Boy Still Missing (29 page)

I tore off the paper and pulled out an office envelope. Peeled back the sticky, dried yellow lip he had sealed, then bent the wings of the metal clasp to find a wad of cash inside. When I pulled it out, my hand felt charged with energy, the way it did when I held that gun. Without even counting the bills, I said to Leon, “I can’t take this.”

“It’s yours,” he said.

“But it’s too much. I can’t accept it.”

“No, man. I mean, it’s yours.” Leon looked toward the covered window then back at me. Fidgety still. “Well, the first installment anyway. There’s more on the way.”

“Installment? What do you mean?” I said, confused.

Leon’s voice was shaky when he spoke next. He held both his hands out in front of him, palms up, as if there was something in them I was supposed to see. “I don’t know how to say this, so I guess I’ll just say it. Remember the envelope Edie gave me that day you were in New York? Well, there was a whole bunch of money in it, and I…well, I’ve been sort of holding on to it for you.”

The floor shifted beneath my feet the way it had the night I found my mother in this room, the way it might feel if that ice cracked on the pond and I sank down into the freezing water, my boots sucked into the cold mud.

Leon was still talking. “I used it to get the car and then to make some more money with Ed. And now I’m going to start paying you back.”

Everything around me seemed to shrink as Leon’s face grew larger before me. His hands were still in front of him, empty with air. His eyes broad and blinking.

I let go of the drawing Jeanny had given me.

I dropped the bills, and they scattered at my feet.

“You fucking kept that money!” I screamed so loud I swore I felt something tear in the back of my throat. My skin was melting, on fire.

“I tried to tell you,” Leon stammered. “But you told me not to bring it up.”

I curled my fingers into a fist. Lunged at him. Swung at his lying sack-of-shit face.

“Dominick!” Jeanny shouted.

But her voice, and Sophie’s crying, sounded far away. Above the ice when I was below. As muffled and distant as two sirens on the other side of town. My fists kept flying. He didn’t swing back but grabbed my arms in an effort to hold me still. My anger was stronger, though, and I broke free, swung at him. Got in one, two, then three more solid punches before he pushed me off. I fell to the floor, slamming the back of my head against the hard wood of the dresser. When I looked up at him from where I lay among that drawing and those strewn bills, there were spots
in front of my eyes. Black, shapeless demons that floated in the air mingling with my dizziness. Taunting:

Edie paid you back.

Leon kept the money.

I screamed again, “You are a fucking asshole! How could you let me keep thinking that Edie had cheated me when you had the money the whole time?”

Leon’s lip was bleeding, and he reached up and touched the blood, wiped it on the back of his hand. “I
said
I was paying you back, you crazy motherfucker.”

I was about to say something more, to tell him to burn in hell, but Jeanny interrupted. “Shhh,” she said. “Did you hear that?”

Silence.

Leon and I looked at her. “What?”

“It sounded like a car door slamming.” Jeanny walked to the window and peeked out, holding Sophie and trying to massage the nipple of the bottle into her mouth. As she stared down at the parking lot, her face looked stricken. A girl in a horror movie who had finally met the monster. “Dominick. Come here.”

I got up off the floor and clambered to the window. Outside in the snowy, dusky air, Roget was getting out of his squad car. With him was none other than Joshua Fuller. I felt a cold wave of fright wash over me. Then my gut instinct kicked in. I told Jeanny to take Sophie into the closet and quiet her down. I didn’t giving a shit where Leon hid.

“What are you going to do?” Jeanny asked.

“I don’t know,” I told her, turning the bolt on the door, sliding the chain into place. I supposed I was just going to watch them. See what they were up to. Keep them from coming inside.

Leon slumped quietly into the bathroom. Jeanny took the baby and settled in on the floor of the closet. She kept the door cracked open, and I could see her nervously shushing Sophie. I turned and watched through the peephole as Joshua Fuller pulled a camera out of his pocket and snapped pictures of the motel.

Click. Flash. Click. Flash.

They walked toward the stairs.

I waited behind the door, and my heart throbbed in my chest. An unseeable claw—maybe the one that belonged to that Hansel-and-Gretel bird—scratched at my face, gripped my throat, and made me gulp for air. As they got closer, I heard Roget say, “Like I told you, the owner is in Florida for the rest of the winter.”

