Under Water

by Casey Barrett

  “I can’t stay much longer,” said Lucy. “I told my dad I just needed to go for a walk. When they released me, they told him I wasn’t supposed to be left alone for long. I think he watched me while I slept last night.”

  “I know, Luce,” said Cass. “We’ll get you back in a few. I just wanted you to share with my partner what you told me. You can trust him. He used to swim for Marks too.”

  “Really?” Lucy looked over at me for the first time with anything resembling trust. “How long ago?”

  “Ages,” I said. “I used to swim with Madeline’s brother, Charlie. We were the same age.”

  “Is that why her mom hired you to find her?” she asked.

  “Probably. I’ve also done some work for some of her friends in the past.” I tried to meet her eyes. She diverted them. “Lucy, do you have any idea where Madeline could be?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t. But I’m worried she’s done something. Something . . . Her boyfriend, James . . .” She covered her face with her hands, pressed her fingertips against her eyes. Her entire body quivered and tensed as tears seeped down her cheeks.

  Cass rubbed at her back. “Lucy, why don’t you start by telling Duck what you told me, about Coach Marks.”

  The girl wiped at her eyes, breathed deeply through her nose, and let out a slow exhale. There was a toughness about her that belied her young face and her recent attempt. It’s been my experience that the slow and dramatic suicide attempts are the ones that don’t really mean it. There are definitive ways to end it quickly, without question. Holding your breath at the bottom of a swimming pool is not one of them. I hoped that silent underwater cry would be the last time she considered that final solution.

  “Teddy and I were having an affair,” she said. “We were having . . . sex.”

  “You and Coach?” I asked. “When? Is this still going on?”

  Cass glanced over, warning me to tread lightly. Now was not the time to overwhelm the girl with a grilling. We needed to respect the courage of this confession.

  “Last year,” she said quietly. “We were together . . . or whatever we were, for about six months.” She wiped at her tears and let out a dark laugh. “I know how gross it sounds. He’s like, old. I don’t know what I was thinking. But Teddy can be really charming and sweet. He made it seem natural. Don’t ask me how.”

  “Lucy,” said Cass. “The man is a predator. That’s what they do. What Coach Marks did to you is rape.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” cried Lucy. “It wasn’t like that. It’s not like I said ‘no.’ He didn’t force me to do anything.”

  “You’re a minor, girl. What he did to you, whether you agreed or not, is illegal. It’s statutory rape.”

  “It’s also not the first time he’s done this,” I said.

  Both women glared at me. Now was not the time.

  “How did it end?” asked Cass.

  “Somebody caught us,” said Lucy. “Coach John. He caught us in Teddy’s hotel room at a swim meet. We were kissing.” The tears returned; her face dissolved into a splotchy mess of memory. “God, I was so stupid.”

  “What happened next?” I asked.

  “I ran out of the room, and Teddy tried to talk to Coach John. Obviously, there wasn’t much he could say. It was totally obvious. Then we got home from the meet and Coach John quit like the next week. And Teddy wouldn’t speak to me at practice.”

  “Did you ever speak to him, to Coach Kosta?” I asked.

  “No. I figured he would call me or email me, or something, but he never did. I have no idea where he went or what Teddy said to him. Anyway, I couldn’t bear to come to practice after that. Teddy was ignoring me. No one knew what had been going on. It was just too much. So, I said that my shoulder hurt, that I needed to take a break. I just stopped showing up to the pool, and it was like no one cared.”

  “When did you start hanging out with Madeline?” asked Cass. “Were you two close before all this?”

  “Yeah, I mean, kind of. Madeline was always really sweet to me. She was like a big sister. She has this terrible reputation, but she’s really not like that. She’s like the kindest person I know. Or at least she was.”

  Cass nodded like she understood. Kept rubbing her back. The sisterhood of striking beauty.

  “So, one of my last days at the pool, Madeline shows up for practice. She would kind of come and go whenever she felt like it. Teddy hated it, but he couldn’t say anything, since she was Charlie’s sister, and their mom bought him an apartment or something. Anyway, Maddie noticed I was upset, and she caught up to me as I was leaving. We started hanging out after that.”

