Heart of the World

by Linda Barnes

  “Not older men in general. I like Carlos.”

  He squirmed to one side of the wide chaise and made a low noise like an insect humming. His arm moved abruptly and he patted the cushion.

  “Then you wouldn’t care to join me here?”

  “No.”

  “Not even if I might then give you a number where you could reach our mutual friend?” He rubbed his crotch suggestively. I kept the smile on my face, thinking that if he yanked his zipper he was going to be one sorry SOB.

  “I’m not a hooker, mister, just a girl who got knocked up. I don’t go for older men. I like Carlos. And he likes me. He told me I could get to him through that lawyer.”

  “Perhaps he deliberately misdirected you. Have you considered that? Send Thurman back in, please. When you leave.”

  I stayed seated. “Then you won’t help me?”

  “What’s your name, young lady?”

  “Carlotta.”

  “Carlotta and Carlos. How very sweet.”

  “After we’re married, maybe we’ll name our kid after you, Drew.”

  “You wouldn’t mind raising a child in Colombia?”

  “Where in Colombia?” I tried to soften the question with a smile but I’d pounced too quickly.

  His mouth narrowed. “I’ll speak with Thurman now.”

  “Please, if you change your mind—let me give you my number.” I scribbled my cell on a pad on his desk, begged him to give the number to Roldan if he didn’t trust me, but I knew it was no go. My intensity had scared him and I was dismissed. I didn’t bang the door on the way out but it took effort to restrain the impulse.

  I was furious at myself. A glass of champagne, two birdbath-sized Margaritas. My head was muddled and I’d blown what might be my only chance to find Paolina. I found myself in the busy kitchen uncertain of the way to the pool. I felt lousy, as helpless and dumb as the pregnant, abandoned woman I’d pretended to be. My mouth tasted sour and I made my way to a sink, intent on water. A man washing dishes glared at me, but nodded to a stack of plastic glasses when I asked.

  I drank a full glass, ran the icy stream over my hand, and patted the back of my neck. A woman in a flowered apron yanked a tray of cheese puffs from the oven and clucked at me to get out of her way.

  I wanted access to that desk in Naylor’s office, that fat pale desk with the golden curves. I wanted the man’s Rolodex, his files, his little black books, his memory. To be so close, to come away with nothing…

  Kitchens, big modern kitchens, have desks. Desks have drawers and drawers have files, and files contain all sorts of domestic goodies, like phone bills. I didn’t go back to Vandenburg like a good little girl. I snooped instead, sitting at the desk, pressing the phone to my ear as though I were making a call while my hands riffled through piles of papers. If Naylor was in touch with Roldan, the phone number might be as close as my fingertips. It might never get closer than it was now.

  “Can I help you?”

  The woman wasn’t wearing an apron, but there was a smear of flour on her cheek.

  “Jeez, you have any aspirin?” I said. “Drew said there was aspirin in here, but I didn’t know it would be a fucking treasure hunt.” I let myself sound drunker than I was. It was easy.

  She exchanged glances with one of the caterers at the same moment I saw the SBC logo on an envelope. SBC. Southern Bell Company. The day’s mail was stacked on a corner of the desk for sorting.

  “You know where the closest bathroom—” I made my mouth work like I might be getting ready to vomit, and the woman hastily pointed me east. I made a shambles of my effort to stand, knocked the mail to the floor, and knelt to restore it. I grabbed the SBC envelope and held it to my stomach, clasping both hands over it as I groaned and ran.

  In the bathroom, I took a long breath and held a hand to my pounding temple. For a moment I thought I might actually be sick. Then I rinsed my mouth with cold water, tucked the phone bill into my pants, and went to find Vandenburg.

  CHAPTER 13

  When the phone jangled me from sleep, I swung my legs out of bed, my head split open, my stomach flopped through a bizarre series of acrobatic maneuvers, and I thought: Paolina, sweetheart, I’m not mad at you. I’m so glad you called. Wheverever you are, stay put; I’m on my way.

  Fumbling for the receiver, a second possibility rushed into my head: Sam, why didn’t you call last night? I grabbed my cell, flipped it open, and pressed the button only to be greeted by Mooney’s growl.

