Hard Feelings: A Novel

by Jason Starr

  “Just find her,” I said. “That’s all I care about. Find her.”

  Himoto was looking into my eyes again. I became uncomfortable and I had to look away.

  “So you’re telling me that the last time you saw your wife was on Tuesday evening in bed at approximately eleven P.M.”

  “That’s correct,” I said. “When I got into bed she was there next to me.”

  “Are any of your wife’s belongings missing?”

  “No,” I said. “At least not that I’m aware of.”

  “Did she take any money with her, credit cards . . .”

  “She left her pocketbook,” I said.

  Himoto’s eyes widened.

  “Does she usually leave home without her pocketbook?”

  “No, not usually. But I suppose she could have just taken some money and left—if she was in a hurry.”

  “Do you think your wife was suicidal, Mr. Segal?”

  “Paula? No way.”

  “She never talked about wanting to kill herself—even a time when you thought she might not be serious?”

  “No, I—well, that’s not really true. Actually, several days ago, she was telling me about problems she had when she was a teenager. Anyway, she said she once went into her parents ’ car inside a garage and turned on the ignition. But she was very depressed at that time and I don’t think she would ever try something like that now.”

  “The only reason I’m suggesting this,” Himoto said, “is you’re telling me you had an argument the other night, and according to Doug Pearson the idea of divorce was mentioned. Perhaps it’s not such a leap to imagine her becoming overly distressed about the situation.”

  I tried to imagine the scene—Paula leaving the apartment and taking a cab to the Brooklyn Bridge. I saw her standing on the bridge’s railing, looking down at the pitch-black East River with a crazed expression.

  “Maybe it’s something to look into,” I said, “but I don’t think so—not Paula.”

  “What about enemies?” Himoto asked. “Was there anyone who was angry at her for any reason?”

  “No,” I said. “Nobody.”

  “What about you?” Himoto asked.

  “What about me?” I asked, wondering if he was accusing me again.

  “Do you have any enemies?”

  Thinking about the e-mails, I said, “No. No one.”

  Himoto closed his notepad.

  “Let us know if anyone tries to contact you,” he said, “although, to be quite honest, given that approximately forty-eight hours have elapsed since your wife disappeared and you haven’t heard anything, it doesn’t seem likely that kidnapping for ransom could have been the motive. But you never know.”

  “So what’s the next move?” I asked.

  “Ideally?” Himoto said. “Ideally your wife walks through the door and you two live happily ever after. In the meantime, we’ll do whatever we can to locate her, which reminds me— do you have a recent photograph of your wife?”

  I went into the bedroom and returned with a picture of Paula that I had taken during our weekend in Stockbridge. I remembered how Paula had given the Jersey police a picture of me from the same packet of photos.

  As Himoto put the photo away in the inside pocket of his sport jacket I said, “I wish you wouldn’t pay attention to anything Doug Pearson says about me. I don’t know if he was having an affair with my wife or not, but I do know that he wanted to be with her. He called here last night, asking if I knew where Paula was and, if you want my opinion, he sounded obsessed. He told me ‘You’re never gonna get her back’ and ‘It’s over between you two.’ I don’t want to accuse the guy of anything—I mean, I hardly even know him—but maybe you should be asking him where my wife is.”

  For the first time, I had the sense that Himoto was on my side.

  “Is the doorman who’s on duty now the same doorman who was on duty Tuesday night?” Himoto asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Maybe we should go down and ask him a few questions.”

  I went down with Himoto to talk to Raymond. Raymond said that someone had come to visit Paula the night she disappeared.

  “He was in a suit,” Raymond said. “He had dark hair.”

  “That must have been Doug,” I said.

  But Raymond said he couldn’t remember what time the man arrived at the building, how long he had stayed, or if he had left alone or with Paula.

  “I only take a good look at the people who are coming into the building,” Raymond said, “not at the people who are going out.”

  Himoto asked Raymond some more questions, but Raymond could offer no further help. Raymond suggested that Himoto might want to call the building’s security company to view the footage from the lobby’s camera. After Himoto took down the name and phone number of the security company, I said, “See, I told you Doug has something to do with this.”

  “But you said your wife was home when you came home from drinking.”

  “She was home,” I said, “but Doug was here that night and he didn’t tell you that when you talked to him, right? That could mean he’s trying to hide something, right?”

  “It definitely raises some suspicion,” Himoto said.

  “So are you gonna talk to him again? Find out if he knows anything?”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll follow up every lead we have ASAP,” Himoto said. “I’ll let you know if there’s any news, and if you hear anything I hope you’ll do the same.”

  After Himoto left, I remained in the lobby for a while, talking to Raymond about Paula.

  “I’m sure she’s okay,” Raymond said. “She’ll probably come home tonight. You’ll see.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I said. My eyes were starting to tear. “If something happened to her, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “She’ll be okay,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

  Back in my apartment, I broke down crying. All the stress of the past few days had built up and become unbearable. I kneeled on the floor in the foyer, sobbing uncontrollably.

