by Tim O'Mara
I watched as Rachel poured soy sauce into a small dish and added some wasabi.
“What are you waiting for, Ray?” she asked.
“A fork.”
She raised her chopsticks, showed them to me, and, as if she’d been doing it her whole life, picked up a piece of fish, dipped it in the soy-wasabi, and placed it in her mouth. “Use your fingers if you want,” she said. “It’s okay, but be careful of the wasabi. It’ll clear your nasal passages down to your intestines.”
“I know what wasabi is.”
I picked up a piece of something red wrapped in rice and smelled it. Not bad. I dunked it in some of Rachel’s soy sauce mixture. She was right about its decongestive qualities, and I caught her smiling as she sipped her wine. We ate in silence until half my plate was finished.
“What else?” Rachel said.
“What else what?”
“What else is going on? School and what else?”
“How much time you got?” I asked.
She raised two more fingers to Jimmy and pointed at the sake. “At least that much.”
I told her about Frankie and his father and Milagros. She let me talk for about five minutes without interrupting. Rachel was always good that way.
“Jesus, Ray,” she said when I was finished. “No wonder you look like you do.”
“I’m fine. Just need to get more sleep.”
“You found a dead body. One of your students is missing. How can you say you’re fine?”
“I don’t know, Rache. I just am. Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You know who you sound like?”
“Oh, please,” I said. “Not tonight.”
“Because you know I’m right.”
“Because you were ten when he died. You don’t know what he sounded like.”
“Oh, right. I forgot. Only you know what Dad was like.” She wiped her mouth. “Maybe one of these days you’ll enlighten me. Tell me all the things I don’t know.”
“Let’s change the subject, huh?” I said.
“See?” Rachel pointed at me, pushing it. The wine was taking effect. “That’s just what he would have done. Change the subject when things got hot.”
“No,” I said. “He would’ve reached across the table and smacked me upside the head. Then he would have changed the subject.”
She shook her head. “It’s been a long time, Ray. It’s time to move on.”
“Your shrink tell you that?”
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t you dare make light of my therapy. If you had—”
“Then don’t you make light of my experience. You weren’t the one who got hit, Rachel. You weren’t the one whose stomach dropped when his car pulled into the driveway, wondering what he was going to find wrong this time.”
You weren’t the one to find him dead in his study.
My little sister paused, and gave me a look that bordered on pity.
“A lot of years, Ray,” she repeated. “How long are you going to let him do this to you?”
“I don’t know, Rachel.” I stood up. “Maybe when the dreams stop.” I turned and walked in the direction of the men’s room. When I got there, I ran the water until it got real cold and splashed my face. As I was drying off, I checked out my face in the mirror. Rachel was right about one thing: I did look like shit.
When I got back to the table, Jimmy was taking the plates away and a younger man was putting two dishes of green ice cream on the table. After they left, Rachel said, “Ice cream makes everything better.” I sat down. “I didn’t know you were still having the dreams, Ray.”
“Forget it. They’re not as bad,” I said, “and they’re not as often.”
“You going to call Mom?”
“Eventually.”
“The memorial service is a week and a half away, Ray. If you don’t go, she’s going to have a lot of explaining to do.”
“Tell people I’m out of town. Couldn’t be avoided.”
“The church has been planning this for months,” she reminded me.
“Why does the church suddenly want to build a garden in his honor?” I asked.
“Mom wanted to do something for the church and the church wanted to do something for Mom. Why is that so hard to understand?”
“A lot of time has passed, that’s all,” I said.
“That’s exactly my point.” She put her hand on mine. “Let it go. For Mom.” When I didn’t respond, she said, “You’re picking your thumbs again.”
“What?” I asked.
“Your thumbs.” She turned my hand over. “You used to do that when we were kids. Before a game or a big test. When’d you pick up that nasty habit again?”
“I don’t know,” I said, taking my hand back and looking at the thumb. The skin on the inside part was red and flaky.
“It’s your student, isn’t it? Frankie.”
“What?”
“You’re blowing it off like it’ll take care of itself. Like you’re gonna be at school tomorrow and he’s just going to show up like nothing happened.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Rachel.”
“What’s so special about this kid?”
“Beside the fact that his dad was murdered and he and his sister are missing?”
“That’s not what I mean,” she said. “You got this kid a scholarship for high school. You called in a favor from Eddie Keenan. Shit, Ray. You went to his house. You don’t do stuff like that. At least you haven’t for a while. Why now? Why this kid?”
“Because this kid can throw a baseball eighty miles an hour.”
“No,” Rachel said. “There’s more. What was his dad like?”
“How the hell am I supposed to know?”
“You talked to him every day. You’re going to tell me you never talked about his dad?”
“Once in a while,” I admitted.
“And?”
“And the guy was an asshole, okay?”
“Frankie told you that?”
“He didn’t have to,” I said. “No home phone, no work phone, just a cell phone number he wouldn’t let his son give out. Frankie lived with his grandmother, five minutes from his dad. What kind of father does that? Frankie’d show up every once in a while with a new pair of hundred-dollar sneakers and say his dad told him he ‘got paid.’ Give me a break.”
