Molly was taken aback. So, she was alert.
“Now,” Edna said, “we’ve got to get ready for our meeting.” With a delicately boned hand, she fussed with her hair which was snow white and so sparse you could see the pink of her scalp.
“Meeting?”
“National Security Council, right? That's why you’re here, isn’t it?”
Molly's hopes nosedived.
“They need us to advise them. We want to be primed and ready to go. Did you bring the briefing papers?”
“That's not why I came.”
“Oh?” said Edna, looking askance.
“I came because of my boy. Danny. Danny Driscoll.”
Edna looked thoroughly puzzled.
“Is he one of my grad students?”
“No, he's just a little boy.”
“Well, you certainly look too young to have a son who's a grad student. To me, though, everyone looks so young!” she giggled. Her skin was paper thin; lines of blue veins coursed their way up the sides of her neck and temples.
Molly tried to control her impatience. “You called me about a half an hour ago.”
“Oh, you’re the one working for the Warren Commission?”
“I’m the mother of the missing boy.”
“Oh, the missing boy,” said Edna as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“You saw him?”
“Couldn’t miss the little tyke. Cute little boy.”
“Where’d you see him?”
“Out in front of Woolworth's,” responded Edna immediately.
“What were you doing there?”
“Where?”
“In front of Woolworth's.”
“If I was there, I was probably shopping.”
“So you were standing where?”
“You know…what's your name?”
“Molly.”
“You know, Molly, I knew that McCarthy was going to fall under the weight of his own arrogance. I remember—”
“Mrs. Poyer—”
“Professor Poyer,” Edna corrected.
“You said you saw my little boy.”
“Yes. I saw him. In front of Woolworth's.”
“When?”
“When I was there!” she shook her head. “Heavens, you keep asking the same questions all the time.”
Molly tried to keep in check her mounting frustration. She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. She was beginning to suspect that Lou Tripoli might have been right.
“What did you see?”
“I saw your little boy. You could hardly help noticing a little guy like that crossing streets on his own. I would never have allowed any of my children to be out on their own, what with traffic and all.”
“So?”
“So naturally, I asked him,‘Are you allowed to be out alone?’”
“And?”
“And he said it was okay, and just marched on.”
“To where?”
“Last thing I saw he was heading to those stairs that lead to South Hill.” Edna turned to gaze out the window. A flurry of yellow and brown drifted down from a nearby tree whose base was already encircled with a carpet of leaves matted from the early. In the protected shadows there were still hidden patches of white.
When Edna turned back she said, “I think I’m going to be offered that ambassadorship to Czechoslovakia—and it won’t cost anyone a plugged nickel. How's that?”
“What did the boy look like?” asked Molly, quickly adding, “The one in front of Woolworth's.”
“Of course, this administration owes me a few favors.”
“Professor Poyer—”
“Heavens, call me Edna.”
“Edna. The little boy you saw at Woolworth's? What did he look like?” Molly insisted.
“Him? The little guy?”
“Yes. Yes!”
“Maybe four. Five. Not six. Big head of blond curly hair. That the one?”
“Yes,” said Molly hoarsely.“What was he wearing?”
Edna wrinkled her forehead in thought. “Hmmm,” was all she said.
“Thanks,” said Molly, getting up to go. Edna had obviously studied the picture in the paper.
Molly had reached the doorway when she heard Edna voice. “Had on a little flannel shirt.”
Molly froze.
“One of those red ones with crisscrossing lines. Blue and yellow.”
Molly's breath caught. Her heart started to pound and her thoughts raced.
“I remember he had sneakers on. White sneakers with markings or something?”
Molly slowly turned, afraid to startle Edna. She looked searchingly into the milkiness of Edna's eyes.
“My memory just isn’t what it used to be,” admitted Edna.
“Wait,” said Molly, trying to recall precisely the description she had given Wally Schuman and his reporters, “you read that in the paper, didn’t you?”
“There's been absolutely no mention in the papers yet about my appointment. Everything's still hush-hush,” said Edna, putting a gnarled finger to her painted lips. “And I hope I can rely on your discretion.”
Molly found Daphne in a resident's room nearby. She was hoisting another frail man from his bed to a chair.
“Was Edna out yesterday?”
Daphne nodded.
“About what time?”
“The police brought her back around four in the afternoon.”
Molly's heart was now racing so hard she felt light-headed.
“Do you have today's Ithaca Journal here?”
“Sure. One second.” She lifted the emaciated man seemingly without any effort and slipped him into a contraption with wheels that reminded Molly of Danny's old highchair. “There you go, Mr. Cantrell.”
Mr. Cantrell's hands were shaking and he mumbled something inaudible. Daphne slid a tray into the chair, locking the man tightly in place.
In the office, Daphne found the morning's newspaper. Sure enough, on the front page was Danny's picture. And in color. Molly scanned the story feverishly. It gave his age, his height, but nowhere did it mention that the shirt was flannel. Just that it was red. She grabbed the phone in the nurse's office and called the police hotline listed in the paper.
