Palindrome (9 page)

Orange nods his head.

“I just gave her your number, talked you up to get her out of here. She was making my skin crawl. I appreciated the offer, of course, but . . .” I can't tell if Orange is blushing or if his blubbery face is still glowing from the
shvitz.

He's
definitely
never had consensual sex in his life.

Orange bites his lip and pushes the laminated paper over to us. We stare at it. It
is
crazy person writing. The central text is surrounded by squiggles that are half letters, half something else. And the words in the center of the page, though clear, are written dysgraphically, in square box letters. No curves. Only straight lines; his
o
is a square. It's also rife with misspellings. First is a single word near the top of the page:

Sexes

Then, beneath it, what looks like some kind of confession:

Orange,

Same plaid backwrds. Evry Second. I saw wat happns. Thatz why we did it. Beulah twelve. Im twelve.

Live not on Evil

Then he seems to completely lose it, degenerating into nonsense:

Evlewt mi evlewtha . . .

His letters become unreadable until the end. Signed:

Egnaro

I click my tongue. Guy was nuts. Like Silas. Probably not worth reading too much into this.

“What happened after he wrote this?” I ask Orange.

“He ran out in a panic. Like a madman. We watched him on the cameras. He raced from here, faster than I've ever seen anyone move. I tried to hunt him down. Asked everyone I knew if they'd ever heard of an ‘Egnaro.' Nothing.”

“Sounds Hispanic,” I muse.

Courtney is still staring intently at the laminated page.

“But if Greta is paying you to find it, she must know something I don't. It must really exist,” Orange says, squinting at the paper in concentration, forehead wrinkled like a salted snail. He clearly doesn't know anything about the tape's connection to Savannah's murder or that Greta is her sister. “So what do we know?” Orange squeezes his fat cheeks. “Obviously the tape is intimately connected to the Beulah Twelve . . .”

“What's the Beu—­” I start, but Courtney suddenly grabs my thigh and digs his nails in deep, so deep that I almost squeak.

“Obviously,” replies Courtney, cool as a Frappuccino. Great liar. A million times better than me. I've seen mannequins with more tells than Courtney. But my lips must have squirmed, because Orange looks up and inspects us, correctly ascertaining that we're holding out on him.

“What else did Greta tell you?” he asks.

Courtney taps my thigh with his index finger. We're both thinking the same thing: Tread very carefully. Give him enough info that he believes we're on his team, but not so much that he could hire his own team to track it down before us . . .
If
it's real.

“Greta believes the tape contains the dying words of a young woman who was murdered,” I say.
And now feed back to Orange what he already knows to be true.
“In which she reveals the nature of the afterlife.”

“And of course she knew of the Beulah Twelve connection,” lies Courtney. “Though obviously didn't have access to the same level of detail as you.”

Orange's black eyes are glowing. I'm involuntary reminded of the look on Sadie's face after her first bite of ice cream the other day but am instantly sickened by the comparison.

“A girl's dying words,” he says, “telling you about the world to come. Imagine if it exists! A tape that tells us what happens after we die! Is there a more fantastic treasure anywhere on earth?” Orange's breathing approaches
shvitz
levels. His eyes alight with wonder—­he can't wait to get his grubby hands on the thing.

“Why?” I say. Orange and Courtney turn to stare at me. “I mean, seriously. So what? Say this thing exists, and it really—­somehow—­tells you about what happens after you die. What's gonna change? You're going to start going to church on Sundays?”

The look Orange gives me in response sends chills shooting down my spine. For just a fleeting moment, I think I'm privy to decades of aggregate, deeply suppressed suffering. Countless hours spent in this subterranean prison he's built for himself. Self-­loathing the likes of which I can hardly fathom. Burying himself among his ever-­growing hoards, like a pharaoh already in his sarcophagus, just waiting to move on.

