The Ghost Network

Praise for
The Ghost Network

“Wrapped in the form of pseudohistorical, multilayered investigative journalism full of footnotes from a skewed world that resembles our own, columnist Disabato’s first novel is a paean to the modern urban landscape … The net effect is simultaneously breathlessly exhilarating and beautifully haunted.”

—
Publishers Weekly
(starred)

“Thrilling … A layered, well-executed story within an inventive story. Artistic ambition, cultural critique, and a revolutionary philosophy drive the mysteries underlying this complex, charismatic novel.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“A brilliant, daring and masterful novel about obsession, fame, and the complex mysteries of human existence. It’s a whodunit with footnotes and glitter, and it’s impossible to put down. Catie Disabato is a marvel.”

—EDAN LEPUCKI,
New York Times
bestselling author of
California

“A giddy mash-up of pop culture, genre tropes, conspiracy theories, and dystopian fantasy. Imagine Thomas Pynchon possessed by the spirit of a teenaged girl who is binge-watching TMZ while shrooming out of her mind, and you get some idea of the layered, phantasmagoric effect of this wonderfully trippy book. Catie Disabato is a true original, and a young writer to watch.”

—DAN CHAON, author of
Await Your Reply

“Catie Disabato’s prose is as clean as a whistle and as sharp as a tack, and her imagination is wondrous. A smart and exciting debut that plays by its own rules.”

—IVY POCHODA, author of
Visitation Street

“Spectacularly original. Meta, ingenious, and totally fun.”

—KATE DURBIN, author of
E! Entertainment

“As close as we’ll ever get to Borges filtering Lady Gaga, Calvino analyzing Miley Cyrus, or Cortázar obsessing over FKA Twigs, the supremely talented Disabato gives us a synth-wave pop illuminati fantasy that will make your ears ring.”

—MAXWELL NEELY-COHEN, author of
Echo of the Boom

THE GHOST NETWORK
Copyright © 2015 by Catherine Disabato
First Melville House printing: May 2015

Melville House Publishing
46 John Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201

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8 Blackstock Mews
Islington
London N4 2BT

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Disabato, Catie.
      The ghost network : a novel / Catie Disabato.
          pages     cm
      ISBN 978-1-61219-434-9 (paperback)
      ISBN 978-1-61219-435-6 (ebook)
      1. Lesbians—Fiction. 2. Women private investigators—Fiction. 3. Lesbians—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3604.I75G46 2015
813’.6—dc23

2014046529

Design by Adly Elewa

v3.1

For Nancy and Ted

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

A Note from the Editor

Prologue

Part 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Part 2

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Reading Group Guide

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

I inherited from Cyrus Archer a polished draft of this manuscript, but not a complete one. Cyrus’s research was extensive and the majority of the plotting in the book is based on firsthand accounts of events. Unfortunately, Cyrus did not get a chance to fill in his footnotes, and in a few places, he didn’t relay the source of a story or a quote. I have tried to fill in the gaps in attribution as best I can, using Cyrus’s notes and in a few cases re-interviewing some of his interviewees. Any additions or adjustments from me are noted in the text or via footnotes. For visual distinction, my footnotes will be in italics.

CATIE DISABATO

THE
GHOST NETWORK

THE DISAPPEARANCE AND SEARCH FOR MOLLY METROPOLIS

CYRUS K. ARCHER

EDITED AND WITH AN EPILOGUE BY CATIE DISABATO

Prologue

April 25, 2010

It was the morning after a record-setting rainstorm. Chicago’s mild, dry spring had given way to lighting and thunder. The soil soaked up six inches of rainfall; drowning worms emerged to cover the sidewalks with their squishy bodies and promptly froze to death in the cold spring air. Overworked eaves on rows of townhouses creaked and moaned in the strong morning winds, and streams of water rushed through the gutters. The winds had torn thick branches off the trees, which crushed the hoods of SUVs parked on the lakeside streets and cracked the pavement, causing hundreds of dollars in damages. The water in Lake Michigan was choppy and cold, below freezing; the surface of the lake was covered in fog.

Early that day, once the storm had broken, a baker named Rebecca Parker decided to take an unusual route along the lake on her walk home. Parker worked at Anthony’s Deli on Wabash Street, baking bread from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. On her way home, she usually avoided Lake Shore Drive, with its extra chill from the wind moving over the lake. Instead, she preferred to walk on Rush Street or take public transit, riding the city’s elevated train line, the L. But riding the rickety train in high winds frightened Parker, and the fallen tree branches that covered the sidewalks on Rush Street made
for difficult walking, so she zipped her North Face down coat to her throat and walked towards Lake Shore Drive. At East Delaware Place, she crossed the highway and started walking on the Lakeshore Trail—the biking and walking path right along the lake—so she could avoid any sidewalk debris.

