Long Gone

by Alafair Burke

  “ITH. Didn’t your father win an Academy Award for a film called In the Heavens?”

  These questions were taking them into subject areas she never imagined. She knew Danes was wrong. Her father wouldn’t start a business and hire a man to draw her into it, just to force his help upon her. Would he? And even if he would, how did that explain Drew’s death? Or these questions about a missing girl in Jersey?

  “I’m sorry, Detective. I don’t think I can help you any more.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying I don’t want to talk to you any more outside the presence of counsel.” She pictured Jeff, and then heard her father’s voice once again. It’s not about book smarts. It’s about stature. It’s about the ability to read a situation. To know what to say and how and when to say it. “My lawyer’s name is Arthur Cronin. Please call him if you need to discuss anything further with me.”

  “Cronin, huh? That’s with a C, right?”

  She had already thrown back two fingers of scotch when the phone rang. She let it go to her machine. “Miss Humphrey. It’s Robert Atkinson again, with Empire Media? I’d really like to talk to you—”

  She picked up the phone and screamed over the screech of her machine. “Please stop calling me. I don’t want to talk to you. If you call my home again, I’ll seek a restraining order.”

  She slammed the phone back onto the cradle as her cell phone began to chime. She was tempted to hurl it across the apartment, but checked the screen to see it was Jeff.

  “Hi.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. I finally filled my dad in on everything, then went to Bikram. I’m a little wiped out, is all.” She wasn’t ready to talk to anyone yet about Danes’s theory of her father’s involvement.

  “I did some digging around with the corporate filings for ITH. I still don’t have an actual person who’s pulling the strings, but I did manage to get the name of the attorney who handled the incorporation.”

  “That’s good, right?” She felt the panic beginning to subside. ITH could mean anything. Her father had made seventeen films in his career. The matchup of the letters was just a coincidence.

  “Hopefully. The papers were filed in 1985, which I guess would make sense if this is an older guy who’s been using this corporation for other projects over the years. I thought I’d give the lawyer a call and see if I can get some basic information as a professional courtesy. His name’s Arthur Cronin. His office was closed for the day, but I’ll give him a ring first thing in the morning.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Alice tried to make herself small inside the tiny alcove at the entrance of her brother’s apartment building. In that day’s street-shopping session with Lily, she’d finally replaced her missing gloves. She’d even purchased a fake fur hat while she was at it, but no amount of bundling was sufficient to protect her from the Icelandic winds pouring up Mott.

  Unlike her rental in the East Village, Ben’s Nolita apartment was a condo, purchased in her parents’ names at the top of the market about five years earlier. It had eleven-foot ceilings and thirteen hundred unencumbered, lofted square feet. He paid utilities and maintenance. Supposedly.

  She pressed her index finger against the buzzer for the fifth floor, this time holding it down for a complete four seconds before breaking into a staccato rhythm of “ah, ah, ah, ah, staying alive, staying alive.”

  A pack of four girls stumbling up the street in platform wedges and miniskirts barely attempted to mask their giggles. “Sometimes he’s just not that into you,” one of them said, giggling, after they had passed.

  “Gross! He’s my idiot brother, not that it’s your business. And put some frickin’ clothes on. It’s fifteen degrees out. You look ridiculous.”

  More giggles. Jesus, she was turning into one of those crazy old New York women who yell at strangers on the street. She leaned on Ben’s buzzer again until she heard his voice over the intercom.

  “I told you, just a second, okay? I was in the shower.”

  She had tried calling her father as soon as Jeff had dropped the bombshell about Arthur Cronin filing the incorporation papers for ITH. Jeff wasn’t familiar with the attorney’s name, but Alice certainly was. The phone at her parents’ townhouse rang for two straight minutes without an answer, and her father’s cell went directly to voice mail. When she tried the house in Bedford, her mother said her father had flown to Miami to scout locations for his next film.

