Authors: Alafair Burke
E
ven in better days, Alice felt an intense irritation navigating the crowded sidewalks of midtown Manhattan. Cookie-cutter clones in dark suits. Street vendors pushing roasted peanuts and $3 belts. Meandering tourists staring up at the skyline, blissfully unaware of their shopping bags smacking other pedestrians in the thighs. Teenagers in flip-flops snapping cell-phone photos while they juggled two-quart buckets of soft drinks from fast food restaurants. It was just ... too much.
“Smile, girl. Don’t matter if it’s ten degrees out. Every day can be beautiful.” The man with the broad grin wheeled a hand truck filled with bottled water down the loading ramp of a delivery truck double-parked on Fifty-fourth Street. When he hit street level, he reached for the volume knob of an old boom-box CD player resting on the truck floor. “Summertime” by DJ Jazzy Jeff and Will Smith when he used to be called the Fresh Prince thumped over the sounds of midday traffic.
She flashed him a thumbs-up as she hurried to the entrance of the office building towering over them. She signed in with the front guard and posed for a digital camera before receiving a guest pass to proceed to the forty-third floor.
Her father was already waiting in Arthur Cronin’s office, sipping from a glass of water with lemon as he sat cross-legged on the cherry-colored leather sofa. Art sat perpendicular to him in a coordinating wing chair in stocking feet. It would have come as no surprise to anyone seeing these two men for the first time that they had known each other nearly fifty years.
“There she is, right on time, the beautiful female half of the next generation of Humphreys.” Art rose to greet her with a solid bear hug, then clasped her shoulders. “How is my fabulous goddaughter holding up? Huh?”
“I’ve got to admit, I found myself eyeing my passport this morning, wondering about the most livable country in the world without an extradition agreement with America.”
“This is why artists aren’t lawyers. Your imagination is getting away from you. Something is amuck here, no question, but these things have a way of getting worked out. You’ll see.”
She looked at her father and could tell he was working hard to appear untroubled. He was a brilliant filmmaker, but he was no actor. He rested his glass on the coffee table in front of him and used his hands on his thighs as assistance to stand. “All right. I’ve got a meeting with a certain hard-to-land octo-mom of an actress. I don’t want to keep her waiting. She might get bored and adopt another baby.”
“Dad, I thought we were meeting with Art together.” When she had called him about the images she found on the Hans Schuler thumb drive, he had persuaded her it was time to get a lawyer involved, starting first with Arthur.
“Sorry, baby girl. This casting is a major get, and it was the only time she could meet me. I told Art what I know. You’re in good hands now.” He blew her a kiss with all ten fingers, then closed the door behind him.
“Don’t be upset with him, Alice. I was actually the one who thought it might be best to meet with each of you separately.”
He’d obviously notified only her father of the change in plans.
“I brought the thumb drive.”
She hadn’t looked at the pictures since that first manic perusal the previous night. Once she walked him through the process of pulling up the screen with the portal, clicking on the girl’s pupil, and then entering the password, she made a point to check out the corner-office views. A couple clicks of Art’s mouse were followed by wincing sounds. She tried not to remember.
As he browsed through the images hidden on the thumb drive, she moved her attention to a different collection of photographs, the framed ones clustered on top of his mahogany file cabinet. Art shaking hands with Hillary Clinton. Art accepting an award from the ACLU. A younger Art on a boat with her father. An even younger Art and a little gap-toothed Opie Taylor lookalike, huddled in the stands with hot dogs and matching Yankees caps.
“Who’s the cutie at the Yankees game?”
“I’m sorry?” He rose from his desk and waved her back to the sitting area. “That’s my nephew, Brandon. Little runt’s already out of business school, if you can believe it.”
She knew Art had a sister who was married, but she’d never met any of his family. She had always gotten the impression that Art considered himself more of an honorary Humphrey.
“Let’s get down to brass tacks. The detectives who questioned you did not ask you anything about these pictures?”
“No, but they asked me about the missing girl from Jersey. Do you think the older girl in those photographs might be her?”
