The Hollow Girl (23 page)

The other call I got was the one I hadn’t expected. It was from Siobhan’s agent, the tough old bird, Anna Carey. Her voice made me smile. I liked thinking about her there in her office, drinking and smoking, too old and stubborn to give up her job or bad habits. I used to hate stubbornness in people. Now I found that I admired it. She needed to talk to me, to see me and pronto. I had to call her back. Well, no, I didn’t, but since I was going into the city anyway, I’d add her to the list of people I meant to see while I was there.

* * *

I hadn’t been to the offices of D&D Security and Investigations, Inc. in many years. Although they now did the security for our New York City and Long Island stores, I hadn’t had much need to pay them a visit. D&D was established by two of my former employees at Prager & Melendez Investigations, the firm Carmella and I ran out of 40 Court Street in Brooklyn. When our marriage dissolved the business melted away with it. Brian Doyle—an ex-NYPD detective with great instincts and a bad tendency to take shortcuts—and Devo—Devereaux Okum, a Zen-like high-tech wizard—had set up their own shop in Lower Manhattan near the courthouses and federal buildings.

Doyle was a night owl, but Devo was there when I stepped out of the elevator into their offices. He bowed to me slightly, showing the shiny black skin atop his perfectly shaven head. Although he had put on a few pounds in the years since we’d first met, Devo was still nearly two-dimensional. And when he gestured with his willowy arm toward his office, it was more a tree branch swaying in a gentle breeze.

“Boss,” he said, nodding for me to sit in the chair across from him. Neither he nor Doyle had ever gotten out of the habit of calling me “Boss,” and I have to say I was honored by it. “What do you wish of me?”

“First, I need to tell you I’m leaving the wine business. The details have yet to be worked out between Aaron and me, but you guys have no need to worry. I’ll make sure Aaron keeps you on.”

“Are you ill again?”

“It’s not that, Devo. It’s just my time to go.”

“As you say. I will inform Brian. But this is not why you’ve come today.”

“Have you ever heard of the Hollow Girl?”

Devo’s eyes, large and hypnotic, grew wide with curiosity. His eyebrows tilted. “I have.”

I slid the envelope Nancy had given to me across his desk. “I need deep background on all the people listed there. They are all connected in one way or another to the Hollow Girl.”

The corners of his lips curled up in what passed for Devo’s broadest smile. “And by deep you mean—”

“Deep.” This was our code word for accessing things that weren’t strictly kosher to access. “Very deep. Especially those names I highlighted. I also need background on the fallout from the Hollow Girl’s 1999 Valentine’s Day post where she faked her own suicide. I did some preliminary digging, but only what I could get from a Google search. Did you see last evening’s Hollow Girl post?”

“Indeed. Disturbing.”

“To her mother, especially.”

“I can imagine so.”

“But top priority is for you to give the Full Monty to—”

He raised his hand to stop me. “What is a ‘Full Monty’?”

Sometimes I swore Devo had been abandoned on earth by a UFO. Maybe they didn’t show British movies on his home planet. I was just happy not to have to explain who the Hollow Girl was.

“It means to give it your full treatment. Do your magic,” I said. “About the posts themselves, is there anything about the set or the room or anything that gives any indication of where it was shot? Can you see who manufactures the rope? Stuff like that.”

“Go on.”

“That photograph at the Hollow Girl’s feet. I need you to see if you can identify the woman beneath the tape.”

“That would truly be magic, Boss. The tape was strategically placed to cover precisely those features that facial recognition software is designed to focus on. The photo was also placed at an angle to the camera, which makes identification more challenging. The camera, at least, was of high quality.”

“And, Devo ….”

“Yes.”

“I need it all like yesterday.”

“Do you believe the Hollow Girl is in danger?”

“Remember when you worked for me, those knots I used to get in my
kishkas
?”

“Say no more.” He stood up, shooing me out of his office.

There were no goodbyes. That was fine. Devo had work to do.

As I left Devo’s office, other employees were filtering in to work, but Brian Doyle’s office was still dark. It was comforting to know that some things never changed.

