Palindrome (24 page)

Courtney's scratching his cheeks frantically, intuiting things going south.

Another brooding silence on the other end. I dance back and forth to get some blood going in my legs.
Jesus. Please say something, anything.
Terrified curiosity on Courtney's face.

Her sudden baritone cuts deep and makes the skin on the back of my neck tingle.

“Your daughter, Sadie, attends P.S. 134 on the Lower East Side, on East Broadway. She carries a blue lunch box with horses on it. She was dropped off outside the school this morning, but if you call the school, you'll confirm that she was marked absent today.”

It takes me a second to process this, and then the ground falls out from under me. I stagger to a freezing metal railing and throw my weight against it.

“Is . . .” I gasp. “How dare you,” I whisper. “How dare—­”

“I haven't hurt her. You have until Sunday evening to get me the tape,” she says. “Don't call the police. Don't come back to the city without it. If you do either, I'll kill her. Don't do anything stupid, Lamb. Bring me the tape and this all goes away.”

“You're lying,” I wheeze. “You don't know—­”

“500 Grand Street, apartment 3B. That's where she was staying. She has a little discoloration on the big toe on her right foot. She said it's from when you dropped a couch on her foot. Don't call me until you have the tape.”

She hangs up.

“Frank? Frank!”

I'm on my knees, Courtney standing over me. It takes me a moment to remember who, where I am. I feel like I just got kicked hard in the stomach.

“Frank, what the hell just happened?”

“She . . .” Hot tears running down my cheeks. “She has Sadie.”

Courtney looks like he was just stung with a cattle prod. His face frozen mid-­gasp.

“What?” He can hardly speak. “What do you mean she has Sadie?”

I hear my mouth talking, but I'm somewhere else. Somewhere very dark.

“She says she got her on the way to school. We have a week to get her the tape.”

“Oh no.” Courtney shakes his head. “Oh no. Oh god. Oh no.”

“How did I let this happen?” Blood pumps through my temples. Nonsensical scenes of violence flash then disappear in my mind's eye.

“Okay, okay.” Courtney is trying to calm himself down. “Give me your phone, I'll call the family she was staying with, have them check with the school. If she's really missing, we'll go straight to Denver to fly back, I'll call some old cop friends—­”

“She said not to call the cops,” I say. “Said not to come back to the city without the tape. She means it. You can hear it in her voice. She'll do anything for this thing. It's all that matters to her.”

“Just give me your phone, Frank. You're not thinking straight—­”

“You're not calling the fucking cops,” I snap. “She means it.”

An older ­couple leaving the Ritz stares at us, me on my knees spitting out phlegm, Courtney tugging anxiously on his thin hair.

“I'll call the Feinsods in a sec,” I say.

I roll onto my side. An emptiness in my stomach, a black hole sucking all feeling out of me, leaving only dread. I pull my knees to my chest, shivering, body quaking, convulsing, my ribs hurting each time I breathe. Through the railing of the porch fence I see Candy, unmoving. Those dead eyes. She can see, but she can't process anything. It must be like staring into bright light all the time. I envy that. My eyes flit to the broken window of the attic above her. I think there are indeed moments so painful that it would have been better to have never been born.

A
N HOUR LATER,
sitting on my hotel bed, blanket pulled over my head,
actual
double shot in hand, second of the day. Popped three aspirin too. Eyes puffy. Throat raw. I barely managed to keep it together long enough to tell Tammy Feinsod that there was a family emergency, and Sadie's aunt picked her up from school. That she'd come back next week to pick up her stuff.

Keep thinking about this time a ­couple years ago when Sadie and I were in some park on the Lower East Side, and she tripped, and I heard a horrible crack as her head collided with the cement. She was fine, as little kids usually are, but in that split second when she was on the ground I felt something I'd never felt before. It was the most awful feeling of helplessness, so potent that it actually manifested itself physically—­as a burning pain in my stomach and groin. A million times worse than actually getting hurt myself.

I hear Courtney enter, gently close the door, sit down on his bed across from me.

