by Linda Barnes
“I dunno.” He seemed momentarily abashed by the scope of his ignorance, but then brightened up and offered, “She was readin’ about Pakistan. Know-your-roots stuff, I guess.”
“Pakistan? Was she planning a trip?”
“Nope. Just readin’ about it is all.”
I took a sip of beer and wished I’d had a chance to meet Tina Sukhia.
Not many women are killers, Keith Donovan had said. And he was right. But a nurse in a Texas hospital had killed sixteen children with a lethal drug a few years ago. Made national headlines, that one. She said she’d done it to show administrators how much the hospital needed a pediatric intensive-care unit. The lady was in jail and would stay there till she died.
I wished I’d remembered that little tidbit when I was sparring with the shrink.
I called a Green & White cab for Tony Foley before I left.
22
The light slipped from the sky as I walked back over the bridge into Boston. The air had cooled and a breeze whipped the dark river. A spandex-clad bicyclist swerved to avoid a pedestrian. A dented Volkswagen blared its impatience at the traffic light.
Chase a bereaved man away from his home, buy him drinks, and desert him, friendless, in a bar. I congratulated myself on a job well done. Time was, I’d have stayed with him, munching stale peanuts, nodding and listening. But the plain and simple fact was that I didn’t want to hear the precious details of his pain.
I shook my head and plodded on. I’ve felt empty before, depleted of compassion. I quit being a cop when I felt that way all the time.
Worries slowed me like pebbles in my shoes. Paolina. Marta. Emily Woodrow. Becca and Tina were dead and couldn’t profit from my anxiety anymore.
Hell, if I were Tony Foley, would I go home to that solitary apartment, to Tina’s peacock feathers and filmy scarves, to the bed they’d shared? I’d moved back to my aunt’s house after I’d split with Cal, and he wasn’t even dead, although he might as well have died, for all the good he did me, zonked out on cocaine.
I passed a phone—not a booth, just a public phone stuck on a metal stem. The 411 operator took her time before parting with the Woodrows’ number. Harold picked up on the first buzz, like he’d been hovering over the instrument, willing it to ring.
No, Emily was not home. No, she had not been home.
“Don’t you think you should call the police?” I asked. “She’s been missing for more than twenty-four hours—”
“What do you mean, ‘missing’? It’s her choice. You think that’s what she’s waiting for? Me to call somebody, let the general public know my wife’s turned into a lunatic?”
“Look at it this way. If something’s happened to her, if she’s in a hospital somewhere, it won’t look good if you haven’t lifted a finger to find her.”
“I’ve informed my attorney. Desertion is grounds for—”
“This is a no-fault divorce state, Mr. Woodrow, as you know. Look, I hate to bring this up on the phone, but I’m concerned about your wife’s welfare—”
“And I’m not, I suppose?”
“Are there pill bottles in your medicine cabinet? Did you notice a lot of prescription bottles?”
He gave an exasperated snort. “What are you getting at?”
“I think you ought to hire me to look for your wife.”
“Hire you? Hah. Use the thousand she already paid you, the money you bilked her out of already. Don’t come to me for more.”
“It’s not money I need, it’s authorization! I can’t tell you what your wife hired me to do, but I can tell you she didn’t hire me to find her!”
“I’m hanging up.”
“Wait. I’m sorry I raised my voice. I won’t do it again. You said her mother hadn’t seen her—”
“Her mother’s in a nursing home. She can’t speak. The attendants haven’t seen my wife in days.”
“Is there anyone else? A sister or brother?”
“I phoned her half sister in Rhode Island.”
“Can you give me that number?”
“You think Emily’s there, but she doesn’t want to speak to me?”
“It’s possible.”
“She’s not close to her half sister. No love lost there. Greta would have begged me to come fetch her.”
“What about her friends from before you got married?”
“Before we married? Well, I wouldn’t know about them, would I?”
“This is no good. On the phone like this. I need to see you. It’ll take me, what? Half an hour, forty minutes—”
“Not tonight.”
“Fifteen minutes of your time. No more.”
“Absolutely not. Not tonight.”