  Later, as I started to recover, I was thinking about Doug, wondering if he was really capable of hurting Paula. I remembered how intense he had been on the tennis court, grunting like a madman every time his racket made contact with the ball. It wasn’t such a stretch to imagine him as a psychopathic murderer.

  Pacing the apartment, I imagined what had happened on Tuesday night. Paula had called Doug around nine o’clock. She was very upset, so Doug had insisted on coming over to see her, whether she wanted to see him or not. Doug stayed for a while, trying to get Paula to come home with him. Feeling guilty for having an affair, Paula turned Doug down and Doug left alone around ten o’clock. Then when I came home, around eleven—drunk, smelly, and beaten up—Paula was so repulsed that she decided to go to Doug’s place after all. Then something happened. Maybe Paula and Doug had some kind of fight. Paula decided to break it off with him and Doug became jealous and enraged. I saw Doug, his face red and intense, beating up Paula, then killing her.

  I was clenching my fists so tightly my fingernails were cutting into my palms. I wanted to find out where Doug lived and go confront him, but I knew this was exactly what he wanted me to do. He’d already told lies about me to Himoto, and he’d probably been sending the e-mails to me too. Paula had probably told him that the police had questioned me about a murder, so he came up with the brilliant idea of harassing me.

  Then I thought of something I could do.

  I went into my office in the spare bedroom and tossed Otis out into the hallway. I still hadn’t cleaned up his piss and shit from the floor and the entire room stunk.

  I booted up my computer, then dialed into my PC at work and accessed my e-mail account. I retrieved one of the threatening messages and replied:

  FUCK YOU DOUG.

  I clicked SEND then turned off the computer. After I cleaned up Otis’s mess, I took a long, cold shower.

  Throughout the evening, I checked my work e-mail sever
al times, but I had no new messages. Around midnight, I took Otis down for his walk. He was better behaved than he had been recently, but he seemed a little sad.

  “I know,” I said. “I miss Mommy too.”

  The apartment seemed noticeably empty and quiet without Paula. To create some noise, I turned on the TV in the bedroom, but this only made the atmosphere more depressing. I wondered if this was a preview of the rest of my life, if I’d always be alone, in an empty apartment, with a TV going in the background.

  I cried again for a while, letting the tears run freely down my face, then I flicked off the TV and got into bed. Usually, the noise of Third Avenue traffic was a constant in my apartment, but tonight the city seemed unusually silent.

  When I woke up I went right to my computer and checked my e-mail, but there was still no response to my message.

  Himoto hadn’t called so I decided to call the precinct to find out if there was any news. A woman who answered said that, as far as she knew, there hadn’t been any developments, but that she would leave a message with Himoto that I had called.

  It was raining steadily when I left for work but, miraculously, I was able to hail a cab on the corner of Lexington and Sixty-fourth. I realized that it probably wasn’t helping my cause to go in to work today. Most men whose wives are missing would stay home, awaiting any word from the police. I would have stayed home, but I couldn’t miss my meeting with Jim Turner.

  At my cubicle, I logged onto my computer right away and checked my e-mail, but there was still no response. I called Himoto and managed to speak with him briefly. He said he had spoken to Doug and Doug had admitted that he had come to visit Paula on Tuesday evening at around nine-thirty, but he claimed he had stayed at the apartment only for about ten minutes.

  “Why didn’t he tell you this before?” I asked.

  “He said he didn’t think it was important,” Himoto said.

  “Give me a break,” I said. “It’s obvious he’s hiding something.”

  Himoto said he was going to follow up on some more leads and that he would be in touch by the end of the day.

  I confirmed the one o’clock meeting with Jim Turner by leaving a message with his secretary. At ten o’clock, I attended an internal sales meeting, to discuss the status of our current projects and to make sure we had the right personnel in place. I spoke about my projects with Jim Turner and Don Chaney. The whole time, I was distracted, worrying about Paula, and my presentation was disjointed and rambling. As I was talking, I couldn’t help noticing how Steve Ferguson was smirking, whispering something to John Hennessy. When I was through speaking I glared at Steve and he looked back at me defiantly. Our standoff lasted for several seconds, then I looked away.

  When the meeting ended, I returned to my cubicle and checked my e-mail log.

  WHO THE HELL IS DOUG?

  I’M SICK OF YOUR BULLSHIT.

  TWELVE NOON AT TEXAS ARIZONA

  ON RIVER STREET IN HOBOKEN.

  NO MORE GAMES.

  20

  I TOOK THE D train from Forty-seventh Street and switched for the PATH train at Thirty-fourth. At a little before twelve, I arrived at Texas Arizona, a casual restaurant directly across the street from the Hoboken train station.

  When I entered the bar area a waitress came over to me by the door and asked me how many.

  “Two,” I said. “I think.”

  “You think?”

  “A table for two would be fine,” I said.

  There were only about ten other customers in the whole place. I looked around, but I didn’t recognize anyone and no one seemed to recognize me.

  The waitress led me to a table by the window and I sat down facing the entrance. She asked me if she could get me a drink while I was waiting. I asked for an iced tea.

