Alafair Burke
Long Gone

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in the U.S.A by HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY, 2011

Winning first published 2011 in the UK by Avon

Published by HarperCollins Publishers 2011

LONG GONE. Copyright © Alafair Burke 2011. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Alafair Burke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Source ISBN: 9781847561121

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2011 ISBN: 9781847562623

Version: 2018-07-25

In memory of David Thompson

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue: The Kiss

Part I: Too Good to be True

Chapter One

Most of the best things in life came to Alice…

Chapter Two

Becca Stevenson had a secret.

Chapter Three

Four days after Alice first met Drew Campbell at the…

Chapter Four

Hank Beckman watched the digital numbers change on the pump,…

Chapter Five

There was a time when the name of Manhattan’s Meatpacking…

Chapter Six

Drew accelerated through the loop into the Holland Tunnel. She…

Chapter Seven

Joann Stevenson felt a tongue between her toes and jerked…

Chapter Eight

“Please tell me this is one of your practical jokes.”

Chapter Nine

Thanks to the radio station’s Two-for-Tuesday playlist, Hank lost track…

Chapter Ten

Alice remembered a time when the sultry baritone of her…

Chapter Eleven

Joann could not help but feel she was somehow being…

Chapter Twelve

Alice blew hot breaths into her cupped fists, trying to…

Chapter Thirteen

Alice had been hunched over her laptop so long that…

Chapter Fourteen

Hank Beckman made it to Jersey before the crack of…

Chapter Fifteen

Her apartment had to be cold—it always was in the…

Chapter Sixteen

“God damn it.”

Chapter Seventeen

How did this happen?

Chapter Eighteen

Hank threw an offhand wave toward Charlie Dixon as he…

Chapter Nineteen

Even with his eyes closed, Morhart would have known his…

Chapter Twenty

Alice was bundled in Jeff’s white terry bathrobe, her hair…

Chapter Twenty-One

Morhart was at Linwood High School for the second day…

Chapter Twenty-Two

Alice was in her bed, thinking about friendship.

Part II: Nothing to Hide

Chapter Twenty-Three

You’ve heard what they say about pictures and a thousand…

Chapter Twenty-Four

“Lady, first you want me to go to Jersey. Now…

Chapter Twenty-Five

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

Chapter Twenty-Six

Hank Beckman was only forty-eight years old, but there were…

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The city of New York claims more than eight million…

Chapter Twenty-Eight

It had been four weeks since Alice’s last visit to…

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Only forty miles of road separated Dover, New Jersey, from…

Chapter Thirty

“Fuck, I feel guilty. I sat here and bitched for…

Chapter Thirty-One

Hank Beckman felt like a dying man who had planned…

Chapter Thirty-Two

There was a time when the Upper East Side was…

Chapter Thirty-Three

It had been five days since Becca Stevenson had disappeared,…

Chapter Thirty-Four

“Now we’re at the height of our practice. Trikonasana, triangle…

Chapter Thirty-Five

Alice tried to make herself small inside the tiny alcove…

Chapter Thirty-Six

Hank Beckman popped his third Advil in as many hours.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

It was Alice’s second trip to the Upper East Side,…

Chapter Thirty-Eight

“This might have been a bad idea.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

“Good to see you again, Morhart.”

Chapter Forty

Even in better days, Alice felt an intense irritation navigating…

Chapter Forty-One

“Holy shit, you actually picked up your phone.”

Chapter Forty-Two

Alice rose from damp moss beneath a towering mulberry tree,…

Chapter Forty-Three

The next time she opened her eyes, she felt groggy.

Part III: Memories

Chapter Forty-Four

Joann Stevenson hit the play button once again on her…

Chapter Forty-Five

Alice maintained a brisk but unexceptional pace down Second Avenue…

Chapter Forty-Six

As Alice watched clumps of hair fall from the scissor…

Chapter Forty-Seven

Alice caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the…

Chapter Forty-Eight

Just as Beckman had predicted, they pulled off 684 at…

Chapter Forty-Nine

“Don’t you need a search warrant or something?”

Chapter Fifty

Joann Stevenson felt like the wind had been knocked out…

Chapter Fifty-One

The home in which Christie Kinley had supposedly passed away…

Chapter Fifty-Two

They were back at their motel outside White Plains, strategizing…

Chapter Fifty-Three

It was nearly four o’clock, and Jason was still pissed…

Part IV: Mia

Chapter Fifty-Four

Alice’s disposable phone rang at 5:58 p.m. She recognized her…

Chapter Fifty-Five

Alice tapped her nails against Hank Beckman’s steering wheel, trying…

Chapter Fifty-Six

For two hours, she and Arthur had waited in Arthur’s…

Chapter Fifty-Seven

“I’d have to say this has been a much more…

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Jason Morhart managed to cram his truck into the hybrid-sized…

Chapter Fifty-Nine

“This is certainly a lovely treat.” Arthur Cronin was inspecting…

Epilogue

Alice was panting by the time she reached her turnoff…

Acknowledgments

A Special Note of Thanks

Winning: Alafair Burke

About the Author

Other Books by Alafair Burke

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE: THE KISS

Alice Humphrey knew the kiss would ruin everything.

“You’ve heard what they say about pictures and a thousand words.”

She looked up at the man—Shannon was his last name, the first hadn’t registered. He was the one with the faded, reddish blond hair. Ruddy skin. Puffy, like a drinker.

She didn’t like sitting beneath his eye level like this. In this tiny chair at her kitchen table, she felt small. Trapped. She mentally retraced her steps into the apartment, wondering if the seating arrangement had been planned for catastrophic effect.

Shannon and his partner—was it Danes?—had been waiting on the sidewalk outside her building. The two of them hunched in their coats and scarves, coffee cups in full-palmed grips to warm their hands, everything about their postures hinting at an invitation out of the cold. She, by contrast, hot and damp inside the fleece she had pulled on after spin class. She’d crossed her arms in front of her, trying to seal the warmth in her core as they spoke on the street, the perspiration beginning to feel clammy on her exposed face.

Shannon’s eyes darted between the keys in her hands and the apartment door before he finally voiced the suggestion: “Can we maybe talk inside?”

Friendly. Polite. Deferential. The way it had been with them yesterday morning. Only a day ago. About thirty-one hours, to be precise. They’d said at the time they might need to contact her again. But now today they suddenly appeared, waiting for her on the sidewalk without notice.

“Sure. Come on up.”

They’d followed her into the apartment. She’d poured herself a glass of water. They declined, but helped themselves to seats, selecting the two kitchen bar stools. She opted for the inside chair of the two-seat breakfast table, leaving herself cornered, she now realized, both literally and figuratively. But hers was the obvious choice, the only place to sit in the small apartment and still face her unannounced guests.

She’d unzipped her fleece, and found herself wishing she’d showered before leaving the gym.

They’d eased into the conversation smoothly enough. Initial banter up the stairs about how they should both get more exercise. Just a few follow-up issues, Shannon had explained.

But there was something about the tone. No longer so friendly, polite, or deferential. The surprise visit. Her heart still pounding in her chest, sweat still seeping from her scalp, even though she had finished her workout nearly half an hour ago. Maybe it was a subconscious shaped by television crime shows, but somehow she knew why they were here—not the reasons behind the why, but the superficial why. Even before the kiss, she knew they were here about her.

And then came their questions. Her finances. Her family. The endless “tell us agains”: Tell us again how you met Drew Campbell. Tell us again about this artist. Tell us again about the trip to Hoboken. Like they didn’t believe her the first time.

But it wasn’t until she saw the kiss that she realized her life was about to be destroyed.

Shannon had dropped the photograph on the table so casually. It was almost graceful, the way he’d extended his stubby fingers to slide the eight-by-ten glossy toward her across the unfinished pine.

She looked down at the woman in the photograph and recognized herself, eyelids lowered, lips puckered but slightly upturned, brushing tenderly against the corner of the man’s mouth. She appeared to be happy. At peace. But despite her blissful expression in the picture, the image shot a bolt of panic from her visual cortex into the bottom of her stomach. She inhaled to suppress a rising wave of nausea.

“You’ve heard what they say about pictures and a thousand words.”

She’d pulled her gaze from the picture just long enough to look up at Detective Shannon. His clichéd words echoed in her ears, her pulse playing background percussion, as her eyes returned to her own image. There was no question that the man in the photograph was Drew Campbell. And even though the cognitive part of her brain was screaming at her not to believe it, she had to admit that the lips accepting his kiss were her own.

She ran her fingertips across the print, as if the woman in the picture might suddenly turn her head so Alice could say, “Sorry, I thought you were someone else.” She felt the detectives looking down at her, waiting for a response, but she couldn’t find words. All she could do was shake her head and stare at the photograph.

Alice Humphrey knew the kiss would destroy her life because thirty-one hours earlier she had stepped in Drew Campbell’s blood on a white-tiled gallery floor. She’d fumbled for a pulse, only to feel doughy, cool skin beneath her trembling fingers. And until she’d seen this picture, she would have sworn on her very life that, other than a handshake, her palm pressed against his still carotid artery was the only physical contact she’d ever shared with the man.

She’d had a crappy year, but had never paused to appreciate the basic comforts of her life—its ordinariness, the predictability, a fundamental security of existence. All of that was in the past now.

Alice had no idea what would happen next, but she knew the photograph would shatter everything. And she knew this was only the beginning.

PART I

CHAPTER ONE

FOUR WEEKS EARLIER

Most of the best things in life came to Alice organically. Not because she asked. Not because she looked. Not because she forced. They happened because she stumbled onto them. The high-flying philosophical question of whether the pieces of her life fell into place through luck, randomness, fate, or unconscious intuition was way above her pay grade, but somehow things usually worked out for her.

She ended up an art major because a course she took on the art of Italian Renaissance courts turned out not to count toward her declared history concentration. She wound up back in Manhattan after college because she followed a boyfriend home. She’d found her current apartment when she overheard a man sitting next to her at a bar tell his friend that he’d been transferred to the Los Angeles office and would have to break his lease. The opportunity Drew Campbell handed to Alice came not only when she’d needed it most, but also in a way that felt exactly as it should—natural, discovered, meant to be.

The gallery was in the Fuller Building, one of her favorites. She paused on her way in to admire the art deco features dotted generously inside and out. The opening reception was the artist’s first public appearance in a decade, so she expected the exhibition to be packed. Instead she found plenty of room to pace the spacious gallery, wineglass in hand, as she leisurely studied the overlapping abstract shapes, layered so meticulously on the canvases that it seemed they might leap weightlessly from the wall and float away into the sky.

She noticed him before he ever approached her, flipping through the price list as he admired one of the larger works, a carnival scene in oil. Beneath a few days of fashionable stubble, his face was very severe in a way that was both handsome and out of place in a froufrou gallery, but his clothing signaled he was in the right spot. She watched him speak to the emaciated, black-bunned woman she recognized as the gallery’s owner. She wondered what he’d be paying for the canvas.

Alice was pleased when she felt him looking at her. Optimistic enough to meet him halfway across the gallery, she paused in front of an abstract of layered triangles and then smiled to herself as he made his way over.

“It’s a shame there aren’t more people here,” he said. “Drew Campbell.”

She returned the handshake and introduction.

“So, Alice, what are your theories about this dismal turnout?”

“It’s crazy, right? You know some gallery down in Chelsea is packed tonight for a gum-chewing punk just out of art school who doodles celebrities. Meanwhile, this man could have been Jackson Pollock, and it’s like Mormon night at the vodka bar in here.”

The artist, Phillip Lipton, was at one time a recognized figure in the New York school of abstract expressionism, a contemporary of Pollock, de Kooning, Rauschenberg, and Kline. Apparently none of this was lost on her new acquaintance.

“I know an art dealer who used to represent him. You would not believe the player the old man used to be. You’ve heard of picky guys who only date skinny girls or blondes? Well, he supposedly only dated ballerinas, and yet—despite that very narrow limitation—always managed to have a new nimble babe at his side each week. There was a joke that he must have been fattening them all up with steak and ice cream so the New York City ballet company would have to replace them one by one. He’d hold court in the Village at One if by Land.”

She could picture the younger version of the artist at that restaurant, smoking cigarettes, wearing that fedora he always seemed to sport in the few photographs available of him in that era. Now Lipton was a ninety-one-year-old man whose sixty-year-old wife was brushing away crumbs from his jacket lapel at an underattended exhibition with, so far, only two “sold” tags posted, including the one the gallery owner had just slipped next to the carnival painting Drew had been admiring.

“So you’re interested in art?” Drew said.

“Until recently, it was my profession.” She told him about her former job at the Met, truncating the long personal story behind her dismissal. It was easier to chalk her current unemployment up to the museum budget cuts and layoffs that had made newspaper headlines.

The conversation between them came easily. He had a good, natural smile. Earnest eye contact. The appearance of a genuine interest in what she had to say. It was strange: there was nothing sexual about it, and yet she felt herself getting pulled in, not by the man’s looks or charm but by the refreshing feeling of being treated as if she mattered. Not merely as her father’s daughter. And not like an out-of-work single woman whose petals had already begun to wilt.

As she felt herself brightening in a way she could barely remember, it suddenly dawned on her how eight months of unemployment had taken their toll. Without even recognizing the transformation, she had started to see herself as a loser.

Alice never meant to be a thirty-seven-year-old woman without a career, but she knew that plenty of less fortunate people would question the choices she’d made along the way. Even in the beginning, she hadn’t gone to one of the intellectually rigorous prep schools that happily would have had her, opting instead to be with her more socially inclined friends. But, unlike most of them, she worked hard. She went to college—and not just a party school with a fancy reputation, but an actual school known for its academics.

Granted, it was a funky liberal arts college and not an Ivy League, and then followed by the few requisite years of postcollege floundering that were typical for her crowd. The two-year stint as a publicist for a cosmetics company. That disastrous three-year marriage in St. Louis before she’d realized her mistake. But she’d started over, returning to school for her master’s in fine arts. And when she was finished, she’d gone to work in the development office of what she believed to be the most impressive building in the world—the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Now, in hindsight, she realized how silly and indulgent all of those choices had been. Her parents spent a fortune on high school tuition just so she’d land at an even more expensive college that no one aside from a few tweed-jacketed PhDs had heard of. Then she double-downed with that graduate degree.

When she’d landed the job at the Met, she’d been stupid enough to believe she’d earned it. Maybe if she had been hired for merit—her knowledge of art, her ability to raise money, her marketing experience, a demonstrated skill at something—she’d still be there in her cubicle above Central Park, quietly drafting the pamphlet to announce the upcoming Chuck Close exhibit to the museum’s most generous donors.

