Nobodys fool, p.22
Nobody's Fool, page 22
I keep my tone steady. “And risky.”
“Not really. I always came into the room fast, so they wouldn’t check her vitals. You were also drugged. I think we gave you too much. It took forever for you to wake up. I had to practically carry you out of the room. And even if someone did get suspicious, what could they do? Report us? I was caught once. Working with another girl. The police laughed. What’s the charge for faking like you’re dead?”
Osorio had pointed out something similar. “So what happened to Anna?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Eventually the girls get used up. So they let them go. Or they run. Or they end up in prison or dead.”
“She never told you her real name?”
“She said her name was Anna Marigold. She said she grew up near Penn State. That her mother died young and left her with a sister. The sister married a man who abused her every which way. She saw a chance to run away.” He shrugs. “That might have been the truth, that might have been a lie. I don’t know.”
“But that’s what Anna told you?”
“That’s what Anna told me, yes. I was working with four girls at the time.”
“You mean you were their handler?”
“Use whatever term you like. It’s not accurate. But we would be running four scams at any one time. We kept it up for another six months after you left, then Anna took off for a while.”
“Took off?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Not important. Some kind of illness.”
There is something on his face when he says this. Something I don’t like.
“Anyway, maybe a year after you—I don’t remember—Anna came to me and we started up again. She hooked up with the wrong man. Or kid, I should say. He was seventeen, flashing a lot of money. The kind of guy we loved to take down. Except we didn’t know his family was connected. It all went sideways. She got beaten up. I got arrested. But this guy, his family was relentless. They went after us. She, I don’t know. To be honest, I thought maybe Anna was dead, so your visit, I mean, I guess she got away. That’s when I got out of the business too.”
We sit there a moment.
“You said she came through an agency?”
“All the girls did. It wasn’t a real agency, of course. Our economy relies on scams, you know that, don’t you? You ever watch daytime TV? Buy gold, buy insurance you don’t need. We all scam in our way. This agency used to have kiosks in malls. They’d stop people and say, hey, you could be a model. All you need is a portfolio, which could be arranged for a fee. A con job. And sometimes, they’d spot something else, someone more vulnerable.”
“Do you remember the name of the agency?”
“Radiant Allure. Funny how I remember that.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me about Anna?”
“I know what you must think of me. But there is more to it. I had my own sadistic handler. I came from an orphanage too. I thought they were sending me to film school in Spain. That’s what they told me. I was going to work as a production assistant on a real Spanish film. And when it all went wrong with that mobster’s kid, my handler told them where to find us. They held me down. Three men. Flipped me on my stomach. Two sat on my legs. The third straddled my back and held me by the hair. The fourth man…” He stops and licks his dry lips. “He had a hacksaw. He sawed through my Achilles tendon. I spent four months in a hospital. Then I moved here.”
I say nothing.
“I don’t tell you that for sympathy. You come here and tell me that you’re looking for Anna and it involves a high-profile kidnapping. So I assume you’re talking about the Belmonds’ daughter. You think that Anna had something to do with it. I don’t believe that. I’m not saying she was a saint. She wasn’t. She was a survivor and clever. But she took care of the other girls. She wouldn’t kidnap one. For all I know, you want to hurt Anna. You want to put her in prison or get some kind of revenge. And it isn’t like the Belmonds hired a random private detective. It’s you. Someone she conned years ago. And if Anna got away, I’m happy for her. She made it. And I’ll tell you something else, Sami Kierce, though you won’t believe it. She cared about you. Those cons? We ran them for a day or two at the most. She kept making excuses to keep you around. Because she was falling in love with you. I had to put my foot down. I told her we were taking too long. The bosses wouldn’t be happy. I think she was planning to run away with you. So if you’re looking for a bad guy or someone to blame, it’s me. Let her be.”
I believe him. I know that sounds crazy. But I do.
“I only want what’s best for her too,” I say.
