The Last Good Night (30 page)

I flinched and turned away from him.

This is what exposure feels like, I thought. True exposure, when the air itself can kill you and there is no cover to be found.

Distracted, I spilled hot coffee on my hand and cursed, bringing the flesh to my mouth to blow on. For a long while, I simply stared at the reddened skin, raw and angry.

I went to David's study to bring him his coffee, waiting quietly while he spoke on the phone to his department chairman at
the university. His voice was strained as he went over some intricacies of student grading, his face contorted with the overwhelming struggle of keeping up the façade.

“God only knows what he was thinking,” David said as he hung up the phone. “He's too polite to come right out and say anything, of course. Christ, in a way I almost wish he would. I'm just beginning to understand what it's going to be like out there. If I ever leave this apartment again, that is.” He turned angrily to me. “I didn't bargain for this,” he said.

“No.”

“It's not fair, Laura. It's not fucking fair.”

“I don't exactly love this either, you know.”

“But you wanted to be famous,” he spit out. “You courted it.”

“And you courted me,” I retorted. “Besides, I certainly didn't want this.”

“No, you thought you could have it all free of entanglements.”

“I don't consider Sophie an entanglement.”

“That's not what I meant. Never mind, Laura. Just leave, okay? Just leave me alone.”

“Please, David.”

“Go,” he said wearily. “Just go.”

I stood holding the doorknob, looking back at him. David's hands were pressed to his glistening maquette of the city's piers, squeezing the papier-mache walls between his fingers, harder and harder, until they cracked.

 

I
WENT AROUND
the apartment, making sure that all the blinds and curtains were tightly drawn.

Still, I could feel the press, with their telephoto lenses and their microphones, feel them moving in, climbing up, no longer worried about manners or professional courtesy. I wasn't the
Madonna anymore, cruelly robbed of her child. That angle was over now.

There was a new avidity to their clamoring, hungry and menacing. I had betrayed them and they would make me pay. Who did I think I was? All boundaries were gone.

Besides, they knew a good story when they came across it, its scent, its heat.

The missing baby had been all right for a few days, but with no new word, it had begun to fade.

Until this.

It would seep onto the airwaves, creep into news broadcasts and talk-jock monologues, it would smear itself onto supermarket tabloid covers and into editorials.

They owned me now.

 

I
WENT INTO
the bedroom, locked the door, and called Harraday.

“How did the papers get hold of the story?” I demanded. “Was it you?”

“No,” he answered calmly, “it wasn't.”

“Who was it then? Carelli?”

“I don't know who leaked the info on the Breezeway photo. But Laura, once they had that, it probably wasn't all that hard to get the rest. We all leave paper trails. Your immigration papers. Your official request for a name change from Social Security. It's just a matter of knowing where to look.”

“I'll bet it was Carelli. He's hated me from the very beginning.”

“It's not our job to hate you or love you, Laura. It's our job to find your daughter.”

“Well, you're not doing that very well either.”

Harraday took a deep breath. “We're doing the best we can
under the circumstances. Look, given a choice, I would not have had the papers print the story. But then again, it will be all over the country within hours. Who knows? If the kidnapping did have anything to do with the past, maybe this will flush someone out.”

“It could also flush out every lunatic from here to Kingdom Come. It's open season now.

“Yes, I realize that. We've already had to add six operators to our ‘800' tips line. Unfortunately, people seem to be dialing up just to express their opinion of you.”

I exhaled loudly. “Where's Cort?”

“They took him down to Central Booking.”

“Haven't there been any new leads?”

“Only one that we give any credence to. A woman called twenty minutes ago saying she thought she'd seen Sean McGuirre coming out of a crack house in the East Village. We sent some men down there but I haven't heard back yet.”

“You'll call me when you do?”

“Of course.”

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Nothing worth reporting.”

“It's been three days. Three days.”

“I know, Laura.”

“You don't know,” I spit out. “No one knows,” I said, dissolving into sobs.

 

D
ESPITE THE MELEE
outside, it was strangely quiet within the apartment's confines.

David stayed in his study and Flanders sat mole-like in the living room while I paced the hallway between my bedroom and Sophie's, touching her door, sometimes caressing it, but not entering.

No one from the network called. Not Carla, not Draper, not
Berkman. Not Quinn. I could imagine them huddled in their offices, coming up with a plan, with a statement, with deniability. With distance.

Of course, they could not come right out and disown me just yet.

There was no evidence of clear misconduct, after all. There was no proof.

And there was still the matter of the missing baby.

It didn't make sense strategically to be too condemning when there was an infant involved. No reason to risk turning public opinion against the corporation.

They turned it this way and that and in the end, the network did nothing at all. Nothing I could see, anyway, nothing I could hear. Not yet. It would come later, I knew, the midday press release that would say I had decided to resign from the evening news broadcast to pursue other interests.