The Lakeshore Trail was otherwise deserted. Parker walked briskly through the fog. Just as she was about to turn off the Trail and return to the gridded streets west of Lake Michigan, Parker noticed a dark shape floating a few hundred feet off shore: two bodies clinging to a piece of wood, one completely still and one kicking feebly. The fog thickened and Parker hesitated, questioning whether she had seen anything at all. She waited half a minute for the fog to clear and for the makeshift raft to come into full view again before dialing 911. Both bodies now lay still on the slab of wood, bobbing through the sharp waves. Parker gave the operator her approximate address and blurted, “Both people on the raft look dead now.”

About five minutes later, two Chicago Police Department officers arrived on bikes and signaled a police boat with portable high beams. Parker was crying. She thought that by waiting before dialing 911, she had “as good as killed” the people on the raft.

About five minutes after that, the police boat appeared. It puttered slowly around the shallow water before the officers aboard found what they were looking for. The maritime police fished two bodies out of the freezing lake: twenty-three-year-old Regina Nix, called “Gina,” and twenty-seven-year-old Nicolas Berliner, called “Nick.” They were hypothermic, unconscious, and concussed, but alive. They were immediately put into an ambulance and driven to Cook County Hospital.

Berliner regained consciousness in the ambulance and was admitted briefly to the Intensive Care Unit. Nix was taken into surgery immediately upon arriving at the hospital. Two fingers on her left hand, which had been partially severed and reattached approximately
one week prior, couldn’t withstand the trauma of hypothermia and had to be amputated.

While the doctors worked on Nix, Berliner gave a statement to the police. He didn’t remember how he had ended up floating in Lake Michigan. The last thing he recalled was spending a good portion of the previous evening with Nix and her girlfriend at their favorite bar, Rainbo.

The officers on the scene left the hospital and returned to the police station on South Racine, where they found a theft report filed by Randy Hecht. He had reported his boat stolen around 5 a.m. An officer called Hecht and spoke to him briefly:

“That’s a shame about the kids almost drowning and such,” Hecht said. “I filed my report right after it happened. I saw those three kids fly off and I called you right away. Did you find the boat okay?”

To which the stunned police officer replied, “
Three
kids?”

The third person on the raft was Nix’s girlfriend, Caitlin “Cait” Taer (rhymes with “air”). No one has seen her or heard from her since the police pulled Nix and Berliner from the lake. She disappeared. Her body was not found in Lake Michigan; it didn’t wash ashore anywhere else.

Nix spoke to the officers as she recovered from her surgery. Doped on morphine, she claimed memory loss, like Berliner. Her doctors told the officers Nix’s memory loss was most likely from both head trauma and excessive inebriation. Neither Nix nor Berliner remembered if Taer was on the boat with them when it broke apart, and they couldn’t remember how it broke apart in the first place. None of Taer’s clothes were taken from her home; none of her meager savings were removed from her Bank of America account.

Investigators packed the facts into a neat conclusion: after a night of heavy drinking, Berliner, Nix, and Taer stole the boat for a joyride. Because none of them had any experience driving a boat, they
steered themselves too far from shore, and then an early morning fog rolled in. Lost, they drifted until rough waves pushed the boat into a rock on the shoreline, then pulled them back into deep water on a breaking boat. All three passengers hit their heads during the collision, and while Nix and Berliner managed to cling to consciousness and a piece of the boat, Taer lost consciousness and drowned. Or perhaps, after the fog rolled in, they passed out in the boat and when the boat collided with a submerged rock, Nix and Berliner were revived by the suddenness of their head trauma and floated, while Taer drowned. Or perhaps, after the collision with the submerged rock, the rough current pulled parts of the broken boat in two directions. While Nix kicked Berliner to shore, Taer floated toward Canada until she became hypothermic, lost consciousness, and sank.

When I spoke with Officers Holt and Burns, they presented these three theories as only a few of many. While the conditions of their stories changed, the conclusion never did: a drunk girl drowned.

Nix and Berliner were charged with the theft of the boat. After a brief negotiation between Berliner’s lawyer and the state prosecutor, Berliner and Nix agreed to perform one hundred hours of community service each to atone for the theft of the property. The felony was then expunged from their records. They were granted this leniency despite Berliner’s prior legal troubles and his close ties with an incarcerated domestic terrorist named Marie-Hélène Kraus.

Three months later, on July 14, 2010, in response to a petition from her immediate family, the state declared Taer legally dead, and the
Chicago Tribune
published a short news story/obituary:

Possible drowning victim Caitlyn [
sic
] Taer, 24, was declared dead yesterday. Taer had disappeared after a boating accident on Lake Michigan in late April. Maritime police were unable to recover a body but investigators concluded that she died
in the incident. The District Attorney’s office has no current plans to pursue manslaughter or wrongful death charges on behalf of the deceased. Taer is survived by her parents, Natasha Tenanbaum and Andrew Taer. Taer’s friend Regina Nix remembers her as a “passionate person, who never doubted herself.” Private services will be held.