Eyes of the Innocent: A Mystery (33 page)

The street ran along the side of a vast warehouse, the old-fashioned kind made of painted cinder block. Denardo eased to a halt just before the end of the building and pulled over to the side of it. I followed his lead and soon the four of us were joined in a small huddle between the cars.

“The office is over there,” Gomes said in a hushed voice, pointing around the corner. “It’s on the second floor. There’s a parking lot and some stairs that go up there.”

“Can Primo see the parking lot from his office?” I asked.

“Only if he’s looking,” Gomes replied.

He could only see if he was looking. Thanks, Confucius.

“So what’s the plan?” Tommy asked. All eyes were on me.

“Well…” I said, stalling to give myself time to think of something.

“You got two females in trouble,” Denardo said. “I say we bust in. If we jump on this dude quickly, he won’t know what hit him.”

“Yeah, but what if he’s armed?” Tommy asked.

“He’ll only have time to get off one shot, at most,” Denardo said. “There are four of us, so that means three of us will get through.”

I got the sense someone had watched too many action movies.

“Whoah, whoah, whoah,” I said. “This isn’t Little Bighorn. No one is charging into battle to get shot.”

Denardo and Tommy had differing reactions to this: the former disappointed, the latter relieved.

“We need to know what we’re up against first,” I said. “Let me just have a look. I’ll be right back.”

I peeked around the corner and saw a black Lincoln Town Car—the brand preferred by livery cabdrivers and short, squat goateed kidnappers everywhere.

Next to it, I could see a rickety set of metal steps that led to a second-floor office. At the top of the stairs there was a small landing, with a door that had windows on either side. The first story of the warehouse was windowless—just a long brick wall. So I crept along it, staying flush to the building to diminish the chance I could be spotted from above.

I reached the stairs and gently tiptoed up, taking the last few steps on my hands and knees so I could stay below the sightline of the windows, then crawled over to the side of the building. Leaning against the concrete, I stayed perfectly still for a few seconds, just to have a listen. But all I could hear was the wind hitting the dried stalks of grass in the nearby marshland.

Were we too late? Had Primo already done something awful and irreversible? It was possible, but there was no sense lingering on that thought. We had to push forward as if Sweet Thang and Akilah were still among the breathing.

That meant I had to take a look inside. Flattening myself against the building, I quietly eased into a standing position next to one of the windows, then turned and nudged myself, inch by tiny inch, toward the pane. I didn’t want any large movements, nothing that might make the metal grates squeak or catch the peripheral vision of someone on the inside. But slowly, achingly, I got my body in a position, and soon my right eyeball was nearing the point where I would be able to see into the office.

And then, with roughly the same volume as a jet plane taking off, my cell phone rang.

*   *   *

I jerked my head back and my hand flew to my pants pocket to silence the phone, but I was too slow—it let out two piercing rings before I could find the correct button.

As I withdrew my hand from my pocket, I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. I braced myself for the office door to fly open and for Primo or one of his goons to come barreling out, gun first. I considered jumping off the landing—it was only one story down. But then what? It was just me and a nearly empty parking lot. I’d be target practice.

I waited, but there was no barreling. No gun. No Primo. I sank back down against the warehouse wall, thankful for soundproof doors or the wind direction or whatever it was that ensured that the county coroner wouldn’t be listing my cause of death as “Verizon Wireless LG Flip Phone.”

It took me a moment to get my nerve, then I began sliding back toward the window so I could finally have a look inside.

I’m not sure what I thought would be in there—Akilah and Sweet Thang bound and blindfolded, pleading for their lives? Primo cackling while he sharpened a comically large knife? Blood and gore everywhere?—but the first thing I saw was a battered gunmetal-gray desk, heaped with old mail, invoices, and other assorted paper. There was a Chinese restaurant calendar from 2004 taped to the wall behind the desk. A black filing cabinet had been shoved in one corner. In the other corner, a small flat-screen television sat atop a cheap entertainment center. It was sparse, and other than the TV, all the furniture looked like it had been claimed off the side of the road somewhere.