  “Did you ever tell her about what Marks did to you?” I asked.

  Lucy nodded. “Eventually,” she said. “Not right away. At first I said I was just burnt out on swimming and that I needed a break. She understood and never pushed me to explain. She respected my privacy. But then one night at her apartment, we were doing like cocaine, and we were talking about all kinds of stuff, and I confessed to her.”

  “What did she say?” asked Cass.

  “She was really quiet at first. I remember she got up and went to the bathroom, and she was in there for a long time. When she came back she was really serious, and like steaming. She held my hands and told me that she was going to get back at Teddy for me.”

  “Did she say how?”

  “No. I begged her not to tell anyone. I said, whatever she did, please don’t let it out. If my father found out . . . God, he would kill Teddy. I mean, literally. He would, I know it.”

  “What happened after that?” I asked. “Did you and Madeline ever speak about it again? Do you know if she ever followed through on what she said?”

  “The next day she told me not to worry. She promised that my secret was safe, and that she would take care of everything. But then the next weekend she met that boy, James, and it was like she forgot about me. She started hanging out with him all the time, and partying even harder, and I figured, you know, that it was just big talk on drugs.”

  “Lucy, honey, what do you think happened to James Fealy?” asked Cass. “You said you were worried Madeline may have done something?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” she said. “A few weeks ago, Maddie started texting me again, asking to hang out. She said James was this total asshole, told me all sorts of terrible things about him. I went out with her once after that, and it was like too much. I couldn’t keep up with her. She’s out of control now. Maddie always liked to party, but not like this. She would go for days at a time. It scared me. She scared me. And then, that happened with James last week. I didn’t know what to think.”

  “And then I got in touch, wanting to ask you all sorts of questions,” said Cass.

  “It was too much,” said Lucy. “Just too much. So, I . . . I jumped into our building’s pool, and I decided that I was never coming up for air.” She burst into sobs this time. She lifted her legs and hugged her knees and buried her face between them. Cass rubbed at her back as Lucy shook with terror and pain at her darkest point. I looked over at Cass. She was sharing my guilt. This girl was in no shape to relive these memories in the presence of two strangers, even if it helped us find her wayward friend. She needed professional help, not brutal, confused confessions on a park bench.

  “I should go,” she sobbed, looking up. “I really need to go.”

  “Let me help you,” said Cass. “I’ll walk you home, okay?”

  “No,” said Lucy, wiping at her tears. “Please don’t. I just need to go. I’m sorry.”

  She avoided our eyes and stood and moved fast out of the park gates and down Second Avenue. Cass started to stand, then reconsidered and sat back down. Elvis sat panting at our feet looking up at us. He leapt up on the bench and nuzzled into Cass’s lap and rested his head on her thigh. She rubbed behind his ears and stared off across the park. Neither of us spoke for a long time.

  “Why did I take her to meet you?” Cass asked, finally, without loo
king over. “I could have just reported back. But we were nearby, at a Starbucks on Union Square, and I was so floored by what she said, I wanted you to hear it directly from her. They released her after the required seventy-two hours, and Lucy got in touch with me almost immediately, said she needed to talk. And that’s how I help her, by forcing her to repeat all that stuff. Jesus.”

  “Even if it means her father killing Marks, we have to report this,” I said. “We have to.”

  “Michael Townes should let me have a crack at him first,” said Cass.

  I shuddered at the thought. It would be worse than any orifice damage that Teddy Marks would receive in prison.

  “Guess this explains who’s behind the blackmail,” I said. “Madeline vowed to get back at Marks for her friend. Sounds like she’s been doing just that.”

  Cass was silent for a moment; then she shook her head. “Didn’t Marks tell you his swimmers were being hurt, after he stopped paying? I can’t see Madeline ever hurting her teammates to get back at him. And we’re talking about a girl who’s spiraled way down into addiction,” she said. “You heard Lucy, Madeline’s out of control, staying up for days. Does that sound like someone capable of well-plotted blackmail? Wire transfers and voice manipulators and whatever else Marks described to you?”

