Missing (17 page)

"Mason was kinder to me than anyone I’ve ever
known. And I loved him for it. I still do. When we made love, I knew
he loved me. I grew to depend on that assurance. Now . . . I’m
afraid I’ll lose myself in you, Harry. You see, I know it’s still
part of me—the willingness to do anything to please, to love
without being loved back."

She turned her head toward me and opened her eyes.
"So, you see the kind of woman you’re getting. I’m going to
be in love with you, and I want you to know it—up front—before we
go upstairs. Because once we start, I’m little girl lost. And if
you’re not prepared to make a commitment, I’m likely to get
hurt."

I stared at her for a long moment. "I wouldn’t
hurt you, Cindy."

"I just want you to be honest with me. That’s
all I want."

She got to her feet and held out her hand. In the
backlight I could see all of her through the thin cotton shirt. Her
high round breasts with their long dark nipples, the heart of auburn
hair that covered her sex, her long brown legs below the hem of
shirt.

I took her hand, and she led me up a half-flight of
stairs to a landing above the garage. The door on the right led to
her bedroom. She pulled me through it over to a large brass bed,
sitting beneath a window that looked out on the driveway. Arching her
back, Cindy stripped off the T-shirt and lay down in the middle of
the sheets. She was brown all over, save for narrow strips of white
at her breasts and hips.

I unbuttoned my shirt and pants.

"You look nice," she said, watching me
undress.

I lay down beside her on the cool sheets. Shimmying
closer to me, Cindy ran her hand down my belly. I reached down and
began touching her.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she shuddered up and down
her spine.

"Just your touch," she whispered.

She wriggled out of my arms and reached over to the
night table. Opening the drawer, she pulled out a condom and handed
it to me. Flipping off the lights, she slid down the sheets.

Sometime in the night I heard her get up. Opening one
eye, I saw her walk naked across the room and out the door to the
bath. I thought to myself, even as I was falling back asleep, that
she was very beautiful and that I wanted her. Feeling a little uneasy
at wanting her as much as I did, because she was a bit screwed up and
very vulnerable. Because I wasn’t used to wanting anyone that much.

I woke up with the same mixed feeling of desire and
uneasiness, alone in her bed, with the morning sun pouring through
the window. The light glinted off her vanity mirror and off the
polished wood of the dresser across from the bed. A drawer stood open
atop it, with a leg warmer dangling over its edge. I could smell the
night on the sheets. Lying in bed, I thought about her—thought
about how we’d connected so strongly physically.

Naked, I wandered out into the hall, into the
bathroom, and stuck myself under a hot shower. I found my clothes,
washed and pressed, hanging from the doorknob of the bedroom. I
slipped them on and went down to the living room. The card tables
were folded up and gone, along with the chairs and plastic plates.
The room smelled of coffee and cooking.

I went into the kitchen and found her standing by the
stove, arranging a tray full of breakfast. She turned to me with
surprise as I came into the room.

"You got dressed! I heard you in the shower and
was going to bring your breakfast upstairs." Smiling, she picked
up the tray and set it down on the Formica breakfast table. "Eat,"
she said.

I was hungry and I ate, while she watched.

"Are you okay? You seem so quiet."

"I’m okay," I said.

Her pretty face bunched up with worry. "What is
it, Harry?"

She sat down on the kitchen chair, facing me.

I put down the fork and stared into her face. "I’m
forty-five years old this November. I’m a part-time drunk. I have
virtually no friends except for a few ex-cops. I sleep with three or
four women, all of whom I’ve known since the early seventies. All
of whom have other attachments. I haven’t had a serious
relationship in better than ten years, and I’m not used to being in
love."

She started to smile. "Meaning what? That you’re
in love with me?"

"I’ve been half in love with you since I first
saw you. It was a pleasant fantasy. I didn’t think it would come
true. Now . . ."

"What?"

"Now we’re sitting here, and I’m thinking
that I’m too old for this, that I’m bound to disappoint you or
lay myself open to being disappointed."

She reached across the table and stroked my cheek.
"I’m willing
to take the chance if you
are."

"I don’t think I have a choice," I said,
picking up the fork and starting to eat again. Out of the corner of
my eye I saw her smile. After breakfast, while Cindy did the dishes,
I called Ira Sullivan from the kitchen phone. His secretary, Cherie,
told me that he hadn’t come into the office yet.

"He doesn’t have any appointments today, so he
may not be in at all. I’d tell you to try him at home, only he
doesn’t always answer the phone."

"Does he call in for messages?"

"Sometimes," she said without confidence.

"If he does call, tell him to phone me at my
office. If he doesn’t get in touch by this afternoon, I’ll stop
at his place—sometime after five."

I hung up the phone, got out my notebook, and dialed
Lee Marks at the number he’d left on the answering machine. A woman
answered in a harried-sounding voice, "Yes?"

"Could I speak to Lee?"

"Who is this?" she said, putting a little
sweetness in her voice, as mothers do when they want to get the
lowdown on their kids.

Before I could answer, someone picked up an
extension.

"Mom," a boy said, "is this for me?"

"It’s Harry Stoner, Lee."

"Mom, please get off the line. This is
important. It’s about school," he added, as if he knew that
would turn the trick. Which it did. His mother hung up.

"You called me, Lee," I said to him.

"Yeah. Look, I don’t think it’s a good idea
to talk on the phone. I mean, she might pick up again any second. And
. . . I don’t want her to hear this."

"ls there someplace you’d like to meet? The
school?"

He laughed. "Definitely not the school. You know
the Kenwood Mall?"

"Sure."

"I’ll meet you there in a half an hour. Down
by the theater. Okay?"