  Alice got the impression that her mother still didn’t know about Drew Campbell’s murder or its aftermath. She had never followed current events that were not related to culture or entertainment, and apparently her husband hadn’t felt the need to fill her in on her daughter’s current crisis. Alice had said nothing to change the situation, simply asking her mother whether she knew about a corporation her father might have used called ITH. Her mother did not, but said she would try to ask her father about it.

  In the meantime, Alice had questions for Ben.

  She gave a perfunctory tap before opening his unlocked door. She found him in the living room fully clothed. His hair was dry. The apartment was not particularly tidy. He had some reason for keeping her waiting in the cold. She looked into his face, searching for signs of drug use, but she’d never been good at detecting such things. Or maybe he’d always been good at hiding them.

  “I need to ask you something, Ben, and I need you to be totally honest with me. Do you know anything about ITH Corporation? Specifically, I mean any connection between it and Dad.” She told him what she had learned from Jeff about Arthur Cronin being the attorney who filed the initial documents for incorporation. “The police must also know about Art’s involvement, because they were asking me whether Dad might be connected to the gallery.”

  Ben shook his head. “I told you, Alice, I don’t know anything about it.”

  “But you acted weird the other night when I mentioned the company, and now it turns out Art was involved.”

  “I wasn’t acting weird. God, not this again. What would Dad have to do with that gallery anyway?”

  “I have no idea. That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I’m starting to wonder whether there’s anything our father isn’t capable of.”

  “Jesus, Alice. It’s been a year. Mom’s not going anywhere. She seems fine with him. You’ve got to start forgiving him, too. Lighten up.”

  “I thought you said my independence was contagious. You didn’t even call them when you got busted, and now you’re defending them?”

  “I didn’t call them because I don’t want them to freak out and worry.”

  She plopped herself down on his oversize sectional sofa and threw her feet onto the ottoman. “It doesn’t piss you off that he spent all those years telling us to ignore tabloid lies? It was all true, Ben. All those years. All those women. It’s embarrassing.”

  “Of course I’m pissed. And, yeah, that’s part of why I’m not really down with them right now either. But with me, it’s temporary. So the man’s not perfect. He loves Mom. He loves us. He’s just—you know, he’s fucked up and has his baggage, like everyone else. Did it ever dawn on you that maybe he and Mom had an understanding?”

  “Oh, gross.”

  “Don’t be so provincial, as they’d likely say. They’ve always been a little weird.”

  They both knew that her parents’ nontraditional approach to marriage had rubbed off more on Ben than on her. She’d been so eager to have a stable, regular marriage that she had dashed down the aisle with someone who proved to be entirely wrong for her. Ben, on the other hand, had been engaged twice to two wonderful women, who both eventually left when they realized he would never be able to live his life around anyone but himself.

  “I’m sorry. I’m not ready to forgive him.”

  “Will you ever be?”

  “I don’t know. Why are we talking about this?”

  “Sorry. I guess I want to see things back to normal with you guys. You’ve always
been able to be my sister, even when I was sticking anything I could find in my arm. I wish you’d show the same tolerance with Dad.”

  “I can tell you one thing: if it turns out he had anything to do with this gallery and kept it from me, even after all that has happened, I’m done with him. I will never talk to him again.”

  “Well, hopefully that won’t be the case, then.”

  She pushed her fingers through her hair. “Fuck, if the police know about Arthur they might try to ask Dad about ITH. I can only imagine how that conversation will go. Remember that time the police came to our house after that belated birthday party you decided to throw for yourself?”

  “I’m surprised you remember that.”

  How could she forget the one time police officers had been called to their home?

  It was a Sunday afternoon. Before the drive back into the city, she had been finishing a project for her sixth-grade civics class—a five-minute oral autobiography delivered in the role of the first female Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O’Connor. Her father had knocked on her bedroom door. Two police officers in uniforms stood behind him. She remembered her father looking nervous, but in retrospect, she had probably projected her own reaction onto him. Apologetic for disturbing her, he made a point of telling the officers they were disrupting his daughter’s schoolwork.

