Under Water

by Casey Barrett

  “How did you hear about it?” I asked. “You’re sitting there, waiting to meet the girl at Chelsea Piers, she doesn’t show. Then you find out she tried to drown herself. How’d you get word so quickly?”

  “That’s the really fucked up part,” she said. “Turns out I know the father. He’s sessioned with me for years at the Chamber. Sweet man. Michael Townes. He’s a widower. Lucy’s mother passed away when she was young. Michael has raised his daughter by himself.”

  “And he called you first about it?”

  “No, Duck. While he was waiting for the ambulance, he noticed his daughter’s phone. Saw a bunch of missed calls from my number. I’d been calling Lucy after she didn’t show. He freaked, thought his relationship with me had something to do with it, and called me from the hospital.”

  “That must have been a fun conversation.”

  Cass gave me a look. Her eyes fell shut, her mouth turned down. She shook her head in bewildered sorrow. “He’s such a good, sweet man,” she whispered. “Always been one of my favorites. For him to think . . .”

  Rain began to fall outside; I could hear its faint fizz in the streets. The humidity was finally cracking. Footsteps outside the window began to pick up their pace. A moving van blocked the street in front of our building. A line of cabs behind it began to honk in impatient discord.

  “So, I met with Charlie McKay,” I told her. “After I was thoroughly scolded by his mother for my appearance in the Post.”

  “What did he have to say?”

  “Told me that he’s the one who introduced his sister to James Fealy.”

  She had been looking past me, into the kitchen, glowering in guilt. This got her attention. She came back over and joined me on the couch. Elvis grumbled and jumped down as she nudged him out of the way. The rain picked up into a steady hiss outside. Low growls of thunder rumbled over the city sky. My darkened living room grew darker.

  “Appears Charlie and Fealy’s father work together at the same hedge fund, Soto Capital,” I said. “Sounds like Fealy Senior is some kind of master of the universe. His son met Madeline at a country retreat out at the boss’s house in Connecticut. Charlie sounds more worried about his job than his sister.”

  Cass said nothing, waiting for more. She slipped a pen from her pocket and absently began to click it open and shut. My headache was returning after too much talk. I reminded myself that I should keep ice on the right side of my face. I leaned back and winced as my splintered ribs stabbed my insides. I needed a doctor, but I don’t see doctors. Not unless I wake up in the hospital and have no choice.

  “He told me about their run-in at the family house in Rhinebeck.”

  “Last time anyone saw her, right?” she asked.

  “Yeah, he says he went up there to get some work done, thinking the house would be empty, said she never uses it. When she saw him, Madeline ran upstairs to her bedroom, packed a bag of stuff, and then took off. She called a cab and waited by the road, he said.”

  “He didn’t go out after her?”

  “He said he tried calling and texting her, but got no reply.”

  “But he was too busy with work to get up and go outside and talk to his sister in person? Isn’t that a little odd?”

  “Not if you talk to him. It’s pretty clear that work comes well before family for this guy.”

  “What a prince.” Cass shook her, imagining the scene as Charlie described it. “And then she sent that text to her mother the next day?” she asked.

  “Saying ‘I’m so sorry’—for something she didn’t specify.”

  We both looked over at the closed laptop. “There would appear to be a few potential sources of shame for this girl,” she said.

  Cass lit another smoke and smiled her sorrowful smile. She reached out and touched my face. Her fingertips soothed the swelling more than any ice could. She looked into my one good eye with a sisterly affection that I hated to acknowledge. “Poor boy, you look terrible. You shouldn’t be talking so much. You need to rest.”

  I shook my head, tried to stand. My head swam in swirling protest. I sat back down. “Don’t worry about me, ma,” I said. “Not the first time I’ve had my head kicked in.”

  “You still need to recover. No drinking tonight, okay?”

  “Promise.”

  “Liar.”