  Some Springsteen song was playing on the restaurant’s stereo. I stared out the window, sipping the iced tea, watching the street in front of the bar and the entrance to the train station. I figured that Doug had sent me the latest e-mail, pretending not to be himself. I imagined him crossing the street and then sitting across from me, confessing that he had murdered Paula. Then I imagined myself leaping across the table and sticking a fork into his face.

  I patted my forehead with a napkin.

  At a quarter past twelve, I was starting to wonder if I was going to be stood up. I decided to give it another ten minutes.

  I looked over and saw a big muscle-head guy in a tank top and jeans, standing near the door with his arms crossed in front of his chest. He looked like a bouncer, but I hadn’t noticed him before.

  Then a teenager, about sixteen years old, entered the restaurant and I nearly choked on the sip of iced tea I had just taken. I had to be asleep, having a nightmare, or maybe I was hallucinating.

  The teenager stopped a few feet in front of my table and stared right at me. Now I was convinced that I was flipping out, having some sort of breakdown. Why else was I seeing a teenaged Michael Rudnick standing in front of me?

  He must have enjoyed making me feel like I was losing my mind, because he didn’t say a word. He just stood there, staring at me with a blank expression. Maybe he didn’t look exactly like the Rudnick of old—his jaw was larger and his lips were thinner—but the similarity was still incredible. He was the same size as Rudnick used to be—big and flabby— and his face was covered with acne. He had the same dark, staring eyes that had once terrorized me. He was even wearing clothes that the young Rudnick might have worn—jeans and a big, baggy sweatshirt. But the most startling resemblance was the single dark eyebrow that stretched straight across his forehead like a thick, ugly caterpillar.

  Finally, he sat down across from me, but he wouldn’t stop staring. I thought about reaching across the table and trying to stick my hand through his body to test if he were real, but I didn’t budge.

  “You recognize me, huh?” he said.

  It was incredible. Even his high-pitched voice sounded like the young Rudnick.

  “Of course I recognize you,” I said. “You look exactly like—”

  “My father,” he said.

  At least I knew I wasn’t losing my mind. I realized he’d probably been at the police station that day too.

  The waitress came over and asked Rudnick Jr. if he wanted a drink.

  “That’s all right,” he said, continuing to stare at me. “I don’t think I’ll be staying too long.”

  The waitress asked me if I wanted to order anything to eat and I shook my head. She went away.

  “So what do you want from me?” I asked.

  “You know what I want,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “Actually, I don’t.”

  “I want a confession.”

  “A confession to what?”

  “Don’t be a dick.”

  “If you don’t tell me what you—”

  “I know you killed my father.”

  “But I didn’t kill him.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I didn’t kill your father. I don’t know how you got that idea.”

  I had a flashback to the parking lot, when I was crouched over Michael Rudnick’s body, driving the knife into his groin.

  “It was obviously you,” Rudnick Jr. said. “Just confess to the cops already . . . or else.”

  “Or else what?” I said, wondering if he was hinting about Paula.

  “Or else you’ll find out what else,” he said.

  “I’m telling you,” I said. “You’re making a mistake.”

  “I know you did it,” he said. “If you didn’t do it, you wouldn’t be here.”

  “I came here to find out who was harassing me.”

  “I know what happened at my father’s office that day.”

  “Nothing happened at his office.”

  “You tried to attack him.”

  “That was just a misunderstanding.”

  “There were witnesses so stop fucking lying to me!”

  The waitress and people from other tables were looki
ng in our direction. The big guy came over to our table.

  “Everything okay here?” he asked Rudnick Jr.

  “Yeah,” Rudnick Jr. said. “Everything’s fine. Just hang out by the door, man. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  The big guy glared at me for a few seconds, then he returned to his spot by the door.

  “Friend of yours?” I asked.

  “He’s my bodyguard,” Rudnick Jr. said.

  “Bodyguard? Why do you—”

  “Protection.”

  “Protection from who?”

  “Who do you think? You killed my father. How do I know you won’t try to kill me?”

  “This is ridiculous,” I said. “Didn’t your father tell the police that a teenager attacked him in that parking lot? Do I look like a teenager?”

  “Teenagers discovered him in the lot. He could’ve gotten confused.”

  “But the police questioned me about it twice. If they had any evidence don’t you think they would have arrested me by now?”

  “So what about the day you attacked him in his office?” Rudnick Jr. said. “You’re gonna deny that, too?”

  “It’s true, I was in his office that day and we had an argument, but I didn’t attack him.”

  “People were there. They saw you.”

  “Look, I don’t want to talk to you about this because I know it’ll upset you.”

  “Oh, so now you wanna protect me?”

  “Yes,” I said. “In a way I do.”

  “I know exactly what happened.”

  I paused, then I said, “How do you know?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said you know. How do you know?”

  He was looking away now. I knew I’d hit on something.

  “I just do.”

  “How? Did the detectives tell you? Did your mother tell you? If they did it would just be my word against your father’s. How do you know I’m not lying, making it all up?”

  “That’s not what we’re talking about,” Rudnick Jr. said, still avoiding eye contact.

  “Come on, tell me,” I said. “Did your father say something about me?”

  “No.”