Under Water

by Casey Barrett

  He went into a little lobby office and made the call. Ray whispered my arrival into the receiver and came out and pressed the elevator button.

  “Go on up. Mrs. McKay and her son are expecting you.”

  And her son . . . Lovely.

  I had no intention of telling them what I’d seen Madeline doing online. The videos Cass had discovered played on an endless loop in my mind alongside the image of her murdered ex-boyfriend. They were something no parent or sibling should know exists.

  I had a copy of the day’s New York Post with me. I unfolded it as the elevator ascended and looked again at the front page. PSYCHO SHOWER SLAY, it read. Beneath the headline was a picture of the scene in front of James Fealy’s building. There I was, being escorted into the police cruiser in the near left corner of the page. Across from that, the story’s lead was published in a small box of copy in the lower right corner. It read:

  The murderous psycho slashed him in the shower. That’s where 22-year-old NYU film student and director-to-be, James Fealy, was found with his throat cut open last night. The victim was the son of hard-nosed hedge funder Max Fealy of Soto Capital. Soon after the body was discovered in the bathroom of Fealy’s East Village condo, a private investigator happened upon the scene. MORE ON PAGES 3–4.

  The elevator doors opened before I could turn to the rest. Charlie McKay was waiting in the open doorway of his mother’s apartment. He stood with one hand against the doorframe; the other held a bottle of sparkling water. His blond hair was combed straight back, his Captain America face clean-shaven; his skin was tan from summer. He projected the still confidence of a man who didn’t need to explain who he was or what he did. It was assumed you already knew. He wore khakis and a pressed white button-down, tucked in. Charlie had always been a tall, ox-shouldered kid. He remained a chiseled, lucky-gene specimen, the years doing little to steal away his Olympian’s physique. He gave me a tight smile.

  “Hey, Duck,” he said, like we’d seen each other yesterday. “C’mon in. Mom’s a mess.”

  The apartment was a sprawling, high-ceilinged affair, room after perfect room posing for the pages of Architectural Digest. The décor was English Victorian—all crimson-painted walls with gilded details and Dutch still-lifes. I followed Charlie down a long hall lined with family photos, highlighted by his swimming triumphs. Olympic podiums, in-water action shots, throwing pumpers at the finish . . . I didn’t stop to examine them, but not many of Madeline caught my eye, her triumphs to date not quite as frame-worthy. In a dark, ballroom-sized living room, Margaret McKay was standing by a window looking out at Gramercy Park with a glass of white wine in her hands. She did not smile when she turned and saw me enter with her son.

  “Sit down, Lawrence,” she said.

  I followed her order, on a hunter green high backed sofa. Charlie hovered nearby like an Aryan guard dog. Together, we waited for the next command. Margaret took a drink of wine and walked over, giving off a hot energy as she moved. She was wearing an emerald silk blouse, buttoned low, and black slacks. She stood before me and glared at the paper in my lap.

  “You’ve read the news today,” she said.

  “Oh, boy,” I said. It fell flat.

  She stood with her shoulders back and looked at me down her narrow, surgically refined nose. She lifted her wineglass and held it there, sipping with deliberation. Her long, thin neck contracted as the wine slid slowly down her throat.

  “Do you know why I hired you?” she asked.

  I shrugged, too tired to play along with this servant’s badgering.

  “For your discretion,” she said. “I appreciated our long-ago connection, your childhood friendship with my son, but that is unimportant.” She glanced over at Charlie; he nodded along. “I was told that you are very good at what you do—and also skilled at staying in the shadows. And keeping your mouth shut.”

  “All true,” I said.

  She reached down and grabbed the paper from my lap and held it close before my face. “You call this staying in the shadows?” she spat. She threw the Post to the floor and stalked away. Her body shivered in its aftershock of unaccustomed emotion. “Yesterday morning my daughter was missing and all I asked was for you to find her,” she said, hardly above a whisper. “And now, now she is a suspect in a murder investigation that is being splashed all over the cover of the New York Post.”