I got the sense that Giorgio Brahms would’ve been more pleased to see his bookie’s legbreaker at the door than me. I was forced to divine his displeasure from the grump in his voice because his Saran Wrap surgery had severely limited his subtlety of expression. Unhappy to see me or not, he was polite enough to let me in. Again, I was surprised by the stark contrast between the Battle of the Bulge condition of the brownstone’s exterior, and the nicely furnished and appointed front parlor.

“Coffee?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said, following him into the kitchen.

The kitchen was caught between the condition of the parlor and the brownstone’s façade. The old plaster and lath construction had been torn off two walls and taken expertly down to the studs. Some new wiring and plumbing had been started but left unfinished.

Giorgio tipped over his French press. “How do you take it?”

“Milk, no sugar.”

“Well, there is something we have in common,” he said, grumpiness still in his voice.

I didn’t take the bait, just the coffee and thanked him. Sipped. I nodded my approval. We sat at the rickety kitchen table.

“So, I suppose I have you to thank for siccing the police on me.”

I didn’t bother denying it. “I suppose you’re right. You had a connection to the guy, Giorgio. I wasn’t gonna withhold evidence from the cops for you. You sure as shit wouldn’t do it for me. But I did tell the Nassau cops I was pretty sure you had no connection to Anthony’s murder.”

“Well, I guess I should be grateful for that. Let me kiss your ring,” he said, bitchy as could be.

I waved my hands at him. “No rings. Too bad.”

“So what are you doing here?”

“Did you see Siobhan’s post last night?”

“Pardon me, but no. I have a life. I’m not some prepubescent twelve-year-old girl, sitting by her computer, glued to the fucking Internet. Why do you ask?” As he posed the question, his eyes drifted over to the stripped walls. Unconsciously, he shook his head in a kind of disgust. He had retreated into his own world and mumbled something to himself.

“What?”

“Oh, sorry. I was just thinking aloud.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I noticed, but what about?”

“Those damned walls. I hate them that way. If I knew how things were going to turn out, I wouldn’t have started the work in here.”

“Have the work finished.”

He turned his left palm up, rubbing his thumb across his other fingers. “You need money to do that and my source … forget it. Forget it. So, what do you want to know?”

I asked him some more questions about Siobhan.

No, he hadn’t seen Siobhan’s posts. No, he didn’t know where she was, nor did he care. His involvement with her had been facilitated by Millie McCumber. Yes, he confessed to wishing she had been his client and admitted that he had tried to persuade her to leave Anna Carey for him. But with Millie dead, he had lost interest in Siobhan. The more he talked about Millie, the angrier he seemed to get. He didn’t know anything about Anthony Rizzo except that he preferred catching to pitching and that the minute he orgasmed, he had his hand out for money. He didn’t know anything about any steroids or mobbed-up Russian brothers. What he did know was that he wanted me to finish my coffee and get out of his house. Even as he made that sentiment known to me, he couldn’t take his eyes off the walls.

Back in my car, I called Michael Dillman’s office. When Giorgio was talking about his lack of funds to finish the construction, an image of Dillman in his fancy office came into my head. It struck me that when I’d spoken to Dillman the first time, I’d been way too quick to take as gospel his version of events. And I was curious to hear his reaction to the Hollow Girl’s latest stunt. Me, I wasn’t much of a grudge holder. Grudges were like jealousy: They ate away at the grudge holder, not at the person you held the grudge against. On a TV show once, I heard a character say that jealousy was like you swallowing the poison, but waiting for the other person to die.
A-fuckin’-men!
But I knew I was an exception, that some people, maybe most people, just couldn’t let shit go. And as far as justification went, Dillman had plenty of it to continue to carry a grudge against the girl he’d known as Sloane Cantor. He and his family had paid a big price for the simple gesture of letting a friend use a photograph in an art project.

And seeing Brahms looking at his kitchen walls had reminded me that a copious amount of money was a great resource. That someone with a lot of money could afford to buy an expensive camera and recreate the rooms from Sloane’s old house. That if someone was holding the Hollow Girl against her will, a vacation home would come in mighty handy. That if you didn’t want to use your vacation home, then having the money to rent space would come in even handier. Then when I got the receptionist at Dillman’s firm on the line, the knot in my gut tightened so that it nearly strangled me.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Dillman has taken a leave of absence,” she said, her voice cold. “May I put you in touch with the person now handling his clients?”

