Winter and Night (3 page)

"What I need my underwear for? Okay, okay, tell me."

"A family. Russell: father Scott, in his forties; mother Helen, thirty-nine. Three kids: Gary, fifteen; Jennifer, eleven; Paula, nine. Last known address, One-eighty-two Littlejohn Trail, Sarasota, Florida."

"When?"

"Three years ago. Could be more recent than that. I don't know when they left."

"What kind of work this guy do?"

"Trucking, shipping. He's management. In Sarasota he ran a trucking company."

"He owned it?"

"No."

"She work?"

"Last I heard, no."

"What else?"

"Before Sarasota, Kansas City. Before that, somewhere in Maryland. Gary plays football. Left behind a varsity jacket that says Warriors."

"What colors?" he interrupted.

"Maroon and white."

"What else?"

"Mother's maiden name is Smith." I gave him the date of her birthday.

"Hey, chico—"

"Yeah. So the sooner the better, okay?"

He hesitated, as though he was about to say something else, but all he did was ask, "Chico: These people. They looking to stay lost?"

"I don't think so."

"Bueno. Makes it easy."

We hung up. Luigi Vélez was a stick-skinny guy with curly hair and a scruffy goatee. His mother was Italian, his father Puerto Rican. He had a bloodhound's nose for the search, a predator's ability to track people through the data spoor they left behind. He almost never left his apartment. "Hey, you makin' wine, you don't go around chewin' chili peppers, chico," he told me once. "Real people, they just confuse me."

I smoked and waited for Vélez to call. I didn't know what the hell else to do while I waited so I cleaned up the mess in the bedroom, righting the chair with a vindictive roughness that made me stop, breathe, tell myself there were things that helped and things that didn't. More than once I thought about calling Lydia. She was my partner; I needed help. But I didn't call. I didn't know what she could do right now besides tell me this wasn't my fault, and I didn't want to hear it.

I left the room, closing the door behind me. I was making another pot of coffee when the phone rang. I grabbed it up before the second ring. "Smith."

"Luigi Vélez el Fantastico."

"You found them?"

"DMV, chico. You get in those databases, it's pig heaven."

"Give it to me."

"Five-sixty-two Hawthorne Circle, Warrenstown, New Jersey."

"Warrenstown?"

"High-class place, man. Fancy houses, trees and shit. Big football town, too. Warrenstown Warriors, division champs. Maybe you seen them in the papers."

"If you say so, Luigi. Phone?"

"973-424-3772."

"Sure this is right?"

"You got to ask?" He sounded hurt. "Here's how genius works, amigo: First I find Helen Russell, driver's license is new in the last three years. People move, they still got to drive. Then I—"

"Luigi—"

"—look at the birthdays for the one you said. Then Scott Russell—"

"Luigi!" He stopped. "Sorry I asked. The check's in the mail."

I wouldn't make conversation about Warrenstown's high school football team and I wasn't willing to listen to his explanation of his methods, which would have been interesting if you had that kind of time. I could hear Vélez's disappointment in me as a client and a student of human nature in his sigh. He said, "Better be double its usual size, chico. It ain't even six yet."

It wasn't, but I poured a cup of coffee, lit a cigarette, and called the number he'd given me.

The "Hello?" that answered was a woman's voice, high, soft. I spoke to her seldom, and if you'd asked me to describe her voice I wouldn't have been able to. But I'd know it, I suddenly realized, anywhere.

"Hello?" she said again, quick, anxious, weary but not sleepy. I hadn't woken her. Maybe, since Gary left, she hadn't slept.

"It's Bill," I said.

She drew a breath; I'd caught her by surprise. "Bill? Bill, what are—?"

"Gary was here," I said.

"Gary? Oh, thank God." The relief that flooded her words made my stomach knot. "Thank God! Let me talk to him."

I said what I had to: "He was here. He's gone."

A small silence, a small voice. "Gone? Where? Where did he go?"

I told her: Midtown South, the silent cab ride, the broken window. "Why did he come here, Helen? What's he up to?"

"I… I don't know. He—" She broke off, said away from the phone, "It's my brother." Then she must have covered the phone. I heard nothing, stayed on the line, smoked, waited.

The next voice I heard was a man's, hot and loud. "Smith? What the hell's going on? Gary went to see you? What the hell for?"

