The Spellman Files (5 page)

“I need a Coke” was my only response. The nausea was kicking in again.

David was silent.

“Or a Pepsi,” I offered.

David grabbed me by the arm and led me down the hallway, through the main corridor, and into the men’s restroom.

“I can’t go in there,” I protested.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m a girl, David.”

“At the moment, it’s not even clear that you are human,” David smartly replied as he dragged me inside. A suited man was standing at the urinal, overhearing the last bit of our conversation as he finished up.

David turned to the suited man, who was zipping his fly. “Excuse the interruption, Mark. I need to teach my twenty-three-year-old sister how to wash her face.”

Mark smiled uncomfortably and exited the bathroom. David placed his hands on my shoulders and turned me squarely toward the mirror.

“This is not how you show up for a business meeting.”

Finding the courage to look at my reflection, I saw that my eye makeup had migrated halfway down my face and my hair, stringy and tangled, was bunched up on one side. The buttons on my shirt were askew and it looked like I had slept in it. Because I had. Then there was the problem with my wearing only one shoe.

“Clean yourself up. I’ll be right back,” David said.

Rather than request a transfer to the women’s restroom, I stayed put and did as I was told. Once I finished scrubbing the dirt and makeup off my face and gulped a pint of tap water directly from the spout, I retreated to a stall to avoid any further contact with my brother’s colleagues. At least two men entered and urinated while I was waiting for David to return. I began daydreaming that he’d find it in his heart to bring me a Coke on ice.

“Open up,” David said, as he banged on my stall. I could tell by the tone of his voice and the timbre of the bang that he was Coke free. I opened the door and David handed me a newly starched men’s oxford shirt in a 38 regular, along with a stick of extra-strength deodorant.

“Put these on,” he said. “Quickly. Mulberg is waiting in my office.”

When I exited the stall, a pair of women’s sandals was waiting for me on the floor.

“Size seven, right?” David asked.

“No. Size nine.”

“Close enough.”

“Where did you get those?”

“From my secretary.”

“Since you’re so good at persuading women to remove their clothes, maybe you could get the rest of her outfit,” I suggested.

“I could, but your ass wouldn’t fit in it.”

We finished assembling my slapdash ensemble and concluded that while I looked remarkably unfashionable and unattractive, I no longer appeared hungover and irresponsible. David sprayed me with his cologne as we left the men’s restroom and ventured into our meeting.

“Great. Now I smell like you.”

“I wish.”

Larry Mulberg was hardly a fashion plate himself and I suspected he would have no comment about my substandard attire. David’s secretary entered the office in stocking feet and asked if anyone would like a beverage, and I finally got my Coke. The meeting went well: I explained to Mulberg the financial benefits of outsourcing background checks and gave him a thorough overview of my family’s expertise in that area. I’m rather good at talking nonrelatives into things, so Mulberg bought it all, not once noticing the green tinge to my complexion or my bloodshot eyes.

I detached the size-seven sandals and handed them back to David’s secretary, thanking her profusely. Returning to my brother’s office, I changed back into my wrinkled shirt and reluctantly tossed my abandoned sneaker in the trash.

“David, can you loan me cab money?” I asked, gesturing at my bare feet, expecting some sympathy. David, already behind his desk hard at work, stared at me coldly. He reached into his back pocket, took out a twenty, and left it on the edge of the desk. He then returned to writing his brief.

“Well, uh, thanks,” I said, after I took the bill. “I’ll pay you back,” I continued, heading for the door. I almost made it out of the office before David finished me off.

“Make sure I
never
see you like that again,” he said slowly and deliberately. It was not a piece of advice.

Then he ordered me to leave. And I did. In that moment I realized that the role of the raven-haired golden boy David played to my mousy-brown fuckup was not the plum part I had always imagined. It occurred to me that while I was egging the neighbor’s yard, David never had the chance to try it himself. Destruction and rebellion are a natural part of adolescence. But David, always cleaning up after me, compensating for me, lost that essential rite of passage. Instead, he became a textbook son. And his only flaw was that he didn’t know how to be imperfect.

I believe that miraculous transformations, the kind that usually involve a preacher smacking you over the head, are rare, so rare that when they do occur, they often cause suspicion. While my change was hardly on the scale of a miracle, it was substantial. Yes, you could still find me in a wrinkled shirt, or downing a few too many, or uttering an inappropriate comment, but you wouldn’t find me leaving messes for other people to clean up. That part I stopped cold turkey.

