The Heartless

by David Putnam

  We didn’t keep any tools in the apartment; there just wasn’t enough room. To have a socket on the counter in the kitchen, a socket the size that matched the mock-up of the visiting window taken out in the jail escape, was too big of a coincidence. I should’ve recognized it right off, but I’d been too distracted with Nicky, and then with John Lau suddenly appearing to wreak further havoc of a different kind.

  Borkow was sending me a message. One that said he could get to me through my family. Just like he had used Olivia to get his trial delayed in order for him to escape.

  I could only hope that it was just a message, that he hadn’t taken the next drastic step and done something to Olivia.

  A slice of yellow light illuminated the front yard of the house on Nord where I’d grown up. Dad stood on the stoop just outside the open door waiting for me. He wore a tattered maroon robe I’d given him for Christmas at least two decades ago. I hurried over to him. He looked tired and older than I ever remembered, another reminder that I’d let life slip through my fingers while I had been out playing cops and robbers, all those years on the violent crimes team.

  “What’s the matter, Son? What’s all the hubbub about? Olivia’s snuck out before. She’ll come back. She’ll be back safe and sound, you’ll see.”

  I didn’t answer and checked the doorknob and the jam for tampering. I didn’t want to believe what I knew to be true.

  No one had forced entry or picked the lock.

  I hurried into the house looking around for anything out of place, any evidence at all.

  Dad followed along. “What’s going on? Bruno, stop and talk to me.”

  I froze.

  On the floor, by the couch where she always left it, sat Olivia’s purse. My knees turned weak and the floor wobbled under my feet. Olivia never left the house without her purse.

  Never.

  I slowly moved over to it and went down on my knees. I picked it up.

  Behind me, Dad said, “Bruno, why would she leave her purse? What’s going on?”

  I opened it and gently dumped the contents on the floor. The heaviest item tumbled out first among the other normal things a young girl might keep. It lay there on the carpet. I sat back on my butt, my worst fears realized.

  “What is it? Tell me, Bruno.”

  I took the socket from my pocket. I picked up the wrench that had fallen out of Olivia’s purse. I fit the socket in place. My voice came out in a hoarse whisper. “He’s got her, Dad.”

  “Who’s got her? Derek? You mean Derek took Olivia against her will?”

  “No, Louis Borkow took her.”

  “Oh, my dear Lord.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  “YOU’RE GOING TO get her back, aren’t you, Son? You can get her back, I know you can.” He wrung his hands, his eyes filled with the same fear as mine.

  “I’m going to get her back.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  I looked at him, my rising anger needing a place to vent.

  After what he’d just said to me, not a handful of hours earlier, about getting out of the life. Now he’d forgotten all about that and wanted me to use that same skill.

  I took a deep breath and put my hand on his leg. “Yeah, I’m going to get her back.” I gave him my hand. He helped me up from the floor. My body hurt all over, and when I stood up too fast, dizziness spun the room a little, the end result of the kicks to my head administered by Little Genie.

  “Every cop in California is looking for this guy,” Dad said. “You think you can find him?” He had never questioned my ability before. But this was Olivia we were talking about. A fear as pure as that could shake lose any solid belief system.

  Even Dad’s.

  I walked over to the phone. “I’ll find her. I promise you that.”

  Behind me, Dad said, “If he’s really got Olivia, if he really took Olivia, you be sure to give him what he’s got coming. You hear me, Bruno?”

  His words shocked me. Where had nice and generous gotten off to? I shook it off, picked up the phone, and dialed. Wicks answered on the first ring.

  I said, “Come pick me up.”

  “What? What’s going on?”

  “I need your help.”

  He paused. “What’s happened?”

  “Borkow took Olivia.”

  “He what? Where are you? I’ll bring the entire team.”

  “No, just you. You’re my first phone call.”

  He’d understand. I didn’t want any witnesses. Not for what we had to do.

  He paused again, thinking about it, absorbing the full meaning of what I’d said. “I understand. You need anything else?”

