The Hollow Girl (18 page)

With that last line, Siobhan Bracken faded to black. I didn’t quite get the need for all the disclaimers, especially since the only person getting cut up in all this was Nancy Lustig and then only by her daughter’s wicked tongue. I felt awful for Nancy, but she’d manage. I would have enough on my own plate over the next few days without trying to salve someone else’s wounds.

I stayed the weekend. It had been a good few days. The best days I’d had since late June. I’d spent a lot of catch-up time with Ruben and let Sarah and Paul get out for dinner on Saturday night. What can I tell you, besides being incredibly handsome, my grandson displayed genius tendencies and laughed at practically everything I did. He was a particular fan of me tickling his belly and playing peek-a-boo. On Sunday, Sarah came over to Pam’s house and helped me organize the paperwork that needed taking care of. We looked through some of Pam’s stuff, her old stuff that predated me. Mostly Sarah and I laughed as we filled in invisible thought balloons and made up dialogue for the people in Pam’s high school yearbook and in her photo albums. It was good to be happy again at the sight of Pam and to see her so young, pretty, and smiling. That’s how I wanted to remember her, not as a body sticking out from under the front end of a Jeep.

We made a deal, my daughter and me. If I promised not to sell Pam’s house immediately, Sarah would come over once or twice a week and sort through Pam’s clothing and papers. She would send me the paperwork that needed seeing to, would bundle up and donate the clothing, the books, all that kind of stuff. She would go through the attic, garage, and basement, and put aside things for me she thought I might want to keep or sell. I was good with that on many levels. I loved my daughter, but she did have a bit of her Uncle Aaron in her. She had a head for organization that had always escaped me.

Now the weekend was over and Monday morning was at hand. Time to head back home to deal with the world again. It would be both the same world I’d left behind and a different world. Although there was no longer a case to work, I would still have to deal with Nancy. I couldn’t dismiss as simple human empathy the sting I’d felt for her as I watched Siobhan rip her to pieces. There were feelings there, and I would have to make sense of them. And I would have to face the world without drinking. I suspected that would be far less complicated than dealing with Nancy Lustig. With a few days’ worth of perspective I’d come to realize that heavy drinking was like most self-destructive activities—far more romantic from the outside looking in. Most importantly, there was something else that needed doing when I got back into the city, something, I realized, that had needed doing for many years.

I locked the front door behind me, but stopped in my tracks as I noticed Sarah’s Subaru—almost everyone in Vermont, it seemed, drove a Subaru—kicking up clouds of dirt as it flew up the driveway towards me. My heart jumped into my throat because Sarah, Paul, Ruben, and I had said our goodbyes after dinner the night before. I couldn’t imagine what reason she could have for rushing to see me like this. I couldn’t imagine it was for anything good. I heard my mom’s ghost whispering to me,
When things are good, watch out
. And when I saw the look on Sarah’s face as she got out of her car, I heard my mother’s ghost clap her hands together and laugh with joy at being right.

“What is it, kiddo? What’s wrong?”

Sarah handed me her cell phone. “Some guy named Vincent Brock called and left a message with my service. He says it’s urgent that you call him. Something about a guy named Rizzo.”

“Anthony Rizzo,” I mumbled to myself, screwing up my face.

“What is it, Dad?”

“Anthony Rizzo,” I repeated, louder this time. “He used to be the doorman at Siob—at Sloane Cantor’s building.”

“Well, I thought you ought to know. Here, call him.” She handed me the phone. “I wrote down his number if you need it.”

“That’s okay, I’ve got it.”

I took his card out of my wallet and tapped in the number. Vincent picked up after one ring.

“Yeah, Prager, Jesus, where have you been? I’ve had to turn over your family tree to find you.”

“You know where I am. I’m in Vermont. What’s so—”

“The Nassau County cops found Anthony Rizzo’s car yesterday.”

“This is why you tracked me down and frightened my daughter, to tell me that the Nassau—”

“They also found him.”

“And ….”

“They found him in his car in the trunk.”

“Dead?”

“Very dead. His head was smashed in like a grapefruit dropped off the Empire State Building.”

“Nice image.”

“What do you think it means?” Vincent wanted to know.

“I don’t know, but I don’t like it.”

“You say that a lot.”

“What?”

“
I don’t like it.
You say that a lot.”