No one from the mayor's office called, as they had been doing every day before.

No friends called to offer support, too embarrassed or too shocked.

There was suddenly no one but us.

At least those in mourning have a fact to grasp, no matter how horrific. At least they know.

But we knew nothing at all.

All we had was the snail-paced agony of seconds, minutes, hours, passing with no word.

I continued to call the precinct every half hour even though Harraday assured me he'd let me know the minute he heard something. I couldn't stop myself. It was hard not to call more than that, not to call every minute. I crossed myself again and again. I waited.

“This isn't happening,” David muttered. “This can't be happening.”

 

H
ARRADAY CALLED BACK
in the early afternoon to say that the lead about McGuirre hadn't panned out. “We'll find him, Laura,” he tried to assure me. “No one can disappear forever.”

But we both knew that wasn't true.

“By the way,” he added, “I just got back the fingerprint checks on the photo you gave us.”

“And?”

“There were three sets. Yours, Flanders's, and another pair.”

“Whose are they?”

“We don't know yet.” He paused. “But we got Pierce's up from Florida. And they're definitely not his.”

“I told you.”

He didn't answer.

We were getting no closer, we both knew that, only dancing along the perimeters bumping into no one but each other.

 

T
HE ONLY OTHER
person I spoke with that afternoon was Jerry. “My phones have been ringing off the hook,” he said. “You could have at least warned me about this.”

“I didn't know about it.”

He sighed. “Is it true?”

“Is what true?”

“All of it.”

“Yes.”

“I gotta hand it to you. You've got balls. Marta, huh?” He said the name curiously, rolling it about his mouth.

“Changing your name isn't a crime,” I replied.

“Of course not. If it was, half of Hollywood would be under arrest. To say nothing of Park Avenue.” He swallowed loudly. “I
just wanted to let you know, I've already gotten three book offers for your life story when this is all over.”

“Are you serious?”

“Completely. And so is the money. Seven figures. What do you say?”

“Jerry, my daughter is still missing.”

“I realize that. I said when this is over, didn't I? Didn't I say that, Laura? Didn't I say when this is over?”

“I've got to go, Jerry.”

“All right. I'll keep them dangling for now. It will only make them hungrier.”

“Goodbye, Jerry.”

 

D
USK FINALLY CREPT
in through the lowered blinds.

Outside, the press jumped up and down to keep warm.

When Johns came to take Flanders's place, the two detectives whispered in the foyer, no longer trying to disguise their gossip and their disdain.

David remained in his study and didn't come out until nine o'clock.

We didn't turn on the radio, or the television.

We hardly spoke.

We lay behind the carefully secured curtains of our bedroom, avoiding each other's eyes.

We were cut off now, alone inside the thousand-watt spotlight.

The only thing we could not see was Sophie.

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
we spoke little, ate nothing, and resumed waiting, picking up our hope where we had left it. But it was not the same hope we'd had before, it had been badly bruised by Cort.

Flanders returned to take up his post, listening in on the phone whenever it rang, avoiding my eyes.

In the morning's tabloids, there were continued updates about our crisis, part fact, part rumor, part absurdity. Dora had gone into hiding, and though the media had staked out her apartment in Brooklyn, no one had found her yet. There were reports that she had gone back to St. Lucia, but they were unconfirmed. Her previous employers were interviewed, as well as her sister in the Bronx. Her record as a nanny was, much to the press's chagrin, spotless. There were photos of our shuttered windows. Our wedding pictures were resurrected. They used my old name, Marta Clark, as much as possible, a weapon, a joke, a lie. We warned everyone we knew not to talk to the press, and David kept a running list of those who did and those who didn't.

Outside, life proceeded and we watched it as if from another continent. It was far away, minuscule, remote, absurd.

We did what we could. We offered a reward for information that led to the capture of the kidnapper and set up another hot line. We gave more photos of Sophie to the police.

My ritual of crossing myself three times, knocking three times, tapping my foot three times, grew ever more complicated.

When David wasn't making lists, he baked bread, pounding the dough with his fists so hard that the china in the frosted-glass cabinets shook. While it was rising in the oven, its sweet yeasty scent filling the apartment in a not entirely pleasant way, he rolled out pasta, puffing the dough through his shining hand-cranked machine and then draping the kitchen with the long and fragile strands.

Harraday called at ten that morning. The police were checking into the hundreds of tips that were pouring into the hot line from people who wanted the reward money, people who got off on simply attaching themselves to a news event, and people who genuinely wanted to help.

Sightings of Sophie came from lower Manhattan, New Jersey, Idaho, and even Israel.

“We're doing our best,” Harraday said, but even he was beginning to sound less certain, less strong. Time was the most invidious enemy of all.

