Whatever Austin or Webber or the two of them had been up to, there were stakes and they were high. High enough to kill him. There were sides.
Now she was about to have brunch with a man who had reached out to her in the middle of the night and who had worked with Austin.
“Miss, you okay?”
She looked around and there was a plump young guy wearing a white apron over a New York Giants sweatshirt. He had disposable gloves on his hands. She presumed he worked inside at the deli counter of the bodega and had seen her or, perhaps, he had come outside to tend to the flowers or the apples. His face was round and wide and worried, his mustache making him look older than she guessed he was.
She nodded. She wanted to smile for him, but she didn’t have it in her just yet. “Yes, thanks. I’m okay.”
She couldn’t bear the idea of rats gnawing at the corpse of a cat. She vowed to steer clear of Safari and the news for the rest of the day. She simply had to, both so she could focus on the meeting before her and then do her job at the ER.
“Your eyes were closed and I thought you were going to pass out. I thought you were going to faint.”
“No. I was just thinking.”
“You need some water?”
“No, I’m…”
He waited.
She took a deep breath and gathered herself. “I really am fine. But you were so kind to check on me. I appreciate it. I’m about to have brunch and I guess I really need to refuel the tank. A sugar low.”
He held up a finger and reached into the pocket of his apron and pulled out a black-and-white cookie in clear plastic wrap. “I was going to save it for later. I think you need it more than I do.”
“No, I couldn’t. I can’t.”
He unwrapped it and broke it in half, not along the seam between the chocolate and the vanilla, but perpendicular to the divide so they each had some of the black and some of the white. He pushed one of the halves into her hands and said, “Take it.” Then he patted his ample belly. “This is already too big.”
“You win,” she told him, and she dug deep inside herself for a smile. This kindness had to be rewarded. And he was probably right: maybe she did need some additional fortification when she went into battle—it was no longer brunch—with Oscar Bolton. She didn’t know what side he was on, but she knew on which floor he worked.
* * *
. . .
Oscar was already at a table near the window when she arrived at the restaurant, a cup of coffee before him. The restaurant was smaller than she expected and a notch more upscale: dark wooden paneling, abstract paintings on the walls, the tables for two round circles the size of manhole covers and draped with white tablecloths. He stood and motioned for her to take the seat that faced out toward the street, and then, when she was sitting, pointed at the pair of bulldogs on the sidewalk that were wrapping their leashes around their owners’ legs as they got to know each other.
“I love dogs,” he said amiably. “Just look at those faces. Those eyes. Are you a dog person or a cat person?”
The cookie she had eaten had helped, but she still felt a little weak. She wondered what he would say if she casually brought up what it was like to identify Austin Harper’s body at the morgue in Da Nang, or the likelihood that before he’d been killed, he’d been tortured. She didn’t trust Oscar—she had no idea whether she could trust anyone from Austin’s department in the hospital—but a small part of her wanted to gauge his reaction. Did he already know the details of Austin’s death? What would he make of her sharing the niceties of the morgue with him? Would he presume she was merely unburdening herself? He claimed that he and Austin were friends, which was the whole reason why he had reached out to her. Still, she knew she needed to wade into this water carefully; she knew neither the depth nor the strength of the riptide. And so instead she arched an eyebrow and said, “If we weren’t here to talk about Austin, I’d give you some good-natured grief for using such a lousy pickup line.”
“I really am a dog person,” he said, his tone a little sheepish. He smiled and it was abashed, almost innocent. It made his shaved head so much less threatening. “Also? Honestly, not meant as a pickup.”
“I know.” And instantly, it seemed, there was a waitress there at the table, a woman her age in a white shirt and black slacks and a necktie, filling her water glass and asking if she wanted coffee. She ordered a cappuccino and sat back in the chair.
“Thank you for coming,” he said. “I really appreciate it.”
“I guess I’m glad you emailed me.”
“You guess?”
“I am, maybe a little bit like you, kind of a mess. A functional mess. But still a mess.”
“It’s like being a functional alcoholic: you can do your job, but your head is always in two places at once.”
She nodded. He’d nailed it, and her respect for him climbed ever so slightly. This also increased her wariness. She couldn’t let down her guard.
“Would you like a drink? Bloody Mary? Screwdriver? Something else?”
“Nope, no booze. I’m working tonight. But thank you. I just need caffeine.”
“How weird is it to be back in New York without him?” he asked.
“Very. There are little echoes of him—of us—everywhere. In my neighborhood. At the hospital. The places we met, the things we did. How weird is it for you in development? I mean, it’s not like you’re such a massive staff that his disappearance could go unnoticed.”
