Oleysniak sneered at Casey. “No solicitors.”
Casey saw Nell’s red BMW pull into the lot. She rolled down the window. “Hey, sleepyhead. Need a ride?”
10
TUESDAY, JANUARY 18
Nell drove Casey to Narziss’s house for their scheduled interview and dinner. On the way there, Casey asked about the cosmetics party.
“It was stellar,” she said. “I met my monthly goals in one day.”
“Nice.” He filled her in on what he had learned from Tyrese. “How in the world did Elena get mixed up in selling drugs?”
Nell shrugged. “Because her father runs them in Ecuador.”
“You knew?”
“You didn’t? How do you think she afforded the European furniture and designer shoes?”
“I had wondered about it, but never got around to asking. Once I heard about the affair, I figured Narziss paid for them.” He yawned. He reached into his pocket and swallowed a caffeine tablet and a Provigil capsule.
“Her father’s a dangerous man,” Nell said. “He’d mail you your mother’s fingers to send a message.”
“How do you know that?”
“Elena told me. That’s why she’s in America—as his drug mule.”
“What? Oh, great. Just great. I was making out with the Godfather’s daughter.”
“Relax. He’s not going to come after you for that. Unless he thinks you knocked her up.”
The blood drained from Casey’s face.
Nell tittered. “I’m kidding.”
“Could Señor Ortega have something to do with her disappearance?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me. Then again, I’ve been thinking she could have ‘vanished’ this week as a way to get out of the drug trade.” Nell took her hands off the wheel just long enough to pantomime quotation marks.
They arrived at Narziss’s address: 8383 Hickory Drive, Green Bay. Narziss had an enormous brick mansion on the outskirts of town. It featured a turret over the foyer. The redwood door stood at least ten feet high, no doubt custom-built for the altitudinous athlete. Casey thanked her and Nell drove off. As he approached the house, Casey wondered if he’d get the oversized door slammed in his face. Or worse. Nevertheless, he knocked and heard footsteps approach. Casey swallowed, bracing for impact from the Hail’s hulk.
Samantha opened the door. She was his age, brunette, his height in heels, and slender with curves. “Casey?”
“Mrs. Narziss?”
She smiled warmly. “Call me Samantha. Come in.”
“Thank you.” The circular foyer, with its gray marble floor, had more square footage than Casey’s entire apartment. Inset into the center was a black marble star. The wide, spiral staircase featured a redwood railing. The place looked gorgeous.
Two little kids collided with Samantha’s legs. She called to them with remarkable softness, “Kids, I’d really like it if you settled down.” She glanced at Casey. “They react better to whispers than screams.”
He respected her methods. “You’re an excellent mother.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Beautiful house.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s huge.”
“Six-thousand.”
“Square feet?”
“That’s right.”
Casey couldn’t imagine cleaning or heating it. “With that much space, you could lose the kids.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice?” she quipped, bending down and gently grabbing her son by the chin, wiggling it and making a cutesy face. “Can you say hi to Mr. Thread?”
The boy meekly said “Hi,” then buried his head in his mom’s embrace.
She addressed her guest. “Todd said he’s going to be a few minutes. Can I get you anything to drink?”
His throat had dried. “Water would be great.”
“Certainly.” She went into the kitchen.
Casey wondered if Todd Narziss had told his wife about the incident with him in the locker room, or about their previous interview. Probably not. Why go there?
“Here you are,” she said, handing him a glass.
He drank the entire thing.
“Wow, thirsty,” she said. “Allow me.” She took his glass and returned it to the kitchen. When she returned she said, “Would you like the tour?”
“Thanks. Is that a…waterfall?” Casey squatted and peered around the staircase toward the kitchen, where lannon stones lined an indoor lagoon. He could hear the water cascading and pooling.
“Oh, that’s hardly a waterfall. It’s just a decoration.”
Casey guffawed. “A decoration is a wreath your mother makes from twigs with a homemade snowman hot-glued inside. That is definitely a waterfall.”