More to the point, there were no people inside, at least none that I could see. They must have been in the warehouse—and the only entrance to the warehouse I could see was inside the office.

I tried the door. Locked. Of course. And Denardo wasn’t crashing through this one—it was steel, with a metal lock guard. I focused on the windows instead. They had bars on them, but maybe if I could break through the glass, I could reach around behind the door and unlock it.

Was I capable of punching through a window? I had no idea. It wasn’t exactly a graduation requirement at Amherst. There was only one way to find out. I hiked my jacket sleeve down over my hand, made a fist, and threw a hard jab.

I connected—it helps when you’re hitting a stationary target—but I’m quite sure it hurt me more than it hurt the window. The pain shot through my hand into my wrist and I recoiled, shaking my arm until the pain stopped radiating. Then I gritted my teeth and tried again, harder. This time, the pain made it all the way to my elbow.

“Dammit,” I said.

“You sure make a lousy action hero,” Tommy said from the bottom of the stairs, where he, Denardo, and Gomes had assembled to watch my effort.

“You got a better idea?” I said, feeling my battered knuckle throbbing.

“I do,” Denardo said. He disappeared around the corner for a second, then came back wielding a large, L-shaped tire iron. He climbed the metal stairs, which rattled and groaned under his weight, then performed a quick appraisal of the window.

“You might want to stand over there,” he said, gesturing to the other side of the landing.

I did as instructed. Denardo swung the tire iron with both hands, baseball style. The glass cracked but did not break. It was thick stuff and, apparently, shatter resistant. He hit it again. And again. As the crack in the glass got marginally larger, our chances of being able to sneak up on Primo were getting rapidly smaller. But, at this point, I couldn’t think of an alternative. This was our only way in. All I could do was hope Primo didn’t hear us.

Denardo bore down on his task, getting some good licks in, grunting at the effort. My phone rang again, but I didn’t bother to look at it, nor was I as concerned about the noise. It was now but a soft tinkle compared to the racket Denardo was making.

Finally, he created a small hole in the window. From there, the rest of it came away pretty easily. He cleared away a few shards that clung to the frame, then reached around and fumbled with the door handle until it opened.

“Nice work,” I said.

Denardo, who was breathing heavily, went inside, straight to the door that led to the warehouse on the far side. He began studying it.

“This thing is for real,” he said. “I don’t know if I’d do anything but dent this one.”

My phone rang again. Again, I reached into my pocket and silenced it.

“Do you know how to pick a lock?” I asked.

“No. Do you?”

“Yeah, me and all the other kids from Millburn.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Think our pal Hector knows?”

“Even if he did, you need tools for that,” Denardo said. “That boy ain’t got nothing but boxer shorts and shriveled balls right now.”

We stared at the door a little more.

“We’re wasting time,” I said.

My phone rang again.

“Why don’t you answer that?” Denardo asked.

“It’s just the office,” I said.

“Maybe they could call a locksmith for us.”

Somehow I doubted any reputable locksmith would walk past a shattered window and pick an interior door with no questions asked. Then again, I was starting to feel desperate and didn’t have a lot of other ideas. It couldn’t hurt.

I fished my still ringing phone out of my pocket. Out of habit, I glanced at the screen before answering it, expecting it would read “Office Incoming.”

But it didn’t. The words on the screen took me a second to parse. Then I felt another one of those primal rushes of energy.

The caller was “Thang, Sweet 2.”

Primo was surprised at how resourceful Byers’s little whore had been at eluding him.

Torching the girl’s house had actually been Byers’s idea—a pointless, pathetic attempt to save his own wretched life. Byers told Primo he instructed the girl to hide the evidence in her house, in a place where no one could find it. So, it stood to reason, destroying the house would mean destroying the evidence. If it took out the girl, as well? All the better.

But the girl hadn’t been home when the fire was set. And that bothered Primo. After all, what if the girl hadn’t hidden the evidence in her house? What if she kept it on her person? What if she left it somewhere else?

