Girl Who Wasn’t There

by Vincent Zandri

  I see his left hand reaching. He comes out with a snub-nosed revolver. I slap it away, wrap my right hand around his throat.

  “Where’s my daughter?”

  “Go to hell, killer.” He spits blood in my face.

  I punch him again. A short, sharp, powerful jab. Then, pulling his right hand up, I grab hold of the index finger.

  “Who sent you?”

  “Fuck … you … killer.”

  I pull the finger sideways, as far as nature will allow the proximal phalanx and the middle phalanxes to go without dislocating. I feel the flexor digitorum profundus tendon pop at the center knuckle, just a split second before the bone snaps like a dry twig. At the same time, I cover his mouth with my free hand while he screams into it.

  “Where are you hiding my daughter, you ugly bastard?”

  Lifting my hand off his mouth.

  “Go ahead,” he spits. “Kill me, killer. That’s what you do. You sick, violent killer. Go ahead. You succeed at that, you’ll never see Chloe again. You understand me? You kill me, you call the cops, you so much as breathe in the direction of the hotel house detective, your little teeny-weeny polka-dot bikini-wearing daughter will die a slow, agonizing death.”

  Raising up my fist, I’m about to plow it into his face again. But his face already looks like raw hamburger. If facial symmetry is an important component to one’s perception of physical beauty, this guy is truly screwed for a while. His procerus, or what you and I recognize as a nose, is definitely leaning left, and I might have broken his left orbital plate. Not to mention his lips, which resemble rare sausage with punctured casings. And that finger on his hand will require surgery to repair. Perhaps several pins. I guess I’ve made my point.

  “What the hell do you want?” I ask, swallowing a lump of concrete.

  “You’ll find out when we’re ready, killer. And not before.” There’s pain in his voice. Fear. But he’s not backing down. He’s a professional. I know the type.

  I slide off of him. Stand.

  “You tell Rabuffo I had no choice.”

  “Maybe you can tell him that yourself.” He stands, awkwardly. “Or maybe this ain’t about Rabuffo at all, killer.”

  He turns, begins limping toward the parking lot and Main Street.

  “Why’d you do it?” I shout. “Why’d you come to me?”

  He turns. “So that I could deliver a message. An untraceable message. Cell phones aren’t safe.”

  “And what message is that?”

  “It goes something like this: If you want to see your daughter alive again, you will do as we say.”

  “And the little girl? That was Chloe? My Chloe?”

  He wipes the blood from his nostrils and lips with the back of his one good hand.

  “What the hell do you think, Inmate number 03C2258, Sidney O’Keefe?”

  Turning, he runs off, taking his damaged face and hand with him, but mistakenly leaving his gun behind.

  CHAPTER 25

  GRABBING HOLD OF the snub-nose revolver, I stuff it into the back of my pant waist, conceal it by pulling my t-shirt over it. Then I jog back to the hotel room, before someone does the lawfully right thing and calls the police. It’s entirely possible they already have.

  Maybe, in terms of being a free man, I am already a short-timer.

  Sliding open the door, I step inside, shut the door behind me, lock it, pull the curtain closed. Penny is so visibly upset, she’s trembling.

  “What the hell was that?!” she barks.

  I hold up my hands, like I’m telling her to get ahold of herself.

  … Do not touch her again, Sid. Do not lay a hand on her … Get your emotions in order … Rein your instincts in … Prison Darwinism no longer applies on the outside …

  “Chloe,” I say. “She’s alive, and from what I can tell, unharmed.”

  For the first time since this ordeal began down on the beach, real optimism paints her tired face.

  “My God,” she says. “That was her … Down on the beach, I mean.”

  I nod. “Yes, I think so … Oh Christ, I know so.”

  “Then what’s going on?” she pushes. “Who was that man?”

  The face of Rabuffo fills my head. Him taking me into his confidence all those years ago. Him taking me down into the protected basement operation below his house. Showing me the safe or bank vault, where he kept millions of dollars in unmarked currency, gold, and silver coins. He would make me a soldier in his army.

