The Shallows--A Nils Shapiro Novel Read online

  “It finally ended with Micaela.”

  “Ah. And how did that happen?”

  “She’s pregnant.”

  Gabriella nodded as if she understood. “She got married.”

  “No.”

  “She’s in a relationship.”

  “No.”

  “Someone just got her pregnant.”

  “Yep.”

  “Do you know who?”

  “I do.”

  “Who is it?”

  I took a sip of tequila and looked up at the starless sky awash in city light. “It’s me.”

  “What?!”

  “We’d sleep together sometimes. That was the extent of our relationship. We didn’t think she could get pregnant. But she did.”

  “Jesus Christ, Shap. What the hell is wrong with you? You think you two having a baby together is going to end your relationship? What the fuck?! Seriously. How could you even let me say what I said? What the fuck, Nils. Fuck!”

  “I know. It’s counterintuitive.”

  “It’s counter reality. You need to see a doctor. The kind with a couch you lie down on. Dammit, Nils. I can’t believe I talked to you about us. This is so embarrassing. So fucking embarrassing. You need to leave.”

  Three police cars, sirens flashing and whining, sped south on Hennepin Avenue, cars pulling over to let them pass then filling back in behind them.

  I let the sirens fade until the regular night sounds returned to their rightful place. I said, “You’re wrong.”

  She had scorn in her voice. “You’re being cruel now.”

  “No. You are wrong. You can’t tell me what I’m feeling. I know what I’m feeling. It took me a long time and a lot of pain to understand what I understand now. You don’t have to believe me. You can believe anything you want. But I know.” I stood. Gabriella did not. “Do what you have to, but I hope you turn down the FBI.”

  She spoke with almost no volume, as if to herself. “Fuck you.”

  I set down my glass. “You can’t lie your way through a kiss, Gabriella. No one can.” I slid open the sliding door and showed myself out.

  I couldn’t feel the alcohol. Even a little. So I got back into my battered Volvo and drove south on Hennepin, half expecting to get involved with what those police cars were racing to. But I didn’t. Just another random wrong that had nothing to do with me. I continued through uptown and took a right when the road dead-ended into Lakewood Cemetery. I followed Bde Maka Ska to Lake Harriet then parked below Micaela’s penthouse.

  She hated when I dropped by unannounced. But Gabriella’s pushback had sparked doubt. I needed to deal with it. Not because of Gabriella but because I’m bad with loose ends. They’re unavoidable at times. But when I can cut them off, I cut them off. In my personal life and in my work.

  I woke Micaela and she wasn’t happy about it. She buzzed me up, I entered the building and stepped into her private elevator. When I stepped out she waited, leaning against the wall, sleep in her eyes.

  Micaela Stahl said, “What is it, Nils?”

  “I need to know how you’re feeling.”

  “A little nauseous. And really fucking tired. But that’s good. It’s a good sign.”

  “Okay. All right. I wanted to hear it directly from you. Not in a text. Not over the phone. I wanted to see your face when you said it.”

  “I’m happy to tell you more.” She folded her arms. “Tomorrow.”

  “I get it. I’ll go. But can I use your bathroom? Kind of rushed out of my last thing and haven’t had a chance.”

  “Please.”

  “Thank you.” I skipped the powder room, walked down the hall and into Micaela’s master suite. I passed through her bedroom, her blanket and sheets barely disturbed from her effortless sleep. I continued through her master closet that had more shoes than a Nine fucking West, then into her master bathroom.

  Micaela’s master bathroom was bigger than some garages. White marble made up most of it. The shower was in one corner, surrounded by one continuous piece of glass. It had several showerheads in different positions so you could get blasted clean like a car in a car wash. The bathroom also had a separate clawfoot tub, antique porcelain, the kind Louis IX soaked his ass in. It had a TV, sound system, wall of built-in cabinets, and shelves for towels and whatever else people keep in their bathroom. It had a toilet and a bidet, and a chaise lounge for kicking back in the same room you shit in. It had a regular mirror, full-length mirror, and magnifying mirror. It had everything a luxurious bathroom could have. Except for one thing.

