Only Child (13 page)

"You don't sound so sure."
"I'm sure the mother wasn't hiding a boyfriend in the basement, yeah. But it could have been a similar scenario . . . one of her teachers, maybe."
"Maybe. Whatever happened to that . . . case you had?"
"I told you, he never even got arrested."
"So that filthy freak and the girl's mother lived happily ever after?"
"Far as I know," I lied.

• • •

"G
iovanni Antrelli has three arrests," Wolfe said, a half-hour later. "None in the past fifteen years. No convictions. He's a family man; this you knew, of course. If he were a doctor, he'd be a general practitioner. Gambling, loan sharking, bust-out schemes, labor racketeering. Supposed to be a real comer. Word is, he reports to a capo but he's actually a higher rank himself. Which means the old men have big plans for him, down the line."
"He's never been Inside?"
"In the Tombs, overnight, maybe. Or on Rikers for a week, at most. The charges were always dismissed. The court records don't say why, but I don't think we have to waste a lot of speculation on it. I guess the bosses
always
thought highly of him."
"Anything about him trafficking?"
"Funny you should ask," she said, twisting her mouth as she spoke. "His rep is, he wouldn't
touch
drugs. Too risky, he says. And the time is so high, a bust could make anyone in the chain roll over. In fact," she went on, watching me closely, "the feds
did
make a little probe of their own, a couple of years ago."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"It was almost comical," she said. "They popped some moke with serious weight, turned him right at the scene. What they wanted was what they always want: the man at the top. A headline-size fish. But what they got was this genius running around trying to make
new
cases for them. He was wired when he approached Antrelli— on his own, the memo says— and tried to get him to go into business."
"And you think Giovanni made him?' "
"I didn't hear the tape," Wolfe said. "Just read the transcript. What Antrelli told him was, and I quote, 'Drugs isn't a game for white men. Let the spear-chuckers and the banana brains have it. The money never sticks to their hands, anyway. We always get it back from them, one way or the other.' "
"The guy the feds have, is he still under?"
"That's not part of our deal," she said, no-argument cold. "You want to protect your pal Giovanni, hire on as a bodyguard."
"I wasn't looking to . . . Never mind."
"Right. Now, Felix Encarnación, this one is another story entirely. He's never been arrested in America, but Interpol has him on file as an assassin for a Colombian cartel. Supposed to have done a half-dozen
very
professional jobs, two of them in Europe."
"Supposed to . . . ?"
"All of this was a long time ago. He was held— I wouldn't say 'arrested,' not with the system they have there— in Peru a while back. Held for about two years, until he was released. Ransomed out, that's what I'm told."
"By the Colombians?"
"Could be. Nobody's sure. Encarnación himself's not Colombian. Or Peruvian, either. Guatemala is what the money's on, but even that's just an educated guess."
"Then we know two things about him for sure," I said. "He can do
very
hard time and not give anyone up. So he's got a lot of trust going for him. And a sure pipeline to pure."
"Yeah. The rest is all gossip-level. Antrelli's supposed to have
no
temper. Pure ice. Never loses control. An old man's head, that's what they say about him."
"And Felix?"
"What they say is, he can never go back down south. And that, to him, a gun's like a hammer to a carpenter."

• • •

I
spent the next three days in my place, sifting and straining the information in Wolfe's paper through every filter I had, adding to my charts until I could see bits and pieces of Vonni's life in every room.
When I ran dry, I went out to see what I could find of her death.

