Facade (8 page)

A
round nine-thirty, after another excellent dinner in his own company at the Harvest, Xander walked home, deep in thought. Wednesday night had been a huge mistake. He shouldn't have had that bottle of 15-year-old Macallan in the house. Someone was trying to set him up and he still couldn't figure out who it was. He'd broken his own rule of one drink a night. But not by a lot. Hadn't he only had two? But then why had he passed out like that? Nils would kill him. It was a badly-kept secret that the Pritzker jury was considering him for next year's prize, and his assistant had made him promise to stay on his best behavior. Of course Xander wanted the award. He deserved it. It was part of his not-so-modest life plan perfectly timed for this exact stage in his career.

Xander turned onto his street and saw, lit up before him, the little house where he now lived. With it's simple gable roof, chimney and front porch, it looked like a child's drawing. He looked forward to curling up with a book in his living room's cocoon-like Swan chair. As he retrieved the keys from his pocket, he heard a loud creak on the porch deck behind him.

A large shadowy figure wrapped an arm around Xander's neck. Xander could feel his attacker's hot breath as the man whispered in his ear, “Tell me where you hide my girl.”

Xander tried to wrestle out of the man's grip but he was trapped in a head-lock. “I don't have her,” Xander spat out through clenched teeth.

“I'll make you tell the truth,” Ivano Kurjak growled. “Cops can't do it, but I can.”

Kurjak raised his right hand and struck Xander so hard he felt something in his neck crack. “That's for saying you screwed my wife.”

Xander tried to scream for help, but couldn't draw any air into his lungs.

Kurjak grunted and delivered a ferocious punch to the man's ribs. The architect crashed into the side of the house.

“That's for what you've done to my girl.”

As Xander crumpled to the ground, he tasted blood but managed to choke out, “I cannot tell you about something I did not do.”

“So, you want the hard way.”

Kurjak drilled his foot into his captive's back. Xander curled up into a ball. Ribbons of pain seared through him. He didn't want to think about what was coming next. He tried to focus instead on a way to escape, but fear paralyzed his brain.

And then, blessedly, a blue strobe light lit up the front yard.

“Kurjak, raise your arms above your head!” a booming voice commanded. “Drop to your knees.”

Xander felt Kurjak's heavy steps running away across the porch decking and glimpsed a shadow chasing after him. He heard pounding in his ears, and then nothing.

*                               *                             *

Xander woke up in a hospital bed, feeling bruised all over. When he tried to sit up, sharp, burning stabs coursed through his back. He gasped and eased back against the pillows.

“Don't try to move.” A tall woman with short, no-nonsense hair moved into his field of vision. She wore a concerned expression and seemed to be studying his pupils. “I'm Dr. Walker. You were brought here to Mt. Auburn Hospital after being assaulted. Do you remember what happened?”

Xander let out a moan at the memory of being beated up on his porch. He could feel the compression of bandages encircling his abdomen. “What are my injuries?” he was able to croak.

“You've suffered a dislocated shoulder and a broken rib. We were concerned that you might have a ruptured kidney but the CT scan showed only a severe bruise. You will probably have some blood in your urine for a week or so. I've set your shoulder and your rib will heal gradually. You're on pain medication, which is why you feel woozy. If you need more, press this with your finger.” She lifted the control button to show him. “It's regulated so you can't overdose.”

“How did they find me? Who brought me here?” Xander asked, confused.

The doctor turned toward the doorway, where Xander now noticed the younger bald police detective. “You can ask this gentlemen those questions. I'll be back in an hour to check on you.”

The detective put away the phone he'd been texting on, walked to the bedside, and squatted down beside the side rail.

“Did you get the bastard?” Xander asked.

“Yeah, we arrested Kurjak for assault and battery. Detective Foster saw everything.”

“Yeah, he sat there and watched me getting beaten to a pulp.”

“He needed to wait for back-up.”

Xander considered this response. Had Foster taken his time, in case Kurjak could get Xander to talk, to tell where Lara was? That would have wrapped up their case pretty neatly.

“I hope you realize now that I'm innocent of any involvement with Lara,” Xander said. “If I were guilty, surely I would have told that brute something in order to save my life.”

“Unless you did something to his daughter that would've made him even more intent on working you over. All we've ruled out tonight is that it wasn't Kurjak who took Lara, unless he's a better actor than we think.”

I
ris texted Luc from her tiny table in the bar area of Chez Jacques, a favorite Cuban bistro in her neighborhood. “So sorry. Emergency came up. I need to talk w/ u. XXOO, I.” She deleted the XXOO, then put it back in and hit “send.”

Iris nibbled on a plantain chip and thought again about ordering a Periodista. No, she would be driving and even one of those delicious rum drinks left her wobbly. She would need her wits about her tonight. The pressed duck sandwich had been dinner enough.

