the wooden rooftop water tanks on some of the older buildings in the neighborhood. We found Marina, battered but alive, in the third or fourth tank we checked. In an undistinguished career as a cop, finding her was my one shining moment. People would forget Patrick, but never Marina. It was this same story that had brought poor Arthur Rosen to me. However, there was nothing remotely poor or needy about the man who stood in front of me at the moment.
“Bravo, bravo.” He applauded, his left hand hitting the folded pages in his right. “Bravo.”
“That was eleven years ago when I found the girl.”
“Don’t be modest,” he said coolly, the smile running away from his face. “I know much more about you than you’d think.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, beginning to feel light-headed.
He didn’t answer, checking his watch instead. “We can discuss your fee at a later date. I assure you you won’t suffer financially. As I said previously, you can expect the fullest cooperation from Mr. Spivack. I must be on my way.”
“You didn’t answer my question. Why me?”
“In a word, luck. You’re lucky, Mr. Prager.”
“We’re not on a first-name basis anymore, huh, Tom?”
He ignored that, too. “Spivack is good, as good as good gets. We’ve had two unproductive years of good, Mr. Prager. It’s time for a little luck.” He about-faced, reaching for the doorknob.
“One condition,” I said.
“Yes, Mr. Prager,” he answered impatiently. “What is it?”
“I interview Brightman, alone.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be-”
“That’s my condition. You won’t meet it, forget about my luck. You can threaten me and try to intimidate me till the fucking cows come home and I won’t take the case. I need to look into your boy’s eyes.”
“I’ll arrange for it. In the meantime, get to work.”
He closed the door behind him without bothering to look back.
When I got back to the shop, Klaus was quick to tell me that Aaron had called in a panic. Apparently, one of Mr. Weintraub’s colleagues had paid our Columbus Avenue location an afternoon visit. I doubt if Geary knew it at the time he arranged for it, but he’d done me a big favor. My absence from the business for the foreseeable future would be much easier for my big brother to swallow now that he’d gotten to experience firsthand the depth of Thomas Geary’s influence.
The business meant everything to Aaron. Would he sacrifice his family for it? No. My charm and less than encyclopedic knowledge of wines was another matter altogether. Besides, one of the conditions of our partnership was that I had the option to take vacation time to work cases. I’d exercised the option only once in five years, when I went up to the Catskills.
“City on the Vine,” Aaron answered the phone.
In those five syllables alone, I could hear the worry in his voice.
“New York State Liquor Authority,” I taunted.
“Fuck you.”
“So I hear you had a visit.”
“What’s going on, Moe? Klaus said something about it being a-”
“-message. Yeah, it’s a message to me. Remember how we couldn’t figure out why we got invited to Connie’s wedding?”
“Sure, but what the fuck’s this got to do-”
“Everything, apparently. Connie’s dad wants me to work a case for him, and today’s bit of muscle flexing was to help me make up my mind in his favor. At the wedding, when Katy lost it, I was out on the driving range with Mr. Geary. That’s when he first suggested it might be in my best interest to consider taking him on as a client.”
“And he thought strong-arming you was the way to go?” Aaron was incredulous.
“I guess he doesn’t believe in long courtships. He made his point pretty effectively, though. You gotta give him that.”
“What about …” Aaron hesitated. “Maybe we should-I mean, maybe you should call … Why don’t you call your father-in-law? He’s probably still got political contacts. Maybe he could insulate us from-” Aaron understood I loathed my father-in-law, but not why, exactly.
“Forget it! Just forget it! I can’t-
“Do you think he’s serious?”
“Geary? Would he really fuck with us if I turned him down? I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I’m not in the mood to find out. Are you?”
“Consider yourself on vacation, little brother.”
“Yeah, okay, I’ll get out my Hawaiian shirts.”
“Very funny. What’s this case, anyway, that Geary’s gone to all this trouble for?” Aaron was justifiably curious.
“All you need to know is there’s a missing girl at the end of it.”
“Oh, I get it,” he said, as if I’d explained quantum mechanics in a single sentence.
How nice, I thought. Now maybe he could explain it to me.
The wine business had always been Aaron’s dream. Even my taking the test for the cops had been on a drunken dare. A good chunk of my adult life had basically been the product of grafting my energies onto someone else’s schemes. Careerwise, the only thing I’d ever wanted for myself, the one thing that was mine alone, was the right to work a case or two here and there. And now that one footnote to my own destiny was getting yanked out of my hands.
“How the fuck did I ever wind up in this place?” I repeated Pete Parson’s question. It had been a good question on Sunday and was an even better one today. I opened up the accordion file and found a picture of a woman of whom I knew very little except her name. “I hope you’re worth it, Moira Heaton.”
God had infinite ways of displaying love and cruelty. Anyone over the age of twelve who hadn’t figured that one out was on his way to either beatification or long-term therapy. But it was the way he manipulated imperfection to such disparate ends that fascinated me. Reconciling holocausts and hurricanes was beyond me. I’d let the big questions turn my rabbi’s hair gray. I looked for God’s handiwork in people’s faces. And in Moira Heaton’s face I found ample traces of the Almighty’s mischief.
I’m uncertain of what I expected, but whatever it was, Moira Heaton wasn’t it. Not immune to the whiff of scandal, I suppose I had envisioned her as darkly beautiful or as a red-haired colleen, the kind of prize an older, accomplished man would be unable to resist. She was neither. Moira was plain. In a culture that values attention almost beyond anything else, even money, plainness is a curse.
I wondered what it said by her high school yearbook photo:
Chapter Four
Heading east on the L.I.E., I passed the hideous twin giants of Queens County: the Elmhurst-Maspeth gas tanks. Rumor was they were going to deconstruct the corrugated steel monsters bit by bit and give the sky back to the moon, the sun, and the stars. Some neighborhood groups were actually protesting the move. No surprise there. When they started tearing down the big blue gas tank in Coney Island, a few idiots threw themselves in front of the demolition equipment. I guess if you stare at something long enough it begins to resemble Stonehenge.
As I left the tanks behind, I couldn’t help but wonder what the nineteen flips of the calendar had done to John Heaton since the last of his daughter. Moira had not been removed from his life one piece at a time. She was there, then she wasn’t. Over the past five years I’d seen firsthand how Patrick’s disappearance, the uncertainty about his
