— Well, that’s a start. But don’t beat yourself up, take action, and I hand her my card.
She looks at me like she’s going to burst into tears. — I meant . . . I meant the wait! The wait you’ve had in this line!
— I beg your pardon, I misunderstood you, and I look into her haunted eyes. — Gimme two slices of pepperoni.
She bends down, cheerlessly scooping the gloopy mess into a clear plastic box. I throw her the olive branch. — I know what a bitch working in fast-food retail can be. You have my number: use it and you’ll lose it.
As I leave I can see that I’ve hurt her. Good: I’ve brought it home. The first step. Act two is all down to this bloated sister.
I get back into the Caddy and drive over the MacArthur, beating the worst of the crazy rush. When I reach the apartment, Lena’s sitting on the mattress in the lotus position, watching the news on TV. — I did number twos twice today, she says nodding to the gross bucket.
I put the pizza box down on the floor in front of her.
Sorenson gets up, puts her hands on her slimmer hips. Stares at the pizza slice. Then me. — What the fuck is this, Lucy?
I’d come here to tear strips off her, but Sorenson looks like she couldn’t give a rat’s ass. She doesn’t even seem like herself, and it isn’t just the lost weight. Her jaw has a hard set to it and her eyes are like slits. The skin on her neck and chest has a ruddy, blotchy flush but her face has gone wraith-white.
I feel myself backpedaling. — I’m sorry . . . l was in a hurry. Things have been hectic . . .
Sorenson pushes the box aside with her foot. — You know what this is? This is fucking shit! And she grabs the box and tips its contents into her toilet bucket. — That’s where that crap belongs! You fucking kidnap me to force me to lose weight and then you feed me THAT FUCKING SHIT! How am I gonna lose weight eating that fucking shit?
— But there was nothing else open—
— You could have gone to Lime and got me a low-carb burrito with Baja fish, or something from Whole Foods! If you’re going to be a twisted kidnapping bitch, at least do it right and get me some fucking food, cause I’d rather starve than eat that fucking crap!
And there’s nothing I can do but concede. — You’re right. I’m sorry.
So I dump the bucketful of crap down the toilet, then get back out and into the car. When I return half an hour later with the low-carb Baja-fish burritos, Lena is doing push-ups. — . . . eighteen . . . nineteen . . . twenty, she gasps, catching her breath.
— This food is getting cold!
— One more freakin set . . . she puffs, and goes through another twenty reps. She finishes and sits up, peels the foil back from the fish burrito, holding it in her cuffed hand, eating it slowly and deliberately. I didn’t get lunch thanks to my fucking unreliable clients, so I’m ravenous and can’t hold out till dinner with Dad later, so I’m packing my own one back. Sorenson looks up at me with a startling glare. — Slowly! she ticks.
— I’m in a hurry!
— Where are you going?
— Over to the Gables, to my dad’s book presentation at the Biltmore.
— Oh yeah, the crime writer, Lena laughs, throwing back her head, exposing capped teeth, — he should know plenty about that, having produced a psychotic criminal bitch of a daughter!
— Look, Sorenson—
— No, you fucking look, Brennan! Don’t kid yourself this is about me. She rattles a cuff again. — This is about your fucked-up shit!
— You were dying! You were eating yourself to death—
— And you have the nerve to go on about my issues with my mother, she spits. — Sort out your own fucking shit! Does somebody without issues behave like this?
— Fuck you!
— Just fucking go, and she leans back on the mattress, clicking on the TV at the remote.
I let go a ton of breath I never realized I was holding back. I keep telling myself that her behavior is normal; she’s gone from dependent child to rebellious, acting-up teenager. She’s testing boundaries, and it’s all just part of her journey back into functioning adulthood. I feel like taking the remote from her, telling the dwarf bitch that she’s lost privileges. But all that would do is relegate me to her level. I can take her shit. But boy, am I glad to get out of there and away from the crazy hoe! I don’t like taking backward steps, and Sorenson, a chained Sorenson, is pushing me around! Jeeze, it’s true what they say: fat people, even ones in recovery like Sorenson, really are hard to kidnap!
