Sacrifice Fly (13 page)

Okay. I gave him my best Parent/Teacher Night smile and tried again.

“It’s about some customers of yours,” I said. “A couple of kids.”

“Get lots of kids, mister. It’s a college town.”

“No, these two were—are—fourteen and eight. Boy and girl. They would have been going
over to Highland. Bevier Court, within the past few days.”

He looked at me and then down at his paper again. With a great deal of effort, he
lifted himself out of his chair. He took five steps toward me and reached under the
counter. He came up with a large binder notebook.

“Let’s see what we got here,” he said. “What day ya thinking of?”

“I’m not sure. Within the last couple, though.”

“The last couple,” he repeated, making sure I could hear how ridiculous my request
was. “I don’t know…”

I reached into my pocket, pulled out my last twenty, and placed it on the counter.
“Could you just look, please? Twenty bucks for two minutes.”

He tried to lean forward. “You a private eye or something?”

“Or something.”

He scooped up the twenty like it was a doughnut and slipped it into his shirt pocket.
He began flipping through the pages.

“Coupla runaways?” he asked. When I didn’t respond, he said, “Oh, yeah. I bet you’re
not at liberty to discuss that.” He gave me a wink and went back to the book. “Highland,
Highland. Would help if I knew what time of day you were thinking of.”

I thought back to the bus schedule and said, “About ten in the morning or seven at
night. Just after the bus gets in from the city. My guess would be night.”

“Let’s try night then.” He moved the big book to the side, reached under the counter
again, and pulled out a single-subject notebook, the kind my kids used. “That’d be
Jimmy’s shift, and he likes to keep his own ledger,” the big man explained. “College
kid. Don’t usually hire ’em ’cause they’re quick to leave when they get another job
or graduate. After all the training I give ’em.” He opened up the notebook and found
what he was looking for. “Monday … nope. Tuesday … nope. Wednesday … bingo! Two to
Highland. Seven forty-five. Bev Court.”

“That’s it,” I said. “Is it possible to talk to Jimmy?”

“You’re asking a lot for twenty dollars, mister.”

“It’s all I have,” I said. “Honest.”

He looked me over to see if he believed me. I guess he did, because after a while,
he picked up the phone and dialed. After another thirty seconds, he said, “Jimmy.
Downey. No, no, we’re fine. Got a question for ya, about a fare ya took over to Highland
on Wednesday.” He listened. “Seven forty-five? Two kids.” Another pause. “Fifty? Shit.
Got a guy here wants to talk to ya.” He handed me the phone.

“Jimmy,” I said. “My name’s Raymond Donne.”

“You a PI?” he asked. He sounded like his mouth was full of food.

“Those two kids you took over to Highland, how’d they look?”

I waited while he thought about that. Or maybe swallowed.

“Tired,” he said. “Especially the girl. Boy seemed real nervous. Kept looking out
the back window, telling the girl to keep it down. Like I cared what they were saying.”

“What were they saying?”

“No idea. Had my mind on other things, and they mostly spoke in Spanish.”

“You dropped them off on Bevier?”

“At the corner.”

“Was there anyone there to meet them?”

“Said they’d walk the rest of the way. Kid seemed to know where he was going, so…”

These were two kids, I thought. Alone, in the early evening. Far from home. I wanted
to reach through the phone and rip this guy a new one, but I needed a little more
info.

“So you saw no one else?”

“Nope.” He chewed a little more. “Kid asked for a card, though. Figured he wanted
to have a number to call for a return ride.”

“You figured that, huh?”

“Yeah. Hey, if you see them two?”

“Yeah?”

“Tell them I said thanks for the tip.”

“Tip?”

“Gave me fifty. Kid said, ‘Keep the change.’ Like a real big shot.”

It took all the control I could summon not to slam the phone into the counter.

“You didn’t think,” I asked, “to question that? Two kids giving you a fifty dollar
bill?”

“Hey, man. I’m a grad student. Someone throws me a fifty, I ain’t asking for ID. That’s
half a textbook.” He took a sip of something. “Tell Downey I’ll see him tomorrow at
five.”

After listening to the dial tone for a bit, I handed the phone back to Downey. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Downey said. “Those kids gonna be okay?”

Good question. “I don’t know.”