“Let me talk to Lou Tripoli,” she said when an officer answered.
“Who's this?”
“Molly Driscoll.”
“He's in a meeting.”
“Well get him out. It's important.”
She waited.
“Okay, what's up?” asked Tripoli when he finally came on.
“I’m up at Oak Hill Manor.”
“Oh, shit,” he mumbled.
“No you hear me out. That woman may be out of her skull some of the time, but she's not totally bonkers.”
“You can’t rely on anything she says.”
“She was out yesterday on the streets.”
“We know that. We were the ones who brought her back.”
“She says she saw Danny in front of Woolworth's. By himself. Walking.”
“That doesn’t—”
“Hold on. She described what he was wearing. A red flannel shirt. Sneakers.”
“Well, that description was out to every agency in the county. She could have—”
“Not the flannel part. That wasn’t in the papers. And don’t tell me that she has a scanner and monitors the police frequencies.”
“So she got it from the TV.”
“Wait. There's more. She described his shirt as red with blue and yellow crisscrossing lines—which is exactly right except for some black lines—and no one knew that. Not even you guys.”
“I’ll send up someone to talk to her—if you insist.”
“I insist.”
“But I just can’t drop everything this instant. I just don’t want to waste precious time checking out red herrings when we could be following better leads. We’ve got tons of possibilities we’ve got to exhaust. Come on, please, Molly, trust me on this a little. Okay?”
It's odd, thought Tripoli the next morning as he stared out his window at the passing traffic. People act like a school of fish. All of a sudden they all turn left. Or right. No telling. Now they were all terrified. They were keeping their little kids home from school, locking doors usually left unlocked, eyeing one another suspiciously. Somewhere in town there was a maniac loose who was abducting little children. Tripoli knew you couldn’t reason with rampant fear, yet he could feel the pressure building. Maybe he was causing some of it, too. They were pulling in and grilling anyone within a fifty-mile radius who had a record that might indicate an abduction or kidnapping—and getting absolutely nowhere. Canvassing the neighborhoods was yielding nothing. They had gotten calls from people who claimed to have seen Danny. He had been spotted in the Pizza Hut out on Route 13, up by the roller rink in the Northeast, down at Cass Park on a baseball field. Every little blond kid seemed to be a sighting, yet they had no choice but to check out every possibility, no matter how improbable.
Richie Pellegrino came by in the early afternoon after his shift. “How's it going, Trip?” he asked, dropping into one of the metal folding chairs next to Tripoli. It creaked under his weight.
“I don’t know,”Tripoli shook his head. The people on his team were still working the phones, but turning up nothing you could really dig your claws into. “This looks worse and worse with time. The troopers are helping us put together a search party. In another hour, they’ll be ready to roll.”
“Yeah, but search where?”
“That's the question. Suppose he wasn’t abducted. Suppose he walked on his own. How far do you think a little kid could get?”
“Depends on the kid…” Pellegrino scratched his head.“A couple miles maybe.”
“Yeah, I was thinking along the lines of a three-mile perimeter for starters. Check out all the gorges. Maybe use dogs…You know, I would have done it earlier, but she—the mother—had me convinced that the kid was swiped. Now I’m not so sure. I keep worrying. We got dozens of sightings, but none of them seems legit. There's always something off. But what if I make a mistake and…”
Pellegrino couldn’t help but detect the note of guilt in Tripoli's voice—which wasn’t very characteristic of the man.“Hey, you want me to do something?”
“Appreciate the offer.”
“I feel sorry for the girl.”
“Well, in that case…Molly called from up at old Edna's.”
Pellegrino rolled his eyes. “Geez, Edna.”
“Says that Edna saw the boy that same day he disappeared in front of Woolworth's.”
“Well, she certainly was out roaming then. Stevenson brought her back.”
“Yeah…”
“Remember when that guy with the ski mask tried to rob the Trust Company?”
Tripoli smiled at the memory.“Yeah, and Edna saw him ripping off his ski mask on Aurora Street while he was fleeing.”
“Said the guy looked exactly like Sidney Poitier.”
“Except it turned out to be Joe Fitchen, who's about as black as an albino. Just one little thing here, Richie. Keeps nagging me.”
“Like?”
“Molly says old Edna can describe the kid's shirt.”
“That's no secret.”
“But apparently she told Molly that the shirt had crisscrossing stripes of yellow and blue.”
“And how reliable is Molly?”
“You want to go up to Oak Hill for me?”
“Visit my old friend Edna?”
“It’d be a help.”
“Don’t hold your breath.” Pellegrino heaved himself up from the chair. The seat was so hard one of his legs had gone to sleep. He worked it, trying to bring it back to life.
“You know, it's very simple,” said Tripoli, thinking out loud.“The kid either walked or was taken. There's no other choice, right?”
“The father,” said Pellegrino.“Did you get a line on him?”
“Nothing. Zip. Relatives don’t have a clue. His mother hasn’t seen him in eight years—you might say they were estranged. You know, Chuck must have dumped his social security number and driver's license and started from scratch. Sisler found an old set of prints on file at the courthouse from when he got a gun permit; but I ran it through the F. B. I.; he's not gotten in trouble, not popped up as an unidentified body somewhere, and not applied for a new pistol permit.”
