Love and Fear (5 page)

She shrugged her square shoulders. “My folks don’t have a lot of money, and this makes it much easier for them. It also means I didn’t have to take out a loan this year.
Even though I live on campus and have the food plan, it costs a lot to live in this city.”

Gulliver couldn’t argue with that. He asked her what she thought of Bella.

“I liked Bella when I met her, and I would have been happy to have her around all the time. She has a real sense of style that has nothing to do with fashion.”

“I don’t understand,” said Gulliver.

“A lot of the kids here are fashion kids. But Bella’s style seems to come from inside her. She’s serious and deep. When she looks at things, you can just tell she sees them differently than other people do. Like she can see inside them.”

Gulliver nodded. He got it. He had that knack too.

“I think we would have been friends if we had the chance. I would have learned a lot from her.”

“Maybe you’ll still have that chance, Niki.”

“I hope so. Are you going to find her, Mr. Dowd?”

“I usually do find who I’m looking for.”

She got a worried look on her face. “But not always?”

“No, Niki. Not always.”

She thought about that for a second. “How can I help?”

“How long did Bella live here before she stopped pretending?”

“About a week. Just long enough so that if anyone checked, she was cool. But even after she moved out, she would still hang out here sometimes between classes and stuff. We didn’t have the same schedule because we aren’t in the same major, but we would run into each other now and then. Why?”

“If someone was stalking her, it might have taken that person a while to figure out she wasn’t living here.”

Niki shuddered as if she had the chills. “Stalking her! That freaks me out.”

“Did she ever mention that to you? That there was someone hanging around her? Did you ever see anyone in the lobby or in the halls who didn’t belong or made you feel strange?”

Niki’s face changed almost at once, but she didn’t speak right away. It was as if she wasn’t sure if what she had thought of meant anything.

“Don’t edit yourself, Niki. Tell me anything, even if it seems foolish or unimportant. Let me judge it. Okay?”

“Well, there was this one time…” Her voice trailed off. She shook her head. “No, it’s silly.”

“You’re right, it’s probably nothing. Tell me anyway.”

“One day last term. In October, I think. There was a man just outside the entrance
to the dorm. And when I was coming into the building, he walked up to me. He said he knew I was Bella’s roommate and that he had something for her.”

“Something?”

“A note for her,” Niki said. “He asked if I could please give it to her. He said it was important and that he would really appreciate it.”

“What happened?”

She made a face. Shrugged. “It was just a note in an envelope. I told him I would give it to her when I saw her. He thanked me and left. But she had already moved into her own place by then, so it sat on her bed for about a week. I wasn’t in the room when she picked it up. I don’t even know when she got it or if she read it. I just looked over at the bed one day, and the envelope was gone.”

“And she never mentioned it to you?” Gulliver asked.

“No. Never. But like I said, we only ran into each other now and then. She never asked me where it came from. She just never said anything.”

“Is it okay if I ask about the man who gave the envelope to you?”

Niki said, “Sure. Why not?”

“Old or young?”

“Older. Maybe sixty or a little older, I guess.”

“Hair?”

“Long and gray. Kind of straggly.”

“Eye color?”

Niki thought about that. “Blue. Dark blue. And his skin had lines in it. His cheeks were very thin. He was nice, though, Mr. Dowd. He wasn’t, like, crazy or anything. He was kind of like a nice grandfather.”

“Anything else?” Gulliver asked.

“He had stained teeth, like he smoked.”

“How did he—”

“Wait. His hands were stained too, but not yellow. They were speckled with paint maybe.”

“That’s great, Niki. You’re doing great. How did he speak? Did he have a foreign accent or a strange voice or anything like that?”

“No. At least, not that I can remember,” she said, almost disappointed.

Gulliver thanked Niki and got ready to leave, but he had one more thing he was dying to ask her. “Niki, can I ask you a question that’s not about Bella?”

“Sure, Mr. Dowd.”

“When you saw me for the first time, you didn’t react at all. Most people do, you know. When they see how small I am. When they see my body’s kind of strange. Most people’s eyes get big. Their faces change, or they force themselves to look blank. But not you. Why?”

She looked like she wanted to say something but was holding back.

