“Nothing's going on!” Both of them were crying.
“I tried to work, but couldn’t keep my mind on anything but Danny.”
“It's so damn cold outside and he doesn’t even have his jacket. He hasn’t eaten.” Molly trembled.“He's lost. Someone's taken him. He's dead already. I don’t know what to think.”
The icy air was pouring into the trailer and Rosie went back and closed the front door.
“Oh, I’m so tired.” Molly put her head down on the table and wept.“None of this feels real anymore.”
“You need some food,” said Rosie in her usual take-charge way and set to work, rummaging through the cabinets and fridge. She found some eggs, some mushrooms, and cheese.“Louie Tripoli came by to see me at work,” she said as she beat the eggs with milk and then slipped the mixture into a hot frying pan that sizzled.
“He saw my boss, too. I’m worried that he's wasting his time— that maybe he suspects me in some way.”
“Well if he did, he doesn’t anymore,” Rosie laughed.“Not after the earful of shit I gave him!” She layered the mushrooms and cheese on the congealing omelet.
“He's not a bad guy, really.” Molly pressed her fingers against her head and rubbed her temples, trying to drive away the dull throbbing that had started in the late afternoon. “He even gave me the number to his cell phone—said I could call him day or night.”
Rosie slipped the omelet onto a plate.“Yeah. Sure.” She brought the plate to the table.“I’m sure they want to find Danny as much as we do—whatta you want to drink with this?”
Suddenly, the phone rang and Molly lunged for it.
“Hi, this is Wally Schuman,” said a man's voice.
It took Molly a second.“Oh, right, the newspaper man. Thanks for the picture. And all the help.”
“Don’t even mention it. Reason I called is that we’re running another story.”
“And Danny's picture, too?”
“Sure. Of course. It's on the wire now, too. It looks like a lot of other papers around the state have picked up the story. Our Gannett wire service has it, too.”
“Good. Ask people to call the police if they’ve seen anything, anything at all. Somebody spotted Danny that afternoon, you know.”
“Really?”
Molly told him about Edna Poyer. He, too, knew Edna. Everybody in town seemed to know Edna. “But she described his shirt perfectly. There was no way…Look, somebody else must have seen him, too.”
“Well, we’ll run it in the story. See what pops up.”
“And maybe just say something like…well, if anybody took Danny, I’m begging them to let him go. I’d do anything to get him back. Anything!”
Despite herself, Molly was crying again. “Damn it!” she said, banging down the phone.“I can’t even talk anymore. I don’t know what to say. What to do.”
“You gotta trust in God,” said Rosie. She got Molly to sit down, then slid in next to her and tried coaxing her into eating as if she were a child.
“Well, maybe that's okay for you,” said Molly blowing her nose loudly.“My mom believed in all that Jesus and church crap, and just look where it got her.”
They ate in silence. Rosie kept wanting to turn on the television to see if anything was going on, but Molly couldn’t bear it. Rosie wanted to sleep over, but Molly was afraid that having her stay the night would lend an air of permanence to Danny's absence. The thought of Rosie sleeping in Danny's bed—or even out on the couch—somehow seemed more of a threat than a consolation.
“Go home and sleep,” she insisted around midnight. “Ed needs you, too.”
“But…”
“I’m going to take a sleeping pill and knock myself out.”
chapter five
The days started to flow into each other. Time became elastic; Molly was no longer sure if it was being compressed or stretched. She kept checking her calendar. How long had Danny been missing? What could be measured before in hours now became days. First three days. Then a week. Then almost two weeks. It was all a nightmarish blur.
Somewhere in that dream-like continuum, Doreen came over from the office with bread she had baked. “It's nothing,” she said, looking a bit embarrassed. “It's the only thing that came to mind. That I could…”
Days later, Ben, the editor Larry had hired just before she joined the crew, came by with flowers.“I just wanted to let you know we’re all thinking of you,” he said.
