The Genius (19 page)

Lord hear our prayer

The service concluded, and people broke off in twos and threes. I approached Samantha to offer my condolences but turned away when I saw her arguing quietly with her mother, their heads cocked forward and their hands fluttering. Mother and daughter shared the same slightly insolent mouth, the same jutting hips. The former Mrs. McGrath had an unhealthy tan, the work of someone who spends too much time on a UV bed; by comparison, Samantha’s pallor looked like the work of someone trying desperately not to look like her mother.

“Do you want to split a cab?”

Behind me stood Annie.

“There’s a reception at the house,” she said.

I told her I had hired a car. “No charge.”

“I hope not,” she said.

On the ride out I pumped her for information about the McGrath family dynamics. Many of the conclusions I’d drawn were correct: the tanned woman was in fact McGrath’s ex-wife, and the man with the walrus face her second husband. There was another wrinkle, though: walrus face was also McGrath’s former partner.

I poked around in my memory for the name on the transcript. “Gordan?” “I think his name is Jerry,” she said.

“That’s right. J. Gordan. Jerry.”

“If you say so,” she said.

“That must be a little tense.”

“You think?”

“Here I thought I was the odd man out.”

“Not by a long shot.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t think it’s very complicated. McGrath’s a workaholic. His wife is lonely. Roll credits. Although she really went for the jugular, didn’t she?”

I thought of Samantha’s sister’s speech.
I doubt that anybody here can think of him as anything other than a police officer
. Originally I’d interpreted that comment as a compliment. Now it sounded like more an indictment. That Samantha had decided to go into law enforcement seemed to me a way of siding with her father. Then why had she not spoken her farewells, made her defense?

I said to Annie, “You’re close.”

“Very.” They met, she told me, at a forensics conference, during a training session for cops and ADAs.

“We hit it off right away,” said Annie. “Like sisters.”

“Her sister—remind me of her name?”

“Juliette. She lives in North Carolina.”

“Uh-huh. Well, thank you for the inside scoop.”

“You’re interested,” said Annie.

“Interested?”

“In her.”

I laughed. “I have a girlfriend.”

“That’s too bad, she could use somebody like you.”

“Like me how.”

“Rich,” she said and started laughing.

“What makes you think I’m rich?”

“Your shoes.”

“My shoes?”

Still laughing, she shrugged.

I said, “Anyway, I thought she had a boyfriend.”

Annie gave me a strange look.

“They broke up?”

She said, “He was a firefighter.”

“Oh,” I said.

And like that we ran out of words. Both of us remembered where we had come from and where we were headed. Annie shifted around to stare out the window. I did the same. The ride took longer than I remembered.

TRAYS OF CUT FRUIT and soggy sandwiches had replaced the pill bottles on the dining-room table. Samantha was nowhere to be seen; nor could I find her sister or mother. Most people congregated around the liquor, and after Annie and I drifted off in different directions, I found myself in conversation with a thickset man with a tangle of gray curls. He shook my hand and introduced himself as Richard Soto. “You’re Lee’s guy,” he said when I told him my name.

“I guess so,” I said.

“I owe you a drink,” he said, guiding me to a sidetable stocked with bottles.

“What for.”

“For getting that bastard off my back. He used to call me up every five damn minutes until you came along. Jameson,” he said, and handed me a cup, which I held politely. “You really did him a world of good. You’re a good man. Bottoms up.”

As he threw back his shot, I quickly spilled mine into the carpet. Then I raised the cup and pretended to wince.

“The next one’ll be easier,” he said, taking my cup and unscrewing the bottle.

“What’s going to happen now?” I asked.

“What?”

“With the case. Thank you.” Again he drank and I poured out.

“Good stuff.”

“Are you going to take it over?”

Soto looked at me blankly. “What.”

“The case.”

“What about it.”

“Are you going to take it over? There’s a lot left to do. I told Annie I’d get her a list of people who had been in the apartment, but I’m having trouble getting in touch with the superintendent of the building, who seems to be on vacation. I was planning to go over there myself this week. She and I also have to go over to the storage locker, because once the lab results come back—”

As I talked, I saw Soto’s gaze slide away from me and over my shoulder, toward a group of detectives joking loudly and making toasts. He got a mean look in his eye and said, “Would you excuse me.”