The sound of his voice made those black demon spots dance in front of my eyes again. I hated Roget for what he had done to my mother. He could have helped her. Saved her life. It took all my strength not to open the door and go after him the way I had Leon. I shook my head to rid myself of that temptation, those dark spots, that claw. My neck felt stiff, and I reached up and touched my head where it had hit the dresser. When I pulled my hand away, there was blood on my fingertips.

“And like
I
told
you,
” Joshua was saying, sarcastic, “I talked to him over the phone. But I just want to see the place while I’m here.”

I heard nothing for a moment, then footsteps, and they were right outside the door. So close I thought I could hear them breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Through the hole I saw Joshua Fuller’s purple birthmark, distorted and round, like the image in that balloon before it burst. I remembered the way he had called after me when I ditched him in the diner.

We had a deal!

We had a deal!

We had a deal!

“This is the room?” he asked.

“That’s what the report said,” Roget told him. “I wasn’t here.”

Joshua put his hand on the knob and turned. I watched it move one way, then the other, as my whole body shook. “Locked,” he said.

“What did you think, the owner was going to leave the place wide open?”

“I was just trying for the hell of it. So would you mind giving me a lift to Marnie Garboni’s place?”

“Sure thing,” Roget said.

I heard their footsteps walk away, and I was about to let out a sigh when Joshua called to Roget, who must have already been ahead of him on the stairs. “The room next door is open.”

Instantly I realized that the door was still unlocked from when I had gone out that way earlier. As a matter of fact, it had probably been unlocked for days. How could I have been so fucking careless? My whole body seemed to shake as I moved to the closet, crouched next to Jeanny. Her eyes big and wide as she rocked Sophie, who was busy with her bottle, making that milky sound.

Please, God, I prayed, don’t let her cry.

“I don’t know what you expect to find,” I heard Roget’s muffled voice say when the door opened in the next room.

“I don’t expect to find anything. I’m a reporter. Reporters like to take everything in. That’s all. Aren’t police officers supposed to be curious, too?”

Roget didn’t answer that.

“The bed’s not made,” Joshua said. “There’s blankets on the window.”

“I’ll be sure to get the name of the chambermaid so I can arrest her for you.”

“You’re a funny guy,” Joshua Fuller said.

Jeanny and I listened as they walked around the room. Hard, discordant footsteps on the floor, like two horses circling each other in a tight stable. Someone—I assumed it was Joshua Fuller—opened and closed a drawer. My mind filled with the image of that Bible stuffed with the pistol Leon had given me. Why hadn’t I just thrown the thing away? I didn’t have time enough to worry about them finding it, because something far worse happened.

I heard the closet door open on their side.

“Hey,” Joshua Fuller said. “There’s a door in the back of this closet. It must connect with Five-B.”

Too late to turn the lock, because he would hear the sound. I reached up and put my hand on the knob. Held it as hard as I could. Joshua tried to turn it from the other side as I squeezed until my fingers
hurt, pulled with all my weight. That’s when Sophie spit her bottle out of her mouth. Jeanny and I watched her, willing her not to cry.

Please, God.

Please, God.

Please, God.

She moved her mouth but kept quiet.

“It’s locked,” Joshua said finally and let go.

I kept holding on anyway, in case one of them tried again.

“Oh, well,” Roget told him, “I still don’t know what you’re expecting to find.”

The closet door closed, and I heard more footsteps. “There’s a car parked out back,” Joshua said. “Is it the owner’s?”

“Nah,” Roget told him. “There’s a pond on the property. Probably high-school kids playing a hockey game back there. Listen, if you don’t mind, I’d like to take you to Miss Garboni’s so I can get on with some business of my own.”

“All right. I’m done here,” Joshua said.

I heard their footsteps move to the door, and then they were outside again. My hand stayed gripped on the doorknob even as I told myself it was okay to let go. A moment later Roget’s car started in the parking lot. I peeled my stiff fingers away and went to the window. Watched them drive off, my heart still racing.

Leon emerged from the bathroom. A piece of toilet paper stuck to his split lip like my father when he cut himself shaving. “I’m out of here,” he said.

