The Pretty Ones Page 12

She looked to the dispersing huddle of girls. Harriet Lamont was waving them off, looking beyond frazzled. “They’re on their way,” she told them over and over again. “They’ll be here any minute. Just sit tight. We’re safe if we stick together. Everyone just sit down!” Nobody was listening. Hysteria kept them from hearing anything beyond their own terrified chattering. Their lives were in danger. The Son of Sam had stepped out of the morning headlines and materialized in the middle of their place of work.

  They buzzed around the call-center floor while Nell sat frozen at her desk. What, exactly, had happened last night, and to whom? Whose blood was all over the clothes she had shoved into a trash bag and dropped into the Dumpster below Barrett’s window? What if the police showed up and dug through the trash? What if one of the homeless bums had discovered them and reported their find? What if the cops were already at the apartment? What if Barrett had run . . . had run and they had drawn their guns, drawn and shot, shot and hit him, hit him and killed . . . killed . . .

  She pressed her hand tight over her mouth, holding back a cry, but it tore free from her throat when a hand grazed her shoulder. Nell jumped, exhaled a strained yelp. Savannah stood over her, wiping her nose on a tissue.

  “Oh God, Nell . . .” Her voice was strained with emotion. “What are we going to do?” Nell mutely shook her head. She had no idea what they were going to do; all she knew was that she had to get home. Savannah tipped her eyes up to the ceiling. She was trying not to cry, though it was clear from the puffiness of her face that she’d done plenty of crying already. “I just can’t believe it. Adriana . . .”

  Adriana.

  That little slut had come into the Cabana Club just before Nell had meant to leave.

  “And Mary Ann.”

  Nell’s lungs deflated, emptying like a punctured balloon.

  And Mary Ann? Both of them in one night?

  “Oh no . . .” Nell whispered.

  “And so far apart from each other. They must have been followed, don’t you think?”

  Nell said nothing. Numb. Hardly hearing a word.

  “They said they were going to the Cabana Club last night.” Savannah sniffled, trying to hold it together. “They invited me, but I had to . . . I . . .” Overwhelmed, she pressed the tissue over her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut. Tears streaked down her cheeks. “Oh my God, what’s happening to this city? How can anyone keep living here after this?”

  How could Nell and Barrett stay in their same apartment? How could Barrett avoid capture after what he’d done? They would find him. The police would question Nell, and they’d see it written all over her face. Maybe they’d see it all over her. She had left the apartment in a dazed rush. She hadn’t bothered checking for stains on the clothes she’d ripped from their hangers. What if Barrett hadn’t only soiled the clothes she’d found on the floor but wiped his hands on all her things and she hadn’t noticed?

  Nell shot up from her seat. She needed to get out of here, go back home. But just as Nell was about to excuse herself so she could check her clothes in the bathroom, Miriam stalled her exit when she appeared next to Savannah. “It’s not the city, Vanna, it’s this goddamn office. Someone is picking us off.” She shot Nell a look, and while she couldn’t have known who had committed last night’s crimes, Nell felt accused. Because why was Miriam looking so aggravated? Did Miriam know that Nell had been at the Cabana Club too? What if Mary Ann had spotted her and called Miriam from the pay phone outside?

  Guess who’s here. Sweaty old Nell is cozying up to your bartender. Uh-huh. He’s about to set sail on the U.S.S. Sullivan.

  “Whether you stay or go is up to you,” Miriam told Savannah. “But I’m cutting out of here, packing a bag, and driving up to my folks’ place in Montauk until they catch this goddamn loon.”

  Savannah dabbed at her eyes with a nod.

  “Come with me,” Miriam insisted. “We’ll take the train to your place first, then go to mine and take my pop’s car. There’s no splitting up. You’d have to be crazy . . .”

  “But the police . . .” Savannah blubbered.

  “We’ll stay for the police,” Miriam said. “Lamont’s bound to have a fucking heart attack if we don’t. But then we’re out of here.”

  “We’ll get fired,” Savannah concluded.

  “Jesus, good !” Miriam scoffed.