Initially, the wave of distrust precipitated by quasi-responsible Isabel was profound enough to almost cause a relapse. My mother was convinced it was some kind of sinister trick and questioned my motives with the skepticism of a research scientist. For at least two weeks straight, my father said around the clock, “All right, Isabel, what gives?” Uncle Ray, on the other hand, appeared genuinely concerned and suggested that vitamins might help. In fact, for the first few weeks, New Isabel prompted more hostility than Old Isabel. But I knew it was only a matter of time before I would build the trust, and when it finally happened, I could almost feel the breeze from the collective sigh of relief.

The mythology that surrounds my work is impossible to shake. The lore of the gumshoe has had decades to flourish in our culture, but not all myth is based in fact. The truth about the PI is that we don’t solve cases. We explore them. We tie up loose threads, perhaps uncover a few surprises. We provide proof of a question for which the answer is already known.

Inspector Stone, on the other hand, does solve mysteries. Not the tidy ones from crime novels, but mysteries nonetheless.

Stone consults his notes in an effort to avoid eye contact. I wonder if it is me or if it’s what he does with everyone, in order to shield himself from their pain.

“When was the last time you saw your sister?” Stone asks.

“It was four days ago.”

“Can you describe her mood for me? The details of your interaction?”

I remember everything, but it doesn’t seem relevant. Stone is asking all the wrong questions.

“Do you have any leads?” I ask.

“We’re looking into everything,” Stone replies, the standard police response.

“Have you talked to the Snow family?”

“We don’t believe they were involved.”

“Isn’t it worth checking into?”

“Please answer my question, Isabel.”

“Why don’t you answer mine? My sister has been missing for three days now and you’ve got nothing.”

“We’re doing everything we can. But you need to cooperate. You need to answer my questions. Do you understand me, Isabel?”

“Yes.”

“We have to talk about Rae,” Stone says in an almost hushed tone.

I suppose it is time. I’ve been postponing it long enough.

B
orn six weeks premature, Rae weighed exactly four pounds when she was brought home from the hospital. Unlike many preemies who grow into normal-size children, Rae would always remain small for her age. I was fourteen at the time of her birth and determined to ignore the fact that a newborn baby was sharing my home. I referred to her as “it” for the first year, pretending that she was a recently acquired object, like a lamp or an alarm clock. Any acknowledgment I made of her presence was along the lines of “Can you move it outside? I’m trying to study,” or “Where’s the mute button on this thing?” No one found my objectifying remarks amusing, let alone me. I was not amused at all. I was terrified that this child would grow up to be another symbol of perfection like David. I soon discovered that Rae was no David, although she was extraordinary nonetheless.

Rae, Age 4

I told her she was an accident. It was over dinner, after she bombarded me for twenty minutes with questions about my day. I was tired, probably hungover, and in no mood to be interrogated by a four-year-old.

“Rae, did you know you were an accident?”

And Rae started laughing. “I was?” It was her habit back then to laugh whenever she didn’t understand something.

My mother gave me her usual cold stare and began damage control, explaining that some children were planned and some were not, et cetera. Rae seemed far more baffled by the concept of planning a child than not planning one and grew bored with my mother’s unnecessary discourse.

Rae, Age 6

Rae begged for three days straight to be allowed on a surveillance job. The begging was relentless and inconsolable. It was the on-her-knees, clasped-handed, insistent-whine-of-
pleeeeease
kind of begging that continued for most of her waking hours. Eventually my parents gave in.

She was six. Six, I repeat. When my parents told me that Rae would be joining us the next day on the Peter Youngstrom surveillance, I suggested that they’d
lost their fucking minds.
My mother apparently had, shouting, “You try! You try listening to that begging all day long! I’d rather have a toenail slowly removed than go through that again.” My father seconded that with, “Two toenails.”

That night I showed Rae how to use a radio. My father hadn’t updated the equipment for a few years. While the radios were perfectly utilitarian, they were also the size of Rae’s entire arm. I stuck the five-pound electronic device into her Snoopy backpack, along with some fruit roll-ups, packaged cheese and crackers, and a couple of
Highlights
magazines. The mouthpiece I slipped through the opening of the backpack and clipped to the collar of her coat. I showed her how to reach through the zipper opening and adjust the volume on the radio. Then all she had to do was press down the button on the mouthpiece when she wanted to talk.

