Authors: Katia Lief
“Mr Stuart stopped me after art class today.”
“He did?”
“Said any time I wanted to head back to the neighborhood together, it was fine by him.”
“Oh. That was nice of him.”
“I don’t need a
bodyguard
, Mom.”
“Who said you did?”
“You and your boyfriend are acting like I do.”
“He’s not exactly my boyfriend. And I know you don’t need a bodyguard. People do care about you, you know, Nat.”
“Then stop showing up at school, OK? It’s embarrassing.”
I stood there, frozen in his headlights.
“
OK
, Mom? Unless there’s something you’re not telling me, and I already know what it is, anyway. That freak from work’s still bothering you, right?”
He knew. And he was right: it was time to stop pretending Joe would just go away.
“Nat, I’ve been thinking. What if we left? We could move someplace else. Someplace more peaceful, with good schools you don’t need to test into. Someplace we both like, or maybe someplace we’ve never been. We could have an adventure, just the two of us – take off, go to northern California, live on a
real
vineyard.”
He listened, or waited, with an uber-passive expression that said he thought I was rambling. And
I
was! But staying here like a sitting duck suddenly felt insane.
“I don’t want to leave,” he said. “It’s been hard enough getting used to it here, and I’m kind of liking it now. I’ve got friends and I can get around on my own. Anyway, Mom, face it: he’ll follow you anywhere we go.”
The wisdom in that was stark and terrible. If we ran, Joe
would
follow. He had done it once before. Why wouldn’t he do it again?
Nat hinged a banana off the bunch in the fruit basket we kept on our table and refused to look at me when he walked out of the kitchen. I forgave him everything: his narcissism and the ease with which he squashed my plea. He was my child, poor kid, and deserved none of the bad stuff he was getting. I sat at the table for a few minutes, thinking. Then I walked through the house and opened all the curtains, letting in what remained of the afternoon. There were hours and hours left to the day, days and days left to the week, weeks and weeks left to the year. Nat was right: we couldn’t spend them in hiding.
I went to my room and tried working on my other stories but had trouble concentrating on them. They no longer interested me. All I really cared about now were two things. No, three.
No
, four. First, purging Joe from my life. Second, safety, health and
happiness
for Nat. Third, peace of mind for my mother. Fourth, to know the provenance of the bones. The rest, as they said – anything that came my way – would be frosting on the cake.
I opened a new computer file and typed my wish list. Felt a little better. And decided not to even try to work today. Work, usually a good distraction for life’s troubles, now felt irrelevant. Instead, I searched online for information about Abe Starkman’s life.
There wasn’t much, mostly it was in relation to Buildings Department work, huge Adobe files posted by bureaucrats in case someone might take an interest in their voluminous outpourings. But then I discovered that the
Times
had just posted an online obituary in which I learned that Abraham Starkman, age fifty-four, had been a senior project manager at the agency where he had spent his entire career; was known for his diligence; had been well respected; did not socialize much; had grown up in Midwood; had been long married to a woman named Ola with whom he had three grown children all of whom still lived in New York City; that he had been about to become a grandfather for the first time. I also learned that a memorial service would be held for Abe the following week and I wanted to go.
“You can’t,” Rich told me, over the phone. He had heard the news and put two and two together. “It could be dangerous for you and it could also be
dangerous
for the family. Shouldn’t you think about them?” In the background I heard people talking, a child’s voice. The
neigh
of a horse reminded me that Rich spent Wednesday after-school hours teaching riding at Prospect Park.
“You’re right. It wouldn’t be fair, especially since Joe might have—”
“Don’t go there, Darcy. Let the cops figure that out. Your detective – I thought Jesus would show the way.”
We shared a laugh. “I sure hope so. Meanwhile …”
“Meanwhile, if you’re really worried, which you are and
should
be, let me take Nat back and forth to school for a few days, OK?”
“He mentioned you’d offered.”
“It makes sense. I live so close. And I care about both of you.”
How could that not melt my heart? My frozen-with-fear heart. “Thanks. That would be a big help. Just don’t say anything to him about us.”
