THE LAST BOY

by ROBERT H. LIEBERMAN

  “What good is sorry?” said Molly. “I gotta find my boy. And I hope to God he's alive—for your sake, too.” She started to leave, then turned abruptly.“Could a kid reach the lock?”

  “What lock?”

  “On the front door.”

  “No way,” said Cheryl.

  “What about standing on a chair?”

  “He couldn’t have done it without my seeing him.”

  “Sounds to me like you weren’t exactly on top of things.” Somehow Danny got out. He didn’t walk through walls.

  “I know I was careful with the door. I’m sure.”

  “Did you ever go to it and find it open?”

  “’Course not. I’d have noticed that! Every time I went to the door I had to unlock it.”

  “Could someone open it from the outside?”

  “Not without a key.”

  Molly went to the apartment door.“I’ll be back,” she said, turning.“Don’t plan on leaving town or anything.”

  Molly started down the stairs.

  Cheryl was already at the top of the landing, leaning over the railing. “You aren’t going to tell, are you?” she called down plaintively.

  “Has Pellegrino called in?” she asked when Officer Sisler picked up the line. Molly was back downtown, standing at an outside phone on the west end of the Commons, her feet and coat soaked.

  “Huh?”

  “This is Molly,” she said, trying to suppress her shivering.

  It took him a beat.“Yeah. Right.”

  “He promised he would keep me posted.”

  “He's out on patrol. He’d let us know if he had something. And we’d get you.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not home.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll find you. And you’ve got an answering machine, right?”

  She hung up, crossed Cayuga Street, and went up to the Ithaca Journal.

  The main entrance to the two-story brick building was closed; but when Molly went down the side alley, she found the rear door leading to the printing plant unlocked. The big presses were open and a couple of the pressmen were cleaning the machines. The thick, cloying smell of ink and paper was oppressive.

  “Where's the office?” she asked one of the workers. He wore a baseball cap that said NAPA AUTO PARTS, and one side of his shirt was stained with red ink. He looked as if he had been shot.“You know, the one with the reporters.”

  “Up those stairs at the end, but…Hey, lady, you can’t go up there!”

  The editorial office smelled of smoke. There must have been a dozen computer terminals, but only a couple of people. The room was absolutely silent except for the click of keys.

  “Excuse me,” said Molly, leaning over a young guy with a pony tail who was squinting at a terminal.

  He started with a comical grimace, then looked up.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you, but my boy's missing,” she said. “Missing from the daycare on State Street.” She took out the picture of Danny and handed it to him.“I want you to put this in the paper. On the front page.”

  “Hmmm,” was all he said. He looked confused. He stared at the picture and then Molly.

  “You’re a reporter, aren’t you?”

  “I do the sports,” he said. “Wait a second.”

  He got up and walked to a young, blond woman who was typing at another terminal in the rear.“Have you seen Wally?” he asked her.

  “I thought he was over at the city desk.” Her fingers continued to fly over the keyboard as she spoke.

  “Naw.”

  “Maybe he went to the men's room. You try him there?”

  After a brief absence, during which Molly thought she was going to kill the placid young blonde who kept obliviously typing at her terminal, the sportswriter returned. “Wally's the city editor and—oh, wait, there he is!”

  A pudgy-faced man with a bald dome and reddish-hued goatee came down the hall toward them. He had a cup of coffee and a Danish balanced in one hand, a sheaf of papers in the other. They intercepted him at the door to his office.

  “What's up?” he asked. Molly quickly took his measure. He looked like a decent guy to her. But who the hell knows, she thought.

  “This is Wally Schuman,” the sports guy said by way of introduction.“This is—”

  She shoved the picture at him. “My boy's been kidnapped. You’ve got to put his picture in the paper. Fast.”

