Under Water

by Casey Barrett

  “Sure, it’s easy to overlook when it’s someone else’s sister, or mother.”

  “Or when you’re immersed in training for the Olympics.”

  “Right, but when you come up for air, see your sister become totally fucked up on drugs . . .”

  I thought of Margaret McKay. The woman had hired me to track down her errant daughter. Until that moment, the sins swirling just beyond her sight had been kept hidden under water. But the moment I inserted myself into the equation and started asking questions of those closest to her daughter, violence had bubbled to the surface. Her ex-boyfriend murdered, her best friend attempted suicide. A ring of death circling around the drain of her damaged young life. Perhaps Madeline had confided in the two people she trusted most. Perhaps Marks was feeling increasingly cornered by threats from her brother. There was motive, and the man in question was a trained killer from the SEALs. But none of this got us any closer to finding Madeline McKay.

  “So, this morning,” said Cass. “He calls Fred the rent-a-cop and tells him he won’t be there, no need to come in? Then calls his assistant and asks her to cover for him. No need to protect her, I guess.”

  “Stolen stuff from the lockers, my ass.”

  “After practice, did you and this assistant talk about any of this? Before you had your way with her?” She smiled sideways and knocked her knee against mine.

  I neglected to tell her that she had it backward. “We did. Anna has seen how flirtatious he can be with the girls. She knows how common it is with coaches, seems she witnessed some dark stuff herself back home. But she thinks with Marks, it stops before he crosses any lines.”

  “You believe her?”

  “I think so. She’s very matter-of-fact, very direct. You know how Eastern Euros are. If she thought there was something there, I think she would have said so.”

  We finished our meals in contemplative silence, turning over the emerging details. I had once been convinced that Madeline was dead, that we were searching for a corpse; now I wasn’t so sure. I remained convinced that our girl wasn’t a murderer. A heartbroken addict, unstable and damaged, and yes, her prints were all over her ex’s apartment, but I couldn’t acknowledge her capacity to inflict that kind of violence. I pictured her far away, on a beach in Mexico, getting clean, getting away from the mess her life had become in the big city. If that was the case. then I wondered if I really wanted to find her.

  “Your turn,” I said. “You said you had shit to tell me too.”

  Cass rolled her eyes. “You’ve set the bar high, my friend. I hardly know where to begin.” She was folding the wrapper of her Cliff bar in smaller pieces. When she was satisfied that it couldn’t be folded again, she tucked it delicately back into her purse.

  “You talk to Lucy?” I asked.

  “I did. Her father didn’t give me much time, and she was pretty out of it, but she was able to talk a little.”

  “How was she?”

  “Hiding something, that much is clear. She kept apologizing, over and over. Said she would rather die than share her secrets.”

  I thought of the last text Madeline sent to her mother before she disappeared. I’m so sorry . . .

  “Was her father in the room when you spoke to her?”

  “He was,” she said. “A nurse too. They wouldn’t allow me to speak to her alone.”

  “No way she’s spilling any secrets with her father listening,” I said. “Did he happen to mention what was in that note she left him?”

  “He told me that she said she just couldn’t take it any more, that he’d never understand. And that she loved him.”

  “Jesus. Poor guy.”

  “He’s shattered, Duck. I’ve never seen a man so completely broken and confused. And I’ve seen men in plenty of dark places.”

  “Did she mention anything else? Anything about Madeline?”

  “Just that Madeline was the mess we thought she was. Seems their friendship blossomed around rebellion. Madeline’s a year older and apparently quite the bad influence. Sounds like Lucy injured her shoulder last year, and it kept her out of training. Seems she filled some of that free time partying with Madeline and Fealy.”

  “Maybe she was in love with her friend’s man? Tried to kill herself after hearing about the murder?”

  Cass shrugged, finished the rest of her second glass. “It’s possible. Would be typical, I guess. But I don’t know. When I asked her about James Fealy, she barely reacted. She just said it was all so sad. Unfortunately, her father made me leave before I could ask her much more.”

