Under Water

by Casey Barrett

  I nodded dutifully. “Not bad,” I said. “Particularly in light of all that’s going on.”

  Soto was waiting for me to make that point. “But don’t you see!” he exclaimed. “That is exactly why this man had such a successful day. The great ones perform at the highest level at times of highest stress. This is when they separate themselves, when their ability to focus and to execute becomes so clear.” He put a hand over his dark eyebrows and turned and scanned the rest of the trading floor like a sea captain looking for land. “And where is Max Fealy today?” he asked. “Oh, that’s right, at his big home in the Hamptons. Not here.”

  “His son was just murdered,” I reminded him.

  Soto scowled at me while Charlie looked at his big shoes, trying not to smile. “I know this,” said Soto. “Yes, we all know this, and tragic it is. But you do not hear my point. Perhaps you can’t, you are not cut from that cloth. The cloth that Charlie and I are cut from.”

  “Perhaps not,” I said.

  “But you will help this man, won’t you,” said Soto. It was not a question. “You will help him find his sister, and clear her of any wrongdoing in this unfortunate matter.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said.

  “Your best?” said Soto. He looked at Charlie like this was some private joke. He was beaming from his boss’s praise; I had the sense that it was more valuable to him than all the money he’d made that day. “You will do neither your best nor your worst,” said Soto. “You will only do—and you will do it until it is done, yes, Mr. Dirk?”

  “Yes, Denny, I will.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I turned to Charlie. “What do you say, buddy? Should we go get a drink and toast your good fortune?”

  “I don’t drink,” he said. “But we can find a bar to talk things over, if you want.”

  “Take him to Whiskey Park,” instructed Soto. “We will call down and have them reserve a table where you will have a private place to talk, yes?”

  “Okay, thanks, Danny,” said Charlie. “Sorry about missing this meeting.”

  “No, Master McKay, thank you. And do not worry about a meeting. You performed like a champion today. Now go and let this man help you take care of your family.”

  * * *

  Whiskey Park was at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Central Park South, a low-lit lounge filled with crimson leather and cocktail waitresses auditioning for thousand-dollar tips and after-work invitations to banker lofts. It was still early, and the crowd was still light. There had been no need to call ahead, but the moment we’d walked in we’d been greeted like visiting royalty by the hostess and ushered to a back corner next to a high, tinted window. A short stretch of velvet rope was placed in front of our area. A leggy Japanese cocktail waitress approached dressed in fishnets, stilettos, and a barely-there black dress. She held eye contact until it hurt.

  It wasn’t on my dime, so I asked on a lark for Pappy. Remarkably, they had it. Charlie ordered a ginger ale and failed to appreciate the presence of that rare, luscious bourbon on their shelf. I was moving up in the world—Pabst and Jack for lunch in some downtown junkie bar, and now here I was behind a velvet rope with a glass of the mighty Mr. Van Winkle on its way. Twenty-three-year, bet your ass. It was enough to make a man feel charitable.

  “So, how much did you make today?” I asked.

  “Plenty,” said Charlie. The gambler’s buzz had faded and, removed from the frenetic cocoon of the markets, he was beginning to sulk. The messiness of the rest of his life was starting to elbow back in.

  “Like a million?” I asked. “Five million?”

  He snorted, insulted by the low-balling cluelessness. “Like I said, plenty. Look, Duck, we’re not here to talk about my work, and besides, everyone starts at zero again tomorrow. I guarantee you Danny’s already forgotten about it. If I lose tomorrow, he’ll be up my ass with no memory of the profits I made him today.”

  “But you don’t start at zero,” I pointed out. “You guys get to keep the money you made today.”

  “You just don’t get it,” he said.

  The waitress returned with our drinks. She made equal ceremony of setting down the ginger ale and the Pappy, but when she delivered mine, she gave a low bow of respect. I watched her drift away, wondered what time she got off. Dylan’s “Visions of Johanna” played soft over invisible speakers. She seemed to move with the song’s wistful cadence. I turned back to Charlie and found him staring into his bubbles and ice.

