Into the Dark Page 3

  The cold smacked her in the face, made her eyes water. But Brenna’s body was so tense, she barely reacted. Don’t think about him, Brenna told herself, but still her mind reeled back to October 21, 1998, the snaking fall chill against the glass of the old-fashioned phone booth outside the Tarry Ridge Police Station, Errol’s voice pressing into her ear. That clipped staccato . . . “I can get you the file, but not for free.”

  “How much money do you want?” Brenna asks, hoping it’s money, hoping it’s not anything else. I can give you money. Please ask for money.

  “I want you to do one more job for me.”

  She closes her eyes. “Errol, I can’t. I’m . . . I’m a mother now.”

  “One more job. It is an easy one. Guaranteed. Hubby will never find out.”

  Brenna snapped the hair ties against her wrist. The sting brought her back to the present, to Greenwich and Seventh.

  She exhaled. Works like a charm.

  From across the street, the Waverly Diner sign winked at Brenna. She moved toward it, weaving through a group of slow-moving tourists, past three laughing teenage girls to the crosswalk, narrowly missing a bike messenger as she hit the street. The whole time, Brenna stared straight ahead, touching the hair ties, glad they were there.

  “Asshat,” Brenna muttered. She was sitting in the Waverly Diner, watching Ludlow through the window. He hadn’t noticed her yet, but she’d seen him, waiting at the crosswalk as a cab whizzed by, checking his watch . . . Through the glass and from this distance, he looked exactly the same as the last time she’d seen him. The first time she’d seen him, too, come to think of it. Same graying buzz cut and, as she could see under the flapping trench coat, that same god-awful dark green polyester jacket he’d worn during her job interview on May 21, 1991. Had he gone shopping even once during this millennium?

  A young woman tapped Errol on the arm and said something to him. At six-eight, he towered over her and he seemed to take pride in that. He looked at his watch, and said something back. The woman nodded and headed off in another direction. She’d asked him the time, obviously, but from the look on his face you’d think she’d asked him for his autograph. Brenna watched him standing there, smirking to himself like the asshat he was.

  God, that smirk. That same, smug smirk . . . Brenna glared at him as he approached the door, hearing Lula Belle again in her head, fingering the computer printout in her bag. I’m going to wipe that smirk off your face.

  “Will you be eating alone?” Brenna looked up at the waitress—an NYU student-type with bright red hair, a pale cameo face, the delicate features modernized by a lip ring—a good candidate for Errol’s Angels, Brenna thought. Streetwise, but with an innocence to the eyes . . .

  Ludlow had just pushed open the door and was peering around the room, the top of his head no more than a foot away from the ceiling. His gaze flittered on the waitress and he smiled knowingly. Eleven years since she’d seen him and Brenna could still predict his thoughts.

  His gaze shifted to her. “As I live and breathe. Brenna Spector!” Errol shouted the words without moving from his spot, as if this were some private party, thrown especially for him. Errol had always had difficulty observing conventional boundaries. It wasn’t entirely his fault, big as he was, but he couldn’t enter a room without invading it.

  There were about ten other customers in the diner, seven or so in booths, and almost all of them turned and stared at the booming giant in the doorway “You look good! Especially for your age!” he said. “You’ve got to be pushing for-ty these days, am I right?”

  Brenna looked at the waitress. “I’m with him.”

  She chewed on her lip ring and gave Brenna a pitying look.

  “Believe me,” Brenna said, “I know.”

  Errol strode up to the table. “You have a delightfully un-con-ven-tional look, young lady,” he said to the waitress, relishing each syllable, just as always. “You stand out, yet you fit in.”

  She shrugged. “I model sometimes.”

  “Modeling is for shallow girls.” Errol snorted. “I could make you a private investigator.”

  “Ummm . . . No thanks.”

  He pulled out his wallet, slipped out one of his cards, and handed it to the waitress. Brenna noticed the design—it had been new on September 24, 1992. “I’ll bet you could get a lot of information out of a man with a bat or two of those pretty eyelashes.”