“Don’t worry about that. This is a teacher–student thing, purely. A neighborly gesture. OK?”
“OK.”
“And I think you should get a restraining order.”
“Rich, I explained it already. Go online and read about stalking. You’ll see how not-simple it is. Please.”
He paused, then promised, “I will.”
“I loved this morning,” I said to change the subject to a much, much better one.
“Me, too. I want to see you. How can I see you?”
“I don’t know. We’ll find a time; something will present itself. Right?”
“Right.” Though he didn’t sound convinced. Now that he’d be accompanying Nat back and forth to school, early morning visits were pretty much out. Maybe we’d have to resort to middle-of-the-night trysts while Nat was asleep in his bed. And if he woke? Heard a noise? Got scared? I knew what would happen: mother would leap from bed and run to child. Leaving lover alone, embarrassed, realizing he hadn’t slept at all and had to appear at work the next day. Reality would infringe, spoiling things. But then again, it already had.
We said goodbye and I was back to where I was before he called: reading about Abe Starkman’s life and assuming that Joe had caused his death. The more I thought this way, the more I realized I had to stop assuming that Joe had personally killed Abe Starkman. Maybe he hadn’t; maybe Courtney was right about the mob’s hand in this.
Two detectives from the 84th Precinct – Jess’s unit – stopped by to see me late in the afternoon: Dee Solaris, a small African American woman who
was
all business, and Malek Rassood, an Egyptian giant with humor that flashed constantly in his black eyes. They sat in my living room, sharing the couch. Before joining them, I crooked an ear up the staircase: rock ’n’ roll from behind Nat’s closed bedroom door. To create another buffer so Nat wouldn’t overhear, I shut the living room door then sat across from my visitors on a narrow wooden chair that had been one of Hugo’s favorites.
They asked me all the obvious questions about my association with Abe Starkman. I answered; there was little to tell. And then Rassood floored me with this: “We hear you got a personal psycho, makes house calls. Want to tell us about that?”
“You’ve been talking to Jess Ramirez.”
They nodded.
“Though
he
wouldn’t phrase it as a joke.”
“Don’t be offended, ma’am,” Detective Solaris said, casting a dark look her partner’s way. “Rass here’s got no tack.” She meant tact and she was right; the remark just wasn’t funny.
“He came to my house once, to leave me a photograph of himself.” Then I told them about my encounters with Joe since a week ago Monday.
“So the warning at work escalated it,” Solaris said, shaking her head.
“Yes.”
“Since then?”
“Just the YouTube video … if he posted it. I guess we’re all assuming he did.”
Rassood’s eyes flickered before forking over a line I suspected he’d delivered many times: “Assume makes an ass outta u and me.”
“No,” Solaris said to him, “just you.” Then to me: “No one’s assuming anything. The YouTube upload traced to Coffin’s cell phone.”
Of course; I hadn’t doubted it would.
“Detectives –” I leaned forwards “– were there any witnesses to Abe’s killing? Did anyone see Joe on the bridge?”
“We can’t comment on that,” Solaris said.
Then, with just the slightest delay, Rassood said, “Nah,” contradicting her with startling directness. She looked at him with a killer glance, which he shrugged off. I got the feeling their good cop/bad cop routine was well worn and perfectly timed. It was as if they recognized the depth of my worry that my stalker might have actually killed someone, a man who had trusted me.
“Do you have any leads yet?” I asked. “About who might have done this to Abe?”
Ignoring my question, Rassood stood up, towering over me in my hard chair. Solaris also stood. They both handed me business cards, white with raised blue lettering and an NYPD shield logo.
“Call if anything comes to mind you maybe forgot to mention,” Solaris said.
Rassood glanced around my living room like he was memorizing it, which made me uncomfortable, then he said, “Thanks for having us.”
Just before six o’clock, I heard from a
Times
lawyer who told me she would be “handling any difficulties that might arise from your professional connection to Abe Starkman”. In other words, if in the course of researching the bones story I had put my source in a position of undue risk, I was in big trouble. If not, I wasn’t. But what about the fact that my stalker had caused the trouble by posting the video on YouTube? Was I to be held responsible for that? On this point I felt totally confused. One way or the other, I felt guilty for Abe’s death. His brutal death. In the dark, on a bridge, alone.
