Under Water

by Casey Barrett

  “Good to see you, my man,” he said. “What brings you down to the netherland?”

  “Missing girl, I’m afraid.”

  “And here I thought this was a social call.” He frowned and put his big hands behind his head and leaned back as the chair moaned under his weight. Despite the chill, there were stains beneath each armpit.

  “Pour us a drink, and we can mix business and pleasure,” I said.

  He glanced down at his desk drawer. “Sadly, the office of Dr. Burke is now a dry zone. Quite a reprimand a while back after the proverbial bottle was found empty in a wastebasket. Tried to tell ’em it steadied the hands, but alas.”

  “Later then.”

  “Sure thing. Now, what’s with the missing girl? Think she’s a Jane Doe?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “Then you’ve come to the right place. Let’s hear it.”

  I pulled the envelope from my back pocket and removed Madeline’s pictures and placed them on the desk before him. “Eighteen years old. Name’s Madeline McKay. Rich girl, mixed up in drugs, found a lot of them in her apartment.”

  Dr. Burke picked up the photos and studied them with an indifferent intensity. “Pretty girl,” he said. “How long she been missing?”

  “Little over a week.”

  He studied them a bit more, then set them down and pushed them back toward me. “Don’t recognize her, but let me go have a closer look at the bodies.”

  He pushed himself up and moved past me with the weary bulk of an old buffalo. I listened to his presence fill the silent morgue as he checked on the lifeless in the rooms down the hall. I checked my phone. No service in this underworld. I examined his Super Bowl ticket stub, remembered Tyree’s catch; remembered the Patriots’ humiliation with a smile. I returned it to his desk with care and settled back and examined Madeline’s pictures again. I thought of those videos she’d made. A reckless one, a self-destructive party girl who was determined to shatter any expectations anyone else might have for her, she’d gone hard around the bend and it was unlikely she could come back, even if she wanted to. If she was alive, and I found her, there would be the requisite rehab, the shaming process. Maybe it would take for a bit, but probably not for long. There would be more hints at the potential and the talent that lay beneath, followed by more relapses, more descents, more disappointments. I was just a courier in a long, sad process. She was beautiful and angry and rich, and she didn’t want what she was able to achieve. Yeah, I’d seen that movie. Seen it more than once. No happy endings to that drama.

  Dr. Burke returned with a shake of his big, shaggy head. “Girl’s not here,” he said. He settled back behind his desk and leaned forward on his elbows. “Glad I couldn’t help.”

  “Me too.”

  “By the way, I saw the Post this morning.”

  “The girl’s mother isn’t too happy about that.”

  “I would imagine not,” he said. “Sounds like a nasty business.”

  “Looking that way.”

  “You think she did it?”

  “No.” Again, I said it with an unplaced assurance. “I don’t know. Maybe. Sounds like she had motive, if you can call heartbreak motive.”

  “The finest motive of all,” he said like a man who knew.

  “She was a swimmer, this girl Madeline. Or is a swimmer. A very good one.”

  “Would that explain the haunted look you’re wearing around?”

  “That, or maybe it’s just coming across a brutal murder.” I saw James Fealy again, lying there mutilated in a red pool of his own blood. “She swims for the same team I used to,” I said. “Her brother is an old teammate. An Olympic champ, in fact.”

  Dr. Burke’s dark eyes narrowed and he gave a slight frown. “You remember what I told you when you first started in this business?” he asked.

  “I know. Never make it personal.”

  “You can’t, Duck. It will torture you. You need to view your clients as I view those lifeless sacks of flesh and organs in there,” he said with a wave of the hand. “They are your work, and you have a duty to do right by them, but you mustn’t identify with them or personalize your task in any way.”

  “What happens when it hits too close to home?”

  “Then you pass the duty on to someone who doesn’t have the same attachment. Move on to the next one.” He leaned back and rubbed a puffy, clean-shaven cheek. Burke eyed me like an aging priest who’d lost the faith, made all the wiser. “But you’re not going to do that, are you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I will. But not yet.”

  I moved to leave, extended a hand, and thanked him once again. I knew Burke felt some kind of responsibility toward me; he was betraying his own advice just by sitting here with me, interrupting his day to assist in my search. I knew why he felt that way, and it set off the usual mix of resentment and gratitude.