I kept my voice even. "He didn't come to see me. He got himself arrested and the cops threw a scare into him, so he gave them my name so I could come get him."

"Arrested?" The word came out clenched. "What the hell do you mean he got arrested? My boy?"

"Why did he come here, Scott?"

"I have no goddamn idea! I—"

"He said it was something you'd approve of, if you knew."

"Approve of? I'll kill the stupid bastard! What do you mean, he got arrested? Where the hell is he? Helen says he ran away again— what does that mean? Why didn't you call us?"

"He wouldn't tell me where you were."

"I thought you're a fucking detective!" he exploded. "You can't find people? Where the hell is my son, Smith?"

I worked at not letting my tone match his; this was a man whose child had been missing for three days. "He broke a window and dropped three floors so he could go do what he came to do. You cool down and we figure out what that was, maybe we can find him."

"Oh, fuck you, buddy. Fuck you and fuck cool down! You can't keep your hands on a kid like that? You let him jump out a goddamn window? Fuck you."

I felt the heat rise in me. "Scott," I said, my words tight, "I need to know why he's here. I'll get the NYPD on it, I'll—"

"Get them? You haven't called them yet? What the hell are you doing, waiting until he turns up in the river?"

I heard a wordless sound from Helen when he said that, but Scott kept on. "Smith, if anything happens to that boy—"

I heard ice in my own voice now, felt my shoulders hard and locked. "What did his note say?"

"His note? His fucking note said, So long, Mom and Pop, see you later. His mother's falling apart here, Smith, she's been crying since Monday. I'll kill that bastard when I get him home! Shit, he came to you!"

"Scott, I'm doing—"

"No! No, you're not doing anything. I'm calling the police. I'll go to New York, I'll find my boy. You stay away. You stay out of it. He went to you; you fucked it up. No big surprise. Now you stay the fuck out of it."

I heard a rattling crash as he slammed his receiver down, left me holding a piece of plastic empty and dead. I hung up, sat staring at the phone. It took everything I had not to pick it up and throw it across the room.

I crushed out the cigarette I was smoking. A moment later I lit another one, called Lydia. "It's me," I said.

"Wow," she said. "This is early even for me. For you it must still be last night."

"In a way. Look, I need help."

The weight in my voice made hers lose its lightness. "Bill? Are you okay?"

"Can you come here?"

"You're home?"

"Yes."

"Is twenty minutes all right?"

"Sure, yeah."

"Are you okay?" she asked again.

"I'll tell you about it." Which meant no. But she knew that already.

While I waited I called Midtown South, got Hagstrom at the end of his shift. "The kid," I said. "I lost him."

"Lost him?" Hagstrom's tone was guarded. "What does that mean?"

"He jumped out the goddamn window, Hagstrom, before I could get to his folks. He's gone."

"What're you biting my ass for? He's your nephew."

I rubbed a hand over the back of my neck. "Yeah. Look, I'm sorry. I need to find him."

"I'll put the word out." Hagstrom spoke tiredly, a cop not surprised something he'd thought might be okay had, in the end, turned out badly.

"You take a photo when they brought him in?"

"No. I told you, I didn't book him. I was trying to give him a break." We'll give you a break, Gary, we'll call your uncle, he'll take care of you. "You don't have a photo?" Hagstrom asked.

I didn't answer.

"All right," he said. "I'll put out his description. It's the best I can do."

His description. "Jeans and a blue tee shirt, Hagstrom. Not the jacket. He left that here."

"Shit," Hagstrom said. "It's cold out there."

I went downstairs to wait for Lydia. Behind the streetlights and the black bulk of the buildings the sky was beginning to gray. Across the street a truck backed into a loading dock. The driver jumped down from the cab, took his paperwork to a guy who was waiting. The driver's day was over, the load in his truck no longer his problem. It belonged to the guy on the dock now, whose day was just beginning.

I spotted Lydia a block away, moving at a steady jog along the sidewalk. I headed toward her.

"Tell me you didn't run all the way," I said after I'd leaned down, kissed her cheek. Her hair was glossy and smelled of freesia.

"If I hadn't been coming here I'd have gone to the dojo. This way at least no one's yelling at me for doing it wrong. Aren't you cold?" She put a hand on my bare arm.