  “Whoa,” said Wally, parking his coffee and Danish on the water cooler. He took a long look at Danny's photo, then stared at the mother. She looked like a drowned rat, but a good-looking one with a pretty, open face. High, broad cheeks. Something of a mildly prominent, almost aristocratic nose. Definitely a townie, he pegged her. Working class. And maybe not working. Intelligent. Scared. “How do you know he's kidnapped?”

  Molly tried to fill him in, her explanation emerging in disjointed bits and pieces.“…It was already being locked. I mean when I got there. To Kute Kids. Like he vanished in thin air! Which is why you’ve got to…” Even to her own ears it sounded jumbled and ridiculous.

  “You want a cup of coffee?”

  “I don’t have time. I mean thanks, but I just want you to promise to get his picture in the next paper. That's all.”

  “Look, it's already,” he checked his watch,“past 9:30. The morning paper's been locked in.”

  “Oh, yeah?” she said half-defiantly, “Supposing half the fucking town burned down or there was an earthquake. You don’t think you could manage to sneak that in?”As Molly spoke, her voice sounded far away to her, and she noticed it was strained and high pitched.

  Schuman was careful not to smile. He had a couple of kids—not that young—and considering what had happened in the past in Tompkins county, he knew it was no joking matter. “It's only been a few hours so far, right?”

  “I know my boy,” she said.“I know him like a book. He's always dying to get home. I’m the only one in the world he's got,” she said touching her chest. “He's always been afraid of losing me. When I sent him off to daycare in the beginning, he wouldn’t even let me go. I always have to promise to be there on time. And today…” she started choking up, though she swore she wouldn’t any more in front of people,“…today I was late!”

  The two men exchanged looks. The woman who had been sitting in the back had left her terminal and migrated towards them.

  “Put it in,” she said.

  All three turned to her.

  “Just put it in,” she repeated as Molly looked on with new respect. “We can fit it in. Move that story on the tax hike to page two. Or put it on hold if you don’t have the space. There's no urgency with it, right?”

  Schuman hesitated. Rubbed his chin.

  “Oh, please,” pleaded Molly. “Please.”

  “Yeah, why not,” agreed the city editor. “We’ll do it as missing, not kidnapped,” he explained to Molly.“It's just a little early and you really don’t know. And we’ve got to touch bases with the police. Debbie?” he turned and nodded to the woman.

  “I’ll take care of it,” she said.

  “You know,” said Schuman, “television is a lot faster than we are.”

  “Damn! I never thought of that,” said Molly slapping her own forehead.“I’ve been so confused and—Hey, how do I get them?” she asked.

  “The main stations are up in Syracuse. Let me get on the horn and see if I can rattle a few cages.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Molly was back home. There were a half-dozen messages on her machine—the parents she had talked to checking to see if Danny had turned up. Some sounded genuinely worried. Others seemed motivated more out of curiosity than concern. Nothing from the police. The trailer suddenly felt cold and empty. Molly turned up the furnace, but it seemed too weak to drive out the chill. She thought about Danny out in the cold without a jacket.

  Still dressed in her coat, she moved over to the front window and pressed her face against the cold glass. In the neighboring trailers, the light of television screens
flickered and shadows danced. The snow had stopped. She could make out the line of hemlock along the drive into the park, their branches bowed under the load of snow. The lower limbs were almost touching the ground and looked ready to snap.

  The night seemed so dark, so cold, so vast. Molly tried not to imagine a little boy lost. Next door, outside the Dolphs’ trailer, a beefy, thick-necked black dog tied to a chain was barking, standing on its hind legs and yanking its line taut.

  Deep. Icy. Saturday. Sunday. Fishing. The words kept circling in Molly's mind, as if recorded on a continuous loop of tape…

  “Are we going fishing like you promised?” Danny had asked in the morning, holding Molly in the hallway of Kute Kids when she tried to leave. Mrs. Oltz was waiting there to take him.

  “If I promised, then I promised. Right?” she said, hectically.

  “Yeah, but when?”

  “Saturday. If I don’t have to work.”

  “But…?”

