The Newsmakers (28 page)

“I was paid to kill him.”

“Do you know why?”

“Because he was too curious about what happened to the ferryboat.”

Erica leans in.

“Why did Gorev care about the ferryboat?”

“He didn't,” Volodin snorts in derision.

Erica and Samuels exchange a glance—they're getting close.

“So somebody paid Gorev to hire you?”

“Smart American policeman. Give him a gold star.”

“Who paid Gorev?”

“You think he would tell me? I'm just a stupid worm thug.”

“Once again—who paid Gorev?”

“Take off the handcuffs.”

“Take them off,” Samuels says, and the cops do it. Volodin shakes out his hands, wipes at the blood on his face.

“Some woman.”

“What was her name?”

“I don't know her name.”

“What did she look like?”

“I only heard her on the phone with Leonid. After they talk about the money, she tries to sell him an apartment house.”

“Sell him
an apartment house
?” Samuels asks.

“He said she sounds like a leprechaun. Then he says leprechauns eat babies.” Volodin laughs.

“So he was contacted by a real estate agent with an Irish accent to have Benton beat up?”

Volodin makes a mock-clueless expression. “Stupid worm don't know.”

Samuels mutes his voice. “So, Erica, we've got his confession and he's nailed Gorev. Is there anything else?”

Erica looks at Volodin on the screen, his sleazebag bravado back in place, and she thinks of Mark in his room at Rusk Rehab. She wishes she could kick right through the screen and knock that smirk off his face. “Is this enough to get him extradited?” she asks.

“We're sure going to try.”

“I can't think of anything else.”

Samuels unmutes. “All right, Volodin, we're done with you.”

“I told you what you want. Can I stay in Russia?”

Samuels turns to Erica and smiles before turning back to the screen. “Sure you can, buddy, sure you can.”

They hang up. Erica's first thought is how skillful Samuels is. He got everything they needed out of Volodin—and more.

Back at GNN, Erica calls Madge Miller, her agent on the Eighty-First Street property, and asks if she can drop into her office this afternoon. Madge readily agrees, telling her that the contracts have been signed and they can set a closing date when she arrives. And while they're at it, Erica thinks, help her find a leprechaun with an apartment building to sell.

Erica hangs up. She feels like she's getting close with her investigation. Yes, there have been fits and starts, but by keeping her eye on the prize—the truth—she's been able to make steady progress. But it has come at a price. She's afraid. Her imagination keeps leading her into some dark places.

Erica takes out her cards and deals a hand. Her office phone rings and she starts.
Blocked
comes up on the caller ID.

“This is Erica.”

“Hi, sweetie, it's your mommy.”

CHAPTER 66

ERICA CAN
'
T REMEMBER THE LAST
time she spoke to her mother, but it's been at least six or seven years. It might as well have been yesterday—she feels that familiar mix of rage, vulnerability, and hurt bubble up inside her, the toxic alchemy that defined her childhood. Sitting in her fancy office with its view of Central Park, she feels at a loss, hollow at her very core, as if the ground has been pulled out from under her. She can handle thugs and First Ladies, murder and sabotage, fame and men, but she's not sure she can handle “mommy.” She struggles to maintain her emotional footing.

“Hi, Susan,” she says flatly.

“Oh, honey, it feels so good to hear your voice, my little sweetie girl.”

Yeah, the little sweetie girl you ignored, belittled, and abused.

Erica lets the pause, the tension between them, just hang there. She's not throwing out a lifeline to this woman.

Finally her mother says, “Well, honey, aren't you going to ask how your old mama is doing?” Her voice sounds raspy and ragged after decades of cigarettes and pot.

Erica says nothing.

“I turned fifty this year. AARP sent me something in the mail.
They want me to join!” she says, laughing. The laughing sets off a coughing fit, which sets off a hacking fit. Charming.

AARP, huh? I'm not sure you can retire from welfare.

“I fell and broke my arm, honey. I'm all laid up. And my car died. I miss your daddy. I'm awful lonesome, sweetie.”