  She pushed herself up, went to the kitchen and poured the rest of my Bulleit bottle down the drain. She knew I could buy plenty more a block from my apartment, but she couldn’t resist inflicting that extra bit of pain to prove her point. She returned with a cruel smirk, stubbed out her cigarette in the cluttered ashtray and stretched, arching her back with her hands on her hips, sighing at the soreness. I felt the usual pangs of lust as I stared up at her long body bent backward toward me. She looked like bottled sex.

  At the door, she turned with a final thought: “This James Fealy kid, he had a powerful father and a trust fund worth who knows how many millions?”

  “Charlie says one-point-five.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Billion. He said Fealy’s father is worth like one and a half billion dollars.”

  She considered the ten-digit number.

  “Murdered boyfriend, best friend attempted suicide, a little warning assault for you,” she said. “Nice start to a case.”

  On that note, she left me lying there on the couch. Beating or not, I couldn’t be alone licking my wounds in the apartment. There was someone I needed to see.

  Chapter 10

  The Brookshire was one of those pedigreed apartment houses with a co-op board like a secret society. Last names were passwords, and if you have a famous one, don’t bother applying, no matter how much you want to pay. Too much attention. Every square foot was priced in the thousands; the maintenance fees were absurd, but if you were bothered by such things, then what were you doing there? The building was old and stylish, with all the original details, and upkeep cost a certain amount. Even to moan about such New York irritations showed you hadn’t made it. A curious place for a swim coach to live.

  When Marks gave me the Upper East Side address, there was silence for a moment, which he filled by saying that he’d explain when I got there. Back when I was swimming for him, Marks lived in a rent-controlled apartment near the pool in Stuyvesant Town. He told me once that his military service gave him a steep veteran’s discount on housing there, which was the only way he was able to remain in Manhattan on a coach’s salary. Over the last few decades his job hadn’t changed, but somehow his circumstances had.

  I got off the 6 train at the corner of 68th and Lex and walked a block west to Park Avenue. BROOKSHIRE was written in a white font across a dark green awning. The rain continued in a steady, dark drizzle, and the evening sidewalks steamed with stubborn humidity. A mosquito landed on my forearm holding the umbrella. I slapped it dead with my free hand, and my ribs burned at the quick movement. The doorman stiffened at my approach. He did not reach for the door.

  “Help you, sir?” He said the last word with naked irony.

  My one good eye looked down at him; he was a little guy, a good head shorter, with a bad attitude under that doorman’s top hat and waistcoat. I felt like slapping him dead too. “Here to see Teddy Marks,” I said. “He’s expecting me.”

  “Theodore Marks, in apartment 2C?” he doubted. “Let me see.”

  I folded the umbrella and waited under the green awning while the little man scurried inside to call Marks. I always seemed to be waiting just outside the gates for approval to enter, wherever I went. Doormen and bodyguards and bouncers all stood by, blocking the way to the rooms that mattered in this city. It was something no tourist would ever grasp about this place, with their “love to visit, could never live there” half-bright comments as they gazed skyward. The city is a giant closed society. Visitors saw nothing.

  As usual, this particular guard dog looked defeated as he emerged with head bowed and waved me inside. “He’s expecting you,” he mumbled.

&
nbsp; Marks lived on a lower floor, less exclusive; back when the Brookshire went up in the 1880s, these were the quarters for the help. Fitting, I thought, that it still is. On the upper floors, most contained just two apartments, the floor divided into two 6,000-square-foot mansions in the sky. At the very top, there were three big billionaire’s residences, one per floor. American-made billionaires, never foreign in this waspy fortress, who’d inherited some millions, gone to the right schools and banks, and then expanded their already considerable fortunes before taking convenient noblesse oblige positions in government to skirt taxes, while slapping their names on museums and hospital wings. These were Marks’s new neighbors, but down here on the second floor there were a dozen or so smaller apartments. The cheapest one was probably around $2 million.