  “Let’s grab a drink sometime,” I said. “A few drinks.”

  “You know where to find me.”

  He pretended to turn his attention to some papers on his desk as I backed from the office and silently shut his door and moved back up toward the land of the living. Outside, the sky was white and low with a thick humidity to the air. The heat was a miserable remnant of summer, a refusal to roll away for the coolness of fall, the only season worth a damn in this city. I turned down First Avenue and walked against the traffic south, past young docs in scrubs, past sad bus stops full of old folks with walkers and stooped backs. I turned into a bodega at the corner of 18th Street and picked up two six-packs of Beck’s, then turned west and headed toward Second with a growing thirst. It was a quiet, tree-lined street, a stretch of restored brownstones with the sidewalks empty before me.

  You’re supposed to sense when you’re being followed. Especially in my line of work, especially with the heightened awareness that aikido training is supposed to provide . . . and sometimes you do. But not always. Maybe I was lost in memories, maybe troubled by Fealy’s murder or Madeline’s videos. Whatever it was, I wasn’t ready. I didn’t sense the threat until I heard the voice, and then it was too late.

  “Hey Duck,” it said in a low grumble.

  I turned under a darkened cover of scaffolding. I saw the fist, in fast-moving 3-D, thick, hairy knuckles, but not the face. The punch connected flush with my right eye. My head rocked back and sent me staggering. The bottles dropped from my hands. Another hard lunging hook completed the knockdown as I twisted around and fell to my knees. Then a rough hand pulled a fistful of my hair and forced me to the sidewalk. A series of well-placed kicks to the ribs and kidneys, followed by a few misses to my instinctively covered groin, then a final parting stomp on my head. He straightened up and caught his breath and spat on me. “You’re a fucking asshole,” he said. Then I heard a car door open and slam and the car speed off. I lifted my head enough to see it was a black SUV, but not enough to catch any details.

  The entire assault could not have taken more than twenty seconds. I lay there longer than that, gasping in the heat, before a dog-walking pedestrian approached. He helped me up as his mutt panted on the leash and asked if I needed an ambulance, if I was okay, if I knew what happened. I coughed up some blood and felt my face swelling and disfiguring. I told him I was fine, waved off the concern, and limped away. I forgot my beers.

  Truth is, it could have been any number of angry ex-husbands. Or more accurately, any number of angry ex-husbands could have hired someone to give me a beating. Plenty of bankers out there in the big city are a little less rich after I gave their wives proof they were screwing, well, you name it: secretary, boss, nanny, wife’s friend, wife’s sister, a Chelsea drag queen . . . I caught one guy, a director at Goldman, with two boys from Stuyvesant High. He’d walk over on his lunch break to a rented fuck pad in Battery Park and give the boys a thousand bucks each to hook up with each other while he jerked off. After getting caught, fired, divorced, and shamed, the guy had shot himself in that same apartment.

&n
bsp; At least I knew it wasn’t him.

  I shuffled home getting Quasimodo stares. My right eye was swelling shut, and I could feel the side of my face morphing into a long, nasty bruise. I was pretty sure I’d broken a few ribs; my kidneys felt like they were leaking. Elvis greeted me with concern at the door. He whimpered at my feet and stayed close by as I went straight for the pills pilfered from Madeline. I found three Vicodins, swallowed them down, and poured myself plenty of Bulleit. I wanted to pass out and sleep away the pain. I gulped at the bourbon and while I waited for the pills, I called Cass. She was not okay.

  “Duck, where have you been?” she gasped. “I’ve been calling. Something’s happened.”

  I hadn’t noticed the calls. “I was visiting, um, meeting with Dr. Burke. No service. No Madeline there. And then . . . What happened?”

  “It’s Lucy Townes,” she said. “We were supposed to meet at Chelsea Piers at two.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She hurt herself, Duck. She was found unconscious at the bottom of her apartment building’s pool. A maintenance worker found her. There was a note, addressed to her father. Sounds like attempted suicide. They’re at the hospital now.” I heard her take a drag from her cigarette. She exhaled.