“Then maybe don’t try to sell her out to a rich family.”
“That’s not what I’m doing,” I say. “We already found her.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She’s Victoria Belmond.”
“What?” He shakes his head and smiles. “My god, talk about the ultimate con.”
“What?”
“Pretending to be a long-lost heiress.”
“The family ran DNA tests.”
“Are you serious?”
“I am.”
“Wow.” He shakes his head, trying to comprehend. “So the Anna I knew… was like a rich heiress?”
“Something like that.”
“So why are you asking me what happened? Why don’t you ask her?”
“She says she doesn’t remember.”
“How can she not remember?”
I shrug. “Some kind of amnesia.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know.”
“So you’re, what, still trying to find her kidnappers?”
“Yes.”
Buzzy shakes his head. “I don’t know what to say.”
“If you reveal anything, the weight of this family will come down on you. If you don’t, they will indeed finance your next film.”
“That’s nice,” he says. “I’ll take the financing. I can use it. But between us, I don’t need the threats or the payoffs. Anna and I, we went through hell together. We survived. If she ever remembers, we will always have a bond.”
“You exploited her.”
“She won’t think that. Either way, tell her if she ever needs me, I’ll be there. But Sami?”
“What?”
“Let this be. Whatever she and I did, it was a long time ago.” And then, using the exact same words I heard from Talia Belmond, he says: “Let sleeping dogs lie.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I check in at the desk at the offices of a charity called the Abeona Shelter and ask for Jennifer Schultz. The building is located on the corner of Hudson and Harrison Streets in Tribeca. It was the New York Mercantile Exchange until 1977, but it’s always looked more like a cool fire station to me.
How did I end up here?
It started with a call from Polly after I downloaded my meeting with Harm Bergkamp to the Pink Panthers.
“I found something strange on the Radiant Allure modeling agency,” Polly said.
“Okay.”
“So the agency closed in 2004 when the two founders, Eunice and Vernon Schultz, retired.”
“Do we know where the Schultzes are now?”
“Both dead. Eunice died of cancer about a year after retiring. That might have been why they retired, I don’t know. The husband, Vernon, died in 2018. He was eighty-two.”
“So what’s the weird part?”
“We found their daughter. Jennifer Schultz. She said she would talk to you. In truth, she seemed anxious to.”
And here I am.
I’m led into a conference room where a woman I recognize as Jennifer Schultz from my Google searches awaits me. Without so much as a hello or handshake, she asks, “Why are you asking about my parents’ old agency?”
No reason to pull punches. “You know why.”
“Pardon?”
“Your working here,” I say, spreading my arms. “It’s almost too on the nose, don’t you think?”
The Abeona Shelter is an international organization that rescues children from danger. Abeona was the child-protecting Roman Goddess of safe returns, ergo the name of this place. The charity does a lot of good work, from what I’m told.
“What do you mean,” Jennifer asks, squinting, “by ‘too on the nose’?”
“I mean that your parents were involved in child trafficking. You felt guilty about it, which is understandable. You wanted to make amends. And now you work here.”
She looks stunned. But I can also see I struck gold.
“You’re not much for beating around the bush,” Jennifer says.
“Sometimes. But not right now.”
“I loved my parents,” she says.
“I’m sure you did.”
“They were good to me and my three siblings. We were a happy family. And the vast majority of their clients—the young people who engaged the modeling agency’s services—received exactly what they ordered: a modeling portfolio with professional headshots. Several of those young people became models. Many more were placed in good jobs in the entertainment and food industry.”
I impatiently gesture with my hand for her to get through this and when she does, I say, “When did you find out the truth?”
But she’s not ready yet. “I can show you testimonials from clients who said the Radiant Allure agency changed their lives.”
“I’m sure you can. Doesn’t make up for it though, does it?”
Silence.
“How did you find out?” I ask again.
