A
pril traveled to the Park Precinct, a hundred-year-old renovated stable on the Eighty-fifth Street transverse, to inform the CO there that within the hour, a K-9 unit would be doing a search for a missing person around the area of the rowboat lake. Luckily Captain Reginald, whom April didn't know, was out in the field when she arrived. So was Sergeant Mackle, CO of the detective unit. Because neither of them was there, she didn't have to embellish her story with any lies about what she was doing on the case. She ended up speaking with the second whip, Captain Rains, a tall, heavyset man with a lush crew cut who looked unhappy with the news that a man had gone missing in the park last night. This would make big trouble for the park, the jewel in the New York City crown, and hence for the precinct dedicated to maintaining its security.
"I'll inform Captain Reginald immediately," Captain Rains told her.
"Thank you, sir."
Ten minutes later, April and Woody met up with Officer Sidney Slocum outside Maslow's building not far away on Eighty-second Street. Slocum was the opposite of Mackle; short, skinny, freckled, entirely bald, with a ginger-colored mustache so extravagant it made Mike's merely luxuriant one look puny. He was wearing an orange Search and Rescue jumpsuit, and if he was lucky, he weighed a hundred and twenty after a big meal. His dog was a huge German shepherd with a flat collar and leather leash that looked as if it weighed as much as its trainer. The two had come in a blue-and-white, and two other patrol cars were parked nearby. So far so good. No shouts from Iriarte. No challenges to her authority yet. April was still hopeful that she'd be able to pull off the operation without a hitch. She was dreaming.
She got out of the gray Buick, which still smelled pretty bad from Pee Wee, and approached the dog trainer.
"I'm Sid Slocum. Sergeant Woo, I presume. You in charge here?" he asked.
April nodded. Instantly, the dog growled and lunged at her, setting the tone for their relationship. April jumped back and assumed a kick-boxing stance.
"Don't worry about Freda-she's a sweetheart," Slocum assured her, hiding a smile under his mustache.
April didn't think it was so funny. "Yeah, well tell her I'm carrying. This is Detective Woody Baum." April jerked her chin at Woody, who approached with caution.
The dog, however, seemed to like
him.
She strained at the leash for the chance to shed all over Woody's navy jacket and lap at his hand. "Hi, guy." Woody wiped the slime on the shepherd's head and looked pleased by the exchange. April thought the drooling, growling hulk wasn't even a close second to Dim Sum-the six pounds of adorable, smart-as-a whip apricot poodle that was the Woo family pet. She didn't have much judgment if she preferred Woody to her. She had her doubts about the dog finding Maslow. So much time had passed that it was probably too late for this kind of hunt.
"Is this all the backup you have?" she asked to cover her anxiety.
"Yep. Four uniforms, the three of us, and Freda. It's a pretty small area. We're not talking about the Jersey Wetlands here. If your man is here, we'll find him." Another smile. Slocum was full of confidence. Then his expression changed when an ABC news van cruised by and the driver stuck his head out of the driver's window.
"I heard something big's up in the park. Missing jogger. You here about that?" The man's eyes looked red and his long gray hair was gathered up in a ponytail.
"You're misinformed," April told him, frowning.
He
heard?
How did he hear? She hadn't used the police radio, hadn't told anyone but Iriarte. She had a really paranoid thought. How bad did Iriarte want to mess her up? She frowned as the van moved half a block down CPW, did a U-turn, and parked in a bus stop to wait for the story to emerge.
"Jesus," Slocum swore, then pointed at one of the uniforms. "Get that asshole out of there. We have to close off the area. No cars, no people. It confuses the dog."
April's beeper went off. Lieutenant Iriarte's number flashed on the screen. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed the squad room. A minute later he came on screaming, "Where are you, Woo? I got the PC on the phone. He wants to know how come no one briefed him on this? Your missing person case is on the fucking news!"
April eyed the ABC truck. "No kidding?" she said.
"You don't have much of a life expectancy, Sergeant. Give me your location, I'm coming up there."