“Todd’s upstairs, watching game film in the theater,” she said to Casey, then called to the kids, “Brent, get off your sister!” She apologized to Casey. “I feel like a zookeeper.”
“My sister and I gave our mother a workout at that age.” He flashed back to playing Kick the Can with Leila and the neighborhood kids, and how invariably someone would end up crying to mom. And yet, those games were some of the best times of his life.
He and Samantha scaled the spiral staircase. “On the left is the restroom if you need it. Next is Todd’s workout room.”
It looked like an infomercial for Bowflex and Gold’s Gym. Mirrors covered the walls. Large flat screens perched in each corner near the ceiling. A digital camera sat on a tripod wired to a cable coming out of the wall.
“Todd’s office is next door,” Samantha continued, strolling down the hardwood hallway. “I’ll see if he’s ready for dinner. The theater room is at the end of the hall.”
“May I use the restroom while you check?”
“Of course.” She turned and walked down the hallway.
Casey entered the bathroom, paused, then snuck into Todd’s office. Hail memorabilia hung everywhere on the walls and shelves— jerseys, game balls, photos with teammates. Some items were from the early 1900s. Two walls were navy blue and the other two white, reflecting the team colors. On the ceiling was a life-size poster of Narziss running with a football and “TODD NARZISS, #83” in huge blue lettering. Also on the wall was an electronic picture frame, the kind that refreshes periodically with different digital photos. It was wired to the wall with a cable similar to the one attached to the camera in the workout room. A family picture appeared on the fifty-inch screen when Casey walked in, but it soon turned to a picture of Narziss with Oakley on the field after a game, then a shot of Narziss flexing for the camera in his weight room. Casey laughed and shook his head.
Normally, he wouldn’t snoop through someone’s private belongings without asking permission. After all, an ethical journalist gets information from first-hand knowledge, reliable sources, the library, or the Internet. If a reporter can’t find the information there, there’s no story. But in this case, Casey could envision Elena huddled in an alley downtown, bleeding. The odds of finding her alive decreased exponentially every hour. He owed it to himself and Elena to check if Narziss had a role in her disappearance. At least, that was his rationale. After all, pinning a superstar athlete with the murder of his mistress and unborn baby would put the “me” in “career advancement.”
Casey glanced out the office door; the hallway was empty. He rifled through Narziss’s desk drawers but found nothing helpful. There was a filing cabinet in the corner—locked. He opened a desk drawer and inside hung three keys. He found it amazing how so many people hid keys so close to the corresponding locks—putting house keys under door mats or in potted plants a mere foot away, or placing a spare car key behind the license plate. Why bother locking up?
He tried the first key in the cabinet. No luck. He tried the second. Nope. His hands quivered. The third worked. He exhaled relief, glanced at the door to the hallway, then opened the drawer and flipped through folders until he found Narziss’s cell-phone bills.
Casey had witnessed Narziss taking a call on hi
s cell in the Hail Locker Room the night Elena disappeared. The fact that Narziss had taken the call stood out as odd to Casey—most players didn’t talk on phones in the locker room due to lack of privacy. At the time, Casey had figured the caller to be Samantha Narziss, or perhaps Todd Narziss’s agent.
Now he had other hypotheses. Casey used his phone to snap a picture of Narziss’s cell phone account number. With that, he could check to see who’d called Narziss Friday night around the time Elena disappeared and possibly connect him to her disappearance.
The hallway light dimmed. “Looking for something?” Narziss stood in the doorway.
Casey flinched, but purposely didn’t look at him. Instead, he pretended to appreciate the décor. “Cool memorabilia, man, you should totally get Todd Narziss to sign everything.”
Narziss wasn’t amused. “Thread, what the f—”
“Todd!” Samantha interrupted, entering the room. “The kids?” Sure enough, their progeny careened into Daddy’s legs a half-second later, giggling.
