The Hollow Girl (A Moe Prager Mystery)

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “Want some?”

  “Sure, but a short one,” I said. “What’s your e-mail address?”

  Her face twisted in confusion. “Why?”

  “I have to send you some photos for us to look at together, and my phone won’t do them justice.”

  She put the glass down in front of me as she gave me the address. Then I forwarded the photos of the remains of Siobhan’s apartment to her e-mail. She waited to drink until I was done.

  “L’chaim.” She touched the lip of her glass to mine. “To life.”

  “If you say so.”

  She drummed her fingers on the table. “So, you said we had to talk.”

  I didn’t get directly to my point, choosing instead to update her on her daughter’s whereabouts between August 23 and September 13. I explained how I’d pieced Sloane’s travels together and how I thought I might go about filling in the holes that remained. Nancy listened with a peculiar sort of rapt disinterest: fussing with things, getting up to bring the expensive bottle of single malt back to the table with her. Yet, regardless of her practiced nonchalance, she could have repeated verbatim what I’d said; I would have bet on it. I recognized a defense mechanism when I saw one, and Nancy was displaying one writ large. God, the energy people expended on self-protection was enormous. The funny thing is that it never really works, except in the short run. And then, not always. I knew that better than most. As if to prove my point about her level of attention, Nancy interrupted.

  “Did you say a motel in the Hamptons?”

  “Yep. She stayed at the Stargazer Motel and Spa in Amagansett. Why?”

  “Sloane always made it a point of telling me how much she detested the Hamptons. Her father has a home in East Hampton and she would never visit him there. Who knows with her? It wouldn’t be the first time my daughter did something contrary to what she said. She lives to be contrary. Maybe that bitch Millie McCumber suggested it.”

  “That late bitch,” I chided.

  “Don’t expect me to get all weepy over her, Moe. She was a dreadful woman who had a very bad influence on Sloane. And it was especially galling to me that she came back into Sloane’s life after I thought she’d cleansed herself of that witch. Millie had the habit of getting between us, Sloane and me.” Nancy poured herself a few more fingers and another for me.

  “Hey, I’m a PI who owns a chain of wine stores with my brother. I’m no psychologist, but don’t you think that maybe your refusal to call your daughter by her name is as much responsible for this rift between you two as Millie McCumber?”

  Nancy winced. Like a careless dentist, I’d apparently hit an exposed nerve. She finished off her second drink in a gulp and looked at the glass as if she’d just swallowed a mouthful of piss. She poured herself a third. “You’re right … you’re not a psychologist.”

  “I talked to Siobhan’s agent, Anna—”

  “Sloane! Her name is Sloane.”

  “You call her what you want, but her professional name is Siobhan Bracken and I’m going with that. So I spoke to Anna Carey yesterday. She says that Siobhan could have all the work she wants, but won’t—”

  “Take the parts she’s offered. I know. It’s an old story, Moe.”

  “But—”

  “Forget it. If you have a spare week sometime, I’ll try and explain it to you.”

  No one, I thought, has a week to spare. No one. Ever. The problem is that you don’t usually realize it until it’s too late. “Sorry, fresh outta spare weeks.”

  “Then c’mon in the house,” she slurred, moving toward the opening where the pool ended and the house began, bottle in hand, “and show me the photos.”

  Nancy took me into an impossible room—impossible, to my mind, in a house so airy and bathed in light. The room was a dark, windowless little cubical on the second floor, just off the master bedroom. Accessible only through a door in the walk-in closet, I assumed the little room was meant to be used as additional closet space if the need arose. Of course, the walk-in closet was so cavernous to begin with that I couldn’t believe the need would ever arise. But I was wrong. Imagine that. It wasn’t extra space at all. Nancy told me that she had specifically had this area built as an office. She touched something on the wall and—poof—there was light, not a lot, but some, anyway. I could feel cool, fresh air circulating. The little room was the most interesting one in the whole joint that I could see because, unlike the rest of the house, the office looked as if a human actually used it. It was a mess. No interior designer had gotten within a mile of it. The desk and chairs didn’t match. There were photos, mostly of Nancy pre-metamorphosis, tacked to the walls. One was of Nancy in Patrick Michael Maloney’s arms. She caught me staring at it.

