Same difference, p.4
Same Difference, page 4
I was hoping Mank would bristle again, but he let a little sigh out and reached over for his computer keyboard. ‘Let me see what the status of the investigation is,’ he said.
He clacked away for a minute or so and then studied what he saw on his screen, which naturally he did not turn in my direction. Cops. ‘Well, it’s not this precinct so I don’t know the officers on the case,’ he said. ‘But you’re right, there’s no detective yet. I’ll give a call over there and see what I can find out.’
So I sat and watched him but oddly Mank did not reach for his phone, either the one in his pocket or the one sitting on his desk, which the NYPD naively believes is the phone their detectives still use for work. Silly NYPD. Mank just looked over at me.
‘Thanks for coming in, Fran,’ he said.
Huh? ‘What do you mean, “thanks for coming in?” I thought you were going to call over and talk to the cops who’re looking for Eliza.’
‘I am. As soon as you leave.’ Not a smidgen of smug on his face, either. He looked, if I’m honest, surprised that I was questioning his decision, which of course I was.
‘How’s that going to help me?’ I asked.
‘Fran, I’m a cop. You’re a private investigator. You know that helping you is not in my job description.’ Still an innocent face. I wondered if he practiced it in the mirror every morning.
It’s not like I hadn’t had this argument with cops before. But I’d rarely had it with Mank, who in addition to being a cop was also a person. Until recently. And he thought I wasn’t a human being!
There was no point. I stood up and prepared to leave as abruptly as he had left the diner where I’d bared my soul and a good number of family secrets to him. But just as I was pivoting on my heel, I heard him say in a soft voice, ‘Remember, whenever you want to talk …’
There are times I despair of the entire male sex.
FIVE
‘You know he was just being a cop,’ Aunt Margie said.
Like many women do with their moms, I tend to seek out Aunt Margie when someone makes me feel angry and frustrated. I’d gone straight to her apartment, which is one floor down from mine and Ken’s, when I’d walked into the building. The last thing I needed was to try and complain about men to my brother.
‘He was being a cop who treats me differently than he did just a few weeks ago,’ I said. ‘That’s the part that hurts.’
I had, in fact, told Aunt Margie about the conversation I’d had with Mank and his completely unsatisfactory reaction to what I’d told him. I had assiduously avoided telling Ken because he’d be mad at me for breaching security and, I was afraid, would side with Mank.
(He really wouldn’t have. The one thing about Ken and me is that we’re the only ones who are like us. He’d know what it was like to feel insecure about being the way we are. At least I think he would. Most of the time he seems to enjoy it immensely, especially when women he wants to impress are around. All they see is a big strong guy.)
‘I know,’ Aunt Margie said. She sat down on the sofa next to me and put an arm around my shoulder. The cookies I knew would be offered were already on the coffee table. Aunt Margie is predictable in the best possible way. ‘But now he says he wants to talk. You have to understand that he needed some time after everything you told him.’
I turned so her hand fell off my shoulder and stopped with a cookie midway to my mouth. ‘You’re taking his side?’ I wailed.
She shook her head. ‘Oh never, Frannie. You know I’m always on your side. I’m just saying he might not be as big a villain as you’re thinking right now. I’ve known a few men. They need more time to absorb things than we do.’
I was thinking of making Mank absorb a right cross to the solar plexus but I didn’t argue the point. ‘The worst part is that I went all the way over there and got nothing to help in my case.’
Aunt Margie nodded decisively and put her hands flat on the coffee table. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Let’s think about that.’
When our parents left us as children (because they were trying to protect us from a threat they couldn’t yet identify), they didn’t abandon us; they gave us Aunt Margie. Our mother had discovered a way to greatly accelerate the healing process, leading to all sorts of medical possibilities, one of which helped to create Ken and me. But Aunt Margie had become friends with ‘Livvie and Brad,’ and once we were around, she was not inclined to break the story and endanger the lot of us.