“Tomorrow, then. Ten o’clock.”
“You won’t be late?”
“No.”
“Nine thirty would be more convenient.”
“Nine thirty, then.”
“Good-bye.” The receiver cracked into the cradle and a rusty dial tone hummed in my ear.
How inconvenient, I thought, to have a missing wife.
Tomorrow. Wait till tomorrow. What the hell would I tell Mooney tomorrow? That my client was missing? That she might or might not have killed Tina Sukhia? That she might have killed herself as well?
I turned blindly and walked uphill toward the bridge. A teenager in a B.U. sweatshirt jogged past, breathing hard. She started to smile at me, stopped with her lips barely stretched, and looked quickly away.
Poor Emily Woodrow. Mother in a nursing home. Husband cold as ice. Daughter dead. I stared at the high iron railing surrounding the bridge. High enough to discourage midnight jumpers? Or did the polluted Charles River beneath, the thought of an unclean death in murky water, do that? For a moment I thought I could see Emily in the gloom, still and small in her neat suit, stockings torn, poised on the brink. Just out of my reach.
My mother used to throw up her hands and cry, “Eyner vil lebn un ken nit, der tsveyter ken lebn un vil nit.” “One person wants to live and can’t, another can live and won’t.” Her all-purpose comment on the basic injustice and futility of it all.
If Tina had been killed by someone other than Emily, my client could have been murdered as well.
Where in hell were those documents Emily had promised to send? Did Harold know about them? Had she confided in her husband? Would he confide in me?
I walked.
I could have gone back to comfort Tony Foley.
“What is it you do when you’re down?” Keith Donovan had asked.
I could have gone home to play guitar and eat frozen pizza.
I called Sam Gianelli.
23
“Hey,” I murmured gently, running a light finger over Sam’s ear, “wake up.”
He smiled and sighed. His eyes stayed shut.
Me, I’m a second-round lover. Unless I have a steady bedmate, a regular night-and-morning man, I find the guy too eager to come, too easily satisfied, too quick to drift off to sleep. I’m slow to rouse and slow to finish. Sam knows that. He forgets.
But when I wake in the middle of the night and reach for him, Sam isn’t surprised. That’s the coziness of old lovers, who know just where to lick and touch and probe.
“C’mon,” I said, a little louder.
Sometimes I miss the craziness of new lovers, who haven’t got a clue, but are more than willing to search. My subconscious flashed an image of Keith Donovan knotting his tie. Substituted one in which he unbuckled his belt.
“Mmmmm,” Sam said. “That’s nice.”
“How to put the romance back into your affair,” I said.
“You could wear lace,” he murmured.
I peeled off my menswear tank-top undershirt. “Black lace?” I asked. “Kinky?”
“Kinky,” he agreed solemnly.
I’ve never been into dress-up sex. Music’s my aphrodisiac, and since Sam tolerates my old blues albums, maybe I ought to give itchy lace another chance. I’ve got a black underwire bra I haven’t worn since high school. T
he push-up kind, bought when I thought every girl needed Miss December breasts. Had I thrown it out?
“Pay attention,” Sam said.
I did. The sheet and blanket entangled us, but they finally surrendered and tumbled to the floor. We managed to stay on the mattress, me on top, wriggling and slowly, slowly sliding, while Sam, his big hands free and busy, did his own underwiring and encircling.
When the phone rang, I was winded, pleased that it had waited till I’d climaxed.
“Relax,” I said to Sam, lifting my hair off my sweaty neck with one hand. “It’s probably just a ransom demand for my garbage.”
I tilted the receiver off the hook before it could shrill a fifth ring. The woman on the other end of the line cursed me in Spanish. I was tempted to hang up, but I knew the voice too well.
“Marta,” I said firmly. “¡Por favor, repita!”
That had no effect at all.
“¡Más despacio!” I demanded.
The flow of sound slowed and started to make sense.
“How long ago? Did she take any money?” I spoke in Spanish. I know better than to try English on Paolina’s mother when she’s in a state.
