Midnight Lullaby

by Jen Blood

  “Everything okay?” she asked, her voice rough.

  I didn’t bother answering. “What if I went with you?” I asked instead.

  She sat up, looking confused. “To the party, you mean?” A second of silence passed. I remained where I was, half in and half out of her room. “You really think Johnny would tell me anything important if you were there?”

  “You saw how he was tonight. If anything, I think my being there would egg him on.”

  She tipped her head at me, fully awake now. “And you’ll give me space to work.”

  “I’ll give you space. If Johnny tries something, though—”

  “Diggs.” She leveled a glare I could barely see in the semi-darkness.

  I thought of my brother again, taking that flying leap into nothingness alone. “Fine. I’ll give you space.”

  “Then I guess it’s a date.”

  Silence fell over the room. In the next apartment, I could just barely hear Motown playing low on the radio. Solomon’s window was open, a cool breeze blowing in. I could smell rain in the air.

  “I’m gonna get to bed,” I said. “I just wanted to...” I trailed off, since I really didn’t know what I wanted anymore.

  “Make sure I was still breathing?”

  “Something like that. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Okay.”

  I hesitated before leaving. It seemed like we were both waiting for something—I wasn’t sure what, though. Whatever it was, it seemed dangerous to me. “Goodnight, kid.”

  I left her room and closed the door tightly behind me. If I could have locked myself out, I think I would have.

  Chapter 7

  I woke early the next morning, intent on getting my head back in the game.

  The three-and-a-half mile trail around Portland’s Back Cove was already peppered with joggers and bikers and dogs and dog walkers of every shape and size when I got there at six a.m. I positioned myself in an area of Payson Park closest to the soccer field and stretched while I watched the women’s soccer league do their thing. They did it well—in short shorts, which I appreciated. Ogling the local talent wasn’t my primary motive, but it wasn’t a bad way to pass the time.

  It was almost six-thirty when I heard footsteps behind me.

  “Your idea of a workout could use refining,” Wolf Cole said.

  “Gets the heart rate up before I hit the trail.”

  “Among other things.”

  While others jogged by in Lycra and spandex and specially designed water-wicking ultra-cooling NASA-tested fabrics, Wolf wore Adidas running shorts and a zippered hoodie over a t-shirt that said SEMPER FI in bold letters. I was in the same camp—outfitted for function, not fashion. So we had that in common, at least.

  “How’d you know I would be here?” he asked.

  “I’ve seen you out before. I figured after last night you might want to get away, stretch your legs a little.”

  “You weren’t wrong.” He looked around. It was an overcast morning, the air cool and the sky gray. A dozen gulls soared overhead. “But if you want to talk, you’ll need to run. I’m not sitting on my ass watching a bunch of girls play ball while you grill me about shit I shouldn’t be talking about in the first place.”

  Fair enough. I shrugged. “I’ve done worse for an interview before.”

  “Not really something to brag about, man.”

  Wolf took off at a healthy lope from the field in Payson Park. I caught up to him just past a water fountain and a woman walking what was either a Chihuahua or a wharf rat. I caught her checking out my running mate before she flashed a bright, predatory smile at me. I kept running.

  “You gonna ask a question, or just breathe heavy on my heels all morning?” Wolf asked. He wasn’t great for the ego, but at least I was getting a workout.

  I finally found my pace and remained steady beside him, my breath coming easier now that I’d settled into a rhythm. “Do you know where Lisette is from?”

  “Africa.”

  “Can you be a little more specific?”

  “South Africa,” he said, glancing at me.

  “You sure about that?”

  “She doesn’t like to talk about it.”

  “Yeah, I’m getting that. What about when she came here? Or how? Do you know anything about the details surrounding her coming to the U.S.?”

  “A talent scout spotted her on the street and helped her come to America to be a model.”

  “That’s the party line,” I said. “I think maybe we’re not getting the whole story. I think there’s a connection between her and Charlene.”