  “I don’t think your daughter killed anyone, Mrs. McKay,” I told her.

  “Of course she didn’t!” She shook her head with fury and finished off what was left of her wine. Then she handed the empty glass to her son. He took it dutifully and marched off to the kitchen for a refill. “Did you know the police have already been here this morning?” she asked.

  “I figured they would be,” I said.

  “The NYPD do not come here, not to this building. We all have our private affairs, our less than perfect children . . .” As if on cue, Charlie returned with a fresh glass of white wine for his mother. “We all have these things inside our homes,” she went on. “But they are kept where they belong—in private. What could be more crass than a visit from a cop?”

  “I understand, Margaret.” She glowered at my use of her first name. “I spent four hours at the police station last night talking to those dumb bastards. I saw James Fealy’s body up close with my own eyes. And I—”

  “Yes, the entire city knows all about the ‘private investigator’ that happened upon the scene,” she said.

  “Mrs. McKay,” I said. “It was a terrible act, and I sincerely hope your daughter had nothing to do with it.”

  She looked at me for a long time. There was something dark in the atmosphere, something thick and tense and dangerous. Finally she exhaled and walked back to the window. “What else did you find yesterday?” she asked. “Before you happened upon Mr. Fealy.”

  I thought of the videos Cass and I had watched online, of her daughter in positions of extreme compromise. She must have seen it in my face. “Just say it,” she said. “Do not spare me. If you have found something scandalous about my daughter, just tell me. I’m not sure how it could get worse than that.” She pointed to the Post and took another drink.

  “There was a stash of drugs,” I said. “Hidden at her apartment.”

  She didn’t react.

  “It was quite an assortment. The usual party drugs: coke, molly, that sort of thing. Lot of pills too. But there was also heroin. That worries me.”

  Charlie let out a low moan. “Jesus,” he muttered.

  “We know that Madeline has not made any recent withdrawals from her bank account. We know she has not made any calls or sent any texts from her cell. Mrs. McKay, I say this with all sensitivity, but I have a friend in the medical examiner’s office, a pathologist for the city. I’d like to find out if there have been any recent Jane Does.”

  Another silence stretched between us. Margaret returned to her perch by the window and stared out at the private park beneath her. Glowing green tree light came in through the high window. Charlie started to walk to her, then seemed to think better of it and stopped and sunk into a club chair next to the fireplace.

  “Just so we can rule that out,” I said with a lame note of false assurance. “Also, this afternoon, my partner has made plans to speak with Madeline’s friend, Lucy Townes.”

  Mother and son nodded from their positions, acknowledging the name but lost somewhere off in their own private worlds.

  “I’ll report back as soon as I hear something,” I told them.

  I stood and moved to leave, and neither looked in my direction. Charlie caught up with me in the hall in front of a framed picture of his younger, shirtless self with gold medals around his neck. “Duck, hold up,” he whispered. “Hey, let’s go get a coffee.”

  * * *

  It was a too warm September day, more summer than fall, and everyone on the sidewalks seemed to be regretting their morning choices in clothing. My underarms were wet and bleeding yesterday’s toxins. Charlie led me to Taralucc
i’s, just north of Union Square. We didn’t speak on our walk, and he maintained a two pace lead as we moved. His shoulders sloped over a wide back that still looked plenty powerful beneath his damp oxford. His blond hair was thinning now, baldness on the horizon in the next few years. He turned his head a few times to make sure I was keeping up as he pressed on at a pitched-forward angle of impatience.

  We found a table with some privacy in the back of the café starting to fill with lunching ladies. Charlie asked for a latte; I ordered black coffee for myself. “What the fuck is going on?” he asked as soon as the waitress retreated.

  “Nice to see you too, old friend,” I said.

  “Shit, man, I’m sorry. I know it’s been forever. But this isn’t exactly the time to catch up. Fill me in on what happened yesterday.” He looked at his phone and by some force of will resisted firing off a reply. “Goddamn, I really gotta get back to work,” he said to himself.