  “What?” The word was out of my mouth before I could contemplate substituting a civil hello.

  “Carlotta? I wake you?”

  The clock on the bedside table said nine. Impossible. I must have turned off the alarm. “You okay?”

  His voice hammered my eardrums. My tongue felt as fuzzy as the hotel blanket, my throat raw. What the hell was in those Margaritas? I sucked a deep breath and scrunched my eyes shut. It felt like the middle of the night but a steady stream of sunlight poured through the thin curtains.

  “Paolina,” I said. “Is she—? Did you—?”

  “No bad news. No great news, either, but no disasters.”

  I opened my eyes slightly, flinching at the skull-piercing sunshine. “You said you might have something, that you’d—”

  “I’m still working it.”

  “Oh.” I ran my dry tongue over dry lips. “How did the thing with the feds go?”

  “If Paolina hijacks a plane, they’ll get interested. Seriously, it’s all terrorists, all the time down the Bureau. Not in so many words, but I got the message between the lines. If I were on the street, I tell ya, now’s the time I’d pull a bank job.”

  “The Roldan angle didn’t grab them?”

  “I’m going to DEA direct. One of our narcs is setting it up for me.”

  “When?”

  “You flying back today?”

  “I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I doubt it.”

  “What?” he said. “You getting somewhere?”

  The SBC envelope was lying on the bedside table underneath the clock. “I’ve got a couple of Colombian phone numbers.”

  I listened to his silence, but it was my own doubt I heard. Two of the numbers on the stolen phone bill bore the 571 prefix that meant Bogota. One of them might or might not lead to Roldan. One of them might or might not lead to my little sister’s whereabouts.

  “It’s something,” I said defensively.

  “Enough to justify a plane ticket?”

  “Somebody told me Roldan was in Colombia.”

  “A guy I talked to yesterday told me he saw Elvis in Cleveland.”

  “My guy seemed to be running on all cylinders. How about yours?”

  “Who did you talk to?”

  “I gave you the name yesterday. Drew Naylor.”

  “No record, no warrants. Who is he?”

  I shrugged, then realized he couldn’t see the movement over the phone. “A businessman,” I said. “A creep.”

  “But you believe him. Because you want to believe him, right?”

  My head throbbed. Without coffee I wasn’t prepared to do battle with Mooney. He was right; I wanted to believe Roldan was in Colombia. I wanted to believe Paolina was with him, safe or relatively safe. Physically unharmed.

  “Look,” he said, “Triola and I spent last night hitting shelters. Church basements, the Pit, the flops. I called a couple Worcester cops, a few guys in New York. Called in a few favors.”

  “Moon, thank you.” I knew what kind of days he put in. If he spent nights searching for Paolina, he was getting no sleep at all.

  “Gloria’s got cabbies looking for Paolina from Maine to New York.”

  “See? You and Gloria and Roz can handle anything that comes up in the States.”

  “Carlotta, just because we can’t find her locally doesn’t mean she’s in Colombia.”

  “Doesn’t mean she isn’t.”

  I couldn’t explain my conviction that she was with Roldan to Mooney because I couldn�
�t fully explain it to myself. It was there in my gut, but I wasn’t sure it amounted to much more than taking the path less traveled. If there was nothing I could do to find her in Boston, nothing that wasn’t a feeble echo of an effort already undertaken by others, then I wanted the fresh trail, the one no one else would follow.

  Jesus, maybe I was still drunk. Maybe the golden spirit guide was prompting me. I didn’t try to sell that one to Mooney. He used to needle me plenty about my “intuition” when I was a cop.

  He said, “You talk to Sam lately?”

  Sam’s proposal weighed like a stone in my gut. Dammit, aren’t marriage proposals supposed to be sweetness and light, unfreighted with the baggage of police involvement, promising blissful stretches of blue-sky happily-ever-after?

  “Why?” I responded cautiously.

  “Honestly, Carlotta, for a smart woman you can be—” His voice died.

  “You want to finish that thought?”

