“Stop asking me or I’ll send you back to the basement. Don’t be dense.”
Alfie took the bowl. Spaghetti and meatballs. He hated spaghetti. He wanted chicken and rice on his own plate and his own fork and his chair and his table and, embarrassingly, he wanted his mother.
Mr. Blue plopped back onto the couch and forked a skein of spaghetti into his gray mouth. “You gonna eat or what?” he asked.
“I’m sorry, I’m not hungry.” Alfie placed the bowl on the coffee table and stood by one of the windows. He ran his fingers over the blinds, played with the sash, tested the glass. Single-glazed, old. He could feel, almost hear, the panes shivering against the wind. What would it take to break through?
He walked slowly past the lamp, and its light flared for a second, then dimmed. He turned and walked back with the same result.
“For fuck sake, sit down!” roared Mr. Blue. “What’s wrong with you?”
Alfie sat obediently. He now had three pieces of useful information. He just needed to figure out how they fit. Mr. Blue was okay. But that didn’t mean Alfie had any intention of staying.
CHAPTER
15
“MR. BLUE?” ASKED Alfie.
“You know, you don’t have to say my name every time you have a question. There’s just the two of us here.” Mr. Blue thwacked his empty bowl onto the coffee table and sighed. “What?”
“What are you going to do with me?”
The man lowered his head and stared at his fingers as if counting them. Alfie wasn’t sure how old the man was, but he thought a bit older than his father. Mr. Blue wore his iron-hued hair short, an even half inch all around. His skin wasn’t so much pale or white as gray, coarse, worn, with deep vertical wrinkles between his brows and framing his thin lips. Despite his age, he had a compact, wiry physique, his movements springy, quick. Alfie did not think he could win a fight with this man. He hoped very much he wouldn’t have to.
“Did you know that I used to work with your mother?”
Alfie sat up, alert. How would he know that? Mr. Blue never told him this. “You’re a cop?” he asked.
The man shook his head. “No. I was what they call a confidential informant. Do you know what that is?”
Alfie knew what that was, though mostly from television. His mother rarely discussed the particulars of her job. He nodded.
“Your mom, she told me she was a drug ho.” Mr. Blue pointed his wolfish chin at Alfie. “Now do you know what that is?”
Alfie nodded again, not entirely sure, but guessing from the man’s tone, this was a bad thing. An insulting thing. He wondered if a normal boy in his place would feel shame on behalf of his mother. He knew she used to work with drug dealers, but she never talked details, and he never asked because that line of work belonged to his old life, when his father loved him. The day when his father stopped loving him was seared into his guts, into his lungs, so that anything reminding him of the old life also made him queasy, as if he’d drunk too much soda and eaten too much cake.
“You do know what that is?” Mr. Blue let out a mirthless chuckle. “I’d love to hear the dinner talk at your house. Anyway, your mom, the crack ho, figured out I was in trouble. She was right. I was being squeezed like a fucking zit. Everyone wanted a piece of me, cops on one end and the other guys, the not-cops, on the other. If you know what I mean. And that bitch just opened her skanky mouth and lied and lied.” He let out a weird sound deep in his throat, a cross between a growl and a moan. “The cops—and by the way, she lied about not being one—told me that if I only introduced her to the right people, I’d be left alone. The guys pressing me from one end would go away, and the cops from the other end would let me go ’cause—and that’s how they put it to me—we all wanted the same thing.”
Mr. Blue stood and rooted through a corner cabinet, withdrew a fifth of whiskey and flopped back down. He unscrewed the bottle, took a sip.
“Turns out,” he continued, “we didn’t all want the same thing.”
CHAPTER
16
MR. BLUE CLOSED his eyes, and Alfie tensed. Could it be that simple? Once the man fell asleep, could Alfie leave? The house was in the woods someplace, but that didn’t concern him. One of the things Alfie liked quite a bit about his new life (as in life after Dad) was the Boy Scouts and camping. He’d been cold-weather camping three times, once even sleeping under a lean-to, no tent.