  I discovered my pint glass was empty before me. My eyes fell to that waiting row of amber. The bartender was already approaching, an old pro accustomed to reading thirsty habits. “Double Maker’s,” I told him. “Just a bit of ice.” I felt Cass watching without approval. “Another glass?” I asked her. She shook her head.

  The bourbon was set before me like a sacrament. I lifted it and took a sip and closed my eyes and felt it burn down my throat. When I opened my eyes, Cass was sliding from the stool and gathering her things.

  “Meet me at your place at five, okay?” she said. “Try to stay soberish, I might need your help with something.”

  “What something?”

  “After I left the hospital yesterday, I tracked down Fealy’s roommate, the one who let you in the building.”

  “The Schwartz kid?”

  “Yeah, Mike Schwartz. Total punk. He’s on some kind of tragic bender since his friend died. I found him coked up at La Esquina late last night. He wasn’t too hard to find. He posted his whereabouts on Instagram. Social media’s making our job too easy.”

  “So what did the punk have to say?”

  “Plenty,” she said. “I cornered him right after he came out of the bathroom, rubbing his nose and sniffing without shame. I let him hit on me for a bit, then acted like I recognized him from his picture in the Post.”

  “What did he say about Madeline?” I asked, knowing the answer.

  “Nothing nice. I believe ‘stalker slut’ was his favorite term for her.”

  “He convinced she did it?”

  “I asked him straight out,” she said. “He hesitated. There’s something he’s keeping to himself. Even high on coke, there was something he managed to hold back.”

  Cass removed a twenty from her bag and set it on the bar. She eyed my double serving of whiskey dessert, thought about saying something. I noticed bruises on her forearm. Her left wrist was red and swollen and bore the traces of fingers that had squeezed it tightly and refused to let go.

  Sometimes I worried about her, alone in those dungeon rooms with conflicted, pain-crazy men. She could take care of herself, and reduce any man to a weeping wreck, but in the presence of a hulking NFL lineman, she wasn’t as dominant as she thought she was.

  “So, what’s the story at five? The Schwartz kid coming by my place?”

  “No,” said Cass. “But his dealer is.”

  Chapter 16

  I arrived home at quarter after five to find Cass and the dealer seated on my couch, chatting like old friends. The dealer was an oddly shaped man with sallow skin and a big, bald head that balanced over a small body like a bowling ball on top of a pin. He tensed when I entered, and Cass set a reassuring hand on his thigh. “This is my friend, Duck,” she told him. “This is his place.”

  “Oh, okay. Right, cool. What’s going on, man? I’m Pete.” He pushed himself up and extended a small, clammy hand. I shook it and moved past him to the kitchen, opened the fridge and fished out a Beck’s. Elvis came over and knocked at his empty food bowl. I filled it and rubbed his neck and apologized for the lack of steady walks. He didn’t seem to mind.

  Cass was telling Dealer Pete about her work at the dungeon. Pete was enthralled and becoming more turned on by the second. Cass crossed her wrists and held them up, demonstrating some bit of bondage, as Pete nodded along with eager understanding.

  I suspect there’s no finer complement to our job than to wor
k in a dungeon. Nothing can shock her, and everyone opens up to her. She hears the darkest, strangest pleadings of lust and buried desire on a daily basis. Her clients confess to her. That is what they do first. Then she does as they wish, and she does it with the exact levels of pain and cruelty that they request and require. She winked when I joined them and ended her description by setting her hands primly in her lap and sitting up straight with a naughty glint to her eye.

  “So, how do you two know each other?” asked Pete. “Are you, like, in that scene too?” The bastard could hardly contain himself.

  “I’m a finder,” I told him. “Like a private investigator. When Cassandra here isn’t busy with her whips and chains, she’s my partner.”

  This took some of the wind out of Dealer Pete’s sails. “Private? You mean, like you’re not a cop.”

  “No, Pete,” said Cass. “Relax. He’s not a cop.” She rubbed his thigh and gave him a mischievous smirk. It didn’t take much to get him back to fantasyland.

  “I feel the same way about cops,” I said. “They’re the enemy. Now, what do you have for us today?”