  “Information?”

  Again with the smirk. “Brenna here worked for me when she was about your age,” he said. “Such a naïve little thing back then, wanting to find her runaway sister . . . I taught her everything she knows.”

  “You know what you want?” the waitress asked Brenna.

  What she wanted was to sock Errol in the jaw. “Just coffee.”

  Errol ordered green tea—his drink of choice for twenty years.

  “You never change,” Brenna said.

  “You would know.” He grinned. “That memory of yours . . .” He looked up at the waitress. “I’m sure you have seen Brenna Spector on the news?”

  “Stop it, Errol.”

  “Perfect memory?”

  The waitress’s face was blank.

  “Solved the Iris Neff case?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “Fabulous interview on Sunrise Manhattan. Though the New York Post rather unfortunately referred to her as—”

  “Stop it, Errol.”

  “Head-Case Hero. They could have done better, in my opinion. Perfect memory doesn’t necessarily make one a head case, but when you’re a slave to alliteration, as the Post clearly is—”

  “I need to check on other tables.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  The waitress left with Errol smiling benignly at her rear end.

  Once she was no longer in sight, he came back to Brenna. “You really do look good,” he said.

  “You seem surprised.”

  “Well, it has been eleven years,” he said. “Eleven years can wreak havoc on the female form.”

  Brenna gave him a sweet smile. “But you’ve been following me, Errol. You’ve seen me on Sunrise Manhattan, read about me in the papers.” She reached into her bag, pulled out the printout. “You know everything about my involvement with the Iris Neff case.”

  “Yes, and how is Detective Morasco? Page Six spotted you two at some bar . . . which one was it?”

  “We’ve been to more than one bar.” Brenna placed the printout of Errol’s home page on the table between them and smoothed it out. “And clearly, you read the Post more carefully than me.”

  Errol glanced down at the home page—Errol Ludlow Investigations in fire engine red against a black background, followed by a list of endorsements. “Oh . . . you’ve seen this.” His face flushed a little.

  The first endorsement: “Errol Ludlow was the best mentor a girl could have—and a truly great man!”—Brenna Spector, HEAD-CASE HERO

  “I never said that, Errol,” Brenna said. “I wouldn’t say that if you put a gun to my irregularly shaped brain and threatened to pull the trigger.”

  He cleared his throat. “Whether you said it or not,” he said, “it is true. You can’t deny that I taught you the bravery and resourcefulness needed to be a private investigator. I didn’t baby you. I helped you grow.”

  “You put me in danger. You put all of us in danger. You sent young girls out there to catch cheating men in the act, unarmed, and you never gave us backup.”

  He sighed. “Now you sound like that ex-husband of yours.”

  Brenna shut her eyes tight, a memory slithering into her brain—the ER at St. Vincent’s on May 29, 1996, her left eye throbbed shut, her head all pain, dry, cool sheets beneath her. Jim pushes aside the curtain, baby Maya in his arms, her little mouth moving . . . like she’s blowing kisses in her sleep. Brenna tries to smile at him. Her gums hurt. “I guess some guys don’t like getting their picture taken.” She tastes copper in her mouth. She isn’t sure whether it’s fresh blood or the memory of it.r />
  Those eyes, those eyes of Jim’s, the hurt in them so big, she has to look away . . . “I can’t take this, Brenna. If you work for him anymore . . . one more job . . . we’re through.”

  “Don’t be sad. Please don’t be sad. I promise. I . . .”

  She snapped the hair ties, cleared her throat. “How long has that quote been on your Web site, Errol?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “Since the day of that Post headline? October 4. That sound about right?”

  He shook his head. “I only put it up about a week ago,” he said. “Business wasn’t good. I thought it might help.”

  “And when did Lula Belle’s manager call you?”

  “The day before yesterday?”

  “How long has she been presumed missing?”

  “Who?”

  She looked at him. “Who do you think?”

  “A couple of months. Why all these questions?”

