The Hollow Girl (32 page)

He had set up a TV production company, but meant to focus on the emerging Internet TV market and not the traditional ones. He’d even had some mediocre reality shows produced and aired. Old world, new world, it didn’t matter: money talked. He’d tried to approach Siobhan through Anna Carey. No dice. And, as Brahms had told me, also through him. That hadn’t worked either. But Millie McCumber had worked her considerable charms: She convinced Siobhan to meet with Johns in the Hamptons after returning from Ireland. Johns then persuaded Siobhan that the Hollow Girl could be used as a means to the career she so craved.

“He was very persuasive, Mr. Prager,” Siobhan told me when we met for lunch at her mother’s house last month. “He knew what I so desperately wanted. I could write the shows, act in them, make it a showcase for my talents. I would have free rein, but the Hollow Girl had to be the starting point. I hesitated. I didn’t want to do it at first, but he wore me down. And Millie was always in my ear. I had a real weakness for Millie.

“During that week in the Hamptons, we would drive to the building he’d set up as a studio in Westbury and record some things I thought we were just trying out. He said he didn’t drive, so he had me rent the car and promised to reimburse me. He had me write some monologues and record them. It was really kinda fun and liberating. I guess he knew it would be, revisiting the Hollow Girl. That had all ended so badly.”

Once he had her committed to the project, the rest fell into place. He drugged her drink one night after they had shot her monologue, and held her captive. The remainder of his fourteen-years-in-the-making revenge fantasy was out there for the world to see. He had planned it all so carefully. And I had to admit that if Millie McCumber hadn’t died of a heart attack, it all might’ve worked just as Johns had hoped. But me finding Millie dead in Siobhan’s apartment set in motion a series of missteps that eventually ruined Johns’s dream. He panicked and paid Anthony Rizzo to ransack the apartment as a diversion. Of course it backfired, and when Rizzo saw it as an opportunity to blackmail Johns …
au revoir
Anthony. It’s still unclear if it was Johns himself or Kaufman who killed the doorman. And we’ll never know which one of them shot at me and Giorgio Brahms. We do know it was Johns who blew Kaufman’s brains out and left him to be found by the FBI.

I did extract one thing from Nancy and Siobhan that day I went for lunch. They had done no interviews since the rescue. That, I told them, was about to change. I handed Siobhan Ian Kern’s card.

“I kept my promise to your mother,” I said. “Now you’re going to keep my promise to him.”

Aaron and I have dissolved Irving Prager and Sons, Inc. We had named the partnership after our dad. It was the only way to do it. I needed to cut that tie, too, like I had with Brooklyn. I needed to be completely out of it, and not at the fringes. I was okay with just letting go, but my big brother insisted I be bought out, some in cash and some on a note. I knew better than to argue with him. I didn’t need the money. I had all the money I was ever going to need. The one demand I made was that Aaron keep Brian and Devo on as security. That, of all things, my brother grumbled about.

“I don’t know about those guys,” he said. “The bills for the last few months have been a little high.”

I managed not to laugh.

Bursaw had come up to Connecticut to see me, as had Vincent Brock. Julian Cantor couldn’t be bothered. Bursaw didn’t get a bump, but had managed to hold onto his shield for the time being. He told me that the Suffolk cops, as a courtesy, had shared what was on Dillman’s suicide tape. The return of the Hollow Girl had been the last straw. He didn’t think he could deal with the bad publicity again, not after the divorce. When I saw Siobhan at Nancy’s house, I’d been tempted to tell her about the Hollow Girl’s part in Dillman’s suicide, but I realized the pain and guilt had to stop somewhere. Dillman’s was over with, and I decided not to be a conduit for more. Vincent thanked me for saving Siobhan. I think I appreciated his coming to see me more than anyone else beside my family, because I knew he didn’t much like me. He had no other agenda. He just wanted to say thanks and shake my hand. When he had done those two things, he got back in his sparkly maroon BMW with the stupid vanity plates and drove two hours back home to Long Island.

When we were clearing out my drawers to make the move up to Vermont, Sarah came across a piece of my past that I had assumed had just vanished with time. She found the replica detective’s shield Katy had had made for me decades ago, in lieu of the one I’d never gotten from the NYPD. Over the years I had come to realize that not getting my real shield was probably the single best thing that had ever happened—or, to be precise,
not
happened—to me. Not getting it had made me a husband, father, and ultimately a grandfather. Not getting it had introduced me to Mr. Roth and Klaus, and made me a success in business, if a reluctant one. Not getting the shield had helped me help get a measure of justice for people from whom it had been stolen or delayed, and it helped me help save people’s lives. What else could a man do better with his own life than those two things? We never did find my PI license, but that was okay. I was never going to need it again.

Nancy came up to visit me last week. I’d tried to get her not to come, but she insisted. I don’t know, maybe it was that I felt uncomfortable having her in Pam’s old house. Maybe it was that I was afraid she would try to rekindle that brief flame we had shared over the course of a few weeks last September and October. Maybe I was just afraid. I needn’t have been.

We shared lunch at a local diner, neither of us ordering a drink and both of us managing to be civil to the waitress. She had simply come up to say thank you and to wish me well. She said that her brief time with me had woken her up, and that maybe she would try and do some good in the world instead of trying to improve her tennis game. It was good of her to say, though she was as impeccably put together as ever and still smelled fantastic.

“There is one more thing,” she said as she stood to go.

Uh oh.
“Yeah.”

“I know you won’t take more money from me, but I want to give you something. Nothing extravagant. Let’s call it a gesture between old friends and lovers.”

“A gesture like what?”

“A trip anywhere you want to go. I know you can afford to do it yourself and you can go anywhere you’d like for as long as you’d like, but I think I know you a little bit now. You won’t do it yourself. So let me do it for you.”

“Israel,” I blurted, though I could scarcely believe it.

There were a thousand reasons that it made no sense. For one thing, I wasn’t so much a lapsed Jew as a collapsed Jew. That and I didn’t believe in God, second chances notwithstanding. I also didn’t care much for the hawkish nature of current Israeli politics. I had sent my daughter there and the rest of my family had gone, Aaron several times.

Nancy looked nearly as surprised as I felt. “Why Israel?”

All I said was, “It’s about time.”

We hugged long and hard, and I watched Nancy Lustig walk away. The tickets arrived yesterday.

I would like to thank Paula Schwartz, MD, Suffolk County ADA Ming Liu Parson, and Karen Olson. I want to express my appreciation to Ben LeRoy and David Hale Smith for helping to revive and sustain Moe. To Sara J. Henry, Peter Spiegelman, and Ellen W. Schare. As always, to Judy Bobalik. And a special nod to Dylan T. Coleman for helping with the cover design for this novel.

I need to thank Rosanne, Kaitlin, and Dylan for making all the sacrifices they have made for me. Only my name goes on the cover, but they have stood by me at every turn. Each of them has helped bring Moe to life by bringing love and understanding to mine.

Moe Prager:

Walking the Perfect Square

Redemption Street

The James Deans

Soul Patch

Empty Ever After

Innocent Monster

Hurt Machine

Onion Street

Dylan Klein:

Life Goes Sleeping

Little Easter

They Don’t Play Stickball in Milwaukee

Gulliver Dowd:

Dirty Work

Valentino Pier

Joe Serpe:

Hose Monkey

The Fourth Victim

Standalone Novels:

Gun Church

Tower
with Ken Bruen

Bronx Requiem
with Det. John Roe

To Moe’s fans. Thanks from us both.