Molly opened the paper wrapping to inhale their fragrance. “Oh, they’re lovely,” she uttered and, before she even realized it, her tears were wetting the petals.
Ben awkwardly put his arm around her shoulder. “Come back soon. We miss you,” he whispered, and then fled before getting emotional himself.
Dianne Lifsey, little Stevie's mother, called to commiserate and find out what was going on. “We still can’t get over what's happened,” said Mrs. Lifsey. “It's terrible. Really terrible.” In her voice Molly thought she detected an undercurrent of better-your-Danny-than-my-Stevie, but she could hardly blame her.
“The state authorities have shut the place down,” said Stevie's mother. “My husband says that Kute Kids probably had extensive liability coverage. You might want to look into it. He's a lawyer, you know.”
One morning, there was yet another TV crew outside waiting for her. They were from one of the major networks, and reluctantly she let them in. With their lights and equipment squeezed into the trailer, there was hardly room to turn around.
The producer was a young man who, despite his beard and mustache, looked almost like a teenager. He kept asking inane questions like, “How does it feel to have your boy missing and not know where he is?”
Molly refused to be provoked to tears or give a flippant reply. She tried to respond calmly. She appealed to the kidnapper to not harm her son and asked viewers to be on the lookout for Danny.
“Did you investigate that daycare center before sending your boy there?”
Molly didn’t even tackle that one.
While the crew was packing, the producer turned to her and said,“This is going to get you national attention.”
“Great,” said Molly, finally yielding to her impulses. “Now my kid can be a star on milk cartons.”
At least two or three times a day, Molly talked to Tripoli.“We’re still working on it,” he said, but she could detect in his voice, even see in his face when he came by, that they were losing hope. Molly clung to her hope, although with each passing day it grew progressively harder. She spent every single day searching the town and surrounding areas, handing out pictures of Danny, tacking up posters. She checked in with the police constantly, hounding them for any leads and racing off to investigate them on her own. A farmer had found a boy's sneaker in a pasture, size one. One of the little girls from Kute Kids just remembered Danny saying something about going on a trip. Sometimes she worked alongside Tripoli, and was surprised and grateful that he never made her feel like she was in the way. At nights, although she was exhausted, sleep did not come easy as her mind raced, trying to find an answer.
Late one night, two weeks after Danny went missing, she lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Outside the wind had picked up again. She could hear the dry leaves being tossed and scattered around the trailer, the rumble of a distant truck on the nearby highway. Around one in the morning, the Dolphs’ dog started its compulsive barking at the night.
Molly took a hot shower, washed her hair, and got into a fresh nightgown. Sleep would never come, she told herself as she crawled back into bed. But when she closed her eyes, she immediately fell into a deep and dreamless oblivion.
Then, out of the blackness, came the jarring ring of her phone. In the stillness of the night, it seemed unusually loud and harsh.
“Oh!” she groaned aloud, bolting upright in her bed. It took her a couple of extra rings to figure out where she was and what was happening.
Barefoot, she dashed for the phone in the living room, her mind struggling to break out of its haz
e. The phone was not in the living room, but had been left on the kitchen counter. Groping her way around in the darkness, she finally took the receiver into her hands.
“We’ve got your boy,” said a gritty male voice.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
Standing in the unlit trailer, feet bare on the cold linoleum, Molly's senses were suddenly alert.“Who is—?”
“If you wan’ him back, it's gonna cost you.”
Molly's chest tightened.
“What do you want?”
“First, don’t talk to the police.”
“Okay by me. That's no problem.” Something about the voice bothered her.“Just tell me what you want?”
“Money.”
“Fine. How much? Where?”
There was a brief pause, as if the man seemed to be taken aback by Molly's quick agreement.
“A hun’red thousand,” he said. There was the whoosh of a passing car in the background, then silence. He was probably standing outside in a phone booth.
“No problem,” said Molly without a flinch in her voice. Now she knew what it was about the guy that struck her.“Tell me where you want it delivered and it's all yours, mister.”