“It’s true. It changes a lot. I know it’s made Sally’s job harder. And we were friends,” he said, nodding, and then, as if he had already revealed more than he wanted—a deeper emotional ravine—he picked up the menu. “I meant it last night: the French toast here is really good. They use challah, and they bring you real maple syrup from Vermont.”
“Okay, I’ll order it.”
“You won’t regret it. I’m going to have it, too,” he assured her, as the waitress returned with her cappuccino. Then she took their order and retreated.
“What mostly do you want to talk about—in regard to Austin?” she asked him.
He shook his head ever so slightly and smiled at her. “Wow. You dive right in. You make me feel like I’m one of your patients in the ER.”
“It’s like you are. You came to me in the middle of the night and were presenting very specific symptoms.”
“And those are?”
“Sadness. Wistfulness. Curiosity.”
“You know them.”
“I have them.”
“Yup. I’d suppose so.” He sat back in the chair and looked toward her, but not at her. “I guess I wonder what he was really doing.”
“In Vietnam?”
“That’s right.”
“Me, too,” she said. “So, you believed that his father and his uncle had been there—in that corner of the country—in the war.”
“I did.”
“Did he talk about it? Did he talk about them?”
“Not much. Not much at all. But he said that was why he was going.”
“And why he went the first time?”
“Uh-huh,” he mumbled, still staring almost dreamily over her shoulder. He was wearing a long-sleeve, striped rugby shirt.
“That’s what he told me, too,” she said.
“Did he talk about the war much when you two were there?”
“Nope.” An idea came to her—a way to confirm how little she dared trust him—and she sipped at her cappuccino while she formulated the best way to ask him the question. “When I was at his apartment,” she began carefully, “he never showed me any pictures of his dad or his uncle in Vietnam. And I never thought to ask.”
“Why would you?”
“I should have. I was remiss not to. I mean, I was his girlfriend. I wonder what he would have done if I’d pressed
him. Shown more interest. I mean, they both went to Vietnam. They just weren’t near where we were biking or where he was when he went missing.”
“Somewhere in his apartment, maybe there’s one of those photos we see in the documentaries of a bunch of young guys with either really short hair or wearing helmets with jungle plants on them,” he said.
“Exactly! They’re either hoofing it through the jungle or sitting around with their shirts off and dog tags dangling against their bare chests. They have big, heavy guns and bandoleers of ammo.”
“He never showed me any pictures like that.”
“Me, either,” she agreed. And then, as casually as she could, she asked, “Tell me: did you ever go to his apartment?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“We were work friends. Our circle never brought us to the Upper East Side together. The closest we came was one time after work when we all took the subway to Yankee Stadium. We passed his subway stop on the way. But it was a group outing. The whole bunch of us in development.”
She stared deep into the white porcelain cup before her, not wanting to reveal any sort of poker tell that she knew he was lying—that she knew now that she couldn’t trust him at all. “Obviously, I went to his apartment,” she said, and she realized that she was actually a little frightened. She thought of the broken bone in the back of Austin’s hand. “And he didn’t have any pictures like that anywhere in the place,” she continued carefully. “At least they weren’t out or in a frame somewhere. And he never posted that sort of thing about his father or his uncle on Veterans Day on any of the social networks—because he wasn’t on any of the social networks.”
“You miss him?” Oscar asked.
“Yes. I do,” she said.
“Even though he lied?”
“Even though. Yup.”
He finished the last of his coffee and dabbed at his lips with his napkin. “Do you have any idea why he did that? Why he concocted that doozy of a lie? I saw you talking to his parents at the hospital. Did they?”
“Nope.”
She looked at one of the paintings on the wall. It was an image, she supposed, of the pied piper: a medieval piper on a gothic, European cobblestone street with a trail of children behind him. But there were no rats. So, maybe, it wasn’t the pied piper after all. Maybe it was just a musician and some kids. A little parade.
No, it was what it was. He got rid of the rats, then he took the children. Just because there were no rats in the image didn’t mean that there were no rats in the subtext. Just because you couldn’t see the rats in this very restaurant didn’t mean that they weren’t living in the alley behind it or in the basement below it. The place had an A grade in the window. But tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, or after the next inspection from the city’s health department? Who could say?
“You like that picture?” he was asking. She must have been lost in it longer than she had realized.
“No. I don’t. It’s just that it’s actually a painting about rats, and they seem to be everywhere suddenly. I mean, I was talking to Sara Edens about them just yesterday, and how I’d love a tour of the labs,” and instantly she stopped speaking. She’d said too much. She hadn’t been thinking.
“Who’s that?” he asked. “Someone at the hospital?”
“Yeah, but just an acquaintance,” she said, and quickly she brought their conversation back to Austin’s mother and father. “Anyway, his parents had no idea why Austin might have rearranged so much of the family history about Vietnam.”
“Do you think there’s any way you can find out?” he asked.
