“Hard to say. From what I can see she’s skeletal. A year, two, maybe longer. Some of the clothes are still intact. When we have a look at them, it might help us with a time frame.”
“Thanks.”
A grain of sand blew into my eyes and I reflexively turned away. When I could see again, I noticed silent tears streaming down Wit’s cheeks. He noticed me notice and quickly wiped them away. It didn’t mean I no longer thought of him as a pretentious, condescending drunkard, just a more human one.
“Why don’t you boys go have a drink across the way there. Reggie’s has a lunchtime happy hour that can’t be beat,” Millet proffered with great authority. “It’s right next to the German place.”
As Wit and I began the muddy walk back to the road, something struck me.
“Captain Millet,” I said, “where’s the guy who found her?”
“The junkie? He’s … he’s over there with Detective Daniels. Why?”
“Do you mind if I have a word with him, alone?”
Both Millet and Wit raised suspicious eyebrows at that, but the captain nodded his approval. “Daniels,” he called out, “let this fella have a word with … with
I told Wit to stay put and I plodded over to where Daniels was hand-holding the junkie. Detective Daniels seemed happy to get a few minutes’ break. What I was about to do could land my ass in jail, so I had to put on the best show I could for the curious eyes that might be watching.
“Hey,” I said, offering my right hand to my new best friend, “I’m Moe.”
He took my hand out of confusion. I squeezed it hard and reeled him in with it, throwing my left arm over his shoulder.
“You’re fuckin’ hurtin’ me, man,” he whined.
“Not anything like I’m gonna hurt you if you don’t tell me where the fuck you dumped it, asshole,” I growled, but quietly.
“What the fuck you talkin’ a-”
“I’m not a cop anymore, shithead, so your crying don’t mean shit to me. So where the fuck did you dump her bag?” I squeezed his shoulder a little tighter. “And don’t even fuckin’ lie to me. If you tell me now, there’s a fifty in it for you and I’ll fix it with the cops not to bust your balls about robbing the corpse. If you don’t … I think we understand each other.”
He swallowed hard, looking over to where the cops were. “A fifty?” he asked. “And no shit about-”
“You heard me.” I turned him around so that we faced the cops directly. “The clock’s running.”
He tilted his head. “Over there, by the road near the gas station.”
“Very good.” I stuffed two twenties and a ten in my friend’s pocket. “If the cops ask, tell them I gave you a few bucks to get some food in you. They won’t bug you about it and they’ll think I’m a fucking saint.”
“What was that all about?” Wit wanted to know when I got back.
“Let’s go get that drink,” I said.
I led Wit in the direction of the bar, but through the marsh. I spotted a mud-caked handbag and a woman’s wallet right about where my buddy said they would be, at the place where the marsh, the road, and the gas station lot began to converge.
“Wit! Gimme a pen.”
He handed me a black Montblanc without missing a beat. I knelt down and flipped the wallet over.
“Fuck! It’s not her,” I said to myself, but loudly enough for Wit to hear.
“But it’s somebody,” he reminded me.
I hated when people did that, when they refused to conform to first impressions.
“Yes, she is. You better get Millet over here.”
Her name was Susan Leigh Posnar, a graduate student in psychology at the nearby State University of New York at Stony Brook. She’d been missing for nearly fourteen months. That’s what Millet told us. Susan had been having trouble with her boyfriend and was falling behind in her work. “Something about not turning in her Ph.D. data or some shit like that,” as the captain so articulately explained. He was sorry it wasn’t our girl.
“That’s okay,” Wit comforted him. “At least one set of parents can finally start grieving.”
We got that drink, Wit and I. I think I needed it even more than my hungover companion. I had beer. Wit stuck with his usual, but had it in a tall glass with a lot of water. The bartender asked us about all the police activity. And when we told him the cops had found a body, he told us about the curse of Lake Ronkonkoma. An Indian princess had drowned in the lake hundreds of years ago while trying to save her lover, so the story went. Every year, when the warm weather came, her ghost would pull swimmers and boaters down to the depths of the lake in the hope that one might be her lost love.
“Yes, sir,” the barman said, “at least one or two people get pulled to the bottom every year.”
Somehow, seeing the bones of Susan Posner had, for the day at least, taken all the romance out of myth or death. Undoubtedly, however, her death, at her own hand or someone else’s, would be woven into the fabric of local lore. This writer, a regular customer of mine at City on the Vine, said he never let the facts get in the way of a good story. So it would be here. Wit and I moved to a table.
“How did you know?” he asked, finally acting the part of the journalist.
“I was a street cop in Coney Island for ten years before the wine shops. Junkies are junkies, drugs make them a little less human. They see some bum, a stiff, they’re not thinking about CPR or calling 911. They’re wondering if they can steal something they can sell from the bum or if it’s a stiff. You get the picture. I guess maybe I didn’t feel like waiting around all day. And you,” I said, “with tears in your eyes. What, were you thinking about your grandson?”
“Always. I’m always thinking about him.”
For the next half hour, one bloody detail at a time, Wit outlined the events surrounding the kidnapping, torture, and death of his only grandchild. He had identified the body, refusing to let his daughter or his son-in-law suffer any further trauma. I wanted him to stop, to not have to relive this part again, but it seemed as if stopping him would have hurt more. I felt sick. Me, who’d found Marina Conseco left to die alone at the bottom of a filthy water tank. Me, who’d seen what knives and shotguns and maggots could do to the human body. I was sick. My second beer glass remained utterly untouched.
I broke the painful trance. “You know, Wit, Geary and Brightman think they can use you.”
“I know, Mr. Prager. They all think they can use me. It’s a rare talent I have.” He mocked himself. “Somehow they never do manage to use me quite in the manner they expect.”
“And you thought you could use me.”
“We can use each other,” he said, but didn’t explain.
The car ride back into the city began as quietly as the trip out. Again, there was very sparse traffic. I decided I wanted to see something other than blacktop and concrete barriers, and switched over to the Northern State Parkway. Here there were trees, bushes, lush green shoulders, tiger lilies, and pretty stone overpasses.
“So, Thomas Geary tells me you two know each other.”
“We do.”
Okay, the cordiality thing was short-lived. If he was going to give me one- or two-word answers, it wasn’t worth trying. But I figured I’d give it one more shot.
“What’s Brightman’s story?”
“I’m here to write it,” Wit answered smartly. “What do you want to know about him?”
That caught me off guard. “I don’t know…. What part of the city is he from?”
“He isn’t.”
“He isn’t what?”
“From the city. Brightman was born in a very lovely little town in New Jersey.”
“Is there such a thing as a lovely little town in New Jersey?”
“This question asked by a man from Brooklyn … Please!”
“Was he rich?”
“To you, I imagine his family would have seemed quite wealthy, yes,” Wit said without a hint of guile. “To someone like Thomas Geary, he would seem almost poor. The Brightmans were well off, I would say. His father was a senior partner in the biggest real estate law firm in the country, but he did have to earn his keep. The mother