Or if she had at least recognized the truth, maybe she would have predicted that a decision in her personal life would affect her employment. She would have realized how ridiculous she must have looked when she’d announced to her father that she no longer wanted his help. No more rent payments or annual “gifts.” Her absolute insistence: No more help, Papa.

Well, unbeknownst to her, some of his help had being going to the museum, and when the donations dried up and the Met had to make layoffs, she was among the first on the chopping block.

It wasn’t until she updated her résumé that she realized that her adult life didn’t exactly add up to the perfect formula for employment in the current economy. In the eight months that had passed since her layoff, she had been offered precisely one job: personal assistant to a best-selling crime novelist. A friend who knew of Alice’s plight was among a fleet of the man’s rotating companions and suggested her for the job. She warned Alice that the man could be frugal, so when he wanted Alice to return his half-eaten carton of yogurt to the deli because he didn’t like the “seediness” of the raspberry flavor, Alice had sprung for the new $1.49 carton of smooth blueberry. The friend had also warned Alice of his “nonconformist” ways, so Alice compliantly agreed when he’d asked her to restrain him atop his dining room table so he could figure out how his character might escape his predicament. But she had finally pulled the plug when the boss’s two questionable characteristics merged together in a single request: that she personally participate in a three-way with him and a hired escort so he could collect “quotidian details” of the experience without paying double.

Alice promptly resigned, but still kicked herself at the manner in which she’d done it—blaming it on his erratic hours instead of raising her knee directly into the glorified subject of most of his research. Maybe it was because she’d been thinking about that short-lived job—and the belittlement it still invoked—that she wanted to believe the part of the conversation with Drew Campbell that came next.

“Would you be interested in managing a gallery of your own?”

Normally, she would have choked on her wine at the absurdity of the question, but Drew floated it past her in a way that felt as natural as an observation about the weather.

“Of course. I always assumed I’d work in the art world in some way or another. I think I just underestimated how hard it was to get and keep this kind of work.”

The art world, as even tonight’s featured artist exemplified, was a young person’s domain. And Alice was a woman. And she wasn’t even an artist. And at thirty-seven, she was already past her prime.

“I’ll have to check on a few things, but you might be the perfect person for a new gallery I’m helping with.”

“What kind of position?”

“Manager. It’s a small place, but we need someone who will really pour themselves into it.”

She was unemployed. Her last job was fetching coffee for a sociopath who should probably be on a sex offender registration. It was hard to believe anyone legitimate would hand her the keys to a gallery. Her skepticism must have shown in her face.

“Now don’t go picturing a gallery like this. And I should probably warn you, it’s a bit of a risk as far as employment goes. I’ve got a client—a guy I’ve bought art for—he’s what his friends call eccentric. If he didn’t have money, they’d call him a nutcase.”

“Eccentric? I’ve fallen for that line before.”

“Trust me. It’s nothing weird. This is one of my oldest clients. He was a friend of my father’s, actually, so he’s been letting me help him out for years. With time, he’s come to really trust me. Turns out he’s a quiet old guy who likes the company of younger men. He treats them well, and they provide companionship, if you know what I mean.”

“Not exactly subtle.”

“Anyway, his most recent friend has been in the picture longer than most, and I guess my client is ready to provide a more substantial level of support. He wants a modest little gallery to showcase emerging artists. Of course one of the artists will have to be his friend. This kid’s gotten his work in a few group showings, but he still hasn’t landed a solo exhibit at a New York gallery.”

“But thanks to your client, he’ll soon be a featured artist.”

“Exactly. And I’m sure he’ll be very grateful to my client for the support.”

“You keep referring to him as ‘your client.’”

“Trust me. You’ve heard of him. And while there have been rumors about his personal life for decades, it’s all unconfirmed, so I’m not about to out him. But, I kid you not, he is a serious collector. That piece I just held is for him. If I can find the right space and the right person to run a gallery, he won’t get in the way. He won’t even take credit for owning it. But he’ll want it to be a place he’d be proud of. Cutting edge. A little antiestablishment, but really good stuff. This would be a good opportunity for someone in your shoes.”

“Sounds like a good opportunity for anyone.”

He shrugged. “I’ve quietly spoken to a few people, and they wouldn’t pull the trigger. They’re worried the owner will move on to some other passion project—a gallery today, a gourmet hamburger stand tomorrow. Then there’s my client’s consort to worry about. He can’t be thrown to the wayside like any other artist.”

“Not everyone would be so forthcoming about the backstory.”

“I’m not willing to burn bridges to satisfy the whims of a fickle old man, even if I do love him like my own closeted gay uncle. Some of the more established people I’ve approached just aren’t willing to take the leap under the circumstances. You might not have the luxury of their worries.”

“If that’s a nice way of saying beggars can’t be choosers, consider yourself begged.”

Like a teenage girl going home after her first concert, Alice left the gallery with a signed brochure from the exhibit and a feeling that the person she had met there just might change her life.

CHAPTER TWO

Becca Stevenson had a secret.

Two secrets, really, tied together by the shiny gadget held between her fingertips.

C’mon. Just a little peek. I won’t tell anyone.

She’d read those words over and over again. Only a minute or two had passed since they’d first appeared on the screen, but the stillness felt like an eternity. Not that there was actual stillness. She heard the New Jersey Transit guy announce, once again, the delay of the train arriving from Hackettstown. Heard the toddler on the next bench pester his mother for more Goldfish crackers. Heard the woman across from her “whispering” into her cell phone, insisting that the person on the other end of the line explain why he hadn’t picked up last night, even though she hit redial until two in the morning.

But despite the noise of the train station, Becca felt stillness. In her head. In her hands. In her heart. She and Dan had been texting for nearly two weeks now, and they had developed a quick rhythm, responding to one another within a few seconds. Or, at least, she responded within a few seconds. So did he, usually. But like any conversation, even the best ones, their back-and-forths had to stop sometime. There had been occasions when she was tempted to be the one who cut off the banter—maybe politely, with a “gotta go” or “bye for now”—but it was always Dan who called it quits, suddenly falling quiet without warning. But he always came back, to her initial surprise and now delight.

She hadn’t deleted a single entry. Their list of messages, cataloged in neat little green and white boxes of text, numbered well into the hundreds. Sometimes at night in her bed, she would scroll up to the very beginning and relive the entirety of their printed relationship on the backlit screen.

There had been so many sweet and funny and clever moments in their clipped exchanges, but probably no single message was as exciting as that first pop-up on her screen. The first text message she had ever received, just two days after pocketing her secret toy.

Sophie gave me your number. Do you mind? You seem fun. P.S. This is Dan Hunter.

Dan Hunter? Dan Fucking Hunter was texting Becca Stevenson? She’d been watching him silently since the seventh grade, when he was the first kid to download My Chemical Romance on his iPod. He’d been cute and funny even then. Now he was a jock who had dated three different cheerleaders, but she always sensed that he had another side to him. He listened to eighties punk music. Wore a lot of black, at least for a basketball player. And he was one of the first guys in school to get a tattoo. The fact that he was interested in her just proved he hid a little “alt” in him.

When he first contacted her, she didn’t know what to think or feel, let alone say. She’d finally opted for casual and a little cool.

No problem. Sophie’s my girl.

Of course, despite the chill attitude of her texts, she’d immediately chased down Sophie for the details.

“Holy shit, Becca. I looked up from my locker, and Dan Hunter and all his sweeping hair and blue eyes and big muscles are staring back at me, fucking confusing me, you know?”

Sophie was such a nerd with her baby-length bangs, black-framed glasses, and ridiculous SAT words, but deep down, she was pretty much the best friend Becca had ever had.

“And, what? He just asked for my number?”

“He said he saw you sneaking glances at your phone all the way through history class. I can’t believe you haven’t gotten busted for that yet. You know the school’s zero-tolerance policy.”

“Can you please skip the lecture? I seriously need every detail.”

“There’s no detail to give. He said he saw you fiddling in class and wanted to text you. He said you were cute.”

“He said I was cute?”

“Oh, Jesus. Who swapped my friend with Hannah Montana?”

It hadn’t been easy, but Becca had finally gotten Sophie to admit that Dan did have a special spark. And his texts were so … not what she’d expected. Cool. Almost kind of deep.

And it hadn’t just been the messages. They’d been meeting. First behind the mall. Once at his house when his parents were out of town. There’d been a few times at the baseball field, kissing and whatever. But then three nights ago, it had been an invitation to meet him in the city. And his friends had been there. Friends from the team. Even a couple of cheerleaders. Becca had been nervous at first. She couldn’t possibly fit in. But they’d been pretty cool with her. Dan was already talking about going to the city with her again.

And now Dan was asking her for more: C’mon. Just a little peek. I won’t tell anyone. She found herself tempted. Liked the idea of being the kind of girl who could titillate a guy like Dan Hunter. Just a little peek.

She could slip into the ladies’ room. Make sure to reveal the background. Make it a little raunchy.

A new message popped up on the screen. You know you want to.

He was right. She did.

No. It was better to make him work for it a little longer. Play hard to get. Make sure this was for real before giving him what he wanted.

She typed a response: Very tempting. And very soon.

That should serve its purpose. Buy her a little time.

In the meantime, she had someone else to meet. She saw the minivan pull up in front of the train station. Her ride was here. She had two secrets. Dan Hunter and the man whom she’d been meeting here nearly once a week for the last two months. They both made her feel special in ways she’d never known before.

CHAPTER THREE

Four days after Alice first met Drew Campbell at the Fuller Building, the conversation that once held life-changing promise now seemed like nothing but heady party talk.

“I hate to say I told you so.” Lily’s dark green eyes smiled at her over the rim of the Bloody Mary she was sipping on the other side of the tiny bistro table.

“Oh, yes. I know how much it pains you to be right. I mean, as pain goes, having to say you told me so is way up there: hot tar, waterboarding, the iron maiden.”

Lily had skipped out of work early to meet her for a late lunch at Balthazar. Unfortunately, they weren’t the only New Yorkers with fantasies of a leisurely afternoon spent lounging at a Parisian-style brasserie, authentically re-created in SoHo. Even at three o’clock, they’d had to wait thirty minutes for their postcard-sized table. Still, as Alice broke off another chunk of baguette, she had no regrets.

“What is an iron maiden anyway?” she asked.

“No clue,” Lily said, tucking a loose strand of her pixie cut tightly behind her left ear before reaching for another moule. “At the very least it inspired years of big-hair, leather-pants metal music. Torture enough as far as I’m concerned.”

“Thanks for kicking out of work early. You sure you won’t earn the Gorilla’s wrath?”

Lily was an editor for a travel magazine where her boss was so notorious for picking at her every move that he’d earned a special nickname. “Are you shitting me? There’s no such thing as a wrathless half day. When he saw me walking out with my coat, he made sure to tell me he needed that piece on Florence tomorrow morning when it wasn’t supposed to be due until Friday. Good thing for me it’s pretty much done already.”

Alice had met Lily in a spin class at her gym last summer. Their friendship had started with occasional groans about their shared discomfort as they grew accustomed to all that time spent bouncing on a bicycle seat. Then they’d moved on to casual conversations in the locker room after class. Once they realized they were both single and lived within a few blocks of the gym, they exchanged cell phone numbers with a promise of meeting in the neighborhood for a spontaneous drink.

Usually those “sometime we should” occasions were nothing but idle talk—imagined time people might spend if their lives weren’t already cluttered and prescheduled—but Lily had actually called. About three drinks in that first night, they figured out that they’d spent their lives only a few degrees of separation from each other. Lily was three years older than Alice and was raised in Westchester, but had traveled in the same rebellious circles as Alice’s older brother.

Now, six months into their friendship, Alice felt like she’d known Lily for years. And it was a comfortable kind of friendship. Unlike a lot of her other friends, Lily took Alice’s last name in stride. She never asked for screening videos, for an autograph, or that annoying question that made Alice want to throw something: “What was it like to grow up with your father?” And unlike Alice’s friends with similarly privileged upbringings, she had never once told Alice to run back to her parents for financial support. Most importantly of all, Lily Harper was honest. She was one of those rare friends who would tell someone what she needed to hear, not what she wanted. And when Alice had first called her after leaving the Fuller Building that night, Lily had told Alice that Drew Campbell was full of shit. Now, four days later, they were rehashing the case against him once again.

“I mean, you just happen to be unemployed, and he just happens to have the perfect job for you? A wealthy anonymous benefactor who will pay for the studio but allow you to run it? The kept young artist who has captured the closeted old man’s heart?”

“I know, I know. You told me so. It was too good to be true.”

“Well, I do hate to say it. The guy was just trying to get in your pants.”

“Black pencil skirt actually. With tights.”

“Fine, then—up your skirt and down your Spanxie pants. I swear, Alice. I might have to take away your Sisters in Cynicism membership card for this one. You can’t tell when a guy’s running a line on you?”

“You had to be there. He seemed legit.”

“The good ones always do. How many women on the Sunday-morning walk of shame are saying the same thing? Tell it to the nurse at the STD clinic.”

With the cacophony of the brasserie in full effect, Alice would not have known about the incoming call had she not felt the subtle vibration of her cell phone from her handbag against her thigh. She was about to ignore it but knew that if she didn’t at least check the screen—as she had every twenty minutes for the last four days—she’d spend the rest of her lunch with Lily wondering maybe, just maybe.

She felt a tiny glimmer of hope when she read “Blocked” on the caller ID. Any of her usual callers—mom, brother, Jeff (who escaped all meaningful labels)—would have popped up in her directory. Lily nodded at her to take the call.

“Hello?” She used her index finger to plug her unoccupied ear and ignored the irritated stares of her fellow diners as she made her way to the front entrance.

By the time Alice returned to her table ten minutes later, Lily had finished her Bloody Mary and was playing a game on her phone. Alice’s other friends would have either scolded her for disappearing so long or dropped some passive-aggressive comment about the boredom during the wait.

Not Lily.

“That call certainly put a smile on your face. I could see that goofy grin all the way from here. Jeff back in town?”

The unlabeled relationship she shared with Jeff Wilkerson had more ups, downs, and lateral turns than she could track over the years, but had last been on an upswing before he’d left town for a one-week trip to the West Coast.

“Nope. That, my dear friend who hates to say ‘I told you so,’ was the one and only Drew Campbell, art collector to the rich and famous.”

“Let me guess: the gallery fell through, but he thought you might want to meet him for a drink anyway.”

“Nope.”