"Come on," I said. We walked together back to my place. The guy in the dock was unloading the truck as we started upstairs. The driver was gone.

Inside, I put water on to boil so she could have tea. "Want something to eat?"

"No, it's early for me. Bill, what's the matter?"

I dropped myself on the couch, suddenly drained, exhausted. Lydia came over and sat on the arm beside me; after a moment, she reached out, kneaded the muscles at the back of my neck. When I leaned forward to pick up my cigarettes from the coffee table, she stopped.

"There's a kid who's missing," I said, shaking out the match. "We need to find him."

"Okay," she said, and then because that clearly wasn't all, she waited.

"Gary Russell. He's fifteen. He left home Monday. He's here in New York." She was still waiting. "He's my sister's son."

The kettle started to whistle. I got up to turn it off. She followed me with her eyes.

"Your sister?" she said. "Your sister's son?"

I opened the cabinet, realized I didn't know what kind of tea she wanted. "My sister Helen," I said. "She's two years younger than I am."

"I didn't know you even had a sister," Lydia said slowly. "Why didn't you ever tell me that?" She got up, walked over and reached into the cabinet, took out a box of Yunnan tea she'd put there a week ago. She pulled open the drawer for the strainer. I felt useless and went back to the couch.

"When I was fifteen, she was thirteen, she ran away," I said.

She turned to me. "She was thirteen? Why?"

I shrugged. "It was tough at home."

Lydia considered me. "That was when you went to live with your uncle Dave, when you were fifteen."

"Helen ran away just before that." I didn't want to tell the whole story, not now. "She never came back. She called every now and then, just enough so we knew she was alive, not enough to be found."

"My God, what did your parents do?"

"Nobody could find her," I said, hoping she wouldn't notice how far that was from an answer to her question. "She spent most of the next ten years on the road with one man or another. When she met Scott, the guy she's married to, she settled down, and when Gary was born she called me. I went down to see them— they were in Atlanta then— and when the girls were born, too. But Scott—" I pressed my cigarette out. "Shit. I don't like him and he doesn't like me, and Helen and I…" I looked up at Lydia. She was standing, drinking her tea. "I never told you about her because she's been gone for twenty-five years. She's just not part of my life."

She could have said, Bullshit. She could have said, There's a lot more to this, I can hear it, and if you're going to hand me a line I don't need it. She could have demanded to know, walked out if I didn't tell her.

Instead she came and sat next to me again. She drank her tea and for a while there was silence.

She said, "And Gary's in New York now, and he's missing?" She said it the way she would have on any case, giving me back the information I'd given her, waiting for the rest. I turned to look at her, warm and solid and beside me, and I almost laughed, so strong was the sudden idea that we could go away somewhere, up to my cabin in the country, to China, to a farm in New Zealand, leave and start over and never come back.

Lydia returned my look, sipped her tea, waited for me to speak.

I said, "Yes. Gary's missing."

I told her the story, all the details, including the phone call with Helen and Scott. I showed her Gary's jacket, and the broken window in the back bedroom. The cold night air had filled the empty room; when I opened the door it pushed past us into the the rest of my place.

"Boy," she said, peering out the window into the alley. The streetlights were off now; the day had started. "I'm impressed."

"He's a football player," I said. "Strong and big. He didn't jump: he swung over the sill, held on, and then dropped. He took some time and thought about it, planned it before he broke the glass."

She was leaning out the window now, saying something I couldn't hear.

"What?" I asked.

She pulled her head back in. "I said, I'll bet it was exciting. Breaking the window, holding on like that, dropping. I'll bet it was a real rush. Even afraid you'd catch him. Even with whatever trouble he's in."

"If you say so," I said. "You're the athlete."

We closed the door, walked back into the living room. "And you were fifteen once," she said.

Yes, I thought, and when I was fifteen, I'd done a lot of things for the rush. Stupider things than dropping from a window. Worse things than running away. And the things I'd done, wild and bad, hadn't had reasons behind them, not the kind of reason Gary seemed to have.

"You think it's true he didn't just run away from home?" Lydia asked. I sat on the couch again, lit another cigarette. She took the big armchair, folded her legs up under her. "Your brother-in-law doesn't sound like any prize."