“I’ll remember that. I don’t know what Rizzo getting his head bashed in means. You met him. He was the type of guy who was good at pissing people off. Maybe he pissed someone off past the breaking point.”

“Well, duh.”

“Vincent, do me a favor, don’t bust my balls. I’m not the schmuck who drives around in a neon car with vanity plates that scream ‘Hey, look at me’ or can’t find his own dick in the dark. I’m sure you’re good at what you do, but you’re not good at what I do. I’ll check in with you when I get back into New York.”

“That’s big of you, asshole.” His voice cracked with anger.

“Who knows? I mean, about the doorman?”

“I had to tell Cantor.”

“His ex, does she know?”

“No clue.”

“Shit!”

I clicked off and handed the phone back to Sarah.

“Do you always talk to people like that?” she asked, smiling, yet a little bit horrified.

“Only when they deserve it, and even then, not always.”

“Is it trouble?”

“Murder is always trouble for somebody, kiddo. I just don’t know if it’s my trouble. I gotta get going.”

I hugged Sarah tight and kissed her forehead. Then I turned and looked at Pam’s house and wondered if I could really ever call it home.

Nancy had left a few messages, but none were about Rizzo. She was mostly just curious about when I was getting back and if I had seen Sloane’s recent posts. There was an odd kind of glee in her voice that seemed disconnected from the question, but I didn’t turn myself inside out trying to make sense of it. I would be seeing her soon enough. Most of the messages were from Julian Cantor and his tone of voice was pretty far removed from gleeful. Mostly he was gruff, alternating between rude and frantic. He wondered if I’d seen what his daughter had been up to. Wondered what I thought about Rizzo’s murder. Wondered why the hell I wasn’t calling him back. Urged me to call him back. Demanded that I call him back. Threatened me that I’d better call him back.

Listening to cell messages after being out of the loop for a few days was like reading through your mail after returning from vacation. Neither was much fun, and both reminded you that all respites were temporary. But before I dealt with Cantor, I had to check in with Frovarp and Shulze to make sure they knew that I hadn’t been screwing them around. I got Shulze on the line. He didn’t even bother giving me a hard time. He assured me they knew all about Rizzo being dead, and Shulze actually sounded as if he believed me when I explained that I’d been out of town. When I asked him if he thought Rizzo’s homicide had any larger implications, Shulze laughed that goofy, malevolent laugh of his and said he would have to look up the word
implications
in the dictionary. Of course he couldn’t let me go without a little bit of unpleasantness, making sure to threaten me if I didn’t alert him to anything new that I might hear in connection with Rizzo’s murder. Everyone seemed intent on threatening me.

I put in a call to a Nassau County detective I’d met about six years back when the art prodigy Sashi Bluntstone had been kidnapped from near her home in Sea Cliff, Long Island. Detective Jordan McKenna and I weren’t exactly close, but we’d found Sashi alive and mostly intact. That had made him look pretty good in the eyes of the brass and, like with Fuqua, had earned him a promotion and a medal. So I was more than a little disappointed to hear that McKenna had chosen to take a week’s vacation.

“Prager, P-r-a-g-e-r,” the guy repeated as he took down the message. “Hey, wait, I know that name. Aren’t you the old guy who dived in the fucking canal in Babylon to save that Bluntstone girl? Man, it took some pair of balls to jump in that water in the middle of winter.”

It’s not quite how I would have described myself. “Yeah, that was me—Old Frozen Nuts Prager.”

He liked that. “Sure. We met at McKenna’s promotion party. I’m McKenna’s partner, Mike … Mike Bursaw.”

“Right. Right. Mystery Mike.”

“That’s me. Shit, you remember that, huh? I’m impressed. I couldn’t remember which way was up the next day, I was so hammered.”

“Listen, Detective Bursaw—”

“Call me Mike, okay?”

“Okay. Listen, Mike, I heard that your uniforms found a guy from the city stuffed in his car trunk yesterday.”

“We did indeed. Hold on a second.” I could hear him tapping on a keyboard. “Yeah, here it is. The vic’s name was Anthony—”

“Rizzo.”

“You knew him?”

“Sort of. Listen, Mike, could I buy you a drink tonight after your shift? I think we might be able to do each other some good.”

“How about maybe breakfast tomorrow? These days coffee suits my habits better, if you hear what I’m saying.”

“Loud and clear. You know Barb and Rob’s Pantry in Roslyn?” I asked.