  The top soldier.

  He would even share the combination to the vault with me. Our relationship was one of mutual trust, but not admiration. I had acquired a gambling debt to an organization that would cost me my life if I didn’t pay it all off. Rabuffo stepped in, paid it off on my behalf. Which meant he owned me, like a slave and his master. But in that ownership sprung a kind of love, too.

  The love for a son he never had.

  But then Wemps and Singh killed that family. They were shot dead by the cops in the aftermath. I was arrested and bore the brunt for the quadruple homicide. Didn’t matter that Rabuffo loved me like a son. What mattered was that I kept my mouth shut while doing my time on the inside. But how long can a man—a human being—physically and mentally hold out? With that in mind, he tried his best to silence me for good.

  The father killing the son. A tragic story as old as the Bible itself.

  A loud knock on the door.

  “Mr. O’Keefe?” the voice on the other side of the door barks. “Hotel security. Please open up.”

  More knocking. Pounding.

  I go to the door, open it. I see a middle-aged man in a gray uniform. He’s heavyset and packing a gun on his utility belt.

  “Guests are reporting a disturbance coming from this room, and outside the room. I’m going to have to ask you to keep it down or else vacate the premises. Is that understood?”

  I nod, like an inmate swallowing a verbal scolding from a corrections officer.

  His brown eyes zoom in on my hand. The bleeding knuckles. I quickly hide the hand behind my back.

  “’Night,” I say.

  “’Night,” he says, with a smirk. “Make it a calm one, please.”

  I close the door, lock it, apply the dead bolt, locking us inside our cell of a room. Then, turning to my wife.

  “Listen, Pen,” I say. “Sit down.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s time I came clean about something.”

  “Clean about what, Sid?”

  “The whole story behind why I was paroled from prison.”

  CHAPTER 26

  IT TAKES ALL of twenty minutes, but when I’m done, Penny knows everything about my relationship with Rabuffo. The details. Some of them retreads, but some of them brand new to her ears. About my first wife emptying our bank accounts before she took off. About the gambling debts I entered into with some pretty bad dudes who ran an operation that competed directly with Mickey’s. About my crawling to Rabuffo to bail me out, and in the process, save my pathetic life. About his hiring me in exchange for paying them off. About his taking me under his wing, treating me like the son he never had. About the truth behind my final job with him, and how my old high school buddies-turned-Rabuffo-employees, Wemps and Singh, killed that Chinese family. How they were shot dead by the cops when they tried to make a run for it. How I took the blame for it all, and how Rabuffo wanted to hush me while I was doing my never-ending time. About my loyalty, until that loyalty wasn’t enough. How Rabuffo wanted me dead, to guarantee my silence. About how I never stopped worrying that, one day, he would go after her and Chloe. About how I finally had no choice but to plead my case to the DA, knowing that one day my survival skills would fail me, and Rabuffo would succeed in having me assassinated. Once that happened, he would surely come after my family. Or maybe he would come after them first, just to torture me. I wouldn’t be around to protect them when the killers finally came for them. It would be the worst torture any one man could ever bear.

  “So
now I’m here to protect you,” I confess, “and all I’ve managed to do is get Chloe abducted.” Me, shaking my head. “I’m completely useless, Pen. You’re right, this is all my fault.”

  She places her hand on my thigh.

  “I was wrong, Doc. This isn’t your fault. You were only trying to shield us from danger. I see that now. I also see why you withheld the whole truth about Rabuffo for so long. I’d always assumed you were just one of his drivers. One of his bag men. But, you’re right. If I knew too much, it would make me a liability. Make Chloe a liability.”

  “That was my thinking, my reasoning. I would stop at nothing to see you safe.”

  She goes to her suitcase, which is set out on the stand by the door. She digs through it, comes back out with a small bottle filled with medication.

  “What’s that, Pen?”

  “Valium,” she says, straight faced. “Would you like one or two to calm you down?”

