Sacrifice Fly (11 page)

“Where I had the fabulous roast pork and pickled beets and you had a burger.”

“They make a good burger.”

“You’re getting predictable in your old age, Ray. Life is more than just Budweiser
and Yankee games.” She took another sip. “You call Mom back?”

“Not yet, but that didn’t stop her from leaving a five-minute message on my machine
last night. Good news about Cousin Patty.”

“Aunt Evelyn six, Mom zero. You know she’s waiting to hear from you about the memorial
service, right?”

“Speaking of future grandchildren,” I said, changing the subject, “you still seeing
that guy? Alan?”

“Alex,” she corrected me. “No.”

“What happened? I thought things were going well.”

“For six weeks. We’re going out less than two months, and he brings up the ‘M’ word.”

“Marriage?”

“Money. As in, ‘Can I borrow some?’”

I almost spit out my sake. “You’re kidding me.”

“I wish. Seems he and some college buddies have this great idea for a new business,
and all he needs is five thousand dollars to get in. What are you smiling about?”

“You’re getting better,” I said.

“At what?”

“Two years ago you’d have been out five thousand dollars.”

“I wasn’t that bad,” she said.

“You were close. Now you just need to take a little more time before bringing them
home to meet Mom.”

“Maybe if you brought someone home once in a while…”

“I’m enjoying this time of celibacy.”

“Celibacy indicates a conscious choice, Ray. You … are not getting laid.”

“Let’s not argue semantics, Rache.”

“Because you’d lose?”

“Because I’d like to have a nice dinner. Even if it is raw fish and warm rice wine.”

Of which I took another sip as Jimmy came back to our table with two oversize plates
of food and another vase of sake.

“Enjoy,” he said, and he gave my little sister a smile before leaving again.

I watched as Rachel poured soy sauce into a small dish and added some wasabi.

“What are you waiting for, Ray?” she asked.

“A fork.”

She raised her chopsticks, showed them to me, and, as if she’d been doing it her whole
life, picked up a piece of fish, dipped it in the soy-wasabi, and placed it in her
mouth. “Use your fingers if you want,” she said. “It’s okay, but be careful of the
wasabi. It’ll clear your nasal passages down to your intestines.”

“I know what wasabi is.”

I picked up a piece of something red wrapped in rice and smelled it. Not bad. I dunked
it in some of Rachel’s soy sauce mixture. She was right about its decongestive qualities,
and I caught her smiling as she sipped her wine. We ate in silence until half my plate
was finished.

“What else?” Rachel said.

“What else what?”

“What else is going on? School and what else?”

“How much time you got?” I asked.

She raised two more fingers to Jimmy and pointed at the sake. “At least that much.”

I told her about Frankie and his father and Milagros. She let me talk for about five
minutes without interrupting. Rachel was always good that way.

“Jesus, Ray,” she said when I was finished. “No wonder you look like you do.”

“I’m fine. Just need to get more sleep.”

“You found a dead body. One of your students is missing. How can you say you’re fine?”

“I don’t know, Rache. I just am. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You know who you sound like?”

“Oh, please,” I said. “Not tonight.”

“Because you know I’m right.”

“Because you were ten when he died. You don’t know what he sounded like.”

“Oh, right. I forgot. Only you know what Dad was like.” She wiped her mouth. “Maybe
one of these days you’ll enlighten me. Tell me all the things I don’t know.”

“Let’s change the subject, huh?” I said.

“See?” Rachel pointed at me, pushing it. The wine was taking effect. “That’s just
what he would have done. Change the subject when things got hot.”

“No,” I said. “He would’ve reached across the table and smacked me upside the head.
Then he would have changed the subject.”

She shook her head. “It’s been a long time, Ray. It’s time to move on.”

“Your shrink tell you that?”

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t you dare make light of my therapy. If you had—”

“Then don’t you make light of my experience. You weren’t the one who got hit, Rachel.
You weren’t the one whose stomach dropped when his car pulled into the driveway, wondering
what he was going to find wrong this time.”

You weren’t the one to find him dead in his study.

My little sister paused, and gave me a look that bordered on pity.