It was a loose end and it kept eating at Primo. He realized he couldn’t be sure he committed the perfect crime while the girl—and possibly the evidence—was still out there. So he set about tracking her down and reeling her in. With all the information Byers had given him, it wasn’t going to be hard.

Except it was. He came back to the house the morning after the fire, but she wasn’t there. He rerented the New York thugs and instructed them to find her. But through the next day, they reported only a series of near misses. They chased her all over the city, they said. But somehow the girl managed to slip by them every time.

Finally, Primo came up with a new plan: stop chasing her. Make her think the heat was off. She would show up again at her house eventually—it was the only roof she had, even if it was burned. And when she did, they would grab her.

So Primo and his men set up surveillance near her house and waited. It took twenty-four hours before their patience paid off. The girl came back, dragging a friend. Primo took both of them—the last thing he needed was another loose end.

Soon it would all be over.

CHAPTER 9

I had forgotten about Sweet Thang’s second cell phone. But now it came back to me, vividly: how she kept a spare for when she talked out the batteries on the first one, how I scoffed at her when she told me about it, how I shook my head as I stored both numbers. And now it looked like some kind of brilliant.

“Hello?” I said in a quiet voice.

Dead air.

“Hello?” I whispered again, just a little louder.

The reply was a long, barely audible “Sssshhhhh.”

The shush belonged to Sweet Thang, and I felt an immediate and powerful sense of relief just knowing she was alive. I gripped the phone tightly, as if holding it was akin to holding Sweet Thang herself, and if I merely managed not to let go, everything would turn out fine.

The next noise was something like static, perhaps the phone’s mouthpiece rubbing against something. Then there was jostling, like the phone was being buffeted as she walked.

I cranked the volume on my earpiece as loud as it could go. Denardo frowned at me curiously. Cradling the phone against my ear, I pulled out my notepad, turned to a fresh page, and scribbled, “It’s our girls. Shhhh.”

He nodded.

I pressed my ear against the phone and concentrated, trying to pick out some sound I could identify, something that would give me a hint as to her whereabouts. There was nothing but more jostling. Then, suddenly, I heard Sweet Thang, as loud and clear as if she had the phone to her mouth:

“It’s not in the bathroom,” she said. “Maybe Akilah will find it in the bedroom.”

Okay. So they were in someone’s residence. And they were looking for something.

“I’m getting tired of this,” a male voice replied. It was a little more distant sounding—across a room perhaps—but I could make it out okay. It had an accent that came from well south of the border, if not south of the equator. It was agitiated but also authoritative, the voice of someone used to being in charge.

Primo. It had to be Primo.

“So, tell me, honestly, do you like the paint color in here?” Sweet Thang said. “It’s a Ralph Lauren color. They called it ‘Sullivan,’ but I call it ‘Sulli’ for short.”

“You are talking to me about paint?” Primo bristled. “These gentlemen here are ready to hurt you, badly, and you’re talking to me about paint?”

“Paint is important,” Sweet Thang replied.

Was it ever. I knew that paint. And I knew where I could find it: Sweet Thang’s apartment. It was the color she had just painted her walls.

I speed-walked out the office door, gesturing for Denardo to follow me. Placing my finger over the phone’s mouthpiece, I whispered, “We have to get to an apartment in Jersey City as fast as your truck can take us,” and recited the address from memory. Then I added: “But no siren.”

We couldn’t risk the noise. Primo would get suspicious if Sweet Thang’s pocket started sounding like it had an ambulance inside it. Denardo rounded up the other two members of our rescue crew. As we hurried toward Denardo’s SUV, I held my index finger to my mouth in a shushing gesture so they wouldn’t start jabbering, then dove into the backseat with Tommy.

He mouthed the words “Call the cops?” but I shook my head. The police had already failed me once. There was no sense in wasting more time with them. And, more to the point, I didn’t need this to turn into an armed hostage situation. Someone else could worry about what laws had been broken later. I just wanted the girls returned unharmed.

“It’s not in the bedroom,” I heard Akilah saying. “It’s got to be in here somewhere. I had it when I came in and I didn’t leave with it. Let me check the couch again.”