David went back to the kitchen, coming out only when the chairman of his department at the university stopped by to go over substitute lecturers with him. Flanders let him in while I hid in my coffee-stained robe in the back. I did not want to see anyone. I did not want anyone to see me. Since yesterday's papers, every pair of eyes that fell on me scoured for Marta in my face, my stance, my words. Had they suspected it all along? Had they distrusted the mask? I could see them going back, back, convincing themselves that they had.

 

W
HEN THE DOORMAN
rang that afternoon to tell us a couple was downstairs, I assumed they were network emissaries sent to fire me. I didn't ask their names before telling him to send them up.

But when I opened the door, Shana and Jay were standing in the hallway, bundled in matching leather jackets, their faces reddened by the cold.

“Good Lord, where have you two been?”

Shana had tears in her blue-shadowed eyes. “We just read about it this morning.”

“Where have you been?” I asked again. “Don't you know that everyone's been looking for you?”

“Why have they been looking for us?” Jay asked warily.

“Well, first of all, Shana broke parole,” I said, irritated now. They were standing so close that their arms were touching even as they walked in. “Do you know anything about Sophie?”

Flanders stepped out of the living room and was standing beside me.

Shana and Jay stared at him nervously. “We read that she was missing,” Shana said.

“What else do you know?” Flanders asked.

“What do you mean?” Shana asked.

“Do you know where she is?” David demanded as he came forward.

“Oh man,” Jay said, turning to leave. “You think we got anything to do with that? You're fucking crazy.”

“Just one minute,” Flanders warned. “I don't think you're going anywhere just yet. What about your brother, Cort? Did you know about that?”

“What about Cort?” Shana asked.

“He tried to get a ransom from us,” David said, still not trusting them. “Thought he could make some quick money out of this. What do you know about that?”

“Fucking hell,” Shana said. “You're shitting me?”

“No,” I replied. “We are not shitting you.”

“That asshole. That fucking junkie bastard.” She looked up at me. “I'm sorry. I got nothing to do with him, but I'm sorry. I'll kill him when I see him.”

“The only place you'll see him is in Rikers,” Flanders muttered.

“You still haven't told us where you two have been,” David said.

“Virginia.”

“What on earth were you doing there?” I asked.

“We eloped,” Shana said, her eyes shining with the pride of new love, with conquest. She held up her hand for me to admire the hammered gold wedding band. Her nails, bitten and ragged, were painted an iridescent white.

I nodded numbly.

I realized that we were all still standing in the foyer. “Come in,” I said, ignoring David's scowl.

“These two are coming with me downtown to answer some questions,” Flanders said.

“I'd like to talk to Shana first,” I told him. “Shana?”

She nodded and I led her back to the kitchen, closing the door behind us.

Shana leaned against the counter, her head bent, her eyes lowered.

I studied her before I spoke. “I went to your house,” I said.

She looked up defiantly. “Why?”

“What do you mean, why? I was looking for you. I was worried.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Shana, where did you get all those clippings of me?”

She glanced away sheepishly. “I photocopied some of them from microfilm in the library. I got some from the stations. I called out-of-town newspapers. It's easy, really.”

“But why?”

“You'll laugh at me.”

“No I won't.”

“I used to want to be you.”

I rested against the butcher-block counter, waiting for her to go on.

“Not be you. But you know, be like you.” She was playing with a saucer filled with toast crumbs that someone had left behind and she brought her forefinger to her mouth and licked it. “I thought maybe it was something I could learn if I studied closely,” she said, “like arithmetic or something.”

“But why?”

“What do you mean, why? Man, look at your life. I thought you had everything.” She shrugged. “I didn't know about all this other shit. Jesus.”

There was an uncomfortable silence.

“I'm pregnant,” Shana said, brightening.

I didn't answer.

“Aren't you going to congratulate me?” she asked petulantly.

“Of course,” I responded dutifully.

“It's not a crime, you know. I love Jay, and he loves me.”

“You're very young.”

“Not too young to know what we want.”

“What you want can change.”

“But it doesn't always,” Shana said. “Does it?”

“I don't know.”

Shana rubbed her stomach unconsciously. “I'm sorry about your little girl,” she said.

When we got back to the living room, Jay and David were sitting in opposite chairs, avoiding each other's eyes while Flanders stood above them both, scowling. It was clear that no one had said a word. Jay stood up immediately and put his arm protectively about Shana's shoulder. She leaned against him and kissed him on the cheek, her eyes half-closed.

“Okay,” Flanders said. “Why don't you two just come with me and we'll talk things over at the precinct house.”

Shana looked at me with real alarm.

“I think you two had better go,” David said.