“Wait,” I told him. “I want you to drive me and the baby back to New York right now.”

“Now? I just can’t drive to New York now. What would I tell Leila?”

“Since when are you so concerned with what you tell your mother? And I own that car of yours anyway. So if I want a ride, you don’t have much of a choice.”

“Dominick,” Jeanny said. “We’re all really worked up. And it’s almost dark outside and snowing. You know how much I want you to
take this baby back. But it would be smart if we all calmed down and left first thing in the morning. It’ll give us time to figure out how we’re going to get the baby to Edie.”

I knew Jeanny was right, but I couldn’t help thinking of my mother’s message. If Sophie was in danger here with me, then one night could make all the difference.

“One more night,” Jeanny said quietly.

And I could tell by the way she said it that despite her return-Sophie-to-her-rightful-owner campaign, she hated letting go of our life here, too. Just like me, she wanted us to sleep next to each other one last time. And I wanted to have my sister with me a little longer before our lives changed forever. “Fine,” I told Leon. “Pick us up at seven. Don’t be late. And don’t bring that dope Ed with you.”

Leon walked to the window, pushed the curtain and blankets aside, I guessed to make sure they were definitely gone. Before opening the door, he turned back to face me. “It wasn’t like I set out to rob you,” he said, his voice still shaky. “When Edie first handed me that envelope, she made me swear up and down that I would give it to you. And I planned on it. But then everything happened with your mom. And you didn’t want to hear about it—”

“I was at her funeral, Leon. You could have tried to tell me another time.”

“Okay, but then you were gone, and that money was just sitting in my drawer staring at me.”

“I was only gone for a month.”

“But I didn’t know that. Christ, the way the paper made it sound, you were dead in a ditch or something. When you showed up at the bus station and I brought you here, I realized I fucked up. Why do you think I’ve been coming around like Santa Claus every friggin’ day?” Leon stopped and touched his lip again. That piece of torn tissue. He sighed. “I’ll drive you to New York in the morning. Then I’ll sell the car. I’ll pay you back every last dime.”

“Just be here at seven,” I said again, not ready to forgive him or to strike a deal.

After he was gone, Jeanny looked at the back of my head. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Dominick, no, you’re not. You’re bleeding.” She took one of Sophie’s diapers and pressed it to my head, then held it in front of my face. The thing had a spot of blood in the center as red as that fish in the pond. “It’s actually not too big of a cut,” she said once the blood was wiped away. She took one of those cold cans of Dr Pepper and pressed it to my head to stop the swelling.

“Some birthday party,” I said and flopped back on the bed, feeling the weight of my head. A serious migraine coming on.

As I stared up at the eleven remaining balloons—the survivors, as Jeanny had called them—my mind filled with a picture of that day Edie left Holedo. I saw the scene unfold in my mind as if I were watching it like one of those balloons watching me. The way I imagined it, Edie pulled up in front of my apartment in her white Cadillac, that man I didn’t know at the wheel, the trunk stuffed and heavy with her belongings. She looked around, nervous, checking to make sure my father’s truck was nowhere in sight. When she felt sure he wasn’t there, she got out of the car. The man who was with her offered to go up to my door for her, but she refused.

“I’ll be right back,” she said to him.

She walked up the stairs with her hands holding her swelled stomach and knocked. As she waited, she bit at her broken, once-beautiful nails. Kept watching to make sure my father didn’t show. No one answered, of course. I was in New York. My mother was off with Roget. My father wasn’t home yet from his extended trip. Edie knocked and knocked, then finally turned back toward the car. That’s when she spotted Leon somewhere. Maybe right there at the bottom of the stairs.

“Hey, there,” she said, piecing together who he was from the few things I’d told her about him. “You must be Dominick’s friend Leon. Right?”

“That’s me,” Leon said, taking note of her pregnant stomach and wondering what in the world Edie Kramer was doing rapping at my door.

She walked down the stairs, one hand on the railing, the other on her belly again. At that very moment Sophie was probably preparing to be born. Kicking and squirming. Shifting into position. Edie may have even felt a cramp just then, before she said, “Can I ask you a huge favor?” uncertain of what else to do.