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  ALL OF US

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  ALL OF US

  A Novel of Suspense

  A. F. CARTER

  The Mysterious Press

  New York

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  Copyright © 2020 by A. F. Carter

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011

  or [email protected].

  first edition

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: June 2020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.

  ISBN 978-0-8021-4943-5

  eISBN 978-0-8021-4945-9

  The Mysterious Press

  an imprint of Grove Atlantic

  154 West 14th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  groveatlantic.com

  UNCORRECTED PROOF • NOT FOR RESALE

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  PROLOGUE

  When Sergeant Louis Brady pulls up to the intersection

  of President and Nevins Streets in Brooklyn, he

  finds three unmarked Ford Escorts, practically his entire

  squad, haphazardly parked, nose to the curb. Already pissed, he parks his ancient Grand Marquis next to a fire hydrant

  and gets out. The contrast between the unusually crisp July

  air and the smoke-saturated interior of the Grand Marquis

  strikes him immediately, though he’s not sure which

  atmosphere he prefers. He does know that his Vice Unit is

  out of business in this neighborhood with no arrests to show for the effort. Lieutenant Cathcart will not be happy.

  Brady holds up a hand when Patrolman Anthony Ribotta

  approaches. Brady actively dislikes Ribotta, a Holy Name

  Society type with a rosary hanging from the rearview mir-

  ror of whatever unit he happens to be driving. For cops like Ribotta, a simple prostitution sting can become a crusade

  to rid the world of impurities. Brady, by contrast, doesn’t

  hate, doesn’t even dislike the women and the transvestites

  he arrests. Take the man’s pay, do the man’s job, in twenty

  years comes the magic pension. Brady’s entire career is based on this understanding of his role in the war against crime.

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  Brady waves at the four cops standing by their units. “Tell

  those bastards to get back to work, Anthony. We can’t stay

  out here all night.”

  He doesn’t wait for a reply but instead approaches the

  Ford with the woman in the back seat. She’s sitting forward

  on the seat with her knees raised on the seat back in front of her. Her already-short skirt has drifted up, probably when

  she backed into the car. Now it rides almost at her hips,

  while her green blouse, sheer to begin with, is unbuttoned

  far enough to reveal a lacy pink bra that Brady wishes he’d

  given to his wife last Christmas.

  Brady stops a few feet from the car, the sight so wonder-

  fully erotic he wants to prolong it as long as possible. He’s assuming the woman is too preoccupied with her situation

  — she’s not handcuffed, but the doors can’t be opened or the windows rolled down—to realize she’s being watched. But

  then she turns her head to him, turns it slowly, smiling a

  sly smile, her green eyes pushing past his baby blues, push-

  ing right down into his brain. Does she find what she’s looking for? Brady doesn’t know as he watches her turn away,

  watches her settle onto the seat again, waiting now for whatever comes next.

  Brady walks back to where Patrolman Ribotta leans

  against a streetlight. Ribotta’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt with a pocket. He’s stuffed a pack of cigarettes into the pocket, a nice touch for an undercover working a sting. Ribotta might

  be a model for Joe Workingman out for a touch of the strange before heading home to his wife.

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  “Alright, Anthony, let’s hear the story. And keep the

  bullshit to a minimum.”

  Ribotta lifts his Yankees cap and runs his hand over

  his half-inch buzz cut, pushing a little wave of sweat front to back. Then he puts the hat back on and raises his chin,

  another habit Brady dislikes.

  “It’s quiet, okay,” he begins. “Like so quiet I’m thinkin’

  the whores know we’re out here and they’re working some

  other stroll. But then this woman”—he points to the woman

  in the back of the car—“she comes walkin’ down Nevins

  Street likes she owns it. Ass and tits, everything moving. I don’t know what to think because she doesn’t look exactly

  like a hooker. She’s too something I can’t put my finger on.

  But she marches straight up to where I’m standing, no hesi-

  tation, Sarge, and propositions me.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “I can’t remember exactly. Somethin’ about if I have a few

  hours, I could do her any way I want. Then she said some-

  thing about eggs.”

  “Eggs?”

  “Yeah, like I could have her sunny-side up or poached or

  hard-boiled. Whatever I liked.”

  Brady stares at his subordinate for a moment. Young, tall,

  good-looking, you dress him up right, he could be working

  an upscale narcotics sting in a Manhattan bar. “And what’d

  you do then?”

