by Andrew Gross
Eighteen years of our lives.
Eighteen years…
And I don’t even get to kiss him good-bye.
CHAPTER TEN
A few days later—Friday, Saturday, Karen had lost track—a police detective came by the house.
Not from the city. People from the police in New York and the FBI had been by a few times trying to trace Charlie’s movements that day. This one was local. He called ahead and asked if he could talk with Karen for just a few moments on a matter unrelated to the bombing. She said sure. Anything that helped take her mind off things for a few moments was a godsend to her now.
She was in the kitchen arranging flowers that had come in from one of the outfits that Charlie cleared through when he stopped by.
Karen knew she looked a mess. She wasn’t exactly keeping up appearances right now. Her dad, Sid, who was up from Atlanta and who was being very protective of her, brought him in.
“I’m Lieutenant Hauck,” he said. He was nicely dressed, for a cop, in a tweed sport jacket and slacks and a tasteful tie. “I saw you at the meeting in town Monday night. I’ll only take a few moments of your time. I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” Karen nodded and pushed her hair back as they sat down in the sunroom, trying to shift the mood with an appreciative smile.
“My daughter’s not feeling so well,” her father cut in, “so maybe, whatever it is you have to go over…”
“Dad, I’m fine.” She smiled. She rolled her eyes affectionately, then caught the lieutenant’s gaze. “It’s okay. Let me talk to the policeman.”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “I’m out here. If you need me…” He went back into the TV room and shut the door.
“He doesn’t know what to do,” Karen said with a deep sigh. “No one does. It’s tough for everyone right now.”
“Thank you for seeing me,” the detective said. “I won’t take long.” He sat across from her and took something out of his pocket. “I don’t know if you heard, but there was another incident in town on Monday. A hit-and-run accident, down on the Post Road. A young man was killed.”
“No, I didn’t,” Karen said, surprised.
“His name was Raymond. Abel John Raymond.” The lieutenant handed her a photo of a smiling, well-built young man with red dreadlocks, standing next to a surfboard on the beach. “AJ, he was called. He worked in a custom-car shop here in town. He was crossing West Street when he was run over at a high speed by an SUV making a right turn. Whoever it was didn’t even bother to stop. The guy dragged him about fifty feet, then took off.”
“That’s horrible,” Karen said, staring at the face again, feeling a stab of sorrow. Whatever had happened to her, it was still a small town. It could have been anybody. Anybody’s son. The same day she’d lost Charlie.
She looked back at him. “What does this have to do with me?”
“Any chance you’ve seen this person before?”
Karen looked again. A handsome face, full of life. The long red locks would’ve made it hard to forget. “I don’t think so. No.”
“You never heard the name Abel Raymond or maybe AJ Raymond?”
Karen stared again at the photo once again and shook her head. “I don’t think so, Lieutenant. Why?”
The detective seemed disappointed. He reached back into his jacket again, this time removing a yellow slip of paper, a wrinkled Post-it note contained in a plastic bag. “We found this in the victim’s work uniform, at the crime scene.”
As Karen looked, she felt her insides tighten and her eyes grow wide.
“That is your husband’s name, isn’t it? Charles Friedman. And his cell number?”
Karen looked up, completely mystified, and nodded. “Yes. It is.”
“And you’re sure you never heard your husband mention his name? Raymond? He did tinting and custom painting at a car shop in town.”
“Tinting?” Karen shook her head and smiled with her eyes. “Unless he was gearing up for some kind of midlife crisis he didn’t tell me about.”
Hauck smiled back at her. But Karen could see he was disappointed.
“I wish I could help you, Lieutenant. Are you thinking this was intentional, this hit-and-run?”
“Just being thorough.” He took back the photo and the slip of paper with Charlie’s name. He was handsome, Karen thought. In a rugged sort of way. Serious blue eyes. But something caring in them. It must have been hard for him to come here today. It was clear he wanted to do right by this boy.
She shrugged. “It’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? Charlie’s name on that paper. In that boy’s pocket. The same day…you having to come here like this.”
“A bad one”—he nodded, forcing a tight smile—“yes. I’ll be out of your way.” They both stood up. “If you think of anything, you’ll let me know. I’ll leave a card.”
“Of course.” Karen took it and stared at it: CHIEF OF DETECTIVES. VIOLENT CRIMES. GREENWICH POLICE DEPARTMENT.
“I’m very sorry about your husband,” the lieutenant repeated.
His eyes seemed to drift to a photo she kept on the shelf. She and Charlie, dressed up formal. At her cousin Meredith’s wedding. Karen always loved the way the two of them looked in that picture.
She smiled wistfully. “Eighteen years together, I don’t even get to kiss him good-bye.”
For a second they just stood there, she wishing she hadn’t said that, he shifting on the balls of his feet, seemingly contemplating something and a little strained. Then he said, “On 9/11, I was working in the city at the NYPD’s Office of Information. It was my job to try and track down people who were missing. You know, presumed to be inside the buildings, lost. It was tough. I saw a lot of families”—he wet his lips—“in this same situation. I guess all I’m trying to say is, I have a rough idea of what you’re going through….”