I rip off the blanket and with my eyes ask him the only question there is to ask.

Courtney bites his lip. “She's not at school.”

I shoot down the rest of the shot and pull the blanket back over my head.

“If Greta touches her,” I say, “I'll kill her. I mean it. I'll kill her.”

Courtney touches my knee. “I won't pretend to know how this feels, Frank.”

“I actually appreciate that.”

Courtney rips the blanket off my head. His face is way too close to mine.

“I'm gonna help you with this.”

I nod, tight-­lipped. “Thanks.”

“So.” I can smell Courtney's breath. Better than most; I attribute it to tea over coffee. “So what are we gonna do, Frank? Your call. You say we don't call the cops, we don't call the cops.”

I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. “I don't know.”

“Well, I'll tell you the first thing you need to do,” Courtney says evenly. “You need to stop getting drunk. That's not helping anything.”

I return his level gaze.

“Fine,” I say, dropping the empty glass onto the floor.

“Okay then.” Courtney nods, satisfied. Sits back down across from me. “This is hard to hear, but emotion is the enemy right now. We need to be logical. Patient, thoughtful and subtle.”

These are mantras I could get behind right about now. Easier said than done.

“First, we need to find out who we're really dealing with here,” I say. “Who knows how much of what she told us is lies? One thing is for sure”—­I swallow—­“she definitely lied about why she wants the tape. And maybe if we can figure out the real reason, we'll be able to get inside her head.”

Courtney expresses approval with a puffed-­out lower lip. “Sounds good.”

“Give me my phone back,” I say. Courtney obliges, though he gives me a wary look, like
you're not going to do anything stupid, are you?

I ignore him and dial Helen Langdon.

Please pick up . . . Please . . .

Five rings. Then my prayers are answered.

“Helen Langdon,” she answers.

“Helen.” The relief in my voice must be tangible; I'm vaguely aware of how crazed I sound. “Listen, it's Frank again. Please don't hang up. I'm begging you.”

An eternal silence.

“Frank. I'm at work. What do you want?”

“Helen,” I say. “I'm in deep. Real deep. And I really need you to run a way wider check on that woman. Greta Kanter. I need the real shit. Credit card and phone bills, all associations from the last five yea—­”

“Christ, Frank. Settle down. What the hell is going on?”

I'm trying not to sound too hysterical. I can't tell her. If I tell her, she'll be legally obliged to start the manhunt, and if Greta gets a whiff of that, she'll kill my daughter. I know it. I could hear it in her voice.

“I made a big mistake, that's the bottom line. I fucked everything up, and now . . .” I lose it, choking on sobs. “And I need to know about her.”

“Frank, get a grip. What the hell is going on?”

I bite my lip. “I can't tell you. I can't get the cops or feds involved.”

Helen kind of half laughs. “A criminal told you not to call the cops? Buddy, that's what they all say. What is this, blackmail? Kidnapping? You can't—­”

“Helen, I heard it in her voice. I know she means it.
I know.
I feel like I'm risking so much even by telling you.”

Another deep breath.

“Her? This Greta woman is the perp?”

Goddamn it. I've said way too much. Or maybe Helen is just way too sharp.

“I know what I'm asking you to do is illegal without a warrant,” I say. “I'm begging you. I need your help.” I sigh and pull out my last card. “It's my daughter.”

Dead air.

“I have a daughter now. It's just me.”

Heart in my throat.

“Oh, Frank . . .” Helen finally says, whispering into the phone. “You have to tell me what the hell is going on. This is serious.”

“I
know
it's fucking
serious,
” I pant, then force myself to take it down a notch. Courtney can hardly contain himself. “Helen, just trust me. I know what I'm dealing with here. She's been ahead of me at every step. And if she finds out I've involved the NYPD, she has nothing to lose. She's not stupid, she just doesn't care.”

The mother of all sighs.

“Did she give you a deadline?”

“Sunday.”

Dead air. She must be chewing the hell out of her pen.

