For the Love of Pete

by Julia Harper

  Pansy Boy cleared his throat. “I’ve got an extra diaper, but they’re for boys.”

  Neil curled his lip. “So? What’ll that do? Give her a package?”

  “Uh, no.” Pansy Boy knit his eyebrows. “Well, they all have packages, babies I mean. When they’re wearing these disposable diapers. Even the thinnest leave kind of a bulge, ah, in the crotch area. And when they pee . . .”

  Neil growled and grabbed a bunch of paper towels to dry off the baby’s butt. “Give it.”

  “Ah, okay,” Pansy Boy stuttered. He rummaged in his blue-striped diaper bag and came up with a blue plastic diaper. Natch.

  He held it out.

  Neil snatched it out of Pansy Boy’s hand and laid the baby down on the plastic changing table. She immediately tried to roll off.

  “Fuck!” Neil dropped the diaper and grabbed her. But the kid didn’t like being restrained. She let out a bellow and began screaming like something out of a horror movie.

  “Gotta watch that,” Pansy Boy yelled over the noise. “Have to keep one hand on the kid at all times, otherwise they try to jump.”

  Neil glared. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” The guy bent, picked up the diaper, and gave it back.

  Neil could feel Pansy Boy breathing down his neck as he tried to open the diaper one-handed.

  “Other way around,” Pansy Boy yelled.

  Neil looked at him.

  “The diaper.” Pansy Boy gestured. “The Velcro strips need to be on the bottom.”

  Neil closed his eyes and briefly considered popping the guy right there in the men’s can. But then he might never get the diaper on the kid. His anger management instructor called this “envisioning consequences.” So Neil envisioned himself running from the men’s restroom with a peeing, naked-assed kid under his arm. Not a good scenario.

  He took a deep breath. “Show me.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Neil had sweat dripping off his nose and Pansy Boy’s hair was standing on end, but the baby girl was dressed. She’d stopped screaming at the top of her lungs midway through, but the kid Pansy Boy held had taken up the slack in the meantime.

  “Jeez,” Pansy Boy said now. “Babies can be quite a handful, can’t they?”

  That remark was so fucking dumb-assed that Neil didn’t even bother answering. He felt like he’d gone five rounds with a grizzly bear on steroids. Instead he picked up the baby girl and slung her under his arm. She began chewing on his right thumb.

  “I gotta say I admire you,” Pansy Boy said as Neil neared the door.

  Neil half turned. “Yeah?”

  Pansy Boy smiled. “Yeah. I used to think guys who changed baby girls in the men’s room were, y’know, wusses.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Friday, 6:42 p.m.

  You can’t arrest them—they’re little old ladies,” Zoey hissed as she bent over the Beemer’s steering wheel.

  “Who brought illegal saffron into the country,” Dante murmured back. He held a road map up under the ceiling light. “Have you any idea how many laws they probably broke?”

  “It’s saffron, not opium!”

  “Is everything all right?” the taller Gupta lady called from the back seat. She and her sister sat on either side of the little blond boy.

  “Fine! Just fine,” Zoey sang back. Under her breath she muttered, “Gestapo.”

  “I didn’t say I was going to arrest them,” Dante muttered.

  “Humph.”

  Dante cleared his throat and shook out the map. He’d decided without consulting anyone else that they would all go to the motel the Gupta ladies had been heading to in the first place. He hadn’t offered an explanation, but Zoey assumed that he didn’t want to drive back to Chicago on the roads tonight. Either that, or maybe he thought Pete was still in southern Illinois. Hard to figure out someone else’s train of thought when they weren’t talking to you.

  The two Mrs. Guptas said they had no idea who the little boy between them was. Maybe Tony the Rose’s henchman was a specialist in kidnapping babies and always traveled with a few in his Humvee. Zoey wrinkled her nose at her own rather dark humor. What they did know—maybe the only thing they knew for sure right now—was that Tony the Rose’s employee had kidnapped Pete. Again. Which brought her back to the one guy she could blame all of this on, Ricky Spinoza. Pete was the only good thing that’d come out of stupid Ricky-the-jerk’s life, and she was worth ten of him. Oh, please let Pete be safe.