“You can say anything to me, Niki. You won’t hurt my feelings, no matter what it is. I promise.”

“We’re all kind of freaks here, Mr. Dowd. We’re the fashion kids or the art kids. We all feel different here. To me you don’t seem so different.”

“Thanks for telling me that,” he said and turned to go.

“Mr. Dowd. There’s something else.”

“Something else?”

“About the man who gave me the note.”

“What about him?”

“He had style. Flair. He had a brown fedora on, with the front brim turned down, and a camel-hair coat, single-breasted. And he had a nice silk scarf. But none of the clothes were new. They looked…I don’t know. Lived in.”

“If I could show you a photo of him, would you remember him?”

“I would.”

“Thanks again, Niki.”

“I hope you find her. Will you tell me what happens, Mr. Dowd? No matter what?”

“I will. I promise.”

Gulliver left the dorm and headed back into Brooklyn. On the subway, he thought about the man and the note. He wondered if they had anything to do with Bella’s vanishing. He thought about how none of the people Joey Vespucci had hired had bothered talking to Niki. They’d just assumed since Bella had her own place that her “roommate” didn’t matter. It wasn’t always the little things that mattered. But it often was. You had to look at even the stuff that didn’t make sense.

ELEVEN

Ahmed and Tony were waiting for Gulliver at his office when he got back to Red Hook. Both looked antsy. Like they had been pacing as they waited. Like they had something to tell Gulliver. He was right. They both started talking before he was two feet inside the office.

“Ahmed first,” Gulliver said.

“Heard some stuff about the boyfriend,” he said.

“Good. How about you, Tony?”

“There was some guy who used to hang out around her building in Greenpoint.
I spoke to almost everybody in the building. Took me all freakin’ day.”

“Let me guess,” Gulliver said. “Older man with gray hair and a brown hat. Thin but nice. Polite.”

The shock on Tony’s face was answer enough. Gulliver was right.

“First let’s hear what Ahmed has to say about the boyfriend. Mike Goodwin is his name, right?”

“That’s right, little man. Friends say the breakup got kind of ugly. He wanted them to still see only each other even though they’d both be away at different schools.”

“But Bella wasn’t having any of that. Was she?”

Ahmed shook his head. “No way. Let’s just say the boyfriend didn’t like Bella saying no to him. I mean, the boy ain’t stupid enough to get physical with Joey Vespucci’s little girl. But he said some things in front of people. You know what I’m saying?”

Tony asked, “What kind of things?”

“Like, how if he couldn’t have her nobody should have her. You know, things along that line.”

Tony’s face turned a bright red. The veins popped out of his neck. He clenched and unclenched his fists.

Gulliver said, “Tony, relax. Be cool. I know what you’re thinking. But he’s a kid, and kids say all sorts of stupid stuff they don’t mean. A lot of the time they blurt stuff out because they’re angry or hurt. Come on. You were a kid once. When Nina broke up with me in high school, I wanted to strike out at her. Mostly, though, I wanted to strike out at myself.”

“So you’re saying it’s not the boyfriend?” Tony was confused.

“No, what I’m saying is don’t jump to conclusions without proof. Why don’t you and Ahmed go have a talk with the family about their boy. Tony, you’ve met the
kid, right? Be nice. Be respectful. Explain things. Find out as much as you can about him. I’ll have someone do some online work about him. We don’t want to waste time looking at the kid if he hasn’t even been back in New York to do anything. If need be, one of us will go out to his school and have a talk with him. But first things first.”

“What about the older guy?” Ahmed asked.

Gulliver detailed his conversation with Niki Philipps.

“Seems pretty harmless,” Gulliver said, “but you never know. When I get the breakdown of the video from Bella’s building, we’ll see.” He paused.

“Tony,” he said, his voice grave.

“Yeah, what?”

“Are any of Joey’s rivals so pissed at him or crazy enough that they would snatch his girl?”

When Tony didn’t answer right away, Gulliver got a sick feeling in his belly.