“I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that you can't relate,” Orange says quietly. “I can't speak for others, but for me to know that there's another life, one without this, this . . .” Orange glances down to his pink-­clad girth, shaking his head as if still in disbelief of his physical form. “This
burden . . .”
He lowers his voice to a strained whisper. “My friends, if this is what Egnaro and Greta think it is, it's worth much more than whatever she's paying you. Its value is beyond material wealth. To hear this tape . . . to know what no man has known before, to be privy to the secrets of the universe, to perhaps understand
God himself . . .”

Hot breath pours from Orange's nostrils. I'm thinking the guy knows that at best he's wasting his life, at worst he's hurt a lot of ­people. In his mind, here's a chance for redemption. All his sins can be offset by this groundbreaking metaphysical discovery.

There's no way he listens just once then hands it back to us.

“So there's two questions,” Orange says. “Where is it? And what does it say, exactly? How could any audio recording
prove
such a—­”

Courtney suddenly slams a thin hand onto the desktop. “Julius. You're an idiot.”

Orange raises an eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”

“His name isn't Egnaro.
Egnaro
is just
Orange
spelled backwards.”

Orange furrows his eyebrows in concern and snatches the sheet back, as if to confirm this.

“Palindromes,” Courtney says softly.

“Palindromes?” Orange asks, still staring at the signature.

“Words or phrases that are the same forwards as backwards.
Sexes
is a palindrome. And then see, he started writing this message to you, telling you about the tape. Then ‘Live not on evil' is itself a little palindrome. Then he tried to finish the letter by just writing it backwards, but must have kinda lost it.”

Orange's eyes scan the sheet, muttering to himself, confirming what Courtney said.

“Son of a bitch,” he says. “I
am
an idiot.”

“So . . .” Courtney muses to himself. “So what he wrote is a palindrome. So what?”

Courtney purses his lips and strokes his thin mustache. Orange and I watch him in silence, not daring to interrupt his train of thought.

“What about this,” Courtney finally says. “What if the tape is literally the same played backwards as forwards. Like you play it in reverse and it sounds exactly the same. This explains two things: why the killer used a tape recorder, because another medium like digital could be doctored to provide this effect. And it also explains how it's proof. Because, essentially, it's impossible.”

“You mean . . .” Orange is positively giddy. Leaning over the desk on his elbows, excited like a little kid who has to pee. “Like you play the tape and you hear the girl saying something. And then once it finishes you have the tape player play it backwards, and you hear her saying the same thing?”

Courtney nods. Orange's jaw is unhinged, palms on his cheeks. Happy as a pig in shit.

“But like you said, that's impossible,” I say.

Courtney smiles. “Exactly. That's the only way the tape could prove anything. If it did something impossible. If something physically impossible could happen, maybe something else
impossible
could happen. Like heaven.”

“But if you're weak, like this guy,” says Orange, gesturing to the laminated sheet, “encountering such a thing really could drive you completely mad.”

“But mad how? What would you do if you knew there was an afterlife?” Courtney asks Orange. “Why would that make your client go on a sexual rampage?” Courtney leans in close and lowers his voice seriously. “Now it's my turn to add another condition to our deal, Matty Julius.”

Orange grows pale. He tried to make Courtney his bitch, but now there's no question who is in control of this situation.

“You're a human stool sample, and no cassette tape can change that. Your operation here is beyond unconscionable: exploiting underage girls, selling their bodies to diseased perverts in exchange for an opiate drip and just enough spending money to replace the clothes that your clientele rip off of them in their animal frenzies . . . It's much too late for you, Matty. But you can at least spare a few poor souls the torture you've inflicted on thousands of others. If we bring you this tape to listen to, and it proves what we think it does,” Courtney says, “no more girls. Keep the gambling, the
shvitzing,
the drugs. But no girls. You send them back to wherever you got them. Back to their families. With cash.”

Orange grows very still, then manages to nod dumbly.

“Okay,” he whispers.

“It might tell you something you don't want to hear,” Courtney says. “Is it heaven? Hell? Or most likely, something you've never even considered. No matter what it tells you, you send them home. Do I have your word?”

“I . . . Yes,” he nods queasily, and I'm pretty sure he means it.

“So you still want us to bring you the tape for a listen?” I ask him.