Karen felt a sting at the back of her eyes. She looked up and tried to smile, not knowing what else to say.
“You’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do.” He took a step to the door. “I still keep a few friends down there.”
“I appreciate that, Lieutenant.” She walked him through the kitchen to the back door in order to avoid the crowd in front. “It’s awful. I wish you luck with finding this guy. I wish I could be more help.”
“You have your own things to be thinking about,” he said, opening the door.
Karen looked at him. A tone of hopefulness rose in her voice. “So did anyone ever turn up? When you were looking?”
“Two.” He shrugged. “One at St. Vincent’s Hospital. She had been struck by debris. The other, he never even made it in to work that morning. He witnessed what happened and just couldn’t go home for a few days.”
“Not the best odds.” Karen smiled, looking at him as if she knew what he must be thinking. “It would just be good, you know, to have something….”
“My best to you and your family, Mrs. Friedman.” The lieutenant opened the door. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”
OUTSIDE, HAUCK STOOD a moment on the walkway.
He had hoped the name and number in AJ Raymond’s pocket would prove more promising. It was pretty much all he had left.
A check of the phone records where the victim worked hadn’t panned out at all. The call that he’d received—Marty something, the manager had said—was designated a private caller. From a cell phone. Totally untraceable now.
Nor had the girlfriend’s ex. The guy turned out to be a low-life, maybe a wife beater, but his alibi checked. He’d been at a conference at his kid’s school at the time of the accident, and anyway he drove a navy Toyota Corolla, not an SUV. Hauck had double-checked.
Now all he was left with were the conflicting reports from the two eyewitnesses and his APB on the white SUVs.
Next to nothing.
It burned in him. Like AJ Raymond’s red hair.
Someone out there was getting away with murder. He just couldn’t prove it.
Karen Friedma
n was attractive, nice. He wished he could help in some way. It hurt a little, seeing the strain and uncertainty in her eyes. Knowing exactly what she would be going through. What she was going to face.
The heaviness in his heart, he knew it wasn’t tied quite as closely to 9/11 victims as he’d said. But to something deeper, something never very far away.
Norah. She’d be eight now, right?
The thought of her came back to him with a stab, as it always did. A child in a powder blue sweatshirt and braces, playing with her sister on the pavement. A Tugboat Annie toy.
He could still hear the trill of her sweet voice. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily…
He could still see her red, braided hair.
A car door slammed at the curb, rocketing him back. Hauck looked up and saw a nicely dressed couple holding flowers walking up to Karen Friedman’s front door.
Something caught his eye.
One of the garage doors had been opened in the time since he’d arrived. A housekeeper was lugging out a bag of trash.
There was a copper-colored Mustang parked in one of the bays—’65 or ’66, he guessed. A convertible. A red heart decal on the rear fender and a white racing stripe running down the side.
The license plate read CHRLYS BABY.
Hauck went over and knelt, running his hand along the smooth chrome trim.
Son of a bitch…
That’s what AJ Raymond did! He restored old cars. For a second it almost made Hauck laugh out loud. He wasn’t sure how it made him feel, disappointed or relieved, the last of his leads slipping away.
Still, he decided, heading back across the driveway to his car, at least he now knew what the guy was doing with Charles Friedman’s number.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Pensacola, Florida
The huge gray tanker emerged from the mist and cut its engines at the mouth of the harbor.
The shadows of heavy industry: steel-gray trestles, the refinery tanks, the gigantic hydraulic pumps awaiting gas and oil, all lay quiet in the vessel’s approach.
A single launch motored out to meet it.
At the helm the pilot, who was called Pappy, fixed on the waiting ship. As assistant harbormaster, Pensacola Port Authority, his job was to guide the football-field-size craft through the sandy limestone shoals around Singleton Point and then through the busy lanes of the inner harbor, which bustled with commercial traffic as the day wore on. He’d been bringing home large ships like this since he was twenty-two, a job—more like a rite, handed down from his own father, who had done it himself since he was twenty-two. For close to thirty years, Pappy had done this so many times he could pretty much guide home a ship in his sleep, which in the darkened calm before the dawn this morning—if it were a normal morning and this just another tanker—would be exactly what he was about to do.
She’s tall there, Pappy noted, focused on the ship’s hull.
Too tall. The draft line was plainly visible. He stared at the logo on the tanker’s bow.
He’d seen these ships before.
Normally the real skill lay in gauging what the large tanker was drawing and navigating it through the sandbars at the outer rim of the harbor. Then simply follow the lanes, which by 10:00 A.M. could be livelier than the loop into downtown, and make the wide, sweeping arc into Pier 12, which was where the Persephone, according to its papers carrying a full load of Venezuelan crude, was slotted to put in.
But not this morning.
Pappy’s launch approached the large tanker from the port side. As he neared, he focused on the logo of a leaping dolphin on the Persephone’s hull.
Dolphin Oil.
He scratched a weathered hand across his beard and scanned over his entry papers from Maritime Control: 2.3 million barrels of crude aboard. The ship had made the trip up from Trinidad in barely fourteen hours. Fast, Pappy noted, especially for an outdated 1970 ULCC-class piece of junk like this, weighed down with a full load.