“Okay. He’s dangling the job in front of you and wants to meet for dinner to discuss it further.”

“Nope.”

“My guesses are up. Just tell me.”

“His client wants to go forward, and Drew wanted to know if the new manager—aka moi—can meet him at a space he’s about to lease in the Meatpacking District.”

Lily said nothing as a busboy added their empty plates to his already chest-high pile of white dishes.

“This is where you remind me he’s full of shit, right?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re supposed to warn me that when I get there, he’ll have some story about the gallery falling through. Or the space will be unavailable. Or there will be a delay in the financing. But then he’ll happen to know about a great bar nearby for a little chat.”

“Sounds like you’re doing a good enough job warning yourself.”

“Maybe I should call him back. I can just say I found another opportunity.”

“When does he want you to meet him?”

“Tomorrow at eleven.”

“A.m.?”

“Of course. I really would deserve to lose my membership card if I fell for a business appointment near midnight.”

“And that’s it? He wants you to see the gallery space?”

“And to bring a résumé so he can do the requisite due diligence. All official-like.”

Still, Lily said nothing.

“Go ahead and say it.”

“What? I didn’t say a word.”

“You don’t have to. I’ve got to admit, I’m thinking it myself. It’s too good to be true. We’ve been running through all of the many reasons to blow this guy off for the last four days. Remember?”

“I remember.”

“But?”

“But nothing. It’s totally up to you.”

“There has to be a catch, right?”

“Seemed so when the asshole wasn’t calling. Now the asshole’s calling with the perfect job.”

“Jesus, you are such a contrarian.”

“Am not,” she said, sticking out her tongue.

“So, all right. I’ll meet the man tomorrow. With my Sisters in Cynicism membership fully updated. Bullshit meter on high alert.”

“And Mace,” Lily added. “A little Mace never hurt anyone.”

As she did more often than she would have liked, Alice allowed Lily to leave enough cash on the table to cover both of their meals. In the pattern that had developed, Alice would soon return the favor, but at a less expensive establishment.

“Oh, and Alice?” Lily’s tone softened as she placed a reassuring hand on Alice’s forearm. “I really do hope this is the real thing.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Hank Beckman watched the digital numbers change on the pump, careful to add only five bucks to the tank. He felt his stomach growl, and then stole a glance at his watch. Three in the afternoon, and nothing today but two cups of coffee.

He’d already paid for the gas—cash, just in case—but dashed back into the station to grab something to tide him over.

“Forget something?”

Just his luck. He stops for gas—at the high-traffic mega station outside the Lincoln Tunnel, no less—and happens upon the one and only gas station attendant in the country who could place a customer’s face. Gold star for attentiveness. He raised a hand, both in a wave and to conceal his appearance. Damn, he was overdoing it with the paranoia. “A man’s got to eat.”

He turned away from the register to peruse the aisles. The usual convenience-store crap. Candy. Chips. Those weird, soggy sandwiches stored in triangular plastic containers. Fried pork rinds? He grabbed two granola bars and then a bottle of orange juice from the refrigerator case. Laid a five on the counter, then slipped the change into the plastic donation bucket, this one bearing a picture of sad-looking shelter animals.

He heard a bell chime against the glass door as it swung shut behind him. Tucking the OJ in the crook of his elbow, he ripped open one of the bars and ate it in three bites before getting settled behind the wheel of the Crown Vic. As he inserted the key into the ignition, he thought about turning around, driving back through the tunnel, and making his way downtown early.

He’d gone nearly two months without checking in on him. Two months since he’d been warned. Officially disciplined, as it had been put to Hank. But not one day had passed in those two months when Hank hadn’t thought about the guy. Wondered what he was doing. Imagined how pleased the guy must have been without Hank around to monitor him.

But it was precisely because Hank had been on good behavior that he was willing to risk this brief check-in. Back before he’d been hauled out to the proverbial woodshed, he’d been watching the subject at night. His intentions had been noble—personal time for personal work—but the guy had noticed the pattern. On the upside, if the guy were still checking his back for Hank, he wouldn’t be suspicious in the middle of the afternoon. No, this was the perfect time. Hank’s field stops had gone faster than planned. He could easily steal ninety minutes out on his own without anyone asking questions. He’d already bought his one-point-six gallons of gas for the round-trip drive to Newark, just in case Tommy wondered about the fuel level when Hank returned the fleet car.

As Hank removed the ring of translucent plastic from the cap of his orange juice, he thought about Ellen. Poor Ellen. He hadn’t realized it when he’d had a chance to make a difference, but his sister had been an addict. No different from the sad sacks he’d encountered (and judged) for years—junkies who told themselves they’d get off the needle next week, career offenders who said they’d retire after one last big score—Ellen had let something other than herself become a necessary part of her identity. In her case, that something was alcohol.

He remembered his sister commenting—usually with pride, but often in a resentful, teasing way if she’d had a glass of chardonnay or two—about his extraordinary discipline. “My little brother is the abstemious one in the family.” “Hank will live to be a hundred, the way he takes care of himself.” “My perfect baby brother.”

He had missed the signs of addiction in his sister, but wondered whether, if Ellen were alive, she would spot them in him. Like a drunk on the wagon never stops craving the bottle, he had managed to restrain himself in the two months that had passed since the reprimand, but he had never stopped thinking about the man who killed his sister. And like an alcoholic assuring himself that this drink will be the last—even as he knows in his heart that he has no intention of ever letting it go—Hank started the engine, telling himself he would cruise down to the apartment in Newark, just this once, just to make sure the man hadn’t gone anywhere without him.

CHAPTER FIVE

There was a time when the name of Manhattan’s Meatpacking District required no further explanation. It was the district where the meat was packed. Not only was the name self-evident, so was the neighborhood itself. Refrigerated trucks backed up to open warehouse doors, ready to transport the hanging carcasses that would become the city’s finest steaks. Butchers—the real ones, with thick smears of pink wiped across their aprons—promised the early morning’s finest cuts. The cobblestone streets, left untended since the notorious days of the Five Points slum, were fit only for industrial vehicles and the most seasoned pedestrians, who knew from years of experience precisely where to step to avoid a tumble. Even the air was tinged with the bloody odor of raw meat.

Now the neighborhood’s name was simply a tip of the hat to history. On Alice’s route from stepping off the 14D bus to the address Drew Campbell had given her, she passed an Apple store, the Hotel Gansevoort (site of the most recent bust of a celebrity offspring for drug dealing), and the Christian Louboutin boutique. She did notice as she made her way south that the luxuriousness of the surroundings became relative. As the $700, seven-inch heels at Louboutin faded from view, she passed a modest little wine bar, then a D’Agostino grocery, even a rather ordinary-looking brick apartment complex.

Despite nearly a lifetime in the city, she always got confused in this neighborhood. She’d spent her childhood in the Upper East Side. Stayed at her parents’ townhouse on trips home from Philly in college. Lived with Bill for two years on the Upper West before the wedding and subsequent move to St. Louis. Briefly back to the folks’ place postdivorce before she’d taken an Upper East Side studio of her own during the MFA program.

Even though she lived downtown now, she was still in the numbered grid, where streets ran east to west, avenues ran north to south, and the numbers on the grid always showed the way. This morning she was turned around in the tangle of diagonals known as Jane, Washington, Hudson, and Horatio, all labeled streets, yet intersecting with one another in knots.

She pulled out her iPhone and opened up Google Maps. After a right turn past the D’Agostino, she found herself on Bethune and Washington. She recognized the intersection, just one block from the dive Mexican joint that served pitchers of fume-exuding margaritas at sidewalk picnic tables.

Her inner naysayer—that voice in her head that kept warning her that Drew’s offer was indeed too good to be true—tugged at her peripheral vision, forcing her to notice that she’d left the swank of the Meatpacking District and was heading away from the better parts of the West Village. A Chinese restaurant called Baby Buddha was boarded shut on the corner, the words “CLOSED Thanks you for your bussiness” spray-painted across the wood.

Past the boarded-up storefront, across the street, stood a prewar tenement with iron gates securing the lowest three floors of apartment windows. She suspected that if she walked a few more blocks, she’d eventually run into a joint needle-exchange, condom-distribution, check-cashing tattoo parlor. She summoned an image of herself, like Lucy in the Peanuts comic strips, sitting beneath a whittled wood sign bearing the words “Modern Art, 5 Cents.”

But as she passed a closet-sized retail space featuring highbrow clothing for spoiled dogs, her outlook began to brighten. She spotted a For Lease sign in the next front window. She took in the remainder of the block. An independent handbag designer. A UK-based seller of luxury sweatshirts, which people now collectively referred to as “hoodies” to justify the prices. A flower shop. High-end shoe store. A ten-table restaurant run by a former finalist on Top Chef. Not a check-cashing tattoo parlor in sight. She crossed her fingers inside her coat pockets as she squinted at the approaching numerals waiting for her above the unoccupied space.

Jackpot. This was the spot. The address Drew had given her. She pressed her forehead against the front glass, cupping her hands at her temples as she peered into the empty space. The ceilings were at least fifteen feet high. Exposed heating ducts, but in a cool way. Smooth white walls, just waiting for art to be hung. She could picture herself there, wearing one of her better black dresses, gesturing toward oversize canvases that would provide the space’s only color.

She jerked backward as a tap on her shoulder startled her from her daydream. She heard a faint beep-beep as Drew Campbell pressed the clicker in his hand, activating the locks of the silver sedan he’d parked curbside.

“So this is it, huh?”

“You sound disappointed,” he said.

For some reason, people thought Alice was down even at her most enthusiastic. She had a theory that this was somehow attributable to a childhood spent with false hopes. She had been raised by parents who told her at every opportunity that she was better, she eventually realized, than she actually was. They’d had the best intentions, but their unconditional, unrealistic praise had in fact groomed her for disappointment. Having to serve as her own reality check had made Alice her own harshest critic.

Even now, she was incapable of feeling pride or excitement without immediately focusing on all the reasons she would eventually fail. She flashed back briefly to those comments she’d received periodically during her annual evaluations at the Met. Saw those signals she should have picked up on. Tried to push them into her past as Drew Campbell looked at her with impressed, expectant eyes, ready to give her a fresh start.

Drew tapped six digits into the keypad of the lockbox on the front door, and then caught the key that fell from the box. “I haven’t signed the papers yet,” he said. “Figured the gal who’s going to run the place should have final approval.”

As she watched him slip the key into the lock and push the door open, she tried not to draw the metaphorical link to a new chapter opening in her life. She tried not to get her hopes up. She told herself it still might not happen. But already she could picture herself with that same key in her hand, pushing open that very door, making a name for this still-unnamed gallery in the limitless world of art.

“What do you think?”

Admiring the polished white tile floor, Alice tried to play it cool. “It’s small,” she said, “especially if we need space for storage, but it’s intimate, which would be right for this neighborhood. I like that it’s off the beaten path of the usual Chelsea galleries. This area still has a lot of untapped potential.”

“All those fashionistas need art for their luxury apartments, right?” Drew fiddled with a Montblanc pen as he spoke.

“One would hope.”

He slipped a half-inch-thick laptop from a black leather attaché and opened it. “Let’s see if we can’t freeload off a neighbor’s wireless signal. Yep, here we go.” She watched as he maneuvered the cursor. Several windows opened simultaneously on the screen. The images flashed too quickly for her to process, but she caught black-and-white glimpses of exposed flesh, a nail, beads that made her think of a rosary.

“So I was pretty sure you’d be happy with the location, but as I warned you, there are a couple of catches.”

Alice felt herself ground back down into the roots of reality. She heard Lily’s voice—and her own running internal monologue—tugging at her once again. Too good to be true. No such thing as good luck. She tried her best to sound carefree. “So go ahead and break the news to me. There’s a brothel running out of that back room, right? Something niche? Midget transvestites. Am I close?”

“Maybe I’m overselling the negatives, but just hear me out, okay? As far as I’m concerned, there are two little hitches. And, no, that’s not a reference to two tiny cross-dressers. First”—he held up a thumb—“my client has a name for the place. The Highline Gallery.”

“Nowhere neeeaaar the hurdle I was imagining.”

“Boring, though.”

Dickerings about the name of the gallery were small-time compared to the perils she’d been imagining, but the Highline moniker was pretty white-bread, the brand for both the new aboveground park running above Ninth Avenue and an adjacent multilevel concert hall. The Highline was to the Meatpacking District as Clinton was to Hell’s Kitchen—an innocuous, sterile name created by real estate agents to whitewash the dust and blood and scars from a neighborhood’s history.

Drew continued with the disclosures. “As you’re probably wise enough to expect, the second catch is more of a doozie.”

He turned the laptop to face her and wiggled his index finger along the touchpad. The staccato flashes of black-and-white images she’d previously glimpsed reappeared on the screen. “This, Miss Humphrey, is our toupee-covered bald spot, our makeup-covered wart.”

Four separate images popped into view: a man’s hairy thigh with crucifix-shaped welts scratched into his flesh; a fifty-cent plastic doll of the Virgin Mary dangling from a hangman’s noose of cotton fiber; a metal fish—the kind she associated with evangelicals—with hot pink balls dangling from its gut; and a Bible headed into a steel shredder.

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Nice word choice,” Drew said.

“Please don’t tell me this is the work of my silent partner’s paramour.”

“I’m afraid so, dear.”

“It’s like Mapplethorpe—only without the talent.”

Drew shrugged. “Like I said, the man’s a longtime friend, but I realize the wrinkles. No pun intended. If you want to pull out, I wouldn’t blame you in the least.”

She took a second look at the images. Alice had been raised in a wholly secular existence. She could count the number of times she’d been to church on two hands, and then only on holidays and for weddings. And yet even Alice had a visceral reaction to these images. They had no beauty. They were interesting only because they provoked. They were wrong.

“And what exactly is the Highline Gallery’s loyalty to this artist?”

Drew used his index finger on the mouse to close the image files and open a Web site called www.hansschuler.com. A photograph of an attractive, early-thirtyish man with light brown curls occupied the screen. “Your first showing has to feature this idiot. Then two or three exclusive shows per year—maybe three or four weeks each—after that. In the interim, you can do whatever you want, but you’ll still have to sell the guy. He’s the weak link. All I ask is that you look before you leap. It’s one thing to tell my client now that this might not happen. Quite another to search for someone else two months from now because you bailed.”

Alice had known in her gut that something about this whole thing was too good to be true, but now she at least knew her enemy. If she took this job, Hans Schuler—artist-slash-paramour—was likely to be the constant pain in her ass for as long as she enjoyed her employment. She reminded herself that the best things in her life had come to her organically.

