Innocent monster

TWENTY-NINE

I was right this time. The reward story had no legs, no legs at all. The news vans and crowds were gone by the next evening. I spent my one night in self-exile at a faceless New Jersey motel out on Route 9. Although it lacked the romance of my Mary Lambert fantasy, it felt almost like a vacation. There can be great joy in anonymity. The story had no legs because Sashi was now just a collection of charred bones on the cold pyre of the twenty-four hour news cycle. She was no longer destiny’s child, now only a child of mind. I imagine that if Max and Candy had been willing to do the morning shows and Larry King and Oprah, they could have kept the machine churning by stirring the ashes and feeding the beast, but, to their credit, they had refused to play the game. The one thing in the world that bound them together was gone forever and I guess they were too busy staring into the abyss to worry about staring into the camera.

I listened to my phone messages to make certain that I didn’t delete anything important. Most, as I suspected, were from the media requesting comment on the reward and the case. There was one from the code enforcement officer in Bridgehampton. Apparently, my moment in the sun had had an impact on the folks out east and they had magically approved all the permit requests, including the one for external signage, for our new store. Then there was the chilling message from Sonia Barrows-Willingham about the reward itself. It seemed a certified check was on its way to me via FedEx. There was this creepy sort of delight in her cool, bloodless voice.

“Oh, and by the way, Mr. Prager, I wanted to let you know that we’re having a little memorial service for Sashi at my house on January second. Max and Candy have requested you be in attendance. Your daughter has already accepted the invitation. Do come.” Said the spider to the fly.

I guessed I would go. The thought of Sarah alone around that woman brought out my fatherly protective instincts. Besides, I had some stuff I needed to say to Max and Candy that I hadn’t had the chance to say in person.

With all the messages erased, emails answered or deleted, and the good news about the new store passed on to my big brother, I took a tour around my condo and realized it looked like a war zone. During my two weeks in brooding isolation, I hadn’t done much house cleaning or laundry or much of anything. I got to it. And though the hard edges of the guilt had softened a bit over the last few days and its voice was no longer operatic, I didn’t need to play music as I cleaned.

I woke up, the pillow wet on my cheek from drool. The downstairs buzzer was ringing, but I didn’t jump out of bed to get it. I had dreamed and I didn’t want to lose it. I sat up, closed my eyes, and tried to get the dream straight in my head. When I thought I had it, I went to the intercom.

“Who’s there?”

“FedEx.”

Come on up.”

I must’ve been too quick for him because the buzzer rang again. I depressed the button again and, this time, held down for many seconds. Less than a minute later there was a rap at my door. The FedEx guy had that end-of-a-long-day look on his face and it was only then that I noticed it was completely dark outside. After tidying up, I’d had a Dewars, my first since my lost weekend, and laid down on my bed just to rest my eyes for a few minutes. I guess I rested more than my eyes and for more than a few minutes.

“Sign this, please,” he said, passing over a handheld device with an electronic signing pad. When I was done, he handed me an envelope.

“Busy, huh?”

“Christmas.” His expression went from bored exhaustion to worry. He had slipped and used the C-word, Christmas.

“That’s right. I almost forgot. Merry Christmas.”

“Happy Holiday Season to you, sir,” he said too emphatically.

“Don’t worry, I won’t report you to the Thought Police.”

His face went from concern to confusion, but neither one of us had the energy nor the inclination to discuss it. I shut the door and ripped open the shipping envelope. Inside, along with the check, was a folded prepaid shipping envelope and some waivers to sign. I didn’t figure it was going to be simple. Nothing is simple anymore, especially not money.

Before I could step away from the door, there was another knock. I thought it was the FedEx guy coming back for some reason beyond my reasoning. Maybe my signature hadn’t taken in his handheld. I didn’t suppose the day was far off when they’d just want to scan your fingerprints or your retina or take a drop of blood. When I pulled back the door, it wasn’t the FedEx man at all. In the end, however, it was about blood, not my blood, but blood nonetheless.

I swallowed hard at the sight of the man standing before me because I immediately recognized his face. Not him, his face. I realize that doesn’t make much sense, but there it is. He must’ve been around Sarah’s age, I thought, about my height, slender, yet well put together under his open cashmere overcoat and dark gray Italian suit. His black hair was thick and as well-groomed as hair that wavy and thick could be. He was a dead ringer for the young Tony Bennett and his mouth smiled at me out of the past. His eyes were a lighter shade of brown and shaped a little differently from the face I recognized. Still, in spite of what I knew in my heart and in my marrow, I said, “Sorry, I’m not talking to the media.”

“I’m not from the media. I’m from Vermont.” He laughed at his own joke.

“I don’t care if you’re from Verona. Who are you?” I asked, my voice breaking up.

“My name is Paul Stern, but that’s only part of who I am. And if I’m reading your expression and voice correctly, I think you’ve figured out the rest.”

“But Rico didn’t have kids,” I heard myself say.