  “So she hired someone to do it for her.”

  “Who?”

  “John Kosta? The guy who caught Marks with Lucy, and suddenly quit a week later?”

  “You mean, the coward who did nothing to help the victim? Who failed to report the crime he witnessed firsthand? Suddenly that guy’s gonna blackmail his old boss for a crime he let happen? And then hurt kids he used to coach himself? No way.”

  “Maybe those incidents with his swimmers were unrelated, and Marks is just paranoid. Maybe Kosta is crazed with guilt for not acting,” I said. “Then Madeline approaches him with a plan to make amends?” I didn’t believe the words as I spoke them, but they had a certain logic.

  “Bullshit,” said Cass. “No fucking way.”

  “Only one way to find out,” I said. “I’m going to talk to that fucker.” I tossed the leash on Cass’s lap. “Drop off the hound whenever, will you?” I left them there under the canopy of green leaves and headed for the subway.

  Twenty minutes later I got off the Q train at DeKalb Avenue on the edge of downtown Brooklyn. I walked east up the hill until I reached Fort Greene Park and found a bench to get my bearings.

  John Kosta wasn’t too hard to find. A Google of his name plus “photographer” and “Brooklyn,” and I was in business. The first hit to pop up was a site for Kosta Family Photography. The home page featured a mantel-ready pic of a smiling baby crawling on green grass. The site described a photography business devoted to capturing “those timeless moments in the life of every family.” In the About section, I read about Kosta’s new post-coaching career. There was no mention of swimming or Marks Aquatics anywhere. Next to his bio, there was the requisite family shot, of John with his plump blond wife, named Pam, and a fat-cheeked baby named Jack on her lap. This wasn’t the portrait of a blackmailer intent on revenge. In stroller-saturated Brooklyn, I guessed Kosta was carving out a nice living for himself. But as Cass reminded me countless times, you never see the truly dark ones coming. They look like the nicest, most well-adjusted . . . well, they look like a guy who owns a family photo business with his loving wife.

  I called the number listed and asked to set up an appointment as soon as they could fit me in. I heard myself playing the part of fumbling husband who’d forgotten to set up a shoot as he’d promised his wife. Our son’s first birthday was coming up, and we wanted to document it with some special family portraits. The woman on the line had a warm, chipper accent, with the sort of Southern drawl that disarms stressed-out Yanks. Kosta’s wife, I guessed. “Sure thing, honey,” she soothed. “We can fit y’all in. Not to worry, we’ll make sure you stay out of the dog house at home.” I stammered my thanks, almost believing my bullshit. I found myself wishing, briefly, that I led the life I was describing, but that passed like an exit half noticed on the highway.

  She told me Kosta could meet for a consultation at one p.m., two hours from now. We agreed on a local coffee shop called the General’s Bean, and I thanked her for fitting me in so quickly. Finding their home address was also light lifting. The business address listed on their site was on Willoughby Avenue. There was a residential listing for a J. Kosta on Adelphi Street, just three blocks over. Doesn’t take much of a sleuth with a smartphone these days.

  I bought a twenty-four-ounce Beck’s at the first bodega I saw. I had it brown bagged and opened, swallowed down two Vicodins with my first sip, and strolled over to casa Kosta for a late morning stakeout with my beverage. It was your classic Brooklyn brownstone, divided into four two-bedroom flats. The narrow street was lined with too green trees; I counted five strollers moving up and down the block. Once upon a time, when I was a kid in the city, this neighborhood was black and cheap and less than safe—the kind of place where it would be reasonable to sit on a stoop with a brown bag bomber and sip a beer on a pleasant Sunday morning. Now the rents are almost Manhattan-high, and the demographics have paled considerably. No one has heard about a mugging in ages. Now good neighbors scowl at folks like me who need a bit of maintenance drinking to get through the day. I pretended not to notice. I found a stoop across the street from Kosta’s, about five doors down. I wondered if Marks’s man, Fred Wright, was somewhere on the same block, staking out the same place. I scanned both sides of the street, looking for anyone idling in his car, but noticed no one. That didn’t mean much. If Fred was the SEAL-trained stealth killer that Marks described, he’d be somewhere in the shadows.