The fat man studied me for a little while. “You ain’t a private detective, are you,
mister?”

“No,” I said. “I’m just a schoolteacher.”

He laughed. “Schoolteacher. Thought you were at least a cop. Here,” he said, pulling
out the twenty I had given him. “You need this more’n I do.”

“Keep it,” I said. “You earned it.”

He pushed the bill at me. “Use it to pay for the gas home. Better yet, charge them
kids for the trip. They seem to have some cash on hand.”

“Yeah,” I said, taking the money. “That they do. Thanks, Downey.”

“You take care, mister.”

I got back in the car and, five minutes later, I was on the thruway heading back to
Brooklyn with some answers, but more questions than I had started with.

*   *   *

I pulled into the last service station on the thruway to stretch my legs and use the
men’s room. On my way out, I passed a bank of pay phones and had an idea. It took
me three calls to reach Uncle Ray. His personal cell phone instructed me to leave
a message. His wife, Reeny—“Why haven’t we seen you for so long?”—gave me his work
cell, which was answered by someone who introduced himself as Officer Jackson. Jackson
told me my uncle was in Manhattan at the Chelsea Piers driving range hitting golf
balls at New Jersey. When I told Jackson I would be there in an hour, he assured me
that they would still be there.

When I was a kid, Uncle Ray would tell me, “You need directions, ask a map. You need
help, ask a cop.” I needed real help and I was going to ask the biggest cop I knew.

Chapter 11

I FOUND MY UNCLE ON THE GROUND
level of the multitiered driving range. He’d never fool around with the upper levels;
they didn’t give an accurate account of how you were swinging. Uncle Ray was dressed
in a short-sleeved golf shirt, blue uniform pants, and a baseball cap with the words
“City Island Yacht Club” written in bright, yellow letters. The sweat marks on his
shirt reached just above his belt. A young black uniformed cop was off to the side
by a cooler. I watched as the automatic tee repeatedly disappeared below the artificial
grass and resurfaced with a fresh golf ball. My uncle would then drive it into the
early evening sky. He did this about a half dozen times before he acknowledged my
presence.

“Officer Jackson,” he said without looking back. “This is my nephew, Raymond Donne.”

Jackson came over and offered me his hand. “Mr. Donne, sir. A pleasure.”

“Ray,” I said. “And the only ‘sir’ around here is my uncle.”

He gave me a smile and a nod as my uncle said, “Have Jackson make you a drink, Nephew.
He puts together a fine Diet Coke and Jack.”

“No, thanks,” I said. “I haven’t had dinner yet.”

“Jeez,” Uncle Ray said, bending down and picking up a plastic cup. “This
is
my dinner.” He drained the remainder of his drink in one long sip. “Another please,
Jackson.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jackson went back to the cooler, the latest rookie to be “adopted” by my uncle straight
from the academy. He’d serve for six months as personal secretary, chauffeur, caddy,
and bartender. The hours were long, the days many, and just about everything about
the position was against PBA rules. But no one complained about it because, if you
lasted the half year, you were well on your way to a detective’s shield. If you were
one of “Donne’s Boys,” you were golden.

Jackson finished making the drink and brought it over to my uncle, who turned to face
me for the first time. When I was a kid, Uncle Ray was the biggest man in my world.
He had about six inches on my father, and my memory of him coming over to our house
was him ducking as he came through the door. He removed his cap and ran his fingers
over his sweaty gray hair. He took a long sip and said, “To what do I owe the pleasure,
Raymond?”

“What?” I said. “I can’t just drop by and visit my uncle?”

“Sure you can. You never do. Now, what is it that you want?”

I thought about it for a moment and decided the best approach would just be to dive
right in. My uncle’s tolerance for bullshit was lower than my own.

“I wanted to talk to you about a…” Jesus, Ray. Slow down. “One of my students is in
trouble. Missing, actually. His sister, too. Their dad was killed over on the Southside
last week.”

“Rivas,” he said.

“How did you know that?”

“Your name—shit,
my name
—shows up as a wit on a murder scene report, and you don’t think it’s gonna make its
way to me? What the hell were you doing over there, Raymond?”

“Looking for my student.”

“God,” he said. “Is that what they got you doing now? Truancy shit?”

“I was there on my own, Uncle Ray. I swung by Clemente first to check with the grandmother.
The kid hadn’t been in for a—”

“It was a murder scene, Raymond.”