  Nell’s focus drifted from Savannah to Miriam and back again, waiting for an invitation to join them. She was their friend now, after all. They had invited her to lunch, to happy hour. Miriam had complimented her on her hair ribbon, and Savannah had come up to Nell’s desk just now, searching for solace. Certainly they’d be concerned for her safety too. It was just as dangerous for Nell as it was for anyone else.

  But Nell couldn’t go to Montauk. She had to make sure Barrett was okay, that the police hadn’t found him. He needed to know that she wasn’t mad at him. She wouldn’t leave him. No. Despite what he’d done, she never would. Maybe she could talk him into an impromptu vacation. Just a few days down the coast, until the cops tossed these murders into the pile with all the others. Most crimes that happened in the city never got solved, right? With four to five murders per day, it was easy for the police to throw their hands up in surrender, and for the most part, it seemed like that’s just what they did. A few days away would do the trick, it had to, but she had to get to Barrett first.

  “I have to do something before I leave town,” Nell told them, an excuse at the ready. “But I can—”

  “Come on, Vanna,” Miriam cut her off, pulling Savannah away from Nell’s desk by her elbow. “We’ll see you later.”

  “If I don’t see you before you leave, be safe, Nell,” Savannah pleaded, her voice still warbling with unshed tears.

  Nell opened her mouth to say something, but she was struck dumb as they both turned away. Miriam’s arm was around Savannah’s shoulders. Savannah slunk along like a petulant child. Be safe. Was that all Nell was worth, some halfhearted warning? Some fleeting hope that she wouldn’t be the next one to get chopped up in a Brooklyn alley?

  She swallowed the saliva that had gone bitter in her mouth.

  And someone had had the audacity to call her a liar?

  The memory of that statement, typed up on her transcription, gave her an emotional zing somewhere between sadness and rage. Savannah and Miriam were supposed to be different. She had convinced herself that they actually cared. But no. They were fake, just like the rest of them.

  Like Adriana.

  Like Mary Ann.

  Frauds, just like Linnie Carter.

  Nell looked down at her hands, which were balled into tight fists. She stared at the keys of the typewriter, her eyes fixed upon the H—H for hurt. For hate. For hopelessness. H for Harriet Lamont, the woman who had claimed to be like her. Who had told her to change what she didn’t like. Who had told her to step out of her comfort zone and make some friends; if Nell just did that, things would be better. Well, Nell had taken that advice, she’d tried to make friends, and now everything was ruined, all because Harriet Lamont thought she and Nell were somehow alike.

  Cunt.

  That rageful voice slithered through her mind.

  Stupid know-it-all bitch.

  Why was Nell blaming herself for everything that had happened? She was a gutless nobody, a little brown mouse who would never have done the things she had done if it hadn’t been for her boss putting crazy, impossible ideas in her head.

  This was all Harriet Lamont’s doing.

  She was the one to blame, telling Nell that she had to change her life for the better.

  Nell couldn’t sit still a minute longer. She let her fingers unfurl just shy of her typewriter before rising from her chair. She pivoted on the soles of her new sandals—shoes that she had considered cute less than a day before but that now made her feel stupid and out of place. With her head pounding to the rhyth
m of her heart, she caught sight of Lamont out of the corner of her eye. The boss looked about ready to tear out her hair as the phones rang off the hook, not a single call being answered. She waved her hands at the occasional girl. Sit down, sit down, be calm. Nobody wanted to be calm. The whirlwind of panic made it the perfect time to duck into the elevator and get back to the apartment. That steel box would sweep her down to street level without a single person noticing. It would unleash her on the world, let her get back to what was important: her brother.

  She gathered herself up, pulled her sweater tight across her chest, and walked to the elevator. Jabbing her finger against the down button, she closed her eyes, steadied her breathing. But rather than being washed over with calm, the memory of Lamont dragging her into her office blazed bright against her eyelids. She would tell the police about Linnie Carter, about Nell’s lie. Like a wolf hunting the weakest sheep, Harriet Lamont had singled her out before, and she’d do it again.