  Zoey tightened her lips as she looked for the exit. I will not cry. I will not cry. The snow was falling thick and fast now, sticking to the faces of road signs and obscuring the letters.

  “I think it is here,” one of the Mrs. Guptas said from the back seat.

  “No, no, Savita-di,” the other Mrs. Gupta said. “Do you not remember that we passed a Kentucky Fried Chicken sign before the proper exit?”

  “And what if the Kentucky Fried Chicken sign is no longer there?” the first lady shot back. “What then, Pratima Gupta?”

  What then, indeed? Zoey thought.

  Beside her, Dante cleared his throat. “I think the exit we’re looking for is the one after this, actually. There’s a sign for the motel right there.” He nodded with his chin to a dim billboard by the side of the road. The Beemer’s headlights briefly lit a familiar chain logo, and then they were past.

  “See? What did I tell you, Pratima?”

  Zoey rolled her eyes. These ladies had obviously known each other waaay too long. She squinted, looking for the exit.

  “Here,” Dante said.

  She’d almost driven past the exit. Hastily she clicked on her turn signal and steered the Beemer to the off-ramp. The motel sign was lighted and clearly visible from the top of the ramp. Zoey pulled into the nearly full parking lot and under the concrete awning next to the front doors. The tiny lobby was lit, but no one was in sight inside. A neon NO VACANCY sign flickered above the door.

  “Are you sure your nephew will have room for us?” Dante asked, echoing her own thoughts.

  “Naturally,” the shorter Mrs. Gupta said airily. “We are his aunts, after all.”

  Dante glanced wryly at Zoey, and for a moment she felt a familiar connection with him. Funny how close you could become to a person in so little time. He hastily looked away again.

  Zoey sighed and opened her car door.

  Inside, the motel lobby was so warm that the windows had steamed up in places. No one was behind the counter, but TV gunfire and spaceship noises were coming from the back room. Zoey inhaled. Spicy cooking smells also came from the back room.

  The shorter Mrs. Gupta marched to the counter and tapped the bell imperiously.

  Nothing happened.

  She frowned and banged on the little bell, making it clatter obnoxiously.

  “There is no room!” a male voice shouted from the back. A short, dark man in a burgundy velour bathrobe stomped out of the back room. “I tell you there is no bloody room! Shoo, now, and stop ringing my—” His words ended in a kind of gurgling squeak as he caught sight of the Mrs. Guptas.

  “Rahul Agrawal,” Savita Gupta said. “Is this any way to speak to your dear aunties?”

  “No, Mamiji, oh, no,” Mr. Agrawal stuttered. He leaned to the side to peer behind her as if expecting more elderly relatives to pop out. “I was just surprised by the, uh, delight of your unexpected arrival.”

  “Humph,” Pratima Gupta snorted. “We need a room, several rooms, actually, for ourselves and our friends.”

  “But Mamiji,” the poor man protested. “There are no empty rooms in my motel. The snowstorm has made many travelers stop tonight. We are full.”

  “Maybe we should check a different motel,” Zoey began but then jumped when Savita Gupta let out a loud wail.

  “Do you hear this, Pratima? Do you hear this? Our nephew will throw his elderly aunts into the cold and dark, with a snowstorm raging outside.”

  “Oh, if only his mother were still alive,” Pratima Gupta replied. “What a
sweet, hospitable woman she was. She would cry with shame were she to hear how her only son will throw—”

  “All right, all right!” Mr. Agrawal held out both hands in surrender. “Perhaps I can find an empty room.”

  “And for our friends?” Pratima Gupta demanded.

  “I don’t know if—”

  “His poor mother!” Savita Gupta cried.

  “Yes!” Mr. Agrawal shouted. “Yes, a room for your friends!”

  “How kind.” Pratima Gupta smiled benevolently at him. “And how is your lovely wife? Is that her cooking I smell?”

  Dante cleared his throat. “I’m sure we can get a pizza or—”

  “Oh, no!” Savita Gupta looked scandalized. “My niece will be most happy to serve us dinner.”