She looked over at Jasna, busy polishing off the last morsels of a Cuban sandwich and said, “Let's go over the timeframe from that night again.” Iris thought back to the first news program she had seen about Lara's disappearance. “The police think she was taken from her apartment on May St. between seven and nine. When did you go to pick up Rory's car?”

“I left around nine forty-five and was gone for maybe half an hour, at most,” Jasna said.

“This is critical information. Someone may have seen something later that night.” Iris thought for a few moments, then asked “Do you know your neighbors? Are there any who walk dogs at night or who would have a reason to be out on the street at around ten o'clock?”

“There's a yappy dog above me that barks all day until the owner returns from work. He walks him at night, I think. At least then it's quiet for a little while.”

“Good. We'll go talk to the neighbors. It's now nine-thirty—about the same time of night that Lara was taken. We can see who's outside tonight. If we can't tell the police the correct time she went missing, maybe we can ask around ourselves. It might make a difference.”

After they both finished eating and Iris settled the bill, they drove over to Jasna's apartment in silence. Each was absorbed in her own thoughts. Iris' mind careened between frustration at missing the chance to clear the air with Luc to sadness over Jasna's story about Lara. Jasna's plan to help the girl escape her father had been so well intentioned. Iris needed to find a way to ease her student's guilt over the way it had all gone wrong. Finding the poor missing girl seemed like the only way to accomplish that.

The younger woman led Iris up the lop-sided staircase to the third floor. As Jasna knocked on her neighbor's door they heard a dog yapping wildly inside.

The security peephole in the door flicked, followed by a scowling face of indeterminate gender as the door opened a crack, stopped by the security chain. “I can't do nuthin' 'bout the barking. Sparky's just tellin' me it's time for his walk.”

“I'm not here about the noise, Mr. Demopoulos. I was wondering if I might ask you something about last week.” Jasna gestured toward Iris. “This is Professor Reid from my school. She's helping me search for a friend who has gone missing.”

The gnome-like man eyed Iris suspiciously, then unhooked the door and opened it a few inches more. “I guess you can come in.”

The apartment was strewn with newspapers. There seemed to be piles of them on every horizontal surface in the cramped living room. Sparky, a small, high-strung terrier, was hopping around his owner, all the while yapping and baring his teeth in menace.

“Your dog doesn't bite, does he?” Iris asked.

“Only if you try any funny business.” The man bent down to pet Sparky. The dog seemed to begin foaming at the mouth.

Iris and Jasna hovered on the edges of arm chairs as Mr. Demopoulos sat on top of a newspaper-covered sofa holding the wriggling dog in his arms. “I'm catching up on my reading,” the man said as he waved an arm to encompass the room.

“Good idea,” Jasna said. “Do you walk Sparky every night around this time?”

“Of course I do. A dog's gotta relieve himself at the end of a day. You'd know that if you were a dog lover.”

Iris jumped in. “My dog, Sheba, goes out in my back yard around now too. We were wondering if you remember seeing anything unusual last Wednesday night when you took Sparky out. Did you notice any strangers around?”

“Wadda you mean, strangers? Some of these punk kids around here look pretty strange.”

“No, I meant someone you didn't recognize from the neighborhood,” Iris said.

Mr. Demopoulos patted Sparky while he thought. “Wednesday. Wednesday. What's on TV on Wednesday?”

Iris and Jasna looked at each other blankly until Iris remembered her own guilty-pleasure viewing that night.

“Urban Survivor.”

“Oh, yeah. I love that show. But those poor kids. The things they have to find.”

“So after you watched the kids looking for the cheese and the pig...”

“Hey, you watched the show too!”

“...you took Sparky outside.” Iris prodded. “Did you happen to notice anyone new hanging around that night?”

“A new person? We mainly get the same neighborhood folks around here and the streets are pretty empty at that hour.” The man scrunched up his face in concentration. “No, I don't remember anyone new that night.”

Iris felt like shaking this guy. If Jasna's story was true, someone carried off Lara from this building right when this guy was out walking his dog, right under his nose.”

“When you walk Sparky you go out the front door, right?” Jasna asked. “Do you walk back and forth in front of the building?”

“I mainly walk to that bush on the right when you go out. He does his business there, then we go back up. We're out there five minutes, tops. I didn't see no stranger out there Wednesday night, sorry.”

They thanked the old man, tip-toed around the newspaper piles, and left. A few minutes later the two women sat on Jasna's front stoop lamenting their bad luck. “He must have just missed the kidnapping. Or else he's oblivious,” Iris said.

“He probably only focuses on his dog and his newspapers,” Jasna said. “Maybe I should show you the window that was open—where Lara was taken out.”

Jasna led Iris to the alley alongside her building, then back to a yard that was a makeshift parking lot. She pointed to a fire escape. “See that light on the second floor? That's my bedroom. Lara was taken out of there.”