I followed him over and joined the group. Jerry Gordan had the floor. Through his moustache I noticed the impetus for growing a moustache to begin with, a large mole on his upper lip. He was ruddy and sweating and talking about old times with his buddy Lee McGrath. The other cops exchanged smirks.

“Hey Jerry, you and Lee were pretty close, huh?”

“The closest.”

“All for one and one for all, eh Jerry?”

That prompted snickering. Gordan didn’t seem to notice.

“He was a good fuckin man,” he slurred.

“Hey Jerry,” said Soto. “Was he honest?”

“Oh you know it.”

“Let me hear you say it: Lee McGrath was an honest man.”

“The honestest man in Queens county, Lee McGrath.”

“You swear?”

“I sweardagod.”

“Honest enough for the both of you, isn’t that right, Jerry.”

“Sure was.”

“You bet he was. And giving, too, huh? A generous man, huh?”

Gordan laughed insensibly.

“That’s right, Jerry. He gave his all. Share and share alike, right Jerry?”

More snickering.

I didn’t like the tenor of the conversation, so I detached myself and paddled through the crowd. I intended to look at the file, to make sure it was still there and to give myself a reason for being in McGrath’s home.

The door to the back room was locked. I didn’t knock, but my rattling the knob brought a red-eyed Samantha to answer.

“Oh,” she said, wiping her face. “I didn’t know you were here.” Her body blocked the doorway, but over her I saw her sister in the La-Z-Boy, a wet towel across her forehead.

“I came with Annie,” I said. I meant it by way of explanation; she, however, heard a request for her to come out of hiding.

“That’s so sweet. It’s very sweet of you both. I’ll be out in a little bit.”

“You don’t have to come out.”

“I want to. Don’t go anywhere. Don’t leave until I come out.”

“Okay.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

“Okay. I’ll be out soon,” she said, and closed the door.

I waited in the corner, gnawing on celery and nodding at strangers. All I intended to do was give Samantha my best and head home, but after forty minutes she still hadn’t emerged, and I wandered past the group of cops, all of them by now pink and talkative. They hadn’t noticed my absence, addressing me as though I had been standing with them all along, pulling me into their circle and handing me shot glasses that I would discreetly dump into a nearby floor plant. When I had all but guaranteed its death from poisoning, I slipped away and went into the kitchen, where I found an army of women in dish gloves trying to cope with the stampede of dirty glasses.

I gave up. I left the house and walked down to the beach.

Samantha was standing barefoot by the 9/11 memorial. Her pumps lay on their sides where the concrete boardwalk met the sand. I kept my distance, watching the wind turn her hair into streamers, resisting the urge to come up behind her and hold her. Slumping to one side, her hand on her hip, she looked frail, like McGrath had been toward the end, and I had an odd fear that she was dying, too. The wind bit down hard; she shivered.

As I turned to go she noticed me and gave a little wave. I made as though to take off my shoes and she nodded. I stood beside her and together we looked at the memorial.

“I’m sorry I snuck out,” she said. “I meant to say hello, I really did.”

“It’s okay.”

“I can’t go back in there right now.”

“You don’t have to.”

The wind bit again and she trembled. I gave her my coat.

“Thank you.”

I nodded.

“Did you make any new friends?” she asked.

“We’re all going out tonight after the depressing shit gets finished.” She smiled faintly.

A silence.

“I am so
tired
.” She looked at me. “Do you know what I mean?”

“After my mother’s funeral I slept for a week. They thought something was wrong with me. They took me to the hospital.”

“I didn’t know your mother died.”

I nodded.

“How old were you?”

“Five.”

“Do you mind if I ask what she died of?”

“Breast cancer.”

“That must have been hard.”

I smiled at her. “Is this helping you?”

“It is, actually.”

“Okay.”

“Do you mind?”

“Not at all.”

“All right,” she said, but she didn’t say anything else.

