One Way or Another(51)

“D’you mean did anybody else see Angie holding her head, fall off the boat, watch her drown, try to save her and fail? Unfortunately, no, sir, no one but myself.”

Detective Moreira made no response, simply sat looking at Marco for a long moment. Finally he said, “I don’t know why I believe you, Mr. Mahoney, but I do. And why do I? Because why the f*ck would a man like you come in here with some cock-and-bull story, bringing trouble on yourself, taking on a responsibility and more angst than you’ve ever experienced, just to tell me about some young woman, unknown to you, that you saw, or believe you saw, killed. Unfortunately, this event allegedly took place in a foreign country. Out of our jurisdiction.”

“But she was an American citizen—”

“And how do you know that, sir? Since you said you had never met her?”

“I found out who she was.” Marco told him Angie’s story, about the steakhouse, the shabby apartment, about reading the missing-girl article in the newspaper when he was in France. “I knew it was her, I knew I’d seen it,” he said. “The only thing I don’t know is who did it. And that’s the truth. Sir,” he added politely.

“In fact, what you are saying to me is that you were the last person to see Angie Morse alive. That no one else was there when she drowned. You were alone, Mr. Mahoney.”

Marco stared at him. For a minute he wished he had not come here, that he had not gotten involved. But if he had not, a young woman would be dead with no person to remember her, no one to help. “What I saw was murder,” he said coldly.

“Well, as I said, for some f*ckin’ stupid reason I’m inclined to believe you. We’ll take care of it from now on, Mr. Mahoney. You can leave the matter with us.”

Marco agreed, but as he made his way back on the orange bike, he knew he could not just let it go. He had to find her. He had to help her. Even if she was dead, he had to help her.





35





ANGIE


Time has no meaning. I am here, in this pleasant room with its two tall windows framed in bluish-gray shutters overlooking a treeless park, so green it reminds me of the watercress we used to grow on bits of flannel at school for our biology class. School. My laugh sounds harsh, too loud in the surrounding silence. School was another lifetime, a different world away from where I have ended up, because I have no doubt this is where I am to end up. Why this has not yet happened is what puzzles me. Why was I hauled out of the marsh that would so easily, so quickly, so silently have taken care of me without so much as a bubble left to indicate where I met my fate?

Why have I not yet met my fate? I can only think they have something even worse in mind for me. Some kind of torture perhaps, medieval-style racks and chains and sadistic practices that I know certainly Mehitabel would be capable of. Mehitabel must be an arch practitioner of S&M, it sparks in those evil eyes, in her steely body, in her, I am sure, unfeeling heart. I doubt she even has a heart. Which doesn’t help me much now.

Mom, I thought, breaking down and crying again, though how I had tears left I did not know. “I tried, Mom,” I whispered into the silence. “I really tried to get away, tried not to let you down. Courage, you always told me, you said that even when you were in pain, when you knew you were leaving me. And I tried to keep you, oh how I tried, I would have worked forever, anything, anywhere just to keep you alive, with me. You were the only person to ever love me, and that’s the truth, Mom. All those guys, well maybe not so many as you might think, but anyhow the men in my life amounted to nothing, no one that I cared deeply for after Henry, the Southern college boy. I wonder what happened to him. Met some debutante with a Southern accent and married money, I’ll bet. Odd, how you find out the truth about men too late. Maybe I’m just bitter, maybe I haven’t yet met the right man, and now for sure I never will. I’ll come and join you, Mom. We will see each other again, I feel sure of it, after all.”

Footsteps clattered in the hall outside. I swung from the window, hand clutched over my heart, holding the edges of my dress over my breasts; I knew those footsteps.

The door opened. Mehitabel stood there, looking at me, taking in the dress and my nakedness underneath. A long time seemed to pass. Eons of time, a lifetime, before she spoke.

“Mr. Ghulbian will see you again,” she said, coming closer, walking around me, inspecting me. “Think yourself lucky, my dear Angie. He’s giving you a second chance.”

She put her face close to mine, smiled that smile that curled only the outer corners of her red mouth, and added, “Something I would never give you. Remember that, why don’t you.”

*

Ahmet was sitting in his favorite red leather chair, fire blazing, the familiar scent of the logs mingling with the floral aroma from the bowls of hyacinths he had ordered delivered from London; they were out of season, of course, because Ahmet had to be different in everything he did. No white supermarket orchids, no too-tightly-budded red roses buried in swathes of fluffy phlox for him. The unusual, the rare, were what he preferred; the out-of-season bouquets of perfect white blossoms he sent his prey, his “girls” as he liked to think of them, wooing them with the eternal message that flowers meant love. As if he ever would, or perhaps could, love anyone other than himself. A narcissist he was and always would be, he admitted, as the door opened and he saw Angie standing there, pale, haggard, sunken-eyed, and most shocking, her shaved head.