Palindrome

by E. Z. Rinsky

  “It will be alright, Frank,” he assures me.

  My mind is somewhere else. Still down there behind that freezer door. Those bodies. I close my eyes. Try to go to my happy place, realize I’m not sure such a place exists. Distantly, I perceive Courtney cleaning up the scene outside. Covering up the hole, leaving the saw because he can’t lift it without me, slamming the trunk shut, climbing into the driver’s seat and starting the engine.

  He keeps glancing over at me every ­couple seconds, a little sympathy mixed with unbearable curiosity. Taking all the restraint he has not to press me. I rest my head in my palm, feeling damp, cold sweat on my forehead.

  “Frank?” Courtney tries.

  “Drive.”

  I zone out, maybe fall into a restless sleep for a few minutes, one that I wake up from more exhausted than I was before. I see those open, unseeing eyes, eyebrows kissed with frost.

  “Pull over,” I say. We’re about twenty minutes south of the cabin.

  Without hesitation, Courtney pulls onto the shoulder of the empty road. Technically a one-­lane highway, but there’s no traffic in either direction. Car clock reads 1:30. We sit quietly for a moment, the only sound between us the patient ticking of the van’s turn signal.

  “What’s up?” Courtney asks.

  My stomach coils into a knot as I reach into my jacket pocket for the plastic case. It’s still there; I note this fact without emotion. I pull it out and wordlessly set it between us on the armrest.

  Courtney’s face freezes. He’s speechless. Then he looks up at me. I find I’m avoiding his gaze, as if he’ll be able to read everything in my face, and I want to spare him.

  “Frank . . .” he whispers, unable to even formulate the question.

  “The Beulah Twelve,” I choke on the words. “They put in all the cement, built a freezer down there and are all . . . dead. Frozen. In the basement.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No doubt. Wrote the same shit about not being born on the ceiling. The snake too.”

  Courtney is stunned for a moment. Gawks out the windshield, his frozen expression reminding me a little of Candy. Finally he thaws a bit.

  “And this . . .” Courtney motions in the general direction of the tape, unable to bring himself to actually touch it.

  “Dangling from the ceiling.”

  “You opened it yet?” he asks, tremor in his throat.

  I shake my head.

  Breathing hard, Courtney reaches into the back and finds a pair of latex gloves in his bag. By the dim interior light of the minivan, he carefully opens the plastic case.

  It’s just a plain, old Sony cassette. Written on it is simply:

  Kanter, 07/08

  33 Rutgers Lane.

  There are tears in his eyes. “We did it, Frank,” Courtney gasps. “Now we go get your daughter back.”

  I nod emptily. What he’s saying makes sense, but instead of feeling light, liberated, I feel only dread. Courtney picks up the tape and examines it next to the interior light.

  And then we both notice it at the same time: the minivan has a tape deck.

  Courtney licks his lips and slowly lowers the tape, his gloved hand making for the dashboard’s general direction. My hand shoots from my pocket, and I grip him hard around the wrist.

  “No,” I say.

  What was a thin smile on his long face turns down into a slight frown. He feigns surprise.

  “Frank . . . we’re detectives. This is what we do. Besides, we have to verify—­”

  “I’m not listening, and neither are you.”

  My grip on his skinny wrist tightens. Our eyes are locked.

  “Be reasonable—­” he starts.

  “I am,” I snap. “Look what’s happened to everyone who’s listened.”

  Courtney’s expression contorts into something between anger and intense frustration.

  “You don’t think they were already a little nuts, Frank? C’mon. It’s us. It’s just an audio recording.”

  “No it’s not. You know that.”

  Courtney blinks but doesn’t capitulate. I slowly bring my other hand to rest on the tape.

  “Give it to me, Courtney,” I say.

  “Frank, please, just think about this.”

  “What you’re holding in your hands is my daughter’s life,” I growl. “Give it to me.”

  His nostrils flare. “What if I refuse?”

  I shake my head slowly. “Don’t refuse, Court.”