  He looked over at Cass for approval. She nodded once, giving him permission to speak. Good boy. “What’s your pleasure?” he asked. “I’ve got all sorts of goodies. Coke, molly, Oxy, you name it.” He gave us a conspiratorial smile and leaned forward and opened a small black backpack at his feet. “H?” he asked in a lower, excited voice.

  Cass set her hand on his. “First, we were wondering if you’d—”

  “You have any Vicodin?” I asked.

  “I do indeed,” he said. “How many would you like?”

  “Let’s say twenty.”

  Cass sat back on the couch and crossed her arms and watched as Dealer Pete dug through his bag for the pills. She shook her head, unimpressed. I tried to make eye contact, but she ignored me. She called Elvis over. The disloyal hound jumped onto her lap and rolled onto his side for a good rubbing. He looked at me with disapproval too.

  Dealer Pete counted out twenty white vikes, mouthing each number, and sealed them for me in a plastic bag.

  “Two hundred,” he said. “Ten bucks a pill. Sure you don’t need anything else?”

  I told him I was good with the painkillers and reached for my wallet. Had eighty on me. I looked to Cass for help. Still no eye contact. “Honey? Could I . . .”

  “No,” she said, not looking up.

  Dealer Pete looked at me, then back at his drugs. They still weren’t mine. Decisions, decisions . . .

  “Okay, just give me eight for now,” I said.

  Pete shrugged and unsealed the bag of pills and counted out a dozen, dropped them back in his stash. An eyeball estimate told me there must be three hundred in there. I wondered, of all the goodies in his bag, which was his drug of choice. Probably the smack, by the sound of his voice when he’d whispered that letter H like it was porn. Probably considered Vicodin the stuff of amateurs, Opiate Lites.

  “Okay, so that’ll be eighty bucks,” he said.

  I handed over all my cash.

  He pocketed it and asked, “You guys mind if I use your bathroom?”

  I pointed down the hall. He took his backpack with him.

  “Have I mentioned that you need help?” asked Cass the moment we heard the door close.

  “You remember the beating I took? These things are medicinal. Besides, you were just gonna grill him without buying anything? How rude is that?”

  “You have problems,” she said.

  “So, now it’s plural. What the fuck, you can’t lend me a few bucks?”

  While she went on shaking her head and rubbing Elvis, I remembered the envelope of expense cash from Margaret McKay. Screw my righteous drug-judgy partner. I had enough on hand to get myself good and glazed for days.

  We continued to sit there in stony silence while Pete took his time. He was taking more than a piss. Finally we heard the requisite flush, and he emerged looking like he’d just found enlightenment. He gave us a blissed-out smile and floated down the hall on a new plane of higher, or lower, consciousness.

  “All right so, like, you have my number,” he said. “Give me a ring whenever, but not after midnight; that’s when I make my last delivery.”

  He was almost to the door when Cass stood up. She crossed the room and held the door closed just as his hand touched the knob. “Hold up, Peter,” she said. “Just one more thing.”

  The look on his blissed-out face said he knew something was about to mess with his high.

  Cass led him back to the couch with a hand on the back of his neck. The flirtation had left her; she was entering mistress mode, and she was one disappointed dominatrix. “Sit,” she snapped. Pete obeyed.

  I leaned back in my chair, sipped my beer, and felt bad for the poor bobble-headed punk.

  “Peter, I want you to know that I have no problem with your profession, per se. In some cases, you seem to perform a valuable service to certain broken souls.” Cass glanced my way; now it was my turn to avoid the eye contact. “However, we must have standards, am I right?” Pete nodded nervously. Cass took a sip of her wine, settling into her performance. “You can deal to drug-abusing idiots like my partner here all you like. It’s his life, and it’s yours too. You can go shoot up in a stranger’s bathroom every night, for all I care. There’s no judgment, do you understand me?” She began to pace the room, idly rubbing her hands together. Her long crimson nails looked like the bloody tip of a well-used weapon. Even Elvis started to cower at the dangerous energy she was giving off. “However, you must understand that there are things I do judge. There are things that are just not acceptable. Do you know what sort of things I’m talking about, Peter?”

