The Hollow Girl by Reed Farrel Coleman Read Free Book Online

it’s important that I speak to Mr. Cantor as soon as possible.”
    She didn’t like it or me. “In reference to … ?”
    “His daughter.”
    “You’ll have to be more specific,” she said, her voice neutral, her expression far less so.
    I handed her one of my old company cards from a little leather case. “Please tell Mr. Cantor that I have been retained by Nancy Lustig, his ex-wife.”
    The receptionist’s expression changed from skeptical to suspicious. She hesitated for a moment, but then put her fingers to a screen. “Yes, hi, Jess,” she spoke into the tiny mic at the end of the curved tube on her headset. “I have a Mr. Moses Prager in reception to see Mr. Cantor … his card says he’s the president of Prager & Melendez Investigations … no, this isn’t a solicitation. Mr. Prager says it’s about Mr. Cantor’s daughter and that he has been retained by Mr. Cantor’s ex … okay, Jess, I’ll hold on.” About thirty seconds later, the receptionist nodded. “Fine, I’ll have him wait. Thank you, Jess.” She looked back at me. “Please have a seat, Mr. Prager. Miss Lourey will be down to get you in a moment.”
    “Thank you.”
    But she had already moved on to something else. I was as good as invisible to her, or dead. I went with invisible. I’d recently been too close to dead to find that option even mildly amusing. Almost before I could sit, a woman seemed to appear before me out of thin air.
    “Mr. Prager?” She stretched her hand out to me. “I’m Miss Lourey, Mr. Cantor’s administrative assistant.”
    I shook her hand as I stood. She had a firm handshake, long but tidy black hair, and was dressed in a gray business suit with sensible black pumps. “A pleasure,” I said out of habit.
    “This way.”
    After a short, painfully silent elevator ride, Miss Lourey dropped me off at Julian Cantor’s corner office. She handed her boss my card, which he gave a cursory glance.
    Cantor greeted me with an insincere slap on the back. He was a trim, plain-faced man with a million-dollar smile and the same blue eyes as his daughter. He was dressed in the standard uniform of a senior law partner: dark blue pinstriped suit, powder blue shirt with white cuffs and collar, red tie, red suspenders, gold cuff links, Piaget watch, alligator belt, black wingtips. His gray hair was expertly coifed, his fingernails trimmed and polished, his face clean-shaven. He smelled vaguely of cigar smoke and sickly sweet, locker-room aftershave. That was the new rich man’s affectation. They seemed to enjoy smelling like they did when they went for their first haircuts.
    “So what’s this about?” he asked, glancing at my card again and gesturing to a chair in front of his desk. I sat as he moved around the desk to his chair. “What’s my ex upset with Sloane about this time?”
    I ignored the question for the moment. “I notice neither you nor Miss Lustig call your daughter Siobhan.”
    “What, are you a psychologist all of a sudden?” Cantor asked, affecting a Yiddish accent, his face frozen in a plastic smile.
    “Just curious is all.”
    It was his turn to ignore me. “Look, Prager, my ex-wife is a guilt-ridden woman. She feels she did a shitty job as a mother.”
    “Did she?”
    “She was no more a bad mother than any of the other women who moved in our circle. In fact, she was better than most of those rich, worthless whores. Sloane learned early on that she could get to Nancy by pushing her buttons and she has never stopped pushing them.”
    “How about your buttons?”
    “I know your firm, Prager. At least I used to. You know what trial lawyers are like. Not so easy to mess us about,” he said, proud as could be. “Sloane was a handful. Precocious, manipulative, talented, high-strung, a screwed-up adult in a little girl’s body. Now all that’s changed is she’s a screwed-up little girl in an adult’s body.”
    “What’s your relationship with her like now?”
    “Look, Prager, I’m not in