  “When?” I asked. “When did she do it?”

  “Sometime between my contact with her and our scheduled meeting. I introduced myself on Facebook, then we emailed. Explained that we were hired to find her friend. She sounded eager to meet. I think she had something to say about Madeline.”

  Cass’s voice was cold and clear; I could hear the rage rippling around its edges. I remembered the images we’d seen of Lucy. She was the bright yin to Madeline’s dark yang. Lucy was fair and blond, brimming with the confidence of attractive youth. She didn’t look like she’d be a friend of the destructive, drug-abusing Miss McKay, but there was some bond there.

  “Is she gonna be okay?” I asked.

  “I think so. Sounds like she was found just in time.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “What the fuck is going on?”

  A silence stretched between us. Then she said, “Duck, are you drunk? Your voice sounds funny.”

  “Haven’t had a drink today, ma,” I said. “Thing is, Cass, something’s happened to me too.”

  The room was closing in with a heavy fog, my field of vision filled with spots. I heard Elvis whimpering, as if from far off, but I saw him right there at my feet. There was a tight pressure in my head, and the screws were turning fast. I took a gulp of whiskey and fought off a wave of nausea. I heard Cass’s voice but it kept getting farther and farther away. I heard myself say, “I think something’s wrong, wrong with . . . I gotta go.”

  The phone slipped from my hand. The beating, the pills, the booze, all did their part as I fell into blackness.

  Chapter 9

  Until I was twelve, my family lived in an Italianate brownstone on the Upper East Side. Not that we needed all that space; I was the only child of my father’s second marriage and this was just one of his half dozen residences. But until that year, mom and I lived a fine loaded life of private chefs and drivers and all the help you could ever need. Then it all went away in a dizzying six months of FBI raids and financial scandal. We fell far, from the Upper to Lower East, into a one-bedroom tenement apartment on Pitt Street, a block from the Hamilton Fish pool. Mom did not adjust well. She fell into a bottomless glass of vodka. One night during my last year of high school, she passed out in the bathtub and slipped under. I’d been staying with friends. I wasn’t there to check on her, as I often did when I got home. The next morning our downstairs neighbor complained about a leak coming from the ceiling. They found her blue and lifeless beneath the surface.

  Eighteen and orphaned, the weed dealing started up. College wasn’t an option. I still had a few friends left from my old rich world, guys like Roy Perry. They became eager customers, started to spread the word. I grew my business, never touching my product, until I was pulling in a few grand a week and feeling pretty good about myself. Then, coming off that subway, I was reminded of the harsh reality that my enterprise was still illegal, and I followed my father’s footsteps to the big house.

  When I dream, I dream of falling, and I don’t need an armchair shrink to tell me why. Sometimes I’ll dream of our old house. I’ll wander the darkened rooms down to the basement, where my mother sleeps soundly in a single twin bed under a flickering bulb. My concussed and addled brain was dreaming these dreams when Cass shook me awake on the couch. There was a puddle of vomit on the carpet next to me, and one cheek was caked with dried puke. The other cheek felt like I had a pumpkin stuffed in it. Elvis, ever loyal, was curled at my feet giving me his greatest droopy-eyed look of concern.

  “My God, what the hell happened to you?” asked Cass.

  “Cut myself shaving,” I mumbled.

  “You look like Cher’s son in Mask.”

  “Ready for my closeup,” I said. I tried to smile but one side of my face wasn’t working.

  She sat next to me on the couch and touched my cheek and frowned. She gave me a sad-eyed smile as she ran the backs of her fingernails down my face. “Poor Duck,” she said. “What are we gonna do with you?” Then she straightened up and went to the kitchen and returned with cleaning supplies. As she scrubbed at the puke-crusted carpet, she told me I was lucky I hadn’t choked on my own vomit.

  “A rock ’n’ roll way to go.”

  “You’re no Jimi,” she said. “You gonna tell me what happened?”

  “Jumped,” I said. “On Eighteenth and First, walking back from Dr. Burke’s. Couldn’t give you a description. Memories aren’t working. What happened with Lucy?”

  Cass recoiled and waved an offended hand in front of her face. “Could you please go shower? We can trade notes after we get rid of this stench.”

