A Drink Before the War (26 page)

F
ROM A DETECTIVE'S PERSPECTIVE
once you rule out running away or abduction by a parent, a child's disappearance is similar to a murder case: If it's not solved within seventy-two hours, it's unlikely it ever will be. That doesn't necessarily mean the child is dead, though the probability is high. But if the child is alive, she's definitely worse off than when she went missing. Because there's very little gray area in the motivations of adults who encounter children who aren't their own; you either
A
, help that child or,
B
, exploit her. And while the methods of exploitation vary—ransoming children for money, using them for labor, abusing them sexually for personal and/or profit concerns, murdering them—none of them stems from benevolence. And if the child doesn't die and is eventually found, the scars run so deep that the poison can never be removed from her blood.

In the last four years, I'd killed two men. I'd watched my oldest friend and a woman I barely knew die in front of me. I'd seen children desecrated in the worst possible ways, met men and women who killed as if it were a reflex action, watched relationships burn in the violence with which I'd actively surrounded myself.

And I was tired of it.

Amanda McCready had been missing for at least sixty hours by this point, maybe as long as seventy, and I didn't want to find her stuffed in a Dumpster somewhere, her hair matted with blood. I didn't want to find her six months down the road, vacant-eyed and used up by some freak with a video camera and a mailing list of pedophiles. I didn't want to look in a four-year-old's eyes and see the death of everything that had been pure in her.

I didn't want to find Amanda McCready. I wanted someone else to.

But maybe because I'd become as caught up in this case over the last few days as the rest of the city, or maybe because it had happened here in my neighborhood, or maybe just because “four-year-old” and “missing” aren't words that should go together in the same sentence, we agreed to meet Lionel and Beatrice McCready at Helene's apartment in half an hour.

“You'll take the case, then?” Beatrice said, as she and Lionel stood.

“That's what we need to discuss between ourselves,” I said.

“But—”

“Mrs. McCready,” Angie said, “things are done a certain way in this business. We have to consult privately before we agree to anything.”

Beatrice didn't like it, but she also realized there was very little she could do about it.

“We'll drop by Helene's in half an hour,” I said.

“Thank you,” Lionel said, and tugged his wife's sleeve.

“Yes. Thanks,” Beatrice said, though she didn't sound real sincere. I had a feeling that nothing less than a presidential deployment of the National Guard to search for her niece would satisfy her.

We listened to their footfalls descend the belfry stairs and then I watched from the window as they left the schoolyard beside the church and walked to a weather-beaten Dodge Aries. The sun had drifted west past my line of sight, and the
early October sky was still a pale summer white, but wisps of rust had floated into the white. A child's voice called, “Vinny, wait up! Vinny!” and from four stories above the ground there was something lonely about the sound, something unfinished. Beatrice and Lionel's car U-turned on the avenue, and I watched the puff of its exhaust until it had pulled out of sight.

“I don't know,” Angie said, and leaned back in her chair. She propped her sneakers up on the desk and pushed her long thick hair off her temples. “I just don't know about this one.”

She wore black Lycra biking shorts and a loose black tank top over a tight white one. The black tank top bore the white letters
NIN
on the front and the words
PRETTY HATE MACHINE
on the back. She'd owned it for about eight years and it still looked like she was wearing it for the first time. I'd lived with Angie for almost two years. As far as I could see, she didn't take any better care of her apparel than I did mine, but I owned shirts that looked like they'd been run through a car engine half an hour after I removed the price tags, and she had socks from high school that were still as white as palace linen. Women and their clothes often astounded me this way, but I figured it was one of those mysteries I'd never solve—like what really happened to Amelia Earhart or the bell that used to occupy our office.

“Don't know about this case?” I said. “In what way?”

“A missing child, a mother who apparently isn't looking too hard, a pushy aunt—”

“You thought Beatrice was pushy?”

“Not any more so than a Jehovah with one foot in the door.”

“She's worried about that kid. Tear-her-hair-out worried.”

“And I feel for that.” She shrugged. “Still don't enjoy being pushed, though.”

“It's not one of your stronger qualities, true.”

She flipped a pencil at my head, caught my chin. I rubbed at the spot and looked for the pencil so I could throw it back.

“It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye,” I
mumbled, as I felt under my chair for the pencil.

“We're doing real well,” she said.