Hour by hour, as I tunneled into myself, shining bright lights of blame, the focus of the unfolding story, as it was revealed via the keyboards and cameras of reporters, shifted away from Joe and thus me. I knew from talking to Courtney and following the story that the police investigation was gaining momentum. They had identified the four bullets that had shot Abe as having come from a gun known to have been stolen among others in a recent heist which investigators had already connected to the mob. Between that, and the fact that no one had seen
Joe
anywhere near the Brooklyn Bridge early this morning, it did appear on the surface to have been a Mafia-style retaliation killing.
Courtney was running with that version of the story, reflected in her and Stan’s piece the next day, Thursday, in which Abe Starkman was revealed as the source of our original information about the discovery of bones. She didn’t spell out the fact that I was the woman in the video. It wasn’t necessary; anyone who wanted to could easily make the connection.
Nat sat across from me, finishing a bowl of cereal and reading the Arts section of the
Times
. When the doorbell rang, his eyes flew to mine.
“It’s OK. It’s Mr Stuart. I thought it
was
a good idea for you to head over to school with him, since he lives around here. It makes sense, don’t you think, sweetie?”
Nat stared at me, rubbing his cheek, leaving behind a ghost of newsprint ink. “Yeah, I guess so, considering.” He had been down before me and must have read the front page of the first section. So he knew.
“And back home, later, too.”
“Fine.” He pushed the newspaper away and stood up. “I don’t know, Mom. I mean, why didn’t you just tell me?”
“There’s not much to tell. Reporters have sources. Mine got …”
Killed
was still a bad word in the vocabulary I shared with my son.
“Guy got whacked by the mob, sounds like. I know about that stuff, Mom.”
“You do?”
“
Yes
. And the mob knew about the guy who got killed because Joe Coffin put his video on YouTube and told his name. I watched the video and I saw you. I mean, I couldn’t see you very well, but I recognized the way you stand.”
“Maybe I should have explained yesterday.”
“It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure this out, you know. I mean, I got half of it online last night. I read all your stories, Mom. I know all about those bones and why the mob wanted to kill that guy.”
He’d said it. The bad word. My baby.
“I think true crime is cool,” he said.
The doorbell rang again.
Cool?
“Mr Stuart’s waiting. Do you have your cell phone turned on?”
No answer. He cleared his bowl to the sink and left the kitchen. I heard him greeting Rich at the front door, and then they were gone.
“Turning the wheel,” was what my mother used to call
getting through the day
. “Turn the wheel, Karl. Just turn it. Don’t think so much.”
“Not thinking is an
im-possib-ility
, Eva.” Breaking up the syllables to make the word heavy and complex, so it would reflect the impact he wished it to have. “Our brains are filters. They hold things. Without them we could not live.”
“Then
live
. That’s all.” Her emphasis bore equal but opposite weight, meant to reduce and simplify. She wanted him to stop remembering. He couldn’t. It was a conflict they never overcame.
All day Thursday, I tried.
Turn the wheel
, I told myself, over and over, but the wheel instead seemed to turn me. By noon I found myself brain-dead in front of the television, desperately trying not to think. But I lacked my mother’s focus and resolve. I couldn’t not think. Thinking ruled me. It gave me satisfaction, release and exhilaration as much as it caused me grief, anxiety and fear. When the phone started up again – ringing and ringing in ten-ring spurts – I couldn’t just sit in the echo chamber of what was essentially a voluntary confinement. I shot up off the couch, grabbed my purse and headed out the front door, my only real concession to common sense being that I locked it behind me.
I would walk the streets of my neighborhood, defying Joe. Or, my fear of Joe. Defying the idea that he had accumulated so much power over me. How had that happened in such a short period of time? But
then
I remembered the box and reminded myself that he had been working on me, like a project, for much longer than I had realized. Going outside for no reason, just to wander, was a stubborn test to find out if awareness of having a stalker made you more safe or less safe, if it changed anything at all about the fact that you were always being watched.