The Hollow Girl (A Moe Prager Mystery)

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “Is she missing?” she repeated, shrugging her shoulders. “Maybe. She might be. I don’t know. She vanishes sometimes, but usually she gets in touch with me after a few weeks. This time it’s been about a month and I’m worried … a little. Do I give a shit? I do, because I failed her as a mother. Like I said yesterday, we aren’t exactly close, but I am her mom.”

  “That’s two outta three answers. What about the big question? What’s this dance about?”

  “You, obviously … and me.”

  I put my cup down. “What about us?”

  “Everything.”

  “Well, that clears it all up.”

  “Sarcasm. God, it makes me wet.” Nancy placed her hand over her crotch.

  “That was the pool water.”

  “More sarcasm.” She pulled a face. “Say something else and I’ll come.”

  I stood to go. “Look, Nancy, I don’t have time for this bullshit. I could be spending my time doing some serious drinking or, God forbid, working.”

  She grabbed my wrist with both hands. “Please, don’t go. I’m sorry. I really am worried about Sloane.”

  “Siobhan,” I corrected just to bust her chops.

  “I detest that name, but yes, Siobhan.” She still had my wrist. “Please sit down. Please.”

  And for the first time, even behind the contacts, I saw a glimpse of old Nancy. “If you give me my wrist back, I’ll think about it.”

  When I sat back down, she said, “I lied to you that time, the last time we saw one another before yesterday.”

  “In 2000? When I came about Patrick.”

  “I pretended not to know who you were. I knew about what had happened to Patrick, and I remembered you. Believe me, I could never forget you.”

  “What does that mean, you could never forget me?”

  “When I was in college and you came here to the old house to talk to me about Patrick, I kind of fell in love with you. You were older, not too old, and so handsome and you treated me like … like a person. You told me the truth and didn’t try to spare my feelings. I remember every word from that day. I told you things I wouldn’t have told anyone, like about the sex club and the abortion. I didn’t know you at all. You were just some broken-down ex-cop who came to my house looking for Patrick, yet there was something about you. I trusted you immediately. You made me feel safe. I felt this spark between us. I’d hoped you felt it too, but I was hideous. I knew I was just being a stupid, romantic girl. That someone like you would never feel something for a stupid little troll like me.”

  I laughed, shook my head, thinking about how incredibly wrong she was. “You weren’t pretty, Nancy, no. But you were the most honest person I think I’d ever met. Your honesty almost made me dizzy.”

  “Do you know what it was like for me to look in the mirror? God, I hated myself. There were times I regretted that Patrick hadn’t killed me after the abortion.” She was crying now. “All these years later and I’m still that ugly girl. You just don’t see her anymore.” She stood up and removed her new robe. I turned away. “Don’t turn away. Please, don’t turn away. Please, look at me. In a very real way, Moe, this was for you. All the surgery and exercise and dieting, all the pain and hard work, it was so I could have a man like you.”

  “I don’t know what to say to that.”

  Nancy took a step to me, knelt down, and placed her cheek against my thigh. “Don’t say anything. Just come upstairs with me. It’s so chilly out here and we could be so warm together.”

  I found I was stroking her hair. “You were wrong, you know. That day I first came to your house, I did fall a little bit in love with you. My brother and I own a wine store not a mile from here. I used to hope you would come in someday, but you never did.”

  “I know, but you were married then and you had a little girl.”

  “How do you know—”

  “Please, come upstairs with me.”

  “I can’t, Nancy. I’m … I just can’t.”

  “Is it Pam?”

  I shot out of my seat, the force of it knocking her back and to the ground. “What the fuck, Nancy? Are you stalking me?”

  And for the second time that day, I saw the old Nancy in her eyes and expression. “I’m sorry, Moe. I really am. You can’t possibly appreciate how much.” Red-faced, she scrambled to put the terry cloth robe back on. When she got it tied up, she turned to me. “I do want you to find Sloane or, at least, to find out that she’s okay. All the pictures and information you asked for are in a brown envelope next to the front door. There are keys to Sloane’s apartment as well. I’ve also included a retainer check for five thousand dollars. I didn’t know what your rates were.”