“Okay, listen. How about this: You know that most manhunts resolve in forty-­eight hours or don't resolve at all. I'll try to find you what you want, and then you get until Thursday at midnight. It's now Monday afternoon, so that's close to fifty-­fifty. If you haven't figured out whatever you need to by then though, I'm taking over, okay? You'll tell me everything you know, and I'll go after your daughter, doing my best to keep it quiet. Deal?”

I click my tongue idly. I'm finding it a little tough to actually think anything over right now.

“Okay,” I say.

“Give me until tonight to dig into this. I'll wait for most of the office to clear out.”

Tears of relief. “Thank you. Thank you so much. You don't even—­”

“It's fine. And Frank? I'm sorry this is happening to you, okay? Really. I'm sorry.”

I hang up with shaky hands. I can taste cold salt on my lips.

“She'll help?” Courtney asks.

I nod.

“Good.”

I stand up and wipe the tears away. Take a few deep breaths, try to focus on standing up straight.

“That was the easy part,” I say. “Now we have to find that fucking tape.”

W
E SPEND THE
rest of the day trying to suck any droplet of knowledge about the Beulah Twelve out of this town, talking to everyone in sight. Anyone who's willing.

Helen calls that night, says she needs another night to get me the info, there's a lot to comb through. I guess that's good?

So the next day—­Tuesday—­I roll out of bed after a largely sleepless night in the zone. Determined not to waste a moment of time. Sadie's time. I don't dare call Greta until I can leave her the message I need to: We have it.

After forcing down some coffee and fruit, we cross the street and convince Ms. Anderson to let us go through Candy's old room, which is off that cramped hallway, past the closet with the men's clothing.

It appears to be untouched since being scoped by the cops the night after the accident; Candy now sleeps across the hall in a criblike thing beside Ms. Anderson's bed. It's weird to see how Candy decorated her room, because that person is essentially dead, replaced by whatever she is now. Posters of heavy metal bands hang on the brick walls (brick for interior walls?), and there's a little vanity with mirror and half-­filled tubes of nail polish and lipstick, clothes stuffed in the dresser that are mostly black. No windows in here, and the ceiling—­painted gloomy grey—­isn't level; instead it slants, so that when you walk into the room you have to duck, but back by the closet I can't touch the ceiling even if I jump.

Courtney insists that I not interfere while he probes every corner, wearing latex gloves and the kind of binocular-­like eyewear that dentists sometimes use, complete with a built-­in light.

“No offense, Frank,” he says, dusting the top of the dresser—­for prints? “I just have a method.”

“Fine by me.” I sit on Candy's bare mattress and watch Courtney slave away. “What are you looking for?”

“Heh. Well, wouldn't mind finding the tape in here, for starters.”

My eyelids are heavy from exhaustion. Courtney's method seems about as scientific as dowsing for water. He brushes areas and just stares at them.

“What are you doing?” I ask blearily. “Cops already turned the place over. Probably already wiped away prints.”

“Ah.” Courtney turns to me and grins, the weird illuminated binocular glasses and long, eager fingers making him look like a giant insect. “Indeed. I'm not looking for prints. ­People leave other indications when they touch areas more frequently than others. Oils, extremely fine erosion . . . classic example is a numerical keypad. Always easy to figure out which numbers are being pushed most often, and sometimes you can even figure out the order by the direction of the oil swirls.”

I leave the house to start canvassing neighbors, asking about the night Candy was hurt and the boy who was killed. When I return two hours later, Courtney has finally worked his way around the room to the brick wall behind the bed.

The metal posters are rolled up on the floor, and he's inspecting the wall brick by brick, brushing and examining with the utmost care. I stand off to the side, not wanting to disturb him for a few minutes. Then he leans away from the wall and takes off his goggles.

“Find anything?” he asks.

“There's one woman who said she'd talk to me, said to come back tonight. You find anything?”

“There's one brick . . .” Courtney searches, then points to a red brick near the head of the bed, where he made a tiny scratch with chalk. “I thought I saw some buildup. Was waiting for you to come back to check it out.”