The man shuddered, his eyelids popped up, and those pewter-colored eyes rolled toward Alfie. Two bright spots flushed over his cheekbones, as if he’d just gone running with the wind whipping his face.
“You ever been in love?” Mr. Blue asked.
Alfie shook his head. Love was something that happened between real people, not for him—not the odd boy who needed a spreadsheet just to figure out what to talk about with another person.
“No? How old are you, anyway?”
“I’ll be fourteen next month.”
“Damn, by fourteen I’d had three or four girlfriends. And they all put out.” He squinted at the boy. “You telling me you never got laid either?”
Alfie looked away, his face warming again. It wasn’t that his thoughts were sex-free. Some days he thought of nothing else, when walking the halls at school became treacherous—all those denim-encased girl thighs and asses, their long hair grazing their shoulder blades, fanning over their backs.
He wanted out of this man’s house. He wanted to go home.
“No?” Mr. Blue squinted at him, appraising. “I’d think girls would be all over you.” He burped and massaged his chest. “I did all right though. Then I met Oksana.” He shook his head. “She was fucking gorgeous. And crazy. Watch out for crazy girls.”
Alfie reflected that he probably wouldn’t know the difference between a crazy girl and a non-crazy girl. Was his mother crazy? His father had said she was, called her a crazy cunt. Was Oksana crazy like his mother or a different kind of crazy? Once, when he had a meltdown in fifth grade and his father had to come get him, his father told him he’d end up in a home for crazy people if he couldn’t learn to keep a grip on himself.
“We had fun. Me and Oksana. She knew how to live. Good wine, restaurants, the best coke. One time she came knocking on my door at midnight and insisted we go to Atlantic City. And I had to be at work the next day! So what do I do? I said all right, let’s go to Atlantic City. We get there and we play poker and she wins, ’cause she always wins, you know? And then we’re on the boardwalk and it’s freezing ’cause it’s like February or some such shit and we watch the sun rise. I gotta tell you. I loved that woman.”
He glared at Alfie. “That’s another thing your bitch of a mother took away from me.” He threw the bottle onto the couch and got to his feet, indicating that Alfie should get up. “Come on, that’s enough. Go downstairs.”
Alfie remained seated. He flicked his eyes at Mr. Blue, then away, lowered his head. He didn’t want to go.
Mr. Blue struck Alfie across his left cheek.
Alfie tumbled sideways, then caught himself and sprang up. He didn’t want to cry. Wasn’t going to cry. Fought to quell his trembling lips.
When the man swung again, Alfie turned and ran down the hallway, paused before the basement stairs, then, as Mr. Blue loped toward him, scurried down and through the door, pressed his back against the dark paneling. The door shut and the lock clicked.
He was alone with the scratchy couch again. He paced the threadbare rug for the next two hours, his limbs shaking for the first half hour, until his mind quieted and his breathing deepened, and when he couldn’t walk anymore, he folded into the couch and closed his eyes.
He had made three separate lists in his mind, and he had memorized them. Each list broke down the steps for escape, but each list was incomplete. He needed certain things.
Flipping onto his stomach, he tucked one arm under his cheek and wrapped the other around his waist. Tomorrow he’d try finding what he needed.
For a brief, blinding second, a feroc
ious rage consumed the boy, and he bit his bottom lip till it bled. For that second he experienced the purest hatred, directed at his mother—who had done something unforgivable to Mr. Blue, who had pushed his father out of their lives; at his father—who was not going to help him, not now, not ever; and at Mr. Blue—because how dare he?
CHAPTER
17
LANEY DROVE HOME from Noonan’s in a haze, missed her exit, had to double back.
Owen Hopper out of prison. Harry dead. Mike scared and running. Owen Hopper knowing her real name.
She’d driven for a half hour before those four persistent thoughts were joined by a fifth. Owen Hopper knew her name, which meant he knew where she lived, and very possibly knew she had a son. And her son went missing after speaking with an older man who might or might not have tried to sell him drugs. Which Owen Hopper always had aplenty. Or at least that’s what he went away for.