“I have no idea, but if they know about these pictures, that could certainly be a reason they’re inquiring. Of course, why in the world they’ve imagined any connection between you and that girl is one of a number of unknowns we’re dealing with right now.”
“They also asked me about Dad. And about ITH. They obviously tracked down the same records my friend Jeff got from the state. Someone used the ITH name to open the gallery, and they know that’s one of my father’s corporate entities. They must think I was the one pulling the strings. The pictures on that thumb drive prove I’ve been telling the truth. Whoever opened the gallery did it to sell those pictures, and used me as the cover.”
Art steepled his fingers toward her. “So what is it that
your
instincts are telling you to do right now, Alice?”
It was funny to see Art here, in this cigar-and-brandy-styled office, wearing a thousand-dollar suit, talking to her the way a grown-up lawyer would speak to a grown-up client. She had known him her entire life. She could still distinctively remember concluding that he was the wisest person on earth after he taught her not to pull her arms through her coat sleeves until she’d first put on her mittens, protecting even her wrists from the cold.
She’d seen him in less noble moments as well, slurring his speech on their living room sofa as he and her parents debated politics, films, literature, life, until three in the morning up in Bedford. Art had been a dirty old man even when he was young. The eternal flirt, always happy in the company of whatever eye candy happened to be at his hip for the weekend. She’d realized early on that Art’s friendship with her father no doubt assisted his ability to land that steady stream of short-term, high-caliber escorts (not a euphemism in this context), but what she had once seen as an amusing penchant for bachelorhood bore a new level of creepiness now that she realized her father apparently shared it.
“My
instincts
? I really wasn’t kidding about the running-away thing. An island and a margarita the size of my head are sounding pretty damn good right now.”
“Too early to start talking about going fugitive.”
She smiled but then realized he was not. “You’re kidding, right?”
He shrugged. “I can’t joke about these things. What do you think I say to a client who has a private jet, a passport, and enough money in an offshore account to live the rest of his days, when he’s looking at a twenty-year sentence because the SEC suddenly decides corporations should be honest about the value of their own stock? Those conversations get a little dicey—not just on the ethical issues but, you know, whether or not someone’s really prepared to walk away from their home, family, reputation, and country. But look, none of this applies to you. You haven’t been arrested, and they obviously don’t have enough evidence to make an arrest, so we have some time.”
Yet,
she wanted to add. None of this applies to me ...
yet
.
“Well, if I’m not—what did you call it? going fugitive—then my instinct was for us to put together everything we have to explain how someone’s framing me, and maybe you could present it to the police. Convince them to take a closer look at George Hardy, or try to find out who was really behind the gallery.”
He pointed to her like she’d just answered a trivia question correctly. “See? That’s why people hire lawyers, Alice. Good, law-abiding, honest people like yourself are predisposed to trust the police. You’ve been told all your life that you have nothing to fear in the truth. Nearly every client I have who winds up in tension with the government wants to do the same thing. But my job is to force you
not
to follow your instincts.”
“But I’m actually innocent.”
“That and an apple might get you an apple. These guys who’ve been questioning you hear the same thing from every lying, guilty dirtbag they encounter.
I’m innocent. I didn’t do it. If you’d just listen to me.
All that does is inoculate them. They’re trained
not
to believe you. They will twist anything you say to inculpate you further. And if you do happen to say anything that casts doubt on your guilt, they’ll make it their number-one objective to go out there to rebut it. Trust me on this: you do not help yourself by talking to them.”
“But shouldn’t we at least tell them about these pictures on the thumb drive? What if it has something to do with that missing girl, and they don’t know?”
“It’s not your job to help them find that girl. And don’t take this personally, if you and that dumbass of an ex-boyfriend of yours could figure out these thumb drives, I’m pretty sure the NYPD already knows about the pictures.”
It was no surprise that Art shared her father’s opinion of Jeff.
“So what do I do? My father thinks George Hardy and his church have something to do with all this. Seems hard to believe a church would be involved in child pornography, but I guess any nut can start himself a religion these days. From what I could tell on the Web, Redemption of Christ is just Hardy and a bunch of wackos willing to follow him around the country. I don’t even think they have an actual building.”