  “There’s something about me you don’t know?”

  “I guess I deserved that.” She looked at the ground. “I realize now isn’t the best time to ask and that I’ve gone about this all wrong, but would you please give me a chance to explain, maybe over dinner? I promise, no more stunts. No more manipulations. Just dinner.”

  “Swear to me that this thing with your daughter isn’t bullshit.”

  “I swear,” old, ugly Nancy said from beneath the million-dollar veneer.

  “I take it your phone numbers are in the envelope.”

  “They are.”

  “I’ll call you in a few days with a progress report. We’ll talk about dinner then.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet, Nancy. First let’s see what’s up with Siobhan.”

  “Will you do one more thing for me, Moe?”

  “Depends.”

  “Just hug me. Just a little. It would mean a lot to me.”

  “Just a hug?”

  “Just a hug. That’s it.”

  I didn’t say a word, but stepped up to her and wrapped my arms around her, my fingers sinking into the thick terry cloth. We stayed like that for a few seconds, her head on my shoulder, our arms around one another, then we pulled apart.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “I’ll call.”

  I walked back into the house. The envelope was where she said it would be. Funny, it must have been there the entire time. I picked it up, let myself out, and settled into my car. But I didn’t drive away, not immediately. No, I just sat there for a long couple of minutes lost in time, unable to get the smell of her perfume out of my head.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The stuff was all there, including the keys and check. I laughed at myself. Someone had to. It had been so long since I took a paying gig as a PI that I wouldn’t have known what to charge Nancy or what to ask as a retainer. I didn’t know where my license was, or if it was valid any longer. But it had never really been about the license for me. Looking back, I wasn’t sure what any of it had been for. For so many years I thought it was about getting my gold detective’s shield. Then it was about being a PI. Then … .

  In the end, it’s true: The older you get, the less you know; at least, the less you know for sure. No matter. Somehow I got the sense that on this case—if it actually was a case and not pure manipulation—there wouldn’t be much need for me to display current documentation.

  I did still carry my badge on me. I toted the old tin in my pocket, not so much to use it—for chrissakes, I was beyond a relic in cop years. I could maybe flash it at a blind man and get away with it. No, I think I carried it as a kind of talisman. It connected me to a distant past, to a time when I dressed in blue and things were decidedly more black and white than unendingly gray. I had, on the other hand, stopped carrying my .38 since I’d taken up drinking as an Olympic sport. Handguns, clouded judgment, and old man reflexes were a bad mix. The same was true for driving. Once I got back into the city, I was either going to have to lay off the booze or refamiliarize myself with the subway map.

  The subway map would have to wait because my first stop was only several miles to the west of Nancy Lustig’s Old Brookville manse. Great Neck, the town I was headed for, was a pretty wealthy area in its own right. The no
rthernmost part of Great Neck, Kings Point, was rumored to have been the model for West Egg in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. I smiled, thinking that Fitzgerald would have soiled himself at the notion of Great Neck having been a predominantly Jewish enclave for the latter half of the twentieth century. Tom Buchanan surely would have. Somewhere, Meyer Wolfsheim was smiling.

  The law offices of Cantor, Schreck, Forbus, Jordan, Halle, LLP took up the top two floors of a four-story glass and steel sarcophagus on Northern Boulevard. The Cantor at the head of the partners list was, according to the paper in my hand, Julian L. Cantor, Nancy’s ex and Sloane’s father. I knew the firm from when my second wife and I ran our own security outfit. Many of our steady accounts had been law firms representing one side or the other in personal injury suits. Though we never worked directly for Cantor, Schreck, et al. we had done jobs for law firms that were allied with them on class action suits. While they weren’t a huge firm by New York City standards, they were big players on Long Island and very well respected.

  The semicircular reception area was straight out of the suburban law office playbook. There was plush gray carpeting and floor-to-ceiling blond wood paneling with the firm’s name in big block letters behind the circular receptionist’s kiosk. To the right of the kiosk was a designated waiting area consisting of six severe black leather chairs and a curved coffee table covered in magazines that might interest someone with a seven-figure income. I can’t say that Polo Month or Yacht and Jet Weekly piqued my curiosity.