I said, “Maybe you have narcolepsy.”

She smiled.

Silence. The sea fired glittering buckshot.

She said, “They were up all night with him. The cops. They had a party, like it was his birthday. I know they meant well, but they can go back to work tomorrow. I’m the one that has to deal with it after today.”

I nodded.

She pointed to the memorial. “I knew him.”

“I know.”

She looked at me.

“Annie told me,” I said.

“She did?”

I nodded.

“I wish she hadn’t done that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I’m still sorry.”

“It is what it is.”

I said nothing.

“That’s him.”

“Ian.”

She nodded, wiped her face, laughed once. “I mean, it’s kind of ridiculous. As soon as I’ve begun to deal with that… and now
this
. Come on.” She laughed again. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

I put my arm around her shoulder, and she leaned against me. We stood there until the wind turned ferocious and her feet began to go numb.

THE FEW PEOPLE THAT REMAINED were halfway into coats. Jerry Gordan had left, as had Samantha’s sister. Samantha told me to go on upstairs and wait for her there, but before I could, her mother emerged from the kitchen, grinding a dishtowel into a mug.

“Where did you go?” she asked Samantha.

“I needed air.”

“I needed
you
. Julie had to take Jerry”—she looked at me, then at Samantha, then back at me. She put on a terrible smile. “Hello. Who’re you.”

“Ethan Muller. I was a friend of Mr. McGrath’s.”

She snorted. “ ‘Mister’?”

“Mom.”

“I don’t think he’s ever been called that.”

“Mom.”

“What, sweetheart. What’s the problem.”

Samantha was staring at the ground, her fists balled.

“He must have liked when you called him that,” Samantha’s mother said to me. “He must have
loved
that. R-E-S-P-E-C-T.” At first she had seemed merely angry, but now I saw that she was very drunk. Over and over the mug started to slip from her hands, only to be caught at the last moment.

“What happened to Jerry,” said Samantha.

“Your sister had to drive him to the emergency room. Don’t look like that, he’s fine. He needs some stitches.”

“What happened.”

“One of your father’s shithead friends”—she stopped again, looked at me, seeming to appraise whether what she had to say could harm my tender ears—“what the hey, we’re all friends here, aren’t we.”

I nodded cautiously.

“Richard hit him,” she said. “He cold-cocked him in the middle of a toast.”

“Oh my God.”

“I threw them out, the bunch of fucking apes. They split his lip open. I needed you. Where did you go.”

“I told you. I went out for a walk.”

Her mother stared at her, reloading; then she turned abruptly toward me and smiled. “And what’s your story?”

“I’m an art dealer.”

“Well la-dee-dah. I didn’t know Lee was into that. Excuse me,
Mr
. McGrath.”

“I was helping him look into an old case,” I said.

That set Samantha’s mother off; she laughed and laughed. “Really,” she said. “Which one would that be.”

“Mom.”

“It’s just a
question
, Samantha.”

“Why don’t you go upstairs?” Samantha said to me.

“Actually, I think I’m going to go home—”

“Oh, Lee. All the way til the end. Oh, Christ, what a joke.”

“Can I talk to you for a minute, Mom.” Samantha yanked her mother into the kitchen. I vacillated, then went quietly upstairs.

In all my time at McGrath’s, I’d never been upstairs, and on the second floor I faced two options, a yellow-and-brown master bedroom still filled with signs of illness: a cane, a bucket for vomit. The other room had wood-blocks glued to the door.

Inside I found a bunk bed with matching comforters, pilled and smelling of dust. Girlish stickers adorned the bedframe. On the floor was a duffel bag emblazoned with the logo of the Queens County District Attorney’s office, half open and spilling out hastily crammed clothes, a stick of deodorant, a running shoe.

Downstairs I heard yelling.

I looked through the books on the desk.
A Wrinkle in Time. The Catcher in the Rye. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
. Julie had
friendz forever
, according to the picture frame. Samantha’s paper number from the 1998 New York City Marathon hung on a corkboard.

The yelling crescendoed. A door slammed.

A few minutes later Samantha entered and closed the door behind her.