  I managed my way to the bathroom and took a scalding shower that scorched the pain in my side and face. I avoided any examinations in the mirror.

  When I returned to the living room, Cass was sitting with her laptop on her knees. Coney Island Baby played at low volume, Lou Reed droning about the glory of love. Cass was watching Madeline’s videos with the clinical air of a surgeon studying an X-ray.

  “She was high as can be when she made these,” she said without looking up. “Look at her eyes, they’re dead. She might sound like she wants it, but the eyes say it all. She’s punishing herself.”

  “How’d you find those things again?”

  Cass paused the video and minimized the browser. “You know that group I work with? Veronica Life?”

  I gave her a blank look; she rolled her eyes.

  “Thanks for listening,” she said. “Veronica Life is a sex worker’s outreach. A sort of watchdog group, named for an escort who was beaten to death by a Russian businessman in a room at the New York Palace. He got out of the country before anyone found the body. Anyway, we try to keep an eye on dangerous practices and people in the city’s sex trade. An impossible task, I know, but we do what we can. At a recent meeting there was talk about a madam and porn producer named Angela Jones. Supposed to be a real evil bitch. Owns a company called Fallen Angels. She’s developed a reputation for recruiting hot teenage girls in the city. Lurks around the club scene. Feeds them the finest drugs, gets them hooked. Anyway, I texted Madeline’s pics to a few of the women from our group. One of them said she thought she recognized her as one of Angela’s new girls.”

  Cass opened the browser again and pressed play. She pointed to a small graphic in the lower right corner of the screen. “Fallen Angels” was scrawled in a fiery font, branding the production. We watched Madeline’s dead high eyes roll back in her head as she arched her back and let out exaggerated moans as a skinny, tattooed hipster pounded above her in amateur frenzy. It wasn’t much of a porn set. Angela didn’t seem to spend a lot on her productions. It could have been the messy bedroom of any twenty-something dude. Reality porn—it’s all the rage these days. I studied the images on the
screen, looked past the slapping bodies, out the bedroom’s window.

  “You want some privacy?” asked Cass. “Stop looking so slack-jawed.”

  “I’m not, no. Take a look at this.” I pointed to the window in the far right corner of the screen. “Right there, you can make out part of a street sign–R-o-e . . . And there, the corner of that black sign. I think I recognize that . . . That’s right, it’s Clem’s, corner of Roebling and Grand. Williamsburg. Great bar.”

  Cass opened a new tab and searched “Clem’s” in Google Maps. She clicked on street view and zoomed in until we were looking at the same location. “I’ll be damned, well done.” She rotated the view until it captured the building across the way, a bland three-story spot with a ground floor boutique.

  “Think we’ve found the set of our young pornographers.”

  “Want to pay them a visit?” she asked.

  “Damn right.”

  Cass clicked back to Madeline’s performance. Our missing girl was on top now, riding angry and hard. The camera zoomed in on penetration.

  She shook her head and closed the laptop and pushed it to the far side of the table like it was infected. Then she got up and walked to the narrow front window, cracked it, and lit a cigarette. She blew smoke in the direction of the opening until she’d sucked it down to the filter. She examined my battered face from across the small room.

  “So, you’ve really got no idea who did that to you?”

  “No clue. I remember picking up some beer on my way home, then someone said my name, I turned, and bam. Never had a chance to react.”

  “Don’t remember anything at all about him?”

  “I remember seeing a black SUV speed off. Couldn’t even tell you what kind. That’s it. Tell me about Lucy.”

  Cass sighed, lit another cigarette. She pulled at it and shook her head like a jaded guidance counselor suffering from the guilt of bad advice to impressionable youth.

  “I must have set the girl off on some kind of panic,” she said. “We spoke briefly, after our emails. At first it sounded like she was relieved, like she’d been waiting for the call all along, and finally it had come. But then she started to get nervous, asking me to prove my identity, mistrust creeping into her voice. I tried to assure her, and she agreed to meet me. But then she must have had a change of heart.” She sucked down the rest of her cigarette, held the final inhale in her lungs. “Thank God someone found her in time,” she said through an exhaust of smoke.