“Oh yes,” Orange whispers. “More than ever.”

 

PART TWO:

Pause

 

I
T'S AFTER TEN
at night, and Courtney is at the wheel of our rented Honda Accord, speeding north on I-­95. There's a drizzle of freezing rain.

The plan is to check out the murder scene first, since it's on the way to the institution housing Silas. We should get to Bangor by one, then we'll check into a motel. Murder scene has been cold five years, one more night won't make a difference. I've got my phone in my hand, am staring blankly at the screen.

“Orange isn't
just
a filthy idiot.” Courtney is babbling; he's been unable to settle down since leaving Midtown Fitness. “He's also a narcissist. And that's his mistake: He thought he could figure this all out himself. Never bothered to ask for help,” Courtney chortles. “All that time thinking somebody named Egnaro was the key to finding the Beulah Twelve . . .”

I lean back in my seat.

“Can you please explain what the fuck is the Beulah Twelve?”

Courtney shakes his head like he's disappointed in me.

“I'm sure you've heard of them. Must just not remember. It was huge news for a week a few years ago. Beulah is this tiny little town in rural Colorado. Twelve upstanding male citizens kidnapped a boy of seven. They brought him to the leader's house—­his attic had been converted into some kind of crazy church. They killed the boy on an altar. Very sacrificial, ritualistic. Any of this ringing a bell?”

“Maybe,” I lie.

“And
then
.” Courtney grins. “The twelve men disappeared into thin air. They left the boy
flayed
on the altar, got in their trucks, and
disappeared
. A few weeks into the investigation it turns out all twelve of them were seen in Chicago, plus they used their credit cards there. Maxed them out, I think. But besides that, no trace. Ever. They never found any of them.”

I'm feeling a little too tired for this. I watch the windshield wipers furiously smack away raindrops.

“Okay . . . so?”

“So clearly Orange's client—­Egnaro—­ was one of them. He was going nuts about how they ‘did it'—­that must mean killed the kid, right? But what if
Savannah
's
death was related to the Beulah Twelve? What if—­” Courtney is as animated as I've ever seen him. And instead of gesticulating with his hands, he seems to be taking out his excitement on the gas pedal, accelerating to punctuate every revelation. “What if Silas was part of the Beulah Twelve!”

“Let's not speculate.” I sigh. “Patience, thoughtfulness, subtlety, right?”

“Absolutely.” Courtney nods furiously. “Absolutely.”

“So bottom line, this Beulah Twelve shit—­which frankly I think is just that. This guy probably read about the Beulah Twelve on the news just like you. I guarantee this dude's freakout happened when this was big news—­but this shit doesn't really change anything. We still gotta check out the crime scene, and we still have to get in to talk to Silas to figure out where the hell he stashed this
alleged
tape.”

“And,” Courtney adds, “you still need to call your friend.”

I've been staring at my cell phone for the last half hour, trying to psyche myself up to call a girl. I feel like I'm back in high school.

“You're being ridiculous,” says Courtney.

“You don't understand human relationships, do you? It's been ten years since I've talked to her. I didn't even have Sadie last time I saw her.”

“Well we need her help. We still know almost nothing about Greta Kanter.”

And so here we are, blazing through what's evolving into a torrential sleet storm to the scene of the murder, me trying to psyche myself up enough to buzz an old flame that I kind of screwed the pooch with. Helen Langdon. A colleague from my days at the NYPD, who's since been promoted to Detective Second Grade. She could run a background check on Greta—­is it just a coincidence that the deceased girl's sister is a total screw job?

“Call,” says Courtney.

“Maybe we could have gotten a little more out of Orange about Greta's visit if you hadn't run your fucking mouth back there, genius,” I say. “What happened to patience?”

Courtney shakes his head, still peering out into rain-­stained, inky darkness. “I think he appreciated someone being straight with him.”

I snort. “Are you a sociotard? One of those ­people who can't pick up on subtle cues, like how someone threatening to force-­feed you glass means they aren't happy?”

“Call,” says Courtney.

“I will. Hold your horses.”