It took me ages to get a decent parking spot at the Biltmore, the lot was crammed with gas-guzzling behemoths. I walked toward the uplit Spanish cathedral-like tower, a golden palace against the blue-bruised sky. There’s quite a crowd and it seems that they’re all heading to Dad’s event. I get inside the hotel lobby, and although I’ve been here a couple of times for presentations and seminars, I never fail to be awed by this building: its huge marble pillars and arches, expensive floor tiles, mahogany fittings, antique furniture, and towering palm trees housed in giant pots. I walk straight through, out onto the terrace looking over lush, lamplit gardens to a massive pool and, beyond that, a golf course.
I was supposed to meet Dad in his suite but I’m running late so I text him and go straight to the hall, which is filling up with a mix of old white-haired suburbanites, walled-and-gated retirees, and several autistic-looking crime-fiction geeks. And most of all, a shitload of the spry, superannuated Irish-American Massachusetts transplants who make up Dad’s core readership. The place stinks of the entitled reek of expensive cologne and cigar smoke.
I head up to the bar. I’ve probably drunk more in the last month that I have in the previous ten years, but I need a glass of red to calm me. A saggy old soak, who looks like JFK or Bobby might have done had they managed to duck WASP-funded shrapnel, fixes me with a gaze of lecherous cheer. And fuck me, as I pick up my comp ticket and drink, and take my seat, I see Mona stage-waving at me then coming over and plonking herself down by my side. — Hey, you!
— Nice of you to come, I spit through my clenched teeth.
— I’ve always been too embarrassed to tell you that I really love your dad’s books. I can just hear those voices in my head, like how you talk when you get mad. I paak my caww in a Bawwwston street.
I try to smile but feel my face crushing like a discarded bag of potato chips, as Dad emerges through a curtain to polite applause. He’s being led by a middle-aged academic type, who’s dressed like he’s just left the adjoining golf course. Dad’s studiously casual, sporting a gray New England Patriots sweatshirt, and he’s lost about thirty pounds since I last saw him. Not only has he grown his hair longer, he’s run some dye through it, retaining some strategic gray at the temples. He sees me close to the front and gives a mock salute.
— Your dad looks so well, Mona says. — How old is he?
— Fifty-eight, I tell her.
— Wow! He looks sooo much younger! Is it wrong of me to say that he looks quite hunky?
— If by wrong you mean inappropriate and gross, yes, it fucking is, I snap, watching her head shrink into her shoulders. Bitch had to eat that one up like a one-thou-cal slice of Key lime pie.
I vaguely hear a mumbled qualifiction, but it isn’t hitting home. All I’m aware of is the feeling of my hair standing up on my body and my skin breaking out in goosebumps. Because I see Mom and Lieb in the audience! They’re settling down a couple of rows in front of us. I can’t fucking believe it! They’re supposed to be away for eight more days!
I don’t know what to do, and my overwhelming impulse is to run out of there right now, and I actually go to rise, with Mona still jabbering in my ear. But Mom turns at that moment, registering me, smiling and slightly taken aback by my undisguised horror. I’m panicking, my skin’s frozen, as an image of a chained Sorenson floods my brain. No time to run the fuck out, as Mom and Lieb come over to us, another couple grudgingly sliding down the row to let them in. I make a clumsy intro to Mona, trying to
get a hold of my breathing. Now it’s so fucking hot in here, and I’m aware of the smell of those surrounding clammy old bodies as Mom and Lieb greet me amicably. To my monumental relief, they obviously haven’t been up to the apartment and found Lena. Yet.
The academic approaches the microphone and clears his throat, the static crumbling the rest of the room into silence. — Welcome to the Biltmore Hotel. I’m Kenneth Gary, from the department of English Literature, University of Miami.
As I’m thinking: I didn’t even know the University of Miami had a department of English Literature, Lieb leans over to me. — This was not my idea, Lucy, he emphatically states. I’ve forgotten what a nice guy he is. He tried to be a stepdad, but I guess I never gave him that much of a chance.