  I think about the possibility of being up all night. How even a few hours of sleep will be crucial if we’re going to maintain some sort of sanity and strength through this thing. But I also know that swallowing a sedative like Valium, especially after suffering a blow to the head, will take away my edge, inhibit my natural ability to maintain optimum neuronal function. In other words, it could very well dull my built-in-bad-guy detector, dull my survival instinct.

  “I’m good,” I say, in the end.

  She opens the cap, pops a couple into the palm of her hand, downs them with a glass of tap water from the sink in the bathroom.

  She comes to me then.

  For moment, we stand stone stiff, just facing each other. It’s almost like we’re looking into one another’s eyes for the first time. After a long couple of beats, our bodies come together. We hold one another tightly. We drop slowly onto the bed, on our sides, never letting go. This isn’t only about stress and distress, it’s about love and needing one another like never before. We’re holding onto each other so tightly, it’s not like we want to press our bodies together. It’s as if we wish to become one person. Our tears are streaming down are faces. The tears are combining. I taste the tears on my lips and tongue.

  Soon, I feel a steady breathing coming from Penny. When I angle my head so that I’m able to get a look at her face, I can tell she is sleeping. Exhaustion and Valium overtake her, and I am so damned happy about it. No mother should have to go through the torture she has endured all day long. But will her dreams be sweet? The answer to that one is plain enough.

  The room is quiet.

  The lights are still on, but I don’t dare let go of Penny to get up and turn them off. Instead, I close my own eyes, try my hardest to clear my throbbing head. To fall asleep, if only for a few minutes.

  I see them standing inside the room then at the end of the bed. The Chinese father and mother. Together, they flank both their children. They’re covered in blood, each of them with a different version of the same execution-style head wound.

  The little girl takes a step forward, holds out her hands, like she wants me to grab hold of them. But I can’t. I’m paralyzed on my back.

  “Why did you do this to us?” she asks.

  I want to tell her that I didn’t do it. That I was just driving the car. That Wemps and Singh killed them. That I had nothing to do with it. The frustration builds up inside me and I’m trying to scream at her. Scream the truth. But all I can do is lie there and watch them bleed out …

  A loud bang.

  A fist against the front door.

  I sit up fast, eyes wide open, my spine a heavy-duty spring. Another knock. Louder this time.

  “Mr. O’Keefe, you up?”

  I shake my head, try to shake the cobwebs from it. I know the voice.

  “Mr. O’Keefe, it’s Giselle … Hotel Detective Giselle Fontaine.”

  Penny is startled awake. She slowly sits up.

  “What’s … going … on?” Her voice is sleepy, groggy. “Is it Chloe?”

  “It’s Detective Giselle,” I answer.

  Glancing at my watch. Five in the morning. Holy Christ, we’ve been asleep for hours. Is it possible grief and excessive anxiety can have that effect on the human body? My med studies would have suggested otherwise. But then I’ve never had a child kidnapped before by a band of human traffickers. This is all new to me. Or maybe I’m suffering from the effects of a concussion. Or hell, I learned to sleep in prison with one eye open, the other shut.

  “Hang on,” I shout, slipping out of the bed.

  I’m still fully clothed. I immediately go the door, open it.

  Giselle is standing there, her big blue eyes intently looking into my own.

  “Tell me you’ve found Chloe.”

  “Not exactly, Mr. O’Keefe. But may I come in?”

  “Of course.” I step out of the way. “Penny is still in bed. By some miracle we actually slept.”

  “Gosh, that’s a blessing to be sure,” she says.

  She’s showered. Her long hair is still damp and her blue suit is professionally pressed.

  “Do you mind?” she says, picking up the remote off the desk, turning on the television.

  “What’s going on?” I beg through a haze of sleep and confusion.

  “This is going on,” she says. The TV is already tuned in to the local 24-hour news station. “It’s time for the headline rundown, so pay attention.”

  I glance at Penny out the corner of my eye. Her eyelids are at half-mast. Somehow, during the night, she must have snuck under the blankets, and now she’s holding them up to her chin.