Tony bowed his head. “I guess. A few of the young guys, they watch
The Godfather
and
Goodfellas
and think that’s how it should be now. They think Joey’s an old man who’s gone soft and don’t let them earn. But I don’t think any of them is stupid enough to try something with… Joey’s kids.” The phrase stuck in Tony’s throat. “But the foreign gangs, they’re something else. Of course, you got the Colombians, the Russians and the Chinese gangs, but we have peace with them most of the time. There are other gangs now. New gangs from new countries. We got the Bulgarians, the Chechens, even some Arab gangs. Could be one of them maybe.”

“Get me some names and addresses by tomorrow,” Gulliver said.

Tony nodded. “Then you and me will go see them?”

“Just me, Tony. You there would be like a red cape in front of a bull. I don’t want to start trouble. If there is trouble, I want to end it.”

Gulliver knew Tony didn’t like that. But he knew, too, that over the years Tony had learned how to deal with things he didn’t like.

“Okay, Dowd,” was all Tony said.

TWELVE

He sensed the trouble coming out of the darkness before he was even aware of it. He ducked. Swoosh! Crack! Gulliver had had a baseball bat swung at his head before, so he knew the feeling. He felt the rush of air over his head and heard the aluminum smack against the brick of his building. Without thinking, he placed his right palm flat on the pavement. Anchored, he thrust out his left leg and connected. The kick didn’t hit his attacker’s knee flush, but it was enough to throw off his second swing of the bat.
Gulliver heard the man stumble backward and moan in pain.

Sometimes that was all it took. You got your opponent off-balance. You made him miss a few times, and he retreated. Not this time. Before Gulliver could right himself, his attacker was coming back at him for a third swing. He saw the metal flash. Instead of ducking, he sidestepped it. Strike three! As he sidestepped, he reached under his jacket and unholstered his
SIG
. Though Gulliver already had a bullet in the chamber, he racked the slide of his semiautomatic. While the racking of the slide wasn’t as effective as the cha-ching of a pump-action shotgun, it did tend to get people’s attention.

“Holy crap!” the attacker screamed. “Screw this!”

The next thing Gulliver heard was the clink of the aluminum bat falling to the sidewalk. That was followed in short order
by the sound of feet running in the other direction. Gulliver supposed he could have shot in the direction of the footfalls and hit the man who had attacked him. But you didn’t shoot a gun in the city unless you had no other choice. Only gangsters or fools took that risk. It was too dangerous. There were people and hard surfaces everywhere. Bullets could ricochet. The chances of hitting an innocent person were too great.

When the fight-or-flight tension had left his body, Gulliver tried to piece together the details of the attack. He closed his eyes and controlled his breathing as his sensei had taught him. As he relaxed, he asked himself questions. What did he remember about his attacker? Not about the weapon, but the man who had swung it. Not much. Could he remember what the man was wearing? Too dark. But he did remember two smells. The stink of old cigarettes
and the sickly sweet smell of cheap aftershave. In fact, those odors still hung in the air around him. Gulliver smiled to himself, because he had a good idea who had wielded the bat. And since he had the bat, it might be easy to prove.

He holstered his weapon. He bent down and picked up the bullet that had been ejected from his
SIG
. But as he picked up the bat by the barrel, Gulliver felt sad. He thought again about the attack. What would have happened if he had been killed and never got a chance to see Mia again? What if he never got a chance to say the things to her he still had to say to her? What if they never got to live the life they were meant to live together?

When he got to his custom-made van, he placed the bat in a plastic garbage bag. He turned the key and was about to give a voice command to call Mia when his phone rang. The name and number that flashed
onto the screen in his dashboard made him smile. It was Mia calling him. Sometimes the universe is like that.

“I was just going to call you,” he said.

“Really?”

“Really. How are you?”

“Okay, I guess,” she said.

As happy as he was to hear from her, Gulliver didn’t like the way her voice sounded.

“What’s wrong, Mia?”

“I can’t do this anymore, Gullie.”

“I know. I’ve been an idiot, and this is all my fault.”

“I’m not interested in blame. I’m just lonely. It’s not the same living here without you.”

“Then I’ll come home…tonight. Right now!”

But if Gulliver thought Mia would jump at the idea, he was wrong. There was a long pause before she spoke. And when
she did, she said the last words he wanted to hear.