“None that he knew of, no. May I come in?”

What could I do? I waved him in and closed the door behind him.

Five minutes later, Paul Stern was sitting on my couch, holding the picture of Larry McDonald, Rico Tripoli, and me in his hand. It was the same picture Mary Lambert had held in her hand only a few weeks before and, as it happened, that was no accident. It was uncanny just how much he resembled Rico. Even some of his movements and gestures were reminiscent of my old precinct buddy. He took a long sip of the red wine I’d poured for him, then held the picture up to me, his thumb under Rico Tripoli’s chin.

“This was my father?”

“You tell me.”

He put his face up close to the photo. “You tell me.”

“Sure, you look a lot like Rico Tripoli,” I said. “But I’ve trusted my eyes in the past and things couldn’t have turned out worse.”

“How so?”

“It got my ex-wife murdered.”

I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me too. So you’re gonna have to do better than looking like that photo.”

“I understand.”

“Whenever you’re ready,” I said.

“I was adopted.”

“I figured you might say that.”

He growled, “Look, Mr. Prager, are you going to let me do this or what?”

That response, like his laughing at his own joke, should have been proof enough. It was so fucking Rico.

I m sorry. Go on.

“I was adopted and raised in Vermont by…”

When he said Vermont again, I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I recalled that Brian Doyle had mentioned a female PI from Vermont calling him several weeks back and asking about Larry Mac, Rico Tripoli, and me. Because of that I only half listened to the rest of what Paul Stern had to say about how his parents never pretended that he was theirs. About how they were well-to-do, but never spoiled him. About how his adoptive parents had done everything they could to support him when, a year ago, he decided to track down his birth parents. About how his mother had been a waitress up at a hotel in the Catskills. About how an NYPD fraternal organization used to sponsor annual golf and ski weekends at that same hotel. How he had the documentation to prove all of it if I needed further convincing.

“You hired an investigator!” I blurted out. “You hired a private investigator named Mary Lambert, didn’t you?”

“What? Yes… no. What I mean to say is that yes, I hired a private investigator to come down here and look into my biological parents’ pasts, but no, her name’s not Mary Lambert.”

“Fifty years old, but looks forty-ish. Blue eyes. Black hair with some gray in it. Just this side of beautiful with high cheekbones, plush lips, and a perfect nose. Not too much makeup, but classy. Okay, she may not have used the name Mary Lambert, but that’s her, right?”

“I don’t see the point in this.”

“But I do. And if you want me to talk about Rico, I suggest you-”

“Yes, that’s her. You seem upset and I don’t understand,” he said.

“You’re a private investigator, aren’t you?”

“Sort of, yeah.”

“In my place, given the things in the public record about my biological father, wouldn’t you have hired someone to check into them?”

“Probably.”

“Then I really don’t understand why you’re upset.”

“You don’t have to understand. Look, Paul, you seem like a good guy, but I’m not in much of a talking mood tonight. I’ve had a rough few weeks.”

“I heard,” he said. “I’ve been following the story. It’s terrible, but at least you found out what happened to that poor little girl. That’s something, isn’t it?”

“In the scheme of things, it’s very little.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What are you doing tomorrow night?” I asked.

He seemed confused. “It’s Christmas Eve.”

“Yeah, and I’m a Jew, not much of one by most standards, but still, it’s not my holiday. Since I’ve been single again, I do a traditional Jewish Christmas: Chinese food and a movie.”

He laughed, that charming smile returning to his face. “At home we did a variation on the theme. For us it was usually Indian or Thai and a movie.”

“You’re Jewish?”

“You want to see my bar mitzvah certificate and my adoption papers?”

“Your father-I mean, Rico-is probably spinning in his grave, but laughing too. He used to call me a heathen fucking Jew all the time and that was when he was being nice.”

“You were close. That’s what I heard.”

“Rico broke my heart. Only someone very close can do that to you.”

He bowed his head. “I know our talking will dredge up bad things, but-”

“Don’t sweat it, kid. Be here at eight tomorrow night and for god-sake, don’t bring wine. We’ll figure something out.”

He shook my hand, but couldn’t look me in the eye. “Thank you, Mr. Prager.”

“Moe.”

“Thank you, Moe.”

“One thing before you leave,” I said. “I have to know why you came to me?”

“Because of all the people left from his world, it seems you knew Rico Tripoli better than anyone.”

“Sometimes I think I didn’t know him at all.”

“Then that makes two of us.”

For a long time after Paul Stern left, I stood staring out my front window at the ambient streetlight dancing on the water of Sheepshead Bay. The kid was going to bring papers with him to prove who he was, but it would be a waste of time. He was Rico’s kid. I knew it from the second I saw him and once my brain filtered the New England out of his voice, it dawned on me that he even sounded a lot like Rico. If I was the type of person who believed in prayer, I would have said one right then and there. Paul Stern seemed like a good man, and I would have prayed for him to avoid the demons that had eaten his father alive.