Leave of absence, my ass. I may not have been a player, but I spoke the language. Michael Dillman was out on the street. You had to love Wall Street firms. No one with a title gets fired. That would make the firm look bad. Instead, they take leaves of absence or new positions elsewhere, or they just go walkabout.

“That won’t be necessary. May I please speak to Mike’s secretary?”

The receptionist did everything but offer me eternal life to try and dissuade me from speaking to Dillman’s former secretary. In the end she relented for fear of having to confess that Dillman had been shitcanned or quit. The secretary was more polite than the receptionist, but equally unwilling to discuss the truth of Dillman’s departure.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m an old friend of Mike’s from high school and I’ve been in London for many years. Do you know, is he at his vacation house?” His secretary’s momentary hesitation was answer enough.
Yes.
I pushed. “Do you know, is it the house his dad used to have in East Hampton?”

There was no hesitation this time. “I’m afraid it’s against company policy for me to give out personal information, but I would be glad to forward any messages to Mr. Dillman.”

“That’s okay.” I thanked her for her help and clicked off.

Next call was to Devo.

“Among the highlighted names, put Michael Dillman at the top of the list. I need to know if he has a second residence, a vacation house somewhere. I need to know soon, and I need to know where.”

“Got it.”

Devo was good, the best, but he really wasn’t magical. He might call me back in five minutes, or five hours, or five days. It all depended on where the vacation house was, whose name was on the deed, things like that. I decided to keep pushing forward as I had intended until I heard back from Devo. I was no good at just sitting around and waiting. Anything was better than waiting.

* * *

Anna Carey wasn’t very good at hiding her emotions. Maybe she had been when she was younger and an actress, but one of the privileges of age is impatience, and she took full advantage of it.

“I thought I told you to call me!” she barked, throwing her lit cigarette at my feet. “You want a drink?”

“Not today, thanks.”

“Well, son, fuck you, then.” She winked at me and smirked. She poured herself a few fingers of bourbon.

“Okay, I’m here. Now that you’ve told me to go fuck myself, can you tell me what’s so urgent?”

“Learn the lines right, boyo. I said fuck you. I didn’t tell you to go fuck yourself.”

“Sorry, poetic license.”

She let out a shriek of laughter, lit herself another cigarette, and sipped her bourbon. I was helpless to do anything but wait until she deigned to speak again. It was chilly and noisy in her office, due to her window being wide open, and I did a little dance, hopping from foot to foot to keep warm. Then she tossed the cigarette down onto the street and closed the window. She walked over to her desk and picked up five pink message slips.

“You want to know what’s so urgent? These!” She waved the slips in my face. “These are just the messages from the five casting directors I was too busy to talk to. She’s done it. That ugly broad is a fucking genius.”

I took the “ugly broad” as a reference to Siobhan. Even I could do simple math, and I was a licensed private investigator and everything. “What has Siobhan done, and why is she a genius?”

Anna Carey went back to her desk, put the slips down, and picked up three bound documents. She threw them at me. I caught them, though not very gracefully. My knees were for shit, but I always had good hands and reflexes.

“Scripts. Three scripts messengered over this morning alone. They were waiting out front when I got in. Leading roles, Prager. Leading fucking roles. That bit last night with the blood and the ropes did it.” Anna grabbed her right breast. “I tried every trick in my book to get that gal a role she deserved and I came up dry as an eighty-year-old—”

“I get the picture. Trust me, I get the picture.”

“And so will Siobhan Bracken get a picture, or a Broadway play or a TV series, if you can find her. Now get your ass outta here and find that girl. She’s gonna be rich and famous. Me, I’m gonna take my money and pay old Giorgio Brahms to spend a week with me in Cabo. I’ll ride that dumb, talentless shit halfway to Texas.”

There was an image I could have really done without. I put the scripts down on her desk and left. As I got in my car and headed out to New Jersey, I tried not to think of the perversity of a world in which being bound by ropes and made to bleed was considered a breakout performance.