  He bites his lip, then finally releases his grasp on the tape. Relieved, I take it and put it back in the case, put the case in my pocket.

  “I’ll hold onto this,” I say, glaring at him warily. “We’re never going to hear what’s on this tape. Come to terms with that right now.”

  “I . . .” Courtney sighs exasperatedly. “Maybe, you know—­”

  “Never,” I say, hoping I’m exuding more finality than I really believe.

  Courtney shakes his head, flicks off the wholly unnecessary turn signal, and turns back onto the road.

  “Pull into the first motel we pass,” I say quietly. We don’t talk the rest of the ride.

  I CALL HELEN from the motel and leave a message, want to make sure she’s still holding off on the old manhunt. Tell her I got what I was looking for. Then I sleep around a half hour before waking up in a cold sweat. First thing I do is check the pockets of the pants I’m sleeping in for the tape. Still there. Check the bedside clock: 3:30. I have to sleep. One of us has to drive us back to the city tomorrow, and I don’t know about Courtney, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable taking a tricycle around the block in my current state.

  I listen for a moment and am pretty sure I hear Courtney emitting sleeplike breathing patterns. Thank God. He can drive.

  I lie flat on top of the sweat-­stained motel blanket. Can’t remember the last time I showered. There’s really no good excuse for that.

  My eyelids are both twitching, and my vision is watery. Hard to imagine my body feeling any worse than it does right now. What if I’m dying? I laugh silently to myself. That would be fucking poetic.

  I wonder if the tape in my pocket still works. Must have been hanging there for years, with cold air blowing on it. It was in a case though. And is cold even bad for film—­or tape—­whatever that black stuff is called? If it still works, it’s entirely conceivable that I have $350K tucked about three inches away from my sweaty, unwashed balls.

  So what does it say? What could it possibly say that would drive twelve men to kill a child, and then themselves?

  Eleven. There were only eleven down there.

  Which actually makes sense.

  One had to close the door, seal them in with cement, and then turn on the generator. That was probably the guy that ended up at Orange’s a month later. Egnaro. Little doubt that he ran off and killed himself after that rant in Orange’s office.

  Suicide. I’m the closest I’ve ever been to understanding it now. I’d give almost anything not to feel the way I feel right now. No question that feeling nothing would be an improvement.

  Better to have never been born . . .

  God, she better not have touched a hair on Sadie’s head. If she has, I won’t be able to contain myself. How do you negotiate reasonably with someone who has hurt your daughter?

  Who is she—­and why does she want the tape—­if she’s not Savannah’s sister?

  If she’s not Savannah’s sister, the whole story about speaking to Silas at the trial was probably bullshit, so how does she even know about it? Maybe she just saw that grainy video online? Because it was certainly never in her possession: Silas turned himself in with it, then sent it to Candy, then Candy’s father got it and carried it back to the cabin for what must have been a weird ­couple hours, communally freezing themselves to death.

  �
�Greta” fabricated an identity and visited Silas in prison before he sent it to Candy, which is a lot of dedication for someone who’s only seen a twenty second video clip. In fact, nothing makes sense if she’s never heard the tape herself, and knows for sure that it exists.

  Could she have heard it between when Silas killed Savannah and turned himself in ten days later?

  That seems like the only possibility.

  I think about that first dream I had of Savannah in the motel room, where she was pleading incomprehensibly. Then imagine her leading me down the mountain, stopping at the edge of the meadow and pointing. I know she has more to tell me. She has the answers to all these questions. I close my eyes and hope she’ll reappear, to guide me to the end of this. But no sleep and no Savannah. Just those eleven naked frozen figures, sitting stiff on cold cement, where I suppose they’ll remain indefinitely.

  I remembered to close the freezer door, right?

  FROSTY DAWN. COURTNEY drives. I call Helen to tell her she can expect us in a few hours. I’m relieved to hear that I preempted the manhunt. Maybe I’ll actually be able to pull this exchange off smoothly. She instructs me to meet her at her apartment on the Upper West Side and to not call Greta until we get there so that she can help me work out a swap.

  I promise to hold off, then hang up.