“¿Cuánto? Gracias. Now tell me exactly what she said. Word for word. Spanish, English, whatever! If I don’t understand, I’ll ask.” I shut my eyes and ground my teeth to keep from screaming.
Sam leaned over and flicked on the light.
“‘¿Jamás?’ ¿Cómo se dice en inglés? Never? Same as ‘nunca’? Stronger, when you use them both? What else? Okay. Okay. Cuanto antes.” I hung up while she was still shrieking at me about how it was all my fault and she would sue me, kill me, if anything happened to her daughter.
“Bad?” Sam asked, already sitting up and starting to pull on his pants with the speed of a man who felt guilty about missing the earlier episode with the trash cans.
“Paolina. She ran away.” I started punching buttons as soon as I heard a dial tone.
“Cops?”
“Not yet.”
“Green and White Cab,” Gloria sang on the first ring. She didn’t try to interrupt while I sketched the outline. “Poor lamb,” she muttered. “Poor darlin’.” Then “You hang on two seconds, hear?”
It was more than two seconds, more than two minutes. I spent the time foraging for clothing on the floor, handing an occasional article to Sam, balancing the receiver between my shoulder and chin while donning the rest.
“You called it right, babe.” Gloria’s voice was so soothing I wondered why I didn’t dial her whenever I got an insomnia attack. “Johnny Knight picked her up on Portland Street, dropped her in front of the Delta terminal fifteen minutes ago. Sweet child knew enough to flag a Green and White. No perverts workin’ here. ’Course she probably hoped she’d get you.”
“I doubt it,” I said. “It’s not like I’d have driven her to the airport. They don’t start flying out of Logan till it’s light, do they?”
“I already checked that on another line. No departures till six eighteen. Not from Delta anyway.”
“She’ll want Delta.”
“Should I call airport security?”
“No. I’m on my way.”
“Let me know if I can help.”
“You already have. Thanks.”
Sam was ready when I was.
“How’d you know she’d take a cab?” he asked.
“She took money from Marta’s purse, and she’s not dumb enough to hitch. Come on.”
I slammed the car door, twisted the key in the ignition, and floored the accelerator.
“Want me to drive?” Sam asked quietly.
“No,” I snapped. “I should have known.”
“Known what? You haven’t seen her for months.”
“I haven’t spoken to her for months. I saw her Sunday, spied on her. Oh, goddamn—” I remembered the envelope the beer-bellied man had passed her, the quick argument that had preceded the exchange, the aura of conspiracy. Money?
“Still—”
“She had a fight with Marta. Usual stuff, but worse. The brothers kept teasing her, she didn’t have any privacy. And Marta says, ‘You’re no better than the rest of us, girl. Don’t complain to me.’ And it goes on. And gets into the business about her dad, and Paolina says Malta’s right, she’s not like the rest of them. And then she says, ‘¡Nunca, jamás, volveré a verte!’”
“What’s that?”
“She pulls out a bag, already packed, from under her bed. And she says to her mother, ‘I’ll never, ever see you again.’”
“Kids say that.”
“And Marta says, ‘Wherever you go, they’ll send you back.’”
“So?”
“Paolina uses the Spanish word extradición. Sounds pretty much the same in English, and you don’t use it if your final destination is in the U.S.”
“You figure she’s going to try to track down her real father? That bum in Colombia?”
There was a long silence in the car and then Sam added, “We’ll find her.” He tried not to wince as I screeched a corner onto Memorial Drive.
It was sheer negligence on the part of the police that I didn’t get a ticket. I flew the route at twenty miles over the speed limit while Sam hung on grimly to the chicken stick and didn’t say a word, bless him. I had less than an eighth of a tank in the car. Plenty to make the airport unless the Callahan Tunnel was jammed, an unlikely event in the predawn blackness.
I shot a yellow at Leverett Circle, yanking the wheel hard to the left to bypass a truck already stopped in my lane.
“Why Delta?” Sam asked.
“They do the Miami run,” I said. “Miami’s halfway to Bogotá.”
“She have enough money for that?”
Why would Paco Sanchez give her money? Why would a twenty-eight-year-old hang out with an eleven-year-old? I used to be a cop. I know there are men who steal children—especially young girls—men who spin them tales of instant movie stardom—or reunions with long-lost fathers.