  “I need the manager’s name and number.”

  “No can do.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “He prefers to remain anonymous.”

  “I don’t give a damn what he prefers.”

  “Those are the terms of the contract. And he is paying quite a bit of money to ensure that I observe them.” He looked at her. “Between us, he is a very successful Hollywood theatrical agent and does not want his reputation sullied.”

  Brenna took a breath, so sharp it hurt a little. Sully this. “Listen,” she said. “I have reason to believe that Lula Belle knows things about me—deeply personal things.”

  “Really? What things?”

  Brenna pressed on. “She’s been missing for months, yet this manager of hers calls you up and hires you immediately after you put my name on your Web site.”

  “I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.”

  “Could be,” Brenna said. “But either way, you’ve got two choices.”

  He stared at her. “I’m listening.”

  “You can give me the name and number of that manager. Or I will take this printout, sue you for libel, then hold a press conference and share the many glorious memories I have of the years I spent working for you.”

  Errol stared at Brenna.

  “And as you well know, no one is gonna question my memory.”

  The waitress returned to their table and set their cups in front of them. “Private investigator, huh?” she said.

  But Errol didn’t answer. His gaze never left Brenna’s face.

  “Oookay.” The waitress left the table fast.

  “If I give you the manager’s contact information,” Errol said, “can you please not tell him where you got it?”

  “My lips are sealed.”

  Errol sighed heavily. “Give me your phone.”

  Brenna handed it to him, watched him tap the name and number into her list of contacts.

  Her face relaxed into a smile. “You know something, Errol? I take it back. You really have changed.”

  “I have?”

  She nodded. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say ‘please’ before.”

  Chapter 3

  “Say Gryffindor, sweetums,” said Ira, the photographer.

  “My name isn’t sweetums, it’s Chloe,” said Chloe Barton, age eight. “And I freakin’ hate Harry Potter.”

  Gary Freeman sighed. Another day. Another one of these never-ending days. Gary turned to Chloe’s mother. “You know, Ruth,” he said, “it’s all well and good to have a great commercial look, which believe me, Chloe does—”

  “I know, Gary, I know.”

  “—but the most important quality for a child actor to have—”

  “Are you listening to the man, Chloe?”

  “—is the ability to take direction.”

  Chloe glared at him. “You’re not a director. You’re just a stupid agent.”

  “That’s enough, Chloe,” Ruth Barton said. “I’m so sorry, Gary. Chloe didn’t get very much sleep last night, and when she doesn’t get sleep, she gets cranky.”

  “I am not cranky!”

  Gary sighed again—more heavily this time. He released all the air in his body, then inhaled, slowly through his nose. Out with the stress, in with the positive energy . . . A couple of weeks ago, he’d taken a breathing class with his wife, Jill. Jill had dragged him to it. A class in breathing, he had complained. What’s next—a pissing seminar?

  It’s pranayana, Gar, she’d replied. Yogic breathing, which had done nothing to inspire any confidence in Gary. But to his surprise, he’d found the class helpful. Turned out, he’d been breathing wrong all this time, using only the tops of his lungs. He’d spent his whole life—all fifty years of it—lacking for air. Who knew? You were right, Gary had told Jill, just a few days ago. Remind me never to doubt you or your crazy yoga classes again.

  More air. Who knew? Why couldn’t everything in Gary’s life be that easy to fix?

  For a few seconds, she seeped into his thoughts—The Shadow. Lula Belle. Usually, he made it a point not to think about her, especially by name. But he couldn’t help it. She was everywhere and she was nowhere and she was ruining his life.

  Lula Belle’s subscribers kept writing him, e-mails pouring into his Hotmail address, even though he’d taken down the site a month ago. Every time he dared check LulaBelleadmin@hotmail.com (and granted, that was rare), he would find dozens of them. Where is Lula Belle? What happened to the site? Did she die? Did you kill her? I want my money back, asshole. Give me my money. It’s your fault she’s gone and you owe me. I trusted you. I’m going to get you. I’m going to track you down and . . . You don’t know me but I know you. I know who you . . . I’m going to get you back . . .