  It’s felt like I’ve been in a bad dream for a while now. And not a lucid one. A dream that’s carrying Courtney and me like leaves atop a white-­water creek, hurling us downstream faster than we’re able to understand what’s happening. And I certainly haven’t had the strength to resist for days. Wonder if I ever will again.

  Courtney’s face is hard, his motions at the wheel mechanical. I wonder what he’s thinking but am scared to break the silence. I glare at my phone. The thought of calling Greta twists my balls in a knot. What if she tells me it’s too late? What if she just doesn’t pick up and I never hear from her—­or Sadie—­again?

  Courtney, prescient, talks to me for the first time today, without taking his eyes off the road. “Think she’ll keep her word?”

  I sigh in falsetto, tremolo in my chest.

  “I want to say yes.” My voice sounds like a squeeze-­toy getting mauled by a puppy. “What good does Sadie do her?”

  Courtney nods. “Right,” he says metallically.

  I’m glad I can’t see what’s going on in his head right now. Bad enough I have to see what’s in my own.

  No words for another hour. I just stare at my phone, getting more and more nervous as we approach the city. Images of the woman who calls herself Greta floating in my mind’s eye. Seeing her beauty in my head is like drinking a sickeningly sweet syrup. Picture Sadie drowning in that syrup.

  Break the silence when I see the Bronx Bridge rising to our right. “Helen lives on 86th and Amsterdam,” I say.

  “Mmk.”

  “You thinking about taking me to a back alley and killing me?” I ask wearily. “Taking the tape?”

  Courtney frowns and says, “Shut up.”

  I laugh mirthlessly.

  “If I was going to kill you and take the tape, I would have just smothered you last night in the motel room. If you have a choice, you don’t kill someone in the city. I’d much rather have the Bangor, Maine PD on my tail.”

  He picks up Broadway, takes us past block after block of Bronx: auto-­repair shops, redbrick projects, kids sitting laughing on benches, pizza joints, ninety-­nine-­cent shops. Press my face against the cold window, try to reconcile faces of ­people on the street with the heavy cassette tape in my jacket pocket, the pale blue faces of the corpses sitting below the cabin.

  I do want to hear it. No doubt. If it wasn’t for Sadie, I would have popped it right in. So who exactly is saving who?

  The streets move into double digits. Projects turn to high-­rise luxury apartments. Garages turn to boutiques, Hispanic kids in beanies turn to white women in heels and waistcoats. In two and a half weeks I forgot how crowded New York is. The humanity is disgusting; thousands of maggots swarming atop the rotting corpse of this city, all trying to get their bite. Pouring from subway stops, from upscale delis, sitting in the sea of taxis around us.

  I stare down helplessly at my phone. Chest empty.

  Courtney turns off Broadway at 86th.

  Pulls into a parking garage, takes a ticket, and slides the minivan into the first available spot. Turns the ignition off and looks at me.

  “You totally trust her, right?”

  “Totally,” I say.

  “Because if you don’t, you could leave the tape here. In the car.”

  “No way,” I say and pop out the door.

  Take a sharp breath of Manhattan parking garage stink. I follow Courtney out of the garage, thinking, Let the stream do its thing. Who knows. Maybe it will lead somewhere okay. Maybe somebody up there likes me and just has a real dark sense of humor.

  My heart flutters as I ring her bell. She lives on the fourth floor of a walk-­up, and it’s embarrassing how out of breath both Courtney and I are from the steps. Haven’t been taking great care of ourselves the last week. Cut-­up ankle pulses beneath the bandage Courtney hasn’t changed for two days. It’s getting pretty rank down there. In fact—­I sniff the armpit of my Pink Floyd T-­shirt to confirm—­I’m pretty rank everywhere. I’m considering fleeing down to the drugstore to pick up some deodorant, when the door swings in.

  Helen sizes me up in an instant. The first thing she says to my face after ten years is “You look like total shit.”

  “Good to see you too,” I say.