  A commercial for a local Lake Placid boat manufacturer is just finishing up. Then the news comes back on, a female news anchor presiding.

  “Back to our top story,” the young African American anchor announces. “A local man was assaulted last night and badly beaten just outside a popular Lake Placid–area hotel. Tom Bertram, 53, of Boat Landing Road, has testified that he was taking a walk along a moonlit Mirror Lake on the beach located behind the Golden Arrow Hotel, when he was suddenly attacked by a man he identifies as recently paroled convicted murderer Sidney O’Keefe.”

  My insides drop. It feels like my organs are spilling out of my body.

  “What the hell is she saying?” Penny asks. “You were attacked by him.”

  “Hang on,” Giselle insists.

  The news report shifts from the anchor to video tape that must have been shot only minutes after our physical confrontation on the north side of the hotel. That is, judging by the fresh blood pouring out of his lower lip and nostrils.

  “You see this?” Bertram says, pointing at his own face with a finger that’s been stabilized with a stainless-steel splint, and bandaged with gauze and surgical tape. “This is what happens when you let animals out of prison before they’re supposed to get out of prison. Innocent people like me get attacked. I was just minding my own business when that monster came up on me from behind, tackled me, started beating me.” He starts to tear up, really pouring it on. “I appeal to you, the police of this village. Find Sidney O’Keefe before he skips town and does the same horrible thing to someone else.”

  “This isn’t happening,” I whisper, more to myself than anyone else occupying the room.

  “There’s more,” Giselle says.

  The video ends and the broadcast switches back to the real-time anchor.

  “Sources tell Channel 9 that Thomas Bertram was able to identify O’Keefe from the very recent news reports of his surprising parole from Green Haven Maximum Security Penitentiary, which occurred this past Monday.” A mug shot of my face appears on the screen over the anchor’s right shoulder. “Back in September of 2007, O’Keefe was arrested and convicted as a coconspirator in the murder of four Chinese undocumented immigrants. He was paroled suddenly, after serving ten years of a twenty-five to life sentence. His defense lawyer, Joel Harwood, was unavailable for comment. In other news …”

  Giselle, lowers the volume.

  “So now what?” I ask. />
  “Customers staying in the hotel reported a violent scuffle last night on the north side of the hotel.” The house detective glances at the wall. “The people staying in that room reported you fighting. That you punched the wall, Mr. O’Keefe. That you hit Mrs. O’Keefe.”

  Penny slides out of bed. Like me, she is still fully clothed.

  “You listen to me, Giselle,” she says, her tone now defiant and angry. “I saw what happened. Chloe was out there last night, on the beach. Somebody was holding onto her. A big man. When my husband went outside to check on the situation, he was attacked by a second man. The injured man on the television.”

  “And you didn’t call me?” Giselle says, shaking her head. “You didn’t call Walton?”

  “He clobbered me on the head.” Me feeling the lump left behind by his .38 caliber revolver. “I was knocked unconscious for a few seconds. But I chased the bastard, and when I caught up to him, I demanded answers. He told me if we involved the cops, Chloe would die. My daughter would fucking die. He wouldn’t give me any answers. He wouldn’t give me anything but threats. So naturally—”

  I hold up my dominant hand. The knuckles are scabbed.

  “—Naturally you beat the living snot out of him,” Giselle answers in my stead. Then, exhaling, “But here’s the darned thing. The police are going to want to pick you up. Walton is going to arrest you. And you know what that means.”

  “You can’t do that!” Penny barks. “You can’t take my husband away from me when our daughter is still missing. When we have bad men out there threatening us. Threatening to kill Chloe.”

  “Listen,” I say. “I know who has my daughter, and I can prove it.”

  Giselle looks at me, like she’s not sure whether to believe me or not. She shifts her gaze to Penny.

  “Is this true?” she says.

  “We need to tell her,” Penny says.

  “Tell me what?” Giselle says.

  “About the man who used to own me,” I say. Then, my eyes suddenly attracted to the television. “That man,” I say, pointing at the flat screen. “That son of a bitch.”