  “I got called into the cops today,” I said. “Talked to two detectives investigating the Fealy murder.”

  “And?”

  “And, let’s see, I made the New York Post? Nice little sidebar on yours truly. You see it?”

  “Yeah, Duck. I saw it. So did my mother. Two days in a row. She says she never should have hired you. The cops and the media—I don’t know which one she hates more. That’s what I wanted to talk about. You gotta keep both away from us.”

  “Unfortunately, both of those fine estates can be rather stubborn when they get hooked on a crime,” I said. “Like, say, the brutal murder of a rich white kid.”

  He thought about that for a moment, took a drink of his ginger ale and set it down carefully on the cocktail napkin and wiped his upper lip. He crossed his legs and gazed out the window at passersby. I waited, had a slow sip of the Pappy. Let it linger on my tongue. Savored the amber bliss.

  “I know it was a long time ago,” he said, lost in a memory. “But what do you remember about him? You remember what he was like?”

  “What who was like?”

  He turned from the window. “Coach,” he said.

  “Coach Marks? I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

  He didn’t like the sound of that, turned back toward the window and sulked. “I think you do,” he said.

  “Listen, Charlie, I quit the team when I was thirteen. It was another lifetime. As far as I recall, Marks always did right by me. And I certainly thought that was true for you. Shit, the man lives in an apartment you bought him.”

  “My mother bought him that place, not me.” He drained the rest of his ginger ale and put his hands on his knees. “I should go,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. “I thought we were on the same page, but I guess I was wrong.”

  “Sit down, Charlie,” I said. “Sit your ass down.”

  He bristled at the command, but when he looked down at me he relented. I was perfectly willing to make a scene in this swank place, Pappy be damned. Charlie sat.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  He crossed his arms and sunk low in his seat. “So, how are you going to find my sister?” he asked.

  “Tell me about Coach Marks,” I said.

  “You really don’t remember anything?” he asked. “Think about it, Duck.”

  “Didn’t your mother tell you? My mind is so addled with booze that I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday. Stop dicking around and tell me what it is I’m supposed to be remembering.”

  Charlie motioned to our waitress; she was perched over us in seconds. “Another round, gentlemen?” she asked. Charlie nodded and handed her his empty glass and looked at mine. It had emptied itself. “Sure,” I said. “Another of the same would be lovely.” Her eyes gave me a knowing smile, and she took my glass and turned on her heels. Watching beautiful women walk away: one of life’s loveliest diversions.

  “I think she likes you,” said Charlie. “That or she’s getting wet thinking of the fat tip you’re gonna leave on eighty-dollar shots of whiskey.”

  “I didn’t think you drank?”

  “I don’t, but I can read,” he said. He picked up the cocktail menu on the low table between us. “I think you can cover this tab from the advance my mother gave you.”

  “Fair enough.” I shrugged. “I know how you’re hurting for cash these days.”

  He wasn’t listening; he’d taken out his phone and was frowning as he scrolled through new emails. He removed a second phone from a separate pock
et and did the same. Then he placed both devices on the table before him, taking measured care to position them parallel to each other, a centimeter apart.

  “Tell me about Coach Marks,” I said again.

  The waitress returned with our refills. She recognized the tension between us and set them down without looking at either of us. The Pappy didn’t taste quite as good this time.

  “Let’s just say he likes them young,” said Charlie.

  “Who? You mean girls on the team?”

  He nodded. “Don’t pretend like this is news to you.”

  “How young?” I had that feeling of history shifting beneath my feet like quicksand. It was a sensation I was familiar with, and I didn’t like it.

  “Not, like, children,” he said. “He’s not that sick. Teenagers. His eye starts roaming right around the time they start looking back.”

  “He wouldn’t be the first,” I said.

  “It was pretty common knowledge that stuff was going on back in high school, with a few of the girls my age.”

  “And later, after you were gone, do you think it continued?”

  “No reason to think he’d stop,” he said.

  “And you think . . . Madeline. You think your sister may have been involved with him.”

