The Stranger Behind You

  Dedication

  To my mother,

  Margaret Agnes Catherine McGuckin Goodman,

  1923–2016,

  again and always

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One: Joan

  Chapter Two: Melissa

  Chapter Three: Joan

  Chapter Four: Melissa

  Chapter Five: Joan

  Chapter Six: Melissa

  Chapter Seven: Joan

  Chapter Eight: Melissa

  Chapter Nine: Joan

  Chapter Ten: Melissa

  Chapter Eleven: Joan

  Chapter Twelve: Melissa

  Chapter Thirteen: Joan

  Chapter Fourteen: Melissa

  Chapter Fifteen: Joan

  Chapter Sixteen: Melissa

  Chapter Seventeen: Joan

  Chapter Eighteen: Melissa

  Chapter Nineteen: Joan

  Chapter Twenty: Melissa

  Chapter Twenty-One: Joan

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Melissa

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Joan

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Melissa

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Joan

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Melissa

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Joan

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*

  About the Author

  About the Book

  Read On

  Praise

  Also by Carol Goodman

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  I HAVE NOTICED in my professional capacity that when someone makes a point of saying that they’re not lying, that usually means they are.

  When the realtor brags that she hasn’t lied about the view, though, I have to admit that her claim is demonstrably true: the view is spectacular. Standing at the elegant bay window it’s as if I am perched on a cliff overlooking the river. There’s nothing between me and the Palisades but water and light. A person who was afraid of heights would be terrified, but heights aren’t what I am afraid of.

  “Can you tell me what ‘state-of-the-art security’ means?”

  The realtor takes a nanosecond—an eon in Manhattan real estate time—to recalibrate and then rattles off the specs again: twenty-four-hour doorman, fiber-optic alarm system, security cameras.

  “As I mentioned earlier, a high-ranking government official lived here. I can’t tell you who . . .” Her voice trails off, suggesting that she very well could if she chose to. All I’d have to do is raise my eyebrows, smile, lean in a little closer—all the body language that implies that it will just be between us girls. I’ve done it a thousand times before with ex-wives and mistresses, corporate CFOs and underpaid personal assistants. But I don’t. I don’t really care who the very important person was who lived here; I just want to be assured that he—or she—lived here safely and unbothered.

  “Can you show me how the camera works?”

  We walk to the front door—steel, fireproof, three locks including a titanium dead bolt that slides into place with the precision of a Mercedes engine—and she touches the screen mounted on the wall of the alcove. A picture emerges of the sidewalk outside the lobby. Leaf shadow dances along the pavement. A patch of the park bordering the building. We might be in a bosky glen. A uniformed doorman stands to one side, hands folded behind his back, with all the good posture and reserve of a Buckingham Palace guard.

  “That’s not a bad view either,” the realtor remarks.

  It takes me a moment to realize she’s commenting on the doorman’s physique. He’s young, dark-eyed with black curly hair, Irish I remember from the accent I detected when he greeted us. Probably from the Riverdale neighborhood to the north, where Irish immigrants still live. And yes, he’s handsome.

  “Does the building do security checks on all the staff?” I ask.

  “Of course,” she says, her voice turned chilly since I didn’t engage in her man-ogling. There’s an unwritten code that women are supposed to join in on certain subjects: hunky working-class men, chocolate, wine. I feel her eyes flick up and down my severe outfit—black jeans, boots, black blazer over plain white T-shirt, scarf wound twice around my neck even though it’s a hot July day outside. Gay, she’s thinking.

  On the monitor the Irish doorman looks up and to the left—a tell that someone’s lying but in this case also a surreptitious glance at the camera. For a second his eyes seem to meet mine in an amused complicity. Not gay, they seem to say. Then the realtor swipes the screen, and the view in the front of the building is replaced by the interior of the lobby. Twelve-foot-high ceilings, marble floors, damask-upholstered couches and chairs—a bit threadbare I’d noticed on the way in, but in that old-money style of prewar apartments and clubs. As we watch, an elderly woman walks her elderly poodle—their hair the same texture and shade of apricot—from the elevator to the front door, which magically opens at her approach. The hunky doorman is on his toes.