Silence. “Okay…” he said, stalling.
“Just one thing,” Molly added.“Tell me what he's got on.”
“Huh?”
“Describe what he's wearing. You want to make an exchange. No problem. I got your money. And you got my kid, right?”
“Not right here.”
“But you’ve seen him, right?”
“My partner—”
“Your partner nothing. What's Danny wearing?”
“Clothes,” said the guy.
“Mister, either you’re full of shit or your memory's shot. Which is it?” Molly was now getting angry.
“You want the kid, don’t you? You give me a lot of bullshit, and—”
“You want the money, don’t you?”
“What the fuck is this?” shouted the guy.“I’m gonna hang up if you keep giving me any more of this crap.”
“Hey, be my guest,” said Molly, “But the next time you call, you’d better have a better description.” And she hung up.
Molly turned on the lights. She found her pocketbook, rifled through the jumble of Kleenex and keys and stray lipstick, and pulled out a yellow slip of paper. On it, in Tripoli's awkward scrawl, was the number to his cellular phone.
He answered almost immediately.“Oh, Molly. Yeah…listen, hang on a second, can you?”
She could hear him talking in the background. It sounded like a one-sided conversation. Apparently, he was on another phone.
Then, a minute later, he was back. “Okay, sorry about that,” he said yawning loudly.
“I just got a call from some creep who says he has Danny.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Know?”
“We’ve got a tap on your line. I’m glad you kept him talking.”
“You got him?”
“Got the asshole. Soon he’ll be sitting and staring at a wall of steel bars.”
“So who was it?”
“Just your run-of-the-mill lowlife. Don’t worry about it.”
Molly was thinking about the phone tap.“That means you knew Edna called me.”
Silence.
“Well, did you or didn’t you?”
Silence.
“Well, yeah, I knew. Sure.”
“And you—”
“Give me a break, Molly, will you?”
“You’ve got to stop bullshitting me.”
“And you’ve got to trust me a little bit, too. I’m running an investigation. I can’t tell you every little thing that I’m doing.”
“Well I’m glad you had a tap on the line,” Molly confessed. “I was thinking, damn, maybe that jerk really did have Danny and here I was blowing him off.”
“Is that an apology?”
“Don’t get carried away, Trip,” she said.
“Trip?” he echoed.
“I’m running my own investigation on you.”
Molly wanted to continue, say something witty, but the only things that kept coming to mind were ragged images: the narrow little suspension bridge dangling over the deep gorge where every year a couple of University students leap to their deaths. The thundering falls down at the high school, its drenching spray coating the slimy sidewalls of the ravine with ice. The crevasses and fissures of the Ithaca landscape that could swallow a child whole. There was comfort in Tripoli's voice, a confident, reassuring tone; as long as they were talking, the horrors seemed held at bay. She knew he was tired, but selfishly craved to keep him on the line.
“Hey, Trip—all right if I call you that?”
“You can call me whatever you want—as long as it's clean.” He tried to joke.
“I’m sorry to ruin your sleep.”
“Nah, no problem. I gotta get up anyhow. What time is it?”
Molly went over to the clock.“4:30.”
“Oh,” he groaned,“I thought it was like six or something. Well, doesn’t much matter. Once I’m up, I’m up.”
“You don’t sleep much, do you?”
“I do. But I’m like a camel. I’ve learned how to store it. Goes with the territory.”
From what Molly could hear, he was now apparently in the kitchen rummaging around dishes, she judged, making coffee.
“What kind of place do you live in?”
“It's an old Greek Revival.”
“Sounds nice.
“It was Kim's idea. My ex. Trouble is, I never got it quite revived.”
Molly laughed softly.
“I redid the kitchen but, well, it's a little rough to say the least. It was this romantic idea we had. You know. Find a nice old house in the country with some land and a barn and fix it up. Trouble is, when the romance went out of the marriage it also deserted the project. And here I am, alone with my insulation and wallboard.”