  “My fucking job, Sarge? I asked her how much, but she

  wasn’t hearin’ it. Said I was enough reward for a weekday

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  afternoon. I mean, what could I do? She don’t take money,

  she’s not a hooker, right? She’s has to state a price and name an act, this for that. But she wasn’t dumb enough to go there.”

  Here it comes. That’s what Brady’s thinking. What

  Patrolman Ribotta should have done is take the lady’s
phone

  number and send her on her way. That’s exactly what Louis

  Brady would have done if anything that sweet fell into his

  lap, which it never has. The woman in the car, though not

  young, is a real stunner.

  “So,” Ribotta continues, “I right away figured that some-

  thing’s off here. In the middle of the afternoon you don’t

  proposition a complete stranger on a street known for its

  hookers unless you got a screw loose somewhere. I mean,

  she wasn’t drunk and didn’t look to be stoned, so I just figured she was crazy. And ya know what? I was right. I ran her through NCIC, and she’s been locked away twice, once at

  Creedmoor and once at Brooklyn Psychiatric.”

  Brady asks two more questions. He wants to settle the

  facts in his mind. “But she never asked you for money? She

  never committed a crime?”

  “No, Sarge, she’s not a hooker. Her name’s Carolyn Grand.”

  Brady spins on his heel. What Ribotta should have done is

  irrelevant. He, Louis Brady, has become responsible. It’s his baby now. He walks back to the Escort, opens the front door, flips the door lock button. Finally, he opens the back door and says, “Why don’t you come out of there, Ms. Grand?”

  He says it nice, not threatening, because he doesn’t want

  to pack this woman off to the psych unit at Kings County

  Hospital for three days of observation. Not when the only

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  crime she committed was being stupid enough to proposition

  Anthony Ribotta.

  Carolyn Grand turns her head first. She’s smiling, her

  gaze frank and unafraid, even defiant. Of course, she has to turn her body, tuck in her knees and scoot along the edge

  of the seat to clear the seat back in front. Which pulls her skirt up even higher. Brady doesn’t turn away, but he’s not

  enjoying the show. He’s evaluating her readiness to assume

  responsibility for her own life. Then she does something

  totally unexpected.

  “Please,” she says, extending a hand. “Help me out.”

  Even as he shakes his head no, Brady takes her small hand

  and gently pulls her to her feet. He’s thinking that she’s definitely going to try to screw her way out of her predicament, but she freezes instead, her eyes blinking rapidly as her hands flutter over her cheeks and mouth. Then she buttons the front of her blouse and smooths the miniskirt over her thighs, her breathing shallow, her fingers trembling. Finally, her cheeks the red of an overripe tomato, her mouth so tight her lips vanish, she manages to speak a single, barely audible word.

  “What?”

  Brady shudders. It’s like glancing into a mirror only to find someone else glancing back. This mousey woman with the

  frightened eyes—her neck curled as though she’s afraid even

  to raise her chin, fingers picking at a button on her blouse—

  this is not the same woman who stared at him from the back

  seat of the unit, not the woman who slid toward him, her skirt rising to her hips. This is someone else, the transformation rapid enough to leave him with his mouth open.

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  So, it’s no good. No good at all. Brady’s first partner, the veteran who broke him in, had made it plain before he put

  their unit in gear.

  “Only one rule, kid, which you should carry with you

  every day, every minute. Cover your ass. You know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because, kid, in the cop world you joined, there’s always

  a foot headed right for it.”

  Brady recalls the advice even before he asks Carolyn

  Grand the obvious question. “Why don’t you tell me what

  happened?”

  The woman looks down at her feet, hesitating for a

  moment, but then finds her resolve. “I’m afraid,” she tells

  him, “that I’ve forgotten.”

  It’s the best she can do, and Brady admires the effort,

  but it’s not enough. He puts her back in the car, then again approaches Ribotta. The woman’s nuts, that’s for sure, and

  there’s no knowing what she’ll do next. Meanwhile, Ribotta

  ran her name, so there’s a record that leads right back to

  Louis Brady.

  “Call in the EMTs, send her to Kings County,” he tells

  Ribotta. “Let the shrinks figure it out.”