  The realtor—Marla, why should I pretend I don’t remember her name or that I haven’t clocked her four-and-a-half-carat diamond ring, last year’s Birkin bag, and this season’s Chanel jacket? To whom am I pretending?—swipes the screen again and a view of the hallway outside this apartment’s door appears. “You can set the camera so the default is on the hallway,” Marla says.

  The camera must be mounted at the end of the hallway. It shows the elevator door, the door to this apartment, and most of the hallway. It doesn’t reach the door to the one other apartment on the floor, which makes me feel a little uneasy.

  “Who lives across the hall?” I ask.

  Marla cocks her head and frowns. She thinks I’m a time waster despite the reference I came with. She doesn’t think that I can afford this apartment—four weeks ago she would have been right—and I’m not asking the right questions. I haven’t asked if the fireplace works or if the advertised washing machine is top- or front-loading—all the details that constitute bona fide miracles in New York City real estate. I haven’t even asked to see the clawfoot tub or the walk-in closets. “I can’t divulge any details about the residents, but I can assure you they’ve all been carefully vetted by the co-op board.”

  “Is it a man?” I ask. “That’s all I need to know.”

  Her eyes widen. Maybe not even gay, she’s thinking, maybe asexual. But then she smiles pityingly. “A sweet old lady lives there. In her nineties. You won’t hear a peep out of her, Ms. Lurie.” And then her eyes get even bigger and her mouth forms a round O. “Lurie,” she repeats, and I curse myself for not using a fake name. “Joan Lurie. Aren’t you the one who wrote that story in Manahatta exposing Caspar Osgood?”

  I could deny it—Joan Lurie’s not so rare a name—but I’ll have to pass a financial check to get the apartment anyway. “Yes, guilty. I mean . . . he is . . . was.”

  Marla throws back her head and hoots, all East Side reserve falling to the wayside. “Was he ever! Four more women have come forward to say he assaulted them. One of them was only eighteen when she interned at The Globe. The pig! What I don’t understand is how he got away with it for so long.”

  “Money,” I say, “and the power money gets you. He paid off the women he could and the women who wouldn’t take the money weren’t believed because Caspar Ward Osgood, Mayflower descendant, owner of The Globe, Pulitzer Prize winner, married man with two children, couldn’t possibly be molesting twentysomething women. No one wanted to go up against him. One of the women I interviewed—an Ivy League–educated reporter with a Pulitzer nom—said after she told Human Resources that Caspar Osgood pushed her into a bathroom and shoved his t
ongue into her mouth she lost her job and couldn’t get another one. So who was going to report on the story?”

  “You did,” Marla says, looking into my eyes for the first time this morning. I’m taken aback by the candid look, but then she says, “I wish I’d had you to talk to six months ago,” and I understand. She has a story too.

  I could forestall it. All I’d have to do is break eye contact and ask to see those closets. Remind her of our professional relationship, that I’m here to buy an apartment not listen to her bad experiences with men.

  But then I’m ashamed of the thought. What kind of a reporter turns away from a story? What kind of human being turns away from a person who needs to talk to someone?

  So I maintain eye contact, lean in, and say, “Oh?”

  She takes a step closer and lays her beautifully manicured fingers on my arm. I can smell her Chanel No. 5. “This job,” she begins as so many of my sources over the last three years have, “you have no idea what it takes sometimes. Showing men—powerful men—apartments alone, sometimes late at night. It makes a girl feel . . . vulnerable.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” I say. “Couldn’t you ask a colleague to join you?”