  I was greeted at the door not by Marks, but by his hard blond assistant. “Anna,” she reminded me with an extended hand. “Anna Lisko. It is nice to properly meet you this time, Mr. Duck.” She squeezed my knuckles for a bit too long, and I let her guide me in. “What has happened?” she asked, motioning to the wreckage down the right side of my face.

  Before I could answer, Marks was by her side, holding a whiskey and a wide-eyed look of horror. “Jesus, man, look at you!”

  “You should see the other guy,” I muttered lamely.

  “Yeah, you give it back?”

  “His fists are probably sore as hell,” I said. “Feet too.”

  “Well, something tells me you might have had it coming.” He put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me past Anna and through the foyer into his high-beamed living room. “You never were afraid of a beating,” he said.

  I took a seat on a low-backed leather couch. Anna settled into a club chair next to me while Marks went over to a wet bar in the corner and poured us drinks. He crossed the room proudly, holding a whiskey for me, vodka for Anna. They were offered with a slight bow and wink at his assistant coach. She took her vodka with unsmiling thanks, then leaned back and regarded the two men before her with candid regard. There was a detached curiosity about her, as if she were preparing to watch a play with dubious reviews. I drank my whiskey; she drank her vodka. Marks smiled down at both of us. He took a sip of his drink and wiped some whiskey from his mustache. Some sort of jazz played soft from invisible speakers. Mingus, maybe.

  “Nice place,” I said.

  He looked around, as if admiring it for the first time. “It is indeed, is indeed,” he said. A real estate agent would have called it “triple mint” with “old world charm and every modern convenience.” Translation: the large living room was bachelor pad perfect, with built-in bookcases around the flat-screen and original crown molding around the perimeter. The space was oddly impersonal, the work of a decorator. A large, dark Oriental rug, a few tasteful Hudson River School landscapes, the palate and the lighting just so.

  “How long you been here?” I asked.

  “Let’s see,” he said. “It’s been, what, almost eleven years now.”

  A silence stretched. I looked over at Anna; there was a slight smirk on her full lips, like only she knew how this scene would end.

  “It was a . . . gift,” he said finally. “A very generous, very overwhelming gift. Some athletes give their coaches their gold medals, others, well . . .” He looked around the room and smiled, unembarrassed.

  “Charlie bought this for you?” I asked.

  “No, well, yes. It was a gift from the McKay family, from their trust. They purchased it shortly after Charlie won all those gold. I refused it at first, of course. Said absolutely not, I was content in my little place in Stuy Town. But they insisted. Margaret bought it anyway, said it would just sit empty then, until I accepted their gift. And it did, this place sat empty for nine months before I realized she was serious. Margaret McKay . . .” He shook his head in awed admiration. “A formidable woman, that one.”

  Anna leaned forward and set down her drained vodka glass with theatrical firmness. “Gentlemen,” she said, “I must be going. Mr. Duck, it was a pleasure. Feel better. Mr. Coach, I will see you early in the morning, yes?”

  She stood and looked down her strong Slavic nose at me. About the same height as Cass, over six feet, but thicker. A rock-solid swimmer girl who’d lost the shoulders but kept the thighs. Everything about her was hard and clean, from her too-toned arms to her crystalline blue eyes that challenged you to look back. I began to stand, and she reached out and touched my chest. She held her hand there until I obeyed. “No, please, do not get up,” she said.

  I watched her leave; she took her time about it. She kissed Marks on both cheeks and whispered a stern thanks. Then she slipped on a light blue nylon warm-up jacket over her tank top. On the back there was a flag of blue and yellow, two simple bars like an unfinished Rothko painting. Beneath it were the words NATIONAL TEAM. Anna crossed the room unhurried, aware of the eyes following her. She moved in that athlete’s slow motion; forever accustomed to conserving energy away from competition. She did not turn back as she opened the door and left us.

  “She was a hell of a swimmer, that one,” Marks said as the door closed.

  I stared through the front door and imagined her waiting beyond us at the elevator, grim-faced and proud, with that private smirk.