We began the detail outside the subject’s home at approximately six o’clock in the morning. Rae awoke at 5:00
A.M
., brushed her teeth, washed her face, and dressed. She sat by the door from 5:15 to 5:45
A.M
., until the rest of us were ready to leave. My father told me I could take a lesson. As we waited in the surveillance van three doors down from the subject’s residence, Rae and I once again tested and reviewed radio procedures. I reminded her that crossing a street without being given the okay from Mom or Dad would result in a punishment so awful, her young mind could not envision it. Then my mom reiterated the street-crossing rule.

Rae followed every instruction to a T her first day on the job. I usually took point, instructing Rae by example on the general rules of surveillance. You could provide a manual on how to perform an effective surveillance, but those most suited for it follow their instincts. It didn’t surprise anyone that Rae was a natural. I suppose we all expected it, just not to the level at which she adapted to the work.

I closed my distance from Youngstrom when the noon lunch traffic cut down on visibility. I was within ten feet of my subject when he made an unexpected one-eighty and shot back down the sidewalk in my direction. He passed me, brushing against my shoulder and offering a quiet “Excuse me.” I was made and could no longer take point. Rae was about ten yards behind me and my mother and father were a short distance behind her. Rae saw Youngstrom turn back before my parents did. She quickly ducked under some scaffolding hidden from his view. My parents, focused on their six-year-old daughter, didn’t notice the subject until he was practically standing right in front of them. Rae realized that she was the logical person to take point and made the offer into the radio.

“Can I go?” Rae pleaded, watching Youngstrom slowly fade out of view.

I could hear my mother sigh into the radio before she replied. “Yes,” she said hesitantly, and Rae took off.

Rae ran down the street to catch up to the brisk walk of a man over two feet taller than she. When the subject turned left, heading west on Montgomery, my mother lost sight of Rae and I could hear the panic in her voice when she called to her through the radio.

“Rae, where are you?”

“I’m waiting for the light to turn green,” Rae replied.

“Can you see the subject?” I asked, knowing that Rae was safe.

“He’s going into a building,” she said.

“Rae, don’t cross the street. Wait until Daddy and I catch up,” my mother said.

“But he’s getting away.”

“Stay put,” my father said more forcefully.

“What does the building look like?” I asked.

“It’s big with lots of windows.”

“Can you see an address, Rae?” I asked, then rephrased the question. “Numbers, Rae. Do you see any numbers?”

“I’m not close enough.”

“Don’t even think of moving,” my mother reiterated.

“There’s a sign. It’s blue,” said Rae.

“What does it say?” I asked.

“M-O-M-A,” Rae slowly spelled. This was undoubtedly an unnatural situation: My little sister was learning how to perform a surveillance before she could even read.

“Rae, Mommy’s going to pick you up at the corner. Don’t move. Izzy, I’ll meet you at the entrance to MOMA,” said my father. And then it occurred to me that, as a family, this was the first time we had gone to a museum together.

After that day, it was not unusual to find Rae on a surveillance job that didn’t interfere with school or bedtime.

Rae, Age 8

There was a sixteen-year age difference between Rae and David. He was out of the house by the time she was two, and while he lived nearby, he was not a consistent presence like I was. He distinguished himself by buying her the best birthday and Christmas gifts and by being the only member of the family who didn’t boss her around. On one of his rare dinner appearances, Rae asked David the question that had always been on her mind.

“David, why don’t you work for Mommy and Daddy?”

“Because I wanted to do something else with my life.”

“Why?”

“Because I find the law interesting.”

“Is the law fun?”

“I’m not sure I’d use the word ‘fun.’ But it’s compelling.”

“Wouldn’t you rather do something that is fun than not fun?”

David, unable to honestly explain to Rae why he left the family business without offending my parents, resorted to a different tack. “Rae, do you have any idea how much money I make?”

“No,” Rae replied disinterestedly.

“I charge three hundred dollars an hour.”

Rae appeared confused and asked what she believed was the next obvious question. “Who would pay that?”

“Lots of people.”

“Who?” Rae pushed, probably thinking she could tap the same spout.

“That’s confidential,” replied David.

Rae mulled this new information over in her head and continued on suspiciously. “What exactly do you do?”

David contemplated how to answer that question. “I…negotiate.” When the confusion did not lift from Rae’s face, David asked, “Do you know what ‘negotiating’ is?”

Rae responded with a blank stare.

