Brooklyn Bones (35 page)

Russo looked exhausted by then
,
though no more than I was. He would not tell me anything, not even where Mary was, though he assured me she would be fine
.
He let me go at last, with only a, “We’ll talk further.” And then he added, “Those two punks will tell us everything. I’d bet my pension on it. Don’t worry about anything.” I caught a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes.

I was glad because, though I had plenty of questions for him too, my adrenaline surge was long gone, and in the aftermath, I was too exhausted
even to ask them. I was past running on empty; I was running on fumes. All I wanted was to take Chris home and hold her, and then collapse.

Someone was delegated to drive us home and see us safely inside. Someone was told to park a car outside the house for the night, and keep his eyes open. Someone else was called to take a look at our probably bugged phone and our probably wired house.

While the de-buggers worked we sat together in a stupor, Chris and I, holding hands and nodding off into the sleep of the terminally overstressed.

The phone rang. Chris answered it, said “Grandpa?” and walked into another room. I heard her faint voice saying “You won’t believe this. I got kidnapped. No, yes…it’s all fine….”

She was gone for a long time, and when she returned she said, “He wanted to talk to you, but I said you were sleeping. I figured you didn’t want to talk. Is that OK? And I told him everything is fine now, we’re both safe.” She stopped and then added, “But I think he was going straight to call about getting a plane ticket home, as soon as he said good-bye.”

“That’s fine,” I mumbled. “I can’t even think about it right now.” But I could, for a minute. “Do you think she’s coming with him? That friend of his?”

“Mom? They broke up a while ago? Maybe you two should talk more.”

***

I woke up on the sofa. A line of pale sunshine was slipping through the shutters, crawling in across the living room floor. Six a.m. My back hurt and my mouth tasted awful. And where was Chris?

My panic subsided when I found her collapsed on her bed, fully clothed, breathing the deep breath of one lost to the world. At least she had made it up to her bed, unlike her mother.

Cold water and a toothbrush helped me wake up a little. I would make coffee somehow in my almost finished kitchen. Looking for the newspaper, I opened my front door to the quiet, early-morning street, where the only sound was cooing pigeons out hunting breakfast. It was almost dark under the trees, the street almost empty, and the air almost cool before the summer heat hit. There was a cop car watching over us, and there was Joe on my steps, reading my newspaper and drinking his own coffee.

I sat down next him on the top step and he handed me a second cup. “I talked to your daughter late last night.”

I braced myself.

“How are you doing?”

He didn’t look at me. I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t know what Chris had told him.

“I…well…things have been very weird…I….”

“You know,” he said conversationally, “you really are an idiot.” He still wasn’t looking at me. “Chris told me the whole story last night.”

“Oh.”

“Why didn’t you call me? How could you walk in there alone…”

“I had to go alone. They insisted. I couldn’t risk Chris.”

“So I could have been somewhere close. Or going for help. We could have figured something out. You’re five foot nothing. You didn’t think you could use some back up?”

“I didn’t think at all. I was…” My voice shook. “If you say one word…if you lecture me…I will never talk to you again. Ever.” Now I was the one who was looking away.

He turned me toward him. His face was a mask. None of his usual amused expression. No warmth. Not even anger. “I am only going say one thing. Don’t you know you can count on me when you are in trouble?”

He stood up. “I’m going to work now. I figured you and the princess needed a quiet day so I sent my guys on another job. They’ll finish here tomorrow, looks like.”

He went down the stairs and out my gate without another word, without even looking back at me. He was halfway down the block before he turned and said, “Try to stay out of trouble.” He still wasn’t smiling.

Then he was in his truck and gone.

I left the paper and the coffee on a table and overwhelmed, went straight up to bed. I curled up under the covers, still in my clothes, and slept until the room was filled with sunshine. I was ready to start the day a second time.

I found a note on Chris’ door. “Didn’t want to wake you. Some of my girls are coming by to take me to breakfast. Going to get a haircut, too. Really grubby after camp. Back later. Love, C. PS Yes, my phone is on. Yes, I will stick to the neighborhood. Yes, I will be careful. I’ll even look both ways before crossing the street.”

What? She was going out alone, after everything that had happened? I certainly did not consider her posse of friends to be any more safe than being alone. I wanted to call and order her home right now, keeping her locked in the house until she returned to camp, and then to send her to school in the fall with an armed guard.

It was not a possibility. I might not be recovered from yesterday for some time to come, but she seemed to be on the way. I wondered if she would convert the very real terrifying experience into an adventure story for her friends. Would experience with an actual crime make her seem glamorous?

Of course I called her anyway. I wanted to be sure she was safe. And told her to get used to it. She said, “Wait,” and next thing I knew a waitress was on the line, saying, “Yeah, Ms. Donato, I got Chris right here with a coupla friends, eating an omelet. Gonna put it on your credit card. You good with that?”

I tried to wash the whole experience away with a very long shower. Freshly scrubbed, freshly shampooed, in fresh clean clothes, I finally settled down with leftover sesame noodles and the coffee Joe had given me. It was now the same temperature as my summer living room, neither hot nor iced, but it was still sweet and caffeinated. It would do while I finally read the paper and then worked out which of my many responsibilities came first.

I flipped on the local news while I ate my breakfast or lunch or whatever it was and promptly spilled my coffee. The talking head on local news had just said something about “the late James Hoyt.”

Now there was a doctor on the screen, confirming that James had been very ill, information Mr. Hoyt insisted on keeping private. His death had come sooner than expected, but they had known for some time that he only had a few months left. There was a parade of famous faces, discussing how much he had given to the life of the city
.

