Hold Tight (11 page)

“What’s it to you?”

Mike pointed to his arm. “The D tattoo.”

“That has nothing to do with my name.”

“ Dartmouth?”

Anthony the bouncer stared at him. Then he nodded slowly.

“You?”

“Vox clamantis in deserto,”Mike
said, reciting the school’s motto.

Anthony handled the translation: “A voice crying in the wilderness.” He smiled. “Never quite got that.”

“Me neither,” Mike said. “You play ball?”

“Football. All-Ivy. You?”

“Hockey.”

“All-Ivy?”

“And All-American,” Mike said.

Anthony arched an eyebrow, impressed.

“You have any children, Anthony?”

“I have a three-year-old son.”

“And if you thought your kid was in trouble, would you, Reggie and Tyrone be able to stop you from getting inside?”

Anthony let loose a long breath. “What makes you so sure your kid is inside?”

Mike told him about seeing DJ Huff in the varsity jacket.

“That kid?” Anthony shook his head. “He didn’t come in here. You think I’d let some chicken-ass in a high school varsity jacket in? He ran down that alley.”

He pointed about ten more yards up the street.

“Any idea where it goes?” Mike asked.

“Dead-ends, I think. I don’t go back there. No reason to. It’s for junkies and the like. Now I need a favor from you.”

Mike waited.

“Everyone is watching us going at it here. I just let you go, I lose cred-and out here I live on cred. You know what I’m saying?”

“I do.”

“So I’m going to cock my fist and you’re going to run off like a scared little girl. You can run down the alley if you want. Do you understand me?”

“Can I ask one thing first?”

“What?”

Mike reached into his wallet.

“I already told you,” Anthony said. “I don’t want-”

Mike showed him a picture of Adam.

“Have you seen this kid?”

Anthony swallowed hard.

“This is my son. Have you seen him?”

“He’s not in here.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Never seen him. And now?”

Anthony grabbed Mike by the lapel and cocked his fist. Mike cowered and screamed, “Please don’t, okay, I’m sorry, I’m going!” He pulled back. Anthony let him go. Mike started to run. Behind him he heard Anthony say, “Yeah, boy, you better run…”

Some of the patrons applauded. Mike sprinted down the block and turned into the alley. He almost tripped over a row of dented trash cans. Broken glass crunched beneath his feet. He stopped short, looked ahead, and saw yet another hooker. Or at least he figured that she was a hooker. She leaned against a brown Dumpster as if it were a part of her, another limb, and if it was gone she would fall and never get up. Her wig was a purplish hue and looked like something stolen from David Bowie’s closet in 1974. Or maybe Bowie ’s dented trash can. It looked like bugs were crawling in it.

The woman smiled toothlessly at him.

“Hey, baby.”

“Did you see a boy run through here?”

“Lots of boys run through here, sugar.”

If her voice had picked up a notch, it may have registered as languid. She was skinny and pale and though the word “junkie” wasn’t tattooed on her forehead, it might as well have been.

Mike looked for a way out. There was none. There was no exit, no doors. He spotted several fire escapes, but they looked pretty rusty. So if Huff had indeed gone here, how had he gotten out? Where had he gone to-or had he sneaked out while he argued with Anthony? Or had Anthony been lying to him, trying to get rid of him?

“You looking for that high school boy, sugar?”

Mike stopped and turned back to the junkie.

“The high school boy. All young and handsome and everything? Ooo, baby, it excites me just to talk about him.”

Mike took a tentative step toward her, almost afraid that a big step might cause too much vibration and make her fall apart and vanish into the rubble already at her feet. “Yes.”

“Well, come here, sugar, and I’ll tell you where he is.”

Another step.

“Closer, sugar. I don’t bite. Unless you into that kind of thing.” Her laugh was a nightmarish cackle. Her front bridge dropped down when she opened her mouth. She chewed bubble gum-Mike could smell it-but it didn’t cover up the decay from some sort of dead tooth.

“Where is he?”

“You got some money?”

“Plenty if you tell me where he is.”

“Let me see some.”

Mike didn’t like it, but he didn’t know what else to do. He pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. She reached out a bony hand. The hand reminded Mike of his old
Tales from the Cryptcomic
books, the skeleton reaching out of the coffin.

“Tell me first,” he said.

“You don’t trust me?”

Mike didn’t have time. He ripped the bill and gave her half. She took it, sighed.

“I’ll give you the other half when you talk,” Mike said. “Where is he?”

“Why, sugar,” she said, “he’s right behind you.”

Mike started to turn when someone punched him in the liver.