  “Then Sunday. But Sweetheart, I’ve really got to get…” Mrs. Oltz stood looking on impatiently. God, how Molly hated leaving him.

  “And I want to go to the lake. Not that baby reservoir.”

  “Okay, the lake it is.” She thought of the reservoir, with its dizzyingly high hundred-foot dam, the rapids below rushing through deep gorges when the fall rains came, trees perched precariously on the lip of the ravines, their roots clinging tenuously to the crumbling shale. The lake was better. Yes. Felt safer.

  “Because that's where the really big fish are! In the deep lake.”

  Deep. Icy. Saturday. Sunday. Fishing. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was stand on the wind-whipped shore and impale a worm on a hook. But then other parents were arriving with their children, jamming the narrow entranceway.

  “And then we need to get Billy and go over to the farm to feed his uncle's lambs. He said that we could ride a horse. But we gotta be there on Saturday ’cause his Uncle goes away Sunday. What day is today?”

  “Wednesday,” she said, pulling him aside so the others could squeeze past.

  “When's Saturday?”

  “Tomorrow's Thursday. Then comes Friday. And then—”

  “Yeah, I ’member. Saturday,” he had smiled happily.

  She had finally pulled loose and kissed him good-bye. A last kiss.

  Deep. Icy. Saturday. Sunday. Fishing. He wanted so much, and she worried that she gave him too little.

  A little before midnight there was a knock on her door. Molly, who had been sitting on the couch staring blankly into space, jumped to her feet. At the door stood a man, stocky and dark, a solidly built guy with eyes that appeared a bright green in the light spilling through the doorway. It took her a moment to recognize him. It was Freddy Tripoli's older brother. She hadn’t seen him in years, and now he had a dark mustache. The last time he was in uniform, driving a squad car. He had brought Molly's mother home early one morning after one of her binges.

  “I’m—” he started.

  “Yes, I know. Freddy's big brother.”

  “I’m a detective now.” He started to take out his badge, but Molly had already stepped back from the door to let him enter.

  “Have you heard anything?”

  He shook his head, and she went back to the couch and flopped down exhausted, leaving Tripoli framed in the doorway. He noticed the pile of photos on the coffee table next to her. Nice-looking little kid.

  Molly had cut her hair since he had last seen her, but it looked good on her, framed her face nicely, and maturity had served her well. She still had that good bone structure. Heart-shaped face. Sensuous bow-shaped mouth. Her two front teeth were canted inward just ever so slightly. Just now she looked disheveled. Obviously she had been out, walking in this lousy weather.

  Tripoli glanced around the trailer. It was clean and neat, but it was hardly more than a notch above a dive. He knew Freeman's Floral Estates well, having spent a disproportionate amount of time here responding to domestics and drugs, harassments and thefts. He could stand in the center of the fifty-unit park and identify the residents, home after home, citing each case and its disposition. Molly's trailer sat in the rear where the smaller, more rundown trailers were tucked away. Unlike the once lavish doublewides at the entrance, these were cramped, usually overcrowded, and their occupants tended to tack on extra rooms and storage sheds. More often than not they were usually cobbled-up structures that sagged and soon rotted, leaving them looking more like ramshackle shanties than homes.

  Tripoli remained at the open door for a moment, trying to match this woman with the hell-raising high school kid he had known.

  “I can remember you and Freddy, but I can’t remember your name,” Molly admitted.

  “I’m Lou.”

  “Right. Louie Tripoli,” Molly repeated to herself with a nod. The Tripolis were a big, extended Ithaca family. There were Tripolis that owned the dry cleaners on Seneca Street, the Tripoli Paving company, the Sunoco station, the Busy Bee luncheonette on Cayuga Street, and that new Italian restaurant—whatever its name was—up in the Cayuga Mall.