  “Whatever it is,” he stammered. “Whatever it is I did, I’m sorry. But I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Cass stopped pacing and stood above him with her hands on her hips. In those combat boots she was six and a half feet of black-laced menace. She shook her head. “I think you do, Peter. I think you know that not all clients are created equal. Like, say, drug-addicted teenage girls? Sometimes dealers need to just say no too.”

  “Look, man, if someone OD’d, I mean, someone you know, I’m sorry. I know it’s not cool to say, but it comes with the territory, you know? Buy the ticket, take the ride, and all that shit.”

  “No one OD’d, Pete,” I said. “At least not that we know of.”

  Cass glared at me, not welcoming my appearance in her scene. She walked over to the kitchen counter and returned with a manila folder. She opened it, placed a picture of Madeline on the coffee table in front of him. “Do you know this girl?” she asked.

  Pete nodded, averted his eyes. “Yeah, I’ve sold to her. She’s a reg. Did something happen to her?”

  “She’s missing,” said Cass. Again, she reached into the folder and took out a photo. “Do you recognize this man?” she asked.

  Pete jumped at the image. I leaned forward and took a look. Wished I hadn’t. Somehow she had secured a crime scene photo of the mutilated James Fealy in the shower. “What the fuck!” he cried.

  “That is, or was, a young man named James Fealy,” said Cass. “He was this girl’s boyfriend.” She pointed back and forth to each photo. “Clearly you don’t read the papers. You see, she is missing, he was murdered, and you have dealt to both of them.”

  Pete’s high was evaporating as he began to grasp his role in this particular darkness. “Look, I haven’t seen that dude in a while. Last time I sold to her, chick told me he quit.” He said it like an alibi, with the first glimmer of hope in his voice since he’d sat back down.

  “When was that, the last time you sold to her?”

  “Weekend before last. Saturday, I think.”

  “You go to her apartment?” I asked.

  “Her pad in the West Village? Nah, man, not this time. She asked me to come out to Williamsburg. I usually don’t do bar hand-offs, too risky, but she promised a big buy.”

  “What bar was
it?”

  “I don’t know, man. It was a bar, random place near the Bedford stop.”

  “What bar was it?” Cass asked again.

  “Let me think, what was the name again? I suck at names. Wait, I got it. It was Clam’s. Like oysters? Except there wasn’t no seafood there. But that was the name. Clam’s.”

  “Clem’s?” I asked.

  “Sure, whatever. Clam’s, Clem’s, you know the spot?”

  Cass and I glanced at each other. A big drug buy across the street from the porn studio, a day before her last sighting. I knew where I was headed next.

  But Cass wasn’t done with him yet. “Last night, did you make a delivery to a young man named Mike Schwartz?” she asked.

  “I don’t do last names,” he said. “And every other dude I deal to tells me his name is Mike.”

  “Curly blond hair, early twenties, skinny, with a hipster beard. Used to live at 259 East 7th, but you probably sold to him elsewhere last night.”

  Pete nodded. “Oh yeah, I know that dude. He was at some penthouse on the Upper East last night, never been there before. He said it was his uncle’s. Dude was acting strange. Bought five bags of blow from me, around eleven. Kid’s usually friendly, but last night he didn’t even look at me. I been dealing to him for . . . Wait, oh shit.” The smack cloud had finally lifted enough for Pete to complete the connection. “They used to live together, those two guys—Mike and that guy who . . .” He looked again at the picture and almost retched. “Jesus, those two, they were roommates.”

  “Very good, Peter,” said Cass. “It appears we are making progress.”

  “Do they have any idea who did it?”

  “They have suspects,” I said. “There are always suspects. Including you, Pete.”

  “My partner is right, Peter,” she said. “You’re the go-to drug dealer for a rich, well-connected white kid who was brutally murdered. That does indeed make you a suspect. You also dealt to the dead man’s girlfriend, who is now missing. And to top it off, you continue to deal to the dead man’s best friend and roommate. These are all things that I’m sure the NYPD would love to know.”