“My husband used to love this spot.” It was Sonia Barrows-Willingham in all her desiccated glory. “That’s a Tiffany window there behind you.”
“Nice place,” I said, feeling the scotch.
“I understand you’ve managed to recoup certain assets, some of which are mine.”
“News travels fast around here.”
“It travels fast everywhere, Mr. Prager, or hadn’t you noticed?”
“Nah, I’m a Pony Express kinda guy myself,” I heard the scotch say.
She did that grotesque barking laugh of hers. “Where are my paintings?”
“In my car. The kids out front have my keys,” I said, reaching into my pocket for my claim check. “Give this to them and they can get them out of the trunk.”
She snatched the card out of my hand and headed back down the stairs. I waited to speak until she’d almost made it to the landing below.
“Oh, Mrs. Barrows-Willingham, I nearly forgot to mention…”
“And what would that be, Mr. Prager?”
“Next to the crate with the paintings is a copy of a report on the authenticity of the paintings that you might find a fascinating read. I’m certain the press will find it equally fascinating. It was convenient of you to invite them, by the way. Thanks. You saved me a lot of bother.”
She didn’t say a word, but about-faced and was standing back in front of me within seconds.
“That reward money was merely a token of my generosity, Moe.”
“It’s Moe now, is it?”
“If you like. As I was saying, that hundred thousand was only a tiny sampling of my generosity. I can be far far more giving. Unfortunately, I am not blessed with Candy or Jill Junction’s looks, but I find that men are more easily swayed by money in any case. Money can get you all the Jills and Candys you could ever want.”
“No sale, sorry. I don’t want them or your money. I already gave the hundred grand away.”
She didn’t flinch. “Force is also very effective and much less expensive.”
“You’re threatening me now? I don’t much like threats.”
“No one does. I believe that’s the whole point.”
I put my scotch down and reached around for my. 38. I unhinged the cylinder and spun it like a wheel of fortune. “Round and round she goes…” I snapped the cylinder back in place and pantomimed shooting her. “Pow, pow, pow.”
She said nothing, but swallowed hard.
“Don’t ever threaten me again, Mrs. Barrows-Willingham. I know some people who would make what John Tierney did to Sashi a pleasant alternative to what they would do to you. And if you think I’m fucking around, try me.”
I picked up my scotch glass and left her standing there, shaking. I went downstairs to try and find a real human being. In a million years, I never thought I’d be happy to see Max, but grief and loss make for strange bedfellows. I found him in the butler’s pantry, drinking bourbon straight out of the bottle and looking even more wrecked and wretched than when we last spoke. He wasn’t crying, but he recently had been, a lot. Through all this, he was the only one who seemed fully in touch with what he’d lost. Love, even parental love, is a complicated thing, but Max’s was pure. In the end, he was the only mensch amongst the monsters. Mensch, in Yiddish, means a real man. He handed me the bottle and I took a sip.
“Tough day,” I said.
“Impossible.”
Then there came an announcement over the intercom. The circus was about to begin.
Showtime.
THIRTY-SEVEN
I got the point of last rites and wakes, funerals, and spadefuls of dirt thrown on sunken caskets. I understood funeral pyres and scattering ashes on the wind. In my middle age, I’d even come to grips with the tradition of sitting shiva, but what the fuck was the point of a memorial service? It was like group masturbation, a communal circle jerk. That’s what I kept thinking as speaker after speaker got up in front of the crowd and spewed polite niceties about Sashi Bluntstone. Talk about being damned with faint praise… I hadn’t known her and now I never would, but, Jesus Christ, didn’t anyone like her? The only people who had genuinely heartfelt things to say about Sashi herself were Ming, the last real friend Sashi had had; Ming’s mom, Dawn Parson; and old Ben Schare, who used to walk his dog along the beach with Sashi and Cara. All the rest of them could do was to fall over each other in praise of the kid’s work, her artistic vision and talent. Neither Candy nor Max had it in them to speak, thank goodness. I’d already done a slug of bourbon, a single, and two big double Dewars. Listening to them make a public spectacle of their grief would have pushed me over the top. McKenna was already there.
He was buzzed when we walked into the house. Now he was absolutely legless, which he proved by loudly stumbling out of the cavernous room in which the service was being held.
“Where’s the fucking bathroom in this mausoleum?” he shouted angrily at the security man who helped him to his feet and presumably the facilities.
As I stood there half listening to the moneychangers in sheep’s clothing drone on about Sashi’s brilliance, I felt like I was trapped in a made-for-TV Agatha Christie movie or a game of Clue. Colonel Mustard in the library with a candlestick. God knows, the setting was perfect: a country manor house. Shit, we even had the lead detective and private investigator on hand. The doubts I had about Tierney reasserted themselves and, with a push from my scotch consumption, my mind drifted off, meandering through all the scenarios I had tried to work through on my ride home from Declan Carney’s.
Yet, none of those scenarios had made any sense at the time. That, or they all led to obstacles that could not overcome logic or the facts, but I hadn’t entertained the thought that more than one or two of them-Sonia, Junction, Candy, maybe even Max-were working in concert. They all certainly had motives, whether it was greed or debt or a need for escape. It wasn’t a big leap to see how they might’ve planned a fake kidnapping that had gone terribly wrong. My guess was that McKenna and the cops had had that very same thought early on in their investigations and had clung stubbornly to it until it was too late. But even if they had all been in it together, Sashi having been killed accidentally, there was still John Tierney, the photographs, and the bones. The only link there was me. Then, just as something flashed in the corner of my mind-a vague image from the videos showing all around the house-I was roused from my trance by a loud ovation. When my eyes looked outward again, I noticed that all the assembled were looking at me as they stood and applauded.
“Yes, it is Mr. Moses Prager to whom we owe a great debt of gratitude,” said Sonia Barrows-Willingham, now at the podium. “It was through his efforts and his alone, that we learned of poor Sashi’s fate. Without his efforts on her behalf, we would all have been left to suffer endless years of torment over what had become of her.”
I don’t think I ever felt more uncomfortable in my life. My skin crawled at the perversity of the spectacle and it was all I could do not to run. I bowed my head and walked quickly out of the room. I found the bar and McKenna found me.