“I’ll start pulling up research on them. See what we can find.”
“Maybe there’s someone involved in the church who had some connection to my father around the time ITH was formed.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because even if they thought he’d make a convenient political scapegoat, they’d still have to know about ITH to be able to use the company name.”
“We resolved the issue without litigation by making payments over time through a trust. It’s fairly standard.”
“Okay, but I’m still wondering what happened to the person who originally threatened the lawsuit. What was her name? Julie Kinley? I mean, she accused my dad of stealing her screenplay idea. Is it possible she’s still pissed off all these years later?”
“The allegation might seem scandalous, but it’s the kind of claim that gets thrown around all the time in the entertainment industry. As it happens, I did in fact follow up on this issue already. The former employee in question passed away last year.”
“Julie Kinley’s dead?”
He nodded. “I had a paralegal do a public records search so we could locate her. The road stopped at her death certificate. She died last March.”
“Damn. I got myself all worked into a frenzy, thinking we’d find out that she’d been following George Hardy around the country for his protests. Thought I’d sic the police on her instead.”
“Afraid not. A dead woman can’t exactly be trailing Hardy around on the protest circuit, can she?”
“Maybe someone else who was involved, who would know about ITH and my father’s connection to it? Maybe her lawyer or something?”
“Corporate names are easier to look up than you might think, but sure, I’ll think again about anyone else who was involved in that transaction and see if there’s any connection to this church. In the meantime, Alice, I know this cuts against every impulse of every fiber in your being, but your number-one job right now is to do nothing. Don’t talk to the police. Don’t talk to your friends, at least not about anything having to do with this investigation. Don’t try conducting your own investigation, because if they tap your phone or search your computer or have you followed, it might wind up looking like you have a personal involvement in this.”
“I
do
have a pretty damn personal involvement.”
“You haven’t been listening to me, Alice. The government will interpret your actions in the very worst light. They won’t think you’re snooping around trying to save your own hide. They’ll think you’re covering your tracks. You absolutely
must
trust me on this. I have an entire firm of lawyers and investigators here. I am good at what I do. And my phone can’t be tapped, and my computers can’t be searched. Try to go back to your life. See some shows. Try some new restaurants. You still want to work? You know my offer to help you out on that has always been open.”
She shook her head. The way she saw it, accepting help from Art was no different than taking it from her father. And yet here she was, receiving his legal counsel, arranged for by her father, when she clearly had no way of paying the astronomical fees someone like Arthur Cronin must charge for his services.
“You take care of yourself, all right?” He patted her head, as he had since she was a child. “And tell Ben I said hello. My secretary says he stopped by yesterday, but I missed him.”
“He came to your office?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Is there something wrong?”
He still had not returned her many messages, but her brother had somehow found time to drop by Art’s. It hardly seemed to matter now how he had known about their father’s company—he always had found his identity through Dad’s work more than she had—but she was still worried that he was using again. He had a way of avoiding her when that was the case.
“No. Just haven’t seen him for a while, is all. Should I take that thumb drive home with me, or do you need it here?”
“Better let me hang on to it for now. The harder we make it for them to connect you to those pictures, the better.”
The unspoken implication was obvious. Despite his reassurances, Art was already thinking forward to a day when the police would show up at her door, arrest warrant in hand.
“H
oly shit, you actually picked up your phone.”
After a mere two rings, Ben finally demonstrated signs of life and answered his cell.
“Sorry. It’s been a little busy.”
“The sound business is
en fuego
, huh?”
Ben’s work in sound engineering was not exactly nine-to-five employment, but she was pretty sure that he’d experienced longer dry spells between gigs than she had suffered after the museum layoff, and yet he never referred to himself as unemployed.
“Just a lot of stuff going on, that’s all.”
She held her free ear shut with her index finger, struggling to hear over the traffic outside Cronin’s building. Ben’s voice sounded flat. In someone else, she might attribute the tone to worry or distraction. In her brother, three or four controlled substances came to mind.
“I’m worried about you, Ben.”
“Isn’t that always the case with the Humphreys? Everyone worries about Ben. Everyone assumes the worst.”