  He bit his bottom lip and looked away. He nodded almost imperceptibly. “My mother has no idea,” he said. “Obviously, she doesn’t. She’s been in love with him since my father died. Maybe even before that.”

  “Wait, your mother and Coach?” I asked.

  “Convenient that she left that part out.”

  “Hence, the apartment,” I said.

  “She would never set foot in that shit hole he used to live in,” he said. “And Coach told her he wasn’t comfortable going to her place. I wonder why, with my sister down the hall. So my mother went out and bought them a love nest.”

  “Why didn’t you mention this stuff when we met the other day?”

  Charlie agitated in his seat. He pulled at his collar, wiped sweat from his brow. His eyes darted out the window, then around the bar, searching for something to distract his thoughts. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to admit this shit?” he asked. “This is the man who coached me to four gold medals. After my dad died, Coach Marks basically became my stepfather. My mother was head over heels for him. I owed him my success. What was I supposed to do?” He seemed to deflate before me. His chin fell to his chest.

  “You were supposed to protect your sister,” I said.

  He didn’t look up.

  “Charlie, do you have any idea where Madeline might have gone?” I asked. “I assume someone has been monitoring your family’s home in Rhinebeck.”

  “Of course. We have a caretaker up there that looks after the property when we’re away. He and his wife have been living in the big house ever since my mother got worried. If Maddie had been back, they would know.”

  “Any friends, relatives you think she might turn to?”

  He shook his head. “Both of our parents were only children. We have no aunts or uncles. Grandparents all died a while back. As for friends, I wouldn’t know. Being so much older, I never knew Madeline that well, never knew that part of her life anyway.”

  “How do you know about her relationship with Marks?” I asked.

  “Because I know him,” he said. “I know him really well. I went to watch her at Junior Nationals two years back. That’s when I first noticed. It was the way he talked to her, the way he hugged her after a good swim, the way he whispered to her after a bad one. I’d seen it before. So many times before, growing up. Every sign was there, trust me, I’m sure.”

  The memory seemed to spark an electrical current that coursed through Charlie’s body. His knees began to bounce up and down, his fists clenched; a shiver seized his upper body. He inhaled deeply through his nose, tried to calm himself with a slow exhale.

  “But you never said anything?” I asked.

  “I said something to her, yeah. I confronted her about it right after the meet. She told me I was crazy, denied it completely. Then she stopped speaking to me.”

  “And Marks, did you ever approach him about it?”

  Charlie took a drink of his ginger ale from a shaking hand. He checked his phones and eyed the growing crowd in their power ties and perfect makeup, released from their cages and ready to play. He studied them like a foreign species, curious of their habits but repelled by their basic nature. Four men in identical blue suits shouted with laughter at the bar. They toasted their whiskeys with puffed chests and puffier cheeks.

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t. You don’t understand.”

  Before I could reply, one of his phones lit up on the table before us. The name of the caller read Mother. He picked it up. I watched his face as she spoke. It darkened like an approaching storm. He told his mother he was on his way. Then he ended the call and looked at me with wild eyes.

  “My mom,” he said. “She’s having a hard time. I gotta run.”

  Chapter 14

  I was waiting by the entrance before dawn as the swimmers approached. Lanky teenage boys with bed heads and a sullen, shuffling air; huddled teenage girls pulled parkas tight around their long, uncertain bodies. They came off the steps of the subway in safe packs of threes or fours or ducked out of Ubers by themselves. They were just past the age of independence, free to move around the city without parental accompaniment, and they moved with that New York air of jaded over-maturity. They looked like children despite themselves.

  A few of the girls eyed me warily. The guys paid no heed. One nodded in my direction with vague recognition, his head an unnatural shock of blond-green straw. We stood together in the predawn darkness as we waited for their coach’s arrival. Rain was in the forecast again. A light drizzle started to fall, and they began to herd under cover by the door.