A good liver shot will take out all the fight and temporarily paralyze you. Mike knew that. This one didn’t do that, but it came damn close. The pain was staggering. Mike’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. He dropped to one knee. A second blow came from the side and hit him in the ear. Something hard ricocheted across his head. Mike tried to process, tried to swim through the onslaught, but another blow, a kick this time, got him underneath the ribs. He flopped onto his back.

Instinct took over.

Move, he thought.

Mike rolled and felt something sharp dig into his arm. Broken glass probably. He tried to scramble away. But another blow hit him in the head. He could almost feel his brain jar to the left. A hand grabbed his ankle.

Mike kicked out. His heel connected with something soft and pliable. A voice yelled, “Damn!”

Someone jumped on him. Mike had been in scrapes before, though always on ice. Still he’d learned a few things. For example, you don’t throw punches if you don’t have to. Punches break hands. At a distance, yes, you might do that. But this was in close. He bent his arm and swung blindly. His forearm connected. There was a cracking, squelching noise and blood spurted.

Mike realized that he’d hit a nose.

He took another blow, tried to roll with it. He kicked out wildly. It was dark, the night filling with grunts of exertion. He reared his head back, tried to head-butt.

“Help!” Mike shouted. “Help! Police!”

He somehow scrambled to his feet. He couldn’t see faces. But there was more than one of them. More than two, he guessed. They all jumped him at the same time. He crashed against the Dumpsters. Bodies, including his, tumbled to the ground. Mike fought hard, but they were all over him now. He managed to scratch a face with his fingernails. His shirt got torn.

And then Mike saw a blade.

That froze him. For how long, he couldn’t say. But long enough. He saw the blade and he froze and then he felt a dull thud on the side of his head. He dropped back, his skull smacking the pavement. Someone pinned down his arms. Someone else got his legs. He felt a thud on his chest. Then the blows seemed to come from everywhere. Mike tried to move, tried to cover up, but his arms and legs wouldn’t obey.

He could feel himself slipping away. Surrendering.

The blows stopped. Mike felt the weight on his chest lessen. Someone had gotten up or been knocked off him. His legs were free.

Mike opened his eyes, but there were only shadows. A final kick, a toe shot, landed squarely on the side of his head. All became darkness until finally there was nothing at all.

AT three in the morning, Tia tried Mike’s phone yet again.

No answer.

The Boston Four Seasons was beautiful and she loved her room. Tia loved staying in fancy hotels-who didn’t? She loved the sheets and the room service and flipping the television by herself. She had worked hard until midnight, burying herself in preparation for to- morrow’s deposition. The cell phone sat in her pocket, set on vibrate. When it wouldn’t go off, Tia would pull it out and check the bars and make sure that she hadn’t maybe missed the vibration.

But no calls came in.

Where the hell was Mike?

She called him, of course. She called the house. She called Adam’s cell phone. Panic played at her fringes; she tried hard not to let it all the way in. Adam was one thing. Mike another. Mike was a grown man. He was ridiculously competent. That was one of the things that first attracted her to him. Antifeminist as that might sound, Mike Baye made her feel safe and warm and fully protected. He was a rock.

Tia wondered what to do.

She could get in the car and drive home. It would take about four hours, maybe five. She could be home by morning. But what exactly would she do when she arrived? Should she call the police-but would they listen so soon and really what would they do at this hour?

Three A.M. Only one person she could think to call.

His number was on her BlackBerry, though she had never actually used it. She and Mike shared a Microsoft Outlook program that contained one address and phone book, plus a calendar, for both of them. They synchronized their BlackBerrys with each other and in this way, the theory went, they would know each other’s appointments. It also meant that they would have all the other’s personal and business contact information.

And in that way, it showed they had no secrets, didn’t it?

She thought about that-about secrets and inner thoughts, about our need for them, and as a mother and wife, her fear of them. But there was no time now. She found the number and hit the SEND button.

If Mo had been asleep, he didn’t sound like it.

“Hello?”

“It’s Tia.”

“What’s wrong?”

She could hear the fear in his voice. The man had no wife, no kids. In many ways, he only had Mike. “Have you heard from Mike?”

“Not since about eight thirty.” Then he repeated: “What’s wrong?”

“He was trying to find Adam.”

“I know.”

“We spoke about that around nine, I guess. Haven’t heard a word since.”

“Did you call his cell?”

Tia now knew how Mike had felt when she’d asked him something equally idiotic. “Of course.”

“I’m getting dressed as we speak,” Mo said. “I’ll drive over and check the house. Do you still hide the key in that fake rock by that fence post?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, I’m on my way.”

“Do you think I should call the police?”

“Might as well wait until I get there. Twenty, thirty minutes tops. He might have just fallen asleep in front of the TV or something.”

“You believe that, Mo?”

“No. I’ll call you when I get there.”