— I know, Lieb, enough already. Mom shakes her head and playfully pushes him back into position, then slides closer to me. — Morbid curiosity got the better of me, pickle, she grins. Then her face takes on a serious hue. — How are you?
— I’m . . . I’m good, but when did you get back? What are you doing here? The reconciliation trip—
— Went better than expected, picks, and she extends her hand showing me a sparkler. — Meet the future Mrs. Benjamin Lieberman. And I’m turning a.s.a.p.
— Congratulations . . .
Mona gasps, — It’s sooo beautiful . . .
— But what about the cruise? I hear myself urgently gulp.
— We got back yesterday. Cut the trip short by jumping ship in Jamaica, skipping the South American coast, flying across via Miami, she says, narrowing her brows and peering over her glasses. — Is my apartment okay?
— Yes, of course it is, I tell her, in abject relief, as we focus back on the event interviewer.
— Tom Brennan has emerged from almost nowhere to become not just one of the bestselling crime novelists in America, but also one of the finest literary voices we have, in any genre, and he looks into the crowd, almost challenging dissent, as Mom rolls her eyes. — Looking at the quality of what is called crime writing these days, he continues, — I’d say the real crime is that those works do not get considered for top literary awards like the Pulitzer Prize . . .
Mom drops her voice and bends in close to me. — Good, cause we need you to look after the place for another month. We decided the Caribbean had worked its magic, and there was no point in hanging around, it was time to close the deal, she says, Lieb giving her hand an affectionate squeeze. — We fly to Tel Aviv tomorrow, she gasps, again displaying the ring, — to tie the knot.
— Congratulations, I whisper.
— That is great, Mona squeaks at that irritating high frequency of hers, causing the people in front of us to turn around.
— My idea, says Lieb. — I’ve never been to Israel before. I wanted us to get married there.
— Jerusalem, picks, everybody should have that place on their must-see list. I say must-see as opposed to bucket, as Debra Wilson advises us edit out morbidity from our language, Mom says, then sits back in her chair, examining Dad on the stage. It must be the best part of two decades since they were in the same room together.
Dad’s trying not to look too smug as the academic continues to sing his praises, — . . . a remarkable man who made the transition from fighting crime to writing crime. And his Boston, and that of his complex protagonist, Matt Flynn, is rendered so vividly by a fluid but spare, scalpel-precise prose style . . .
— Won’t that asshole stop already? This is feeling like one big mistake, Mom moans, as a man in front turns around again.
Lieb shoots her an I-told-you-so look.
— Dad looks well, I tell her.
— Well, yes, she says grudgingly, squeezing Lieb’s paw, — but I got the real goods on my arm here. She drops her voice another octave, and I can smell the drink on her breath. — A Jew versus a Paddy in the sack? If ever there was a no-contest, honey!
As the sycophantic intro closes and Dad gets up to the podium, Mom starts again, only to be shushed by a battleax sitting behind us. Mom abruptly stands up and turns on her. — That man couldn’t silence me in nearly seventeen years of marriage. He ain’t gonna start now! And she grabs Lieb’s hand and drags him to his feet behind her, as they take a ceremonial walk toward the door.
The academic remains unfazed. — So I invite you all to join in the wit and wisdom of Matt Flynn, and, above all, Mr. Tom Brennan!
The audience erupts into cheers, a few of them following Dad’s eyes as he tracks Mom and Lieb. She yanks open the door and departs without looking back.
— Another satisfied customer, Dad remarks into the microphone, to middle-class laughter, barely breaking his stride. I’m wondering if he even recognised her. — Anyway, this passage I’m going to read is from the new Matt Flynn novel, entitled The Doomsday Scenario.
42
MATT FLYNN
MICK DOHERTY KNEW how this one would play out. Every time his daughter Lindy returned home to Boston from her current haunt in Miami it meant trouble. Big trouble. Mick rose in the filtering sunlight, wrapping a robe around himself, feeling that familiar mild sting of dismay as the ever-tightening cord slipped under his solid ball of a gut. He could hear the bland sounds of early-morning TV seeping through the house from the living room. Lindy was already up, crouched in a lotus position on the recliner, watching infomercials and eating a power bar. She was dressed in running gear: a tank top and shorts, with her Nikes kicked off onto the rug. Thin runnels of sweat on her forehead attested to recent physical exertion.
