Alafair Burke - Long Gone

“L ady, first you want me to go to Jersey. Now you tell me you don’t even have an address? Let me guess: you’re also paying with a credit card, right?” The cabdriver could read Alice’s response on her face in the rearview mirror. “Ah, Jesus. I read you all wrong. Would’ve been better off picking up that crazy-looking woman wrapped in all the scarves.”

“Just drive. I’ll tell you how to get there once we’re on the other side of the tunnel. And I’ll make it up to you on the tip.”

“If you say so.”

The round-trip fare to Hoboken would run into triple digits, plunked onto a credit card that had been hovering at maximum for the better part of a year, but she had no choice. She’d gone to sleep last night planning to follow Lily’s advice. You’re no longer involved . Consider yourself lucky you don’t know more. But the unannounced house call from the detectives had changed all that.

As the cab emerged from the tunnel, she tried to recall the views she’d taken in from the passenger seat of Drew’s BMW three weeks earlier. A right turn next to the construction site. Then another right where the road came to a tee. A left to cross the overpass. Straight until downtown, then another left.

“I’m pretty sure this is the street. It should be up here on the right. There’s a fire hydrant out front.”

“That’s very specific, ma’am.”

“No, wait, this is it. I remember passing that bar on the corner.”

“Crabby Dick’s? You needed to see that sign to remember a bar called Crabby Dick’s? Are you kidding me?”

“Just pull over, okay?”

“Wait-the fare. You owe me fifty-seven bucks. Plus that tip you mentioned.”

“Look, I have a credit card, okay?” She even pulled it from her wallet as proof. “Just wait for me a few minutes.”

“Jesus, lady.”

“I can’t exactly hail a cab from here. Just run the meter, all right?”

She left him grousing in the front seat with no option but to wait, pulled next to the same parking hydrant where she’d bided her time while Drew Campbell had obtained the paperwork to rent the Highline Gallery space. A bell chimed politely as she walked into the converted town house. Alice recognized the spiky-haired Amazon working two carrels behind the waif of a receptionist at the front desk.

“Good afternoon. I was wondering if I could speak to the woman over there, with the short black hair?”

“And your name?”

“Alice Humphrey. She doesn’t know me, but it’s about a retail space on Washington Street, in Manhattan in the Meatpacking District?”

She watched as the receptionist conferred with the agent, and then returned to the front counter. “I’m sorry, but she tells me that space is unavailable.”

“I know that. I need to talk to her about the lease.” She called out directly to the other woman. “I manage the business that moved into that space. I need to know what name the lease is under.”

The agent barely glanced in Alice’s direction, but did make her way to a wall of file cabinets to retrieve a manila folder. She flipped through its contents as she walked to the front of the office. Alice stepped to the side to make room for the departing receptionist.

“Coffee run, Michelle. Can you watch the front for a sec?”

Michelle with the punky hairdo nodded absentmindedly.

“Now, if you’re the manager, shouldn’t you already know whose name’s on the lease?”

“It’s probably either ITH Corporation or Drew Campbell.”

“Well, okay then. There you go. Drew Campbell.” She looked directly at Alice for the first time. “Is this a joke or something?”

“No, I just-”

“I mean, you’re the woman who was starting a gallery, right?”

“Well, managing it, yes.”

“So, okay, why would you have any doubts about your name being on the lease?”

“Me? My name’s not on the lease.”

“Drew Campbell.”

“Right. I was hoping he gave you an address I could get?”

“Is this Who’s on First or something? I’m pretty sure you know the contact information on the lease. Just like you knew the name.”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m here.”

“Well, I wouldn’t normally recite the contents of a lease to someone who walked in off the street, but, sure, I’ll play along. The address is one-seven-two Second Avenue, New York.” She rattled off a Manhattan phone number.

Alice felt a fog building around her. “No. That’s my address. My phone number.”

“Not to be rude, but, no duh. Seriously, I’ve got other work to do-”

“No, wait. Please. I don’t understand. Drew Campbell gave you my address to put on the lease?”

“Of course. You are Drew Campbell, aren’t you?”

“No. My name is Alice Humphrey. Drew Campbell is the man I was with. He signed the lease with you.”

“My notes here say his name is Steve Henning. He said he was helping his girlfriend look for a gallery space, and I suggested the Washington property. When he was finally ready to sign the lease, I told him you needed to be the one to come in. But when he got here, he said you were absolutely at death’s door with the flu and didn’t want to infect anyone. Didn’t you see me looking at you through the window?”

“Well, yeah-”

Alice heard the polite chime of the front door behind her. Stepped aside again to make room for the hundred-pound receptionist and her newly acquired cup of coffee.

“So your boyfriend assured me he was taking the lease out to the car for you to sign. He even gave me a copy of your license.”

She flipped the manila envelope around to show a photocopy of what appeared to be a New York State driver’s license. She recognized the photo. It was cropped from a larger shot taken at a friend’s wedding the previous year. Ben had been cut out, and it had been Photoshopped against a standard background in DMV gray. Her face, her address. Drew Campbell’s name.

She replayed her previous visit to this location in her mind. Drew had taken the paperwork, removed a pen from his pocket, and then gestured toward the car. The agent had looked right at her. The reason he’d offered for signing outside had played right into Alice’s stereotypes of a woman who looked like this one: Creepy in there. I felt like a field mouse dropped into the middle of an anaconda tank.

“This license is a fake. I am not Drew Campbell. Drew Campbell is the man who came here to the rent the gallery.”

The coffee-sipping receptionist’s eyes grew wide at the sharpness of Alice’s response before holding up a hesitant hand like an intruding schoolgirl.

“I’m not sure if this matters, but I copied that entire file yesterday for the New York City police department.”

“W hat do you mean, she had a cell phone?”

Morhart had known the conversation would be a difficult one, but Joann Stevenson was having a harder time with the news than even he had anticipated. She was only a year older than he was, but, man, what a different kind of life she’d led. He’d never been married. Never even lived with a woman, not formally. And here was this person-pretty much the same age as him, who’d made her daughter the center of her world for as long as she could remember-learning that her baby girl had already reached the age of keeping secrets from her.

“Sophie says Becca got the phone two months ago.”

“Why didn’t she tell me?”

“Sophie assumed you knew.”

“No, I mean, Becca. Why wouldn’t she tell me?”

“Well, that’s one of the questions I’m trying to answer.”

“She’s been begging for a phone since eighth grade. Come to think of it, she hasn’t mentioned it of late. How’d she even pay for it? And don’t kids need a parent or something to sign a contract? I just don’t understand this.”