"Yes, sir." She gave the entrance to the park as Maslow's Place Last Seen, then hung up and checked her watch. It was two on the button. Her boss would be there in fifteen, twenty minutes. Her heart was racing. Her palms were wet. Her head felt light. The PC himself was going to ream her. Her mother's dream would come true. The whole world would see her cease being a cop. She'd be disgraced on the evening news, on the morning news. She'd lose her boyfriend, the man she worshipped and adored. Why? Why had she done this? Then she remembered Maslow was still missing and the minutes were ticking by.
"Come on, Officer, let's get started," she said.
"Call me Sid. Good girl, good girl. We're going to work. Yeah, yeah. You hot, old thing? Good, good, good." Slocum pumped the dog. She responded by practically taking his arm off in her eagerness to get going. He turned to April. "We need to get a feel for this guy. He live here? I want to start at ground zero."
"Uh-huh. "The dog growled at her, and April stepped back uneasily.
"Wow, this is an unusual reaction for Freda. She always loves everybody."
"Uh-huh." April didn't believe it.
They crossed Central Park West and went through the routine with Regina again to get into Maslow's apartment. This time she kept a respectful distance as Sid unleashed the dog and let her run around the apartment, root into the armpit of Maslow's jacket that he'd left on the sofa. She leapt up onto the bed, dove into the pillows. Then, finished with that, she raced into the kitchen, where the rotting Chinese leftovers drove her into a frenzy.
Slocum glanced at the stereo, computer, medical texts. "What is this guy, a medical student?"
"Doctor. A psychiatrist."
"Jeeze. Hear that, Freda, this guy's a headshrinker." The dog raced back into the bedroom, nosed into the pants on the bed, and came up with the wad of bills and the wallet.
"How do you like that? I didn't even tell her to fetch. Good
girl,
Freda, but put it down. You don't get a tip unless you find the guy alive." The dog dropped the money. A bunch of twenties and fifties fanned out, looking to April like several weeks' pay.
"Interesting," she murmured. "Woody, bag that and the wallet so they don't disappear, will you?"
Woody stepped forward to comply. The dog growled when he reached for the money.
"Interesting," April said again. Freda had an interest in cash. So did April. She wondered why Maslow had so much on hand.
"Guess he wasn't heading off for a night on the town. Anything in the hamper? I need something only he touched."
"Nothing there, I checked."
"Was he depressed? Did he have any illness we didn't know about? What about his medications?" Slocum asked.
They went into the bathroom. Sid checked out the medicine cabinet. "Hey, look at all this. This guy has asthma, allergies, psoriasis, migraines. You name it. Today must have been laundry day."
"Maybe he has a maid. We can check that out." April glanced at her watch. "You have enough now. Let's get the show on the road."
Slocum swore at the neat apartment and empty hamper. He debated between the suit jacket flung on the sofa and the T-shirt and socks lying on the floor in the bedroom. He chose the T-shirt, approached it with a plastic bag, slid the thing inside without touching it himself.
"Freda, come, baby. We're going to work." He held out the bag for the dog to sniff. Freda leaped around for a while, trying to get into the bag. Then she lunged at April's crotch without warning.
April let out a yelp. Sniff, sniff, sniff, slobber, slobber, slobber. The dog nosed her privates while Slocum and Woody yucked it up. Then, Freda lost interest in April and moved on. She shoved her muzzle into Woody's crotch, smacking her jaws at the delights she found there, causing manly consternation and more macho jokes. Freda sure knew what she was doing. She then dived back into the bag for more of Maslow. Sid reattached the leash.
"Go find," he said.
The dog went for the door, knocking the hovering Regina out of the way and nearly off her feet. Freda panted at the elevator, sniffed it all over when it arrived, and they got inside. Down in the lobby she sniffed the rug, stopped, headed for the door. Sniffed the brass struts holding up the canopy, peed on one of them, then dragged Sid right to the corner and across the street to the park.