“I didn’t know that at the time.”

“No,” he said. “Just after you committed a little B and E.”

“I didn’t break in,” I said. “The neighbor gave me a key.”

“The detective didn’t give you shit on that?”

“A little, but he didn’t push it.”

Uncle Ray grinned. “He didn’t push it because your last name’s Donne.”

“He said he took a course with you at the academy. Detective Royce?”

He thought about the name for a bit. “Big black guy? Looks like he coulda played defensive
end in college?”

“That’s him.”

“Yeah. He did pretty well, if I remember correctly.”

“Said you were a hard-ass as an instructor.”

“Don’t know where he got that idea.” Uncle Ray finished his drink and held the empty
out for Officer Jackson. “So, what do you need me to do? Royce change his mind and
decide to break your balls on illegal entry?”

“No,” I said. “We’re past that, I—”

“Past that? You know better than that, Raymond. You don’t enter an apartment just
because some neighbor gives you a key. You knock, you wait, but”—he tapped his golf
club on the fake grass to accent the next four words: “You. Do. Not. Enter. You call
it in.”

“Call what in?” I asked. “You think the cops are going to rush over to the Southside
because I can’t find a fourteen-year-old?”

“What the hell was the goddamned rush?”

“There was a dead body in there.”

“You didn’t know that at the time.”

“I felt something was wrong, Uncle Ray. And I was right.”

“Ahhh.” Uncle Ray leaned his golf club against the wall next to his pitching wedge.
“Here we go.”

“Here we go, what?”

“You’re still getting those …
feelings
.” He wiggled his fingers in the air and added a spooky quality to his voice. “Something’s
rotten in the state of Denmark.”

“I was taught to go with my instinct. By you. What? That’s all bullshit now?”

“Instinct,”
he repeated. “What you’re describing is intuition. Cops have instinct. Psychics …
women … have intuition.” He picked up his pitching wedge. “If you honestly felt that
something was wrong, you should’ve called it in. For Christ’s sake, you coulda called
me, and I coulda sent a car over there. Instead, you entered a private residence
illegally
and risked contaminating a crime scene. You know better than that. At least, you
should.”

I looked at my uncle’s face—the wrinkles a little deeper and the circles a little
darker than I remembered—and said, “I’m coming to you now.”

Uncle Ray turned away, and with the business end of his pitching wedge, tipped the
golf ball off the tee. He lined himself up and stroked the ball about thirty yards
away, where it landed just short of a yellow flag. Out beyond where the ball fell,
past the nets I doubt anyone could reach, a green and white Circle Line boat headed
south on the Hudson, filled with curious folks who wanted to see what New York City
looked like from the water.

“Coming to me for what?” Uncle Ray asked, lining up his next shot. “You said they’re
not pressing you on the entry. Something else they’re squeezing your nuts over?”

I reached into my pocket and felt the hundred-dollar bill. “I found something.”

“Good for you, Nephew.”

“Regarding the case.”

He drove the next ball.

“Excuse me?” he said, turning back to face me.

I had a sudden craving for a Diet Coke, so I went over to the cooler and grabbed a
can from the ice. I took a sip and faced my uncle.

“I went by to see Royce yesterday,” I said. “To see how the case was progressing.”

Uncle Ray leaned forward. “You did what, now?”

“On my way home,” I said. “I had this—”

“Urge to stick your nose into an active investigation?”

“I didn’t stick my nose into anything. I thought I had something to offer him.”

“What,” my uncle said, not trying to hide his annoyance with me, “could you possibly
have to offer the lead detective in a homicide case?”

I was about to say, “A clue,” but I wasn’t in the mood to hear another one of my uncle’s
Encyclopedia Brown jokes.

“I thought there was an avenue of investigation he may have overlooked.”

He laughed. “Listen to my nephew, Jackson.” Jackson took a tentative step toward us,
uncomfortable with having been drawn into this conversation. “‘Avenue of investigation.’
Where’d you pick that up? A televised police drama?”

“I’m trying to help someone out, Uncle Ray. You don’t need to talk to me like I’m
a kid.”

“Then don’t act like one,” he said. “Damn, Raymond.” He shook his head and gave me
the look. “You’re still collecting strays.”