  “Ha! And split the commission?” she scoffs. But her laugh is as brittle as the light bouncing off the river beyond the windows. “I’d be done in a New York minute if I let on I was reluctant to show a prospective buyer a property on my own. I do always suggest they bring their wife, or partner, but sometimes . . . well, six months ago this Wall Street type asks to see a co-op on Sutton Place. High-end, you understand. Belonged to the widow of a coffee tycoon. Asking way too much, but there was no talking her down. He wants to see it on a Friday night, in a big hurry because he has to catch the last train to Greenwich. ‘Why don’t you come back with your wife tomorrow?’ I suggest. ‘No,’ he says . . . get this . . . ‘women get too emotional about real estate. I have to vet it first.’”

  I lift an eyebrow and she goes on. “What a jerk, right? That should have been my first clue, but what could I do? The coffee widow needed to sell, I needed my commission, and the guy checked out—seven-figure salary at a major Wall Street firm, huge year-end bonus, wife with old family money, equity in Greenwich, Jupiter Island, and Booth Harbor, yada, yada, yada.” She twirls her hand and her four-and-a-half-carat solitaire catches the orange glow of the sun as it sinks over the red Palisades.

  “So I meet him in the lobby, make sure to greet the doorman by name so Wall Street knows I’ve got backup, and we get in the elevator. Right away I can smell the liquor on him and I’m on guard. I’m giving him all the stats—professional as can be—and mentioning his wife and kids every other sentence. ‘Oh your wife will love the shopping’ and ‘There’s a park right across the street for your kids’ and ‘See how secure the locks are you won’t have to worry about your wife and kids when you’re away.’ I walk straight to the view—East River, not as spectacular as this view but still pretty great—and when I turn around he’s right there, on my heels, in my face . . . and then in my mouth. I mean, like, his tongue is in my mouth and his hands are on my ass!”

  She pauses for my reaction and I give it. “Wow! What an asshole! What did you do?”

  “I pushed him off, of course, and tried to laugh it off. ‘Oh, that’s not included in the lease,’ I say, and then I flash my ring.” She wriggles her fingers for me. The diamond sends a million rainbows skating across the polished parquet and dancing up the built-in oak bookcases, the marble mantel, and the cream-white egg and dart molding on the ceiling. “‘I’m taken,’ I tell him. And then you know what he says?”

  I can guess but I don’t. “What?”

  She lays her hand back down on my arm and digs her nails into my flesh. “He says, ‘I bet you could go on a great honeymoon with the commission you make on this sale.’”

  “The implication being he would buy the co-op if you had sex with him,” I say.

  “Implication my ass! He took out his checkbook and said he’d lay down a deposit right then if I lay down with him in the Master Suite.”

  “A bad punster on top of being a sexual predator,” I comment, keeping my tone light. This is the point at which many women back out. I’ve learned that making a neutral but supportive comment can ease the path to confession. I’ve forgotten that I have no stake in Marla’s story. Part of me—a part that emerged four weeks ago and that I’m heartily ashamed of—wants her to stop. But coaxing out women’s stories has become second nature to me.

  “So then what did you do?”

  “Well,” she says, tossing her highlighted, blown-out hair over her shoulder. “I said, ‘Mr. Wall Street,’” she winks to let me know she’s leaving out his name because she respects the confidentiality of her clients, even the pervy ones. “‘You do realize that if you buy this apartment I will have multiple dealings with your wife over the next few months. I would hate for there to be any . . . awkwardness.’”

  “You were letting him know that you would tell his wife if he assaulted you.”

  “Yes. And it worked. He backed down. Tried to laugh it off. But he barely looked at the place and I found out later he bought a junior four in Murray Hill from a newbie realtor at another agency. I’ve always wondered what she put out for that measly fifteen percent.”

  “What an upsetting experience,” I say by rote, as I have said to half a dozen other women. When did it begin to feel so useless? “Did you tell your boss?”

  She shrugs. “He would have just told me that I should’ve put out for the sale.”