  Brady takes a final look at Carolyn Grand as he heads for

  his own unit. The look of utter defeat tugs at his heart. He tells himself that if he’s wrong, if she’s not crazy, she’ll only spend a day or two at Kings County. No big deal, right? But

  some tours of duty, as Brady learned many years before, are

  worse than others. Some tours are worse than others and

  some tours are fucking impossible.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  VICTORIA

  I take a second to adjust my game face—I should say we,

  because there are others watching—before I open the

  door and step into Dr. Halberstam’s office. It’s four days

  since we were discharged from a locked psych ward at Kings

  County Hospital and our appearance is a condition of our

  discharge. Do it or else.

  I find our therapist standing behind his desk, his expres-

  sion as composed as my own. He says, “Good morning, Ms.

  Grand, please have a seat.”

  I accept the chair he offers, though I would have preferred

  another. The back of this chair is tilted. I can’t sit up straight unless I perch on the edge. Nor can I walk out of his office, which I and my sisters and my brother would most like to

  do. I’m stuck here, forced into a posture, if not seductive, at least vulnerable. For the present, Dr. Laurence Halberstam

  owns us. I know it, and he knows it.

  I watch him sit behind his desk, his chair back far more

  upright than mine. I watch him shuffle through the case file on his desk, our case file: thick, substantial, the history of our lives as told by the many therapists and psychologists

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  and psychiatrists who’ve dissected us over the past twenty

  years.

  “Well, Ms. Grand—”

  I stop him with a small shake of my head. “There’s no

  Ms. Grand, Doctor, and there hasn’t been for many years.

  There’s only us.” I can afford to be open here because I’m not telling him anything he doesn’t already know. “I want to be

  frank,” I claim, “right from the beginning.”

  His expression doesn’t change, but I didn’t expect it to.

  Our therapist is in his midforties, with a slender body and a full head of neatly parted hair that I suspect to be his pride and joy. Every hair is in place, every strand uniformly black.

  There’s not a hint of gray, or even a thinning on top when he bends forward to study his notes, taking his time about it. He wears a gray suit over a starched blue shirt and a muted red tie. The tie’s Windsor knot forms a perfect triangle beneath his chin, but the tie itself is slightly askew, an imperfection that somehow pleases me.

  Without changing expression, he lifts his head and looks at

  me, a technique we’ve encountered several times in the past.

  Still, I have to concede Halberstam’s mastery of the silent stare.

  His blue eyes ar
e piercing, even behind the glasses. Finally, he says, “Can I assume that I’m talking to Victoria?”

  Presenting an acceptable public face is my job, my func-

  tion. I represent the family, the four girls and one boy who share this body. In that capacity, I’m required to project, first and foremost, that our situation is under control. Which it’s not, of course, which it’s never been, as my siblings are quick to remind me when I’m too full of myself. Still, I’m wearing 2

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  my demure best, a full, brown skirt that falls to within two inches of my knees, a white blouse with a scalloped collar

  and a tan sweater. My shoulder-length hair has been swept

  back to cover my ears. Except for a light coating of dark red lipstick, I’m not wearing makeup.

  “And where are the others,” Halberstam asks, his tone

  studiously neutral. “Right this minute?”

  “Some watching, some wherever.”

  “That’s interesting. Who would you say is watching? And

  why?”

  As I compose myself, I glance around Halberstam’s office.

  We’ve passed time in many psych offices, enough to know

  they fall into three general patterns. The warm and cozy, the ultrahip, the cool, calm, and collected. Halberstam’s office fits the latter category. Beige wallpaper, a lacquered desk that reflects my shins, hints of mauve in the chairs, porcelain and pottery in lit niches. LED lights frame the outer edges of the ceiling, while a desk lamp with an amber shade provides the

  only real color in the room.

  The décor advertises Halberstam’s approach. He will be

  neither friend nor foe. He will play the part of the objective observer, his goal to help us help ourselves. Sadly, we’ve generally done better with the homey types, the huggers.

  “Martha, of course, and Tina. They’re watching.”

  “And the others? Where are they?”

  I shrug. “Wherever.”

  He’s not having it, and he gets right to the point. We

  don’t exist and never will. “Where do you go, Victoria, when you’re not in control and not watching?”

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  “Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? And I apologize for not having an answer, except to say we don’t relate well to clock time. It seems to me that I exist at every moment, but I know that can’t be strictly accurate.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because there are periods of time I can’t account for,