  “I just want to know how much you know about what your beau’s been up to the past two years.”

  Sam and I hadn’t been together the past two years; we’d rekindled the flame a scant three months ago. Mooney knew that as well as I did. We’d discussed our mutual lack of significant others over two lingering Chinese restaurant meals. After the second, I’d expected him to invite me back to his apartment. But he’d gotten called out on a case and the opportunity had never materialized again.

  He said, “The feds are keeping me updated, so if Gianelli gets a ransom note, I’ll know.”

  “Moon, come on, this isn’t about Sam. Marta sold Paolina’s photo to one of Roldan’s—”

  “The lady said she was from Roldan. But that could have been a diversion. What’s to stop her from being Mob?”

  “You want it that way, Moon. You want me scared off of Sam.”

  As soon as I said it, I wished I could take it back, delete the words like suspect e-mail. My forehead gave another throb and I considered the possibility of pretending I’d lost the connection, hanging up. The silence grew.

  He said, “You’re right. Guilty as charged. I want you and the kid to have a future.”

  “Mooney—”

  “Hey, I’ll call you right back. I got somebody on the other line.”

  Sure, I thought. Sure you do.

  The phone went dead and I thought: Coffee.

  The room didn’t run to a lot of extras; no mini-bar, no bathroom phone extension, but a coffeemaker perched on a closet shelf with a small foil bag of pre-measured grounds nestled beside it. I hauled it down, plugged the cord into a socket, and added water. Small pink packets of sugar filled an ashtray. No milk, but I wasn’t feeling fussy.

  I retreated to the edge of the bed and waited for the coffee to brew, feeling battered and too sick to get dressed. I knew Sam was up to his neck in the Mob, more involved than ever. I’d known it when we’d gotten back together, but I’d avoided thinking about it, overwhelmed by physical sensation, lulled and blinded by chemistry, by lust. Dammit, why did Mooney keep hitting me over the head with Sam? Why now? I couldn’t think about Sam now. I had to think about Paolina. Face it: The phone numbers were all I had and they were slender threads, threads that might unspool forever without leading to my sister.

  For the first time since she’d disappeared I let myself consider the possibility that I might never find her. Never celebrate her sixteenth birthday. Never argue over whether or not she could borrow the car. Never see her walk across a stage to claim her high school diploma.

  I’ve always considered myself lucky, a happy blend of parental heritage with my father’s easy laughter and my mother’s supple strength. Lucky to have a mother who never stopped loving me, even after I’d driven her to distraction by refusing to name the man who’d fathered my child. The image flickered and I shut my mind against it; I didn’t go there.

  I’d been young enough, dumb enough, to deny what was happening to my body till most of my options were gone, not that my Catholic father would have abided any solution that meant, to him, terminating a life. I’d felt lucky to be loved through that stormy time, even by parents who hadn’t managed to love each other enough to stay together.

  When I was sixteen, my mother’s sudden death had stunned me, but my aunt Bea had taken me in without a second thought and given me all the fierce love her frail body could hold. My father, dying, had given me away in marriage. Sometimes I thought I’d married Cal at nineteen just so my dad would feel better about dying, knowing he hadn’t left me alone.

  I made up for lack of family with friends. When I drove for Gloria and Sam, my fellow cabbies became an unlikely band of brothers and sisters. When I swore my oath as a cop, I joined another kind of family. Sometimes it seemed that no one who came to my door ever really went away. I’d mothered Roz, who’d turned up as a tenant. I’d mothered Paolina, making up for that baby I hadn’t mothered, the one I’d given away, the one I’d lost.

  I worked alone now. I’d grown used to solitude. I played guitar late at night. I sang other people’s blues and solved other people’s problems. Not my own. I kept putting off my own choices, telling myself I had plenty of time, plenty of options. I couldn’t decide whether or not to accept Sam’s proposal. I couldn’t decide whether or not I wanted children of my own, and yet last night, I’d faked a pregnancy without a second thought.

  Maybe I hadn’t made choices about my own life because I still didn’t trust the choice I’d made: to give that baby up for adoption. Sometimes, in Harvard Square, I’d freeze, glued to the sidewalk by the sight of a redheaded child.