• • •

I
started where they'd discovered the corpse. A culvert off an unpaved lane in the swampland between Jamaica Bay and JFK Airport. I could feel the hackles that must have gone up on Giovanni's neck when he'd first been told. The area's a big favorite of mob guys who have a recurring need for unmarked graves.
As I slowed to a stop, my shoulders tightened and my nostrils flared, taking the pulse of the place. It was way too long after the murder for the cops still to be staking out the dumping ground; but I'm an old dog, and sniffing for danger is an old habit.
Her body had been found wrapped in heavy plastic sheeting, secured with baling wire. "Like a slab of meat, ready for the freezer," one cop's notes had said.
You'd think that would rule out a Lovers Lane encounter that had gone wrong. What kind of man carries plastic sheeting and baling wire in his trunk?
I knew the answer to that question, so I spent an hour crisscrossing the area. But there was nothing resembling a regular spot for car sex. About the only dry land was where the body had been dropped off.
Dropped off, not buried. That meant something. Maybe the killer was in a hurry.
Or maybe he was a psycho, making a statement. Those kind never write their messages in invisible ink.
One look around was enough to show me that the site was outside New York's special two-tier recycling system. You want to get rid of something in Manhattan, you just leave it out at the curb. It doesn't matter if the Sanitation Department takes a pass. Between the scrap-metal scavengers, the flea-market restockers, and the homeless guys pushing their pirated shopping carts, nothing worth a nickel survives.
But, out there, all I could see was dregs nobody would touch, anywhere— a few empty forty-ounce malt liquors, a couple of screw-top wine bottles, a slab of tread from a truck tire, one aluminum leg from a kitchen chair, a crushed pack of Newports, strewn condoms, a torn potato-chip bag. . . .
I knew the condoms were recent— they would have been the first thing bagged and tagged by the forensics crew if they'd been there when the body had been discovered.
It was a pretty good spot for people who were too crazy, or too smart, for the homeless shelters. Close enough to the airport to make Dumpster-diving productive, with plenty of natural cover to keep you through the weather with the help of a few artfully rigged plastic garbage bags. The cops would have scoured the area. Not just for traces of the killer's vehicle, but for any signs of campfires, lean-tos, cans of food . . . anything to show people were living out there. In the jungle, the birds see everything. Getting them to sing on cue, that's the tricky part.
Nothing in Wolfe's paper showed they had found anyone to talk to, but that didn't mean nobody had been around at the time the killer had dropped off his garbage. If anyone from a homeless camp had seen a body being dumped, they would have just nomaded on out of there, quick.
But if the area was inviting enough, maybe some of the old residents would have drifted back over the past few months. . . . At least that's what I was hoping for.
It turned out like most of my hopes.
In books, the detective stands at the spot where the victim was killed and makes a promise to her— seems like it's always a woman— that he'll find the murderer.
I didn't feel anything. And I didn't make any promises.

• • •

"I
know street kids," I told Michelle. "I know where they go, even
why
they go. I can tell the weekenders from the permanents. I know where they shelter up when they have to. They're like a . . . species, I guess. There's a food chain, predators and prey. They've got their own look. Their own mating habits, their own survival systems. I can always find some of them, tap into their communications."
Michelle touched one perfect cheek with a long, red-lacquered nail, saying nothing. She'd never seen her son Terry before the night I'd finessed him off a kiddie pimp in Times Square. But she'd adopted the kid in less time than it would take a sperm to merge with an egg. Terry had never seen the pimp again.
I had.
"Some things never change, girl. You drop a dope fiend into a strange city, how long's it going to take him to find a slinger? It's like that for me with runaways. I was one of them once. It's easy—
too
fucking easy, sometimes— for me to put myself right back there, in my mind."
"But . . . ?"
"But there's no street kids in that town where she came from. I mean, there's probably the equivalent of some kind, but they're not
on
the streets, see?"
"They're all in cars?"
"No. That's not it. Sure, out there, the cars are the drivers— everyone's social status rolls on wheels. But that's got nothing to do with what I mean."
"Small towns . . ."
"It's not the size, honey. I've been in little towns that make Vegas look like Amish country."
"
Border
towns, I know. But when there's money . . ."
"Not that, either. There's lots of ways to join the street-kid army, but they're not all draftees. Where you come from doesn't matter so much as why you're there . . . and what you're willing to do to hold your place. Plenty of kids of rich families are eating out of garbage cans and selling their bodies."
"My bio-parents had money," Michelle said, saying it all.
"You see where I'm going with this, then. The kids I
could
connect with, they're not still in that town. They're here. Or out on the coast. What difference? It's all the same place."
"I know, baby," she said. "You know I do."
"But even if there's any runaways from Vonni's town here, I couldn't find them," I told her.
"Her mother, she'd know the girl's closest friends, right?"
"Yeah, I think she would. I know when there's secrets, and I didn't smell any in that house. But I guess I
could
try just asking her, if . . ."
"If what?"
"If I can't figure out a way to bring them to me."
"Her friends?"
"Not just them, Michelle. The whole . . . environment."
"The police . . ."
"They've been over the ground, sure. But they don't know how to take soil samples the way we do."
"You have any ideas?"
"Not yet, I don't. I've been . . . studying them from a distance, I guess you could say. The mother gave me one place I think I could try."
"A hangout?"
"No. A woman. Vonni used to babysit her kid."
"What makes you think she knows anything?"
"Not her. The kid. The way I read Vonni's mother, no way she'd let her daughter have boys over without supervision. But when the girl was babysitting . . ."
"Kids don't miss much," Michelle said, agreeing.

• • •

"H
azel said you'd be calling," the woman said.
"Yes, ma'am. Then you know what my job is. Would you be willing to talk to me?"
"If you think it will do any good . . ."
"There's no way to tell without trying," I said. "Okay?"