“You
did
just get arrested last week.”
“Jesus Christ. I told you, it was a little weed. I’m fine.”
Whenever she was tempted to write her brother off as a total fuckup, she forced herself to remember that, although siblings, they really did not have the same parents. Ben was close to five years older than she. Their father had stopped drinking when she was eleven, but Ben was already in high school by then. He remembered more. And their parents had always expected less of him as a result.
“Art said you stopped by his office yesterday. What’s that about?”
“He’s our godfather. Do we need a reason to see each other?”
“I’m starting to wish you hadn’t picked up the phone. Did I do something wrong?”
“No. Look, I’m sorry. I wanted to talk to him. That’s all.”
“Was it about ITH?”
Ben was silent.
“When I was at your apartment, you said that ITH was incorporated a long time ago, but I never told you about the incorporation. And I didn’t know about Dad’s connection until Jeff dug up those documents with the state. But
you
knew, Ben. If you knew something about that company, you should have told me.”
“I thought I remembered hearing Art and Dad talk about ITH when I was in high school. I dropped by Art’s office yesterday to see if he could shed some light on who might’ve used the name to start the gallery. That’s all.”
“When you were at my apartment, you told me you’d never heard of the company.”
“I didn’t think I had. Then after I left, it sort of rang a bell. Are we done with the cross-examination?”
“I feel like I’m stuck in the middle of a nightmare, and I can’t wake up. I already talked to Dad and Art about it, but when I brought ITH up with you, I sensed you were holding something back. And, frankly, Ben, you’re not always a hundred percent honest when you’re using.”
“You know what, perfect little sister? I was trying to help you out by going to Art. I was making sure that he and Dad weren’t the ones being selective with their information. But fuck it. Just go to hell.”
By the time Ben hung up on her (and refused to answer her four consecutive redials) she was already a third of the way home from midtown. Despite the cold, she continued on foot toward her apartment.
She told herself she needed the forty-five-minute walk as exercise, but she knew precisely why she’d opted for foot travel over subway: the squandering of time. Forty-five minutes of her boots against concrete meant forty-five fewer minutes in her apartment, struggling futilely to read a book or watch a television show without thinking about Highline Gallery, Drew Campbell, or those horrible photographs. The walk gave her one less hour in the day to tie her head into knots about the trail of evidence that even she had to admit led directly to her. The walk allowed her to believe that the argument with Ben had been just another sibling tiff, and that she and her brother would be patched back to normal by nightfall.
She felt herself slow her pace as she passed Tenth Street, only two blocks from her apartment building. She usually ran past the corner on Twelfth because of all the construction noise from the new condo development that would seemingly never be completed, but today she managed to tune out the eardrum-shattering sounds of the jackhammers.
Even though she wasn’t hungry, she stopped at the counter in Veselka for pierogies to go. She savored the warm pillows of dough-wrapped potato while standing, chewing slowly, buying more time.
She had finally resigned herself to a fate of sitting in her apartment, accompanied only by her worries, when she saw the green Camry roll through the intersection at St. Mark’s. She caught the last three digits of the license plate. They matched the car she’d spotted twice the day before. She tried to remember now if she had seen the Camry while she’d been walking south on Second Avenue. Had the man been following her? Or was the Camry simply a car from the neighborhood that she’d never had reason to notice?
She pulled her phone from her pocket and started to dial 911, but then remembered Cronin’s warnings. She dialed his number instead. His secretary cheerfully reported Mr. Cronin was unavailable but that she was happy to take a message.
She understood Cronin’s point about strategy, but the third Camry sighting in two days raised concerns that went beyond her legal situation. Someone had killed the man she’d known as Drew Campbell. She still did not know his true name, but she had seen his body and felt the stickiness of his blood on the floor.
She dialed 911.
“So ... I’m sorry, miss, but you say you do know the man was following you, or you don’t?”
The uniformed officer was polite, but she could tell from the way he smiled reassuringly at gawking passersby that she sounded like a woman who was one missed med away from screaming at the pigeons about an impending alien takeover. She tried to explain once again that she had seen the Camry twice yesterday and again today but did not know who was driving it.