"Lee, what’s this about?" I said,
wondering if he was pulling my chain.

"It’s about Mr. Greenleaf I wanted to tell you
yesterday, but Snodgrass came in."

"All right," I said, "I’ll meet you
at the mall."

But I still wasn’t convinced that he was on the
level, even as I kissed Cindy good-bye and walked out the door.
 

18

IT was close to noon when I got to the Kenwood Mall,
on the northeast side of town. I parked the car close to a Lazarus
department store and walked across the lot to the mall entrance. The
doors opened onto an enclosed concourse with a little fountain in its
center and corridors radiating off at compass points around it. The
place was surprisingly crowded for a weekday noon. Aside from a few,
power—walkers scurrying along—heads down, eyes fixed, like
Alice’s rabbit—the crowd was mostly teenagers, out of school and
on a tear. They darted eagerly in and out of the stores that lined
either side of the long walkway, nosing right and left as if they
were following scent, plastering themselves against windows, against
each other. Like dogs in the backseat of a car.

I found a "You are here" sign in the south
corridor that looked like a map of Los Angeles and managed to
navigate a good half-mile farther south to a balcony overlooking a
plaza. Below me, a band was playing light rock too loudly and with no
discernible ensemble on a small step-up stand. All around them, more
kids I were mobbing cafeteria-style food booths—ordering everything
from pizza to Chinese, served on paper plates and eaten on your
choice of stool.

As I went down the staircase toward the band, I
spotted Lee Marks beside the marquee of a Loew’s theater, making
time with a tall, pretty brunette in a leotard and neon yellow
bicycle shorts. When he saw me walk up, he waved, then said something
to his girlfriend. Glancing my way, she walked off a short distance
and pretended to stare at some lingerie that even a teenager would
have been ashamed to wear.

"Mr. Stoner!" Lee shouted to me over the
din.

With the rock band and the kids playing with their
food, I could see it was going to be impossible to talk.

"Is there someplace we could go?" I
shouted.

He nodded. "Follow me."

He led me down another corridor that sprang from the
headwaters of the eateries. Eventually we got far enough way from the
chaos to hear each other speak—some secret, unused segment of the
mall where bookstores were lined up like ducks on a pond. We found a
resting place, a couple of varnished benches, and sat down. Up the
way, clinging to the shadows of the storefronts, I could see Lee
Marks’s neon-colored girlfriend. He could see her, too.

"Oh, for God’s sake," he said, looking
embarrassed. "She thinks she’s gotta keep an eye on me."

"Why?"

"Because of you, I guess."

It was true I was over forty, but I was a clean old
man.

"What does she think I’m going to do—kidnap
you?"

He laughed. "Yeah, I think that’s exactly what
she thinks."

"What’s her name?"

"Gloria," he said. "She’s okay,
really. She just watches too much TV."

It appeared to me, from his manner, that Lee Marks
didn’t. Which was something of a relief.

"Well, we’re here, Lee," I said. "I
haven’t kidnapped you yet. What exactly do you have to say?"

He bit his lower lip, raking it under his front
teeth, as if he’d gotten his audience but wasn’t sure he could go
through with the performance. "I honestly don’t know how
important this is," he admitted. "I mean, it’s such a
little thing. But when I saw you yesterday and you told me that the
police still don’t know why Mr. Greenleaf killed himself—I just
thought maybe I should tell you."

"Tell me what‘?"

"It’s something I saw, about three weeks ago.
Right after an assembly at school. You know, one of those
'for-your-own-good' things that everybody’s got to attend. There
was a lecture and a play, dramatizing the danger of drugs and AIDS.
Anyway, after it was over I stuck around the auditorium to wait for
Gloria to pick me up. I was standing outside the lobby when I heard
some loud voices coming from inside the door. Everybody else had
left. At least, I thought they had. Anyway, I went inside to look. It
was pretty dark—they’d shut off the lights. But down by the stage
I saw Greenie talking to a blond guy with a mustache. I’d never
seen the other guy before. I couldn’t hear what they were saying,
except that the blond guy looked upset. I started to feel embarrassed
about spying on them, so I went back out to the lobby.

"After a while Greenie came out by himself. He
had his head down and his face was . . . I mean, he looked sick. When
he saw me, I asked him if he was okay. He smiled and said sure, he
was okay. He didn’t know I’d seen him with the other guy, the
blond one. We talked a little about the summer session and about me
going to Harvard. I said I’d write him a postcard when I got
settled in at Cambridge, and then he made this funny face and told me
not to do that. I mean, it was a strange look. He said just to drop
by the school and say hello to him when I got into town at the
Christmas break. He said he was proud of me and that he was sure I
would do well."

"He didn’t say anything else?" I asked.
"About the man he’d been talking to?"

Lee Marks shook his head. "No. He just walked
off, out to the parking lot. I don’t know why, but I had the
funniest damn feeling that I wasn’t going to see him again. Just .
. . something about the way his voice sounded when he told me he was
proud of me and that I would do well. Like he was saying good-bye."

"Did you see him again?"

The boy laughed. "Yeah. The very next day in
class. He acted like nothing had happened. Lectured about
The
House Of Seven Gables
. I tried to talk to him
after class. But he didn’t stick around like he usually did. The
day after that, I guess that was Thursday, he didn’t come in. I
never did see him again. None of us did. Until the funeral parlor."

He dropped his head.

By then, his girlfriend had gotten close enough to
spit at. When she saw the boy drop his head, she rushed over to the
bench and sat down beside him, reaching out for his hand and glaring
at me like I was a dirty bastard. Love in bloom. Hell, I knew the
feeling.

"This is Gloria," Lee Marks said, blushing.

"Hello, Gloria," I said.