Chapter 6 - The Bottom of the Bottle

CHAPTER 6

I trudged up the subway exit at Bergen Street. I'd been conflicted since I left the meeting. The idea that I might now know who was decaying in Marlowe's wall was competing for attention with the need to contact the police. I also knew that Pete thought he was in danger, and that he really wanted me to forget all about the body in the wall, which made me not want to contact the authorities. Which went against every instinct in my body.

I found myself leaving Harding and taking the route out of work I used to take when I was dating Pete, getting on the 2 train without thinking. The 2 takes me nowhere near home, but there's a stop a block from Marlowe's. That's where I got off.

It was around 4pm and the warm early-June sunlight contrasted strongly with my troubled mood.

I knew Pete had told me to return to my normal life, but what normal life? My currently planned future was falling apart faster than Stephanie could criticize what I'd written to date, and I had no real new ideas.

In fact, the only thing consuming me was this new mystery. That, and hunger. Since the TST closed Bruno's Pizza, I had to walk three blocks further to grab a greasy slice. Once my hunger was dealt with, I turned back to the dilemma at hand.

Writing was investigation, imagination investigation – and here was a real mystery that had been dropped into my lap. Forced into my lap by Peter. Just because he delusionally thought he'd put me in danger didn't mean he could erase everything I'd learned in the last day.

I went through the green door.

I had fond memories of Marlowe's on bright warm days like this. A good bar in the afternoon is way better than the best bar on a busy night. The calm that pervades the atmosphere is contagious, and I took a seat on my favorite old bar stool on the corner.

Part of me knew there was still in a body in the basement, but until I decided what to do about it, I figured I might as well have a beer while I poked around this missing-TST-employee business.

Aimee walked out from the backroom, carrying a bucket of ice. She had fifteen years and half a foot on me. She was almost as tall as Len, whom she'd been dating for over ten years. Her dyed red hair set off her light blue eyes – her hair was naturally white-blonde, as evidenced by her blonde arm hair and white eyelashes. She always reminded me of a warrior Viking queen, both physically and personality-wise: towering and reserved, aggressive at times but regally nice at others.

She was your typical female Brooklyn bartender in her 40s: she'd seen it all, heard it all, and tried it all. Aimee differentiated herself from the cliché by not drinking and by scaring the hell out of any woman ignorant enough to flirt with Len for even a moment. She had intimidation written all over her, exemplified in her one full-sleeve tattoo, which made her look kind of lopsided. It was, she'd once confided in me in a rare moment of female bonding, a remnant of her tumultuous youth and a constant reminder of all the things she'd chosen to give up. I don't think she's the kind of gal who worries about what's already done.

Nowadays she worries about the bar, worries about her man's drinking and in general worries about patrons like any good bartender should – very little as long as they pay up and stay away from her man.

Since it had been two years since we'd last seen each other, she seemed surprised to find me in my regular seat like nothing had changed. Once I recognized her surprise, I was a little disappointed that no one had mentioned to her I'd been back two nights before.

I tried to smile friendlily. She dumped the ice in the trough and took her sweet time heading over to take my order, re-arranging some glasses on the bar and wiping up an imaginary spill.

I was the only customer besides two youngsters of questionable age in a booth, playing Chinese checkers. Aimee glanced at them before heading over to me.

“You going to write another book about how we serve minors?”

She was snippier than I'd expected, given the others' welcoming attitude the other night, but as standoffish as I'd originally feared everyone would be. If anyone was to hold my novel against me, I guess it would be her.

“You read my book.”

She harrumphed.

“It was fiction, you know, except the historical stuff.”

She gave me a withering look she'd given me many times before. “You may not have used people's real names, but you know you used their personalities, their relationships, and their secrets.” She handed me a Pabst. I guess she was more open to my return than her words indicated. “Not to mention what you did to Pete.”

Ah, there it was. A beer with a chaser of cutting remark. I slid a five across the bar. She slapped a few singles as my change on the bar. I left it untouched, as a tip.

I picked up my beer and slid off my stool. “Pete and I broke up and we shouldn't have done it here, but I hardly see how that's any of your business, Aimee.”