  “Just missed a medal at the last Games in the two hundred breast,” he continued. “Still holds the Ukrainian National records. I hired her a year ago to work with our age groupers. She’s gonna be a hell of a coach too, really knows her stuff.”

  “You always have your assistants over for drinks?” I asked.

  He gave a dry, clipped laugh. “Sometimes,” he said. “My door is always open. In this case, Anna is having a bit of a problem with her colleague, my other assistant coach, Nick Price. I believe you met both of them on your way out the other day?”

  “I did, briefly. They looked like a cute couple,” I said.

  “Nick only wishes. Seems to be quite a case of puppy love. Anna tells me there was something brief, a forgettable night after a meet and a few drinks; she didn’t think much of it. But poor Nick’s fallen hard, and now Anna wants to disentangle herself from this ‘American boy,’ as she calls him, and bless her, she came to me worried that it would upset the professionalism on the pool deck.”

  “So now you get to tell Coach Nick to leave her alone?”

  “I’ll mention something tomorrow at practice; he’ll get the message.” Marks sat down in a beaten black recliner across from me. It looked like the one piece of furniture saved from his last place, a cheap totem of roots that made the rest of the place that much less personal. His face darkened. He set down his whiskey on the floor and looked across at me with that old truth serum glare. “Duck, what the hell have you gotten yourself into? You show up drunk on deck after all that time, then the next morning you’re on the cover of the Post—at a murder scene. Then you come over here looking like someone stuffed you through a meat grinder.”

  “You tell me,” I said. “I’m looking for one of your swimmers. And, as it happens, one of the owners of the apartment we’re sitting in. A rightful heir to the McKay family fortune, I believe.”

  He stiffened at that. “The apartment is in my name,” he said. “I am the sole owner.” His pride was too thick to be wounded, but it was clear the subject would always be sensitive. He picked up his whiskey and had a long swallow and winced. “Madeline McKay,” he said. “Christ. That girl has always been a hot mess.” He stared into his glass, stewing, trying and failing to suppress his exasperation. Then he turned his hard eyes back to me. “This could really be a disaster, you know? For me, for all of Marks Aquatics, and especially for the McKays. Charlie and Margaret, they’re like family to me. Good people, the best. They don’t deserve this . . .”

  “Don’t deserve what? A wild child in the family? What else is going on here, Coach? Madeline McKay is now the prime suspect in a brutal murder—I witnessed the body myself. Someone slashed up her ex-boyfriend. The boyfriend’s roommate claims Madeline had gone bunny
boiler on him. The police are probably gonna find her before I do.”

  “I know,” he said quietly. “They were here earlier today.”

  “So what else can you tell me? What did you tell them?”

  My head was starting to hurt again; the edges of the room were beginning to blur. I put the whiskey glass to my lips, but it seemed to have emptied itself.

  “Here,” said Marks. “Let’s get us a refill.” He stood and took my glass and went to the wet bar and gave us both a splash. Returning, he looked weary, his age and stress starting to crack through the dogged fitness, the veteran’s sense of unbreakable self. “I’m sure it wasn’t Madeline who killed that boy,” he said, handing over the glass.

  I swallowed half the whiskey down before he settled back into his seat. “How are you so sure?” I asked. “The girl’s a mess, you said it yourself. She’s an addict too, from the looks of it. And based on her phone records, she was legitimately obsessed with this kid, James Fealy.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” he said. “Maddie has been in a bad way for years, plunging deeper every time we think she’s found bottom. But ultimately she’s a sweet, sad kid. I just can’t see her being violent.” He sighed, shook his head at the thought. “I understand this kid Fealy was a poor influence, a partner in crime, so to speak. Charlie hated him from the beginning.”

  “He told me he introduced them.”

  Marks nodded, grimaced. “At his company’s retreat, was it? He felt horrible about it. Now, well, I can only imagine . . .”

  “Where would she go?” I asked. “I thought I’d check out the McKay’s country house in Rhinebeck. The last place she was seen, by Charlie over Labor Day weekend. You ever been there?”