  He picked up his pace as we hit an incline leading to the Casco Bay Bridge. I matched his stride, but not easily. Turns out the body isn’t as forgiving as you’d think after three months of cigarettes, booze, and whatever else might have crossed my path when I was with Marcy. It felt good to be moving again, though, even if it was just for the sake of a story. Wolf glanced at me as though surprised I was still there, then focused dead ahead as we ran past a man pushing a jogging stroller.

  “Someone took her, I think,” he said when we were well out of the man’s hearing range. “Lisette, I mean. She’s said things in her sleep—she doesn’t know I heard. And some of her scars... They remind me of something I’ve seen before.”

  “Seen where?”

  He didn’t answer. We hit the bridge, where the roar of passing traffic made it impossible to hear anything but my own panting breath. When we were off again and back on packed earth, Wolf sprinted ahead. We rounded a bend where the trail was slick from rain that had fallen overnight. Instead of slowing down, Wolf ran faster. I slipped, caught myself before I hit the ground, and scrambled after him.

  “Hey!” I called. “Wait a second, damn it.”

  He slowed down about fifty yards down the line, where the trail ran parallel to Baxter Boulevard. He got off the track and went to an empty park bench overlooking the cove. It was high tide, gulls circling overhead, the sun shining weakly through dense cloud cover. Wolf stretched his thick, muscled calves on the bench while he waited for me to catch up.

  “There’s a reason Lizzie doesn’t talk about these things,” he said when I joined him. I nodded, trying to catch my breath. “What happened to her over there—the scars she has... Somebody burned her. Beat her.” He looked away. “And worse. A hell of a lot worse. She doesn’t talk about it, but she doesn’t need to. Somebody hurts a person that bad, there’s no hiding it. I was in the Gulf for two tours. Held for three months in an Iraqi prison. And what they did to me is nothing—it ain’t shit, compared to what happened to her.” He sat down heavily beside me, his gaze locked on the bay.

  “You said you think she was taken,” I said. “What about Charlene? Do you know anything about her story? Where she came from?”

  “Not really. She worked for Johnny when she first got here, under the table until she got her papers or whatever... It was pretty obvious she wouldn’t be with him long, though. Charlene never knew when to shut up—Johnny didn’t take to that. He treated somebody wrong, she was the first one to say something.”

  “Did they ever get into it?”

  He snorted, and glanced at me sideways. “You met my brother. How do you think he handles it when somebody—a black woman, no less—tells him he’s got his head up his ass?”

  “I’m guessing not well.”

  “You could say that, yeah.”

  “What about her relationship with Lisette? Do you think they knew each other before they came to the States?”

  He hesitated.

  “I won’t say anything,” I promised. “Whatever you tell me is off the record. But I just need a direction to follow this thing.”

  He remained quiet. I let him stew for another few seconds, fighting with himself. When he still didn’t say anything, I turned to face him.

  “Lisette’s on the edge—you can see that, or you wouldn’t be talking to me. When I went to her last night, she had a couple of neat white lin
es drawn and ready to go. She needs help. I’m not saying I’m the one to do it—but she needs something. I’m not going to print anything yet, and I’ll work my ass off to make sure none of this comes back to her. But if there’s someone after her and they’ve already gotten to Charlene, I think you need to start talking to someone.”

  “And you just happen to be handy to listen,” he said. I didn’t say anything. He grimaced. “I looked you up yesterday, you know. Checked out some of the stories you’ve written. All that shit about the cop out West.”

  “That wasn’t—”

  He looked at me. I shut my mouth.

  “The cop was really dirty?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He was. Not everything turned out to be true in there—I got some things wrong. I own that. But not everything.”