“You want to come over here?” asked Molly, surprising herself with the audacity of her suggestion.
Silence.
“I’m up for the duration, too,” she quickly added. “I just thought…” Molly was so tired, she didn’t know what she thought. Just knew that if he was near, she’d somehow feel more secure.“You might as well have coffee over here—hey, where do you live, anyhow?”
“Newfield…”
He was clearly debating with himself.
“Okay,” he said finally. “I can come over for a little. But let me just check in at the command post first, okay?”
“Whatever,” she said. “I don’t think I’m going anywhere right now.”
Tripoli got to Molly's place more than an hour later. Camel or not, he looked thoroughly washed out.
“We questioned the idiot who called you. A real A-number-one dirtball,” he said crossing the threshold to her door.“He didn’t know anything.”
“Coffee?” she asked. Molly was dressed in a robe over a pinkish nightgown whose frills peeked out at the neck. Her hair was tousled.
“Huh? Yeah. Sure.” He was so tired he couldn’t think.
She brought him a cup.
“I gotta sit down. I’m a little more blitzed than I thought,” he admitted.
“You want to put your feet up?”
“Well…” he looked at her dubiously. “Yeah. Okay. Mind if I borrow your couch for a minute?”
“Sure.”
Tripoli kicked off his shoes and lay back, the cup balanced on his chest.“Yeah, now this is an improvement,” he sighed. He took a sip of coffee and felt a lot better. “You can’t sleep, either, huh?”
“Sleep? I’m afraid to even close my eyes.”
“I can certainly understand how you feel.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Hey, it doesn’t take much imagination.”
“It's like there's a piece of me that's missing. And not just an arm or leg. More like a chunk carved right out of my insi
des,” she grasped her chest.“Something vital. I keep thinking…well, what if we don’t ever find Danny. One way or another. If you never know, if—”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself. I think maybe we should take things as they happen.”
There were tears in her eyes.
Tripoli's face contorted.
“Hey, I’m not going to cry again, don’t worry.”
He motioned for her, and she came over to the sofa and sat down on the floor beside him.
Without thinking, he reached out and took her hand.
She placed her other hand on top of his and let it rest there for a moment.
“A cop's hand,” she muttered, taking it and turning it over to study the inside. It was massive and muscular, the fingers stubby. “They say you can tell a lot about a man by his hands.”
He didn’t say anything, just turned to watch her with his green eyes.
Molly looked at him.“You ever kill anybody, Mr. Cop?”
“No,” he smiled,“though there are some real lowlifes I’d love to see moved to another planet.”
“Ever shoot anybody?”
“Yeah, once. Some idiot who came at me with a knife. I got him in the leg. I’m not particularly proud of it.”
She moved nearer to him. He reached out and tentatively stroked her hair. Tripoli could feel himself losing control. It was nuts, he told himself, but he couldn’t help it. She seemed to be melting under his touch, and his exhausted brain was split in two, the hemispheres debating loudly. The rational half was being drowned out by the thumping and churning on the other side. “Hmmm,” he said with muffled voice, bringing his nose close, “I love the smell of a woman's hair.”
Molly turned her face up to his in an unmistakable offer.
He bolted upright, spilling the last dregs of coffee on his shirt. “Shit!” he said, wiping it off as best he could. “Hey, look,” he said, gathering himself,“This is totally crazy.”
“Sure,” she said. “But I’m crazy already, so what the hell's the difference.”
“I don’t want to take advantage of you.” His hands were shaking.“You’re vulnerable.”
She looked at him.
“And, yeah,” he admitted, “I happen to be kind of vulnerable right now myself.”
He kept talking. She let him talk. Didn’t quite hear his words. Just looked at his face, open and exposed. There was pain written all over it. In that instant, she saw that he needed her almost as much as she needed him.
THE LAST BOY Page 11