  Lamont was the worst one of all.

  Nell shot a look over her shoulder, her fingernails biting into the meat of her palms. There wasn’t a single girl within a hundred feet of her. Lamont’s door was less than a few steps away. She bit her bottom lip, cast another look about, and ducked into the office with Lamont’s name stenciled in gold upon the door. She had to make things right with Barrett, and she knew exactly how to do it.

  Less than a minute later, Nell snuck out of the boss’s office in time to see a pair of detectives step out of the elevator.

  “Nell?” Harriet Lamont gave Nell a curious glance as she rushed to meet the police. Why was Nell standing outside of her office door?

  Nell swallowed hard and nodded. “Ms. Lamont, I have some information about Adriana and Mary Ann . . . ,” she said. Nell would be the first to grant those detectives an interview, the first to give them a lead. The girls had invited her to the Cabana Club, after all, an invitation Nell had passed on because she had some shopping to do. They had warned her about that creepy guy Dave, the one who frequented the bar. Dave was the guy the police needed to focus on. Maybe he was the guy who had killed Linnie Carter too.

  . . .

  Nell sat on the edge of Barrett’s wingback chair, waiting for him to return home. Her attention was fixed on her favorite childhood photo of the both of them. It had been taken in the summer of ’58, only a few weeks before Barrett stopped talking. And while Nell adored the photo of them standing together with their arms draped across each other’s shoulders, Beary clutched to her chest, it never failed to bring up bitter memories of their father’s funeral. Of the way their grandmother had whispered that she was going to take her away.

  Their mother hadn’t seemed the least bit sad about their father’s death until they arrived at the cemetery. She had hissed at them in the car, craning her neck to glare at them from the front seat. “You keep your big mouths shut,” she had warned. “And don’t talk to any of those people. You hear me?” She spit the word people out like it was tainted with something foul. As though their father’s family wasn’t good enough for her. As though they had never been good enough and she was relieved that she’d never have to see their faces again. “They never liked us, and they aren’t going to start doing that now that your father is gone.”

  Stone-faced, Faye Sullivan stepped out of Leigh’s old car. She pulled the door open for Nell and Barrett and turned toward a small black-clad group that was already gathered on the cemetery’s grass. It was only upon seeing Leigh’s family standing together that Faye’s emotions came flooding out. Nell and Barrett had been crying together in their room for what felt like weeks, while their mother hadn’t shed a tear—not a single one until right then.

  Clasping hands, Nell and Barrett decided that adults handled sadness in strange and confusing ways. Perhaps when they grew older, their sadness would come in fitful, manic bursts as well.

  Now, thumbing the soft edge of the photo in her hand, Nell realized that, as a grown-up, emotions hit her in a similar way to how they had come over their mother. Faye Sullivan had always been erratic. She was happy one minute, screaming the next, collapsed in a fit of anguished tears moments after that. Nell remembered nights when their mom would weep while their dad held her tight in his arms.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Leigh!” she’d cried. “It’s like I’m two people. It’s like I have no control over the things I do!”

  That had been back when Faye was still herself. But the longer her emotional highs and lows continued, the less she thought there was something wrong with her and the more she was sure the problem lay with everyone else. That’s when she started smelling like booze and sleeping until three in the afternoon. Those were the days when Nell and Barrett would listen to the television through paper-thin walls at all hours of the night. Their mom had no regard for the fact that it was bedtime, that they had to get up for school, that the TV was keeping them up.

  Those mornings were tough. Sometimes, when Nell dozed off in class, she’d get a ruler across the tops of her hands. Once, when she had fallen asleep, her third-grade math teacher, Mrs. Brannigan, had shoved her awake. The bitch made Nell put on a rubber pig nose and stand on top of a desk like a flamingo for the rest of the hour. Ten minutes before the bell, old No Shenanigans Brannigan had to take a call in the front office. She left the classroom after warning Nell that if she moved a muscle, she’d be in even bigger trouble than she already was. As soon as she was gone, Nell’s classmates pelted her with spitballs and oinked with glee. Hey, pig! Nell moved all her muscles. She ran out of the room sobbing, only to crash chest-first into Brannigan’s trunk-like legs. That prompted Brannigan to call Faye Sullivan, complaining about Nell’s inability to focus and follow instructions. Brannigan had even revealed her tactics for keeping Nell awake, as if satisfied that she’d humiliated Nell with her unorthodox punishment. But instead of Faye Sullivan raging at the instructor for disgracing her daughter, she had grabbed Nell by the arm and dragged her out to the car. In the parking lot, she slapped her across the face before shoving her into the backseat.