• • •

T
he house was quite a bit downstream the status river from where Vonni had lived— a small, squarish tract house, squatting undistinguished in a tight cluster of identical boxes. The front lawn was a crabgrass-and-dandelion postage stamp. The sidewalk was cracked. A clapped-out once-blue Monte Carlo was parked out front.
The woman who opened the door was sweet-faced, with a mop of tightly curled hair the color of fresh rust, and lively blue eyes. She was about six inches shorter than me, and ten pounds heavier, wearing a bright-yellow sweatshirt and jeans.
"Hi!" she said.
"Good afternoon, Mrs. McClellan."
"Oh, please! Call me Lottie. Everybody does," she said, stepping aside to let me in.
"Is the kitchen all right?" she asked, seeing me hesitate.
"It's fine," I told her. "I just didn't want to barge in. . . ."
"Your mother raised you right," she said.
"Yes, ma'am," I said, maintaining the myth.
"Lottie," she reminded me, pointing to a kitchen table with a pink Formica top.
"Burke," I said, offering her a hand to shake.
"Irish! I'll bet we're cousins, somewhere back on the Emerald Isle."
"Scotch, actually," I told her, straight-faced.
"Ah, well. I'm not clannish. You may be Scotch, but I'll bet you fancy an Irish coffee now and then," she said, the smile so at home on her face that I knew it was a permanent resident.
"I do, that's a fact," I lied. "But never while I'm working."
"Well, suit yourself. And tell me how I can help you."
"Mrs. Greene called you . . . ?"
"She did. And I promised I'd tell you anything you want to know. So fire away."
"You understand what I'm trying to—"
"You're trying to catch whoever did it. Hazel told me."
"That's right. So if some of the questions I ask seem—"
"I'm not one who believes you can harm the dead. Let's get on with it."
"Vonni was your babysitter?"
"Sure was. And the best I've ever had. She was never late; never minded
staying
late, even if I only called to tell her at the last minute. She never went into the liquor cabinet, never had boys over—"
"I'm sorry to interrupt, but how would you know that for sure?"
"That she didn't have boys over?"
"Yes."
"The houses around here, they're not exactly estates. You probably saw that for yourself, driving over. Now, my neighbors on the right," she said, pointing in that direction, "the Feinbergs, they're experts at minding their own business. But on the left, Mrs. North, she's an expert at minding mine."
"And she'd notice if—"
"She'd notice if a new butterfly landed on a bush, never mind a young man coming around when I wasn't home. She'd be over here in a flash, that poison tongue of hers ready for work, I promise you that."
"But she's not home all the time, is she?"
"Isn't she? The woman's in a wheelchair. Never goes out, except to the doctor, to hear her tell it. Her husband's not home much, I give you that. Poor man. Between working two jobs and listening to her rant, he'd probably rather put in a third shift if he could."
"If she's in a wheelchair, how would she get . . . Or do you mean she'd call you on the phone?"
"I mean exactly what I say," Lottie said. "That husband of hers built her a ramp and a little runway. Right up to my back door, he did, without even asking. So, when I saw what he was doing, it was me who asked
him,
what did he think he was up to? And he says, well, Flo, that's the wife, he says Flo said she'd talked it over with me and that's what we
both
wanted. He was all ready to build
another
ramp so she could just roll right into my house."
"And you stopped him?"
"No," she chuckled, "I sure didn't. I took pity on the poor soul. I didn't want him to have to go back and tell that harridan she wasn't getting her little 'access road.' Ever since, whenever Flo's got anything to report, you can be sure she does it in person."
"She's got the area under surveillance, huh?"
"That's the right word," she said, laughing. "Most of the time she comes over here, it's to give me the lowdown on the rest of our neighbors. I suspect her of having binoculars, but I've never caught her at it."
"Your own Neighborhood Watch."
"Don't think for a second she isn't. And I won't pretend it isn't kind of a comfort, sometimes."
"How old is your baby?"
"Baby? Oh, you mean my son. He's no baby. But he's not big enough to be left on his own. He's only ten. And got himself some bad asthma, besides. So he wants watching."
She stood up, went over to the cabinets, moved enough stuff around to let me know she wasn't going to force me into a staredown when she said whatever was coming next. "The reason I need a babysitter so much is, I've got a boyfriend. His name's Lewis, and he's a wonderful, gentle man. But Hugh never took to him, because of his father, so I can't really spend much time with Lewis here. And certainly not at night . . ."
"Did Hugh get along with Vonni?" I asked, before she went driving down her own road.
"Get along? He
adored
her. Told me a thousand times he was going to marry her when he got big enough. He's got a real contrary streak in him— gets it from his mother— but he minded Vonni like she was an angel from heaven. Now I guess she is. . . ."
I never know what to say to a woman who's crying, even when it's not me who made her cry. I reached over and took her hand, letting it run its course.