  “Bring me a shotgun and a box of double-ought buck. I’m at my dad’s. You’re not here in twenty minutes, I’m gonna start without you.”

  “You wait for me, buddy boy. You understand? You wait. I’m coming.” He hung up.

  This was the second time in two days that I’d called on him for help. He didn’t hesitate.

  I headed down the hall with Dad close at my heels. He said, “Let me change, I’m coming with you.”

  I stopped, turned. The emotional pain in his eyes made me want to lie down, curl up, and cry. “No, you don’t have any training. I’m sorry, you’ll just get in the way.”

  He nodded as his eyes filled with tears. “You think she’s okay?”

  “He took her because he doesn’t want me chasing him. He hurts her, he loses that hammer. He won’t hurt her.”

  But he will once he doesn’t need her anymore. I couldn’t tell him that. The words wouldn’t form.

  “But you are going to chase him. What if—”

  “Dad, trust me, this is what I do.”

  He was right. I had to find Borkow without him finding out I was on his trail. Which meant I had to be right with each decision with no room for error, act quickly, and get real lucky.

  I opened the door to my old room, now the room where Olivia stayed when she visited Dad. I kicked the doorframe down at the base.

  “What the heck are you doin’, Son? Have you gone crazy?”

  Kicked it again and again until the section of doorjamb came loose from the wall, where I’d cut and sectioned it off years before. I went down on one knee and wiggled the section of the jamb until it came away from the wall. I reached in between the drywall where I’d removed the 2 x 4 brace and found what I was looking for. I brought it out into the light. A Charter Arms Bulldog .44 revolver, wrapped in an oilcloth, the same make and model The Son of Sam had used in New York to kill all those people. A gun I’d taken off a crook and never turned in as evidence. I never thought I’d need it.

  Never say never.

  Dad didn’t say a word about having a gun hidden in the wall in his house. He understood that with Olivia involved, nothing else mattered, that all bets were off.

  The gun still had rubber bands around the grip to avoid fingerprints being left behind. The serial number was filed off so it couldn’t be traced. I opened the cylinder, checked the rounds, spun it, and closed it. The gun had a 2½-inch barrel and was designed for close-in work. A bellygun, one that worked best if you shoved it into your victim’s belly and pulled the trigger. I stood and stuck it in my waistband.

  Dad said, “How long do you think it’ll take to find her?”

  “It’ll take as long as it takes, Dad. But I better find her in the next twenty-four hours.”

  “Can you call me with updates?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll try.” One part of my brain said the words; the other part automatically moved off to the more important issue, going over everything that had happened in the last few days, looking for anything that had been missed. I leaned against the wall, closed my eyes, and tried to concentrate.

  The phone rang.

  I bumped past Dad and headed into the kitchen to the phone on the wall. High anxiety buzzed in my ears. I picked up on the third ring and listened.

  The person on the other end s
aid nothing.

  “Who is it, Son?” Dad stood close, his eyes pleading for relief.

  I said into the phone, “You hurt her, there won’t be any place you can hide.”

  “Now, I don’t think that’s any way to start a conversation with someone who’s sitting in the catbird seat, do you?”

  I recognized the voice, Borkow. “What do you want?”

  “Honestly, I can’t say that I want a thing. I’m good here.”

  If he didn’t want anything, there wasn’t any reason to keep Olivia safe. It might already be too late and he’d just called to gloat.

  “You have to want something.” If he wanted to just send a message, he wouldn’t have taken her; he’d have just done her harm and moved on.

  “Nope. Like I said, I’m good here.”

  “Where’s here?”

  He chuckled. “Not a chance. But, Mr. Bailiff, maybe there is one thing you can do for me. You can quit chasing me. That’s what I really want.”

  “Done. Now give me my daughter back.”

  “Not just yet. There’s one last thing I need to do before I get out of town before sundown, as the saying goes.”

  “How long is that going to take?”