  She remembered how Tripoli would pick up Freddy at the high school. He was a cop already then—which made him seem so much older—and his shiny patrol car would be waiting in front every afternoon when the kids were let out. The car with its red lights always caught her eye. It made her a little nervous and she would observe it through the corner of her eye as she sidled off with her friends, watching how Tripoli would grab Freddy and affectionately hug him in a way that men usually didn’t do—not the men she knew. Seeing that, Molly used to wonder what it was like having a brother. An older brother to look out for you.

  “I’d like to ask you some questions if I could,” he said.

  “You want to stand there in the door or do you want to come in?”

  “Well, if you don’t mind,” he said politely.

  “Help yourself,” she said.“And you might as well close the door while you’re at it.”

  “Oh, yeah, sorry.” Tripoli wiped his feet free of the clinging snow, then stepped in and closed the door. Instinctively, his eyes swept the place, taking in everything in a near-single glance. On a bookshelf there were dog-eared textbooks, children's books, and on the bottom shelf he recognized a set of that Great Books series that Time/Life was always trying to sell through the mail.“Mind if I take off my coat?” he asked.

  “Suit yourself.”

  When he had taken off his overcoat, Molly saw that he had a sport jacket and tie on. He had an easy way about him. A lot more polished than his brother Freddy. For a cop he even seemed gentle.

  “I’m sorry if I sound such a—” She shook her head.

  “Hey,” he held up his hands, “no apologies necessary. I understand. Don’t worry. We just want to get your boy back.”

  She showed him a chair, and he took it and pulled it up close to where she sat on the sofa. There was something about his eyes, perhaps their clarity and brilliance of their light green color, that held her gaze. They looked like jewels.“Do you have any ideas?” she inquired.“Anything at all? Some leads maybe? Some—”

  “Truthfully? No. But we’re starting to focus in on this thing.” He held his hands out and slowly brought them together as though narrowing a gap.

  “What exactly does that mean?”

  “I got ahold of Bea Bruce—”

  Molly perked up.“And?”

  Tripoli shook his head.“She didn’t know anything. Neither did her girl. I got ahold of the Ruzickas. But you already talked to them, so I hear.”

  “Okay, so what do we do now?”

  “Sit tight.”

  “That's what everybody keeps saying. Sit tight. Hang in there. Wait.” She could feel herself getting angry, and fought to stifle the bitterness.

  “I’ve got three investigators out canvassing the whole town and questioning everybody—including the other kids from the daycare,” he said. Then he turned quietly thoughtful.“Look, do you have any idea of where your boy
might go if he wanted to leave home?”

  “Danny? Hell, you couldn’t pry him away from me.”

  “Is there some place he might have talked about wanting to go—you know, kids get all kinds of ideas.”

  “He kept going on about fishing this morning. But he’d never…”

  “Fishing where?”

  “We always go to the reservoir.”

  Tripoli lifted an eyebrow.“Reservoir?”

  “Not a chance. Anyway, he was tired of that and wanted to go fishing in the lake.” For an instant she was assaulted by the vivid image of Danny in a row boat drifting out on the dark, snowy lake. “Come on, there's no way he could get down to the lake. He's just a little boy.” She could hear the element of uncertainty creeping into her own voice. Tripoli said nothing for a few moments.

  “The boy's father—” he began.

  “Chuck? Chuck?” She gave a loud laugh.“My ex-husband? You think he took Danny?”

  “I don’t know,” said Tripoli.

  “Let me tell you about Chuck. He took off the day Danny was born. We’re talking almost five years now, and I’ve never heard from him since—that's how much he cared about Danny! I couldn’t even find him to serve the papers for a divorce. Do you really think he's going to come back to claim a kid he's never even seen?”

  “Anything's possible. I’ve got to explore every lead.”

  “You got a cigarette?” she asked.

  He reached into his breast pocket, then caught himself. “No. I don’t smoke anymore. If you want, I could get—”

  “Naw. Forget it. Gave it up myself. I just don’t know what to do with my hands.” She threw them up in the air and let them fall back into her lap.

  “Do you at least have any idea where Chuck might have gone?”