  “Mr. Cantor, please,” I said to the receptionist.

  Attractive, with short cropped brown hair, she was maybe thirty, but she had older eyes and a professionally cool demeanor. “Do you have an appointment?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Sorry, I don’t.”

  “Then I am afraid Mr. Cantor is unavailable. Would you like to make an appointment?”

  “Look, I’m not trying to be difficult, but it’s important that I speak to Mr. Cantor as soon as possible.”

  She didn’t like it or me. “In reference to … ?”

  “His daughter.”

  “You’ll have to be more specific,” she said, her voice neutral, her expression far less so.

  I handed her one of my old company cards from a little leather case. “Please tell Mr. Cantor that I have been retained by Nancy Lustig, his ex-wife.”

  The receptionist’s expression changed from skeptical to suspicious. She hesitated for a moment, but then put her fingers to a screen. “Yes, hi, Jess,” she spoke into the tiny mic at the end of the curved tube on her headset. “I have a Mr. Moses Prager in reception to see Mr. Cantor … his card says he’s the president of Prager & Melendez Investigations … no, this isn’t a solicitation. Mr. Prager says it’s about Mr. Cantor’s daughter and that he has been retained by Mr. Cantor’s ex … okay, Jess, I’ll hold on.” About thirty seconds later, the receptionist nodded. “Fine, I’ll have him wait. Thank you, Jess.” She looked back at me. “Please have a seat, Mr. Prager. Miss Lourey will be down to get you in a moment.”

  “Thank you.”

  But she had already moved on to something else. I was as good as invisible to her, or dead. I went with invisible. I’d recently been too close to dead to find that option even mildly amusing. Almost before I could sit, a woman seemed to appear before me out of thin air.

  “Mr. Prager?” She stretched her hand out to me. “I’m Miss Lourey, Mr. Cantor’s administrative assistant.”

  I shook her hand as I stood. She had a firm handshake, long but tidy black hair, and was dressed in a gray business suit with sensible black pumps. “A pleasure,” I said out of habit.

  “This way.”

  After a short, painfully silent elevator ride, Miss Lourey dropped me off at Julian Cantor’s corner office. She handed her boss my card, which he gave a cursory glance.

  Cantor greeted me with an insincere slap on the back. He was a trim, plain-faced man with a million-dollar smile and the same blue eyes as his daughter. He was dressed in the standard uniform of a senior law partner: dark blue pinstriped suit, powder blue shirt with white cuffs and collar, red tie, red suspenders, gold cuff links, Piaget watch, alligator belt, black wingtips. His gray hair was expertly coifed, his fingernails trimmed and polished, his face clean-shaven. He smelled vaguely of cigar smoke and sickly sweet, locker-room aftershave. That was the new rich man’s affectation. They seemed to enjoy smelling like they did when they went for their first haircuts.

  “So what’s this about?” he asked, glancing at my card again and gesturing to a chair in front of his desk. I sat as he moved around the desk to his chair. “What’s my ex upset with Sloane about this time?”

  I ignored the question for the moment. “I notice neither you nor Miss Lustig call your daughter Siobhan.”

  “What, are you a psychologist all of a sudden?” Cantor asked, affecting a Yiddish accent, his face frozen in a plastic smile.

  “Just curious is all.”

  It was his turn to ignore me. “Look, Prager, my ex-wife is a guilt-ridden woman. She feels she did a shitty job as a mother.”

  “Did she?”

  “She was no more a bad mother than any of the other women who moved in our circle. In fact, she was better than most of those rich, worthless whores. Sloane learned early on that she could get to Nancy by pushing her buttons and she has never stopped pushing them.”

  “How about your buttons?”

  “I know your firm, Prager. At least I used to. You know what trial lawyers are like. Not so easy to mess us about,” he said, proud as could be. “Sloane was a handful. Precocious, manipulative, talented, high-strung, a screwed-up adult in a little girl’s body. Now all that’s changed is she’s a screwed-up little girl in an adult’s body.”