  “But he beat up those girls—that was true.” When I nodded, his jaw tightened. Another few seconds passed. A couple of mallards settled on the water. Wolf took in a long, deep breath and let it out on a sigh. “Lizzie and Charlene had the same tattoo—a homemade one. I walked in on Charlene once, didn’t mean to... She was getting dressed. But there was a tattoo, almost like a brand, on her backside.”

  Things began to come into focus in my head. “What kind of brand?”

  “I didn’t get a good look at Charlene’s, so I don’t know for sure, and Lizzie had something done to hers—it’s hard to tell what it was, originally.”

  “What is it now?”

  “A dove.”

  “And you’re sure Charlene’s was the same?”

  “Both of them are on the left ass cheek—like you’d brand friggin’ cattle, you know? Both about the same size. It’s not exactly the kind of place just everyone goes out and gets a tat. It’s just... It’s a feeling I get. They’re connected.”

  I thought of the scarred man on the pier. No one bearing the mark is safe. Was this the mark he’d been talking about?

  “So does that mean you’ll work with me on this?” I asked. “Maybe talk to Lisette, and see if you can convince her...”

  “The hell I will. I’m not trying to convince Lizzie to do anything. I’m talking to you now. I don’t know if I’ll talk to you again.” He scratched the back of his neck and sighed, his eyes on the ducks paddling past. “But I have to do something—you’re right about that. If somebody doesn’t do something, these secrets are gonna eat her alive.”

  ◊◊◊◊◊

  I spent the rest of the day bouncing between the office and the Portland Public Library, researching everything I could about Charlene Dsengani, Africa, Rick Foster, and Lisette Mandalay’s mysterious past. Following some of the vague clues Wolf had provided, I also looked up kidnappings in Africa in the mid to late ’80s. Throughout Eastern Africa, one of the most pervasive issues over the past decade was the abduction of children, either to sell to human traffickers or for use as child soldiers.

  In Uganda, Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army had been gathering momentum for years through the abduction and forced recruitment of kids as young as eight years old, to fight his war against the Ugandan government. About half of Kony’s growing army was said to be peopled by boys and girls between eleven and sixteen years old. South Africa wasn’t immune to the problem, either, though it was more likely that kids would be sold into slavery or the sex trade when taken from that region. In either of those scenarios or half a dozen others I read about, the abductor typically made some kind of mark on their “property” to indicate the child now belonged to them.

  By the time Buzz got in at a little past noon that day, I was fried by the darkness of the world at large. Our fearless leader strolled through the door, tossed his fedora on the nearest coat hook, and sank into his chair. There was no denying my relief at sight of him, though irritation still pricked at me after his abrupt disappearance the night before.

  “Nice you could show up,” I said. He started up his computer without acknowledging me. “And no problem ducking out last night instead of looking out for Solomon. Johnny took her out—”

  He looked up. “Spare me the sarcasm, huh? Alice called while you were making nice with the model, and Solomon was holding her own just fine. How’d it all turn out?”

  The look on his face was enough to convince me he wasn’t in the mood for games. “Fine,” I admitted. “But we actually had a run-in with my scarred warrior from the pier afterward... Kind of interesting.”

  I told him about the videotape, focusing on the presence of Rick Foster and Lisette Mandalay with Charlene Dsengani on the tape. When I told him about the party at Johnny’s that night, I half expected him to balk when I told him Solomon was going. Instead, he actually looked pleased.

  “She’s better than you give her credit for,” he said. “And if you don’t ease up on her soon, you’ll drive her right out of your life. This was a good solution—the two of you going together.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. I mean, you saw the way Johnny was looking at her last night...”

  “Sure, but he’s not the first creep who’s given her the eye, and he won’t be the last. Go with her tonight, let her have some space, the two of you work your magic... You’re a good team, and she’s got a good head on her shoulders. Trust that.”

  He shifted in his seat, pushing back from the desk. He looked tired, and I wondered if there was something more going on at home than he was letting on. If there was, he didn’t seem eager to share and I didn’t press him.