“Sure. Tomorrow at 6:30.”

“See you there.”

I picked up the phone to call Cantor back, but decided to watch the last few posts from the Hollow Girl before dealing with him. Before you step into a minefield, it’s good to know what kinds of mines were buried there. The last post I’d seen was the one I’d watched the day I showed up on Sarah’s doorstep. After that, I hadn’t been willing to let the Hollow Girl inject her particular brand of
mishegas
into my life. I was too busy enjoying my time with my own daughter’s family to allow Siobhan’s anger and pain to rob me of my pleasure.

The posts I missed were more of the same, but with a different flavor. During Sunday’s post, the Hollow Girl turned her focus away from Nancy and aimed it directly at Julian Cantor. Although Cantor’s sins were more diffuse than Nancy’s, he was portrayed by his daughter as a little man—weak, insecure, consumed by petty jealousies and vanities. She claimed that her father had married her mother only as a means to gain access to his father-in-law’s money and influence. That he was a serial cheater both in his marriage and in his law practice. This post, like the ones about Nancy’s surgeries, came with a photo display. This time, however, the photos were of Cantor’s alleged mistresses. A few, apparently, were the wives of friends and business associates. One of the photos was of Alexandra Cantor. Neither the gleeful tone in Nancy’s voice nor Julian Cantor’s frantic one were mysteries to me any longer.

I took joy in none of it. It was getting ugly, and harder to watch. Given how she had carved up Nancy and trashed her father’s reputation, the new disclaimer with the fake blood and bayonet seemed strangely appropriate. Viewing the Hollow Girl’s recent posts was like watching a slasher movie with family members as all the victims. It was bloody and vicious, and there seemed to be no thought given to collateral damage. Would any family, I wondered, have withstood this kind of perverse scrutiny? Mine surely couldn’t have. It was like that PBS show from the ’70s,
An American Family,
but this was worse because here there was only one voice, one perspective, one opinion, one knife. There was no other side of the story, no one to tell it, no defense, no rebuttal. Siobhan was determined to show the world what had made the Hollow Girl hollow.

I couldn’t help but hear Fuqua’s words in my head.
It is why the world hates us, our obsession with ourselves. The inflation of our small lives into objects of public fascination
. And with the huge number of hits these posts had gotten, it would have been hard to argue that Fuqua was wrong. The level of interest was bizarre. Then again, I’d never watched a single episode of anything labeled reality TV.
Reality TV
, now there was an oxymoron if I ever heard one. Just the fact that people knew they were being observed distorted reality. When I thought about it, I realized that the Hollow Girl had a point, too: Reality TV was nothing more than performance art.

I called Nancy on my way out to Long Island and told her I’d see her in a few hours. That seemed to placate her. She hadn’t mentioned Rizzo to me, so I didn’t mention his murder to her. That kind of issue was always best discussed face to face. Besides, I didn’t want to interfere with her schadenfreude over the treatment her ex had received at the hands of the Hollow Girl.

I wanted to believe Rizzo’s murder had no connection to Siobhan Bracken’s life, to the trashing of her apartment, to Millie McCumber’s death, to the Hollow Girl’s reincarnation as an avenging angel—that Rizzo’s demise and the rest of those other incidents were simply isolated dots connected in my mind by lines of proximity and coincidence. I argued with myself that even in a cold and random universe, things sometimes got clustered together by chance. I tried hard to make myself believe, but it was a waste of time. I couldn’t ignore what a lifetime of experience had taught me. That’s why I was going to meet with Detective Bursaw in the morning. Maybe he could convince me of what I could not convince myself, that the connection was only in my head.

The sky was overcast, the warm air heavy with moisture, and still, deathly still. The trees along the expressway seemed a little less green today, their leaves hanging inert from their stems as if holding their breath. I could not escape the sense that an invisible wind was howling, blowing through the lives of Nancy, her ex, and their daughter. Something dark, insidious, and more destructive than the sum of its parts. I thought I could almost hear it whistling as it blew through the cranky metal bones and creaky wooden beams of the old rides in Coney Island. It was a familiar song to me, not a siren’s song. Nothing so sweetly torturous as that. Not this whistling. This was a high-pitched whine of ragged edges that only old ears could hear. It’s hard to explain, but a closeness to death had increased my sensitivities to the darker frequencies.