The Hollow Girl (9 page)

“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.

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 guarantees. 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 obliged 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.”

I sipped. She gulped.

“You were saying something about Siobhan and work.”

Anna Carey seemed not to have heard. “They keep me around here because I’m too old to fire. It would look bad for
dem wot sits on de frone
,” she said, affecting a Cockney accent. “I’m past hanging on by my fingernails. I’m down to the cuticles, Prager. Most of my stable couldn’t get arrested, let alone a gig. On the other hand, Siobhan could get all the work in the world if she wanted it. I’ve been in the biz in one form or the other for sixty years and I’ve come across a lot of hacks and a lot of talent, but there are those rare ones … and she’s one of them. They called that drunken cunt Siobhan ran around with the next Streep, but Millie McCumber, God rest her worthless, scenery-chewing soul, didn’t have the talent Siobhan has in her little finger.”