  Consideration for another person.

  There was enough square footage, of course. But Micaela Stahl’s master bathroom did not have a second closet. It did not have the greatest amenity, separate toilet areas. It didn’t even have a second sink. When she bought the penthouse, she gutted it. Rebuilt it from the exterior walls in. When she built the master bathroom, she spared no expense other than omitting what every other luxury master bathroom had: design for a couple. Because Micaela Stahl knew a partner would never come along. Never join her. She knew that because she didn’t want a partner. Not even the possibility of one.

  I didn’t need to hear how Micaela was feeling. I didn’t have to go to the bathroom. I needed to see that bathroom. One more time. One last time. To know we were done. Forever.

  I looked at myself in the mirror. A smile found my face. I didn’t put it there. Micaela did. The heartbeat inside her did.

  I was free.

  And then I felt it—the lightness—it usually happened on cases. The lightness told me I was near something significant. It’s what some people called being psychic, but it has nothing to do with the supernatural. It’s just math, an equation that gets calculated in the part of my brain I can’t reach. That part of my brain reaches me sometimes, but I can’t reach it.

  The lightness wasn’t triggered by my smile in the mirror. It was triggered by the mirror itself. Check that. Not the mirror. What was behind the mirror. It was a medicine cabinet. I kept a toothbrush head in there. I’d used it dozens of times so I’d seen what else was in that cabinet. And the unreachable part of my brain had done the math. It just hadn’t clued me in until now.

  I opened the medicine cabinet and there it was in the lower left-hand corner. A pill bottle. The opaque white kind. That was the problem. Because Micaela didn’t take pills. She didn’t take them and she didn’t shut up about it. If she’d get a headache, she’d take a nap. “You don’t need chemicals when your body is telling you to rest.” She thought if you had sleeping problems you didn’t work hard enough during the day. “If you can’t sleep, your body is telling you there’s more work to be done and it can’t wait.” If you get a fever, your body is raising its temperature for a reason. “The high temperature is to kill the infection. The last thing you should do is lower your temperature with aspirin or acetaminophen or ibuprofen.”

  I picked up the white pill bottle and turned it around. No label. I opened it and looked inside. White pills in foil blister packs. I dumped some into my hand. On the back of the blister pack, in a clear blue font, were the words Clomiphene Citrate.

  I walked over to the toilet, flushed it as if I were actually using the bathroom for its intended purpose, and Googled clomiphene citrate.

  I put everything back in its place, then returned to Micaela, who sat in the leather chair that was once part of a pair before our divorce. She got one. I got the other. The chairs, like us, lived separately.

  She said, “Nils, I have to go to bed.”

  “Go. Sorry to bother you.”

  I pushed the elevator button.

  Micaela said, “Nils.”

  The elevator opened. I stepped inside and pushed another button.

  “Nils, I’m sorry. I’m exhausted.”

  The elevator door started to close.

  “Nils!”

  I descended.

  37

  I woke to a lightening sky and a text from Ian Halferin asking to meet for breakfast at s
even. I thumb-typed I would be there, then stayed in bed thinking about my vacuous flaws and the trouble, disappointment, and heartache they’d sucked into my life, all masquerading under the name Micaela Stahl. It would be easy to demonize her, but I wasn’t any better. We both knew our path and obliterated obstacles that stood in our way, who stood in our way.

  I cast aside rational thought, convention, and stability to free the inaccessible part of my brain to solve hard-to-solve problems. Finding those solutions didn’t make my life any better but gave it direction. Direction is focus. Focus is a free, legal anesthetic.

  Micaela Stahl lone-wolfed it, which kept her on a path to excellence. She’d achieved it in her personal and professional life. I would have held her back. Anyone would have held her back. But I would have most, because she loved me.

  And so she figured out how to keep part of me without the burden of me and add the one jewel missing from her crown. A baby. She got pregnant with chemical help. And me. I hated and loved her for it. I always would. But we’d never again share a house. Or even a bed. Our relationship would live on playgrounds and at school conferences and at birthday parties. If whoever was in there made it out alive, there would be three of us, but we three would never be a family.