A lick of fear unlike any she’d ever known grazed her heart, then bit, the pain in her chest briefly violent, breathtaking. By the time she pulled into her driveway, she was near to howling with anxiety.
Mike had given her his passcodes (no questions asked, grabbed her phone and punched in his information). She still needed his laptop to use them, and he told her he’d leave a spare key with the super at his apartment building in Riverdale. They both knew the job would fire him for this if she got careless, and the knowledge vibrated between them, sharp and flinty.
Once home, she dialed Ed Boswell, but his phone went to voice mail. She said, “Ed, it’s me. I mean, this is Laney Bird. I was wondering if you found anything else on—” She paused, realizing she’d almost said Hopper’s name. But Ed didn’t know about Owen Hopper, about the RICO case, or Harry, or Mike. Ed Boswell knew fuck all. “—the older man. The older man by the school who might be dealing. Just, you know. Call me if you find anything.”
She searched the house once more, starting with the wreck that was Alfie’s room, looking for anything she might have missed. She hoped Alfie had run away. It was a terrible thing to wish, but it was better than the alternatives scrabbling around her head.
After she turned every room upside down and gleaned no new knowledge, Laney buckled to the floor. She lay down, her arms outstretched, her gaze fixed on the cobwebbed ceiling. Was Owen Hopper holding her son? Had Owen Hopper done something unthinkable to her life?
CHAPTER
18
THE FIRST TIME she noticed him, she’d been working as Kendra in Brighton Beach. It was August, and the air hung thick, heavy, the heat so aggressive it seemed to scald her lungs. She hoped to score dope quickly, then wile away the rest of the day indoors. She wore short shorts (the department-issued Glock snug inside an underwear holster), flip-flops, a cream-colored tank with a thorny rose decal over the chest. Her hair was pinned back with rosettes. She envisioned Kendra as a lost girl, a woman in her late twenties who dressed and acted like an adolescent, a girl men (or women) might want to protect or exploit. Either way, it worked. Kendra always made a buy.
That summer and most of the spring prior, Laney and her team had worked a racketeering case, collecting evidence against a tight-knit organization involved in drug trafficking, extortion, illegal gambling, possibly prostitution. Laney’s job was to buy as much dope—oxy, coke, Molly, et cetera—as she could from a small selection of dealers working for the organization. No arrests would be made until the team had enough buys to mount a solid case, which meant Laney had the leisure to become a regular without being burned. It also meant she could meet people, earn trust, and hopefully find a weak point. They needed someone who could give them, or at least lead them to, the boss, a Russian-American named Viktor Orlov. Orlov knew how to camouflage. He had no social media presence, and it seemed everyone who worked for him was family. He ran the syndicate low-key, old-school, all communication word of mouth except when it absolutely had to be digital, and then they used coded sentences primarily in English with injected Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian, and, according to a linguist the team contacted, Romany words.
After months of investigation, the team amassed some photographs, some nicknames, enough drug buys to sink three or four of his distant cousins, but Viktor remained elusive.
That day Laney met up with Bunny, a sometime singer and most-time user who had already introduced her to two of Viktor’s dealers. Even in the crazy heat, Bunny wore her lemon-yellow wig and denim jacket, towering over Kendra in gold platforms. Together they slogged through soupy streets, past the Russian delis (smells of fried dough, buttery beef, sour pickles), under the elevated train tracks, to a corner on Fifth and Brighton.
Since Viktor’s guys didn’t text, didn’t deliver, and didn’t deal from their apartments, Bunny relied on word of mouth and texts from her friends to locate frequently changing drug locations. It was a pain, but Laney saw the wisdom in running a business like that. After all, look how long it was taking her team to collect the evidence. It was a good thing they made regular arrests working other cases. Otherwise none of them would be making overtime, and time is money and overtime is time and a half.