Instead, she became our guardian and for all intents and purposes the parent who raised us.
But the reporter’s instinct never dies, and there’s nothing Aunt Margie likes better than a good question to answer. She still does some fill-in work at the radio station but that’s mostly just reading news copy someone else has written or taken off a wire service. She wants the thrill of the hunt and the chance for a big byline. Even if she hasn’t actually reported a crime story in more than twenty years. When she was raising us it was best to keep a low profile, and that was still the case to some extent now.
‘What do you know?’ she asked me, her face nothing but focus.
‘Right next to nothing,’ I said, because feeling inadequate and sorry for myself was becoming my new hobby. ‘Eliza Hennessey left home about six days ago with no indication as to where she was going and hasn’t been seen since. Damien Van Dorn, a guy Eliza knew in some capacity, has been missing about two days. Eliza is a trans woman, but there’s no indication that Damien is trans. In any event, they’re not answering their phones or emails and that’s unusual. In both cases, parents are frantic. The cops are investigating, but don’t exactly seem to be putting this on the top of the NYPD’s to-do list.’
‘You said there might have been some friction between Eliza and her father?’ Aunt Margie asked. She was gathering information, not testing me.
I made a ‘maybe/maybe not’ gesture with my right hand. ‘Eliza’s kind-of friend Laura Rapinoe says Eliza said it wasn’t a big deal. Brian Hennessey seemed to me to be carrying around enough guilt that it could have been more than Laura knew. I’m sure he didn’t react well to his daughter coming out as trans. He’s still having trouble referring to her as his daughter.’
Aunt Margie nodded. ‘So she might have been trying to get to a safer place. Not that Brian was necessarily posing a threat, but a place where she’d be more completely understood for who she is, right?’
I shrugged because I honestly didn’t know what I thought. ‘It’s possible. It’s also possible she was taken. There’s a lot of violence against trans people and New York isn’t always as understanding of LGBTQ people as we like to pretend.’
She picked up a cookie and took the smallest bite possible. I realize I’m larger than most people, but Aunt Margie can make one cookie a meal and sometimes have some left over for later. It’s sort of awe-inspiring. ‘That’s true,’ she said. ‘But you have a few places to start. If I was researching the story, I’d talk to Damien’s parents.’
‘Mank already did that,’ I pointed out.
‘Yeah, and he’s got nothing. You know, sometimes an understanding woman can find out more than a New York City cop.’
I sat back and closed my eyes. ‘Tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I’ll call them tomorrow.’
‘Do you need to plug in?’ When my energy gets low, Aunt Margie gets nervous and wants me to recharge through my wall socket booster.
‘I don’t think so, but maybe later. It’s only been a couple of days.’ Having my eyes closed did feel good, though.
‘Then call Damien’s parents now,’ she said. ‘You can make an appointment to talk to them tomorrow.’
Opening those eyelids was not an attractive proposition. ‘I don’t have their number.’
‘There’s this new thing called the internet. I’m willing to bet you can find them there. Or call your friend Mankiewicz and ask him.’
‘He’s not my friend,’ I said. ‘And he’s a cop. He won’t tell me.’
‘I guess you’ll just have to be a detective,’ Aunt Margie said. She got up and went into the kitchen to put the cookies away.
It was subtle, but effective. I went upstairs to my apartment and got on the laptop. Sure enough, it took about ten minutes to find the mobile number for Helena Van Dorn, mother of Damien. If I was going to be an understanding woman, it would probably be an advantage to talk to the mom.
She took five rings to answer, which I understood. If my son was missing and the Caller ID on my phone read STEIN INVESTIGATIONS, I’d be perplexed. It wasn’t the cops, who might have news, and she hadn’t hired anyone to look for her son (or, if she had, it definitely had not been me and my brother). But I was guessing curiosity would prevail, and it did.
‘Hello?’ The voice sounded cautious and tense.