Iris started up the rusty metal stairs, testing each step in front of her before committing her weight. Light spilling out of Jasna's bedroom lit their path. As they approached the window, a tiny yellow fragment caught Iris' eye. She got out her phone and pressed the flashlight app to illuminate it. A small scrap of fabric was wedged between the grate and side of the metal bars. Jasna leaned in and pried it out before Iris could say “Don't touch it. It's evidence!”

“But we can't give it to the police. We can't tell them about this,” Jasna said as she held the material up to the light. “This is from my bedspread.”

“That confirms your theory that she was taken out this back way. Maybe he wrapped her in the bedspread so no one could see her.”

They didn't find anything else on the fire escape so they examined the area around its base. The dirt was too dry to show any footprints from four days before, or anything else for that matter.

They were still hunched over, inspecting the ground, when a back door opened to emit the squalling of an infant. A harried-looking man lurched out with a baby slung over his shoulder. He headed robotically toward a beat-up hatchback.

Jasna rushed up to him. “Hey Mark—can I ask you—were you out here last Wednesday night?”

The clearly exhausted man looked at her bleakly. “I'm out here every night. This kid won't sleep. She has colic. I have to drive her around in the car seat until she nods off. Sometimes it takes forty minutes of driving back and forth on Route 2. Why?”

“Did you happen to see anyone out here last Wednesday night?”

“You mean that jerk in the blue van? He almost ran me over.”

“Y
ou'd better be calling about that interview with DeWitt,” Budge croaked. “It's six friggin' thirty in the morning, Reid.”

Iris' brain felt fricaseed. She had stayed up late brainstorming with Jasna about how to trace the blue van's license plate, all of which Mark had miraculously remembered.

She rubbed her eyes with her free hand. “I've decided to let you know where you can find the professor alone so you can grill him to your heart's content. If you want to know where, meet me at Peet's. Over by Grendel's Den. Seven o'clock.”

“Am I supposed to bring thirty pieces of silver or has he agreed to this interview?”

“I'll fill you in at Peet's and let you know my price.”

“Intriguing. Make it seven-thirty. But don't forget I've still got that photograph of you, all ready for the front page.”

After a long hot shower, during which she nearly fell back asleep, followed by a hard splash of cold water, Iris walked the twenty minutes into Harvard Square. Better that than spending time circling to find a parking spot. She wound her scarf around her neck against the brisk October chill as she hurried along Mass Ave. A hunched-over bicyclist sped through a red light narrowly avoiding a collision with an SUV driver who'd over-anticipated his green. A horn blared and middle fingers were raised. Iris passed the brick Georgian facades of Harvard Yard on her left and navigated through the craziness of the Square's kamikaze traffic.

The aroma of coffee was palpable as she entered the café and scanned the room for Budge. Having arrived first, she joined the line to place her order—a triple espresso for her, an American regular for him, guessing at his preference.

Iris sipped fast and waited for the caffeine to reach her brain. She stared out the window at a ruddy-faced man asleep on a bench in Winthrop Park, covered in a tangle of sweaters and dirty jackets. She contemplated the plan they had come up with to find Lara quickly, without exposing Jasna's involvement. Why wasn't there another way that didn't involve Budge? This felt like making a deal with the Devil. Still, she felt confident that Xander had nothing to hide so what harm would it do to give him a chance to set the press straight?

She was just reaching to help herself to Budge's coffee when the devil himself appeared at the table.

“How do I know that he'll answer my questions?” he asked, shrugging off his overlarge overcoat.

“Use your journalistic skills, Budge. Here, have some coffee.” She shoved the second cup at him.

He went to get more sugar at the supply table. His hair was wet and slicked back. With his protuding eyes he looked like a toad.

“Great place to meet,” he said on his return. “Parking's fun at this hour.”

“You'll soon learn why I picked it. ”

Budge's eyes lit up. “Go ahead. I'm listening.”

“First, you need to agree to do me a favor.”

“Destroy the photo of you?”

“Yes, but that's understood. I need you to run a license plate for me. Some jerk nicked my car in the Star Market parking lot. Porter Square of course. A witness left me a note with the license number. I figure I might as well get something out of this scoop I'm giving you.”

“Which might not pay off. He could just stonewall me. But if I do squeeze some sound bites out of him, I'll check your plate number with my source in the RMV.”

Budge made a let's-move-this-along gesture with his hand.

“DeWitt swims every morning at eight at the Malkin Pool at Harvard. It's three blocks from here.” She jerked her thumb across the small park. “You can pick up a Speedo at the Coop on your way. You'll have him all to yourself.”

Budge took out his phone and checked the time.“I'd better get going. I've got to get set up.”

Then he turned to her with a skeptical look. “I thought this guy was a friend of yours.”

“He is and you might be able to help him clear his name.”

Budge regarded her intently then said, “Okay. Give me that license plate number.”