“Okay, I’m in.”

“Really? All right, then. I can let the leasing company know I’m ready to sign the paperwork now. You want to come with? They’re out in Hoboken, but it’s a nice day for a drive.”

Given the gallery owner’s desire to remain anonymous, Alice supposed that Drew was going to be the closest thing she had to a functional boss. After she’d been laid off from the museum, one of her former coworkers let slip that Alice, unlike her colleagues, hadn’t gone the “extra mile” by participating in activities outside the formal job. It couldn’t hurt to start putting her best foot forward at the start.

“A drive sounds good.”

CHAPTER SIX

Drew accelerated through the loop into the Holland Tunnel. She could tell he enjoyed the way the BMW handled the curves, low and tight. She felt like she should say something impressive. Something about torque or suspension or German engineering. All she came up with was, “I can’t even remember the last time I drove a car.”

Growing up, her parents had a chauffeur for the family in the city, so her only opportunities to drive had been at their house in Bedford or on an infrequent visit to her father’s place in Los Angeles. She went through the teenage ritual of obtaining a license but had never been particularly comfortable behind the wheel. Now she preferred her nondriving existence, tooling around Manhattan by foot, subway, and the occasional taxi in bad weather.

“That’s what happens when you grow up in the city.” Drew hit his fog lights as the sedan hit the tunnel. “You grow up in Tampa, Florida, and you drive. My friends say I’m crazy for keeping a car in the city, but I like the freedom to hop behind the wheel and go whenever and wherever I want.”

She didn’t recall telling Drew she’d been raised in Manhattan. He must have Googled her before offering her the job. Lord knew she’d entered her own name in search engines before, simply out of boredom-induced curiosity.

On the spectrum of Google-able names, Alice Humphrey fell somewhere between Jennifer Smith and Engelbert Humperdink. Most of the hits belonged to a scientist who had written what was apparently a politically divisive book about global warming. More recently, sixteen-year-old Alice Humphrey of Salt Lake City had been kicking butt and taking names on her high school soccer team. But this particular Alice Humphrey had her own online existence. Unfortunately, most of it was not of her own making. Sure, there was her Facebook page, as well as a couple of mentions for her work on museum events. But any marks she had made out there in the virtual world as Alice Humphrey the woman were far outweighed by mentions of Alice Humphrey, former child actress and daughter to Oscar-winning director Frank Humphrey.

She was tempted to ask Drew whether it made a difference. To ask whether she would have gotten the job if she had been just plain old boring Alice Humphrey, with, say, a schoolteacher mother and an accountant father. But to ask that would be unfair, both to Drew and to her. There was no correct answer, and no appropriate response for her to then offer in kind. She no longer wanted to take anything from her father, but she was in fact his daughter. That was never going to change. And so far, Drew hadn’t uttered one word about her family. For her to raise the issue, just because of an innocuous comment about driving, would officially make her the freaky thin-skinned girl.

“So what exactly do you do, Drew?”

“Well, I’ve got two possible responses to that question. One—the answer I might give to a woman on a first date—is that I’m an entrepreneur. Are you suitably impressed?”

“Honestly? I’m not sure I’ve ever understood entrepreneurship as a job description.”

“Which is why there’s a second option—the one my mother might give you. If my mother were here—and not mixing up her it’s-finally-noontime martini down in Tampa—she’d probably tell you I’m a spoiled kid living off his family’s money.”

Apparently she wasn’t the only person in the car with delayed-cord-cutting issues. “Well, if those two versions are your only choices, I’d stick with the first.”

“Somewhere between asshole and pathetic daddy’s boy lies the truth, which is that I live a really great life and figure out ways to make people money in the process. Like, say I go to a tiny little restaurant with a young chef who’s doing everything right; I’ll see if he’s the kind of guy with bigger dreams that might require investors. Then I try to get a deal done and take a little commission for myself in the process.”

“Why does your mom give you a hard time?”

“Because usually the people I turn to for the seed money are the same two guys I’ve been working for since I was mowing lawns for the snowbirds as a kid. And they happen to be my dad’s friends, which makes them only slightly less despicable than the AntiChrist.”

“And one of these men is my new boss?”

“To the extent you have a boss.”

Drew pulled next to a fire hydrant in front of a rehabbed town house and hit the emergency blinkers. The ground floor’s front window was lined with commercial real estate listings. He was out of the car before she’d even unbuckled her seat belt. He tossed the keys on the driver’s seat before shutting his door. “You can drive, right?” he hollered from the curb. “Just in case?”

“Yeah, sure.”

She watched through the glass as he spoke first to the receptionist, then shook hands with a leggy woman with spiky black hair. She walked to a file cabinet and returned with some paperwork. He removed a pen from his sports coat pocket and gestured toward the car. Spiky woman was looking at her now. Was Alice supposed to wave or something? She pretended to fiddle with the car stereo, then saw Drew leaving the building in her periphery with the paperwork.

He hopped back into the driver’s seat, placed the documents on the center console, and began a rapid-fire signing of pages that had been pretabbed with hot pink tape.

“Creepy in there,” he said as he scrawled. “Those girls are all way too pale and tall. I felt like a field mouse dropped into the middle of an anaconda tank.”

“So you said you find ways to make other people money. Does my new boss see the Highline Gallery as a hobby, or is it actually supposed to turn a profit?”

He snapped his Montblanc into his coat pocket and tapped the contract against the steering wheel. “Excellent question, Alice.” Stepping out of the car, he glanced back at her. “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Joann Stevenson felt a tongue between her toes and jerked her leg back, letting out a high-pitched squeal.

“Sebastian!”

Her shih tzu matched her yelp as he leaped to the floor, then back onto the bed near her head. She couldn’t help but giggle as his fluffy nine pounds bounced around her pillow.

“I thought you said we had to be quiet.”

She felt a warm mouth against the back of her neck. This time, the kisses were definitely not Sebastian’s.

“We do have to be quiet.”

“Mmm, you sure about that?”

She felt Mark’s bare skin against hers beneath the sheets. Felt his knee rub against the back of hers. She turned to face him. Saw him smile before he kissed her.

“Very sure.”

“Absolutely certain?”

She raised a finger to his lips. “Be very, very quiet.”

She fumbled for one of Sebastian’s smooshy toys from the top of the nightstand and tossed it across the room. He happily followed.

“Good dog,” Mark whispered.

She hadn’t been kidding about the need for silence. They stifled their giggles and adjusted their bodies as necessary with each squeak of the mattress, each knock of the headboard against the bedroom wall. She struggled to choke back her own sounds at that crucial moment. Bit her lip so hard she thought she might bleed.

Afterward, they shared silly, silent, sweat-soaked grins. She nestled her way into the crook of his right arm and placed her head on his chest.

“I don’t want to move.”

“Me neither.”

“You’re a scientist. Can’t you invent a machine that lets us hit pause and stay here naked for a week while the rest of the world remains still?”

“I adore you, Joann, but I don’t think either one of us would be faring very well if we kept this up for a week straight.”

“We could pause for showers and nourishment.”

“Now that sounds like a plan.”

A monotone beeping erupted beside her, and she let out a pained groan as she slapped the top of the alarm clock.

“Do I even want to know what time it is?”

She gave herself twenty minutes between snooze alerts, and the latest round of beeping marked the end of the third respite. “Eight o’clock.”

“Crap. I need to be on campus by nine. So how are we sneaking me out of here?”

After fifteen years as a single mother, Joann had never—not once, not ever—allowed a man to spend the night in her bed while Becca was home. Sleepovers in front of her kid were a strict no-no on Joann’s list of self-imposed rules. But she’d known the previous night that Becca would be out with her friends until ten. And things with Mark had heated up when she’d asked him inside after the restaurant. She’d known him for two months now. Had hit double digits in dates. And he was—well, he was different.

So she’d broken her own rules. As if she were the high-schooler and Becca the parent, Joann had sneaked Mark into her bedroom before Becca returned home. Left Becca a note in the kitchen: “Decided to hit the hay early. Knock if you need anything. Apples and really tasty cheddar in the fridge if you want a snack. Love, Mom.”

Now she had to sneak the boy out.

She climbed from bed and pulled on her dog-walking sweat suit. Sebastian hopped excitedly at her feet. She cracked open the bedroom door, listening for the usual household sounds. Becca’s sleep schedule was unpredictable. Sometimes she sprang from bed at the crack of dawn to surf the Net or to catch up on whatever TiVo’d show she wanted to gossip about with her friends at school. Other times, she was truly her mother’s daughter, hitting the snooze button until Joann had to drag her from bed.

The house was silent.

“Coast is clear,” she whispered.

She admired the leanness of Mark’s body as he pulled on the jeans and striped shirt he’d worn the previous night. Forty-five years old, but the man looked good. She waved him into the hallway, past her daughter’s room. At the top of the stairs, he took her hand and pointed to the first step. They took each step in synchronicity, walking with a single gait. She gave him a quick good-bye kiss at the door, then watched him through the living room window, making his way to the Subaru he’d parked on the street, two houses down.

She heard a low growl and looked down to see Sebastian with one of her UGG boots in tow.

“Hold your horses, little man.” She leashed him up, then paused at the bottom of the staircase, wondering whether to wake Becca before their walk. Becca could get dressed in ten minutes flat when necessary, and it was good to see the girl get some much-needed sleep.

She and Sebastian kept their usual pace on the usual route around the usual block. Most people—and dogs for that matter—would have tired of this morning routine long ago, but she liked to think that both she and Sebastian appreciated this ten-minute ritual as “their” time. Between raising a kid and working full-time as a records clerk at the hospital, life tended toward chaos. At least she and Seb could count on their walks.

Unlike too many of her mornings, Joann found her thoughts during this particular jaunt to be peaceful. In the fifteen years she’d been trying to build a life for Becca, Joann had been lonely. She had a few friends at the hospital, but they were married with younger children and didn’t have the need for friendships that extended past working hours. She had met some men along the way, but none of them ever stuck. She had a kid, after all. She had all of her rules as a result. Not many men were willing to abide. And the few who had? None had ever turned out to be worth what felt, to Joann at least, like an awful lot of effort.

Until Mark. She’d met him at the prospective-students reception she had forced Becca to attend. Becca fostered fantasies of attending design school at Parsons in New York City, but Joann certainly couldn’t afford the tuition, and the last thing she wanted for her kid was to be unemployed and saddled with debt at the age of twenty-two. She was hell-bent on getting her into a state four-year college.

Even with her single-mother status hanging out there for all to see, given the nature of the event, she’d been certain Mark was interested. He’d gone out of his way to catch up to her and Becca after the panel discussion to speak to her about the university’s physics department. Becca barely hid her indifference, but Joann feigned a deep interest in the school’s brand-new lab facilities. When she finally said good-bye, she was disappointed he didn’t ask for her number. But two days later, there he was, roaming the hallways of St. Clare’s Dover General Hospital in search of the records department.

“Are you lost?” she’d asked.

“Not any more. Call me old-fashioned, but I just couldn’t hit on you in front of your daughter. It’s okay I’m here, right? If not, if I read things wrong the other night, I can—I don’t know, awkwardly excuse myself with some ridiculous cover story?”

“As curious as I am to hear what you’d come up with, no, a cover story is definitely not necessary.”

They were two months in, and nothing about Mark had once felt like work. They talked, dined, walked, kissed, and made love effortlessly. She kept reminding herself to take it day by day, but she found herself imagining a future with him.

And it wasn’t only her love life that was falling into place. After a few rough teenage months, Becca seemed to be back to her normal self. No more skipped classes. No more missed curfews. She’d even set aside some of her more rebellious ways, hanging out with a few of the popular kids at school.

As they approached the house, Sebastian—as usual—pulled against his leash. She let go, allowing him to drag the thin brown strip of leather behind him as he ran to the door. She opened it for him and followed him inside.

“Becca,” she called out as she hung her keys on a cat-shaped hook in the entranceway. “Time to get up.”

Nothing. Sebastian beat her to the top of the stairs and scratched at Becca’s door.

“Come on, sleepy girl. I’ll drive you, but we’ve both got to get going.”

Still nothing.

She opened the bedroom door, expecting to find her daughter in that same sleeping position she’d used as a toddler—on her side at a diagonal, head rested on her forearm, one leg straight, the other bent like Superman taking flight, blankets and pillows scattered across the bed.

But the bed was empty.

She knocked on the bathroom door down the hall. Nothing. Opened the door. No one.

She walked back to the bedroom for another look at Becca’s unmade bed. Was it her imagination, or were the sheets bundled into the same knot as when she’d quickly pulled the door shut last night to hide the mess from Mark? Same with the bathroom: Becca’s paddle-shaped hairbrush was tossed on the right side of the sink counter, and the adjacent bottle of gel was capless, despite Joann’s repeated reminders about the cost of dried-out hair products.

Joann tried to convince herself she was wrong. Becca must have woken early and left for school already. Maybe she realized Mark was over and snuck out to give them privacy.

But as much as her brain tried to create a simple explanation, somehow Joann knew—truly felt the truth, at a cellular level. Her daughter had never come home last night. And the explanation wouldn’t be simple, if it ever came.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Please tell me this is one of your practical jokes.”

It had been three weeks since Drew Campbell had signed the lease for the Highline Gallery. Now she stood, one night before the grand opening, feeling tiny beneath the eighteen-foot ceilings and next to Jeff Wilkerson’s six-foot-three frame.

Jeff’s comment was a reference to her long-standing habit of testing what she called his Indiana goodness.

“I know,” he would sometimes say, “I’m gullible.”

But gullible was not a word Alice would choose to describe Jeff. To call a person gullible was to imply he was stupid. But Jeff was no dummy. He’d been a top student at Indiana University, both as an undergraduate and then in law school, moving to New York City to work at one of the world’s largest firms. But after seven years of slaving away at billable hours, he realized that life as a big-firm partner wouldn’t bring any monumental changes, so had started his own law practice.

No, nothing about Jeff was gullible. He was well read and refined, brilliant even, as much as Alice hated the overuse of that word. But he still had that Indiana goodness. He was trusting. Earnest. Vulnerable. He wasn’t the kind of person who even contemplated the possibility that others would fabricate facts for mere entertainment. Jeff was good. And his vulnerability made him sweet. It also made him a tempting target for people like Alice.

She’d lost count of the number of times he’d fallen for her ridiculous stories: that some breeds of cats could grow their tails back, that a car’s stereo would stop working if the transmission fluid fell too low, that she’d had a bit part in the Aerosmith video for “Janie’s Got a Gun.” As for that last one, even when he called to complain he’d watched the entire clip on YouTube without spotting her, she only persuaded him to watch a second time as she listened, stifling her giggles.