‘Is this Mrs Van Dorn?’ Even to me it sounded suspicious. I would have probably hung up on me.
‘Who’s calling?’ Good answer. Never say ‘Yes,’ because that can be recorded and used in any number of unpleasant ways.
‘My name is Fran Stein. I’m a private investigator and I’m looking for Eliza Hennessey, who I’m told might be a friend of your son’s.’
‘My son is missing,’ Helena said.
‘I know. I’m sorry to bother you right now, but maybe I can help find both of them. May I ask a few questions?’
There was a pause on the other end of the line and when she came back, Helena’s voice sounded vaguely confused. ‘Are you a police officer?’ she asked.
You actually get that question a lot, particularly when you’re speaking to people who might be upset about something going on in their lives, which people like me (not that there are any, other than Ken) do a lot. They skip past the ‘private’ part in the explanation and jump to ‘investigator.’
‘No, ma’am,’ I said. ‘I’m a private investigator hired to look for Eliza Hennessey. Do you know her?’
‘No, not really. Damien’s mentioned her once or twice but I’ve never met her. I don’t think they’re dating or anything.’
‘They knew each other from New Amsterdam?’ I asked. There didn’t seem to be any other way Eliza and Damien could have met.
‘I think so,’ his mother told me. ‘I don’t remember hearing about her before he started school, and then only a couple of times since. Do you have some idea where he might be?’ She was trying not to cry; I understood. I wished I could tell her something that would help.
‘I’m trying very hard, but I don’t have anything for you right now,’ I said. That was pretty accurate and didn’t sound especially pessimistic. ‘Anything you can tell me would be helpful. Was there somewhere that Damien and Eliza used to go? Maybe after class or something?’ I knew they hadn’t gone back to Damien’s parents’ place because Helena had never met her. ‘Does Damien have an apartment of his own?’
‘Of course.’ How foolish of me it had been to think that an undergraduate student might not have enough money to afford rents in New York City. ‘But we’ve been there and he’s not in his apartment.’ Helena had returned a bit of patronization into her voice to indicate that I might have thought they hadn’t checked at their son’s place.
‘Can you give me the address?’ I asked.
‘Why?’
Why? ‘So that I might go over there and see if there’s anything that might point me in a direction toward finding them,’ I said. I mean, what other motivation could I have had?
‘I’m not letting you go over there by yourself,’ she said with newfound steel in her voice. ‘Not one item in his apartment is going to be missing when you leave.’
Now, I could have been offended and let her know. I could have explained exactly who I was and why nothing of the sort would ever happen on my watch. But I saw a way to get into Damien Van Dorn’s apartment without having to sweet talk the super, so I did neither of those things.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘When would you like to meet me there?’
SIX
Not long ago at all, Alphabet City (Avenues named for letters instead of numbers, a radical concept) Manhattan had been a scary, seedy place. Drug deals took place in broad daylight. The suburban visitors from New Jersey didn’t habituate the area. It was, frankly, a little like the New York in movies from the 1970s. It still is in spots, but not very much. The same developers who have managed to gentrify Harlem, parts of East Harlem and a huge amount of Brooklyn have made their way to Alphabet City and it is, depending on one’s point of view, either admirably or regrettably losing some of its original flavor.
There were still some public projects for people with low incomes, but there were also wine bars and brunch places with avocado toast. Designer cookie shops and the Apple Store wouldn’t be far behind.
I walked up to a clearly renovated building with a new front door boasting video cameras and a security desk just inside the lobby from which a uniformed employee could check on everyone who wanted to enter. Helena Van Dorn didn’t have that kind of problem, so as soon as I arrived she waved a key card at the sensor and in we walked.
She had barely spoken to me when I identified myself, looking me up and down as if to decide whether she thought I should be torn down and replaced with luxury condominiums. I get that sort of look a lot, to be honest.