  She remembered feeling small as she followed them to her father’s private study. She remembered running her fingers across the nap of his new red velvet sofa—push it one way and it’s shiny, then the other way for dull.

  “Alice, these policemen have some questions about a gathering your brother had Friday night? Remember we were watching your movie until midnight? They just need to ask you about that.”

  Ben had a way of telling his parents he was “inviting a few friends over,” only to wind up hosting a kegger in the backyard. This particular night was precisely one week after Ben’s sixteenth birthday. Ben had wanted to celebrate the actual date with his school friends in Manhattan, but that didn’t stop him from taking a second bite of the apple in Bedford a week later. By then, Ben was nearly an adult in her parents’ eyes. They thought of themselves as too freewheeling to interfere.

  The party had proven to be a doozie. Ben would tell her later that one girl got so drunk her parents sent her away to an all-girls boarding school.

  It seemed like the police officers’ questions went on forever. How many people were at the party? Could she name any of them? Did she hear or see anything unusual? Where were her parents? She ran her fingers back and forth over that red velvet—shiny then dull, shiny then dull.

  She remembered wanting to protect her parents. She remembered hating her brother for putting them in a position of having to answer questions from police officers. She remembered wishing that her father’s friend, Arthur, was still there, but he had already left for the city.

  Were her parents going to have to go away with these men because of Ben and his stupid underage drinking parties? All she could do was tell the truth: her mother had gone to bed early, and her father hadn’t paid the party any mind. He’d been in their screening room with her, watching an advance copy of The Goonies. He hadn’t really been watching it, of course. He’d been sneaking glimpses at scripts in the dim glow of a flashlight until he had a few too many scotches and fell asleep, but she didn’t see any point in adding that detail.

  Her parents were the kind of people who dined with liberal senators and raised funds for elected officials, but who held in contempt the people who actually carried out the work of government. People like her parents saw police as security guards for people with “those kinds” of problems. She remembered that day because it was the day she learned that police officers—whom children naturally saw as helpers and heroes—were, to men like her father, unfit to intrude upon the private affairs of a family like theirs, unqualified to disrupt even a sixth-grade homework assignment. She would witness that attitude in her father several more times over the next fifteen-plus years, every time Ben had one of his scrapes with the law. He’d rail against the war on drugs. He’d demonize the nation’s irrational emphasis upon retribution over rehabilitation. But he’d never blame Ben for blowing so many second chances.

  She didn’t want to think about how her father would respond if Willie Danes and John Shannon showed up at his doorstep unannounced, as they had with her.

  Ben walked her to the door and gave her an awkward hug. “Try not to get ahead of yourself on this ITH stuff. Arthur represents thousands of clients at that huge firm, and that was like twenty-something years ago anyway. It’s probably just a coincidence. Hang tight, and I’m sure the police will figure this out.”

  As she made her way to the 6 train, she passed the location of what used to be her favorite bar, Double Happiness. It seemed like only yesterday that she and her girlfriends were downing ginger martinis in the basement-level hangout—getting ejected once when her friend Danielle broke not one, but two, cocktail glasses—but she realized it had been closed now for almost five years. Terrific. First she was yelling at the group of hot party girls on the street. Now she was pining for the better-than-today places that used to be. Why didn’t she go ahead and adopt a dozen cats to seal her grumpy-lady fate?

  She was just about to swipe her MetroCard through the turnstile when something about her conversation with Ben began to nag at her. The man behind her rammed into her when she failed to follow the usual rhythm of the subway system.

  “Sorry.”

  “You going or what, lady?”

  She stepped out of his way, not wanting to board the train until she figured out what was bothering her. Something related to what Ben said about Cronin. What was it that he had said? That Art had a lot of clients, and it was a long time ago.

