The Hollow Girl (A Moe Prager Mystery)

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  Showered, shaved, and coffeed up, I sat down to scan the papers. Millicent McCumber’s death wasn’t exactly front-page news. She was like a thousand actors before her—pretty, talented, full of promise and potential that came to nothing more than a footnote or afterthought. She had died not as a celebrity remembered, but as someone people thought they might’ve remembered. A chasm exists between those two things. There was a listing of her acting credits: a few Off-Broadway plays, Ophelia in a Shakespeare in the Park production of Hamlet—the role that got her noticed—plus two Broadway shows, six movies, and a five-episode run on a star-crossed prime time soap about a wealthy New England family that lost their money during the Depression.

  Although there was no explicit mention of the cause of death, an NYPD spokesperson was quoted as saying, “There is no reason to suspect foul play.” I knew the ME had a working theory about a heart attack, but given what Nancy and Anthony Rizzo had told me about Millie’s wild and addictive nature, I wasn’t so sure. I was awfully curious to see what the toxicology report would say. My curiosity would no doubt fade in the six weeks it would probably take to get those reports back. Six weeks, as I had learned during my illness, could be a lifetime.

  One thing that grabbed my attention was a statement from Millie’s agent, Giorgio Brahms. Poor Giorgio was heartsick at the loss: “We’d been through some very tough times together, but lately Millie was re-energized and we were excited to put her back out there.” It wasn’t the statement that so much caught my eye as the person who gave it. Old Giorgio didn’t know it yet, but he had an appointment with me that afternoon. There was at least one other person I wanted to see first, so I made a few phone calls as I waited for my computer to boot up.

  * * *

  Michael C. Dillman was happy to see me as long as he believed I had come to his offices at 7 Hanover Square down by Wall Street in order to enlist his assistance in diversifying my portfolio. Dillman was a fit and slender African-American man of thirty-one with a handsome face, close-cropped hair, and a well-trimmed mustache. Everything about Dillman was well trimmed and well appointed, including his clothing and his office. There were photos of his lovely wife holding their twin daughters. His Yale BS and Wharton MBA were proudly displayed on the wall to the left of his desk. It was all peaches and cream between us until I handed him my PI card and mentioned Sloane Cantor by name. Then the cream curdled, the peaches went bad, and his mood went severely sour.

  “What kind of nonsense is this?” His voice was cold and he shook his head in anger. “Get out of my office or I’ll call security.” He picked up his phone to emphasize the point.

  “Sloane’s missing,” I stated, as if it was a fact.

  He twisted his mouth into a sneer. “And this should concern me because … .” Regardless of the sneer and bravado, he put the phone back in its cradle.

  “Maybe it shouldn’t, but when it’s the cops who come looking for her and not a PI friend of the family, your office is going to be the first stop on their list.”

  Dillman tried unsuccessfully to act unfazed. “Why would that be, Mr. Prager?”

  “Because after five minutes even a blind detective will know all there is to know about the Hollow Girl and Lionel, her cruel, abusive boyfriend who made her watch as he fucked her friend Victoria. And then there was that order of protection thing she took out against you … .”

  He shot out of his chair. “Fuck! I thought all this idiocy was behind me forever. God dammit! This is bullshit. I did none of those things. Lionel was as phony as the rest of Sloane’s Lost Girl routine.”

  “Not the order of protection. That was real enough.”

  “Look, Sloane and I were friends in high school. We were both in the Drama Club. For me, it was just something to do to break out of my shyness. For Sloane, Drama Club was her life. We had done all the school productions. It bonds people together in a way that’s difficult to explain. I thought I could trust Sloane with my life. How was I supposed to know when she asked if she could use my photograph for this project she was doing that it would turn into a nightmare? I have too many regrets in my life, Mr. Prager. I can’t undo any of them, but if I could undo one thing, it would be giving my permission to Sloane to use my picture. You have no idea how bad it got there for a little while.”

  “I think you’d be surprised at the ideas I have. I take it you got a lot of hate mail.”