  “Depends.”

  “Maybe I can help you with this one last thing so we can get this over and done with.”

  “Don’t know how that would work. No, no, wait, maybe … yeah, sure. I think I can risk it. You see, the thing is, I’m in dire need of talking to someone whom I need to … Well, let’s just say I need to talk to this person very sternly. You find that person and bring her to me, you can have your daughter back. Then I’ll be out of your hair. I’ll be gone. Goodbye, bon voyage, adios.”

  “Who?”

  “A cute little thing who goes by the name of Twyla.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  I CLOSED MY eyes and put my head against the wall. I had never betrayed an informant. How could I trade Twyla for Olivia and live with myself afterward? If Borkow wanted Twyla, it wasn’t for a friendly reunion and could only be for dark designs.

  I said to Borkow, “Where do you want me to bring her?”

  “Just like that? You know you can find her? You know where to lay your hands on her?”

  “I said, where do you want me to bring her?”

  “You get her in hand. I’ll call this number back in eight hours. But I’ll only stay on line long enough to give you instructions, you understand? Sixty seconds max.”

  “Make it four hours, call back in four hours. Now let me talk to my daughter.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Put her on the phone, now.”

  Borkow paused. I might’ve pushed too hard.

  “Fair is fair,” he said. “She has no idea where she is, so don’t waste your time trying to get her to give you some cutsie little clue. We’re constantly on the move, so it doesn’t matter anyway.”

  Constantly on the move? Did he mean from house to house, or motel to motel?

  Borkow put the phone down. A scuffling came across the line. Borkow said, “Here, talk.”

  “Hello, Popi?” Sobs filled her words

  “Hey, baby, it’s me. Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”

  “I’m okay. Really, I’m okay.”

  “Everything is going to be all right, you understand? I’m coming for you.”

  “I’m sorry I was mad at you, Popi.”

  “I am too, baby. It was all my fault.”

  “Now I wish I woke you up when you were sitting by the door and gave you a big hug instead of making fun of you. I made you breakfast though, your favorite.”

  “What?” What she said didn’t make sense.

  “I’m so sorry I made fun of you and put that sign on you. I shouldn’t have done it. It was a mean and an ugly thing to do. I’m sorry.”

  “What? No, that’s okay.”

  “That’s enough,” Borkow said. He grabbed the phone from her. “You got four hours, Bailiff.” He clicked off.

  I hung up and slid down the wall to the floor. My hands shook. My mind wouldn’t function, not under that kind of stress. I was emotionally drained and more scared than I’d ever been before.

  Dad knelt beside me. “Well, come on, tell me, what’s going on? She’s okay, right?”

  “Yeah, Dad, she sounded good. As good as can be expected. He hasn’t hurt her.”

  “What does he want?”

  “He wants me to find a woman named Twyla and bring her to him.”

  “Can you find her?”

  I opened my eyes and looked at him. “I think I can, yes. But what’s going to happen to her when I make the trade for Olivia?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’m sorry, I hadn’t thought of that. I’m not thinking right, not with Olivia involved. What are you going to do?”

  “I have to find Twyla and somehow, during the trade, keep them both safe.”

  Dad shook his head. He put his back to the wall and slid down sitting next to me. “How are you ever going to do that?”

  “Please, Dad, just give me a minute to think. Olivia was trying to tell me something.”

  “What? What’d she say? Let me help you.”

  “Dad.”

  “Okay, okay, go ahead and think. I’ll be quiet.”

  The puppy rounded the corner into the kitchen, losing traction on the linoleum, his feet skittering under him, his pink tongue hanging out. He regained control and jumped up in my lap. He licked my face. How had I forgotten all about Junior Mint?

  “Here, give him to me. I don’t know how he got out.” Dad took him, struggled to his feet with the energetic ball of fur, and disappeared, his footfalls moving down the hall.