Erica's father took off for points unknown when she was still at Yale. At the time she held out faint hope that having that pig out of the house would lead to Susan pulling herself together a little bit. But no, it just added one more notch to her self-pity belt.

Erica reaches for her deck of cards. Susan hasn't asked her one question about how she's doing, about her life, her success, Jenny. Erica doesn't have time for this. She knows where this call is heading and she decides to take a shortcut.

“How much do you want, Susan?”

“What did you say, pumpkin?”

“I asked you how much money you wanted.”

“Oh, Erica, sweetie, I don't want any money. I just wanted to talk to you, to get back in touch with my little girl. There isn't a day goes by that I don't miss you. I was looking at the sweetest picture of you and me the other day, on the swing set back behind Kennedy Elementary. Remember that day, honey? I came to pick you up from school like I always did, like I mostly did, and that nice man said hello to me. He was a cafeteria food salesman, he was at Kennedy to talk to the principal. Do you remember, honey? Handsome and well-dressed and he was flirting with your mommy and I grabbed your hand and pulled you over to the swing set and we each got in a swing and had a contest to see who could swing higher and the man was laughing and I swung higher than you but then I let you win 'cause that's what mommies do, and he took our picture and then when he came back to Kennedy, it was on a day when I didn't pick you up and he gave you the picture and you brought it home. I always wondered, honey, what would've happened if I
had
picked you up from school that day. That man was sweet on me, I was just a little twenty-three-year-old thing, cute as a button.
Remember how cute I was, honey? I bet he lived in a
nice
house. All carpets and cozy with a big screen and ice cream. We could have lived there, pumpkin. I know he wanted to marry me, we had
chemistry
. But I didn't pick you up that day. You asked me not to. Sometimes I think you were
ashamed
of me.”

You got that right—I was ashamed of you. And I still am.

And now Erica feels something worse than anger coming on—sadness. A terrible, cosmic sadness about her mother's terrible, sad life. Susan grew up poor, her parents were illiterate, she dropped out of school at thirteen, never visited a doctor or a dentist, had an abortion at fifteen, the year before she met Erica's father and got pregnant again. She never had a chance in this world. Poor Susan. Poor, sad Susan. Erica feels herself falling into a black chasm, an abyss of grief and longing and pity for her mother.

No!
It's not an abyss, it's a trap, a trap set by Susan, to play on those very emotions. Yes, she had it rough, but so do millions of other people—people like Erica herself, thank you very much—and they don't turn into monsters who abuse their children, they don't retreat into a netherworld of pot and pills. Erica feels herself pulling back from the black chasm, into the here and now, into the life she has built for herself, through hard work and tenacity and respect for herself and others. When she fell—and she fell far—she picked herself up, patched herself together, and got back in the game. She doesn't owe this woman—this Susan, her mother—anything.

“I've got a very busy day ahead of me,” Erica says.

“So do I. Thank God I got a taxi voucher to take me to Hannaford, otherwise I would starve to death right here in this lousy dump.”

“I'll send you a check for a thousand dollars,” Erica says, wanting to be over and out.

“Oh, honey, I told you I don't want your money. If you send me a check, I'll just rip it up into tiny pieces,” Susan says, her voice growing quivery as the tears start to flow. “I just want us to be friends again, like we were that day on the swing. I know I wasn't the greatest mommy, I
wasn't an Oprah mommy, I even know I was a bad mommy sometimes, but I was dealing with that sonofabitch father of yours, I just always loved you, you were my little tidbit, my little Necco wafer, and I'm so proud of you, baby girl, of everything you've done, oh, baby girl . . .” Now she's drowning in her tears, sniffling, bawling.

In spite of everything, the tears get to Erica. She can't help it, can't stop it, it's her
mother—
the woman who gave her life, brought her into the world, and Erica does have some early memories of her mother smiling at her, holding her up and nuzzling her, talking silly talk, squeezing and hugging her. Loving her. Does her mother love her? She wants so much for her mother to love her. And not to cry.
Please don't cry, Mommy
.