  I drifted back to sleep for another hour and dreamed nothing worth remembering. Then I started my day with coffee and internet news plastered with headlines about Luke Tressler’s past and Karin Tressler’s attempt to cover it up. I especially enjoyed an op-ed arguing Karin Tressler is not her brother’s keeper. It was chock-full of biblical references trying to restore her credibility with her base. The comments section was full of tirades and misspellings. I tried to wash off what I’d read in the shower.

  I called Gabriella Núñez, Special Agent in Charge Colleen Milton, then left my coat factory and walked from the North Loop to the skyway system entrance near the parking ramps on Third Avenue. I snaked my way through air-conditioned glass bridges to the Soo Line Building to meet Ian Halferin for breakfast.

  He waited in a booth wearing a white shirt and royal blue tie. He stood, shook my hand, then we sat facing each other.

  “Let me just get this off my chest,” he said. “I’m embarrassed. Nils, I’m telling you. I am mortified. Was I so gung-ho for Arndt Kjellgren’s neck I didn’t think clearly? Absolutely. I should have let the investigation play out naturally instead of trying to push it forward.”

  “All right,” I said. “But what you’re saying makes no sense.”

  “What? You think I’m not ashamed?”

  “I don’t care how you’re feeling. The fact is if you hadn’t kept us on the case after Robin died, Luke Tressler would have got away with it.”

  A young waitress with hair dyed gray and rhinestone-studded cat-eye glasses took our order. She was friendlier than her standoffish look. She was trying to tell us something by dyeing her hair and surrounding her eyes with a cinema marquis—I just didn’t know what.

  After she left, Ian Halferin shook his head and said, “I read in the paper this morning that Luke Tressler has a huge swastika tattooed on his back. And that he was one of the tiki-torch carriers in Charlottesville a couple years ago. In Sunday school when I was a boy they taught us never forget. Never forget. They were right.”

  “You say that as if it’s new information. As if you haven’t raised millions of dollars to fight that battle.”

  “Well, it’s one thing to support organizations. For the old and disadvantaged. For people who live in other countries and don’t have the freedoms we have. We all have a responsibility—”

  “Stop. Please. Just stop talking.”

  Ian Halferin stopped. He looked hurt and confused. Two women and a man walked by looking like Brooks Brothers mannequins. They said hello to Ian. Introductions were made. They moved on.

  Ian Halferin tried to change the subject. “Sorry about that. Too many lawyers breakfast here. I should have suggested someplace else.”

  I said, “Remember that morning I said I drank too much the night before? I was embarrassed because I’m too old for that. Remember when I said that?”

  He nodded. “Yes. But what’s that have to do with anything?”

  “Well, turns out I didn’t drink too much that night. The reason I didn’t feel well is someone drugged my drink.”

  The lines in Ian Halferin’s forehead contorted from confusion to concern, as if they were a seismograph measuring his emotional state. Marquis Eyes came back with a coffeepot, filled our cups, and said our food would be out shortly. Her eyes smiled in their rhinestone frames then she and her coffeepot drifted away.

  Ian Halferin shook his head but his forehead lines held firm. “Drugged? Nils, that’s terrible.”

  “It was some kind of rape drug that wipes your memory of the evening. You wake up the next morning and wonder how you ended up where you ended up.”

  “Oh my God. You must have been terrified.”

  “I was.” The lines in Ian Halferin’s forehead disappeared. He wasn’t thinking this through. But that was good. I wanted him relaxed.

  He said, “You blacked out? That’s why you thought you drank too much?”

  “Ian, I never thought I drank too much.”

  “But—”

  “I met Luke Tressler that night to thank him for reporting my car stolen. I didn’t know he was Luke Tressler. And he didn’t know I’d hired a friend to steal my car.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No, you don’t. While I was with Luke, I saw him drop something into my drink.” Ian Halferin’s forehead lines fired up again. “I know, right? A murderer dropped something in my drink. I didn’t know he was a murderer at the time, but still. I had gone to the bathroom and—well, I really didn’t have to go to the bathroom. I just told him I did because I’d noticed these two goons at the other end of the bar and I’d seen one of them with Luke casing my car before I paid a friend to steal it.”