I headed to a booth, plopping my laptop on the table.

She grabbed her cigarettes from next to the register and headed to the front door. “Pete went on a bender the night you broke up and blew all the money he was going to invest in Marlowe's in Atlantic City. Now we'll probably have to accept any offer from the TST to avoid bankruptcy, so, yeah, I think you made it my business.”

She let the door slam shut behind her. Storming out or not, she was just having a smoke. Even knowing she was never one to mince words, it stung a little, as intended.

It had been one of my and Pete's best achievements as a couple. One night, back when the TST's development was really just a rumor, Aimee had confided in me that Marlowe's was struggling. A few years before, when the local economy took a hit after 9-11 and business plummeted, she sunk what money she had saved up in the bar. The stock market crash of 2007 had tested the bar's resources and, when Pete and I started dating, Aimee had confided that they needed a new influx of money to stay afloat.

I suggested Pete. He and I had only been dating a few months at that point, but he'd expressed a desire to grow up, set down roots, create something of his own. Aimee had said she didn't know if Pete could raise the $15,000 necessary, but I asked her to give him a chance.

Once I'd suggested it to him, he and I both worked hard to help him save. We'd stay in on nights he wasn't working, and I taught him to cook basic meals so he didn't have to order out. He lived on pennies in order to stash away as many of his tips as possible, and once he'd saved $5,000, he invested in a 6-month CD and continued saving on his own.

The CD matured a week before we broke up and that, with the rest of the money he'd saved in the meanwhile, equaled just about the $15,000 needed. Pete had been so proud of himself for accomplishing his goal, and happy to be able to buy a part of Marlowe's.

I couldn't believe I hadn't thought to ask him about it, but it helped explain why he was so intent on finding another way to save the bar.

Aimee shot me a dirty look through the window as she blew out angry smoke.

One of the barely-twenty-one-year-olds walked to the bar for a refill and looked around for service. Through the window, Aimee caught sight of him and lit a new cigarette. She could be a real handful when she wanted to be.

I opened up a search engine on my laptop and did some basic internet research on the missing TST employee. Once I got through the more recent news stories about the development, I found articles dating back almost two years and spanning the following six months, but the information was skeletal.

Denise Cortlander, age 26, had worked at the TST for a year as an assistant in the legal department. She'd stopped showing up for work on June 2, 2009, two days before the first article I could find. She was not even an official missing person yet at that point. She lived alone, in an apartment she'd moved into two months earlier. She'd recently started dating someone new, so he was the main suspect, but only for a day or two as he had an iron-clad alibi.

I couldn't believe it. She was originally reported missing by her boss – George Braxes, the TST's lawyer who'd almost got me hit by a cab.

Maybe George was truly delusional, or maybe he was involved in this Denise's disappearance. If the body in the wall and Denise were one and the same, maybe he put her in the wall to frame Marlowe's and get the place to close down more easily. But then why hide the body? Why not make sure it was discovered?

Aimee reentered and glanced at my laptop. “I see you're looking into your ex, huh? Never could let things alone,” she called out as she slipped back behind the bar.

I finished my Pabst and brought it to the bar, laying out another five. She fished out another can from the cooler.

“I'm not looking into Peter. I just heard about this TST employee who went missing a few years ago.”

“What were you, living under a rock? I mean, it was all over the news.”

I hopped onto a stool. “Aimee, this was two months after Pete and I broke up. Wait – ” I cut her off from interrupting me. “I know now how upset he was, but he didn't reach out to me until like a month ago. I was devastated too. He went on a bender and I'm truly sorry for that, and what it might do to Marlowe's.” She rolled her eyes at that. “But I just missed this story altogether. I buried myself in my work.”

“Writing you fucking book?”

“Yeah.” I couldn't undo what I'd done.

She liked having the upper hand. “I think Denise first came in about a month or so before you and Pete called it quits. But, you know, she came in all the time after that.”

“Wait, she was a regular here?”

“Well, yeah.” Aimee thought hard. “She came in almost every day. Everyone got to know her pretty well, even though she was only here for a few months.” She poured herself a soda water from the hose, smiling. “She was actually pretty nice.” High praise indeed coming from Aimee. “Of course,” she continued, “none of us knew she worked for the TST.”

