building where Carmella and I now kept our offices. His firm had done the initial investigation attempting to clear Steven Brightman from any taint in connection to his intern’s disappearance. After I got involved and we cleared Brightman, Spivack went to his cabin upstate and blew his brains out. Spivack’s suicide, along with some other nagging doubts, led me to question my own conclusions about Brightman’s innocence. At Spivack’s funeral, Ralph Barto offered his services to me. I had no way of knowing that he was Brightman’s boy, a mole meant to keep tabs on me. When I got too close to the truth, he tried to kill me.

  I could understand Brightman wanting revenge as much or more as Martello, but why now? Why seventeen years later? Something had had to set him off and I wanted to know what that was before we crossed paths.

  “Devo,” I said, “do me a favor and get on the internet.”

  “Sure, Moe, but why?”

  “Steven Brightman.”

  “What about him?

  “Everything, but especially about his ex-wife.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Connie Geary had made it happen. I knew that without Devo having to look it up. She was in this. I just didn’t know how deeply. She had planted the idea of our date weeks ago. She made the call. She set the time. She made sure we were alone and I was unreachable. She arranged for the car. She picked the restaurant. She gave me the first kiss. Christ, even fucking was her idea. At least she let me choose the wine. Had she known what Brightman really had in mind? I’d like to think not. She had probably financed him. Financing Brightman’s campaigns seemed to be a Geary family habit.

  For a little while there, I thought about heading to Crocus Valley and grabbing her ass for trade bait. It was a good thing her son wasn’t around, because I was in the kind of mood to have used him too. That’s how fucked up I was. But even if I had been far gone enough to have used them both, it wouldn’t have mattered. Bargaining requires that the parties value what the other party possesses, but Brightman wouldn’t care about Connie or her kid. Too bad Connie was blind to that. She wouldn’t be for much longer. If she had understood the end game and not involved herself, then maybe Brightman would’ve been forced to come directly at me instead of my family. That wasn’t his way.

  I was pretty sure I had some time and that Katy was in no immediate danger. My guess, my hope was that Brightman needed my presence to bring down the final curtain. Was I certain? No. I’d been wrong about almost everything else, but I knew Brightman, the way his twisted mind worked. So before heading into town, I stopped at the cemetery to talk with Fallon. I don’t know why it had taken me so long to realize what was right in front of me from the first: that a man with a backhoe, a shed full of pickaxes, shovels, and sledges, a man with unfettered access to the Maloney family gravesite, was a more obvious suspect than neighborhood kids, vandalous ghosts or avenging angels. That the sheriff had also neglected this point was of no comfort.

  The crunch of the gravel beneath my tires brought it full circle. I once again thought of that long-ago winter’s day in the cemetery with Mr. Roth. God, how I missed that man, but the love I felt for him was always tainted with guilt over my father. We’re funny creatures, us humans. We live in hope that even the dead will change. I know I did. My dad loved us. We loved him, but he had cut himself off from us. He could never bring himself to meet us halfway. So far, no further. He was a failure at business. Even his failures were unspectacular. I don’t think Aaron, Miriam, or I cared about that, but he did. We saw him as a failure because he saw himself that way, because he failed us that way. Israel Roth came with none of that baggage. That baggage was reserved for his son. He was the father I chose. I was the son he wished he had. It was a cruel bargain for everyone but the both of us.

  I parked in front of Fallon’s neat little bungalow, but I didn’t make it up the front steps. The shed door was open, creaking as it swung lazily in the early evening breeze. I reached around for my. 38. Something was wrong. I could feel it in my bones. Besides, cemeteries just tend to throw me off my game. No one likes confronting the inevitable. When your life spreads out before you, there are countless possibilities. Not in the end. In the end, it’s all the same. Death is the most egalitarian of things. Cemeteries, like a constant whisper in the ear, had a nasty way of reminding you of that fact.

  “Fallon!” I called out. “Mr. Fallon. It’s Moe Prager, Katy Maloney’s ex.”

  The only answer was the whine of mosquito wings. They’d come out for a light supper. In the distance I heard a faint clink, clink, clink — ing. When I grabbed hold of the door and peeked around, I saw why it refused to close. Mr. Fallon’s work boots were doorstops. The caretaker lay face down, one end of a pickaxe stuck so completely through his left shoulder blade that the handle nearly rested on his back. There wasn’t much blood, not on his back anyway. His head was pretty well smashed up. The little blood that had pooled around the wound was thick with mosquitos.

  I looked up at the door header and ceiling of the shed as I backed out. Fallon hadn’t been killed in the shed. No way an assailant could have swung the pickaxe high enough to gather the momentum it would have taken to gouge through the body that way. I took a look around. On the far side of the equipment barn, I found the source of that faint clink, clink, clink — ing. Fallon’s abandoned backhoe was still running, the exhaust cap popping up and down in rhythm to the puffing of diesel fumes. The blood missing from the shed was all here, but not pooled all in one place. The caretaker had received quite a beating before dying.

  My cell phone buzzed even as I grabbed it to call the sheriff. It was Brian Doyle.

  “You were right, boss,” he said. “The tattoo babe confirmed it.”

  “Thanks.”

  I clicked off and called the sheriff.

  “Pete.”

  “Yeah, what’s up?”

  “Have you seen my daughter?”

  “Sarah? She was just in here with Robby, why?”

  I let out a big sigh of relief. “Keep an eye on her.”

  “Why? What’s up?”

  I didn’t bother explaining. “Listen, Fallon’s dead.”

  “Fallon, the guy from the cemetery?”

  “Yeah. I’m at the cemetery now. Fallon’s in the tool shed, a pickaxe sticking halfway out his back. My guess is-”

  I never f
inished the sentence because a baseball bat had, at that instant, introduced itself to my right kidney. It’s way back. The leftfielder’s on the warning track… at the fence… looking up. That ball is… outta here! I’ll be pissing blood for a month, I thought, crumpling to the ground, if I live that long. My cell phone seemed free of the bonds of gravity and flew off somewhere, far far away. The involuntary tears and choking mucus that filled my eyes, throat, and sinuses was the least of it. The nausea, the puking, that was the bad part. It made everything else that much worse, especially the pain. When I was done puking, someone slipped a pillowcase over my head, taped it closed around my neck, and cuffed my hands behind me. Two men-I guessed there were two and that they were men-dragged me by my elbows along the dirt and gravel. I was shoved into the back of a car-my car, by the sound of it-and driven away. Someone spoke. The voice was familiar, but it wasn’t Brightman’s or Barto’s.

  “You didn’t think you was gonna blow up our kitchen and get away with it, did ya?”

  It was Crank.

  The ride was a fairly short one. That much I could say, but I was still disoriented from the whack in the kidney and the growing pain in my head. The tape, tight around my neck, wasn’t helping my respiration any, and the buildup of my own vomit-sour fumes in the pillowcase was hard to take. When we stopped, I was yanked out of the car and dragged along some new dirt and stone. A door opened. I was bent into a sitting position with my legs and ass on a cool, damp floor and my back against a rough wooden wall. Something tore open the linen cocoon around my head. The rush of fresh air made me swoon. If there had been anything left in my guts, I would have puked again. As it was, I dry-retched until my head nearly exploded. Someone kicked me in the ribs and the dry heaves stopped. I wish I had known that trick in college.