  I open my mouth to ask if she’d reported him anywhere else, but close it. Who could she have gone to with her story? Like many women who are sexually harassed on the job—waitresses who encounter handsy patrons, spa workers asked to perform “extra” services—there’s no clear course of action. They can ask their bosses to expel the client, but once they’ve done that there’s no way to make the predator accountable for their actions or to prevent them from assaulting other women other than reporting them to the police, and the police aren’t going to take action unless there’s been a physical assault.

  “I’m sorry that happened to you,” I say, which is what I said to every woman I interviewed. Then I would add: But your story will help other women. I don’t say that now. I no longer believe Marla’s story will help anyone else—at least, not by telling it to me.

  “Well, at least your story woke people up,” Marla says. “If Caspar Osgood can be taken down, that means it could happen to any of them. I think it’s great you wrote it and I bet a lot of women are telling you that.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “I’ve gotten some moving responses, but not everyone is so happy . . . especially after . . .”

  “Oh,” she says, solemn now. “You must be getting some awful hate mail. Threats even. Especially after what happened . . . Is that why you’re so concerned with security?”

  I hesitate. Marla’s told me her story; I could tell her mine. But then it occurs to me. Marla knew Mr. Wall Street’s entire financial portfolio. There’s no way she didn’t look me up before agreeing to show me this spectacular river-view apartment, even though I came with a reference from Sylvia Crosley, the style editor at Manahatta, which of course meant she knew exactly who I was. She knew about the story I wrote for Manahatta; and knew about the announcement for the seven-figure book deal I got just last week, which is the only reason I can afford this apartment.

  Which means Marla told her story to make a sale.

  It’s not that I don’t believe her—I imagine worse has happened to her, actually—nor have I been entirely honest either. I am not here because of the nasty tweets and threatening emails I’ve received since I exposed the publisher of the Globe as a sexual predator, although I’ve certainly gotten plenty of those. Nor am I here for the view, although looking out at that expanse of sky and knowing there’s no one looking back in at me has allowed me to breathe freely for the first time in four weeks.

  “Yes,�
� I tell Marla, “I’m here for the security.” I don’t tell her it’s not because of those nasty tweets and threats I’ve received. I’m here because four weeks ago someone tried to kill me.

  Chapter One

  Joan

  IT HAPPENED THE night the story went live. My editor, Simon Wallace, had rented out the restaurant across the street from Manahatta’s offices to celebrate—a lavish gesture even for Simon, who ran the magazine as if it were 1989.

  “You’ve worked on it for three years—it’s a damned fine story—you deserve to celebrate before the wolves circle.” He’d given the last phrase in his husky vibrato with a wink as we stood outside the door to the restaurant. He’d warned me three years ago that if I went forward with the story I’d be letting myself in for a “holy shitstorm.”

  He’d delivered the warning during my interview for a job writing for the style section of Manahatta. I’d already interviewed with the Style editor, Sylvia Crosley, but apparently the “big boss” had to personally meet all potential new hires. The first question Simon Wallace asked when he looked at my résumé was “Why’d you leave the Globe?”

  It’s what I’d been afraid of. No one left an internship at the Globe voluntarily. It was the plum of journalism internships. I could have lied—made up a bullshit story about wanting to work at a different kind of publication—but instead I told the truth. “I saw Caspar Osgood put his arm around his assistant and then I saw her crying in the ladies’ room. She told me she’d been sleeping with him for six months and she was afraid that if she complained to HR, she’d be fired. She had a black eye that she’d tried to hide with make-up. The next day she was gone and I found out she had been fired. I went to HR to ask what had happened to her and to tell them that I was worried she’d been sexually harassed. Then I was fired. No reason given because, of course, they don’t have to with an intern.”

  Simon had been silent for a moment, and then said, “You sound angry.”

  The truth was I’d been fighting back tears, digging my nails so hard into my palms I had little crescent scars there for days after. “I suppose so. Casper Osgood shouldn’t be allowed to get away with treating women that way. No man should.”