  “You married Patrick’s older sister, didn’t you?” Nancy asked. It sounded like an accusation more than anything else. “I’m a little drunk, so I can ask.”

  “Katy, yeah. We met alongside the Gowanus Canal. The cops found a floater they thought might’ve been Patrick. Katy was there to identify the body.”

  She made a face. “How romantic.”

  I ignored the sarcasm. “Not really. Have you ever seen a body after it’s been in the water a while? It ain’t pretty, Nancy. Seeing Millie the other day reminded me of that. She wasn’t very pretty to look at either. Why all these photos of your old self?”

  “Reminders,” she said as if that somehow explained it all. I guess it did. Then she ripped the picture of her and Patrick off the wall and threw it in the trash.

  “That’s what this room is too, isn’t it? A reminder. The ugly little core in the beautiful house.”

  When I turned away from the photo, Nancy was standing very close to me and there was a yearning in her eyes so deep it nearly buckled my knees. And before I could take another breath, her lips were pressing against mine. She parted her lips and I parted mine. I felt my fingers burying themselves in terry cloth. Then, from the pocket of her robe, vibration and a ringtone of The Zombies’ “Time of the Season.”

  I stepped back.

  “Ignore it,” she said, but we both knew it was too late for that. The spell had been broken. She reached into her pocket, pulled out the phone, studied the screen. “It’s Julian. I should take this.”

  “Go ahead.”

  When she answered, she just listened. Then, “Calm down, Julian. Yes, he told me about Sloane’s apartment,” she lied, shaking her head at me and giving me a look angry enough to stop time. “Uh huh, yeah, I’ll have him call you. Calm down. Yes … uh huh … okay, Julian. So long.” She turned to me. “Julian says that—”

  “His investigator notified him that the cops got a call about Siobhan’s apartment being trashed,” I finished her sentence. “That’s what’s in the photos I e-mailed you from my phone. Except I don’t think they represent what you and your husband will assume they represent.”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “Boot up your computer and I’ll show you.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Nancy was horrified as she clicked through the photos of her daughter’s apartment. It’s exactly how I expected her to react, and exactly how Julian Cantor must’ve reacted. I was not a fan of how they had raised their daughter, who, by the way, sounded just as responsible for her family’s mishegas as her parents. Still, it was heartening to know that, in spite of their crazy level of dysfunction, they loved each other. But it was precisely because of Nancy’s visceral reaction to the photos that I had driven here to see her and show her the photographs. What I had to say needed to be said in person.

  She turned away from the screen after reviewing the photos three times. “I’m confused,” she said. “You knew about this hours ago, but didn’t bother to call me or mention it to me until after Julian called. We sat out by the pool and drank. We came up here and were this close to—”

  “We kissed, Nancy. That’s all we were doing. But yes, you’re right. I didn’t tell you immediately.”

  “Are you nuts? Why
would you wait to tell me that Sloane’s apartment had been ransacked?”

  “You know I was a New York cop for about ten years, right?”

  She seemed offended, sounded bitter. “I know all about your career and even about your saving little Marina Conseco. You must tell me about her sometime, in all her incarnations. But what does your being a cop have to do with why you didn’t tell me?”

  “It has everything to do with it,” I said, losing my patience. “I presume that you didn’t hire me only because you’ve been curious about being with me. That you thought I might actually find out what’s going on with Siobhan.” I didn’t wait for her to answer. “Well, it may have been a long time since I was a cop, but I haven’t lost my eye for detail or forgotten what I learned on the job.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that someone trashed your daughter’s apartment on purpose, but not because they were looking to rob her. See there,” I pointed at Nancy’s computer screen, “her TV, her Bose system, her desktop … they’re all still there, though now in pretty rough shape. That stuff would be worth a fortune to a junky, but it wasn’t taken. I don’t know Siobhan’s apartment, but it doesn’t look like anything’s missing. Can you see anything missing that should be there?”