  I had a hard time focusing. What exactly had she said, her exact words? She said that she was sorry and that she’d been mean to me. She wasn’t mean. She was being funny. It was funny. That was obvious. She’d put the sign in my hand that said, “Save a dolphin, don’t eat tuna.”

  Dolphin and tuna? What had she meant by that?

  If she truly didn’t know where she was, and Borkow wasn’t lying about being constantly on the move, that meant she couldn’t have been giving me a clue about her location. Then what? If it wasn’t the where, and it wasn’t the how or the why, it had to be a who.

  The other sign, the one hanging around my neck, had said, “Hi. I’m Bruno the Clown. Don’t Clown me.”

  I snapped my fingers and stood. I dialed the phone, an old number from memory, Mike Moore from OSS, Operation Safe Streets, the gang unit at Lynwood Station. Mike worked swing shift. He picked up. I told him I needed a big favor. I needed him to run the gang moniker “Clown” through the gang system and to call me right back. I told him it was life or death.

  I stood by the phone waiting for it to ring. Willing it to ring.

  Then started pacing.

  Dad came back and sat at the kitchen table. From the time on the wall clock, ten long minutes passed. I went to the phone ready to pick it up and dial Mike Moore and stopped myself. I again paced the kitchen floor. “Come on. Come on.”

  Dad said, “You want me to make you something to eat? You might not have a chance later. You need to keep up your strength.”

  He needed something constructive to do just like I did. I wasn’t hungry and wouldn’t be able to keep anything down. “Sure.”

  He stood. “How about some bacon and scrambled eggs? Maybe some wheat toast?”

  “That’s sounds great.” I looked at the pinkness in my palms, insignificant and foolish in the big scheme of things.

  The phone rang. I leaped at it. “Yeah, talk to me.”

  “I found seventy-six Clowns in Los Angeles County.”

  “That’s too many. That won’t work.”

  “I checked to see how many are in the can that narrows it down to forty-five.”

  “Still no good.”

  “Out of that forty-five, seventeen are deceased, leaving twenty-eight. Fifteen of those are over the age of forty and have gone quiet. They’re not a
ctive in the life anymore. Does that help?”

  “That’s not going to work. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t be a problem, but we’re on a clock here. If there was more time, thirteen would be a workable number. Not tonight, Mike, thanks for the effort, I owe you.”

  “Sorry, man,”

  I started to hang the phone up then stopped and yelled into it, “Mike!”

  “Yeah, Bruno?”

  “How many of those left are male blacks?”

  Borkow had aligned himself with the blacks during his escape, and his girlfriend, the woman he’d killed, the one he was on trial for killing, had been black.

  “I thought that’s all you wanted. They’re all male blacks, Bruno.”

  “Damn. That’s it then, thanks.” I hung up.

  I went back to trying to remember exactly what Olivia had said word for word. She couldn’t say too much, so she would have tried to bury the information using as few words as possible.

  My lips moved as I restated the conversation.

  Cops interviewed hundreds if not thousands of victims, witnesses, reporting parties, and suspects, then they transferred that information to paper. They got used to memorizing things people said and could easily play back entire conversations verbatim.

  “What is it, Son? Tell me. Let me help.”

  “Sssh, just a minute. She said she made me my favorite breakfast.”

  Dad nodded. “Your favorite breakfast is huevos rancheros.”

  “That’s right. Yeah, that’s right.” I grabbed up the phone and dialed.

  Mike picked up.

  I said, “What’s the Hispanic word for clown?”

  “Payaso. Ah, shit, sure, sure, I’m with you. I’m checking now. Wait, Bruno. Is this about the Borkow thing?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Borkow ran a string of massage parlors, right?”

  “Yes. Whatta ya got?”

  “The Feds came in a few months back. They’re working a human trafficking ring and their target’s a guy named Payaso, a Phillip Cortez, male Hispanic thirty-eight years. A no-account kinda thug without any violence on his record. At least none that’s he’s been tagged with.”

  “That’s gotta be him. That’s the guy. I need everything you got on him. His last known address.”