“I bet she felt conflicted about it, especially once she got to know everyone here,” I suggested.

She shot me a withering look. “Are you kidding?”

“She must have, right?”

“Hardly. She was that leech lawyer's original plant. He sent her here to spy on us. Legal research, they called it later in the papers.”

That made sense, I thought. Moved to the neighborhood, insinuated herself into the social fabric of the bar. If she was smart about it, she could learn a lot without arousing suspicion.

“So what happened? She just stopped showing up?” I couldn't believe Aimee was blabbing like this. It really wasn't like her.

“Yeah. One night she left and she never came back. Then that slime Braxes started coming by every day. He called The Post the day after she didn't show up for work. He used her disappearance to try to ruin us. We had reporters coming by every day interviewing all of us, dogging us. It didn't last long, thank god, and our name in the paper actually increased business.”

“Didn't he already have the restraining order against Len by then?” She seemed surprised I knew about that. “The boys told me all about the pee incident when I was here the other night.”

“Oh, you were here the other night?” I didn't quite believe her but I couldn't put my finger on why. Maybe someone had mentioned I'd been there after all. I just nodded in response.

“Well, the pee incident as you called it...didn't really go down that way. George is a jerk and, it turns out, a little nuts, but Len didn't scare him into actually wetting himself. He just yelled at him, and you know how Len can get when he's had too much to drink.”

I did. I'd never personally witnessed Len losing his temper, but I'd heard stories.

Leaning close, Aimee confided, “Well, soon after Denise went missing, Len had to have our lawyer submit his own restraining order to stop Braxes from harassing him about her.”

“What do you mean?”

“Braxes thought something shady happened. He thought she was hurt, or worse, and that it happened here. I mean, there was no evidence of it, but he became obsessed. In fact, I heard that it threatened his job. The TST demoted him from corporate counsel to assistant negotiator. I hear he didn't even mind – it gave him a chance to poke around here in his never-ending quest to find out what happened to Denise.”

This was starting to get real.

“We tried to get our a restraining order to protect the whole bar as a property against Braxes personally, but because of the eminent domain thing, the TST had a right to negotiate with a representative of the bar. Rather than pay the lawyer for every meeting, we asked Pete to do the honors.”

“Hardly seems like a logical choice for negotiator.”

Aimee laughed. “I'll say. But, he worked out. I guess he felt guilty because he put us in a bind? Hang on.” She went to the other end of the bar and served the youngsters, who'd come back for their third round since I'd come in.

I could see Pete doing anything for Len and the bar, and I couldn't imagine the guilt he must have felt about squandering his investment money. He would have done anything to make that up to them.

Aimee headed on back. “So anyhow,” picking up where she'd left off, “He and George had a weird relationship. You know Pete, always trying to be everyone's friend.”

Something must have changed, I thought, as that certainly didn't reflect Pete's current opinion of George. I wondered what George could have done to make him turn tide so severely.

“Let me ask you this,” I said. “When did you find out this Denise girl worked for the TST?”

Oddly exasperated, “I told you, when it hit the papers. When George came around asking questions.”

“What did you think before that?”

“We just thought she was like a normal girl, you know? She was smart and told us she was in law school.” Confidentially, she added, “Len even hoped she might help him with the fight against the TST. Irony, huh?” She leaned against the mirrored shelves. “Kind of reminded some of us of you, you know?”

I stepped over to the booth, grabbing my laptop and bringing it to the bar. I flipped the screen so we could both look at it together, and scrolled down to an article with a picture. Denise Cortlander had straight blonde hair and all-American looks. She and I could not have looked more different.

“Well not physically,” she conceded. “I mean, she had your same charm.”

“Charm, really, Aimee?” I said skeptically.

She nudged my arm jokingly. She'd never been this nice to me before. “You know what I mean. She fit right in.” She grabbed a crate full of empty bottles. “I'll be right back.” She headed for the backroom.

She spun around almost giddily. “I mean, she even dated Pete, you know? She was the new you.” And she disappeared through the backroom door.