She turned to him and asked in response, “Why would I want to? Why, at this point, do I need to know?”
“You just want to move on?”
“Yeah. I think I do.”
“That’s harsh.”
“No. That’s being kind to myself—and, maybe, to him. Accepting that we had six and a half nice months together, but part of it had been a lie. And maybe he had a good reason for lying and maybe he didn’t, but he’s not a part of my life anymore and I don’t need to know.”
He pulled at a stray strand of fabric on the cuff of his shirt and seemed to think about this, and they both were silent. “So, his parents weren’t much help.”
“Not in the slightest. They got mad at me.”
“What else have you done?”
“Are you asking what I’ve done to find out why he lied? Why he created—and, to some degree, lived—this fabrication?”
“Yeah. I’m curious,” he admitted, his tone matter-of-fact. She saw the waitress was returning with their brunch. “I assume you brought back his stuff from Vietnam. Was there anything revealing in it?”
She shook her head. “Nope. Not a thing.”
“What was there?”
The waitress placed the French toast before them, and for a moment Alexis took in the strawberries and blueberries atop the confectioners sugar. Red, white, and blue. How inadvertently patriotic. When the waitress was gone, Alexis replied, “All I brought back was this suit he had made in Hoi An and one cycling jersey that I thought might have sentimental value to his parents. Speed Racer.”
“You didn’t bring back his phone? His computer?”
“His phone was gone.”
“Gone?” he asked, offering her the maple syrup in what looked like an actual Wedgwood gravy boat, but she assumed was a replica designed for restaurants.
“Yup. The police in Vietnam never found it.”
“That’s odd.”
“I guess. I just assume it went flying when he went flying, and it’s somewhere in the jungle near the top of the mountain pass.”
“Wow, that’s…”
“I know. That’s horrible. I’ve been living with this, Oscar.”
“What about his computer?”
She concentrated on pouring the syrup on the French toast, pouring it slowly so she could think. She couldn’t lie and say she had returned it to Austin’s parents, because that might put them in danger; likewise, she certainly couldn’t tell him that she’d had a detective open Austin’s laptop and discovered it had been wiped clean. But if she revealed that his computer and tablet were in her apartment right now? Wouldn’t that be putting herself in jeopardy? Even greater jeopardy?
“This is embarrassing,” she said.
“Doubt it.”
“I forgot it at the hotel. The last hotel we were in.”
“In Vietnam?”
“Yup. Stupid, I know. I forgot his tablet, too.”
“Don’t be embarrassed,” he told her. “You kind of had a lot on your mind.”
“I guess.”
“Have you asked them to send the devices to you?”
“They offered, yes. And I told them there wasn’t a rush, but sure.” She started to eat, and so he did, too. Clearly, he had been waiting for her, a gesture that was undeniably chivalrous. “This is delicious,” she told him. “You weren’t kidding.”
“Glad you like it,” he said. Then: “So they’re shipping them back?”
“Yes. The computer, the tablet.”
“That’s good.”
She cut off a piece of the bread and skewered a strawberry slice, and asked, “Why?”
“It might be revealing. I mean, like you, I’m a little creeped out by the mystery of where he went before he died.”
“Do you think I should open his computer when it arrives? I could tell you what’s on it.”
“Would you mind? That would be very cool. I’m interested.”
“It wouldn’t be too, I don’t know, invasive?”
“You were his girlfriend, for God’s sake. He dragged you across the planet on a false pretense. You have a right to know.”
“I guess. But do you have that same right?”
“I’m sure you were,” she told him, though she had absolutely no idea if this were true. She and Austin had never socialized with Oscar. “So, when I get the laptop back, I’ll boot it up.”
“Would you?”
“Sure,” she said, and her mind was picturing once again Ken Sarafian’s face when he accessed the laptop and saw that it had been wiped clean. “Do you think there was anything on his office computer? His computer at the hospital?”
“Maybe. But we’ll never know. Hospital IT has already taken it and I’m sure washed it so someone else can use it. If Austin had been murdered, maybe someone would have examined its contents. I guess the police, or someone. Sally told me the FBI was at the hospital when he was just…just missing. But he died in an accident, so I’m pretty sure there’s nothing left for us to look at.”
“That makes sense.”
“Anything else worth sharing?”
“In regard to the mystery of Austin Harper?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I told you, I haven’t done a damn thing but grieve and work and sleep and not sleep. I haven’t done anything.”
“Okay. Got it,” he said. “And you brought nothing else back?”
She shrugged. “I brought back some of his unopened Psych energy gels.”
“My mother would have approved. She hated to see food go to waste.”
Alexis nodded. “Mine, too.”
“So, you’re finished?”
“Finished? I think it will be years before I’m finished. And you?”
The Red Lotus Page 30