“I’m afraid she might. She took sixty bucks from Marta. She’s got her baby-sitting money. And there’s this guy who might have loaned her some.” I didn’t tell Sam any details about Sanchez; it made him seem less real.
“And she’s that hot to meet her old man?” Sam murmured.
“Wouldn’t you be?” I asked. “If you’d never seen him? If you’d never even known about him till you found out by mistake?”
“I’d be delighted if I found out my father was a mistake.” Sam’s voice had an edge to it. It’s a sore subject. He’s the son of a Boston mob underboss, the kind of guy who chews a cigar on the evening news and mumbles “No comment” out of the corner of his mouth.
I fishtailed into the short-term lot at Delta. You want your wheels stolen, park them at Logan International. The professional car thief has the brains to boost from the long-term lot, but the junkies don’t care.
I made sure all the doors were locked. My Toyota was going to have to take its chances.
I didn’t want to alert airport security. Once you start your basic attack dog in motion, it’s hard to call him off, and the last thing I wanted was a bunch of bored gun-happy guards tagging at my heels.
She’d have to buy a ticket at the counter, or, better, talk somebody into buying one for her. She’d want to stay out of sight until she could blend with a crowd. Maybe find a nice sympathetic family she could temporarily join. Paolina’s a pretty good liar. If she went up to some lady with a story about how her mom had to drop her at the door with money and rush Aunt Cecelia to the hospital to have the new baby, and now the people at the counter won’t pay attention to her because she’s just a kid … well, you’d probably do her a favor, and take her cash, and put her ticket on your credit card, too.
If there was a cheap under-twelve fare to Miami, she’d definitely join a family. I tried to think myself in her shoes, but eleven years old is a lifetime away from thirty-odd. I don’t remember eleven, except that everything—a quiz, a boy, a pimple—wa
s life-and-death important.
The terminal was hushed and fairly empty. Cleaners bused the ashtrays where desperate smokers had stoked up before venturing into the smokeless skies. A skinny young man stared into space as he moved his linoleum polisher in widening arcs. I asked him if he’d seen a little girl hanging around and it took me a while to realize that he was plugged into a Walkman and hadn’t heard a word I’d said.
“Nope,” he muttered when disengaged. “Ain’t seen nothing.”
Good witness. Typical.
We tried the restaurant, the snack bar, the bookstore, the two magazine stands, the souvenir shop. There was a special waiting area with cheerful slides and ride-’em airplanes for Disney-World-bound children. Empty. Sam’s leather soles smacked the linoleum. My sneakers were silent, except for the occasional hurried squeak. I remembered the elevator and thought she might have taken refuge there. She likes elevators.
The doors slid open on no one.
“Maybe we should wait by the ticket counter,” Sam said, grasping my hand.
“You wait, okay?”
“Where will you be?”
“Just make sure she doesn’t buy a ticket.”
“What am I gonna do? Grab her and carry her out to the car? What if she screams?”
“Do what you have to do, Sam.”
“If I get shot by airport security, one of Dad’s goons will want to know why. Bear that in mind.”
I leaned into a quick kiss, took off in the direction of the restroom sign.
There are six restrooms in the Delta terminal complex. I pride myself on knowing the location of every ladies’ room in Boston—which ones have Tampax machines, which have rats and roaches, which are clean enough to use. The knowledge came in handy as a cop, especially on surveillance, and it comes in handy as a cab driver.
Two flight attendants chatted in number one. A cleaning crew was swabbing the floor in number two. Number three was empty. I opened all the stall doors, ducked into the special baby-changing alcove.
By number four I had to pee. That’s what propinquity will do for you.
Number five was it. A hint of Paolina’s cologne entwined with the smell of disinfectant. She doesn’t wear it often, just on special occasions, and then she always splashes on too much. I waited while a woman patiently helped her daughter sit on the toilet, then washed the girl’s hands in the sink and showed her how to start up one of those dumb air blowers that takes so long to use that your flight has left by the time your hands are dry.