  “No,” she said. “Not from these pictures.”

  “Did Siobhan have a lot of jewelry? Did she keep cash on hand?”

  “Jewelry wasn’t her thing. She had some, but most of the time she wore what little she had. Cash … no, she didn’t keep a lot in the apartment. Her bank is not thirty feet from her building’s front door. What are you getting at? Is there a point here, Moe?”

  “We’re almost there. You know, beside the fact that it didn’t seem to me that anything of value was taken from the flat, there was another odd thing I found when I was there.”

  “And that would be … .”

  “There was not a solitary sign of forced entry at Siobhan’s place. Not one. I checked and rechecked. Whoever did this had a key, or was let in by someone who had a key.”

  “What?”

  “A key. It’s a little piece of metal with ridges and grooves that—”

  She flushed with anger. “This isn’t funny.”

  “It isn’t. I agree.”

  “All right, so nothing’s missing and the person or persons that did this didn’t break in. From all that you conclude, what, exactly?”

  “That what happened at Siobhan’s flat was bullshit. It was staged to look like a crime, but wasn’t a crime at all.”

  “Have you lost your mind?” She was screaming at me, pointing at the screen. “Look at the damage. Thank God Sloane wasn’t there.”

  “That’s the point, Nancy. I think she was.”

  “She was what?”

  “There.”

  She looked gut-punched. “You’re joking.”

  “I think Siobhan’s responsible for the damage. Maybe she had a little help. It would have been tough to wreak all that havoc by herself. And maybe I have an idea who her assistant was.”

  “But why? Why would she do—”

  “C’mon, Nancy. Think. Look at yourself. You and your ex-husband are probably ready to walk through concrete and chew through steel if it means keeping Siobhan safe.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You don’t even know Sloane. She would never do something like this.”

  “All I know is that if something looks like a setup, and smells like a setup, and tastes like a setup, it’s a—”

  “My daughter would never do something like this to us,” she repeated.

  “But the Hollow Girl might.”

  Nancy opened her mouth, squeezed her eyes into angry slits, clenched her fists, and tensed her body as if to pounce. I felt myself flinch, but the attack never came. My words had finally seemed to penetrate her defenses. She slumped her shoulders, turning away from me.

  “But why would she do it, Moe?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she wanted to up the stakes or change the dynamics between you and her and her father. Maybe she just got bored and wants to try another stunt—sorry, I mean a different type of performance art. Look, Nancy, I’ve got enough trouble walking the high wire with my own daughter. I’m no expert. I’m not the person with the answers. I’m just giving you my opinion about what I saw at her apartment. You guys are a complicated bunch.”

  Nancy Lustig let out an exhausted sigh, “Well, if what you say is right, at least she’s safe then. I mean, she’s not really missing. I just wonder what she’s really up to.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Where’s your ex now?”

  She faced me again. “Home.”

  “I think I better go have a talk with him. With your permission, of course. I work for you.”

  “Go,” she said. “It’s a good idea. He should hear what you have to say before he calls out the National Guard. You don’t know Julian. He can be … . Let’s just say he can overreact. I’ll call ahead to tell him you’re coming. If you’re right, and I’m still dubious that you are, Sloane wants us to panic. I’m weary of it, Moe, of the drama. I’m weary of the fencing, of the thrust and parry. I don’t want to play anymore. So go talk to Julian, but … come back when you’re done, please.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Because we—”

  “Because we kissed? No. It should be why, but it isn’t. After I talk to Julian, there’s someone else who needs some talking to, maybe something a little stronger than talk.”

  Her eyes got big at that. “You’re not going to hurt anyone, are you?”