“A lot of years, Ray,” she repeated. “How long are you going to let him do this to
you?”

“I don’t know, Rachel.” I stood up. “Maybe when the dreams stop.” I turned and walked
in the direction of the men’s room. When I got there, I ran the water until it got
real cold and splashed my face. As I was drying off, I checked out my face in the
mirror. Rachel was right about one thing: I did look like shit.

When I got back to the table, Jimmy was taking the plates away and a younger man was
putting two dishes of green ice cream on the table. After they left, Rachel said,
“Ice cream makes everything better.” I sat down. “I didn’t know you were still having
the dreams, Ray.”

“Forget it. They’re not as bad,” I said, “and they’re not as often.”

“You going to call Mom?”

“Eventually.”

“The memorial service is a week and a half away, Ray. If you don’t go, she’s going
to have a lot of explaining to do.”

“Tell people I’m out of town. Couldn’t be avoided.”

“The church has been planning this for months,” she reminded me.

“Why does the church suddenly want to build a garden in his honor?” I asked.

“Mom wanted to do something for the church and the church wanted to do something for
Mom. Why is that so hard to understand?”

“A lot of time has passed, that’s all,” I said.

“That’s exactly my point.” She put her hand on mine. “Let it go. For Mom.” When I
didn’t respond, she said, “You’re picking your thumbs again.”

“What?” I asked.

“Your thumbs.” She turned my hand over. “You used to do that when we were kids. Before
a game or a big test. When’d you pick up that nasty habit again?”

“I don’t know,” I said, taking my hand back and looking at the thumb. The skin on
the inside part was red and flaky.

“It’s your student, isn’t it? Frankie.”

“What?”

“You’re blowing it off like it’ll take care of itself. Like you’re gonna be at school
tomorrow and he’s just going to show up like nothing happened.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Rachel.”

“What’s so special about this kid?”

“Beside the fact that his dad was murdered and he and his sister are missing?”

“That’s not what I mean,” she said. “You got this kid a scholarship for high school.
You called in a favor from Eddie Keenan. Shit, Ray. You went to his house. You don’t
do stuff like that. At least you haven’t for a while. Why now? Why this kid?”

“Because this kid can throw a baseball eighty miles an hour.”

“No,” Rachel said. “There’s more. What was his dad like?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know?”

“You talked to him every day. You’re going to tell me you never talked about his dad?”

“Once in a while,” I admitted.

“And?”

“And the guy was an asshole, okay?”

“Frankie told you that?”

“He didn’t have to,” I said. “No home phone, no work phone, just a cell phone number
he wouldn’t let his son give out. Frankie lived with his grandmother, five minutes
from his dad. What kind of father does that? Frankie’d show up every once in a while
with a new pair of hundred-dollar sneakers and say his dad told him he ‘got paid.’
Give me a break.”

“Where’d he get the money?”

“Frankie wouldn’t say, and I didn’t ask. I think we can assume he wasn’t driving around
behind the sneaker truck waiting for a pair in his son’s size to fall off.” I took
a sip of sake. “Took him a week to sign the acceptance letter for Our Lady. Woulda
been just as happy if Frankie ended up in some dumping ground with a thousand other
nine-digit numbers.”

Rachel smiled. “So you took care of him?”

“I took care of getting him a shot at a decent high school.”

“Our Lady is a little more than decent, Ray.”

“And Eddie Keenan did me a solid.”

“Sounds like he’s getting something in return.”

“Damn straight he is.” I scooped up a little of the ice cream. It mixed nicely with
the taste of the wine. “I stopped by the precinct today.”

“What made you— You’re kidding me?”

“I had some information I wanted to share with the detective on the case, and he pretty
much told me to bug off.”

“What’d you expect? A Junior Detective badge and a ‘Go get him, Ray’?”

“I don’t know what I expected,” I said. “No, that’s not true. I got pretty much what
I expected. Fifteen minutes of his time, a little respect for the walking wounded,
and ‘Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, Mr. Donne.’”

Rachel smiled. “Fifteen minutes, huh?”