“Sorry,” Todd said to her. “Thread, tell us what y—”
Casey’s heart felt as if it were ricocheting inside him like a Super Ball. “Would you like the Hail coaches to call more plays for you?”
The football question seemed to surprise and disarm Narziss. “Hell, yeah. Todd Narziss always wants the ball. But what were you doing in my office?”
Samantha said, “Oh, Todd, don’t take yourself so seriously. He was just doing research for his story. Right, Casey?”
Little Brent chased his sister down the hallway, then back toward the adults. The boy jumped onto his dad’s waist, hugging him and sliding down Todd’s legs like a firefighter answering the bell and taking his father’s sweatpants with him to the floor.
“Brent!” Todd shouted, bending down to pull them back up. But the kids didn’t stop wiggling or laughing until Samantha softly said, “Settle down, kids.”
Todd hastily hiked up his pants. Casey couldn’t help but smile. “I’m flattered, but you probably greet all your guests like this.”
Narziss’s eyes bulged and his chin jutted as he leaned toward Casey. He whispered what sounded like it should have been shouted. “Get. Out.”
“But what about our interview?”
“OUT!”
11
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 19
Hailangelo took the hide from the auto-tanner, a large black machine in his studio featuring a barrel that spun, similar to a raffle drum for stirring bingo balls.
The mold for the Pygmalion was nearly complete. Somehow, the arms still fought him a bit—they looked forced, artificial. True, this often appeared to be the case until he covered and painted the statue, but he realized he couldn’t rely on those accoutrements to pull it off. The pose had to be natural, and look alive.
In his studio, he walked around the mannequin-mold he would use to immortalize Galatea. As he stared at the plaster, the solution came to him. The sculptor rolled his right shoulder twice, dipped it below the height of the left shoulder, assumed the pose of the woman in the famous painting, and realized he needed a bit more plaster along the top of the shoulder on the right side.
Of course. It had been there all along, taunting him, waiting for him to find it. Just as his other statues had taunted the public. He supposed it qualified as poetic justice. Still, while other self-absorbed sculptors had walked past their wounded statues, he viewed himself as the Good Samaritan who took the time to nurture the mold for the statue and ensure its perfection for the final product. His artwork’s beauty went much further than skin-deep.
Later, he carried the hide to the polyvinyl mannequin. It fit perfectly over the mold. He secured it. Eventually, he glued glass eyes in place, fitted clay around the sockets and painted details. He had a steady hand, superb concentration, and rare patience. He viewed these traits as the keys to success in any part of life, and the most critical of them was patience.
When he had finished, he stepped off the stool and took his usual five steps back so he could view the entire human sculpture. The statue clearly yearned for him, he thought, as she bent back and down, her right arm prepared for his embrace. Her left arm, bent at the elbow, had been flexed upward at the shoulder joint, positioned as if for balance. Taken together, the contour of her arms mimicked the pose of Cupid aiming his bow, though she needed no implement to seize his affection.
He glanced at a framed print of the classic painting Pygmalion and Galatea by Jean-Léon Gérôme, featuring the bearded sculptor named Pygmalion kissing his female statue, Galatea, as she supposedly came to life. Hailangelo’s statue mimicked Galatea down to every last detail, except that his creation had a darker skin tone while the original’s was alabaster. That, and he had left her hair down.
Long hair excited him. It stimulated his blood flow and filled his brain receptors with pleasure. He spritzed perfume on her hair, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply. “We’re all alone now,” he said to her, embracing his Galatea and giving her a passionate kiss.
Casey went to his sister’s apartment. Leila had three new canvases on the wall above her couch in the living room, all originals she had painted. The first was a profile of her staring face to face with a Bengal tiger, the feline’s jaws slightly ajar. The second was an image of a mother hawk perched over two baby birds, its wings outstretched, and Casey couldn’t quite tell if the matron wanted to feed the chicks…or eat them. The third featured trees along an everglade, ominous like something out of The Heart of Darkness.
