Innocent Monster (28 page)

“Me too.”

“A lost child of any kind is a tragedy,” she said.

That cut deep. I remembered back to Katy’s miscarriage, how it tore her up inside, how it caused the first subtle cracks in our marriage. I took a prodigious gulp of scotch. “It’s awful for everyone.”

“Except for my husband and the cunt throwing this strange little affair.”

“Jill!” Junction snapped.

“Don’t
Jill
me! You and that dried-up bitch will need your own private bank tellers now that Sashi’s dead.”

“Okay, that’s quite enough from you.” He grabbed his wife’s arm, but she pulled away from him.

“Again, Mr. Prager, a pleasure to meet you.” She sauntered off into the crowd.

“You’ll have to excuse my wife. She’s had a little too much to drink already.”

“Seemed in control of her faculties to me.”

“It’s Sashi. You see, she can’t have children,” he said with blame in his voice. It wasn’t that they couldn’t have children.
She
couldn’t have them.

“She can’t have children and you can’t keep your dick in your pants. I think I’ll take her side in this.”

“You don’t understand. Sure, she’s very beautiful, but—”

“Save the explanations for someone who gives a shit, okay? And by the way, I got some of the paintings back.”

You’ve got to love human reflex because in spite of himself and his surroundings and his wife’s commentary on his greed, Randy Junction’s eyes got big and he smiled a big wet juicy smile.
Money makes the world go around, the world go around, the world go around
... The best part was watching him struggle to wipe his face clean of joy. He just couldn’t do it and I guess he figured it wasn’t worth the effort. I wasn’t worth it.

“Try not to ejaculate right here, Randy,” I said, waving my glass at the bartender for a refill. “A double.” The bartender more than obliged.

Junction was gone before the words were out of my mouth. No doubt to hunt for Sonia Barrows-Willingham and tell her about the recovered paintings.

As I walked away from the bar, Candy looped her arm through mine and marched me into a library like the ones that I used to think existed only in movies. You know, shelf after walnut shelf of colorfully bound volumes with gilded titles on leatherbound spines. There was even a painting of a fox hunt and a big antique globe from when Ogologlu’s home country was losing its grip on a nice chunk of the world. She closed the door behind us.

“I saw you talking to Randy and Jill.”

“I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus, so what?”

“Come on, Mr.—Moe. Did you tell—”

“Not for me to tell.”

Candy exhaled for the first time since she found me. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

“Jill? Mrs. Junction? Yes, very.”

“Why would he want me when he could have her? I know that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Not even close.”

She seemed not to hear. “You don’t know about their situation. You don’t understand.”

“Funny. That’s what Randy tried to tell me.”

“And...”

“I’m not judging you, Candy, but what are you doing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Exactly. Now’s not the time to trust your decisions. You’re grieving.”

“I want my life back. I want a life where I can have some joy. Do you know what it’s been like being a slave to my own daughter? To be an adjunct, a second thought, to have my needs be the last rung on the ladder? Everything I’ve done since the day Sashi first picked up a brush has been about her career.”

“Well, you’re free now.”

“That’s right,” she said, stepping uncomfortably close to me. “I can do whatever I want.” And before I could react, she kissed me on the mouth, and with intent.

“Stop that!” I pushed her away hard and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

Candy made to slap my face, but I grabbed her hand before she even came close. When she calmed down, she said, “Why did you do that, push me away like that? I’ve wanted to kiss you like that since I was fourteen.”

“Well, you’re not fourteen anymore, but you are acting like someone who wants to be punished. Try and remember that today is about Sashi. Let yourself feel the grief and the guilt if you have to, but don’t look to me for answers. I don’t have the ones you want.”

She was sobbing now, quietly, into the palms of her hands. Grief does stupid things to people. I knew firsthand about that. I’d done my share of acting out too. If I’d made Candy take note of that, then good, I was glad. If I’d just hurt her feelings... Well, it was a day for hurt feelings.

“I’ve got three of the paintings back.”

She looked up out of her hands, her makeup smeared, but the tears turned off.

“What? How? I don’t under—”

“I did use one to bribe someone and that got me to Tierney,” I said. “I had the other three tested by an expert for authenticity.”

“But—”

“They’re in the trunk of my car. I’ve already told Junction. You guys can get them when this thing, whatever this is, is over. Right now, I need another drink.”