“Where’d he get the money?”
“Frankie wouldn’t say, and I didn’t ask. I think we can assume he wasn’t driving around behind the sneaker truck waiting for a pair in his son’s size to fall off.” I took a sip of sake. “Took him a week to sign the acceptance letter for Our Lady. Woulda been just as happy if Frankie ended up in some dumping ground with a thousand other nine-digit numbers.”
Rachel smiled. “So you took care of him?”
“I took care of getting him a shot at a decent high school.”
“Our Lady is a little more than decent, Ray.”
“And Eddie Keenan did me a solid.”
“Sounds like he’s getting something in return.”
“Damn straight he is.” I scooped up a little of the ice cream. It mixed nicely with the taste of the wine. “I stopped by the precinct today.”
“What made you— You’re kidding me?”
“I had some information I wanted to share with the detective on the case, and he pretty much told me to bug off.”
“What’d you expect? A Junior Detective badge and a ‘Go get him, Ray’?”
“I don’t know what I expected,” I said. “No, that’s not true. I got pretty much what I expected. Fifteen minutes of his time, a little respect for the walking wounded, and ‘Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, Mr. Donne.’”
Rachel smiled. “Fifteen minutes, huh?”
“Thirteen of them were for Uncle Ray. I wanted to see how they’re progressing. I got the feeling if nothing happens by the weekend, this guy’s moving on. He has to.”
“At least you tried.”
“But you didn’t,” Rachel said as she stood up. She came around the table and kissed me on the cheek. “You did something. Who knows? Maybe the detective’ll think about what you said and act on it.”
“Maybe Frankie’ll just waltz into my classroom tomorrow.”
“I’m going to the ladies’ room,” she said and pulled two bills out of her pocket. “If Jimmy comes back before I do, give him this.”
I looked at the bills: both twenties. “We drank more than this,” I said.
“Jimmy tries not to charge me,” Rachel explained. “It’s a compromise.”
A few minutes later, we walked outside and Rachel found the rare, unoccupied Queens cab. She gave me a long hug.
“Call Mom,” she said.
“I will.”
“And stop being so hard on yourself. And your thumbs.”
“Go home, Rachel.”
“I love you, Raymond.”
“Me, too.”
I watched as the cab took my little sister home.
Chapter 10
I AM UP ON THE FIRE ESCAPE AGAIN. The metal creaking. Fog rolling in.
“You planning on staying up there forever?”
I’m trying to hold on to the metal railing, but it’s slippery, and my hands keep coming off. It’s hard to breathe.
“I am not getting you out of this one. You are on your own.”
Two lights are blinking, a red one on my left, green on the right. There’s a slight buzz as each light comes on and then fades out.
“You hear me?”
I hear you, Dad. I always hear you. And I don’t want your help. How about that?
“You really think you know what you’re doing, don’t you?”
Leave me alone, and I’ll figure it out. You’re good at that, right? Leaving me alone. Isn’t that what you—the sound of the fire escape pulling away from the wall. I grab onto the railing and close my eyes to concentrate, but it doesn’t help.
Fucker.
Another voice now. A kid’s voice.
Shut up.
White mother FUCKER.
I said, Shut the fuck up.
Whatchoo gonna do, Casper? Can’t do shit.
The fire escape starts to move back and forth, like a rowboat caught in a storm.
“All right.” My father’s voice again. “Give me your hand.”
I said I don’t want your help.
“You don’t know what you want. Give me your—”
I do not want—
“THEN STOP ACTING LIKE A GODDAMNED CHILD, GET DOWN FROM THERE AND DO SOMETHING!”
I start to cough and wipe my hand across my wet face. Maybe it’s the fog. Maybe I’m crying. I don’t know what to do.
“Then you’re going to be up there for quite some time, aren’t you?”
It’s not as easy as you think.
“It’s not as hard as you make it. Do something.”
Do what?
Except for the buzzing of the lights and the creaking of the metal as it continues to move away from its support, there is silence.
Do what?
The fire escape jerks to the left, sending me to my knees. I grab the railing, but my feet fall through the slats.
Do what? I say again.
The fire escape breaks free from the building and I am falling.
Before I hit the ground, I sit up in my bed, breathing heavy and drenched in sweat. My dream father’s voice echoes in my head.
Do something.
Do something.
* * *
Once you’ve driven through the Bronx, you’re officially out of New York City. It’s not for another half hour, though—where the Tappan Zee Bridge crosses the Hudson River—that the departure is truly experienced. About halfway across, just before you enter Rockland County, if the air is clear enough, you can look south and see the Manhattan skyline in the distance, promising you that it’ll be there if you decide to come home again.
Royce had told me he’d spoken twice on the phone to John Roberts—Rivas’s boss and the husband of Frankie’s cousin Anita—and saw no reason to rush a third conversation. What exactly was I expecting to achieve by borrowing my sister’s car and taking a day off from school for a ninety-minute car ride north that Royce wasn’t willing to take?