“And what makes you think the man is, um, stalking you or whatever? Did he make threats toward you? Or try to follow you into your building? Or act inappropriately in some manner?”
She was tempted to say all of the above just to appear less insane. “No. It’s just—I know it sounds crazy, but I’m a witness in a homicide investigation. I—I discovered a man’s body four days ago and they haven’t found the person who did it. So when I saw the same car three times in twenty-four hours—”
The officer was nodding quickly. She couldn’t tell if that was a sign he believed her or was buying time before calling the nice men with a spacious van and butterfly nets. “Well, the car doesn’t appear to be here any longer. You say you’ve got the license plate number. What I’d suggest is that I forward my report to the detectives in charge of that pending homicide. They can decide the best strategy going forward. Run the plate. See how this guy fits in, if at all.”
“Can’t you just run it now? Maybe we’ll find out the guy lives around the corner, and it’s all just a misunderstanding.”
“Or maybe I’ll wind up stepping on the toes of your homicide investigators and messing something up big-time. I don’t think either one of us wants that, right?”
Not to mention that forwarding the report would be less work for you.
“You know, I shouldn’t have even called. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
“So now you’re saying you
don’t
want to file a report?”
“I let my imagination get away with me.”
“No offense, lady, but I don’t want to learn next week that my failure to write down this license plate fucked up some shield’s murder case. You know the name of the detectives involved, or do I need to look it up?”
Her cell phone rang. She recognized the prefix of the incoming number as Arthur Cronin’s law firm. He was not going to like this one bit.
Hank Beckman finally made it through the knot of standstill traffic snarled at the intersection of Bowery and Canal Street. That neighborhood always brought a smile to his face. The coexistence of Chinatown dim sum restaurants, the remains of Little Italy, and emerging hipster boutiques and bars was at once bizarre and happy.
He’d been raised in Montana. After getting his undergrad degree and a CPA with the help of Uncle Sam, he’d completed the requisite years in the army and then put in for the bureau. New agents don’t have the luxury of choosing their cities of service, but he’d assumed that the demand for a spot like Montana or Idaho—working bank robberies and gun cases—would be low.
But then thanks to Brad Pitt, Robert Redford, and a little flick called
A River Runs Through It,
suddenly every man with a midlife crisis and a fishing rod wanted to move to the northwest corner of the country. Small populations, combined with low crime rates, meant tiny field offices with few agents. Hank wound up with a job in the bureau, but an assignment in the Big Apple.
He’d planned on getting out as fast as he could, but he’d become accustomed to it faster than he’d anticipated. He bought the apartment near Prospect Park. The city wasn’t an easy place to make friends, but Hank never really needed anyone’s company. For a while, he felt like he was friends with some of Jen’s crowd, but when she moved out, he didn’t feel comfortable staying in touch. Then after her husband’s plane crash, Ellen found herself a forty-year-old widow in Montana, living alone on a ranch. She said the sound of a new life in New York wasn’t so bad. Two years later, she had the Upper East Side apartment with a view of the park from a terrace. Then within a year, she had met and was quickly engaged to Randall Updike, or at least that was the name he’d been using at the time.
Sometimes Hank wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t run that background check on “Randall.” Ellen would have inevitably lost the bulk of her money to Larson, he suspected. She would presumably have still been saddled with the clinical depression and untreated alcoholism that had led to her death. But maybe he would have noticed his sister’s problems. If the man she loved had conned her out of her last dime, Hank would have known to watch out for her. He would have recognized the depth of the attack on her. But as it was, at the time, he had been arrogant enough to think that she should have been grateful to her little brother for saving her.
Now, as he made his way back to Brooklyn across the Manhattan Bridge, he was fairly certain that Alice Humphrey had spotted him but had not managed to follow him from the East Village. He was also fairly certain that Alice Humphrey—with her practical shoes and clumsy gait, a bit like a general stomping his way through a field—was not the same woman he had seen cruising in stiletto heels toward Travis Larson’s apartment. He was profoundly less certain, however, about what to do with that puzzling piece of information.