  “Now that we’ve got that figured out, I think we need to talk about how we’re going to handle this story,” he said.

  I told him about the deal Solomon and I had made: shared byline, full disclosure, full accountability. “How do you want to handle the deadlines and the other stories I’m on?” I asked when I was done.

  “I told you before: All your energy goes to the Dsengani story,” he told me. I looked at him, surprised at the ferocity of his tone. “Alice and I can handle anything else that comes along—I want you on this, but I want you to keep it quiet. If this one-eyed source of yours has taken a liking to you, we’ve got a leg up. We need to use that.”

  “Okay,” I said. He fell silent. Buzz had been there for me since I was a teenager, but it had always been in an unspoken way—I knew he had my back, but we didn’t do a lot of sharing. Right now, though, it was clear something else was going on. “Is everything all right? You said Alice called you last night and you had to leave... Everything okay there?”

  His gaze shifted from mine. “Nothing I can’t handle. Now, talk to me about Solomon. I assume she knows how much shit she can get into if her byline shows up on my paper when she was interning at the Tribune.”

  “She knows,” I said. I looked at Buzz over my computer. He was leaned back in his chair, his gaze fixed on something outside the window. “Just between you and me, I think Rafferty’s been bad mouthing you. You know Solomon—she doesn’t give a shit about her future. Somebody messes with you or me, and they might as well be dead to her.”

  He grimaced, turning away from the window to face me. “Loyalty’s a good quality, but it doesn’t really get you shit in this world. And it could mean trouble for her this time.”

  “You said I should trust her judgment. Maybe you should do the same. If we broke this story and it’s as big as I think it is, you could probably afford to bring her on board and she could just kiss the Tribune goodbye.”

  “Still, a move like that follows a person. You know that.”

  I shrugged. “You want to fight her on it?”

  He laughed a little, but had no other response. After a few minutes of silence—long enough for me to think the subject was closed—he cleared his throat and got up from his desk.

  “Listen,” he began. I looked up and turned my chair so I could face him.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m not totally sure what you’ve stepped in with this thing,” he said. “But I get the feeling there are some powerful people involved. I want you to watch yourself, all right? Run thi
ngs by me before you make a move—can you do that for me?”

  “Of course. You sure there’s nothing you want to talk to me about? Did something happen last night?”

  “Nothing worth mentioning,” he said, terse now. “Now why don’t you move along for the day—do what real reporters do and start rounding up some interviews. Alice will be in a little later, and we’ll start pulling things together with the rest of the paper.”

  My concern dropped a level deeper, but I dismissed it. “You sure? I can stick around...”

  “I’m sure. Scram. Give me a call if you need anything from me. And keep in touch as things play out—if you’re not sure about something, check in and I’ll see if I can grease some wheels.”

  I told him I’d do that, and stopped arguing. It was a beautiful day, I had a story the likes of which I hadn’t seen yet in my career, and my boss was telling me to get the hell out of the office. I wasn’t about to fight him on it.

  ◊◊◊◊◊

  The sun was shining and the sky was clear, so I made a call to the agricultural program Charlene had been involved in and spoke with a supervisor there who said she’d be willing to talk to me. Program headquarters were at Applewood Farms in Gorham, a small college town about twenty miles south of Portland. The farm itself was fifty acres, with a stately colonial mansion at the head of the property.

  It was warmer in Gorham than Portland, fields of well-tended crops extending far into the horizon. There were a few white faces there, but those tending the land were predominantly black—hardly an extraordinary sight in other parts of the country, but in Maine it was unprecedented.

  Laura Edgecomb met me at the door of the estate when I rang the bell, as she’d instructed me to do. She was tall and well-proportioned, healthy and solid looking. Her expressive eyes seemed strangely familiar, and she had a wide smile and strong, tanned hands and arms from working outside. She wore a Celtic knot on a chain around her neck, and there was a tattoo of Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu god, peeking from the t-shirt sleeve of her left arm.