  The Vicodin kicked in after forty-five minutes, as I was taking the last sips of my Beck’s. I felt the warm rush of inexplicable joy as the pills worked their magic. My head began to nod in slow beats to silent music; my nose had that pleasant phantom itch; my jaw unclenched. Ah, Vicodin, hello, old friend. I considered going back to the bodega for a second bomber, but I didn’t want to mess with the buzz. It was settling just right. There aren’t too many times when you’re not too clear and not too cloudy. You have to savor it. I was leaning back on the stoop, letting the September sun warm my face, when I spotted Kosta leaving his place.

  He reached the sidewalk and looked both ways like a man expecting trouble. He took two strides in one direction, then reconsidered, and turned and walked off fast the other way. We still had an hour before our meeting. The man was heading somewhere else first, and it looked like even he wasn’t quite sure where. I followed at a discreet distance. He turned left on Lafayette and moved almost at a jog down the avenue. I let him widen the gap a bit. Paranoia was emanating from the guy; he’d have noticed someone moving at the same speed behind him. Three blocks later I watched him turn into a church on the corner of Oxford. Again he looked back in all directions before pushing through the high, heavy doors of the chapel. I resisted following him inside. I’ve always hated the suffocating, guilt-choking air of those places, could never understand the serenity that some find inside of them. I checked around the side, and seeing no other exits, resumed my vigil on a new stoop across from the church.

  An hour later, just as the bell tolled, Kosta emerged and headed toward our meeting. He was walking more slowly this time. Whatever prayers had been said inside appeared to have eased his worried mind. I walked along behind him on the other side of the street for a few blocks and watched as he entered the General’s Bean with the transformed air of the pleasant neighborhood photographer. I entered ten seconds later and was greeted with his finest family-man smile. I introduced myself as Lawrence.

  “Great to meet you,” he said, clasping my hand in a hearty shake. “Psyched we can help you out on short notice.”

  He’d gained weight and facial hair since I’d last seen him. The Kosta I remembered as a kid was a slim, short man who carried himself tall. Always clean shaven, always fresh from a run
, or about to go for one. This later version Kosta was about thirty pounds heavier with a paunch and a puffy face covered by a scruffy Brooklyn-issue beard. We ordered our coffees at the counter and talked about the weather and the Yankees while we waited. He looked at me with amiable warmth as he tried to place the memory of the face before him. We found a table in the back.

  “You don’t remember me, do you?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m terrible with names, but I never forget a face. We’ve met before, have we?”

  “It’s okay, it was another lifetime,” I told him. “When I was a kid I used to swim for—”

  “Wait, oh man, Duck Darley?”

  “Good to see you again, Coach Kosta.”

  “Why’d you say your name was Lawrence?”

  “It is, my given name. Guess I wanted to see if you’d remember me first.”

  “My apologies, Duck. I see so many . . . and it’s been, what twenty years?”

  “Something like that.”

  He was relaxed now, in the presence of an old swimmer, a part of the tribe. “Well, thank you for reaching out to our little photo business. How did you hear about us? I’m afraid I stopped keeping up with any of the old crew. You were a funny bunch of kids. And so motivated . . . It’s amazing to think of the sets you guys used to do back then.” He took a sip of his latte and let himself get lost for a moment in the nostalgia. I watched as memory lane reached its dark dead end. He chewed the beard hair beneath his lower lip. He exhaled through his nostrils like he was trying to release a sudden bout of bad energy. “Anyway,” he said. “What can I do for you today? My wife mentioned a son’s first birthday coming up? My congrats, dude. There’s nothing more special in life, is there?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “I’m not here about a photo shoot. I have no wife, no kids. I’m investigating a disappearance.”

  For a second I thought he was going to get up and run. He began to stand, gripped his coffee cup like he was about to toss it in my face.