Casey wasn’t sure what to make of them, aside from wondering if they reflected Leila’s life experiences. Regardless, they were well done. “Your paintings are stunning.” He complimented her despite her propensity to not take it very well.
“Thanks.” She lay on the couch, flipping through a magazine. “Is Fairytopia Barbie your girlfriend now?”
“Who, Nell? No. Known her a long time.”
“How long?”
“Couple years. She’s a friend of Elena’s.”
“Who’s Elena?”
“My friend from the Hail Pro Shop who went missing over the weekend.”
Leila looked up from her magazine. “You mean the one you made out with…until you had a sleep attack?”
Great, even my sister knows. Had Skeeto told her? The Hail players, coaches, and the media agreed that playing pro football in Green Bay was like swimming in a small aquarium. In Green Bay, even Casey couldn’t keep his kissing faux pas a secret. “Anyway, Nell just earned her first car from Baciare Cosmetics.”
Leila looked up. “A car? Or a Pepto-Bismol boat on wheels?”
“A Beemer Z4 convertible.”
Leila let that sink in, then turned a page. “Good for her.”
“She could hook you up.” Casey thought a career change could spark her into a more positive outlook.
Leila gave her brother a toxic stare. “To sell makeup?” Her apathetic persona worked at age twenty-three, but in a few years it wouldn’t. They both knew it. She pointed at her blue hair. “Duh.”
“She said it’s decent money,” Casey said.
Annoyed, she flipped shut her magazine—Rolling Stone—and frowned. “Who are you? Mom? Jesus.”
“Neither. Did you call Dr. Stepnowski?”
“Here we go.” She reopened her magazine and resumed reading it.
Casey wanted to write for a big-time monthly magazine someday. Some days, he wanted it so much he furiously shook his head so he would no longer think about it, like a drenched dog after swimming in a lake. Remain calm. Your most important breath is your next one.
“Come on, Lei,” he stepped toward her. “He really helped Fiona, that reporter from the Green Bay Times.”
“Why don’t you see a shrink, Narcolepsy Boy?”
“I did see a psychiatrist.”
“Once?”
“Twice. Anyway, Dr. Stepnowski helped Fiona get past her social anxiety.”
Leila slapped the magazine on the couch. “Fiona’s an
anorexic who thinks she’s Gene Simmons. And you think I’m crazy?”
“Fiona’s not that crazy,” Casey said.
“You do think I’m crazy!”
“Of course I do—I’m your brother. I just want the best for you.”
“Then quit reminding me of it just because you feel guilty it happened outside your college apartment.” She scoffed. “Leave me alone. Between you and Mother, I can’t stand it!”
“I thought Mother refused to discuss it.”
“She won’t directly,” Leila said. “But she itches around it like it’s the pox. The other day she says, ‘Leila, you have no health insurance. You need a real job with benefits.’ Can you believe that?”
“Health insurance helps. I know that first-hand.” He yawned and pressed the end of the triangular piece of old credit card into his palm.
“Whose side are you on?”
“Nobody’s.” Casey made the peace sign. “I’m Switzerland.”
Leila flopped back on the couch. “It’s not like I list raped as a bullet point on my resume. Besides, I don’t want to take some lame-ass job and spend my whole life in a cubicle being a tool for the Man.”
“I hear you,” Casey said. “On the other hand, you’re not going to work at Fixate Factory forever.” She could afford to be a waitress for the foreseeable future because of the low cost of living in Green Bay. But she couldn’t go on like that forever, could she?
She didn’t respond.
“So what is your plan, Lei?”
“I have no idea. But hell, why can’t Mother let me figure that out?”
Leila had a point. “What did Ma say exactly?”
“She said, ‘That unfortunate event has been holding you back.’ I’m like, ‘Mom, Uncle Marty leaving a stench in your bathroom is an unfortunate event. I was raped; you can say it.’”
“What’d she say then?”
“Nothing. Just lit a cigarette.”
“Of course she did.”
“I’m like, ‘We’re not doing this. Either accept me for who I am and let me live my life, or back off.’”
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