“Thirteen of them were for Uncle Ray. I wanted to see how they’re progressing. I got
the feeling if nothing happens by the weekend, this guy’s moving on. He has to.”

“At least you tried.”

“It didn’t get me anywhere. I might as well have gone home and taken a nap.”

“But you didn’t,” Rachel said as she stood up. She came around the table and kissed
me on the cheek. “You did something. Who knows? Maybe the detective’ll think about
what you said and act on it.”

“Maybe Frankie’ll just waltz into my classroom tomorrow.”

“I’m going to the ladies’ room,” she said and pulled two bills out of her pocket.
“If Jimmy comes back before I do, give him this.”

I looked at the bills: both twenties. “We drank more than this,” I said.

“Jimmy tries not to charge me,” Rachel explained. “It’s a compromise.”

A few minutes later, we walked outside and Rachel found the rare, unoccupied Queens
cab. She gave me a long hug.

“Call Mom,” she said.

“I will.”

“And stop being so hard on yourself. And your thumbs.”

“Go home, Rachel.”

“I love you, Raymond.”

“Me, too.”

I watched as the cab took my little sister home.

Chapter 10

I AM UP ON THE FIRE ESCAPE AGAIN
.
The metal creaking. Fog rolling in.

“You planning on staying up there forever?”

I’m trying to hold on to the metal railing, but it’s slippery, and my hands keep coming
off. It’s hard to breathe.

“I am not getting you out of this one. You are on your own.”

Two lights are blinking, a red one on my left, green on the right. There’s a slight
buzz as each light comes on and then fades out.

“You hear me?”

I hear you, Dad. I always hear you. And I don’t want your help. How about that?

“You really think you know what you’re doing, don’t you?”

Leave me alone, and I’ll figure it out. You’re good at that, right? Leaving me alone.
Isn’t that what you—the sound of the fire escape pulling away from the wall. I grab
onto the railing and close my eyes to concentrate, but it doesn’t help.

Fucker.

Another voice now. A kid’s voice.

Shut up.

White mother FUCKER.

I said, Shut the fuck up.

Whatchoo gonna do, Casper? Can’t do shit.

The fire escape starts to move back and forth, like a rowboat caught in a storm.

“All right.” My father’s voice again. “Give me your hand.”

I said I don’t want your help.

“You don’t know what you want. Give me your—”

I do not want—

“THEN STOP ACTING LIKE A GODDAMNED CHILD, GET DOWN FROM THERE AND DO SOMETHING!”

I start to cough and wipe my hand across my wet face. Maybe it’s the fog. Maybe I’m
crying. I don’t know what to do.

“Then you’re going to be up there for quite some time, aren’t you?”

It’s not as easy as you think.

“It’s not as hard as you make it. Do something.”

Do what?

Except for the buzzing of the lights and the creaking of the metal as it continues
to move away from its support, there is silence.

Do what?

The fire escape jerks to the left, sending me to my knees. I grab the railing, but
my feet fall through the slats.

Do what? I say again.

The fire escape breaks free from the building and I am falling.

Before I hit the ground, I sit up in my bed, breathing heavy and drenched in sweat.
My dream father’s voice echoes in my head.

Do something.

Do something.

*   *   *

Once you’ve driven through the Bronx, you’re officially out of New York City. It’s
not for another half hour, though—where the Tappan Zee Bridge crosses the Hudson River—that
the departure is truly experienced. About halfway across, just before you enter Rockland
County, if the air is clear enough, you can look south and see the Manhattan skyline
in the distance, promising you that it’ll be there if you decide to come home again.

Royce had told me he’d spoken twice on the phone to John Roberts—Rivas’s boss and
the husband of Frankie’s cousin Anita—and saw no reason to rush a third conversation.
What exactly was I expecting to achieve by borrowing my sister’s car and taking a
day off from school for a ninety-minute car ride north that Royce wasn’t willing to
take?

The radio was a mix of Springsteen and static when I took the exit ramp off the thruway.
I made the right onto Highland and spotted a diner. A cheeseburger with fries and
two iced teas later, I was fully fed, caffeinated, and had directions to the Roberts
house.