  Ian Halferin sipped his coffee and said, “I’m not following this at all.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “You will.”

  Ian Halferin unbuttoned his sleeves at the cuff and began to roll them up.

  “So obviously, I didn’t drink my drink after what I’d seen. I went back to the bar, picked up my glass, then walked away. When I returned, my glass was empty. Luke Tressler just thought I drank it.”

  I looked hard at Ian Halferin. He shrank. He reached for his water and picked it up. His hand shook.

  Two uniformed police officers walked past. One of them was a young woman I’d never met before. She said, “Hi, Nils.”

  I smiled. “Good morning, officer.” They sat in the booth directly across the aisle. Ian Halferin’s seismograph turned bright red. It glistened with sweat. I said, “I pretended I was under the influence of whatever drug Luke had dropped into my drink.”

  Ian Halferin looked at his watch and said, “Nils, I’m sorry, but I need to get to the office.” He slid toward the edge of the booth.

  I said, “If you get up from this table, those two officers will arrest you. Right here. Right now. Up against the wall. Cuffs behind the back. The whole shebang. In front of all your lawyer friends.”

  Ian Halferin forced a smile and said, “The police won’t arrest me. They have no reason to.”

  He slipped out of the booth. The two officers stood to block his exit. Ian Halferin looked back at me.

  I said, “It’s your choice. We can keep talking and see what happens, or you can get hauled out of here in front of everyone.”

  “I would sue this city for every penny it has.”

  “You were in the van that night. You thought I was drugged. By the way, you’re probably not in the mood right now, but at some point, I’d like a little kudos for my acting chops. Not bad, huh?”

  Ian Halferin sat back down. He said, “I had nothing to do with Todd’s murder. Or Robin’s. Or Arndt Kjellgren’s.”

  “That’s hard to believe.”

  “It’s the truth. I …
what…” He stopped. He opened his mouth to say something then closed it, shook his head, and pressed his lips together. Goddamn lawyers. Sometimes they know when to shut up.

  Marquis Eyes brought our food with a lovely smile. I reciprocated. Ian Halferin did not. She left.

  I said, “Luke Tressler confessed everything.”

  Halferin said, “His word is worthless.”

  “Maybe. But there were two other people in that van. You referred to them as Wilson and Pinsky. Both are in FBI custody.”

  “FBI?!” Ian Halferin shut his eyes, opened them, then shut them again. “Why would the FBI be involved in this?”

  “Because someone exploded a bomb in your law firm. And that someone was Luke Tressler, your van buddy. Domestic terrorism is a federal offense.”

  Halferin’s head dropped forward. He shook it from side to side, chin against his chest, his bald spot pointing right at me. He stayed in that position and said, “I will tell the FBI everything. Absolutely everything. I had nothing to do with the bombing or anyone getting killed. I was just trying to protect Karin Tressler. I overstepped. I made mistakes. I may have broken the law. But I did not know of any plans to kill anyone or blow up anything, much less have any involvement.” He lifted his head. His face had returned to its normal color. “I will call my lawyer. From this booth. And I will cooperate fully with the FBI and Minneapolis PD and anyone else who wants my cooperation.”

  I ate some toast then said, “Can I ask you something?”

  “You can ask, but I probably won’t answer.”

  “You can’t get in any trouble answering this. It’s just to satisfy my own curiosity. Why the fervent support of Karin Tressler? What’s so wrong in this world that she’s so capable of fixing?”

  Ian Halferin forked a piece of omelet, lifted it from the plate, then put it back down. He said, “Two things: I don’t like paying taxes—Karin Tressler is for less taxes. And Karin Tressler is good for Israel.”

  “Is she?”

  “Without question. She’s anti-Iran. She’s pro-settlement. She’s anti-two-state-solution. She’ll increase sanctions with any state or nonstate actor that supports terrorists. Directly or indirectly. And she bases her policy positions on Judeo-Christian values.”