  “Scare, not hurt. I’ve done enough hurting. It may not even come down to scaring. Money might do the trick. It usually does. And besides, I can’t avoid the cops forever. I’m gonna have to go into the 9th Precinct and clear some things up.”

  She clutched my forearm as I made to walk past her.

  “I’ll call,” I said, brushing her hair back, tucking a loose strand behind her ear.

  She let go of me, seeming to understand that we had gone as far as I was willing to let things go. I was glad one of us understood something about what we were doing, because I sure as hell didn’t.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  New Mexico called itself the Land of Enchantment. Long Island was more like the land of endless strip malls surrounding pockets of wretched excess. I think Nassau County’s motto is In Shopping We Trust. Not as catchy as the Land of Enchantment, I know, but probably more accurate. It’s no state secret that I’ve never cared much for the island, and none of my experiences out here had done anything to disabuse me of my distaste for it. Most of my troubles on Long Island had been with the rich and the dead. The rich had been a varied lot; some weren’t even rich, exactly. Some were semi-rich or had-been-rich or desperate-to-be-rich, but they were all money drunk. The dead were different. It’s a lovely lie that we’re all created equal. We are, however, all just the same in death. Liberté. Egalité. Fraternité. Mortalité. The French almost got it right. Almost.

  While Nancy’s house made a statement about open design and the melding of exterior and interior spaces, the only statement Julian Cantor’s house made was, “You better fuckin’ look at me.” I looked. I had to look because I couldn’t quite believe you could pack that much tastelessness into one structure. It was a muscular monstrosity of brick and stone, columns, concrete, and clapboards. It wasn’t quite one of those McMansions that had sprung up all about the place. McMansions were more bland than ugly. Mostly they were too big for their lots and too much a matter of vinyl siding and silliness than of distinction. Cantor’s house was a lot of things—bland not among them.

  I pulled up the cobblestone driveway and parked under the triangular, capped portico that hung off the front of the house like a grandiose afterthought. The portico was held up by two massive columns that must have been pilfered from the set of Gone with the Wind. I noticed P EYE 7’s maroon BMW parked further down the driveway. When I got out of my car, the front door to the house opened.
Only it wasn’t Julian Cantor who came to greet me.

  “You must be Mr. Prager,” she said, holding her delicate hand out to me.

  I shook it. “Moe Prager, yes.”

  “I’m Julian’s wife, Alexandra.”

  She was a vision. Think trophy wife. No, think “trophy for first place” wife. She was what models looked like on magazine covers, only breathing and moving. A woman of about thirty, she had long flowing dark red hair, flawless creamy skin, a perfect nose, sculpted cheekbones, and deep green eyes. She was svelte but not too thin, and her legs seemed to reach from the floor to my eyeballs. She was dressed in a white sweater and black slacks. She had to be Nancy Lustig’s worst nightmare. Nancy had turned herself into a very handsome and attractive woman indeed, but Alexandra was something much beyond that. I had only ever met one other woman with the same sort of otherworldly beauty, and that was thirty years ago. I didn’t like thinking about her or what had become of her.

  Katerina Brightman had been married to an up-and-coming politician, Steven Brightman, whose career I helped rescue from the slush pile of once promising failures. Brightman had been cleared by the cops in connection with the disappearance of a young intern named Moira Heaton. He had, however, been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion. My initial investigation uncovered the fact that Moira had been murdered by a vicious serial killer already in police custody. In the end, though, I’d only discovered what I’d been misled to discover by a trail of false bread crumbs. The truth of what had actually happened to Moira was far more chilling. And when, out of wounded pride and vanity, I used Katerina to punish Steven Brightman for playing me as a fool, I set in motion a series of events that led to more murder and ruined several lives, Katerina’s first of all.

  Alexandra let go of my hand and gestured to the open door. “Come in. I should let you know that Julian is not alone.”

  “I can see that,” I said, pointing at the BMW. “007 is here.”