He looked at his daughter, taking in that noble, slightly long face, inherited from him, and those flowing brown locks, tinted with streaks of gold. Then there were those eyes, blazing lamps which could narrow into focused slits of hate; they came straight from her mother’s arsenal. It was always so hard not to see Jenny in the girl. Right now those eyes were set on neutral, which suited Mick; he generally avoided asking Lindy about her personal life.
But she wouldn’t have changed. She would be the same hardcore, demented, dyed-in-the-wool slut of old. That was such a terrible thing for a man to admit about his daughter. But the stone-cold truth was that since puberty Lindy had seemed unable to resist the attention of just about any suitor; male or female, she wasn’t picky. Worse, she actively pursued the bulk of them in the most wanton, predatory manner.
He recalled with his customary shudder the trauma of that horrific day, now so long ago but burned into his psyche so as to cast it up as vivid and stark as if it were yesterday. Taking a run through the parking lot behind the strip mall, he turned the corner, coming across a crowd of youths tightly gathered round at the mouth of a narrow L-shaped alley. This was a popular spot for kids to hang out, and Mick reckoned by the jeers and the charge in the air, it would be two boys having a fight. As a conscientious Boston Police Department Officer, he went over to break it up. But it had been Lindy, just in ninth grade, lying there, getting fucked by a kid who barely looked old enough to have a set of balls in his sack! Mick had stood for a second, uttering a disbelieving curse as the kids around them scattered, then his next shout echoed across the park, as he pulled the copulating pair apart like two dogs. The terrified boy fled, yanking his pants up, while Lindy did the same with her underwear, then tugged down her skirt, Mick turning away till his daughter had completed this mortifying task. Then he dragged her to her feet and out of the park. The thing that struck him on his tense, shameful walk home was that Lindy seemed totally unrepentant, unconcerned, and barely even embarrassed once she’d gotten over the first flush of shock. — We were just making out at first and things kinda got outta hand, she said with that shrug that seemed only slightly affected.
Mick Doherty had been about to react, when he’d looked at his daughter’s profile. It was the same one she was displaying to him now; glassy and vacant, her arms folded across her chest. Back then it was still the chest of a child, he considered, now swamped by a vision of Lindy in her communion dress. How could this be his little girl? How could this have hap
pened?
Now she was sitting there, watching the infomercial, and Mick felt as shut out from her life, her thoughts, as ever. Her behavior was rendered all the more incomprehensible, given the parental framework he and Jenny—for all her faults had provided their offspring. And her sister, his younger daughter Joanne, was now working in the war and famine zone of Darfur, trying to help imperiled children.
One kid attempting to save the world, the other seemingly determined to fuck it to death.
Mick had long faced up to the disturbing facts. Despite the discipline of the sporting background he’d provided for her, Lindy was a demanding, insatiable borderline nymphomanic with psychopathic tendencies. And Mick sometimes blamed himself for instilling that competitive drive, that will-to-win-at-all-costs attitude within her.
But was she also a killer? Arthur Rose was as dead as he was ever going to be, his back weeping with multiple wounds, in the very alley where he’d discovered his daughter’s grim copulations all those years ago. Lindy had gotten into town a couple of days before the body was discovered. She had publicly threatened Rose once, over another dark chapter in her troubled life. And she would be in the frame; the Boston homicide tecs hadn’t come calling yet, but that would happen as sure as night followed day.
Lindy looked up, only cursorily acknowledging Mick’s presence, her face set in that expression of mild disdain she hadn’t been able to shake off since those teen years. His casual overture, when he asked if she’d had a good run, produced little more than a brief, contemptuous raising of her shoulders. Yet, for all their estrangement, Michael Patrick Doherty couldn’t believe that his older daughter was capable of cold-blooded murder. But he knew one person who could find out for sure, an old colleague of his in the BPD.