Once we were walking up the stairs (it wasn’t that renovated) to the third floor, Helena found her voice and it had an edge to it. ‘I’m only doing this because I’m desperate,’ she said.
Always encouraging words, the kind I was more accustomed to hearing in a dating situation. ‘I appreciate it,’ I said. I don’t think I meant that the way Helena heard it, but that was fine with me.
‘After all we’ve done for that boy, to have him up and leave without a word, well … it’s infuriating.’ Helena, who had at least twenty-five years on me, was also two steps ahead of me on the stairs. She was working up a head of steam. ‘So ungrateful and insensitive, don’t you think?’
Luckily there was no need for me to answer because we reached the third floor. I opened the door for Helena and she led me to Damien’s apartment entrance. Helena rooted around in her expensive purse to find a single key on a ring by itself, one which she probably did not use often if at all, and inserted it into the lock.
‘Shouldn’t we knock first?’ I asked. If Damien had roommates or if he’d come home under his own steam, a little advance warning wouldn’t be an awful thing.
She blew some air out between her lips. ‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘He isn’t here.’ I guessed Damien didn’t have roommates and, after the speech about ‘all we’d done’ for him, I guessed he wasn’t paying the rent on this place, either. Helena turned the key and opened the door.
There wasn’t much to the apartment, no matter what the lobby had promised. There was a small living room as we entered, a galley kitchen to the right and a corridor at the end of which appeared to be a bedroom and a bath. I bet the ‘bath’ was just a shower.
The furnishings, such as they were, looked consistent with the idea of a young man’s first apartment, minus the roommates, who in Manhattan should have been de rigueur. Helena and the dad, if there was one, clearly had some bucks. There was the mandatory acoustic guitar on a stand in one corner of the living room with an accumulation of dust that indicated it didn’t get played often. There was a small pile of laundry, with which Helena was diligently refusing eye contact, in the hallway. There were no cooking utensils out anywhere but there were takeout boxes sticking out of the lone refuse container in the kitchen.
A college student’s apartment. You’d think a dorm room would have made more sense.
‘I told you he wasn’t here,’ Helena said. I was starting to understand why Damien might have wanted to vanish.
‘I didn’t think he was here,’ I told her, largely because I’d done the not-answering-at-all thing and it hadn’t made me feel any better. ‘I’m looking for anything that might indicate where he could have gone.’
In Bendix’s day (which I believe was April 27, 1988), there might have been a note scrawled in pencil with an appointment listed on it, or better yet, a full address book or Rolodex of contacts to ask about Damien. But in real world 2024, all that information would be on Damien’s phone, and there was no way Damien would have walked through the apartment door without it.
Being a young man in his early twenties, Damien also had not accumulated many photographs of himself with people Helena might have been able to identify and framed them to make them easier to spot. Again, all on the phone. I was a product of the generation just before his and I was just as addicted to my screen as the next girl, but I had to admit technology wasn’t making my job any easier.
‘Does Damien have a girlfriend you know about?’ I asked. I was fairly certain Eliza wasn’t included in that category, but in any event Helena had already ruled that possibility out. ‘Do you have information about any friends? Places to contact? People he’d go to?’
‘No,’ she said. I was getting the distinct impression that Helena didn’t want to help me despite my work increasing her chances of finding her son. Maybe she didn’t want to find her son. Maybe she just didn’t like tall women, despite (or because of) her son being almost seven feet tall. In either case, there wasn’t much I could do about it. ‘Of course not. I don’t have phone numbers for everyone my son has ever met.’ I was leaning heavily now on the theory that Helena had been fed up with Damien and didn’t care if he ever came back. ‘Especially not the transgender woman.’ Aha. So Helena knew about Eliza.
‘OK, then,’ I said. ‘So what can you tell me about your son and Eliza?’
She stopped in her assessment (negative) of her son’s home, which had included no picking things up off the floor but a lot of nostril flaring, although I had noticed no especially noxious odor in the room. ‘There’s nothing to tell.’