“My mom,” Jennifer says. “On her deathbed.” Her eyes are on my face, but they are looking way past me. “She wanted me to understand. It was a tiny percentage of the teens, she told me. She and Dad only did it to the most hopeless cases—the kids who had nothing and no chance. And the profit from these interactions helped the Radiant Allure agency help other young people, ones who could be reached. ‘You can only tend the garden you can reach,’ Mom liked to say—it’s an old Buddhist expression, I think—and these girls could not be reached.” She looks up at me. “I loved my mother with all my heart, and the last thing I said to her on her deathbed was that I would never forgive her.”
We both stop now. The silence is pushing against the walls and windows. I let it. So does she. Part of me wants to reach out a comforting hand. I try to do that with a gaze instead. She seems to get it and gives me the smallest nod. Then she gestures for me to sit. I do. She takes the chair across from me.
“So yes,” Jennifer Schultz says, “I work here to make amends. It’s obvious and clumsy and inadequate.”
“But it’s something,” I finish for her.
“Yes. Who are you looking for?”
“She went by the name Anna Marigold. She was sent to Spain.”
“When?”
“Early 2000s.”
“A long time ago,” Jennifer Schultz says. A pendant of a butterfly hangs from a gold chain around her neck. She reaches for it now. “Funny. I kept waiting for someone to come to me like this, someone who lost a loved one they cared deeply about—or at least, someone that was missed. But you’re the first. Are you a relative?”
“No.”
“So maybe my mom was right.”
We both know she wasn’t, so neither one of us has to say it.
“What else do you know about the girl?”
I tell her most of what I learned from Harm Bergkamp. She takes notes. I tell her about Anna Marigold coming from somewhere near Penn State and the dead mother and then living with the aunt. I tell her how she worked cons with another man in Spain. Jennifer nods along as she scribbles. The story is not an unfamiliar one to her, I guess.
I don’t tell her that I was one of Anna Marigold’s “victims.” I don’t want her to think my motives are anything but pure.
“Do you know if this Anna Marigold is still alive?” Jennifer Schultz asks me.
“She is.”
Jennifer Schultz fiddles with the butterfly pendant like prayer beads. “Is she okay?”
“Yes.”
“But she has questions about her past.”
“Something like that,” I say.
“I have a private database, but it’s huge. Do you know how the Radiant Allure agency operated?”
“Tell me.”
“Our agency mostly worked out of kiosks in malls. Young girls would walk by—boys too—and we’d approach them and say that they were attractive and had a great look and maybe they should consider modeling. Really lay it on thick with the false flattery. Then we would try to sell them a modeling portfolio. Basically a photo shoot. Some people called it a scam, but our prices were competitive and hey, we weren’t the first business to sell a dream.”
“Did you work in the agency?”
“Yep. All four of us kids did. It was our after-school job. Good training for life. The agency had kiosks in dozens of malls throughout Pennsylvania and Ohio.”
“You said you have a private database.”
“Yes. I can’t make it public for privacy reasons. It would lead to many false claims and lawsuits. Do you have a photo of what Anna looked like back then?”
I realize that I don’t. There are still a few grainy photos of Victoria Belmond from that time period, so I google them. Not many. I see Anna in Victoria’s face, especially the eyes, but that might be mind games. I find the few photos taken right after Victoria was found, the paparazzi ones with no hair and shot from a distance because the FBI and her parents protected her privacy—these are slightly more accurate. Jennifer Schultz tells me to AirDrop them to her. I hesitate.
“Can I trust you to keep her identity a secret?” I ask.
“Of course.”
I AirDrop the best photo. She studies it on her phone. I don’t say Victoria Belmond’s name, and I can’t tell whether she’s figured it out.
“I have a team working with me,” I say to her. “They can do AI on this photograph and put hair on her head and de-age her, maybe clean up the image a little.”
“That might help,” Jennifer says. Then she looks up at me. “What’s going on, Mr. Kierce?”
“I have a tougher question for you,” I say.
She waits.