  Mr. Agrawal didn’t seem nearly as certain as his aunt, but he led them all behind the counter and into the back rooms. This was obviously where his family lived. There was a large main room, serving as both living room and dining room. A kitchen was at one side, the TV perched on a counter dividing the two rooms. Two open doors led off the main room into bedrooms. There were three small children sitting on the floor in front of the TV, apparently enthralled by what looked like a very violent science-fiction show. A slender woman in a bright blue sari stood in the kitchen, and she turned as Mr. Agrawal led them in.

  “My aunties have come to visit,” Mr. Agrawal said rather helplessly. He looked at the shorter Mrs. Gupta. “Mamiji, you remember my wife, yes? And this is . . .” He gestured to Dante and trailed off uncertainly.

  “Dante Torelli, ma’am. How do you do?” Dante said. “And Zoey.”

  Zoey couldn’t help but notice that he gave her no description, not even “my friend, Zoey.”

  “Hello.” Mrs. Agrawal nodded and smiled.

  “My wife speaks only a little English, but she understands it very well,” Mr. Agrawal said. He stared at the baby in his aunt’s arms as if noticing him for the first time. “What—?”

  Mrs. Savita Gupta ignored her nephew and moved past him to sit at a wood dining room table.

  Mr. Agrawal blinked, clearly confused. He shrugged and seemed to give up the idea of introductions altogether.

  “Please sit, Mamiji.” He pulled out one of the wood dining table chairs for Pratima Gupta. “I’m sure there is something about that my wife can serve you.”

  But that lady was already moving swiftly, apparently unfazed by the sudden appearance of four extra guests for dinner. She called to the eldest child, and the girl rose obediently to run into the kitchen. Her mother gave her a stack of plates, and the little girl solemnly took them to the table. Zoey smiled and helped her to set the plates around the table as Mrs. Agrawal brought several steaming platters into the dining room.

  “Please, eat.” Mr. Agrawal gestured and smiled at her, and Zoey couldn’t help but think how nice the poor man was even if she’d appeared out of nowhere to eat his food.

  Her nose caught the appetizing scents rising from the platters and her stomach took over. After a day and a night and another day of eating nothing but junk food, this was nirvana. One platter held a kind of savory lentil stew, another was filled with hot chickpea dumplings, and a third held steaming flatbread. Zoey took some of each, careful not to overfill her plate so that there would be enough to go around. One of the Agrawal children kneeled in the chair next to her and grinned when she helped him choose a piece of bread.

  The meal was nice. It was more than nice, it was a welcome break from constant fear and confusion. If only Pete were here, it would be perfect.

  And on that thought, the wonderful bread in Zoey’s mouth turned to ashes. Where was Pete now? Halfway back to Chicago? She closed her eyes and remembered long-lashed brown eyes and the rings of baby fat around Pete’s little wrists. So small, so fragile. Zoey would never forgive herself if something happened to the baby.

  On her other side Dante leaned toward her, placing his hand over hers on the table. His bitter-chocolate eyes were intense and solemn. “We’re going to find her, I promise.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Friday, 8:35 p.m.

  Naturally the motel room had only one bed.

  Dante shouldered open the door and walked inside. Zoey followed behind him, holding a pile of towels, mini soap, and shampoo. Mr. Agrawal had told them this room was closed for repairs—something about the ceiling. Sure enough, a two-foot hole in a corner of the ceiling exposed dangling wires. At this point, as long as it had heat and a shower, Dante could care less. Although two beds would’ve been nice.

  He sighed and plopped the plastic grocery bags from the car on the fake wood bureau. All motel rooms had the same long, low bureau, usually with a TV perched on one end, and no one ever used the drawers. Why a bureau? Why not a table?

  Dante shook his head, knowing he was delaying the inevitable argument. He locked the outer door and shot a glance at Zoey. She looked really tired. Beat, as if she’d lost all of her usual forthright energy. All of her optimism. And she had, hadn’t she? They didn’t have the baby; he hadn’t found her niece for her. He’d failed her.

  Dante watched as she dragged off her goofy hat and threw it on the one armchair by the bed. Underneath, her red-blond hair was in the messy braids she’d made this morning in the car. Long strands of hair had come undone from the braids and hung to her shoulders.

  He sighed and took off his suit jacket. “I’ll take the chair.”

  She looked up. “What?”