  I opened my mouth, but Charlie wasn’t done. “I’m really freaked out about Maddie, man,” he said. “I mean, what if she did this? Where the hell is she? I know she’s been messed up, but Maddie would never hurt anyone. Anyone but herself, I guess. I don’t know, what do you think? You don’t think she’s in the morgue, do you? I know you only had a day, but did you find out anything at all?”

  This time he let me talk. His blithe assumption that she’d turn up had been replaced by a stammering frustration. Charlie still maintained the sharp-edged mind-set of a swimmer. When faced with uncertainty, you could put your head down and train it away, until at some point you needed to look up and see the results on the scoreboard to validate your faith.

  The coffees arrived, and I watched as Charlie carefully scraped away the sticking foam from the sides of the mug and licked off his spoon. Then he placed it just right at a forty-five degree angle in the saucer.

  “What can you tell me about the last time you saw her?” I asked.

  “It was Sunday of Labor Day weekend, up at our place in Rhinebeck. I thought I’d have the house to myself. I went up to get some work done; get a head start while everyone was pissing off on the holiday weekend. Mom was out visiting friends in Montauk. Maddie never uses the place. She hates leaving the city. I was surprised to find her there. When she saw me, she acted really flustered. She hurried upstairs, and came down a few minutes later with a packed swim bag. Then she said she was going back to the city. She called a car and waited out by the road until it arrived. It was weird, man. After she left, I went up and looked through her room, but everything seemed the same.”

  “How did she look? I mean, physically?”

  “Like I said, I barely got a glance. She looked normal, I guess. She was obviously agitated about something, taking off like she did. But physically, I mean, she looked the same to me.”

  “Did you try to reach her after she left?”

  “Of course. What do you think? I called her cell right away. Sent her texts. It went straight to voice mail and she never replied to the texts.”

  “What do you know about this ex-boyfriend, James Fealy?” I asked.

  Charlie frowned, looked down into his half-empty cup. “I introduced them, man,” he said. “You know who that kid’s father is? I’m praying Maddie had nothing to do with this. Not just for her sake, but for mine too. I could be fucked.”

  “How long have you and his father worked together?”

  “Few years. Max Fealy is one of the partners at Soto. Guy’s an animal, worth like one-point-five.”

  “Billion?”

  “Probably even more than that. That’s just what Forbes reported last year. But guys like that always have more stashed away all over the place.”

  “And you introduced your little sister to your boss’s son?”

  “He’s not really my boss, we work on separate desks, but yeah, I guess we both introduced them together. It was at a company retreat last year, at Danny Soto’s place in Greenwich, the owner of the company. He’s real big on crap like that, on trying to pretend his firm is like a big happy family, not just another fuck-your-mother hedge fund. Which, of course, we are.”

  “And James’s father, Max, he was okay with his son going out with Madeline? Did he know about her . . . issues?”

  “He knew she was a badass swimmer. And he knew he could trust her family. I’m the one who should have been worried. This kid James was a total fuck-up. Director-to-be, my ass. He was a cokehead party boy. All he did was piss away his trust fund and pretend to make short films. I watched one once; it was total shit.”

  “How much were you in touch with your sister?”

  “Less and less, unfortunately,” he said. “I mean, we’re sixteen years apart. We both basically grew up as only children, in different households. Sometimes it was like we weren’t even related, not really. Mom changed a lot after dad died, as you might have noticed. I was so into my swimming, it’s not like I was noticing much of anything back then. But Maddie, she was so sweet when she was younger . . .”

  “How often do you think your mom saw her over the last few months?”

  “I don’t know how often they got together in person, but I know they talked all the time. If you can call it that. They fought.”

  “Any idea what about?”

  “Everything. Nothing. Obviously I was only hearing it from one side, when mom would call late at night and ask me what to do.”

  “And what did you tell her?”