Actually, I felt more like I needed another shower, but a drink was the best I could do under the circumstances. I got a double on the rocks and went to find a quiet little corner for myself. Even with all the people in attendance, I thought, there were lots of quiet corners in a house that size. One of the things thwarting my quest was that there were an inordinate number of flat screens set up around the house showing endless videos of Sashi. Some of the images registered, but I mostly tried to avoid watching. Finally, I found a kind of nook on one of the staircase landings between the second and third floors. There was a small stained glass window that let in light and a pillow-covered oak bench built into the landing wall. I sat down and slowed down my drinking, trying to sip at this one. It was lovely up here and the noise from the main floor was only a quiet medley of shuffling feet and soft whispers.

“My husband used to love this spot.” It was Sonia Barrows-Willingham in all her desiccated glory. “That’s a Tiffany window there behind you.”

“Nice place,” I said, feeling the scotch.

“I understand you’ve managed to recoup certain assets, some of which are mine.”

“News travels fast around here.”

“It travels fast everywhere, Mr. Prager, or hadn’t you noticed?”

“Nah, I’m a Pony Express kinda guy myself,” I heard the scotch say.

She did that grotesque barking laugh of hers. “Where are my paintings?”

“In my car. The kids out front have my keys,” I said, reaching into my pocket for my claim check. “Give this to them and they can get them out of the trunk.”

She snatched the card out of my hand and headed back down the stairs. I waited to speak until she’d almost made it to the landing below.

“Oh, Mrs. Barrows-Willingham, I nearly forgot to mention...”

“And what would that be, Mr. Prager?”

“Next to the crate with the paintings is a copy of a report on the authenticity of the paintings that you might find a fascinating read. I’m certain the press will find it equally fascinating. It was convenient of you to invite them, by the way. Thanks. You saved me a lot of bother.”

She didn’t say a word, but about-faced and was standing back in front of me within seconds.

“That reward money was merely a token of my generosity, Moe.”

“It’s Moe now, is it?”

“If you like. As I was saying, that hundred thousand was only a tiny sampling of my generosity. I can be far far more giving. Unfortunately, I am not blessed with Candy or Jill Junction’s looks, but I find that men are more easily swayed by money in any case. Money can get you all the Jills and Candys you could ever want.”

“No sale, sorry. I don’t want them or your money. I already gave the hundred grand away.”

She didn’t flinch. “Force is also very effective and much less expensive.”

“You’re threatening me now? I don’t much like threats.”

“No one does. I believe that’s the whole point.”

I put my scotch down and reached around for my.38. I unhinged the cylinder and spun it like a wheel of fortune. “Round and round she goes...” I snapped the cylinder back in place and pantomimed shooting her. “Pow, pow, pow.”

She said nothing, but swallowed hard.

“Don’t ever threaten me again, Mrs. Barrows-Willingham. I know some people who would make what John Tierney did to Sashi a pleasant alternative to what they would do to you. And if you think I’m fucking around, try me.”

I picked up my scotch glass and left her standing there, shaking. I went downstairs to try and find a real human being. In a million years, I never thought I’d be happy to see Max, but grief and loss make for strange bedfellows. I found him in the butler’s pantry, drinking bourbon straight out of the bottle and looking even more wrecked and wretched than when we last spoke. He wasn’t crying, but he recently had been, a lot. Through all this, he was the only one who seemed fully in touch with what he’d lost. Love, even parental love, is a complicated thing, but Max’s was pure. In the end, he was the only
mensch
amongst the monsters.
Mensch,
in Yiddish, means a real man. He handed me the bottle and I took a sip.

“Tough day,” I said.

“Impossible.”

Then there came an announcement over the intercom. The circus was about to begin.

Showtime.