Granted, her pranks had occasionally misfired. To this day, Jeff was convinced that her father disliked him because, on her recommendation, Jeff had eschewed the usual handshake on their first introduction, opting for a flash of the peace sign instead. Her father was bemused by the episode, but Alice saw no point in disabusing Jeff of his impressions, because in truth her father did not like Jeff, but for entirely different reasons.

She kept expecting Jeff to stop falling for her jokes, but he insisted she had a poker face that could break a casino. He’d express disbelief, and like Lucy with her football, she’d persist that this time she was serious. She suspected he often feigned the credulity, but even so, her white lies and his Indiana goodness formed one of the few patterns that had cemented in their ever-fluid relationship.

Unfortunately, this was not another occasion for leg-pulling. They stood side by side, Jeff with his hands on his hips, Alice with crossed arms, perusing the series of black-and-white photographs.

“Those of us in the art world would refer to this as high concept,” she said.

“Nice try for your consumer base, but you forget that I know you. And I know that you know this is a bunch of pretentious crap.”

She tried out her most authoritative gallery-managing voice. “The artist refers to the SELF series as a portrait in radical introspection. By examining the baseness of raw physicality, we reveal our true selves and can therefore achieve a higher level of inner reflection.” She’d been diligent throughout the day in referring to Hans Schuler as “the artist” and to these photographs as the “SELF series.” As she stumbled through the words, she realized it might take more than a day to overcome the bad habits formed over the last two weeks, when she continually referred to Schuler as the “German Boy Toy” and to his pictures as her “porn collection.”

The centerpiece of the series was a photograph he called Fluids, featuring a taffylike strand of drool stretched from his lips to the bloody bite marks in his wrist. His hairy wrist. Prior to seeing the diverse variety of exposed Schuler flesh in close-up, she had no idea that one body could contain so much fur. She posed next to the Fluids photo in mock contemplation, placing the hook of her index finger beneath her chin.

“Can you picture me now on the cover of New York magazine? I can already imagine the tagline: ‘New Highline Gallery Seeks to Mainstream Radicalism.’”

He shook his head. “That is scary. You could actually pull that off, Al. Maybe you should have been an actress after all.”

She usually hated all iterations of shorthand for her already short name, but for some reason, when Jeff had taken to calling her Ally and then Al when they’d first met seven years ago, she had never minded.

“I feel like I’m selling snake oil. Radical introspection? What does that even mean, and why would we want to mainstream it?” She found the photographs aesthetically unappealing and intellectually vapid, so had simply pulled catchphrases from the artist’s Web site when drafting her own materials for the exhibit. “Please remind me I just have to make it through this first show, and then I can start highlighting actual artists.”

According to her deal with Drew, the Highline would open with an exclusive three-week showing of Schuler’s SELF series. She would have to continue selling Schuler’s work afterward, but could move on to showcasing other works.

“Just hang in there, all right? This is a good gig. You’re going through the rough patch now.”

She grimaced. “I don’t think I like the idea of anything rough or patchy with our friend Hans here.”

“So what is the man who bites himself bloody like in person?”

She plopped herself down on the low white leather banquette at the center of the gallery space and clucked her tongue. “You see. Now there’s the catch.”

“You mean to tell me that Hans’s hairy porn isn’t the catch?”

“Just a part of it, I’m afraid. Schuler apparently read one too many J. D. Salinger obits and has decided he’s a recluse.”

“Salinger went into hiding because he couldn’t stand the public attention anymore. Does your guy realize no one’s even heard of him?”

“First of all, he’s so not my guy. And yes, of course he realizes this, but he thinks being a supersecret man of mystery will give him an allure. Drew tried to persuade him otherwise, but he says the only appearances that matter are the images he chooses to reveal in film.”

“But you’ll meet him at his show?”

“Nope. He’s not coming.”

“That’s … well, that’s ridiculous. How does he expect to sell anything?”

“That’s where we get to the mainstreaming part. How much do you think a Hans Schuler will run you?”

“Clueless on that, as you well know.”

“Guess.”

They’d had countless discussions about the randomness of art prices. Art was worth whatever a buyer was willing to pay in an arm’s-length transaction on the open market. “I don’t know. I guess it depends on how many photographs he’s printing and signing. Assuming he runs a series of—what, a couple hundred?—I’d guess you’re charging at least a few thousand dollars.”

“Seven hundred bucks.”

“Dudes in Union Square Park charge more than that.”

“That’s why he says he’s mainstreaming radicalism. He’s making high-concept art available to any and all. And there’s no limited print run. Take a look at that lower right-hand corner there.”

Jeff did a half-raise forward to get a closer look. “What a cheese-ball.”

Instead of marking each piece 1/some number to indicate where a particular print fell in a limited numbered series, Schuler had penciled “1/8” onto every photograph to indicate an infinite run. According to him, there was no need to restrict art’s supply to make it precious. The very advantage of photography as a medium, he pontificated in the artist’s notes that accompanied the prints, was the ability to produce identical replications. By lowering the price, he would make his work accessible to more people, making him more influential than any artist who sold only a handful of pieces, no matter the price.

Alice suspected that Schuler himself didn’t believe a word of his trite puffery. The plain fact was that Schuler’s plan, if successful, would pocket him far more cash than a traditional showing for an unknown artist could possibly hope to yield.

She walked to the low white desk at the front of the gallery, removed an item from the top drawer of the steel side-return, and tossed it in Jeff’s direction.

“Nice catch.”

He inspected the tiny thumb drive. “Self,” he said, reading the simple personalization aloud. “So what is it?”

“Yet another piece of Schuler’s gimmick. Every buyer gets one of these stupid thumb drives. Everything you could possibly want to know about Schuler is then uploaded to the buyer’s computer.”

She unplugged the gallery’s own computer, a slim Mac laptop, and resumed her seat next to Jeff. “I guess if customers want to know more about him, I’ll just refer them to the thumb drive and his Web site.” She pulled up a familiar bookmark.

Jeff moved closer to get a look. They’d known each other so long that his knee against hers, his arm around her shoulder—they weren’t signs of passion or romance, but a level of familiarity and physical intimacy that remained between them regardless of where they were in their on-and-off experimentations with coupledom. “Not much of a site if that’s going to be his only venue.”

The home page was a stark black screen with Schuler’s name in white block letters, along with three links: New Work, Galleries, and Bio. She clicked on each link so Jeff could get the idea. The New Work page featured thumbnails of the photographs now surrounding them in larger proportions. The Galleries page referred to the Highline Gallery, with a promise of “additional venues to be announced.” The bio, supposedly a short version, listed training at an art school in Germany, some group exhibitions around Europe, and even a few grants.

“Someone gave him money to support this garbage?”

Maybe Jeff did have some skeptical bones in his body.

“Oh, who knows? Those grants could all be coming from our mutual benefactor, for all I care.” She gently clicked the laptop shut.

There was a moment when neither of them filled the silence of the empty space. When his knee was still against hers. The arm still around the shoulder. Eye contact.

“Look, I know you’ll be fine, but just be careful not to make any affirmative representations to your customers about his background. Limit your talk to his work. If anyone wants to know his credentials, steer them back to the art itself.”

“Well, for a seven-hundred-dollar photograph, I doubt I’ll be getting the third degree about his bona fides.”

“I just don’t want to see you get sued for fraud.”

“Got it, counselor.”

The moment between them had passed. She slipped the thumb drive into her jeans pocket. Retrieved their coats from the back-room. Tucked the tiny laptop into her gigantic purse. Took in the majesty of this space—her space, sort of—one last time before flicking each of a long row of light switches like dominoes, rendering the cavernous room dark but for the hints of street light fading through the front glass.

Jeff held the door open for her. “You’re lugging that laptop around with you?”

“It’s a hundred times faster than my dinosaur. A perk of the job.”

“You’re excited, aren’t you?”

“Of course.” She managed her tone of voice as if the gallery opening were no big deal, but inside she felt the same way she had as a child, clicking her knees together in the dressing room as her mother instructed her to sit still for the nice makeup lady. Something big was about to happen. And she’d be at the center of it.

CHAPTER NINE

Thanks to the radio station’s Two-for-Tuesday playlist, Hank lost track of time tapping on the steering wheel to the beat of “Satisfaction,” followed by “Shattered.” Sha-doo-be. Shattered, shattered.

He was pulled back into reality as the DJ with the corny voice introduced a block of Steve Miller Band. All he needed was to have “Abracadabra”—the worst song in history, by his ear—stuck in his head for the rest of the day. He switched off the radio, looking up for a double take at the redhead cruising up the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. She wore those oversize Jackie O shades women went for these days, the heavy collar on a peacock blue coat flipped up around her face. Sky-high black stiletto pumps, the kind that look French and expensive. She might be a real bow-wow beneath it all, but she was rocking a look all right. Classy but with a little edge.

He looked at his watch. Crap. He’d been parked here for over twenty minutes, waiting with his camera for something worth photographing. Stupid. He could be spotted. Or someone downtown might wonder why he had so much solo fieldwork this week. Or, thanks to his little gas stops, Tommy in the garage might eventually notice that Hank was getting some damn good mileage out of the Crown Vics.

Hank had told himself four days earlier that the afternoon drive to Newark was a onetime deal, a harmless peek to make sure he could find the man if necessary, just in case. But this was his fourth detour in as many days. During yesterday morning’s drive, he’d sworn it would be the final drop-in. And Hank really believed he had meant it. But then he saw the car. A BMW. As in Big Money Wagon. Granted, it was a 3-series, not one of the super-high-end ones. Still, it was a better ride than this scumbag should be sporting.

He’d seen the guy—he didn’t like to use his name, not even mentally—walk from his crappy building to the apartment complex parking lot. But then instead of the man’s familiar blue Honda, he’d headed for the gray BMW. Hank had hoped to follow him. He’d even been willing to miss an eleven o’clock debriefing if necessary. But the guy had simply opened the driver’s side door and then closed it again, forgotten iPod in hand.

When Hank got the skinny on the plates, he’d felt a familiar rush of adrenaline—that feeling he experienced whenever he was in the hunt. The BMW’s registration came back to Margaret Till of Clifton, New Jersey. Maybe the guy’s new mark. Maybe Hank could warn her before she fell too deep.

When he finally gave up on the apartment yesterday, he’d buzzed by the woman’s address in Clifton instead, eager to learn Margaret Till’s connection to the man in Newark. He’d spotted her in the front yard, tending to begonias off the brick walkway with a tiny shovel and lime green canvas gloves, accepting a peck on the top of her head from the man of the house, still pulling on his suit jacket, late for work. A freckled girl with two missing teeth played jacks on the sidewalk. And beyond the girl was a gray BMW sedan, parked in the driveway next to the Lexus coupe that the happy husband was crawling into.

With one look at the car, Hank knew Margaret Till was not the man’s latest mark. It wouldn’t have been the first time a Mrs. Wholesome June Cleaver type stepped out on her family, but the problem was the BMW’s license plate: he recognized it, but it wasn’t the one that belonged on Margaret Till’s BMW. Last time he’d seen that combination of numbers and letters was two months ago, on the bumper of that scumbag’s blue Honda.

When Hank returned to the man’s apartment complex today, his BMW was still parked in the lot, adorned with Till’s stolen license plates. The switched plates probably meant the car was hot. Hank was tempted to drop the dime on the guy with an anonymous call to the locals, but car theft was chump change. Hank wasn’t about to risk exposure of his unauthorized stakeout missions for some chippy Class C felony that would get bumped down to probation on the county criminal docket.

Now he’d wasted twenty minutes parked on the street in a white Crown Vic in full view. This wasn’t exactly the hood, but someone might still make a federal agent on the lookout. He was about to call it a day, maybe even for good this time, when he noticed the redhead again. Big shades. Blue coat. Looking great. Making her way up the steps with that same confident stroll she’d owned on the sidewalk. Right to his guy’s apartment door.

He ducked even lower in his seat.

Knock, knock, knock. The door opened. A quick kiss on the lips, and then the redhead walked inside.

Figuring a woman like that would hold a man’s attention for the near future, he stepped from his car, walked through the apartment complex parking lot to the BMW, and searched for the vehicle identification number through the front window. A folded copy of New York magazine blocked his view of the dash.

He thought about trying the door, but knew in his gut it would be locked. It was all about the risk-reward ratio. Low odds of reward. Medium to high risk of setting off a car alarm. Basic math told him to let it go for now.

He made his way back to the Crown Vic. Felt his pulse beat quicker than expected as he imagined a nosy neighbor calling 911 about the stranger near the BMW. Kept the key in the ignition just in case he needed to roll.

Nothing happened for the next forty minutes.

Nice car. Pretty girl. He’d spent so much time thinking about this man over the last seven months that he fancied himself something of an expert about his fundamental nature. And his expertise was telling him that his time watching Travis Larson had not been wasted. There was something here after all.

CHAPTER TEN

Alice remembered a time when the sultry baritone of her mother’s determined voice could cut through a crowded room like a diamond through glass. She didn’t know whether a woman’s voice simply faded with age, or if changes in a woman’s life somehow worked their way into vocal cords, but now she found herself leaning in to hear her mom over the din of the busy restaurant.

“You should have seen our girl, Frank. She was just wonderful. The way she talked about the artwork, she had those people in the palm of her hand.”

Alice had no problem making out her father’s booming words from across the table. “Alice has always been good at anything she tries her hand at. I’ve told her that from the time she was born.”

“Still, you should have been there to see it firsthand.”

Alice caught her mother’s eye and gave her a quick shake of the head, but it was too late.

“Obviously I would have liked to have been there, Rose, but our baby girl’s all grown up. She doesn’t need her father looking over her shoulder all the time. Wouldn’t want to make it all about the old man now, would we?”

Tonight had been the official opening of the new Highline Gallery, and Alice was celebrating at Gramercy Tavern with Jeff and her parents. To anyone overhearing the conversation at their table, they would have sounded like any normal family, two proud parents fawning over their daughter, the mother taking a shot at the father’s absence from the main event.

“Of course you could have gone, Papa.”

Frank Humphrey had never wanted to be called Daddy or Dad. In fact, Alice suspected he had never even wanted children or a marriage. His habit of casting, and then bedding, his leading ladies probably could have kept him content for life. But he’d managed to knock up the acclaimed up-and-comer Rose Sampson during the production of their second film together, In the Heavens.