  I don’t wait for an invitation, just limp straight past her into the apartment and collapse on a black leather couch. Rub my tender ribs. Courtney is still standing on the threshold. He extends a clammy hand to Helen, who’s staring at him with trepidation. I can’t blame her. I’ve gotten used to Courtney’s appearance, having spent nearly every waking moment with him since embarking on this thing. But objectively . . . he is pale and sickly looking, hair unkempt, long face unshaven and prickly with stubble, eyes turning yellow from sleep deprivation.

  “Helen.” I sigh. “This is my partner, Courtney Lavagnino. Courtney, allow me to introduce NYPD Detective Second Grade and former paramour, Helen Langdon.”

  Helen glares at me, gives Courtney a perfunctory handshake and forces a smile.

  “Welcome,” she says. “Come in and sit down on the couch. Gonna have to get that thing steam-­cleaned now anyways.”

  She strides into the kitchen and returns with a chair, two bottles of water and two cork coasters. Sets the coasters on the glass coffee table in front of us, the bottles on the coasters. Then she sits down facing us, hunched, with her elbows on her thighs.

  She says, “Alright. Let’s hear it.”

  Helen is still very pretty. She’s aged, obviously, but the few additional lines on her face and strings of grey hair look right on her. Some ­people were born to be middle-­aged, and it breaks my heart a little to see that Helen is one of them.

  I try to keep my emotions in check as I steal looks at her face. She never wore makeup when we were together, but now she’s wearing just a touch of blue eyeliner beneath her wide brown eyes. Her cheeks have tightened a little, as if she’s spent the better part of the last decade exasperated, but they still have that pink flush of youth I always loved. And her nose is, of course, still perfect. She has the best nose I’ve ever seen. A delicate, tender nose. After Helen, every nose I look at is just a two-­holed smelling beak. Crude, crooked.

  I pull the plastic case that contains the tape out of my jacket pocket and place it on the glass coffee table between us.

  “This is it. This is what she wants.”

  Helen raises an eyebrow. Courtney sits beside me, arms crossed, still not entirely sold on Helen’s trustworthiness. Keeps covertly glancing around the contents of Helen’s living room, as if to uncove
r hidden cameras. Looks pretty innocuous though: sparkling white floors; sleek, hypermodern lights; flat-­screen TV; every surface pristine and clear of clutter. Modern, minimalist, efficient. I can easily picture Helen laboring over every square inch with a baby wipe, like she used to do in the much smaller apartment she lived in when we dated. She’s the first to admit that she’s obsessive about cleanliness but used to argue that taking it out on her living space helped keep her anality out of the other parts of her life.

  “That’s the tape?” she says.

  “That’s it,” I reply. “Not much to look at, I know. That’s the nature of audio devices.”

  She looks first at me, then at Courtney. “What does it say?”

  “We don’t know,” Courtney responds in an exasperated drawl, rolling his eyes. “We haven’t listened.”

  “Well I could probably scrounge up a tape player some—­”

  “We’re not listening to it,” I interrupt firmly. I think I catch Courtney tightening in my peripheral vision.

  Helen looks at me, confused. “What?”

  I rub a hand through my hair—­feels thinner than I remember—­and just shake my head in response.

  Helen claps her palms to her cheeks and summons a look that under different circumstances I might interpret as semi-­flirtatious.

  “We have to listen, Frank. Otherwise you’re risking giving this woman the wrong thing. She won’t be happy about that. What is it? Evidence or something?”

  I shake my head adamantly. “It’s nothing like that. And this is the right tape. Trust me.”

  Helen gives me the once-­over, then Courtney, maybe questioning for the first time if we’re both just heroin addicts that have totally lost it. I swallow, looking at Courtney desperately scratching at his pointy chin. I rub my forehead and exhale.

  “What is this thing?” she asks. “Where did you find it?”

  I laugh to myself, shake my head. No way to not come off nuts with this whole thing.

  “I found it . . . with the Beulah Twelve.”

  She stares at me. Takes her a second to process the name, recall the details. “I—­what? What the hell are you talking about? Don’t fuck with me, Frankie.”