  “And death threats,” he said, staring out the window at the harbor, Brooklyn, the Statue of Liberty, Staten Island. “Even though people knew it was a sham, they thought I really was Lionel and that somehow I had done all those horrible things to the Hollow Girl. That I had practically forced her to commit suicide. I had no idea about any of it until it was too late. It was like my family was hit by a tsunami, and without any notion it was headed their way. I could take what happened to me, but what had my parents, my brothers and sisters, done to deserve any of it? I guess I lost it. I was a senior in high school. What did I know about life? I didn’t know how to react, so I said some very stupid things that I should never have said. With Sloane’s dad being a powerful lawyer, one thing led to another.”

  “I can see how things could have spiraled out of control. But you seem to have done very well for yourself, Mr. Dillman.”

  He turned back to face me. “Sloane’s dad wasn’t the only powerful father on the block, so to speak. My father was a powerful man as well. The order of protection was vacated and we all moved on with our lives, or so I thought.”

  “Apparently, it was pretty bad for Sloane, too. Did you know that she changed her name?”

  “I didn’t know that and please … .” He held up his hand. “Don’t tell me what she’s changed it to. I don’t want to know.”

  “Do you hate Sloane?”

  “I suppose I did, but if she’s missing, it’s nothing to do with me. I’ve moved on from all that.”

  “I believe you.”

  “Do you think I should contact my lawyer, Mr. Prager?”

  “You probably should, just in case. If there’s another tsunami coming, it’s good to be prepared.”

  “Thank you for that. I will get in touch with my attorney as soon as you go.”

  I stood up to do just that. I shook his hand and thanked him for his candor. As I was almost out his office door, he called after me. “Have you ever met her?”

  “No, I haven’t. Why?”

  “Sloane is—was an odd duck. I suppose all of us were back then, but Sloane was different.”

  “How so?”

  He laughed, a bitter sort of a laugh. “It’s kind of ironic that she became known as the Hollow Girl, in spite of her beginning as the Lost Girl.”

  “I’m not getting you,” I said, turning fully to face him.

  “To be lost you have to have once been present. Sloane was never really present. She was always kind of empty. I used to think the only times she was ever truly alive were when she was being someone else. It was as if Sloane was only ever Sloane when she was Eliza Doolittle or Lady Macbeth. I know that doesn’t make much sense.”

  “Lots of things don’t make sense, Mr. Dillman.”

  I left it at that. Who Sloane Cantor or Siobhan Bracken was or wasn’t didn’t concern me. I hoped it never would. I’d been hired to find out if she was missing, whoever she was.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Coming out of 7 Hanover Square I noticed a maroon BMW parked nearby. This putz was persistent, if not very subtle. I admired persistence. Just now, however, it was annoying the shit out of me. I didn’t mind so much that I’d been tailed here or that P EYE 7 had anticipated my next move. Like I’d explained to Dillman, any yoyo would come sniffing around, given the bad blood between him and Sloane Cantor. I was a generous guy by nature, but I had my limits. I didn’t want P EYE 7 anywhere near Giorgio Brahms. Not everyone a PI interviews is apt to be as forthcoming as Dillman. There were times you had to work to develop a level of trust before someone would open up to you. Even then, there are no g
uarantees. The last thing I needed was for this schmuck to show up at Brahms’s door while I was there, or ten minutes after I left.

  I thought about using traffic to shed the BMW. Regrettably, using traffic in Manhattan to lose a tail wasn’t a sure thing. The streets were too congested, traffic moved too slowly. I opted for another approach. Post-9/11, there was always an army of cops around the financial district. So it was less than challenging for me to find a uniform to help me out. And when I explained that I used to be on the job and that there was this annoying asshole in a BMW following me around because I was in the midst of a messy divorce … I didn’t stick around to watch the festivities, but it was easy to picture the look on my new friend’s face when he was asked to step out of his car.