  But she had never said anything to Ben about ITH being incorporated twenty-five years earlier. She nearly slipped on ice patches three different times as she ran back to his apartment. Despite five minutes of buzzing, no one answered.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Hank Beckman popped his third Advil in as many hours. He felt his eyes beginning to cross from the strain of reading entries on bank statements and deposit slips.

  “Okay, Mrs. Ross. If we’ve identified every transaction at issue”—he punched a series of numbers into the calculator—“it looks like you transferred a total of $410,525.62 to Coulton since 2007. You withdrew only $35,000, leaving you with a loss of $375,525.62. Our charges against Coulton will reflect as much, and you might be needed to testify about the transactions and your communications with Coulton should the case proceed to trial.”

  “What about the money? When will I get the money back?” Marlene Ross was a well-maintained woman with smooth skin and immobile hair. Had it not been for access to her official date of birth, he would have placed her a decade younger than her sixty-six years. She had tastefully applied whatever fragrance had created the subtle sweetness he smelled whenever she leaned toward him.

  The U.S. Attorney was on the verge of indicting Richard Coulton in what would have been the office’s largest Ponzi scheme if Bernie Madoff had not blown that record out of the water a couple years back. “We’ll go after his assets, but there’s no guarantee, of course, of obtaining a complete recovery. The very nature of a Ponzi scheme is that Coulton used the money you gave him to cover promises he made to clients he enlisted years earlier.”

  “So are you telling me that if you had just minded your own business and left him to his own devices, he would have received investment money from some other person in order to pay me back? He promised me a thirty percent return.”

  The newspapers made it sound like the swindlers who engaged in pyramid schemes were taking food from the mouths of gullible investors, but Hank had found it difficult to sympathize with some of the entitled people who were supposedly Coulton’s victims.

  He walked Mrs. Ross from the conference room. As she passed him, he noticed the ease with which she walked to the elevator in her six-in
ch heels, the designer red soles unscratched despite her claims that Coulton had left her “with nothing.”

  Back at his desk, he Googled “Highline Gallery,” “Travis Larson,” and “Alice Humphrey,” as he had been doing obsessively since he divulged everything he knew to NYPD detective Willie Danes. No new information. He had seen the boxes of documents in the war room at the precinct. He had felt the energy and momentum of that investigation.

  The police had a theory. He was certain of it. They had a suspect, that much had been obvious from their conversation. But three days had passed without an arrest. Probably some prosecutor had concluded that they lacked sufficient evidence for a trial, so now they were in that familiar holding pattern. He’d heard all the metaphors before: getting their ducks in a row; holding their cards close; letting the suspect wiggle free like a fish, careful not to try to grab it too early. Waiting for the media frenzy to die down. Waiting for another piece of the puzzle to fall into place. Waiting for the suspect to make a mistake. Waiting. Waiting.

  He couldn’t wait any longer. For seven months, since Ellen died, he had thought about Travis Larson every single day. Now the man was dead, and Hank—for reasons he could not identify—felt like he had seen something that would somehow prove relevant. He hated being locked on the outside, left scouring the Internet for clues like one of those housebound true-crime crazies who routinely called the bureau with so-called tips gleaned from online surfing.

  He kept recalling moments from the last days of Larson’s life, replaying mental videotapes from his periods of surveillance, wondering if he had overlooked the significance of something he had witnessed.

  He also had an uneasy feeling about the identification process Danes had used to get him to name Alice Humphrey as the redhead he’d seen at Larson’s apartment. Last year, a federal court had released a man named Anthony James Adams after DNA evidence cleared him of raping a nurse working the night shift at St. Vincent’s Hospital thirteen years earlier. Hank had been the FBI agent in charge. He’d shown the victim a six-pack of photos, and after a minute of careful study, she’d identified Adams as the perpetrator. It would be more than another decade before a different man, Teddy Jackson, would tell his cellmate that he raped a nurse at a New York City hospital in 1997 and got away with it when another man took the rap. More sophisticated DNA analysis, unavailable during the original investigation, led to Adams’s release.