“We are.” The pencil wasn't below my chair or the desk, as far as I could see.

“Made more this year than last.”

“And it's only October.” No pencil by the floorboard or under the mini-fridge. Maybe it was with Amelia Earhart and Amanda McCready and the bell.

“Only October,” she agreed.

“You're saying we don't need this case.”

“Pretty much the size of it.”

I gave up on the pencil and looked out the window for a bit. The wisps of rust had deepened to blood red, and the white sky was gradually darkening into blue. The first yellow lightbulb of the evening clicked on in a third-story apartment across the street. The smell of the air coming through the screen made me think of early adolescence and stickball, long, easy days leaking into long, easy nights.

“You don't agree?” Angie said after a few moments.

I shrugged.

“Speak now or forever hold your peace,” she said lightly.

I turned and looked at her. The gathering dusk was gold against her window, and it swam in her dark hair. Her honeycomb skin was darker than usual from the long dry summer that had somehow continued to extend well into autumn, and the muscles in her calves and biceps were pronounced after months of daily basketball games at the Ryan playground.

In my previous experience with women, once you've been intimate with someone for a while, her beauty is often the first thing you overlook. Intellectually, you know it's there, but your emotional capacity to be overwhelmed or surprised by it, to the point where it can get you drunk, diminishes. But there are still moments every day when I glance at Angie and feel a gust cleave through my chest cavity from the sweet pain of looking at her.

T
HE FIRST TIME
I met Karen Nichols, she struck me as the kind of woman who ironed her socks.

She was blond and petite and stepped out of a kelly-green 1998 VW Bug as Bubba and I crossed the avenue toward St. Bartholomew's Church with our morning coffee in hand. It was February, but winter had forgotten to show up that year. Except for one snowstorm and a few days in the subzeros, it had been damn near balmy. Today it was in the high forties, and it was only ten in the morning. Say all you want about global warming, but as long as it saves me from shoveling the walk, I'm for it.

Karen Nichols placed a hand over her eyebrows, even though the morning sun wasn't all that strong, and smiled uncertainly at me.

“Mr. Kenzie?”

I gave her my eats-his-veggies-loves-his-mom smile and proffered my hand. “Miss Nichols?”

She laughed for some reason. “Karen, yes. I'm early.”

Her hand slid into mine and felt so smooth and uncallused it could have been gloved. “Call me Patrick. That's Mr. Rogowski.”

Bubba grunted and slugged his coffee.

Karen Nichols's hand dropped from mine and she jerked back slightly, as if afraid she'd have to extend her hand to Bubba. Afraid if she did, she might not get it back.

She wore a brown suede jacket that fell to midthigh over a charcoal cable-knit crewneck, crisp blue jeans, and bright white Reeboks. None of her apparel looked as if a wrinkle, stain, or wisp of dust had been within a country mile of it.

She placed delicate fingers on her smooth neck. “A couple of real PIs. Wow.” Her soft blue eyes crinkled with her button nose and she laughed again.

“I'm the PI,” I said. “He's just slumming.”

Bubba grunted again and kicked me in the ass.

“Down, boy,” I said. “Heel.”

Bubba sipped some coffee.

Karen Nichols looked as if she'd made a mistake coming here. I decided then not to lead her up to my belfry office. If people were uncertain about hiring me, taking them to the belfry usually wasn't good PR.

School was out because it was Saturday, and the air was moist and without a chill, so Karen Nichols, Bubba, and I walked to a bench in the schoolyard. I sat down. Karen Nichols used an immaculate white handkerchief to dust the surface, then she sat down. Bubba frowned at the lack of space on the bench, frowned at me, then sat on the ground in front of us, crossed his legs, peered up expectantly.

“Good doggie,” I said.

Bubba gave me a look that said I'd pay for that as soon as we were away from polite company.

“Miss Nichols,” I said, “how did you hear about me?”

She tore her gaze away from Bubba and looked into my eyes for a moment in utter confusion. Her blond hair was cut as short as a small boy's and reminded me of pictures I've seen of women in Berlin in the 1920s. It was sculpted tight against the skull with gel, and even though it wouldn't be moving on its own unless she stepped into the wake of a jet engine, she'd clipped it over her left ear, just below the part, with a small black barrette that had a june bug painted on it.

Her wide blue eyes cleared and she made that short, nervous laugh again. “My boyfriend.”