They always made it up here fast.
Dolphin Oil.
The first time he’d just been curious. It had come in from Jakarta. He had wondered, how could a ship loaded with slime be riding quite that high? The second time, just a few weeks back, he’d actually snuck below after it docked—inside the belly of the ship, making his way past the distracted crew, and checked out the forward tanks.
Empty. Came as no surprise. At least not to him.
Clean as a newborn’s ass.
He’d brought this up to the harbormaster, not once but twice. But he just patted Pappy on the back like he was some old fool and asked him what his plans were when he retired. This time, though, no glorified paper pusher was going to slip this under a stack of forms. Pappy knew people. People who worked in the right places. People who’d be interested in this kind of thing. This time, when he brought the ship in, he’d prove it.
2.3 million barrels…
2.3 million barrels, my ass.
Pappy sounded the horn and pulled the launch along the ship’s bow. His mate, Al, took over the wheel. A retractable gangway was lowered from the main deck. He prepared to board.
That’s when his cell phone vibrated. He grabbed it off his belt. It was 5:10 in the morning. Anyone not insane was still asleep. The screen read PRIVATE. Text message.
Some kind of picture coming through.
Pappy yelled forward to Al to hold it and jumped back from the Persephone’s gangway. In the predawn light, he squinted at the image on the screen.
He froze.
It was a body. Twisted and contorted on the street. A dark pool beneath the head that Pappy realized was blood.
He brought the screen closer and tried to find the light.
“Oh, Lord God, no…”
His eyes were seized by the image of the victim’s long red dreadlocks. His chest filled up with pain as if he’d been stabbed. He fell back, an inner vice cracking his ribs.
“Pappy!” Al called back from the bridge. “You all right there?”
No. He wasn’t all right.
“That’s Abel,” he gasped, his airways closing. “That’s my son!”
Suddenly, he felt the vibration of another message coming through.
Same: PRIVATE NUMBER.
This time it was just three words that flashed on the screen.
Pappy ripped open his collar and tried to breathe. But it was sorrow knifing at him there, not a heart attack. And anger—at his own pride.
He sank to the deck, the three words flashing in his brain. SEEN ENOUGH NOW?
CHAPTER TWELVE
A month later—a few days after they’d finally held a memorial for Charlie, Karen trying to be upbeat, but it was so, so hard—the UPS man dropped off a package at her door.
It was during the day. The kids were at school. Karen was getting ready to leave. She had a steering-committee meeting at the kids’ school. She was trying as best she could to get back to some kind of normal routine.
Rita, their housekeeper, brought it in, knocking on the bedroom door.
It was a large padded envelope. Karen checked out the sender. The label said it was from a Shipping Plus outlet in Brooklyn. No return name or address. Karen couldn’t think of anyone she knew in Brooklyn.
She went into the kitchen and took a package blade and opened the envelope. Whatever was inside was protected in bubble wrap, which Karen carefully slit open. Curious, she lifted out the contents.
It was a frame. Maybe ten by twelve inches. Chrome. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble.
Inside the frame was what appeared to be a page from some kind of notepad, charred, dirt marks on it, torn on the upper right edge. There were a bunch of random numbers scratched all over it, and a name.
Karen felt her breath stolen away.
The page read From the desk of Charles Friedman.
The writing on it was Charlie’s.
“Ees a gift?” asked Rita, picking up the wrappings.
Karen nodded, barely able to even speak. “Yes.”
It was her husband’s notepad. The stationery Karen had given him herself a few years back. The sheet was torn. The numbers didn’t make sense to her and the name scrawled there was one Karen didn’t recognize. Megan Walsh. A corner of it was charred. It looked as if it had been on the ground for a long time.
But it was Charlie—his writing. Karen felt a tingling sensation all over.
There was a note taped to the frame. Karen pulled it off. It read: I found this, three days after what happened, in the main terminal of Grand Central. It must have floated there. I held on to it, because I didn’t know if it would hurt or help. I pray it helps.
It was unsigned.
Karen couldn’t believe it. On the news she’d heard there were thousands of papers blown all over the station after the explosion. They had settled everywhere. Like confetti after a parade.
Karen fixed intently on Charlie’s writing. It was just a bunch of meaningless numbers and a name she didn’t recognize, scribbled at odd angles. Dated 3/22, weeks before his death. A bunch of random messages, no doubt.
But it was from Charlie. His writing. It was a part of him the day he died.
They had never given her back the piece of his briefcase they’d recovered. This was all she had. Holding it to her, for a moment it was almost as if she felt him there.
Her eyes filled up with tears. “Oh, Charlie…”
In a way it was like he was saying good-bye.
I didn’t know if it would hurt or help, the sender had written.
Oh, yes, it helps. It more than helps…. Karen held it close. A thousand times more.
It was just a jumble of stupid numbers and a name scratched out in his hand. But it was all she had.
She hadn’t been able to cry at his memorial. Too many people. Charlie’s blown-up photo looming above them. And they all wanted it to be upbeat, not sad. She’d tried to be so strong.