M
aslow heard the sound of a barking dog and opened his eyes. He saw very little. He tried to move. But his whole body was stiff and aching. A hammer pounded in his head. The light now was gray, the smell of pond scum was overwhelming. He knew for sure it was pond scum when a bullfrog hopped over his face with a wet splat, spiking his heart with terror. Other creatures were alive in here, too. He could hear their movements around him. Things that he knew would start eating him as soon as he died.
Now he heard a dog and prayed that someone had come looking for him. He didn't want to die.
"Here, I'm here." When he opened his mouth to scream, all that came out was a soft moan. He couldn't seem to get his voice up to full volume.
He tried to move his fingers and his mouth, but pain was all he felt. He didn't know how long he had been here. He was aware that he'd felt sicker before, that he'd fallen asleep. He'd awakened, then dozed some more.
Maslow was irritated by his weakness. He couldn't seem to rally enough energy to get himself going. Through a haze that felt like a bad drunk, Maslow knew he was not dead. Chloe was not talking to him. Nor was he trapped on the drying rack in the linen closet in the Cape Cod house that was long gone from his life. He knew his fantasy that Chloe was still alive and ten years old in Massachusetts was only a fantasy.
He was not a child and not a sixteen-year-old, drunk for the first time. He was not twenty-five and knocked out on the street after trying to help someone in a bar fight. He was not an intern in ER. He was way past all that. He was a psychiatrist now, a candidate at the Psychoanalytic Institute. He remembered his class on personality disorders the night before. He remembered his session at his Central Park West office with Allegra and how upset she'd been because he'd told her it was normal for a child to have loving feelings for a father, even if the father abused her. But that was about it.
He couldn't remember anything after coming home and getting ready for his jog. If he had not gone for the jog, he could be dreaming. But the creatures crawling on him were no dream. He was not where he was supposed to be. He was in terrible pain. He couldn't move at all. Something had happened to him. And if he didn't do something about it soon, he might well die.
His brain worked slowly. He was a doctor. He should be able to figure out what was wrong with him. He heard the barking of a dog and other noises he couldn't identify. The persistent roar troubled him. He knew he should be familiar with the sound. He struggled to remember what it was. A roar just like it occurred every few minutes night and day all year around. What was it?
Roar, vibration, then quiet for a while. He should be able to identify it, get some clue to where he was. He tried to distract himself from his fear of the dark and the creatures scurrying around there. He was in a hole. Definitely a hole. His breath caught in his throat. A hole of some kind.
He heard people shouting. He didn't know if the shouting was real, or just the sounds of people in his memory. His voice wouldn't work to call back to them. Was he paralyzed? It hit him suddenly that the roar was the subway under Central Park West. He was underground. Yes, in a hole close enough to hear the subway.
But he could breathe, so there must be air coming in from somewhere. It was dark, but not always totally dark. He knew he had to get up, get out of there, but he couldn't seem to get going. His hips and legs wouldn't move. He didn't know why. Suddenly he was eye to eye with a rat. His heart almost stopped with terror. The rat scurried over him, and he couldn't do a thing about it. The sound of the barking dog faded. He closed his eyes and prayed.
Come back. Please, God, come back.
W
hen the phone rang at quarter to twelve on Wednesday morning Cheryl Fabman was writhing around on her stunning sea foam silk sheets in the bedroom of her fabulous new Park Avenue apartment. Simultaneously, she was trying to find a comfortable position and assign an appropriate name to her multiple miseries. First on her list: Her doctor, Morris Strong, the most prestigious plastic surgeon in New York -for whom she'd had to wait nearly a year just for a consultation-had assured her that a "slight discomfort" after the liposuction and lip-enhancing procedures was the worst she could expect.
At his urging she'd had the hip, thigh, abdomen, and butt sculpting by liposuction as well as the lip procedure on the same day. A full five days later she was not experiencing mere discomfort, nor even simple pain. Her body was now perfectly shaped and encased in Lycra, but she was in agony. Total and complete agony. She did not blame God or herself for the pain. She blamed Dr. Strong for lying to her. Next, she blamed her ex-husband for being a jerk and going through with the divorce after she very nicely said she'd have him back. After that came her decorator for being late, her lawyer for not doing better on her behalf, and her fifteen-year-old daughter for not loving her nearly as much as she should.