  Charlie sighed, took a sip of his latte. He wiped the lingering foam from his upper lip and picked up the spoon and scraped the inside of his mug clean. “I didn’t know what to say. I can’t even remember.” He looked at his phone again and frowned. “I’ve been so fucking busy. Jesus, I really gotta get going.”

  “You still in touch with Coach?”

  “Of course, man, the guy’s like a second father.”

  “You know he has a bouncer out front of the pool these days?” I asked. “Any idea why?”

  He sniffed. “You mean Fred? That guy couldn’t guard a saint in a church,” he said. “Fred’s some old SEAL buddy of Coach’s. Dishonorable discharge or something. I think Coach is just doing him a favor, helping him get back on his feet. Besides, you know how Coach can be. He’s always had that ego. He probably likes how it looks.”

  “Like he’s someone who needs a bodyguard to protect his special swimmers.”

  “Something like that.”

  “What about Kosta, his loyal lieutenant?”

  Charlie shrugged. “They had a falling out last year. The little Greek decided he should be the boss, demanded to be called co–head coach or something. You can imagine how Coach reacted to a challenge to his authority.”

  “Guess you can’t stay an assistant forever,” I said.

  “Yeah, true, but Kosta got possessive. His distance group was like a team within a team.” A shadow of memory passed across Charlie’s face, and it darkened with irritation. “Goddamn it, we’re not here to talk about fucking John Kosta. We can swim through the memories some other time.”

  He took out a gold money clip and peeled off a twenty and set it between us. “Sorry, Duck, but I really need to run. Listen, it’s real good to see you. We’ll catch up properly after all this stuff is over. After you find Maddie. I know you’ll find her, right?”

  I didn’t answer, and Charlie took that as a yes.

  “Thanks, man. Really appreciate it. Keep me posted, okay?”

  He was almost at a jog by the time he reached the door.

  Chapter 8

  Dr. David Burke was an ex-lover of my mother’s, after the fall, when I was around fifteen. He used to share his Jameson’s with me on Sunday afternoons after he’d stayed over, while mom slumbered all day in the bedroom and we watched football on the couch. He was a big, lumbering man who dressed in secondhand black suits, even in summer. His huge head was topped with a mess of brown curls always in need of a trim. Even back then his nose swelled with the bulbous red pride of a committed whiskey drinker. He was a d
ecent man who treated me with all the respect I didn’t deserve. Of course, I hated him for the sounds that came from my mother in the night.

  The relationship had fizzled like all the others, but Dr. Burke had tried to stay in touch. I blew off his kind attempts at contact for years, until I needed something. He didn’t hold it against me. His business is the cold and the dead; he doesn’t expect much from the living.

  I called ahead and arrived at his office a little before two. It’s on a doctor-drenched stretch of First Avenue, wedged between NYU Medical and Bellevue, a concentration of the city with too much clinical knowledge of life and death. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner is at the corner of 30th. Dr. Burke has been there for decades. He can tell you more about the causes of quick death than anyone this side of the grave.

  A solemn young attendant led me down to his basement office. He was a skinny, pale kid who looked like he went Goth when he removed his scrubs. Pathology attracts the grim by nature, but those who last, the ones who thrive in the field of the dead, are those with a cheery, unflappable disposition. Dr. Burke grew up in Alphabet City when the far reaches of the East Village still went by that name. His early years were filled with memories of OD’d junkies on sidewalks and random violence so regular you stopped waking in the night to gunshots. Death stopped fazing him early.

  In the cold quiet of the basement corridor, I heard him clearing his throat in his office at the end of the hall. Just before we reached the door, his giant frame emerged with a wink and a grin.

  “Master Darley,” he said with a bow.

  “Doctor Death,” I said.

  He stepped forward and pulled me in for a quick manly hug and a slap of the back. Then he led me into his office as the dour attendant sulked away. Burke settled into a wide, worn chair behind his desk, waved for me to sit on one across from him. Above his head there was his framed medical degree from NYU. Between us, framed in the center of his desk, was a ticket stub from Super Bowl XLVI. I knew which one he was more proud of.