The corner stayed empty, nothing but ice cream wrappers, used condoms, and a dusty pair of purple panties decorating the sidewalk. Laney wiped her forehead with her palm. Maybe she could drag herself the few blocks to the beach and fall into the cool ocean. For just an hour. Or at least get her legs wet. She glanced behind her, making sure Harry was still ghosting, and sure enough he was, steadfast in the unmarked Impala at the other end of the block. Could she convince him to play hooky?
A loud crash and Laney turned, attention fully engaged. A man had burst through a door, smashing it against the wall so hard it ricocheted back against a second man, who hurriedly lifted his arm to keep the metal from banging his face.
She cataloged them as if she were recording descriptions on arrest papers—the first a white male, late thirties or early forties, six foot four, blondish crew cut, gray eyes, white button-down shirt with long sleeves, gray slacks, black leather shoes (expensive), a briefcase (and who carried briefcases anyway?); the second also a white male, late teens, five foot eight, frizzy brown hair, hipster ’stache, black tank top, black-and-white Adidas shorts, Adidas slides.
The first man crossed the street and hurried away, and Laney watched him, thinking. Midday, midweek, on Brighton Street in a heat wave, this man stood out. He should have been in an air-conditioned office somewhere else, yet there he was, his jaw clenched so tight she could see the muscles jumping even as he rounded the opposite corner.
The second man she recognized from pictures at the precinct—an apprentice at the syndicate and Viktor’s third cousin. What had just happened between them?
“Dobrydjen,” said Bunny, who, having lived in Brighton her whole life, had picked up an impressive collection of Russian greetings, curses, and endearments.
The boy squinted at Bunny, his mouth curling down, nostrils flaring. Working this case for months had taught Laney that these Russians would strip you naked at gunpoint and sell your clothes back to you at a thousand percent markup, but as far as they were concerned, men were men, women were women, and anything on the fringes was dirt.
“Marat, right?” Laney said, stepping up to him, lips stretched in a wide smile. She had no idea if his real name was Marat, but it was a decent guess in this neighborhood. He went by Malyish within the gang, but her showing him she knew this would have exposed her as much as her showing him the slim radio taped under her tank top. When she had worked in the Bronx, she’d used Ray or Steve. Everyone knows a Ray or a Steve. Down here, everyone knew a Marat.
He studied her face, her tan legs, smiled back.
“No,” he said, “you looking for Marat?”
“Yes.” She touched his arm playfully. Contact is personal. It’s a shortcut to friendliness. People have a hard time denying you once you’ve been friendly with each other.
After this, it took only ten minutes to negotiate four dime bags of dope and voilà! A day’s
work in the bag (ahem), another notch added to the case, and Malyish one sale closer to a lovely stretch at Rikers.
CHAPTER
19
LANEY WAVED GOOD-BYE to Bunny, bringing the radio taped under her tank strap closer to her mouth. “Meet you at First by the boardwalk,” she said. It wasn’t like she could simply waltz across the street to where Harry sat parked in the shade and get in. That was how undercovers got burned.
She’d done that once, her first week working in the Bronx, and the next time she came strolling onto the set, a junkie named Lala had marched up and down the block screaming cop, cop, bitch is a cop, don’t sell to white bitch, she’s a cop. And that was the end for Kendra on Lexington and 125th Street.
The heat slowed her but didn’t stop her arriving at the rendezvous point before Harry. She leaned against a tree for the meager shade it provided. It wasn’t like him to leave her waiting. Or to stop ghosting. She frowned and punched in a text. She raised her head and listened but heard no sirens. So he hadn’t gotten sidetracked by an emergency job.
It was too hot to walk back to the precinct, so she texted him again and headed for the boardwalk. The heat and brightness felt fitting there, the wooden slats rough beneath her thin flip-flops, the beach exuding briny ocean, sunblock, fried food.
She smiled. There were worse places to work. When her phone vibrated, she assumed it was Harry and was ready with a mock reprimand, barely stopping herself even as her brain registered that the call was coming from Theo.
“Laney,” he said, his voice tense, shaded with everything from mild panic to fury to a whiff (yes, definitely a whiff) of resentment. “Alfie’s had a panic attack at camp.”
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