  Charlie had rushed away and left me sitting there with more questions than answers, along with a stupidly priced whiskey behind a velvet rope on the edge of Central Park. The cocktail waitress was unimpressed by my tip. In the cab on my way home I texted Roy Perry, thinking he could earn my forgiveness with many rounds of drinks and maybe a bump or two. But when he failed to write back I was thankful. This wasn’t the time to unravel into coke-fueled weakness and mindless mania. Instead I went home, walked Elvis, and did some homework.

  I knew there had been scandal in my sport, and plenty of others, swirling around inappropriate coach–athlete behavior, but until I started Googling I had no idea how pervasive. It was damn near an epidemic, with mounting lawsuits coming out of teams all over the country. Youth coaches were being lumped into an unholy trinity with Catholic priests and Boy Scout troop leaders. Based on the search results, it sounded like a long-dormant sickness now bubbling to the surface. There was a task force set up by swimming’s governing body, devoted to investigating every last rumor.

  And there were rumors about everyone. Old-school coaches like Marks would say those were different times, and they were—a time when statutory rape and abuse of power was par for many pool decks. After a few hours of online research I was convinced I’d never look at a coach the same way again. I was also inclined to believe Charlie’s allegations. I set the alarm for five a.m., looking forward to a predawn confrontation.

  I was proud to have acknowledged the wake-up call in the darkness. These kids were too young to be impressed by their commitment, but someday they would be. It takes a certain obsessive insanity to wake this early to go follow a black line up and down a swimming pool before school while your classmates slumber. But it was the right madness, and they’d all be better for it—no matter who loomed over them on deck.

  At 5:34 a.m., a low agitation began to spread through the group. There were hushed whispers and the checking of phones and a hint of merriment at the prospect of no practice. Marks was nowhere to be seen, and his swimmers were eager to get back to their beds. A tall, freckled girl approached.

  “Are you here for practice too?” she ask
ed.

  “Here to talk to your coach,” I said. “He late?”

  “Yeah.” She looked across the street to the subway entrance, then back to her pack of friends. “He’s never late.”

  “Weird,” I said. She agreed and went back to the herd.

  Five minutes later, just as the guys were starting to speak up and call the morning off, a cab came to a stop before us. A dashed groan went through the group as a tall blond woman emerged in blue nylon warm-ups. She regarded them with a supercilious smirk.

  “Teddy is not able to make it this morning,” she said. “I will coach you. Let us go, we are late.”

  She strode between them with painted pink toes in her flip-flops and unlocked the door and waited by it as the procession marched downstairs to the pool. I waited until the last one entered before I approached.

  “Mister Duck, that is you?” she asked. “I see your face is improving, yes?”

  “Nice to see you again, Anna. Where’s Marks?”

  “Sick, I am told. I receive text early this morning, asking me to run workout.”

  “Does he miss practice a lot?”

  “Never,” said Anna. “It is very unusual.”

  “Strange, indeed,” I said. “Do you mind if I watch?”

  “Of course, Mr. Duck. Come.”

  She turned and walked down the steps as the rain opened up behind us. The smell of the waiting pool was like a warm chemical balm. The sense memory set off the usual associations of pride and peace of mind. Associations I was starting to question after Charlie’s accusation and my previous night’s research.

  The air on deck was hot and heavy. Anna stripped down to cycling shorts and a black halter sports bra, enviable abs between them. She tied her blond hair back in a ponytail and spread her legs and began to stretch. I watched, sweating, in my jeans and polo, feeling like a poorly dressed intruder. Anna tossed her muscled arms in lazy circles, twisted out the morning kinks, then walked to a white board behind the lanes and began to write out the warm-up in red marker.

  The swimmers began to trudge out of the locker rooms dragging mesh bags full of boards and buoys and paddles and straps. They pulled at caps and goggles and moved their mostly naked bodies like colts in the morning mist. The guys looked like young anatomy charts. The girls wore a bit more flesh on their bones. They were no less fit, but they carried their fitness with an artificial broadness, like it was a temporary condition. Most walked with arms covering their chests, careful of angles and the bleary-eyed stares of their male teammates. Anna eyed each body with naked judgment. When they were all assembled behind their lanes, she pointed to the warm-up on the board and told them to leave at the sixty.