  “They all saw up your dress,” she yelled on the way home. “You stood there like a dunce while all those boys were looking at your panties. You probably liked it, didn’t you? Filthy.”

  Filthy.

  Filthy pig.

  Faye’s mood swings had been swift and terrifying. Sometimes Nell felt that she was falling into the same pattern as her mother, and that’s exactly why Barrett kept her close, why he had done all those terrible things. He was protecting her from what at times seemed like an inevitable destiny. Perhaps Nell had been born to repeat history. To become a carbon copy of the monster that had spit her out wet and naked unto the world. It was no coincidence that Faye was a single letter shy of fate.

  Nell frowned at the photo, wishing that, by some sort of magic, she and Barrett had remained in that marginally happier time. At least back then she had someone to talk to, someone who would answer back. Barrett had been funny. Every other sentence that came out of his mouth was a joke, something to amuse his kid sister. Even during the hard times, he knew how to make her smile. But Barrett had recently grown into his own kind of monster—one sculpted by anger and a need for vindication. He wanted reprisal, fantasized about squaring accounts with a woman he cared nothing for. His was a blood feud, and if he couldn’t have it with their mother, he’d settle on the blood of someone else, even if it cost Nell her sanity.

  Barrett appeared in the apartment as silently as always, having climbed up the fire escape just outside his bedroom window. Nell found herself looking into the eyes of her stern and looming brother. Her only friend and confidante. For half a second, she wanted to scream at him, wanted to demand an explanation for Adriana and Mary Ann. She had begged him not to repeat what he’d done to Linnie, had implored him to trust her, to let her make things better for the both of them. He’d purposefully ignored her wishes. She had every right to be enra
ged. And yet, rather than waiting for a scribbled apology, she murmured “I’m sorry” before he ever reached for that small yellow pad.

  She looked down at the photograph balanced on her knee. No explanation was necessary. She knew why he had done it. She knew it was partly her fault.

  “I guess I should have seen this coming,” she murmured. “I should have talked to you at the club, told you why I was there.” She peeked up at him. He appeared unmoved, his arms rigid at his sides. “I saw you. I know you followed me there. I was angry for a minute. I felt betrayed that you’d do that, that you’d tail me like some . . .” Her words trailed off. She didn’t want to finish her sentence, didn’t want to call it the way she saw it, no matter how true it was.

  “Anyway, I talked to the police . . . at the office, I mean. Because Lamont had sent for them and nobody was allowed to leave until they gave a statement. I don’t think they’ll come here, but we should leave regardless.”

  Barrett’s expression flickered between blank and dissatisfied. Nell wasn’t surprised. She had predicted his response.

  “But I know that if we leave without you finishing what you started, things will get worse rather than better,” she told him. “I know that you have to do this, that this is your way of working through the hurt. But I know how to fix it, Barrett. I know how to make it right for you.”

  Barrett stood by, waiting for Nell’s big reveal. She rose from the chair, moved across the apartment to her purse, and brought out a folded rectangle of pale yellow paper. She unfolded it and narrowed her eyes at the name in the top left-hand corner: HARRIET LAMONT. It was a blank check. They could make it out for a hundred thousand dollars if they wanted. But Nell hadn’t stolen it to hack into Lamont’s finances. It was for the few lines that followed Lamont’s name. There, printed in crisp black ink, was her boss’s home address.

  “This is what you want,” she said, extending her arm for him to take the check from her fingers. “She’s the source of all of this, the seed of everything you hate.”