Because of her stupid lawyer and stingy husband, Cheryl's apartment was only six rooms on Park Avenue and Seventy-fifth Street instead of ten rooms on Fifth Avenue below Seventy-second Street. Because of her decorator's tardiness, the smell of paint was still very intense and made her sneeze frequently. In her postsurgical condition, Cheryl's every sneeze threatened the inside of her plump new lips and made them feel as if they might burst free from their fan of stitches and split open like ripe plums. It was not unlike sex after childbirth.
Which brought her to her daughter, Brandy, who should have hurried home right after school yesterday to take care of her, order soup for her from the deli, and complain about her father. Brandy was a disappointment on all fronts, particularly on the father front. She did not complain about him at all. Cheryl found this stoicism abnormal, not to mention unsatisfying to herself. Not only that, Aston Gluckselig, the love of her life at the moment, was way over fifty, was heavy, and didn't have as much hair or height as her ex-husband, Seymour. Aston's balding head came to her forehead when she wasn't wearing heels, and to her chin when she was. On the good side, he was a very prominent man, extremely well known among the UN crowd. He was a lawyer. He made millions of dollars, and he loved her. The only thing that stood in the way of their marrying was that he was waiting for his aged mother to die and his last child to graduate from college before breaking the news to his second wife that he was divorcing her for another woman. Luckily Aston's mother was ninety-eight.
Cheryl did not blame herself for fucking him in the private swimming pool in the garden of his house at the exclusive Round Hill Club in Jamaica the first night they met. The pool was surrounded by flowering oleander and had seemed quite hidden, but in fact happened to be only a few feet from the bedroom where her then husband, Seymour, turned out not to be sleeping and, worse, not at all blissfully ignorant of what was going on. In spite of Cheryl's certainty in her heart of hearts about her husband's own
years
of cheating, he faked a huge heartbreak thing and made a big stink, threatening to kill them both. His lawyers advised him to choose divorce as an alternative action. She offered to forgive him, to no avail. Now he had whores all over the place, and she hated his fucking guts for being such a hypocrite.
The phone stopped ringing, and Brandy stood by the bedroom door peering in.
"Mom, is it okay if I go to school now?" she asked.
"Brandy, thank God you're up." Cheryl groaned and removed the frozen gel pack from her aching lips.
"I've been up for hours. Can I go to school now? They called. I said I was on my way."
"I didn't hear the phone ring. Come into the light where I can see you." Cheryl didn't feel at all well.
"There is no light." Brandy hit the light switch, turning it on.
Cheryl yelped. "Shit, are you trying to kill me?"
Silence from the kid. That really hurt.
"I'm bad, baby. Really bad," Cheryl said, hoping for love.
"You aren't going to die, are you?" Brandy said sullenly. "If you die, you know Dad will get me."
"No, of course I'm not going to die. I just hurt all over. The prick doctor lied to me. He told me this would be a piece of cake. And I still feel like shit."
"You want something to eat, or another painkiller before I go?" Brandy studied her mother. "You don't look great." Brandy reached out to touch her. "Maybe something's wrong with the surgery. Should I call the doctor or something?"
Cheryl squinted into the bright light, then jerked away, squealing, "Don't touch me. I'm all right." Then, angrily, "Where were you last night?"
"With Dad, doing my homework. Remember, Tuesday's my night with
him."
Cheryl didn't remember anything like that. "I've been lying here in agony, worried to death about you all night. Don't you remember you were supposed to come home and take care of me yesterday?"
"I thought you had a nurse taking care of you," Brandy replied.
Cheryl had sent her away two days ago. She changed the subject. "How is your father?"
"Fine." Brandy rolled her eyes to the ceiling.
"You didn't tell him about the surgery, did you?"
"He wouldn't be interested." Brandy studied her nails, a horrible color, almost black.