“Call now.”

I stare out into the dark night through the rain-­streaked windows. Can just make out silhouettes of pine trees and highway signs. “I was such an idiot,” I say. “I'm so embarrassed. It makes me cringe just thinking about it.”

“What happened?” I know Courtney couldn't care less. Just knows that indulging me is a necessary precursor to getting me to dial.

I breathe out slowly. Courtney cranks the speedometer past 100 to pass a red minivan, executes it with the precision and impassivity of an electric can opener.

“I sorta cheated on her.”

“Sorta?” Courtney cocks his head in amusement but doesn't take his eyes from the road for even a moment.

“She was working a night shift. I went out with some old law school friends after work. I got trashed and hooked up with some floozy I met at the bar.”

“How did she find out?”

“I told her,” I sigh.

Courtney actually seems impressed. “That's admirable.”

“That's exactly what she said. But also that it meant I must not really want to be with her. Subconsciously. We'd been dating for about three months then. I told her she was wrong, that it was just a stupid mistake, that she was the best thing that had happened to me in a long time. It was true. She was a real fucking gem. A hard-­ass, a real tough cookie, that's for sure—­you have to be to survive as a female officer. Especially in the city. But a gem once you dug beneath all that. Anyways, she didn't cry or anything. Just looked at me real hard and said, ‘I guess that's it.' God, I felt so ashamed.”

“So you're upset that you told her? Or that you did it.”

“Shut up.” I open the glove compartment and root around for the trail mix we bought at the last gas station.

“Upset that you weren't thoughtful and patient enough?” Courtney asks, unable to contain a note of glee.

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Call. I listened to your stupid story, now call.”

My heart is pounding. I enter what I sort of hope isn't still her cell number—­I've switched it to every new phone I've gotten. I Google her once in a while, too, just to see what she's up to, if she's married and so on. Best I can tell, she's not. I hit call and pray nobody picks up. Two rings.

“Hello?”

Shit, shit, shit.

“Hi.”

“Who is this?”

“This . . . is this Helen?”

“Who is
this
?”

My chest heaves. I put a hand on the dash to steady myself.

“It's Frank. Lamb.”

A long pause. Courtney looks at me like
so?

I bite my tongue. I don't know where she is, on the other end, but I know what she's doing: She's got a pen out, doodling little geometric shapes on a pad of sticky notes. I never saw her answer a phone without her pen and pad ready, breaking from the drawing only to chew thoughtfully, desperately, on the end of the pen, like it's leaking some vitamin she's deficient in.

Just when I think maybe she's hung up she says:

“Frank. Wow. How are you?”

“I'm fine. Okay, I guess. How are you?”

“Same.”

Another pause. Courtney gestures:
Come on!

“Um, look I know this is a little weird, but I need some help. On an investigation.”

I'm a little relieved to hear her laugh softly on the other end of the line.

“Help, huh?”

“Yeah. You're still in the department, right?”

“What do you need, Frank?”

“A girl named Savannah Kanter was murdered five years ago. Her sister hired me to look into a little detail of the crime, and I have a feeling she might have a record. At the very least, something weird is going on with her.” I clear my throat. “Her name is Greta Kanter. K-­A-­N-­T-­E-­R. Also, obviously, anything about the crime itself would be just super.”

Another awful silence. The splatter of the rain on the windshield picks up a little.

“Frank, I can't.”

“I can pay you.”

“Stop it. You know I'm not supposed to do that. I could lose my job.”

“Just think about it,” I plead.

I can hear her huff. I hear a click that I know is her tapping the end of her pen against her front teeth.

“Was it in the city?” she finally asks.

“No. Rural Maine. Outside Bangor.”

“That means I'd have to call and request files—­”

“I know. Look, if you can't do it, fine. Just know I'm desperate here. This woman walked into my office and gave me $15K up front. C
ash.
The bounty is huge. I don't know a damn thing about her. What would you do?”

“Not tell an NYPD detective, for one thing,” she says. “What do you think the chances are that that money is clean?”