“I’ll go say hello to Edna.”
Molly couldn’t sit still. She kept driving around town, starting in the Green Street neighborhood and moving in an ever-widening circle. Every time she saw a cop car, she would flash her lights, come abreast of them, and roll down her window.
“Any news?”
By now all the cops knew who she was. Sometimes she didn’t have to flag them down; sometimes they just pulled over when they saw her and got out of their car.
“Trip is doing just about everything he can,” said Officer Harry Beaner, taking off his dark glasses and squinting in the low sun. Molly could see Danny's picture attached to the clipboard on the front seat of his patrol car.“And Trip's the best.”
“Trip?” she repeated.
“Yeah, that's what we call him. His friends and people.”
“Trip…hmmm.” She liked the sound of it. It fit him.
“He's good people,” Harry continued. “Believe me. He’d give you the shirt right off his back—if you needed it.”
When she swung by her trailer, there was an unmarked radio car parked in front. Tripoli was sitting inside eating a sandwich. There were puffy bags under his eyes, and he needed a shave.
He stepped out of his car as she pulled up.
“How’re you holding up?” he asked, chewing and hurriedly swallowing the mouthful.
“Good as can be expected under the circumstances.”
There was mustard smeared on the left side of his mouth. She laughed despite herself and pointed to her lips.
“Oh,” he said and leaned into his car to hunt for a napkin.
“Here,” she said, opening her purse and pulling out a tissue. “I think this is clean.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“No, the other side.”
He briskly rubbed around his lips.
“Here, give me that,” she said impatiently, took the tissue and wiped his chin.
He seemed embarrassed by the gesture.
“You look tired,” he said.
“Looks like you didn’t get too much sleep either, huh?”
“Sleep?” He smiled wearily.“What's that?”
“You want to come in?”
“No. I just came by to get something.”
“Like?”
“A piece of Danny's clothing.”
Molly felt her stomach sink.
He raised a hand.“Now just hold on before you start to panic.”
“Who's panicked? I just—”
“We’ve organized a search party. We’ve got over a hundred people. And I got some dogs lined up.”
“Good!” she said emphatically.
She went into the trailer and came back in less than a minute with a handful of Danny's clothes.
“None of this has been washed. Come on, let's go,” she said, leaving no doubt about her intentions.
When they got to Woolworth's, there was already a group searching the stream bed behind the store. The men were in high waders, working both ends of the creek, which was flowing briskly. The late afternoon sun was low, casting long shadows across the cold water, magnifying the size of every boulder and tree.
While they sat in his car watching the operation, Tripoli told Molly they were also checking the inlet and the near end of the lake.
“What does checking mean?”
Tripoli hesitated.
“You mean like dragging?”
He nodded.
“Do me a favor?”
“Hmm?”
“I can’t stomach bullshit. Just give it to me straight from now on, no matter what it is, no matter how bad.
Okay?”
He nodded.
They were also searching up at the reservoir, he told her quietly, and Six Mile Creek near Giles Street.
“You’re thinking maybe he went fishing?”
“I’m beginning to think that maybe he got out somehow. He was probably pissed off after they punished him.”
Molly looked at him long and hard.
“The girl who was working at Kute Kids…” he swallowed. “Cheryl? Turns out she wasn’t such an angel with kids.”
Molly kept quiet.
“She had locked Danny in the basement as punishment for a little while.”
Tripoli watched her face expecting a reaction. When he got none, he said,“So you knew, huh?”
“Yeah. I knew.”
“So who's bullshitting who?”
“That's different.”
“Like hell it is!”
“I got Cheryl to admit to it by promising not to tell.”
“Well, from now on I’d appreciate it if you don’t cut any deals with my witnesses, all right?”
“Hey, I’ll be straight with you. Just you be straight with me. Okay?” Molly held out her hand.
“Okay.” Tripoli took her hand. “A deal,” he said, shaking her hand and holding it tight.
Molly looked down to see her fingers enfolded in his large grip, looked up at him, and felt his hand slip shyly away.
He looked at her for a long moment, then shifted his eyes away. Later, when he wasn’t aware, she ventured a look at him, studying his face in profile. His features were strong, cleft chin, prominent nose and brow—all clearly delineated, like his character. He had a strong sense of self, of right and wrong, knew who he was. Molly liked that about him. It gave her comfort and made her comfortable in his presence. She knew she was lucky to have him looking for her boy. She could hardly have found a better man for the job.
The door to the trailer was unlocked and Rosie walked right in. She caught Molly sitting at the kitchen table staring blankly into space.
“Oh, Rosie,” she gasped, and the tears sprung to her eyes. Her hands were balled into tight fists.“I’m scared. Really scared now. It's too long already.”
“I kept trying to call you all day, and either the line is busy or you’re out,” she put her arms around Molly and brought her face close.“What's going on?”
THE LAST BOY Page 10