  It was a straight shot up West Street to get to Giorgio Brahms’s address. He didn’t live too far from where the USS Intrepid was docked along the Hudson River. When I was growing up, this part of the city was a real shithole. The waterfront was falling to pieces. The cargo business was moving to New Jersey, and the cruise business was moving down to Florida. Hell’s Kitchen, never the garden spot of the city, was under the control of a violent Irish mob known as the Westies. But there’s this New York City phenomenon that exists, because the city has no room to grow: The neighborhoods cycle and churn. It’s what transformed Williamsburg, Brooklyn, from a forgotten backwater area populated by Hasidic Jews and Puerto Ricans into hipster heaven, and what turned Long Island City, Queens, from an inert industrial wasteland into a hot part of town. There are inevitable downsides, too, of course. Rents skyrocket. Traditional residents get displaced. Hell’s Kitchen, a moniker that persisted in spite of the real estate hyenas’ attempt to rename the place Clinton, had undergone a slow churning into respectability and hipness. I mean, who but a Bible-thumping, God-fearing servant of the Lord wouldn’t want to say he lived in Hell’s Kitchen? As a dyed-in-the-wool Brooklynite, it even appealed to me.

  Brahms’s brownstone could have used a little churning and urban renewal of its own. The chipped and flaking façade looked as if it had survived a WWII battle, barely. The wrought-iron gate was rusted and unstable. The front steps were cracked and wilted. All the street-facing windows seemed to have been produced before industrial glass became the rage. Only in New York City during rough economic times could such a dump still have fetched several million bucks on the open market.

  I had never met Giorgio Brahms. What I knew about him, I knew from his website. He was a theatrical agent who listed Millie McCumber as one of his clients. But just from seeing the state of his website—it hadn’t been updated in a year—and his abode, I got the sense that he had probably done a lot of borrowing against the equity in the brownstone and that he had invested very little of that money back into its upkeep. I’d been wrong before, dead wrong. This time, I didn’t think so. I rang the bell then knocked, and waited to find out. That the door hadn’t been painted in ten years and that the bell wasn’t working didn’t come as a shock.

  “Coming … coming,” a man’s voice called from behind the door. “Who is it?”

  “Police,” I lied, holding up my badge to the peephole. I’d worry about an explanation after he opened the door.

  Brahms was likely a few years younger than me and considerably vainer. His website photo was either very old or had been Photoshopped to death. He’d been a very handsome man once, but he’d had the kind of work done on his face that his brownstone needed. It was a shame that the work hadn’t been all that skillfully done, or it had come too late in the game. Nancy’s work had been done when she was young, when there was elasticity to her skin and tone in her muscles. Giorgio’s work just made him look like Saran Wrap had been too tightly stretched over his face and left there. I was kind of amazed he could move his lips or blink his eyelids. He answered the door wearing a black T-shirt over jeans and running shoes. Apparently, he kept the rest of himself in good shape through exercise and diet. As I looked him over, he did the same to me.

  “A little long in the tooth to be playing a cop, don’t you think?”

  “I used to play one for real,” I said, handing him my card. “I’ve been retained by Siobhan Bracken’s mother.”

  “Yes, Nancy Lustig, the wicked witch of Old Westbury.”

  “Old Brookfield,” I corrected, unsmiling.

  “Ruins the rhythm. Come in, come in.”

  The interior of the brownstone—what I could see of it—though not as designer showcase–ready as Siobhan Bracken’s apartment, was tidy and very nicely done up in retro ’60s style. Kind of looked like a set from Mad Men.

  “Why didn’t Nancy just hop on her broom and fly over herself instead of sending a flunky?”

  I laughed at that. “I like that, Mr. Brahms. I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, but never a flunky.”

  “Glad I could make your day, but could we move on … please?”

  “Will you be taking care of the funeral arrangements for Miss McCumber?”

  “Mr. Brahms, Miss McCumber … my, aren’t you the most polite ex-cop?”

  “Charm school,” I said. “The funeral arrangements?”

  “I will not be involved,” he answered and sniffed as if offended I’d asked.

  “She was good enough to rep and good enough to fuck, but not good enough to bury, huh?”