He hung up. Tia swung her legs out of the bed. Suddenly the room had lost all appeal. She hated sleeping alone, even in deluxe hotels with high-thread-count sheets. She needed her husband next to her. Always. It was rare they spent nights apart and she missed him more than she wanted to say. Mike wasn’t necessarily a big man, but he was substantial. She liked the warmth of his body next to hers, the way he kissed her forehead whenever he got up, the way he’d rest his strong hand on her sleeping back.

She remembered one night when Mike was a little out of breath. After much prodding, he had admitted to feeling a tightness in his chest. Tia, who wanted to be strong for her man, nearly collapsed when she heard that. It had ended up being bad indigestion, but she had openly wept at just the thought. She pictured her husband clutching his chest and falling to the floor. And she knew. She knew then and there that someday it could very well happen, maybe not for thirty or forty or fifty years, but it would happen, that or something equally horrible, because that was what happens to every couple, happy or not, and that she simply would not survive if it happened to him. Sometimes, late at night, Tia would watch him sleep and whisper to both Mike and the powers that be: “Promise me I’ll go first. Promise me.”

Call the police.

But what would they do? Nothing yet. On TV the FBI rushes out. Tia knew from a recent update on criminal law that an adult over eighteen could not even be declared missing this close in, unless she had serious evidence that he’d been kidnapped or was in physical danger.

She had nothing.

Besides, if she called now, the best-case scenario was that they’d have an officer stop by the house. Mo might be there. There could be some sort of misunderstanding.

So wait the twenty or thirty minutes.

Tia wanted to call Guy Novak’s house and talk to Jill, just to hear her voice. Something to reassure. Damn. Tia had been so happy about this trip and getting into this luxurious room and throwing on the big terry cloth robe and ordering room service and now all she wanted was the familiar. This room had no life, no warmth. The loneliness made her shiver. Tia got up and lowered the air-conditioning.

It was all so damn fragile, that was the thing. Obvious, sure, but for the most part we block-we refuse to think about how easily our lives could be torn asunder, because when we recognize it, we lose our minds. The ones who are fearful all the time, who need to medicate to function? It is because they understand the reality, how thin the line is. It isn’t that they can’t accept the truth-it’s that they can’t block it.

Tia could be that way. She knew it and fought hard to keep it at bay. She suddenly envied her boss, Hester Crimstein, for not having anybody. Maybe that was better. Sure, on a larger scale, it was healthy to have people out there you cared about more than yourself. She knew that. But then there was the abject fear you would lose it. They say possessions own you. Not so. Loved ones own you. You are forever held hostage once you care so much.

The clock wouldn’t move.

Tia waited. She flicked on the television. Infomercials dominated the late-night landscape. Commercials for training and jobs and schools-the only people who watch TV at this crazy hour, she guessed, had none of those things.

The cell phone finally buzzed at nearly four in the morning. Tia snatched it up, saw Mo’s number on the caller ID, answered it.

“Hello?”

“No sign of Mike,” Mo said. “No sign of Adam either.”

LOREN Muse’s door read ESSEX COUNTY CHIEF INVESTIGATOR. She stopped and silently read it every time she opened the door. Her of- fice was in the right-hand corner. Her detectives had desks on the same floor. Loren’s office was windowed and she never closed her door. She wanted to feel one with them and yet above them. When she needed privacy, which was rare, she used one of the interrogation rooms that also lined the station.

Only two other detectives were in when she arrived at six thirty A.M. and both were about to head out when the shift changed at seven. Loren checked the blackboard to make sure that there were no new homicides. There were none. She hoped to get the results from the NCIC on the fingerprints of her Jane Doe, the not-a-whore in the morgue. She checked the computer. Nothing yet.

The Newark police had located a working surveillance camera not far from the Jane Doe murder scene. If the body had been transported to that spot in a car-and there was no reason to think someone carried it-then the vehicle could very well be on the tape. Of course, figuring out which one would be a hell of a task. Probably hundreds of vehicles would be on it and she doubted one would have a sign on the back reading BODY IN TRUNK.

She checked her computer and yep, the stream had been downloaded. The office was quiet, so she figured, well, why not? She was about to hit the PLAY button when someone rapped lightly on her door.

“Got a second, Chief?”

Clarence Morrow stood outside her doorway and leaned his head in. He was nearing sixty, a black man with a coarse gray-white mustache and a face where everything looked a little swollen, as if he’d just gotten into a fight. There was gentleness to him and unlike every other guy in this division, he never swore or drank.

“Sure, Clarence, what’s up?”

“I almost called you at home last night.”

“Oh?”

“I thought I figured out the name of your Jane Doe.”

That made Loren sit up. “But?”