“Could your parents have been involved in a kidnapping?”
She blinks. Then she says, “In what way?”
“I don’t know. The obvious, for one—would they ever just kidnap a girl?”
“It would be easy for me to say, ‘Of course not,’ but…” She doesn’t finish the thought. She doesn’t have to. “I don’t think so. They needed the self-justification, I think.”
“Did your parents ever help move someone?”
“Move someone?”
“Like maybe someone brought your parents a girl to hide overseas?”
She frowns. “You think someone brought my parents this girl so they could hide her in Spain?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Okay then.” Jennifer places both hands on the table and pushes herself to a standing position. “I’ll start going through the database. Oh, and a more innocent possibility, Mr. Kierce.”
I turn.
“The girl you’re looking into—you think she was kidnapped.”
“Probably.”
“But there are many who don’t believe that, right? I mean, a lot of people think Victoria Belmond just ran away.”
Ah. So she does recognize the image in the photo.
“That’s right, isn’t it?” she presses.
“Yes.”
“So maybe that’s how my parents got involved,” Jennifer says.
“How do you mean?”
“If Victoria Belmond wanted to run away and never be found,” Jennifer Schultz says, “my parents would be the best at making that happen.”
Still mulling over Jennifer Schultz’s last words, my phone vibrates. The caller ID reads BELMOND, so I pick it up.
“Hello?”
“Lenore said you wanted to talk to me.” It’s Victoria.
“Could we meet?” I ask.
“Is everything okay?”
“I was in Spain.”
Silence.
“Victoria?”
“I’m here,” she says. “You found something?”
“I can come out to you.”
“No. My parents will ask a lot of questions. I’ll come to you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The children’s playground is built on top of a cemetery.
James J. Walker Park is in Greenwich Village on Hudson Street between St. Luke’s Place and Clarkson Street on top of what used to be aptly and not subtly called St. John’s Burying Ground. Even now, something like ten thousand corpses lie beneath the baseball diamond, the pickleball courts, the bocce courts, the children’s playground—and even the bench where I now sit with Victoria Belmond.
The only visible remnant of the park’s macabre past is the Firemen’s Memorial, a nearly seven-foot-high marble sarcophagus dedicated in 1834 to two very young firemen who died their very first day on the job. According to the memorial’s epithet, “Here are interred the bodies of Eugene Underhill, aged 20 years 7 months and 9 days, and Frederick A. Ward, aged 22 years 1 month and 16 days”—meaning that their remains are still in this sarcophagus sitting on a fence against a kids’ baseball field. For those who need an additional reminder, the bronze plaque, which I always read no matter how often I come here, reads:
THIS GROUND WAS USED AS A CEMETERY BY TRINITY PARISH DURING THE YEARS 1834–1898. IT WAS MADE A PUBLIC PARK BY THE CITY OF NEW YORK IN THE YEAR 1897–8. THIS MONUMENT STOOD IN THE CEMETERY AND WAS REMOVED TO THIS SPOT IN THE YEAR 1898.
Welcome to New York.
Lots of benches in New York City are sponsored—that is, someone donates money and gets a little plaque on the backrest—and this one is dedicated to someone with the last name Madoff. I don’t want to know more. Victoria and I sit no more than ten yards from the monument. Behind us, children are squealing on slides and climbing bars. In front of us, through the chain-link fence, little kids are shagging grounders and fielding pop-ups with enthusiasm and chatter. I like watching baseball. I think it’s the nostalgic echo. I see a field and I still remember the first time my father took me to a game at Shea Stadium when I was six. I still remember the smell of the grass and the echo when a small white ball connected with the wood of a bat. My dad bought me two pennants that day, one for the Mets, one for the visiting Houston Astros. “Because you should respect your opponent,” he explained. When I got home, I hung those pennants on my wall over my bed. As I aged, the colors faded, but I kept them on that bedroom wall until I came back from Spain and rid my room of all childish things.