“Negotiating is something you do on a daily basis. Some negotiations are implied, like when you go to the store and give the clerk a dollar for a candy bar; both parties are essentially agreeing on the exchange. You always have the option of saying to the clerk, ‘I’ll give you fifty cents for this one-dollar candy bar,’ and he can say yes or no. That’s negotiating. It’s the process of coming up with a solution that different parties can agree upon. Does that make sense?”

“I guess so.”

“Do you want to negotiate something right now?”

“Okay.”

David considered a negotiable topic. “Let’s see,” he said. “I would like you to get a haircut.”

Since Rae’s last professional haircut had occurred well over a year ago, this was not the first time such a request had been made. And yet each appeal was met with the same unsatisfying response: Rae would administer her own haircut. The resulting lopsided ends and jagged bangs were certainly an eyesore, but to the dandy in my brother, Rae’s hair was truly offensive.

My sister, tired of the repeated haircut harassment, snapped back, “I. Don’t. Need. A. Haircut.”

“I’ll give you a dollar if you get one.”

“I’ll give you a dollar to shut up about it.”

“Five dollars.”

“No.”

“Ten.”

“No.”

“David, I’m not sure this is a good idea,” my mother interjected.

But this was David’s job and he couldn’t stop. “Fifteen dollars.”

This time there was a brief pause before Rae said, “No.”

David, sensing weakness, went in for the kill. “Twenty dollars. You don’t need to cut it all off. Just trim the split ends.”

Rae, showing an aptitude for bartering beyond her years, asked, “Who pays for the haircut? That’s at least fifteen dollars.”

David turned to my mother. “Mom?”

“This is your negotiation,” said my mother.

David turned back to Rae, ready for the final settlement.

“Twenty dollars to you. Fifteen for the haircut. Do we have a deal?” David asked, reaching his hand across the table.

Rae turned to me for a nod of approval before the handshake.

“You’re forgetting about the tip, Rae.”

Rae pulled her hand away and turned to me. “Tip?”

“Yes,” I replied. “You have to tip the hairstylist.”

“Oh. What about the tip?” Rae said to David.

That is when David shot me an annoyed look and shifted from instructive older brother to ruthless corporate lawyer. “Forty dollars total. Take it now or the offer is off the table.”

Rae turned to me again and I knew David’s patience had come to an end. “Take it, Rae. He’s ready to walk.”

Rae held out her hand and they shook on the deal. She turned out her palm and waited for the money. As David paid Rae her forty-dollar bribe, he appeared pleased that he was able to teach his little sister something about his line of work.

The lesson in negotiation stuck with Rae. It stuck hard. She discovered that even simple acts of grooming could be negotiated to her end. In the first half of her tenth year, the only time she would brush her teeth, wash her hair, or take a shower was when money changed hands—more precisely, leaving ours and entering hers. After a brief family meeting my parents and I agreed that we had to cut her off cold turkey and deal with the consequences. It was three weeks before Rae realized that hair washing was not a career.

Rae, Age 12

Sometime in the winter of Rae’s seventh-grade year, she made an enemy. His name was Brandon Wheeler. The genesis of their conflict has always remained somewhat fuzzy. Rae likes her privacy as much as I do. What I do know is that Brandon transferred to Rae’s school in the fall of that same year. Within weeks he was one of most popular boys in her class. He excelled in sports, possessed a firm grasp of all academic subject matter, and had clear skin.

Rae had no problem with him until one day in class, when Jeremy Shoeman was reading aloud from a passage in
Huckleberry Finn,
Brandon offered a dead-on imitation of Jeremy’s stutter. The class laughed uproariously, which only encouraged Brandon, who added the Shoeman imitation to his regular playlist. Rae never had a problem with Brandon’s previous impersonations, which included a red-headed boy with a lisp, a girl with horn-rimmed glasses and a limp, and a teacher with a wandering eye. Rae wasn’t even friends with Shoeman. But for whatever reason, this rubbed her the wrong way and she was determined to put an end to it.

Rae’s first line of attack was an anonymous typed note that read,
Leave Jeremy alone or you will be very, very sorry
. The next day when Rae caught sight of Wheeler cornering Shoeman during the lunch hour, apparently thinking the note was from the victim himself, Rae decided to come clean. Wheeler then spread the word around school that Rae and Jeremy Shoeman were a couple. While this infuriated Rae, she kept her cool as she plotted her revenge. I cannot say how my sister acquired this information, but she discovered that Brandon was not twelve, but fourteen, and was repeating seventh grade for the second time. The next time Brandon was flattered for his excellence in academics, Rae made sure her classmates understood that it was a matter of practice and not talent.