These days, unwed pregnancies were a Hollywood norm, but in 1969, even the film crowd still followed the traditions of the old nursery rhyme—maybe not about first-comes-love necessarily, but certainly about marriage coming before the baby carriage. When Frank Humphrey and Rose Sampson wed, Life magazine pronounced America’s most sought-after young director and the actress he’d twice directed to best actress nominations “The King and Queen of New Hollywood.” Five and a half months later, Alice’s older brother, Ben, was born.

Where was Ben? Alice now wondered. He’d been a no-show at the gallery, texting her that he’d meet them at the restaurant. Fifteen minutes into cocktails, his seat at the table remained empty. She tried to write off the pit in her stomach as a byproduct of his past.

“We’re so proud of you, dear.” Her mother patted her gently on the shoulder as she spoke, but with her gaze still directed at her husband. The silence that followed was awkward.

Luckily, Jeff was there to fill it.

“Great turnout tonight. Did you sell much?”

“Not everything’s about money, Jeff.”

Had she been seated next to her father, she would have nudged him under the table. Poor Jeff. She was certain he would have preferred to be anywhere other than the “celebratory family dinner” her mother had been determined to organize, but he had insisted on accompanying her after Lily had come down with a stomach flu.

Alice had been careful to engineer the seating arrangements at the round table: her father next to her mother, then her, then Jeff, and then Ben was to be the buffer between Jeff and her father. But thanks to that empty fifth seat, her dad had a clear shot at Jeff. And, as always, he’d taken it. And, as usual, Jeff deflected the bullet.

“Of course not, Mr. Humphrey.”

Alice jumped in before the discussion could escalate. “It’s actually a good thing my friends turned out, or the place wouldn’t have looked so full. We had pretty good publicity leading up to the opening—mentions in Time Out and New York magazine—but about half of the crowd were people I know.”

“Gee, I wonder how all your friends heard about it,” Jeff said with a smile.

She filled her parents in on the joke. “I sort of buried every person I’ve ever met with Evites, Facebook alerts, and every other form of spam so they’d at least show their faces.”

“That’s what it’s all about,” her mom said. “You’ve got to create that opening buzz. It’s just the same with movies, you know.”

Alice could count on a single hand the number of acting jobs her mother had lined up since Alice’s birth, but the film industry was and would always be the lens through which Rose Sampson saw the world. This was, after all, a woman who’d stayed locked in her bedroom for a week when a much younger Alice had finally stopped trying to be a star herself.

“I only sold a couple of prints tonight, but I was checking online orders, and we were about to cross into the triple digits when I left the gallery.”

Jeff’s eyes widened above his highball glass. “You’re kidding me.” Coming off her adrenaline high from the successful opening, she’d been so busy gushing to Jeff in the cab about the various socialites who’d shown up to the gallery that they hadn’t had a chance to talk numbers.

“Is that a lot?” her mother asked.

“You saw the pictures, Mom. Hans Schuler’s a little off the beaten path.”

“Good,” her father interjected. “Too much art is sterile and commercialized. If you’re representing fresh work, you can be proud regardless of whether you make a single dollar.”

Now her father was proud. He hadn’t actually seen the crap she was pushing, and couldn’t resist that dig to Jeff about art not being measured by money, but all he needed to hear was that the photographs were weird, and suddenly he was on board. This from the man who watched his opening weekend grosses like a hawk, even as he insisted that studio executives were hacks who cared only about their bottom line. Her father wasn’t consistent, but he was definitely predictable.

Predictable enough that she foresaw his response when the waitress interrupted to ask whether Mr. Humphrey preferred to wait for the last member of his party before ordering.

“If we waited to eat every time my son ran late, the whole family would have starved by now. Go ahead, everyone. Let’s order up.” Her father had spent so much of his life in charge of other people on set that he refused to tolerate tardiness, especially from his flaky son, Ben. It probably did not help that everyone at the table was imbibing while he sipped club soda, twenty-five years after he quit drinking (but not craving, as he liked to say). “I’ll have the duck,” he announced, handing the waitress his unopened menu. “Get the duck, Jeff. They do a great duck.”

Just as she knew that the family dinner would be at Gramercy Tavern, the restaurant her father always insisted on when he came to “her neighborhood” (meaning south of Thirty-fourth Street), she knew he’d order the duck. She also knew that, even though Jeff would have preferred beef, tonight he would opt for duck.

She wished she could persuade Jeff to stop trying to appease her father. She wished she could explain why her father would always be hard on him. But any discussion about her father’s disapproval of Jeff would inevitably lead to a discussion about the history of Jeff’s relationship with her, and that might end the friendship that meant so much to her.

After the waitress departed, Alice continued calculating her sales results for the day. “We’ll have brought in over seventy thousand dollars by morning. I have to admit, I thought Schuler was full of it, but maybe he’s onto something. The online orders came in from all over the world. Instead of targeting the tiny pool of customers who happen to show up in a New York City gallery, anyone living anywhere can buy this stuff. Granted, I don’t understand the appeal of it, but—”

Her mother tipped her pinot grigio in Alice’s direction. “To each his own, right?”

She noticed a small groan from her father and felt like she was thirteen years old again. She’d been about that age when she’d first learned to recognize—to label—the tension that had always existed between her parents. Her mother’s resentment of her father’s successes. Fights that coincided with his time spent on location. Her father’s barely veiled boredom as her mother filled him in on the mundane details of days he missed from his family. His snorts—like the one she’d just heard—when her mother wasn’t sufficiently creative in her choice of words.

With any other couple, she might have wondered why the two of them bothered to remain married. But she always assumed—or maybe, as their daughter, she’d just wanted to believe—that there was some sticky bond of love between them that outweighed all of the apparent imperfections. The rumors about her father? She’d always written them off as precisely that. Her mother trusted him, and therefore she had too.

But they weren’t rumors. She’d learned that last year. And yet Mom still didn’t leave. Someone had to say something to him. And so Alice had been the one. She had finally cut the cord, at least as much as she could without destroying her mother. Then she’d lost her job at the Met. Now she’d finally landed on her feet and didn’t know whether to see her father’s absence from the show as punishment or exactly what she had asked of him.

She took another sip of her vodka martini, allowing the alcohol to warm her stomach, feeling it form a fuzzy cloud around her face.

Ben never did show up that night. It would be two more days before she realized why.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Joann could not help but feel she was somehow being punished for every mistake she had ever made as a mother. As a woman. As a person.

The last fifteen years hadn’t always been easy. Pregnant at twenty-one by a guy who was not only uninterested in being a father, but who proved to have no idea what he wanted out of life even for himself. Working retail as the mother of a toddler, getting laid off for missing hours every time her kid was sick. Taking part-time classes at the university, then juggling full-time waitressing once Becca started school. A college degree and the hospital job had given her sick time, benefits, and all the security that came with the territory, but it had taken years of saving, a housing market crash, and a lot of luck before she’d finally been able to buy them this house.

But as much as she had managed to improve life for the Stevenson girls, she had never rectified her original sins. In fact, she had only managed to compound them as her daughter got older and began to ask the inevitable questions a child asked of a single parent. Lineage. Biology. History. Pedigree. As if the desire for answers were ingrained in the very DNA whose origins we could not help but explore.

It was bizarre to watch this police officer—this stranger—roam room to room through the home she’d worked so hard to create. She could see him making judgments with every observed detail. The boxes of sugary cereal on the linoleum kitchen counter. The crappy DVDs on the living room shelves, mostly two-star romantic comedies and buddy action flicks, far outnumbering the books, declaring she was no intellectual. The clutter. The piles of papers. Unopened mail.

Tidying up had been the last thing on her mind since Becca had gone … missing. She could still barely stand to imagine that word and its significance. So she hadn’t straightened the place. As a consequence, she now wondered whether this cop had irreparably categorized her as one of “those” parents.

She would have expected the detective to be older. Dover, New Jersey, was a small town, the kind of place the movies would depict with a seasoned sheriff. Grizzled, even. With a southern accent, no matter the actual locale.

This particular cop was younger than she was. Probably in his early thirties, even though he could pass for his twenties in a different context. When had she gotten so old that a police detective investigating a missing child could be younger than her?

“How did Becca feel about your having company that night?”

“I told you, Officer Morhart. I mean, Detective.” She looked at the business card he had handed so purposefully to her upon his first polite step through the door. Jason Morhart. Detective Sergeant. Town of Dover Police Department. “Becca didn’t know.”

He lowered his gaze. She was now not only a slut but a lying liar. The kind of woman who snuck men into her bed without even noticing whether her own kid came home for the night.

No, she had no doubt how the situation looked to this fair-haired, blue-eyed, strong-jawed officer. The teenage child of a single mother. The recent dip in Becca’s grades. Attendance problems at school. The phone call from the guidance counselor, asking whether there had been any changes in Becca’s home life. Joann, struggling to balance a full-time job with motherhood and a new boyfriend. The teenage girl missing just as the boyfriend spent his first night in the family home.

“You sure there’s not someone else your daughter might be staying with? Maybe she just needed a break.”

In other words, you’re one fuckup of a mother, and your daughter finally made a run for it. Suck it up or go cry to your boyfriend, lady.

But Joann knew the truth behind the stereotypes that were dominating this police officer’s conclusions.

Joann had already called every last one of Becca’s friends. According to them, she’d gone to the library that morning, just as expected, to finish her chem lab report with her class partner, Joel. Went to Sophie’s house afterward, just as she told Joann she would. The girls met Sophie’s boyfriend, Rodney, at the Rockaway Town-square mall to check out the new gadgets at the Apple store, then headed back to Sophie’s again to pick up Becca’s backpack. Sophie, whose parents (unlike Joann) could afford to buy their daughter a car, offered Becca a ride, but Becca (as was often the case) wanted to burn a few calories with the five-block walk. No one had seen Becca since.

These were the facts Joann knew. Not only knew, but trusted. Would swear by. Because Joann, unlike this cop, had known Sophie Ferrin for three years. Had carpooled her around through junior high. Had stayed up in her pajamas with her and Becca for late-night gossip sessions over chocolate-chip cookie dough. Joann, unlike this cop, knew Sophie wouldn’t lie to her.

Becca had been frustrated, even angry, at her mother for failing to give her the thorough explanations she was looking for about her childhood. About her very existence. And she had gone through a troubled few months as a result. And Joann—as always—had more on her plate than any one person should have to handle alone. But Joann, unlike this cop, knew something else: she and Becca had a bond.

Sure, they were mother and daughter, but they were also friends and confidantes. Becca would know how the sight of her empty bed in the morning would affect Joann. She would know that just one look would devastate her. Break her to the core.

As angry as Becca could sometimes be with her mother, Joann knew her daughter—her best friend, her everything—would never voluntarily destroy her this way.

Joann had made mistakes as a mother, there was no question. And she would work every last day of her life to remedy them, if given a chance. But at that moment—as she watched a police officer run his fingertip along the edges of the baby photos on her mantel—all she could do was close her eyes and pray that she be the one punished—not her baby, not her Becca.

Please, God, not my precious Becca.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Alice blew hot breaths into her cupped fists, trying to warm her fingers before they numbed. With a puff of warmed air trapped between her hands, she’d then rub her palms together before balling them into her coat pockets once again. She’d been in this rotation system since she stepped out of the gallery ten minutes earlier—warm breaths, brisk palm-rub, coat pockets—but there was no curing the chill that had already set in.

She finally gave up and tried following the advice Ben used to give when she was young. She must have been about nine by the time her parents entrusted her older brother to escort her around the city on their own, and Ben took full advantage of every opportunity to roam Manhattan on foot.

“Stop hunching. Just relax your shoulders and let the cold in. You’ll adapt. I promise.”

Ben could stroll for miles in single-digit temperatures with that strategy, but Alice inevitably wound up with her shoulders near her ears, her arms folded against her body, fighting desperately for every single degree of her body temperature. Since then, she’d adopted her own coping skills. Heavy wool coat. Thick socks. Warm boots. Good gloves.

Where the hell were her beautiful gloves—the crocodile-embossed leather ones, with the cozy fur lining she blissfully chose to believe was faux? She’d rather lose a kidney than those gloves.

Alice had yet to take a break or leave the gallery before eight o’clock, until today. For three weeks, she’d lived with the frenzy of launching a new business. Renting the furniture. Hiring painters and a cleaning service. Connecting the electrical and phone services. Communicating with the diva Hans Schuler via his chosen medium of text message. Finding a mover specializing in art to deliver hundreds of Schuler’s prints from a warehouse in Brooklyn to the gallery’s stockroom. Getting one of each print from the SELF series framed for display. The press releases. The phone calls. The online marketing. Until opening day, Alice had been a one-woman manager-slash-decorator-slash-publicist.

But after last night’s fanfare at the opening, she was looking forward to finding a rhythm to her new employment at the Highline. This morning was marked by the bus ride to Ninth Avenue, a Starbucks stop, and then crouching down, brass key in hand, to release the lock on the pull-down security gate. She loved the clacking sound of the old gate as it retracted.

Inside the gallery, she’d finished her coffee while checking the Web site for new online orders. She’d been worried about keeping up with the shipments as a one-woman operation, but she quickly had the packaging process down cold: tightly rolled print, one of Schuler’s thumb drives, and a letter to explain the concept, all tucked inside a cardboard tube to be picked up by Fred the UPS guy before two o’clock. Other than walk-ins, the rest of the time would be her own. She planned on splitting it equally between publicizing the gallery and researching emerging artists for the happy day when she could show her own selections.

Alice had been glued to the gallery for the last three weeks not only out of necessity, but also because she loved being employed again. She had missed having a place where she was needed. She’d missed having a schedule. All those months of waking up and knowing that no one cared where she went, what she did, or whether she changed out of her pajamas had worn her down in ways she hadn’t realized at the time. Maybe one day she’d go back to being like everyone else. She’d have mornings when she wouldn’t want to work. She’d complain about the job.

But maybe not. Maybe she’d continue to come in early and stay late, simply out of gratitude.

Lily had been the one to insist that her new routine include the occasional break. According to her, the patterns of employment set in early. Breaks were use ’em or lose ’em, she said. If the boss got too accustomed to her constant presence at the gallery, he’d come to expect and then require it.

Alice had tried to explain to Lily that Drew wasn’t exactly checking in on her, but her friend had finally persuaded her to go for a walk when she e-mailed her a link to the day’s Wafels & Dinges schedule. One small but significant upside to Alice’s unemployment had been her discovery of the culinary wonders that are served from the windows of New York City’s food trucks. Tacos. Burgers. Dumplings. Cupcakes. And, in the case of Wafels & Dinges, Belgian waffles made to order. The truck’s online announcement that it would be parked mere blocks from the gallery had done the trick, proving once again that Lily Harper knew her well.