  Sometimes he’d see those e-mails in his dreams. He’d be online, thinking he was alone, and then the words would get bigger and bigger, until they shattered the computer screen and scrolled up and down his bedroom walls and shrieked at him in The Shadow’s voice. Did you kill me, Gary?

  And then, if Gary was lucky, he’d wake up.

  Gary closed his eyes. He took another deep breath—a cleansing breath, that’s what it was called, as if breathing could make you clean. As his lungs expanded, he felt it at his chest—the cell phone he’d bought, just for the investigation. It was a TracPhone—no GPS, no Internet. No apps like that fruit-throwing game that his daughters loved to play. Just a number he could give to Ludlow. “Only call if it’s important,” he had said. And so far, nothing . . . He’d kept it hidden at the back of his desk at night and slipped it into his shirt pocket every day, and in five days, the thing hadn’t budged. Not once. Ludlow was probably full of crap.

  The photography studio smelled like baby powder. It was big and airy, with pale pink walls that Ira claimed cast a flattering light on most people’s faces. But there was something about the color—a nursery-sweetness he found hard to take. Ira was one of the best in the business, and so Gary brought almost all his clients here for their head shots. Yet sometimes—now for instance—he felt too dark for Ira’s studio, as if his presence might corrupt it, the blackness floating off him, sticking to the baby pink walls with those bright lights humming at him: For shame, for shame, for shame . . .

  Think it away, Gary told himself. And he did. He always could. You close a door on something in your mind—a person, a memory, a bad dream . . . You close that door and you lock it. You throw away the key. And if you keep it locked, if you make yourself forget there was ever a key to begin with, then eventually all of it will disappear. The door. The memory. The way it makes you feel. The mind is a very powerful muscle.

  Ira was trying his best to get good shots of Chloe Barton, but his best didn’t seem to be good enough. She was standing on a little platform in the middle of the room with a fan blowing her blonde curls, her doll-like features twisted in a way that brought to mind a Twilight Zone episode that Gary used to have nightmares about, back when he was her age. Meanwhile, Ira and his digital camera buzzed around the little girl in nervous circ
les. “Work it, Miss Thing,” he was saying. “Work it like a rock star!”

  “I’m not a rock star. I’m an actress,” said Chloe, who at eight was just a year older than Gary’s youngest, Hannah. “An actress and a model. Rock stars are sleaze buckets. And so are picture takers.”

  Ira set his camera on the floor. “I can’t work with this kid, Gary.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Chloe’s mother, Ruth.

  “Sorry for yourself is what you should be, lady.”

  “You’re an ugly man,” Chloe told Ira. “And your pants are too tight.”

  You tell yourself lies for long enough, you start to believe them. Once you believe them in full, once you put your whole heart into it and believe in those lies the way you believe in anything—your country, your family, your God —once you do that, those lies become the truth.

  Hadn’t she said that herself, in one of her videos?

  Maybe Gary didn’t want to find Lula Belle. He could get by without the extra money the Web site had been bringing in. He’d tell Jill a client had fired him and so they needed to tighten their belts. She would understand. She would have to.

  Powerful as it was, the memory of Lula Belle would fade, the subscribers would forget. And Gary would, too. He would make himself forget. He would close down the Hotmail address, and the subscribers would move on. The Shadow would stay behind her locked door and the door would disappear, and she would, too. He would never hear from her again. It would all be over, but for the dimming memory.

  Will it ever dim, Lula Belle? Will I ever get over not knowing you?

  “That’s it,” Ira said. “We’re done.”

  Gary snapped out of it, looked at him. “Do you think any of the pictures are useable?”

  “Only if someone is doing a remake of The Bad Seed.”

  Ruth Barton gave Gary a pleading look. “One more chance?”

  “Next week we’ll reconvene,” Gary started to say, but he didn’t get to the last word.