She's not making this easy, that's for sure. Courtney has had one hand fiddling with his ponytail since he realized this wasn't going well. I think he's also picked up the speed. Rain crashes down in sheets on the windshield.

“Can you at least run her driver's license?” I ask.

I hear her breathing on the other end and consider saying something to evoke the magic we had for at least a two-­month stretch, an inside joke or something.

“Goddammit,” she sighs. “I'm not gonna make you beg me. Just a sec. Lemme get into the system remotely. I'm at home. What's the number?”

I respell the name and feed her the license number. Hear the distant clicking of her fingers on the keyboard. Are they painted? She used to paint them bright colors; a weird habit that always seemed incongruous with her otherwise tough exterior.

“Okay, Greta Kanter . . .” She hums to herself. “Got her. Ready?”

“Yeah,” I say, switching to speaker so Courtney can hear.

“Record totally clean. Not even a traffic violation, but she lives in the city, so she probably doesn't even drive. Six foot, green eyes. Here's a picture of her. Very pretty.”

I cough uncomfortably. Courtney raises an eyebrow at me.

“Is she?” I say into the phone. “I didn't notice.”

Helen continues, “Address on 83rd, Upper West Side, thirty-­nine years old—­born in Sheepshead Bay, so probably Russian parents.”

“Anything coming up about her sister? And the murder?”

“I told you, I'm not gonna get anything like that without requesting files from the ­people who handled it. All I could find is public news clippings, same stuff you have access to.”

I lick my lips. “Alright, so everything looks clean and normal on her?”

“Yes. And you know what it's like: If there's something weird, you can usually spot it right away.”

“Sure,” I say. “Thanks, Helen.”

Awkward pause.

“No problem,” she says. “Is that it, Frank? I'm pretty busy right now.”

“Oh, of course. No, no. That's all, I guess.”

“Alright. I guess I'll talk to you in another ten years or so. Have a good night.”

Click.

Courtney avoids eye contact with me. Wish I'd taken the phone off speaker for that last bit.

“Well that went about as well as expected,” I mutter and close my eyes.

“To be fair, you probably could have exchanged a few more niceties before—­”

“Jesus Christ. I called, okay?”

“It wouldn't have killed you to be a little more patient. That's all I'm saying.”

Blood rushes to my face. “Aren't you a fucking virgin? Don't act like you know fucking anything about women or relationships, alright?”

“I'm not a virgin.”

“You
love
this, don't you? You act so fucking high and mighty and smug. ‘
Wouldn'
t have killed you to be a little more patient
.' Are you serious? Who do you think you are? Jesus? You're a wiry vegan with a ponytail, so you figure you're qualified to dish out advice like Doctor fucking Phil, huh?”

I'm enraged to see that Courtney is smiling.

“What's so goddamn funny?” I growl.

“Nothing,” Courtney replies.

“If you weren't driving right now, I'd strangle you with that goddamn ponytail.”

Courtney doesn't respond, just stares out into the dark rain. I pull the lever that makes my seat recline and pull my jacket over my eyes. I listen to the roaring of the Honda's transmission, protesting mildly as Courtney directs her through the constant staccato of freezing rain. I think about Sadie, imagine us on a beach somewhere on the Mediterranean. Maybe there's a woman lying next to me in the sand. Maybe it's Helen. Maybe it's Greta Kanter.

And fuck it, Courtney can come too.

W
HEN
I
OPEN
my eyes it's still dark in the motel room. That's where we are, right? A motel? Don't even remember checking in or passing out. I'm on my back on top of a starched sheet, thick darkness swimming above me. I have to pee.

Can't hear Courtney breathing. He must be down in the lobby working.

I reach for the bedside lamp and twist it on, but nothing happens. Burned out.

I throw off the thin blankets and sit up in the darkness. It's cold in here, I realize. Really, incredibly cold. Maybe the power went out because of the storm? No electricity, no heat? I grope for the blanket and rip it off the bed, wrap it around my shoulders, stand up. My legs feel wobbly, like I'm drunk or something. I shudder. I don't like this. Something's wrong. Where's Courtney?