"Are you sure you didn't tell him?" Cheryl demanded suspiciously.
"He doesn't
care,
Mom. You could have a boob job the size of California and he wouldn't give a shit." The voice of a heartless adolescent.
Cheryl groaned. So much for the family she'd given her entire life for. Her bastard of a husband leaves her for twenty-year-old whores, and her daughter twists the knife.
"Was the bitch there?"
"Which one?" Brandy giggled.
"Jesus, how many are there?"
"Just kidding. She wasn't there. I told you it was our night."
Cheryl closed her eyes against the hurtful fantasy of her daughter and ex-husband in an intimate tête-à-tête in the dining room of the Central Park West apartment twice the size of hers that she knew cost over four
million
dollars exclusive of the lavish, but utterly tasteless, furnishings. Brandy had reported that he'd bought only the most expensive modern Italian furniture, everything shiny and slick, the sofas and chairs in those weird shapes. And there were
no
antique accessories like she had. Absolutely none. He'd left their entire life, their whole history behind. There was nothing soft even in Brandy's room there. Not a plant, not a pillow. Nothing. He'd scattered the money freely on nothing at all. Cheryl was sure he'd fucked the decorator, fucked the woman from the carpet company. He'd fucked the paraprofessional in his divorce lawyer's office, then the divorce lawyer, even though she was older than Cheryl herself. The man was a fucking maniac. Talk about childish revenge.
All of her miseries stabbed at Cheryl's gut. Something bothered her about Brandy's report of last night. Cheryl wanted to call her on it. She wondered if the kid was now lying, too. Brandy lied about everything. She gave her child a sharp look. There was nothing wrong with Cheryl's eyes. "Jesus, what the hell is
that?”
"What?" Brandy said.
"That outfit is bad, Bran."
Brandy was wearing a pink fuzzy sweater the size of a hanky. She had a small frame and breasts large enough to nourish all the children in a well-populated state. The breasts stretched the sweater way out of shape and hiked it high up on her midriff. Her jeans hung low on pudgy hips and were pegged tight down to surprisingly coltish ankles. Cheryl groaned some more.
The daughter she'd prayed would come out more like her than her father looked like a refugee from a road show production of
Grease.
Here they were in a new millennium, with beauty aids more advanced than at any other time in history. And of all the daughters in America, she, Cheryl Fabman, had to have the only one who wouldn't do a single thing to fix herself up. Brandy's short brown hair was, well, brown, flat on top, flat on the sides. Her chubby cheeks showed no sign of bones anywhere. Her eyelids were pale and virtually lashless-her eyes pitifully small for the brilliant blue that was the only thing Cheryl could claim as hers. And worst of all were the breasts-the breasts! The least Brandy could do was camouflage the freaking breasts just a little. The sight of her daughter looking like such a poor imitation of a tart was so disturbing it was almost enough to distract Cheryl from herself. Her daughter was a disaster, a complete disaster. She couldn't
bear
it.
"What?" Brandy's lips were stuck together in a pout.
"Trust me on this. The outfit makes you look fat. What are you eating? I told you
no fats.
No
sugar,
Brandy. What's in your mouth?"
"Nothing."
Cheryl sat up a little.
"Something's
in your mouth. What is it?"
"Nothing's in my mouth. I have a class, Mom. I gotta go"
"I thought today was One World Day." Cheryl's lips hurt or she would have had a lot more to say.
"It is, but I can't skip the whole thing. Do you want me to take it as a sick day?"
"No, if you have to go, then go. But come back at five. I want to see you for dinner."
"You can't eat anything," Brandy reminded her.
"Neither can you. We'll have soup together." Cheryl shook her head. "What did your dad give you for dinner last night?"
"He took me to the Posthouse for a steak."
Cheryl closed her eyes. Their old hangout. "You didn't eat the French fries, did you?" she demanded.
"Just a few. Not all of them." Brandy broke free of the door. "Bye, Mom. Don't die on me. Promise?"
"Put on a sweater or a jacket, anything to cover up those boobs," Cheryl replied.