I got the point of last rites and wakes, funerals, and spadefuls of dirt thrown on sunken caskets. I understood funeral pyres and scattering ashes on the wind. In my middle age, I’d even come to grips with the tradition of sitting
shiva
, but what the fuck was the point of a memorial service? It was like group masturbation, a communal circle jerk. That’s what I kept thinking as speaker after speaker got up in front of the crowd and spewed polite niceties about Sashi Bluntstone. Talk about being damned with faint praise... I hadn’t known her and now I never would, but, Jesus Christ, didn’t anyone like her? The only people who had genuinely heartfelt things to say about Sashi herself were Ming, the last real friend Sashi had had; Ming’s mom, Dawn Parson; and old Ben Schare, who used to walk his dog along the beach with Sashi and Cara. All the rest of them could do was to fall over each other in praise of the kid’s work, her artistic vision and talent. Neither Candy nor Max had it in them to speak, thank goodness. I’d already done a slug of bourbon, a single, and two big double Dewars. Listening to them make a public spectacle of their grief would have pushed me over the top. McKenna was already there.

He was buzzed when we walked into the house. Now he was absolutely legless, which he proved by loudly stumbling out of the cavernous room in which the service was being held.

“Where’s the fucking bathroom in this mausoleum?” he shouted angrily at the security man who helped him to his feet and presumably the facilities.

As I stood there half listening to the moneychangers in sheep’s clothing drone on about Sashi’s brilliance, I felt like I was trapped in a made-for-TV Agatha Christie movie or a game of Clue.
Colonel Mustard in the library with a candlestick.
God knows, the setting was perfect: a country manor house. Shit, we even had the lead detective and private investigator on hand. The doubts I had about Tierney reasserted themselves and, with a push from my scotch consumption, my mind drifted off, meandering through all the scenarios I had tried to work through on my ride home from Declan Carney’s.

Yet, none of those scenarios had made any sense at the time. That, or they all led to obstacles that could not overcome logic or the facts, but I hadn’t entertained the thought that more than one or two of them—Sonia, Junction, Candy, maybe even Max—were working in concert. They all certainly had motives, whether it was greed or debt or a need for escape. It wasn’t a big leap to see how they might’ve planned a fake kidnapping that had gone terribly wrong. My guess was that McKenna and the cops had had that very same thought early on in their investigations and had clung stubbornly to it until it was too late. But even if they had all been in it together, Sashi having been killed accidentally, there was still John Tierney, the photographs, and the bones. The only link there was me. Then, just as something flashed in the corner of my mind—a vague image from the videos showing all around the house—I was roused from my trance by a loud ovation. When my eyes looked outward again, I noticed that all the assembled were looking at me as they stood and applauded.

“Yes, it is Mr. Moses Prager to whom we owe a great debt of gratitude,” said Sonia Barrows-Willingham, now at the podium. “It was through his efforts and his alone, that we learned of poor Sashi’s fate. Without his efforts on her behalf, we would all have been left to suffer endless years of torment over what had become of her.”

I don’t think I ever felt more uncomfortable in my life. My skin crawled at the perversity of the spectacle and it was all I could do not to run. I bowed my head and walked quickly out of the room. I found the bar and McKenna found me.

“Two double Dewars,” he said before I could breathe.

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough, McKenna?”

“Enough! I’ve only just begun to fight.”

“Somehow, I don’t think scotch was what John Paul Jones had in mind.”

“You like Led Zeppelin?”

“Not that John Paul Jones,” I said.

“I know, you asshole.” He slapped my back hard, a little too hard, as the barman put our drinks down and the memorial crowd began shuffling out of the big room. “So that was a nice round of applause there.”

“Nice isn’t the word I would use.”

He either hadn’t heard me or didn’t agree. “You get a hundred grand and a standing fucking O and I get to become Detective Cheese-eater and rat. IA, here I come.” He wasn’t exactly whispering as he spoke. Heads turned our way.

“Try and keep it down, okay?”

He shrugged his shoulders and put his hand over his mouth. “Yeah, we wouldn’t want people to stare.”

I didn’t think pushing back was the best strategy with McKenna in his current state. Push a drunk and he pushes back harder. This was the classic bar brawl setup: two drunks in shitty moods, one with a particularly nasty bug up his ass. Frankly, in a different setting, I might have been willing to go at it with him. I was pretty fed up with the whole situation too. I hadn’t asked for any of it: the money or the applause. Over the last three or four weeks I’d found a dead baby in its crib and seen the ugly side of things I thought I’d left behind years ago. I found love or what I thought might be love and had it walk away from me, and to top it off, my daughter was dating the son of a guy who had sold me out and tried to get me killed. A fight was just what the doctor ordered, but instead of throwing punches, we clinked glasses.