  “The chair.” He gestured with one hand as he loosened his tie with the other. “I can sleep there.”

  He’d thought she’d be grateful, or at the very least understanding.

  She snorted.

  He frowned. “What?”

  “It’s a king-sized bed. I think I can get through one night without leaping to the other side and attacking you.”

  He felt himself flush. “That’s not—”

  But she waved a dismissive hand at him. “I call dibs on the shower.”

  And she disappeared into the bathroom.

  Dante stared at the closed bathroom door. Huh. Damned if he’d ever understand women, especially this woman. He didn’t know whether to be grateful that he wasn’t going to have to spend another night upright, or insulted that she apparently had no qualms about sharing a bed with him.

  He pulled off his tie, folded it neatly, and laid it on one end of the dresser. Then he hung her idiot reindeer hat on the back of the chair and sat to unlace his shoes. God, he’d give half his pension to have a clean set of clothes right now. He was in the act of shrugging out of his holster when he heard the shower go on in the bathroom.

  He paused and listened. The water made that muted roaring sound motel showers did, a product of too-thin walls and cheap showerheads. He almost thought he heard her voice. He held his breath, looking toward the bathroom, straining to hear with every pore in his body. Was she singing? Her voice came again, and he felt his mouth curve into a grin, his face almost aching with the unaccustomed use of muscles. It’d been a while since he smiled so widely. But her voice . . . he couldn’t help himself. He could barely pick up the sound, but her voice was low and scratchy and not a little off-key. He let his hands fall to the chair’s arms, laid his head against the tall back, and closed his eyes, just listening to Zoey sing in the shower.

  She sang in short bursts, interrupted by mutters, pauses, and gasps, and he felt his smile drain away as he imagined what those gasps meant. Her face under the shower spray, the spray making her gasp, the water trickling down past her arched neck, down over her strong shoulders, to run in little streams over her breasts. White, full breasts that would feel heavy in his hands. Oh, shit. Having imagined that far, it was impossible not to see the rest. Zoey standing naked under the shower, slowly rubbing soap over belly and thighs and rounded hips. Her fingers stroking lower, tangling in red-gold curls, disappearing into . . .

  The shower stopped and Dante’s eyes popped open. He could hear her draw back the shower curtain a
nd then a sigh. God, he had to get off this. But his mind’s eye helplessly filled in details. Zoey taking one of those awful thin motel towels off the rack, rubbing it over her arms and legs and belly, stepping from the tub, her bare toes curling into the wisp-thin bath mat. There was something wrong with that. Did other guys fantasize about a woman’s bare feet? Unless they had some kind of foot fetish?

  Dante shook his head. He was tired. Bone-tired, and it was affecting his thoughts. And the kiss they’d shared only this morning had been truly spectacular.

  The bathroom door opened. Zoey walked out wearing dark pink sweatpants and an orange sweatshirt with a cartoon little girl on it. She had a towel wrapped around her head and a bundle of clothes in her arms.

  “All yours.”

  “Uh, right.” He grabbed his suit coat and folded it over his arm as he stood, because otherwise the bulge in his trousers was going to make her think he was a pervert.

  “When I shopped, I got you a change of clothes,” she said cheerfully.

  “Really?” He grinned. “Thanks.”

  She set her bundle of clothes on the bureau and rummaged around in one of the plastic bags. “Here they are.”

  She tossed a pair of gray sweatpants at him and then a navy sweatshirt. Dante caught both and held up the sweatshirt. It had I LOVE NY emblazoned across the front with a heart for the love.

  “Funny,” he muttered.

  “Think so?” Zoey took out a plastic-wrapped package. “And I got you these, too.”

  She tossed the package at him.

  He still had his hands full of the sweatshirt. The plastic package bounced off his chest and fell at his feet. It was a packet of men’s white briefs. High-waisted. With a red and blue striped waistband. Like Fruit of the Loom, only knockoffs. He hadn’t worn briefs like these since he was fourteen. Maybe thirteen. He looked at her.

  She widened her eyes. “What?”

  “Tighty-whities?”

  “They were cheap.”

  “Huh.” He bent and picked up the package, straightening in time to catch a smirk on her face. “You got these on purpose.”