“We got a call from the Livingston PD about a Mr. Neil Cordova. He lives in town and owns a chain of barbershops. Married, two kids, no record. Anyway, he said his wife, Reba, was missing and, well, she roughly matched your Jane Doe’s description.”

“But?” Muse said again.

“But she disappeared yesterday-after we found the body.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive. The husband said he saw her that morning before he went to work.”

“He could be lying.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did anyone look into it?”

“Not at first. But here’s the funny thing. Cordova knew someone on the police force in town. You know how it is out there. Everyone knows someone. They found her car. It was parked at the Ramada in East Hanover.”

“Ah,” Muse said. “A hotel.”

“Right.”

“So Mrs. Cordova wasn’t really missing?”

“Well,” Clarence said, stroking his chin, “that’s the funny thing.”

“What is?”

“Naturally the Livingston cop felt like you did. Mrs. Cordova hooked up with some lover and was late getting home or something. That’s when he called me-the Livingston cop, that is. He didn’t want to be the one to tell his friend, the husband, this news. So he calls me to do it. As a favor.”

“Go on.”

“So what do I know-I call Cordova. I explain that we found his wife’s car in a local hotel lot. He tells me that’s impossible. I tell him it’s there right now, if he wants to go see it.” He stopped. “Damn.”

“What?”

“Should I have told him that? I mean, thinking back on it. Might have been an invasion of her privacy to tell him. And suppose he showed up there with a gun or something? Man, I didn’t think that through.” Clarence frowned under his coarse mustache. “Should I have kept quiet about the car, Chief?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay, whatever. Anyway, this Cordova refuses to believe what I’m suggesting.”

“Like most men.”

“Right, sure, but then he says something interesting. He says he first started to panic when she didn’t pick up their nine-year-old daughter from some special ice-skating class in Airmont. That wouldn’t be like her. He said she’d planned to spend some time at the Palisades Mall in Nyack-he said she likes to buy the kids basics at Target-and then head over to pick up the girl.”

“And the mother never showed?”

“Right. The ice rink called the father’s cell phone when they couldn’t reach the mother. Cordova drove up and picked the kid up. He figured that maybe his wife got stuck in traffic or something. There was an accident on 287 earlier in the day and she was bad about keeping her cell phone charged, so he was concerned but didn’t go into full panic when he didn’t reach her. As it got later and later, he got more and more worried.”

Muse thought about it. “If Mrs. Cordova met up with a boyfriend at a hotel, she might have just forgotten to pick up the kid.”

“I agree, except for one thing. Cordova already went online and checked his wife’s credit card records. She had been up at the Palisades Mall that afternoon. She did indeed buy stuff at Target. Spent forty-seven dollars and eighteen cents.”

“Hmm.” Muse signaled for Clarence to take a seat. He did so. “So she goes way up to the Palisades Mall and then comes all the way back down to meet the lover, forgetting her kid who is getting skating lessons right near the mall.” She looked at him. “Does sound weird.”

“You had to hear his voice, Chief. The husband’s, I mean. He was so distraught.”

“I guess you could check with the Ramada, see if anybody recognizes her.”

“I did. I had the husband scan a photo and e-mail it over. No one remembers seeing her.”

“That doesn’t mean much. New people are probably on duty and she could have sneaked in after, I don’t know, her lover checked in. But her car is still there?”

“Yep. And that’s weird, isn’t it? For the car to still be there? You have your affair, you get back in your car, you drive home, or whatever. So even if it was an affair, wouldn’t you think by now it’s an affair gone wrong? Like he grabbed her or there was some violence-”

“-or she ran away with him.”

“Right, that could be it too. But it’s a nice car. Acura MDX, four months old. Wouldn’t you take that?”

Muse thought about it, shrugged.

Clarence said, “I want to look into it, okay?”

“Go for it.” She thought about it some more. “Do me a favor. Check and see if any other women have been reported missing in Livingston or that area. Even if just for a short while. Even if the cops didn’t take it too seriously.”

“Already did it.”

“And?”

“None. Oh, but some woman called to report her husband and son were missing.” He checked his pad. “Her name is Tia Baye. Husband is Mike, son is Adam.”

“The locals looking into it?”

“I guess, I don’t really know.”

“If it wasn’t for the missing kid too,” Muse said, “maybe this Baye guy ran off with Mrs. Cordova.”

“You want me to look for a connection?”

“If you want. If that’s the case, it’s not a criminal matter anyway. Two consenting adults are allowed to disappear together for a little while.”

“Yeah, okay. But, Chief?”

Muse loved that he called her that. Chief. “What?”

“I got a feeling there’s something more here.”

“Go with that then, Clarence. Keep me in the loop.”