And now Erica's throat is tight and her eyes are wet and she can't let her mother know she's crying, but she can't stop and they're crying together and she wants to forgive . . . to forgive this poor, sad woman her sins as she wants to be forgiven for
her
sins. It's the only way forward . . . to a healed heart. And they cry and they let themselves cry and it feels cleansing.

“Oh, baby . . . my sweetie baby . . .” Susan sobs.

The crying tapers off and there's a strange silence between them—to Erica it feels as if the plates have shifted, they're in uncharted territory . . . Is a fresh start really possible? It will take baby steps at first . . . baby steps . . . baby and mommy steps . . .

“Can I call you again, sweetie?” Susan asks.

Erica takes several deep breaths. “Yes, yes you can.”

“Maybe we can be . . . friends,” Susan says.

“Maybe we can.”

“Can I ask you one question, pumpkin sweet?”

“Of course, ask me anything.”

“Like I said, my car died, and living up here you just
need
a car, you need one, otherwise you go crazy, people freeze to death up here, they freeze and starve to death, you remember how cold it is, sweetie, and my friend Wilbur—yes, Mommy has a special friend—has found a
Honda Accord with only 58,000 miles on it and it's only six thou, and if you could loan me the money, I'll pay you back on a regular payment schedule 'cause I'm going to go down and apply for a job at Walmart. Could you do that for your old mommy?”

A door—a thick metal overhead door, the kind bullets bounce off of—slides shut in Erica's heart and mind and soul. What was that old song? “Won't Get Fooled Again”? Yeah right, fat chance.

You are a fool, Erica. Only a fool would go back to a dry well again and again hoping that by some miracle she would find it full of water.

Erica sits up in her chair, throws back her shoulders. This is over, o-v-e-r,
over
. “I'll send you a check today.”

Susan starts to gush with gratitude and promises, but Erica is deaf to them. She hangs up and feels a dark hole where—just ten minutes earlier—her heart had been.

CHAPTER 67

ERICA IS IN MADGE MILLER
'
S
office at Sotheby's Real Estate on East Sixty-First Street. The office is perfectly organized and decorated in soothing beiges. Madge herself—in her understated gray dress and pearls, glasses on a chain around her neck and hair in a bun—seems like a throwback to a more genteel New York. This is exactly the kind of calm, ordered place that Erica needs to be in right now. The call from her mother left her rattled; demons she thought she'd conquered flared back to life, screeching, teeth bared, red eyes glowing.

Madge looks at Erica—there's concern in her eyes. “How about a cup of tea? We have some lovely herbals.”

“That actually sounds nice,” Erica says. She never drinks herbal tea.

Madge presses her intercom. “Rufus, could I get a cup of chamomile-lavender for Ms. Sparks? . . . So, we're all ready to close. I must say, Erica, I think you've made a very good decision. It's a lovely apartment.”

Rufus—young, wearing an expensive suit—brings in Erica's tea. She holds it up and inhales the gentle fragrance, takes a sip—it's soothing. Madge is soothing. Why can't Madge be her mother—this lovely, understated, understanding woman.

“Does June fifteenth work for you? That's in two weeks and gives us time to make sure all the t's are crossed.”

Erica takes another sip of tea—the office is soothing too, immaculate and ordered and sane, and her chair is so comfortable.

“Erica?” Madge gently prompts.

Erica is pulled out of her reverie. “Oh, I'm sorry. It's been an . . .
intense
day.”

Madge chuckles in sympathy. “We all have those.”

“The fifteenth works.”

“It's very exciting.”

“I can hardly believe it,” Erica says. She pictures her mother, back from Hannaford, unloading her beer and frozen pizza and Little Debbies in her kitchen with its grimy corners and cheap cabinets and long-busted dishwasher. Erica doesn't feel a lick of guilt about her new apartment, not a drop, not a crumb, not a scintilla. Why would she? How could she? She sits up straight, puts the teacup on a table.

“Listen, Madge, I wonder if you could help me with something?”

“I'd be delighted to try.”

“I'm trying to track down a real estate agent who has an apartment building for sale.”

“Erica, there are over twenty thousand real estate agents in this city. It's true that the majority of us don't deal in apartment houses, but you're still talking about a large number. Do you have any other information?”