“I’ll have a waffle with strawberries, bananas, and butter, please?”

She would have killed for a scoop of ice cream on top, but it was just her luck that the first time she gave herself a break from the gallery, the temperature would suddenly drop back into glove-wearing weather. And her, with no gloves. She shook off the thought as soon as it formed. No more bad luck. No more beating herself up.

She felt a buzz from the cell phone in her coat pocket. It was a text from Lily. Fresh air yet?

She typed in a return message: Fresh, freezing air. Yes.

Waffle?

Just ordered. Strawberries & nanas.

Ice cream, woman!

Too brrrrr … Bye. Waffle here!

Alice returned her phone to her pocket and grabbed her lunch through the truck window, grateful for the warmth against her fingers. Even more grateful for the mixture of the sweet flavor of fruit with the crisp buttery waffle.

She resisted the temptation to swallow the thing whole. Despite the cold, she walked to the Westside and parked herself on a bench before allowing herself further bites. She tried not to look too pleased with herself as panting joggers glanced enviously in her direction.

She had polished off her meal and was halfway back to the gallery when she felt a buzz in her pocket. It was Lily again.

Hey look: You left the gallery & the world didn’t break.

You were right. Thanks. She typed in a smiley face, a colon followed by a dash and a closing parenthesis.

The world may not have broken, but something had changed back at the gallery.

When she first spotted the small crowd huddled together on the sidewalk, she couldn’t believe the uncanny timing. She had somehow managed to hang out her “Be Right Back” sign just as a burst of walk-in activity arrived. She tried not to chalk it up to her bad luck. But then she saw the signs and knew that impatient customers were not the problem.

What can 311 Online help you with today?

Those were the words staring at Alice from the laptop screen as Alice tried to decide whether to make the call.

Child abuse isn’t art.

Highline or Hell’s Line?

God hates pornographers.

Those were the words staring at Alice from the placards held by protesters lining the sidewalk outside her gallery. A few of the signs referred to biblical passages whose significance she was in no position to recognize.

Despite his warning that he wanted no involvement in the day-to-day happenings at the gallery, she had tried phoning Drew. He wasn’t answering his cell, so she’d called Jeff. Jeff was the one who suggested calling 311, New York City’s nonemergency help line.

The Web site made it sound simple enough. What can 311 Online help you with today? Well, you could help me kick the Bible-belting, freedom-hating nut jobs away from the only gainful employment I’ve had in a year. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Still, Alice hadn’t called immediately. Controversy and attention were nourishment to these kinds of people. A police presence would only support their narrative: good, holy people oppressed by the godless bureaucratic machine of New York City.

So instead she tried to ignore them. She tallied up another round of phone tag with John Lawson, an artist who incorporated Mardi Gras beads into his sculptures, trying to persuade him once again to commit to a showing this summer. She updated the gallery’s growing Web site to include the latest blogosphere references to the opening. She even added a new, meaningless status to her Facebook profile: “Wafels & Dinges!”

It was the NY1 truck that put her over the edge. She watched as an attractive correspondent stepped from the passenger seat. She recognized her from television. What was her name? Sandra Pak, that was it. She was followed shortly by the jeans-clad, bearded cameraman who emerged from the back of the van.

Sure enough, the man she’d pegged as the protesters’ ringleader made a beeline to the camera. The man could have been anywhere between fifty and seventy, depending on how he’d lived his life. About six feet tall, but that was taking into account the hunching. Thin. A little gaunt, in fact. Hollowed cheeks. His frame curved like a human question mark.

She watched as the man scurried to the reporter, the crown of her dark hair bundled into a shiny beehive, the chubby cameraman struggling to keep pace, even though he wore sneakers and she balanced in ambitious four-inch platform pumps.

She had to put an end to this.

Three … one … one. Four rings before an answer, followed by a series of recorded messages about the opposite-side-of-the-street parking schedule. Had she really expected a sugary sweet voice to greet her with, “What can 311 help you with today?”

When a live operator finally picked up, Alice explained the situation. Gallery manager. Protesters. Name-calling signs. She did her best to include the buzzwords she thought would make a difference. Disruptive. Harassing. Blocking the entrance.

“Has anyone trespassed on your property?”

“Um, no, they didn’t actually enter inside the property. Yet.”

“Have they engaged in any physical contact with you or anyone else, ma’am?”

Ma’am. Alice knew that being called ma’am by a government employee was not a good sign. “Well, no, nothing physical. But they’re creating a public disturbance.”

“Please hold.”

Three minutes until she returned. “If these people are exercising their rights to free speech, I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do for you.”

“But they’re creating a public disturbance.”

“Ma’am, you’re running a business in New York City. What you think of as a public disturbance, some people call the city’s flavor. You know what I mean?”

“Would you be saying that if I were calling from Citibank instead of some fledgling art gallery in the Meatpacking District?”

“Please hold.”

Three more minutes. The cameras still rolling outside.

A male voice came on the line. That in itself bothered her for some reason.

“Miss Humphrey?”

She wondered if her actual name was a promotion from ma’am or simply an escalation. “Yes.”

“If you’d like to go to your local precinct to file a report, the address is—”

“I don’t want to go to my local precinct, because I’m at work trying to run a business. I am calling you because these extremists are disrupting that business.”

“I realize that, ma’am, but—”

“Shouldn’t someone at least come out here to see what’s happening and decide whether it’s legal or not? I mean, I’m not a police officer. I don’t know the difference between protected speech and public nuisance. Isn’t that what police are for?”

“Please hold.”

Alice looked at the time on her laptop. Minutes ticking by. Camera rolling outside.

She heard a long, solid beep over the Muzak piped in by 311. The other line. It could be Drew. She stared at the buttons at the phone, realizing she had no clue how to click over to the other line without disconnecting the call. Fuck.

“Highline Gallery. This is Alice.”

“Good, you’re still at your desk.”

She recognized her father’s voice.

“Hey, Papa. Can I call you back?”

Up until last year, her father had been a regular caller. Too regular, in fact. Regular enough that she’d made a point never to mention her cell phone number.

“Don’t say anything to those cocksucking reporters.”

“Excuse me. What?”

“I’ve been pulled into this game before. Don’t do it. Stay away from the vultures.”

“Wait, this mess is out there already?”

“Your mother called me. It’s on New York One as we speak.” The magic of live television. “A group like that will want to paint you as the bad guy. Same as Daily News and the Post. Cable news might be the same if it goes national. They’re all trying to outfox Fox. I’ve fallen for it, and I’ve been burned every time. You need the New Yorker. Maybe the Times. The libertarianish blogs would be good. Huffington Post would be terrific. Make it all about free speech. Theirs and yours. The more speech, the better. That’s the high ground.”

It had been a long time since she’d felt like this with her father. Symbiotic. Comfortable. Papa to the rescue.

She heard the long, solid beep again. Maybe Drew had finally picked up her messages.

“I gotta go, Papa. But thanks. Really … Highline Gallery, this is Alice.”

“Hi, Peter Morse from the Daily News. I was calling about your Hans Schuler exhibit?”

She recited a few of Schuler’s bullet points. The SELF series. Self-introspection. Mainstreaming radicalism. She left out the part where she herself had spent a good couple of weeks calling the stuff pornography.

“Sounds like it’s right out of the artist’s brochure. Between me and you, I’m looking at this guy’s stuff online. Is there really any art to be found there? The Reverend George Hardy of the Redemption of Christ Church certainly thinks not.”

“The value of art—and speech—is in the eye of the beholder and the ear of the listener. Mr. Schuler has a right to free speech, and we’ve been happy to help showcase his provocative images.” She found herself grateful for her father’s advice. “Whether people enjoy them or not, if the pictures get the community thinking and talking, we think that’s all for the bett—”

“And what about the allegations that the photographs contain pornographic images of minor children?”

“Excuse me?”

“The Redemption of Christ Church alleges that one of the models in Schuler’s series is a teenage girl. That would make the photographs in violation of criminal law, unprotected by the First Amendment.”

She immediately swiveled her chair to face one of Schuler’s photographs, the one called First. The flat chest. Thin, boyish hips. Flawless pale flesh.

“No comment.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Alice had been hunched over her laptop so long that the small of her back ached. When she lifted her wrists to work out the kinks, she saw a crease in her skin from the pressure of her forearms against the edge of her pine breakfast table.

Despite all of her online digging, she still had no one to contact about the growing public relations disaster besides Drew Campbell, who was not answering his phone.

As a car commercial faded out on the television, she heard the familiar staccato theme music of the Channel 7 news. She reached for the remote control to crank up the volume.

A male anchor in a light blue suit with a plastered mushroom of thick black hair introduced the story. “City officials and local religious leaders are weighing in on the elusive line between art and obscenity tonight, thanks to a controversial exhibit at a new gallery in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. The Highline Gallery has not yet been open a week and already has the city in an uproar.”

The screen flashed to images pulled directly from Hans Schuler’s Web site, and the audio switched to a female correspondent’s voice.

“Blood. Saliva. Nudity.” The camera tightened in around each referenced image, cropping any nudity they could not air. “Unknown artist Hans Schuler calls the photographs in his SELF series ‘a portrait in radical introspection.’ A growing chorus of critics, however, say Schuler has crossed a line into obscenity.”

Flash to a female protester. “Those pictures are disgusting. They shouldn’t be in a gallery, and they shouldn’t be on the Internet.”

“Of course, nudity in the art world is nothing new,” the correspondent announced. “The Museum of Modern Art created headlines last year with a show featuring live nude models, but the only point of contention was making sure that observers didn’t touch the art. The image that brought these protesters to Manhattan is this one, called First, which the protesters claim is an image of a minor.”

The screen cut to the gaunt man who led the protests, the caption identifying him as George Hardy, Pastor, Redemption of Christ Church. “Just looking at the picture is enough to raise questions about the age of that so-called model. But the artist won’t answer those questions. The lady at the gallery won’t come outside, won’t answer the question, and won’t assure us she’s not selling child pornography. Well, my daddy always used to tell me, where there’s smoke there’s fire. If they’ve got nothing to hide, they could put this thing to rest right now.”

Now the screen changed to a pan across the piece of art in question. The correspondent narrated. “We at Eyewitness News have blocked out almost the entire photograph because we have also been unable to confirm the age of the depicted model. Some local officials are calling for the exhibit’s removal pending verification of the model’s age.”

The multiple black bars pasted across the photograph created the impression of more tawdriness than the collage actually contained.

“The manager of the Highline Gallery declined our request for an on-camera interview, but the gallery did release a written statement: ‘The Highline Gallery promotes the work of provocative, cutting-edge artists who, like Hans Schuler, create art that makes us think, react, and sometimes even become uncomfortable with our own thoughts and reactions. We of course condemn and would never agree to display indecent depictions of minor children, but we have heard no evidence to support these disturbing allegations. Without articulation of a good-faith basis for the accusation, we respect the First Amendment rights of our artists.’

“For now, it sounds like the city’s mayor agrees.”

Alice wanted to believe she was managing the public relations aspect of this disaster as well as could be expected, on her own, isolated from the information that actually mattered. She had issued the written statement. She had stopped answering the gallery phone, letting all calls go to voice mail with the same statement recorded as the outgoing message. Last time she checked, she had received not only that first call she had answered from the Daily News, but also calls from the Post, Times, Sun, Observer, and a place called Empire Media.

The film cut to an image of Mayor Michael Bloomberg stepping from the backseat of a town car. “This isn’t the first time someone’s been offended by art. I support artistic freedom, and I support the First Amendment. If there is evidence that laws have been broken, we will take that evidence seriously and prosecute offenders under the law.”

“It seems the one person who isn’t commenting tonight is the artist himself. According to his Web site, Hans Schuler communicates with his followers only on the Internet so as not to taint the world’s perception of his art. Although the origin of this photograph might still be a mystery, one thing is certain: with this level of controversy, Hans Schuler isn’t likely to remain unknown for long.”

“We’ll keep an eye on this one, Robin. Sounds like it could turn into a real wrangle.”

“Sure thing, Andy. One interesting side note about the gallery. Its manager is Alice Humphrey, the daughter of Frank Humphrey and his former leading lady, Rose Sampson.”

Great. Apparently there was icing to go on the cake.

“Oh, sure. She was the kid in that show about the single father—what was it called?—Life with Dad.”

“Before my time, I’m afraid, Andy, but importantly, Alice Humphrey’s own father is no stranger to scandal. His acclaimed film The Patron was boycotted by the Catholic Church for its depiction of a steamy affair involving a Catholic bishop. It was his long and seemingly devoted marriage to the beloved actress Rose Sampson that often softened a public persona defined by his explicit films and controversial public statements, but of course that all changed when several women came forward last year with evidence of multiple extramarital affairs with Humphrey over the years. So far, his wife has been standing by him, and the family had begun to fade from the headlines until this new story involving his daughter—”

Alice couldn’t stand it any longer. She hit the mute button and was relieved when the broadcast moved on to a story that appeared to be about the beneficial health effects of red wine.

She returned her attention to her computer.

Schuler had not responded to any of her many texts, and a call to the number she’d been using for their texts went unanswered. She’d made no progress finding additional contact information for the artist online. Other than his Web site, the man was a ghost.

More creatively, she’d been trying to track down the gallery owner using the few facts she’d gleaned about his biography from Drew. Moneyed. Maintained a part-time presence in Tampa since Drew was a kid, making him a considerably older man. Plagued by long-whispered rumors about his sexuality. Presumably here in New York. Sufficiently well known for the name to be familiar.

She prided herself on pretty clever Googling skills, but so far, she’d come up with squat.

She tried Drew’s number for the umpteenth time. Straight to voice mail once again.

Moving her cursor to the search window, she typed in “George Hardy,” and then clicked to review recent news articles. The first cluster of hits linked to stories covering that afternoon’s protest outside the Highline Gallery. But as she scrolled through a series of pages, she learned more about the Reverend Hardy and his Redemption of Christ Church. Based out of southern Virginia. Founded by Hardy only a decade earlier. They’d made a name for themselves protesting seemingly everything—abortion clinics, “antifamily” movies, same-sex commitment ceremonies, and the funerals of American soldiers for defending a depraved nation that had lost its way.

Her cell phone rang. Blocked call. She answered.

“Hey, it’s Drew.”

“Thank God. I’ve been calling you all day. I put out a statement, but we need to reach Schuler. Call the gallery owner. Make Schuler prove the model’s age.”