I didn’t believe it then, and I have never believed it since. Oh, I believed he was dead, of course, but I always thought he had found a way to evade his own consequences, just as he had helped his son evade his, all those years ago. He’d taken extra pills, or mixed pills with alcohol, or had a special brew from a bribed pharmacist. Something. And if anyone ever found out, they would call it “depression over ill health.”

Maybe he willed himself to let go now instead of later. I firmly believed his will was more than strong enough to succeed at that.

There was a bit mentioning that his nearest relative, his nephew Steven, was in seclusion. “Seclusion?” I thought. That certainly was a euphemistic word for it. I thought “held by police” might be more accurate.

With James gone, Steven would be left to clean up the mess. He deserved it. The fact that only a few days ago I had some feelings for him seemed less real to me than any dream I had ever dreamed. Less real than a dim memory of something that might have happened when I was a child. Or in another life. It happened a very long time ago, to someone else.

I hoped he would end up in jail. For the next few days, I kept a radio turned to the all-news and read all the papers, from the newspaper of record to the sleaziest tabloid, to see if there was anything more about how James died, or what was happening to Steven. In all the verbiage about James’ life and times, I could not find one word.

I had another meeting with Russo, to fill in some details for him, and give him notes and answer more questions, so I tried to ask my own too. When I asked about Steven, he shook his head and said only two words, “Ongoing investigation.” I hadn’t expected anything better, but it was worth a shot. When I asked if I would have to testify at a trial, or if Chris would, he only shrugged and said, “Wait and see.”

When I pressed him about Mary, he said, “Safe in a psychiatric facility, getting help.” I must have looked horrified, because he laughed and added, “Calm down. It’s no snake pit, believe me. She’s getting good care. We need her to get better so we can ask her some more questions. Not that we haven’t tried, but the answers don’t always relate to what we’re asking. Or even this planet, sometimes.”

“I don’t know what would
have happened without her…I owe her…I can’t even say how much. Please. Please take care of her.”

He nodded. “We owe her too, loony as she is. Someone, somewhere, knows who she is. We’re gonna find them.”

Amazingly enough, they did, though I didn’t learn about it for some time. Deep in her filthy shopping bag of meager possessions, there were two pictures of a young girl, sealed into a zip top plastic bag. Much later, he showed me copies. One was a yearbook photo, and if you got past the too-wide smile and the Brady Bunch curls she did look a little like Chris. The other was from a dime store photo booth. She was gaunt now, her hair string-straight, her eyes surrounded with black eye liner. She wore ankh shaped earrings.

Russo told me that the plastic bag also held a Minnesota birth certificate. They used it to make some connections, tracked down people still in the town who told about the teenage cousin who ran away decades ago, about the parents who followed a trail to New York and then hit a dead end, the heartbroken father who came home and the disturbed mother who refused, who insisted she’d stay until she found her, no matter how long it took.

So Chris had finally found her, behind a plywood wall in our house. I was sure of that now, and a few weeks later I found out that Mary knew it too. She came by my house with a middle-aged woman in a pink suit. Not a New Yorker. Mary looked shaky, but clean and less gaunt, and for the first time ever, her eyes were truly focused when she talked to me. Something had worked for her in the hospital.

“That Lt. Russo told me all about it. I thought I’d ask you if I could see where…where…you know. But maybe not. Maybe not.” She went silent, lost in her thoughts.

“I’m Mary Margaret’s cousin,” the other woman said. “From Minnesota. I’m taking her back home. We’re sure glad that policeman found us.”

“Going back for a visit. Not so sure I’m staying.”

“Mary,” I said, “I have to say thank you, forever and ever. I’ve wanted to, but they wouldn’t tell me how to find you. Do you want to come in? You are certainly welcome. We didn’t…the fireplace is still there…it didn’t seem right…is there anything I can do for you? Anything at all?”

I was babbling. I couldn’t find the right words to tell her what I wanted to say, so I was using a lot of wrong ones.

She shook her head. “You don’t need to say thank you. You found my girl and I found yours.”

Close enough. I nodded, unable to speak.

“Cover up the damn fireplace and hang a pretty picture on it. She liked rainbows.” She stopped, took a deep breath, started again. “We’re taking her back home, my sweetheart, and saying a proper good-bye to her with a minister, choir, resting her next to her grandparents and her poor father. I’m thinking about writing ‘Good Morning, Starshine’ on the stone. She loved that song.” She stared at my house. “Her name was Kristin, you know. Nice Norwegian name. Popular in Minnesota.”

I hugged her hard and she hugged me.

“Remember me to your lovely daughter,” she said as her cousin led her to the car.

As if, I thought. As if Chris would ever forget.

***

My father came home. He took his house back from his tenant and we talk now. We don’t talk a lot, not yet, but we talk. We began to plan a service for Rick, accepting that we might not ever know what really happened to him, but that we needed to remember and honor the man we did know.

Joe showed up at my house with a full crew a few days after our talk on the steps, and seemed like his old self. I was relieved. I could not deal with a lost friendship right now. I had too much else on my plate. I had to return to my internship and make myself useful—working overtime!—or I would not get the credits I needed. My father was back in my life. Chris would be coming home from camp, where she had returned to finish her summer.

Joe came to the party I had to celebrate my brand new kitchen. He looked over the tiles for signs of sloppy grouting until I told him to get a beer and leave my kitchen alone. He went into the living room, where I saw him straightening the picture on the wall. He was the same, but not quite.

Darcy came, still apologizing for introducing me to Steven. I told her to shut up and serve the potato salad. The Pastores came, with a restaurant-size pan of lasagna and some more old photo albums. They admired everything about the kitchen. Then Mr. Pastore got into a discussion with Joe about tiles and Mrs. Pastore immediately began cutting up the lasagna. The perfect guests.