  “What’s your relationship with her like now?”

  “Look, Prager, I’m not in the mood. I already have an analyst, okay? What’s going on?”

  “Your ex says your daughter has been off the radar for almost a month now, and that’s a little longer than she’s used to.”

  Given Cantor’s previous glibness, I expected more of the same. What, the kid doesn’t check in and my ex sends for the Marines? See, the kid’s just pushing Nancy’s buttons again like she always has. So what? Maybe my kid’s finally making a life for herself apart from Nancy. But that wasn’t what I got, not at all. The lawyer screwed up his lips. Pensively stroking his cheeks with his left hand, his eyes filled with worry.

  “A month? That is a long time for Sloane not to bust Nancy’s balls. Are you sure it’s been that long?”

  “That’s what your ex says, Mr. Cantor.”

  “All right, Nancy is pretty accurate about that stuff. If she says it’s a month, it’s a month. Look, Prager, keep me posted too.” He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out one of his cards. “This has all my contact info on it, including my home number, cell, et cetera. Anything you need, just ask.”

  “Why the concern? I mean, it’s pretty apparent that your daughter does this kind of thing on occasion.”

  “It’s complicated. You have to understand Nancy and Sloane to understand the situation, Prager. They’ve always been bound together in a strange kind of dance. It’s almost planetary, the way Sloane revolves around her mom. Two weeks and not a word from Sloane. Then, like clockwork, she calls to hurt her mom. Lord knows it wore me down. I have never seen two people who love and hate and need each other more than those two. Nancy never really needed me anyway. She never needed anyone or anything but a mirror. And Sloane only ever needed her mother. I got tired of being an afterthought,” he confessed, now staring intently at my card. “Moses Prager … Moses Prager. Do people call you Moe?”

  “Everybody calls me Moe.”

  His mouth readjusted itself into a crooked, knowing smile, and he clapped his hands together. “Moe. Ah, so you’re the famous Moe.”

  “If you say so.”

  “You’re the guy who Nancy met when you were looking for her
old boyfriend, Patrick, in the ’70s.”

  “You know about Patrick Maloney?”

  “Of course, but only as a means to talk about you. You’ve always been her white knight, you know that, right?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “No offense, Prager, but I don’t see it. I mean you must’ve been pretty good looking as a younger man, but … I guess it’s always tough, competing with a fantasy.”

  “I wouldn’t know, Mr. Cantor. I just try to get by. When I walk, I put one foot in front of the other.”

  “Nancy fuck you yet?”

  “Thanks for the card.” I stood up, refusing to take his bait. I didn’t see the point. The surgery, chemo, and radiation had not only gotten rid of my cancer, they had largely gotten rid of my temper as well. Too bad they were woefully ineffective against guilt. “I will call if I need anything.”

  “She will, you know … fuck you, I mean. She’s always wanted to, and Nancy’s always gotten everything she’s ever wanted, except you and Sloane’s affection. Now she can cross one of those off her list.”

  I walked to the office door, then turned back. “It’s funny, Mr. Cantor, how hard it is for people to see the stuff right in front of their faces. I don’t think Nancy’s ever gotten anything she ever wanted, not really.”

  With that, I left. I wasn’t judging Cantor. I had been twice divorced myself, both times because I was blind to the things right in front of my face. But I was getting the sense that maybe there was a case here, and that I’d better start taking things seriously.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  When I saw the building that matched Siobhan Bracken’s address, I can’t say I was surprised. The Kremlin, as it had come to be known, was a fifteen-story-tall red brick apartment building on East Houston—that’s HOW-ston, not YOU-ston—Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It wasn’t ugly, nor was it much to look at. It got its nickname because of the whimsical art installment on its roof that featured twenty-foot-tall statues of Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev holding hands and doing a circle dance. It was visible from surrounding streets. Behind the dancing comrades was a four-sided metal structure shaped like rows of dark green, red-starred ballistic missiles. The array of fake missiles covered up the building’s water tower. So, no, I wasn’t surprised at all by Siobhan’s choice of address. Like mother, like daughter—things weren’t what they seemed.