“There’s something I need to tell you. I’ll meet you at the gallery tomorrow morning. Early. Seven, okay?”

“Wait. I need to know—”

But somehow she knew in the silence of the receiver he was gone. “Drew? Hello? Are you there?” She called his cell, but once again, she immediately heard his outgoing message. She hit redial for another hour until she finally forced herself to go to bed.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Hank Beckman made it to Jersey before the crack of dawn, determined to return to the city with the vehicle identification number of Travis Larson’s newly acquired BMW. He parked across the street from the apartment complex, tucked the slim jim up his coat sleeve, and stepped out from behind the wheel.

He kept his eye on Larson’s front door as he made his way into the parking lot. He was within fifteen feet of the car, slipping the slim jim from its hiding place, when he saw movement at the top of the stairs.

Saying a silent thank-you for the pricks who still drove gas guzzlers, he dodged behind a GMC Yukon and bent down next to the tire, faking a tie of his shoelaces in case a neighbor caught a glance. He heard Larson’s footsteps move quickly down the stairs and across the concrete. Larson wasted no time hopping into the driver’s seat and firing up the BMW’s engine, not bothering to signal when he pulled out of the lot.

Hank trotted back to his own car, flipped a quick U, and headed after the BMW. By the time he reached the T at the end of the road, Larson was already gone. Hank played the odds and hung a right, heading for the city.

It was just past six in the morning, but traffic was already starting to accumulate outside the Lincoln Tunnel. His eyes scanned the lanes of cars lined up to pay their tolls, searching for the gray sedan in what seemed like a sea of light-colored luxury cars.

Then he thought again about his previous glimpse through Larson’s dash. He prided himself on his photographic memory. He could pull mental images from his past and display them like a virtual snapshot against the blackness of his closed eyelids. How many times had he pictured Ellen beaming across the table from him, a bright smile above her wine glass, as she announced her engagement to the man sitting beside her? The man who just hadn’t rubbed Hank right. The man who was too young. The man whose name turned out not to be Randall after all.

He shook the image away as if it were sand in an Etch A Sketch and instead pulled up a visual of Larson’s front window. Pictured the New York magazine, the one with the funny looking black-and-white dog on the cover, concealing the VIN. Saw the gray pebbled console. The black rearview mirror. And the unoccupied glass around it.

Larson hadn’t had an E-ZPass, the automated toll-payment device users mounted to their front windshield. Hank moved two lanes to the left, pulling himself closer to the Cash Only toll lanes. He spotted Larson two lanes over, about six car lengths in front of him.

No problem. Hank inched up, watching his progress against Larson until he merged into his E-ZPass lane.

By the time the gray BMW emerged from the tunnel, Hank was lingering in the right lane, ready to pull in behind him.

He worried about the man spotting him. Hank had made the trip in his personal vehicle, confident from his past rounds of surveillance that Larson would be dead to the world this early. He found comfort in Larson’s speed. He didn’t seem to be paying attention to traffic around him. He didn’t act like a man worried about a tail.

Larson drove north on Sixth Avenue, then curved into the West Village on West Fourth Street. Hank forced himself to remain a block and a half behind the BMW on the narrow streets, still quiet this time of morning. When he spotted the glow of Larson’s brake lights midblock past the stop sign at Bank Street, he immediately hit the button to roll down his window as he pulled to the curb on Washington. He watched as Larson parallel-parked. Leaned his ear outside as Larson hopped out of the car, looking both ways before crossing the street. He saw Larson disappear into a storefront, but couldn’t identify the business from this vantage point.

Hank pulled forward to the stop sign, hung a left on Bank, and then circled around to park north of the BMW and head south on foot. He took the red wool scarf he’d brought for the occasion—remembered Ellen giving it to him for Christmas—and wrapped it around his cheeks. Slipped the slim jim up his coat sleeve.

He paused at the curb beside the BMW. Did a quick visual of the interior. Nothing. He was relieved to see that Larson had removed the magazine from the dash. He had a clear look at the VIN and jotted it down.

He felt the slim jim against his forearm. It was an unnecessary risk, but he was moving too fast now to rethink his decision. He hadn’t heard the beep-beep of an activated alarm when Larson left the car. The sidewalks were still empty. It was now or never. Just one quick peek.

He forced the slim jim past the rubber seal of the driver’s side window. Allowed himself to exhale when no alarm blasted the neighborhood silence. He began to jiggle, counting off the passed seconds in his head. One, one thousand, two, one thousand. He had vowed to give himself only fifteen seconds before hightailing it back to his own car.

Thirteen thousand. He felt the lock release.

Still seeing no one, he popped the glove box. Completely empty. Pulled the lever for the trunk, shut the door, and headed to the rear of the car. Also empty.

He clicked the trunk shut and made his way north to his Toyota Camry. Made three left turns: Greenwich, to Bethune, and back onto Washington.

As he cruised past the parked BMW, he checked out the storefronts across the street. He identified what looked like a flower shop and a shoe store as candidates for Larson’s location, a closed-down storefront separating the two.

Nice car. Pretty girl. Early-morning drives. And absolutely nothing in his ride, not even an owner’s manual or registration.

The next step was to run the VIN.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Her apartment had to be cold—it always was in the winter, thanks to the lousy furnace and cheap windows—but Alice woke up with the covers kicked from her body and a thin sheen of perspiration coating her skin. She was thankful to be one of those people who could never truly remember her dreams. Although the details of last night’s sleep were fuzzy, they’d left behind a shadow of anxiety still lingering in her core.

Even as she shuffled into the shower, images from her sleep flashed through her mind. Hans Schuler’s photographs. The protesters. Those ugly words plastered onto their signs. News cameras. Standing at a podium before an auditorium full of reporters. The white lights of flashbulbs blinding her. A hush covering the room as she began to speak. Looking down at her notes to find nothing but blank paper. A thin, balding man chasing her. In her dream, she imagined he was Hans Schuler. Or maybe he was the Reverend George Harvey. Or perhaps he was no one—just a physical representation of the horrible feeling she carried in her subconscious about yesterday’s protest at the gallery.

She held her head beneath the spray of hot water, as if she could literally wash away the thoughts from her mind and send them spiraling down the drain.

Even after the long shower, she had too much time on her hands before her meet-up with Drew. She used the extra minutes to check the online situation.

She entered “Highline Gallery Hans Schuler” into her search engine and hit enter. As the computer did its thinking, she hoped against hope that she would find no new results since the previous night.

No such luck. As she’d suspected, the story had gone viral. What started as a local New York story had been picked up on the wires, was spreading blog to blog, and was now being “retweeted” across the Web with irreverent headlines like “Hans Smut-ler” and “New York Art Show: Mainstream Radicalism or Old School Porn?”

On the Daily News Web site, she was happy to see that the story of a missing girl in Dover, New Jersey, had replaced the gallery for top billing. No surprise. Alabaster skin, full lips, a few freckles for good measure. Becca Stevenson’s photo beneath a banner declaration—MISSING—made good newspaper copy. Alice felt a pang of guilt as she registered her hope that the media vultures would latch on to the missing girl story instead of her own saga.

She moved her cursor back to the search window. This time, she searched for her own name, plus the words “Highline Gallery.” Maybe Channel 7 would be the only outlet to play up her family background.

Despite her hopes, she found story after story identifying the gallery’s manager as the daughter of Frank Humphrey and Rose Sampson. Almost all of them alluded to the controversies her father had created with his own work. Most also mentioned his recently exposed infidelities—the “casting couch” allegations, the scandalous ages of the women involved. Then she reached a news update that she found herself rereading.

Alice Humphrey is only the latest member of her family to find herself at the center of controversy. In addition to her father’s reported extramarital and perhaps even coerced sexual activity going back decades, her brother, Ben, was arrested last weekend for drug possession. According to two separate NYPD sources, Ben Humphrey, 41, was arrested after police found marijuana in his possession while investigating a noise complaint outside of a West Village bar.

She remembered Ben’s unexplained absence from the gallery opening. Recalled her parents’ anxious expressions, wondering whether he was back to his old ways.

She quickly pulled up his number on her cell, but heard only his familiar outgoing message: “This is Ben. You know the drill.” Even when he was clean, Ben was not the type to answer a phone this early in the morning.

As she disconnected the call, she caught the time displayed on the screen: 6:34. Shit. Time to meet Drew. Her brother’s problems would have to wait.

She found herself working the metal of the gallery key between her bare fingers inside her coat pocket like a worry stone. If it weren’t for those ridiculous protesters, she would have had time yesterday to pick up a new pair of gloves to replace the ones that were still missing. One more reason to hate the fuckers.

Alice wasn’t proud of this aspect of her personality, the complete inability to harness free-floating anxieties. She was the kind of person who could not sit still once she realized an unsent piece of mail still lingered on her desk, who would wake in the middle of the night with a recollection of an unreturned phone call.

Her relationship with stress was one of the reasons she had never felt at ease with the acting career her mother had so desperately sought for her. The standing around, biding time before the next scene. Wondering if the director was going to alter the dialogue or the order of filming. Waiting to know whether the powers that be would pick up the pilot or approve the dailies. The constant uncertainty had left her feeling unfocused and insecure, never able to find peace within herself.

The irony that she had chosen a safer path only to find herself out of work for nearly a year was not lost on her. Now she had finally landed not only a job, but a fabulous one at that, and once again she found herself trying to anticipate what would happen next.

As she continued to rub that key between her fingers, she resolved that her involvement in this nightmare would end today. She would not spend another night as she had the last, tossing and turning in bed while those awful images rushed through her mind. She would take control of this situation, or at least her role in it. She was through with Drew’s middleman smokescreen. She would simply refuse to end this morning’s meeting until he put her in direct contact with Schuler. And if he couldn’t connect her to Schuler, she’d insist on speaking with the gallery’s owner. And if all else failed, she would quit. She’d go back to being jobless. She’d break down and ask her parents to help, if it became necessary.

But no matter what happened, her anxiety about those photographs would be assuaged. Hopefully, it would be a simple matter of verifying the model’s age and identity. A quickie press release, and all would be forgotten. And if the verification didn’t come, she’d take the omission as a sign that the Reverend Harvey might actually be onto something, and she would walk away. Regardless, she would no longer be part of this story by the time the day ended.

She found comfort in that knowledge. She’d found a small element of control.

As she approached the gallery, she spotted brown butcher paper lining the previously unobstructed glass. Drew had been quite the busy bee this morning. She let out a frustrated sigh. She was as upset about the protesters’ allegations as anyone, but covering the windows like some seedy peep-show emporium was a little over the top. Knowing—okay, not knowing at all—but based on her assumptions about Hans Schuler, she wondered if this was the artist’s way of generating even more controversy, along with the attendant publicity.

The security gate was unrolled over the glass entrance, but when she bent down to unlock it, she found it unsecured. Drew must have pulled it down behind him. She rolled the gate open and found the front door also unlocked. She pushed it open, ready to find Drew waiting for her at the desk. Instead, the lights were off. The space black.

“Drew?”

He must have stepped out for coffee. If she was going to continue to work here, she’d have to talk to him about leaving the place unattended, even at this early hour.

She made her way through the gallery space, struggling to adjust her vision to the dark, wondering who the genius was who installed the light switches in back. She was relieved when she finally felt the rear wall. She ran her hand along the now-familiar row of switches, but nothing happened.

Damn it. She had no idea where the fuse box was in this place.

She worked her way toward the fire exit, one hand against the wall. Fumbled with the bolt until she felt it release. She was disappointed when only a gray ray of morning light crept through the propped open door.

She knew immediately when she turned to face the interior of the gallery again that something was wrong. It was one of those unexpected realizations. A dawning of awareness at a cellular level. The rhythms of this space had already become ingrained. Even in the dark, her brain was wired to expect certain shaded forms—the low leather banquettes dividing the gallery in half, the glass-topped desk toward the front door, the very objects that she’d been careful to avoid bumping into as she’d worked her way to this place. But she saw nothing but evenness in her field of vision.

“Drew?”

Her voice sounded different in the room. Louder. With a touch of an echo.

Every sense was telling her that something had changed. She fumbled inside her purse for her cell phone and activated the screen for a tiny pocket of light. Did a 180-degree scan of the room. Saw an empty floor where the benches had been. Saw uninterrupted blank space on the wall where Hans Schuler’s First had hung.

Fuck. She had assumed the brown paper on the windows was a cheap publicity stunt—a very public effort to obscure their so-called pornography from public view—but now she realized Drew had been even busier this morning, and even more overreactive, than she’d first assumed. It looked like she wouldn’t be calling the shots about how the end would go down. Obviously the owner was pulling the plug.

She was tempted to walk out the door and leave the entire experiment behind her, but thought Drew owed her an explanation. She assumed, based on the open gate, that he’d be returning.

As she walked toward the front of the gallery, she noticed a shadow on the floor—some sort of pile. She took each step carefully, as if the sounds of her footsteps might disrupt it. Fifteen steps from the pile. Now ten. Five.

Despite her caution, she felt the sole of her boot slide beneath her on the floor. Felt her weight pulling her down backward. She reflexively stuck her hands beneath her, forgetting all those old ski lessons about protecting your wrists in a fall. She heard her cell phone tumble to the floor.

Her body hit the ground, palms first, and then slid against the tile. Wet. Warm. Sticky. Paint?

She pulled herself to her knees and crawled toward the form on the ground. Used a tentative hand to tap what she recognized upon touch as some kind of fabric. A rug? A large canvas?

She patted the form’s edges and jerked upright when she finally identified a texture with certainty. Hair. Coarse human hair.

She scrambled on the slick tile, fumbling for her phone. Found the button at the bottom. Aimed the tiny beam of light toward what she now suspected was a body.

Drew Campbell lay on his side, a magenta pool forming beneath him despite the bundling of his winter coat. Her hands and knees and shins and forearms were soaked in his fresh blood.

She felt her fingertips stick to the glass screen of her phone as she dialed 911.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

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“God damn it.”

Detective Jason Morhart hit the enter key on his computer once again, this time so hard he thought it might not pop back into place.

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“Fuck.”

“Cursing’s for the uncreative. They say ‘Frack!’ on Battlestar Galactica, and everyone still knows what it means.”

Nancy had appeared at his desk about six presses of the return key ago. Her job was to process file requests. In her mind, that plus a few software classes at the community college made her the resident computer expert at the police department. No one had the heart to disabuse her of the notion. He knew for a fact that Nancy could out-cuss a cussing contest at a sailor’s convention, but that wasn’t going to stop her from ribbing him about his temper.

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