The radio was a mix of Springsteen and static when I took the exit ramp off the thruway. I made the right onto Highland and spotted a diner. A cheeseburger with fries and two iced teas later, I was fully fed, caffeinated, and had directions to the Roberts house.
There were only eight houses on Bevier Court, and even if I hadn’t known the address, there’d be no mistaking the huge white house I parked in front of. It looked just like the photo I was holding. From what I could tell, it was the last original house on the block, but there was enough scaffolding along the side to launch a space shuttle.
I tossed my umbrella into the backseat, grabbed my suit jacket, and stepped out of the car. The suit—last worn at a wake or a wedding or a court date—was too tight in the waist, but it was the only one I owned.
As I adjusted my tie and stepped onto the driveway, I could see that the scaffolding went around to the back of the house. Roberts was expanding the top floor. Royce had told me Roberts was expecting another child. At the end of the driveway was the small barnlike structure I had seen in the crayon drawing of the house. It looked as if it served as a garage.
The sound of laughter came from somewhere inside the house, followed by the side door crashing open. A young girl—long blond hair, maybe three years old—in a flowery sundress came screaming down the steps, followed by a very pregnant dark-haired woman wearing an identical dress. The girl let the woman catch her, and she received a bunch of tickles in return. The girl’s skin was a shade lighter than her mother’s. They both stopped laughing when they noticed me. The daughter looked at me curiously, the mother with annoyance.
“I told you people,” she said, “my husband is handling everything with the loan, and he is not going to be home until this evening.”
Here I was trying for cop, and I got banker.
“Mrs. Roberts?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, still annoyed.
“My name is Donne, and I’d like to talk to you about—”
“I told you,” she said. “John will not be home—”
“—your cousin Frankie.”
She gave me a worried look and put her hand on her daughter’s head. “Frankie?” she said, her tone a mix of excitement and concern. “Have you found them?”
“No,” I said. “We have … they have not been found. That’s why I’m here.”
“My husband told you people … Detective Ross, I think … we don’t know anything about where they are.” Back to annoyed. “Don’t you people talk to each other?”
“Detective Royce,” I corrected. “Of course we do, it’s just that—”
“As a matter of fact, my husband is down in the city today and planning on talking personally to Detective … Royce. So I’m afraid you have wasted a trip, Detective…”
“My name’s Raymond Donne, Mrs. Roberts.”
“Well, Detective Donne, you’ll just have to drive back down and talk to my husband there. I’m sorry.”
Anita Roberts took her daughter by the hand and started walking to the back of the house. The little girl gave me a smile as she looked at me over her shoulder.
“Elsa told me to say hello,” I lied.
Anita stopped and turned back to me.
“You spoke to Elsa?”
“Absolutely. She’s been quite cooperative.” I took a few steps forward. “She gave me the impression that you’d do the same.”
I listened to the wind blowing through the trees and the siren calls of the cicadas. The sounds reminded me of the hot summer days in my own backyard when I was a kid. It was easy to understand why this place felt safe to a couple of kids from Wi
lliamsburg, Brooklyn.
“I have already been cooperative,” Anita said. “My husband is handling the rest of the matter, and, if you don’t mind, we don’t have a lot of time before it gets too hot out here.”
That was the third time she told me her husband was taking care of everything. When someone keeps repeating things, it makes me wonder what they’re avoiding.
“When was the last time Frankie and Milagros were here, Mrs. Roberts?”
She looked at me again and realized I wasn’t going to go away as soon as she would have liked. “Gracie,” she said, and leaned down to whisper something into her daughter’s ear. The little girl twirled around a few times, showing off her dress, then ran toward the swing set in the backyard. Anita gave her attention back to me. “Christmas,” she said. “We bring them up for a week during the vacation and again in the summer. So they were here last at Christmas. Frankie and Milagros.”
“Mee lah grows.” Gracie was pushing a swing back and forth, singing the name she’d just heard her mother speak. “Mee lah grows.”
Anita and I shared a smile. “Can we talk in the shade?” I gestured to the patch of grass under the maple tree by the swing set.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s getting close to Gracie’s nap time and—”
I reached inside my jacket, pulled out the picture of her house, and handed it to her. “Frankie had this picture in his school notebook, Mrs. Roberts, and Milagros had a drawing of it on the refrigerator. Your house is very important to the both of them. I really just have a few quick questions, and I’ll be on my way.”
She looked at the picture and then up at the scaffolding. No work was being done at the moment, and that struck me as odd. It was just past noon on a Friday. Anita held the picture for a few more seconds and handed it back. “Five minutes,” she said.
“Absolutely,” I answered, following her under the tree. Anita Roberts picked up her daughter and placed her in the swing. Gracie held on to the chain and closed her eyes as her mother slowly pulled back and let go. The girl kept her eyes closed and squealed as the breeze played havoc with her hair.
“I really don’t know what more I can tell you, Detective,” Anita said. “I hadn’t seen Francisco for months. He works—worked—for my husband.”
“And you haven’t seen the kids since Christmas?”