  His eyes got wide. Well, as wide as the Saran Wrap would allow. And he did now seem a little frightened of me. “No, no … you misunderstand. I loved Millie. She’d been good to me, and I was good to her. There were times I was the only person on this earth who loved that woman, and even then it was a trial. I’m just upset because I won’t be involved. She has family, though they were never there for her. They’ll come out of the woodwork like rats and roaches now that she’s dead, and suck up her money. They’ll own her image and the rights to her story, and they’ll exploit her although they abandoned her long ago. It’s too ghastly to—” He stopped mid-sentence, a light seeming to click on. “Wait, you said you were hired by Nancy. So what are you doing here? And how did you know about—”

  “I have my ways. I know all about the cozy little foursomes you were an occasional part of.”

  “The doorman, Anthony,” he said, shaking his head, smiling. “Bridge and tunnel types, a real weakness of mine, but they can be awfully indiscreet.” He shrugged his shoulders. “That doesn’t explain why you’re here, Mr. Moses Prager.”

  “Nancy is concerned that Siobhan is missing.”

  “Nancy is concerned about her daughter. Really? That’s a first. She won’t even call her by her name.”

  “Be that as it may, I’ve still been hired to look into it.”

  “Well, it’s your lucky day, sunshine,” he said, something resembling a smile on his face. “Siobhan went to Europe for a couple of weeks, I think. Mystery solved.”

  “A couple of weeks was done a couple of weeks ago. It’s now been over a month since Nancy has heard from her daughter.”

  His smile-like expression vanished. “It has been a while, hasn’t it? No biggie. Siobhan goes on lots of trips.”

  “But never for longer than two weeks.”

  He squinted his eyes and put his fists to his face in thought. “I suppose that’s right. I don’t know. I wouldn’t worry about Siobhan. She can handle herself. Now you’ll have to excuse me, Mr. Prager, but I do have to get ready to go.”

  I didn’t know if he was full of shit or not, but I also didn’t want to press him. Whereas with Dillman I assumed I’d gotten everything from him there was to get, I thought I was just scratching the surface with Brahms.

  “Fine. Thanks for the cooperation. Just one thing. I know Miss McCumber was your client. Was Siobhan your client as well?”

  “I’m afraid not. Siobhan was immensely gifted, but I’m not sure she even had representation anymore.”

  “Who was—”

  “Anna Carey at ICAA Management. Now, if you’ll excuse me … .” He gestured at the front door.

  I oblige
d him, closing the door behind me. The deadbolt clicked into place not two seconds later.

  * * *

  Anna Carey was old, and if I called someone old that was saying something. Grizzled and gray-headed, she was drinking a glass of bourbon and lighting herself a cigarette by an open window when I walked into her office. She didn’t appear very pleased to see me. I didn’t take offense. PIs get used to that or they get out of the business. Plus, Anna Carey didn’t strike me as a woman to be pleased with much of anything anymore.

  “You want a drink?”

  Yeah, really bad. “No, thank you. I’m—”

  “Moses Prager and you’re here about Siobhan. That sexy fraud, Giorgio Brahms, gave me a courtesy call. Giorgio Brahms, my wrinkly old ass. I knew him when he was a bad actor named George Abramowicz. Probably hopes I’ll fuck him.” She broke into hysterical laughter, baring her yellowed teeth. “They say he’ll fuck just about anything with a pulse and a purse. I’d be a helluva test, don’t you think?” She finished her drink and took a long drag on her cigarette. “Old Georgie says you think she’s gone missing. Is that a fact?”

  “Her mother thinks she might be missing. I don’t have an opinion yet.”

  “Bullshit, Prager! Everybody’s got an opinion about everything. What’s yours?”

  “It’s suspicious. When was the last time you heard from her?”

  That started her laughing again. “Agents never want to hear from their clients. It’s the other way around.”

  “So there wasn’t any work for Siobhan?”

  “On the contrary … you sure you don’t want a drink?”

  I hesitated because I was strapped for the first time in months, my old snub nose .38 tucked in the clip holster at the small of my back. But I could feel Anna Carey warming to me a bit and didn’t want to lose her goodwill. I held my right thumb and index finger an inch apart. “Maybe a short one,” I said.

  “That’s more like it.” She tossed the cigarette out the window. She pulled a half-empty bottle of Jim Beam and a second glass from her drawer, poured more than I wanted in the fresh glass, and twice that in her own. “Slainte.”