  I had to find Paolina.

  The coffee tasted awful. I drank it like medicine, visualizing the caffeine surging through my veins, nudging the sluggish red and white corpuscles awake. I waited for the caffeine to subdue the headache, for the phone to ring, for the answer to the overwhelming question: Should I follow the thread to Colombia? Or give up and go home, defeated? Go home to wait. I studied Naylor’s phone bill till I’d practically memorized it. Account number. Billing date. The billing address was the same as the vast Coral Gables house where I’d downed too many Margaritas, but the customer was listed as MB Realty Trust. I’d get Roz to check them out.

  When he finally called back, Mooney didn’t bring up our previous conversation. He didn’t even say hello, just started speaking as though Gianelli’s name had never come between us. “You’ve got a photo of Paolina with you, right? A good one?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you know about facial imaging?” His voice was charged with suppressed excitement.

  “Is this the break you were waiting on, Mooney?”

  “Right. I’ve been trying to get in touch with a guy I know who does facial imaging. You know what that is?”

  “Yeah.” It was one of a handful of promising identification technologies. Not new. Some company had tried it at the Super Bowl in New Orleans and gotten in trouble with every civil liberties group in the country.

  “Okay. I don’t think they’re gonna let you look at every warm body flew Miami—Bogota in the past week, but if you get them a photo of Paolina, they’ll run a scan.”

  “What about New York—Bogota? Atlanta?”

  “I don’t know. You can try.”

  I plunked the coffee cup on the bed and started a search for paper and pen. “Who’s they, Moon? Where? When?”

  He said, “I tried to fax the photo I had, but my guy couldn’t get good resolution from a fax, and our scanning equipment is on the fritz—”

  “Is your guy in Miami?”

  “Close. Del Mar.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “You’ll have to wait while he runs it.” “Moon, I owe you.”

  He gave me an address, told me to ask for Greg Hanson. Then he said, “Word is Gianelli flew out of Las Vegas late last night on a charter. You know he got his pilot’s license last year?”

  I didn’t say anything. I hadn’t known. He’d never said a single word about learning to fly.


  “Hey,” Mooney said, “the thing is, I only want what’s best for you, Carlotta.”

  I didn’t respond. I was thinking that if I didn’t know about the pilot’s license, there were probably ten thousand other things I didn’t know as well.

  “I care about you,” he said. “Remember that.”

  CHAPTER 14

  A cold shower popped my eyes open. Breakfasted and dressed, with three cups of coffee racing three Bufferin through my veins, I waited for a cab under a sun that felt so far removed from the January Boston variety that I might have been standing on land heated by a different star. I shifted into the sparse shade cast by a skinny palm and thanked God for dark sunglasses.

  Last night all the parking slots in the motel’s handkerchief parking lot had been filled with white lookalike rent-a-cars. Most had peeled off for a day at the beach. A deep blue Saturn sat in a shaded slot. A man in the front seat adjusted his baseball cap as he read a tabloid newspaper. He flipped the page and the cab arrived.

  It sped through an area that looked like the outskirts of a business district. Fast food with drive-through lines, multicolored signs for distant orange groves and nearby car washes. The building corresponding to Mooney’s address was long, low, and nondescript, neither shabby nor particularly well kept. No sign out front. No name on the front door. Inside: security. The deskman had the brisk air of someone in the military, trim, muscular, and crew cut. Biodyne was the third of four names on a wall display. The other names were of the Acme school, giving no hint as to the nature of the business. There was an underlying smell of chemical processing, a hint of something to do with old-fashioned photography, the same smell that ruled Roz’s darkroom.

  “Greg Hanson,” I said. If the army man asked for a company name, I’d go for Biodyne over Hemisphere or Rectilinear. The buzzword for facial imaging, fingerprint recognition, iris scanning, and such is biometric security.

  “Sign here,” he said.

  I scribbled an illegible signature. He took the phone off the hook, pressed four buttons.

  “Hanson,” he said, and waited. “Lady visitor, for you.” He squinted at my signature.