 

T
HE PRESS STOOD
ready to snap everyone entering our building, but few came. I could feel them, all of them, my friends, my bosses, in their offices and their dining rooms, distancing themselves from me.

“What do you care?” David asked. “I'd think you'd be relieved not to have to keep up the pretense anymore.”

“It wasn't a pretense,” I replied.

He looked at me, not understanding, and walked away.

When Quinn arrived unexpectedly at three, the press swarmed greedily around him, and he smiled his practiced smile. A funeral smile, used for reporting bad news. It would be in all the papers the next day. Which, of course, he knew.

David let him in.

After a polite exchange, David excused himself. Quinn and I were left alone in the living room. “Thanks for coming,” I said quietly. It had, if nothing else, been brave of him. We both knew that.

He nodded.

“Do you want any coffee?”

“No. I can't stay long.” In fact, he wouldn't even let me hang up his coat. We sat uncomfortably across from each other, without a script for this specific type of meeting.

“So you have the show back by yourself,” I said. There was an acidity in my voice that surprised even me. I was striking out blindly, striking anywhere. What, after all, can you do with an anger so overwhelming?

“It's not what I wanted,” he said calmly.

“Oh, you suddenly want me back? I don't think so.”

“I wanted a fair fight, Laura. Not this.”

I nodded. “I'm sorry.”

“You'll be back,” Quinn said.

I smiled. “I don't think so. I'm damaged goods. No matter what happens, I'll always have the stink of unwanted headlines. Scandal may be all right for Hollywood starlets, but I've never seen it help a news anchor. No, the best I can hope for is a shot on
Oprah
. Or maybe if I play my cards right, a talk show of my own.”

He laughed and I did too. It was the first time I'd heard that particular sound for as long as I could remember.

“Don't knock it,” Quinn said. “There's a lot of money to be made in that racket.”

“Where defrocked celebrities go to die.”

We smiled and then it faded. I knew that he wanted to ask me more, ask me about Xavier and Pierce, about who, precisely, had been sitting at the news desk beside him, but he didn't. We both shifted in our chairs.

“How are your girls?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Miserable, but okay. All that stuff about staying together for the sake of the children is beginning to make sense to me.” He looked away. “Unfortunately my wife and her new boyfriend don't see it quite the same way.” He laughed briefly. “My daughters are now seeing therapists three times a week. Individual therapists, family therapists, group counseling. All these experts and all three girls are still pissed off as hell. Who can blame them? Kids don't understand shit like this. All they really want is continuity. That shouldn't be so hard to give them, should it?”

“Things happen,” I said.

“Things happen,” he repeated.

“You're doing the best you can, Quinn.”

“Maybe.” He straightened his legs. “Anyway, I have to get going. I have an interview with an automobile executive who's
willing to talk anonymously about systemic lying in Detroit about pollution levels. Do you know they actually installed a device without telling anyone that lets cars emit completely illegal levels of carbon monoxide?”

“That was my idea.”

“Was it?”

“You know it was. What did you do, find my notes on my desk after I ran out the other day?”

“A good story is a good story, right?” Quinn said. “Jungle rules.”

“Jungle rules,” I muttered.

I saw him to the door.

“Laura?”

“Yes?”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“No.”

“I didn't think so.” He finished buttoning up his coat. He looked up once, embarrassed, and then he left.

 

I
LOCKED THE
door behind him and went to find David in the kitchen. The bread he had baked earlier sat neglected in the corner. The pasta was hardening on the cabinet doors. No one was hungry. He was standing with his back to me, his open palms pressed against the wooden counter as he stared out the window at the approaching dusk. “Quinn's gone,” I said. “It's safe to come out.”

David didn't move, didn't speak.

I walked up quietly behind him and ran my hand down his back.

I felt his muscles tense, and then relent just a little.

He turned slowly around and I saw the tears in his eyes.

I reached over to wipe them away but he wouldn't let me.

“David.”

He swallowed once and blotted his eyes. “I was just thinking,” he said. “Do you remember when we went to Cape May? Do you remember how scared Sophie was when I dipped her toes into the ocean the first time?”

“But she loved it by the third time.”

He smiled. “She loved it then.” He bit his lip. “All these things I wanted to do with her. All these plans.” He shook his head. “You know what I was really looking forward to? It sounds silly, but what I was really looking forward to most of all was just walking down a street holding her hand. The way fathers do.”

I fingered a lock of hair from his forehead. “I know.” I wrapped my arms around him and he held me against his chest.

“I love you,” I said quietly.

He looked at me and then away. “Not now, Laura.”

If there had been anger in his voice, perhaps it would have been easier. But there was only an endless well of sadness.

He turned back to the waning light.

I watched him for a moment, and then I left.

 

W
HEN THE TELEPHONE
rang an hour later, I picked it up dully, expecting nothing. “Hello?”