“And his name is…” I said, guessing Tad or Ty or Hunter.

“David Wetterau.”

So much for my psychic abilities.

“I'm afraid I've never heard of him.”

“He met someone who used to work with you. A woman?”

Bubba raised his head, glared at me. Bubba blamed me for Angie ending our partnership, for Angie moving out of the neighborhood, buying a Honda, dressing in Anne Klein suits, and generally not hanging out with us anymore.

“Angela Gennaro?” I asked Karen Nichols.

She smiled. “Yes. That's her name.”

Bubba grunted again. Pretty soon he'd start howling at the moon.

“And why do you need a private detective, Miss Nichols?”

“Karen.” She turned on the bench toward me, tucked an imaginary strand of hair behind her ear.

“Karen. Why do you need a detective?”

A sad, crumpled smile bent her pursed lips and she looked down at her knees for a moment. “There's a guy at the gym I go to?”

I nodded.

She swallowed. I guess she'd been hoping I'd figure it all out from that one sentence. I was certain she was about to tell me something unpleasant and even more certain that she had, at best, only a very passing acquaintance with things unpleasant.

“He's been hitting on me, following me to the parking lot. At first it was just, you know, annoying?” She raised her head, searched my eyes for understanding. “Then it got uglier. He began calling me at home. I went out of my way to avoid him at the gym, but a couple of times I saw him parked out in front of the house. David finally got fed up and went to talk to him. He denied it all and then he threatened
David.” She blinked, twisted the fingers of her left hand in the fist she'd made of her right. “David's not physically…formidable? Is that the right word?”

I nodded.

“So, Cody—that's his name, Cody Falk—he laughed at David and called me the same night.”

Cody. I hated him already on general principle.

“He called and told me how much he knew I wanted it, how I'd probably never had a good, a good—”

“Fuck,” Bubba said.

She jerked a little, glanced at him, and then quickly back to me. “Yeah. A good, well…in my life. And he knew I secretly wanted him to give me one. I left this note on his car. I know it was stupid, but I…well, I left it.”

She reached into her purse, extracted a wrinkled piece of purple notepaper. In perfect Palmer script, she'd written:

Mr. Falk,
Please leave me alone.
Karen Nichols

“The next time I went to the gym,” she said, “I came back to my car, and he'd put it back on my windshield in the same place I'd left it on his. If you turn it over, Mr. Kenzie, you'll see what he wrote.” She pointed at the paper in my hand.

I turned it over. On the reverse side, Cody Falk had written a single word:

No
.

I was really starting to dislike this prick.

“Then yesterday?” Her eyes filled and she swallowed several times and a thick tremor pulsed in the center of her soft, white throat.

I placed a hand on hers and she curled her fingers into it.

“What did he do?” I said.

She sucked a breath into her mouth and I heard it rattle wetly against the back of her throat. “He vandalized my car.”

Bubba and I both did a double take, looked out at the
gleaming green VW Bug parked by the schoolyard gate. It looked as if it had just been driven off the lot, still probably had that new-car smell inside.

“That car?” I said.

“What?” She followed my gaze. “Oh, no, no. That's David's car.”

“A guy?” Bubba said. “A
guy
drives that car?”

I shook my head at him.

Bubba scowled, then looked down at his combat boots and pulled them up on his knees.

Karen shook her head as if to clear it. “I drive a Corolla. I wanted the Camry, but we couldn't afford it. David's starting a new business, we both have student loans we're still paying off, so I got the Corolla. And now it's ruined. He poured acid all over it. He punctured the radiator. The mechanic said he poured syrup into the engine.”

“Did you tell the police?”

She nodded, her small body trembling. “There's no proof it was him. He told the police he was at a movie that night and people saw him going in and leaving. He…” Her face caved in on itself and reddened. “They can't touch him, and the insurance company won't cover the damages.”

Bubba raised his head, cocked it at me.

“Why not?” I said.

“Because they never got my last payment. And I…I sent it. I sent it out over three weeks ago. They said they sent a notice, but I never got it. And, and…” She lowered her head and tears fell to her knees.

She had a stuffed animal collection, I was pretty sure. Her totaled Corolla had either a smiley face or a Jesus fish affixed to the bumper. She read John Grisham novels, listened to soft rock, loved going to bridal showers, and had never seen a Spike Lee movie.

She had never expected anything like this to happen in her life.