Promise Me (20 page)

M
yron was trying to figure out what to do next when his cell phone rang. The caller ID read
OUT OF AREA
. He picked it up. Esperanza said, “Where the hell are you?”

“Hey, how’s the honeymoon going?”

“Like crap. Do you want to know why?”

“Is Tom not putting out?”

“Yeah, you men are so tough to seduce. No, my problem is that my business partner is not answering calls from our clients. My business partner is also not in the office to cover my absence.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, well, that covers it.”

“I’ll have Big Cyndi transfer all the calls directly to my cell. I’ll be in as soon as I can.”

“What’s wrong?” Esperanza asked.

Myron didn’t want to disrupt her honeymoon any more than he already had, so he said, “Nothing.”

“You so lie.”

“I’m telling you. It’s nothing.”

“Fine, I’ll ask Win.”

“Wait, okay.”

He briefly filled her in.

“So,” Esperanza said, “you feel obligated because you did a good deed?”

“I was the last to see her. I dropped her off and let her go.”

“Let her go? What kind of crap is that? She’s eighteen, Myron. That makes her an adult. She asked you for a ride. You gallantly—and stupidly, I might add—gave her one. That’s it.”

“That’s not it.”

“Look, if you gave, say, Win a ride home, would you make sure he got all the way into the house safely?”

“Good analogy.”

Esperanza snickered. “Yeah, well. I’m coming home.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You’re right, I’m not. But you can’t handle both on your own. So I’ll tell Big Cyndi to transfer the calls down here. I’ll take them. You go play superhero.”

“But you’re on your honeymoon. What about Tom?”

“He’s a man, Myron.”

“Meaning?”

“As long as a man gets some, he’s happy.”

“That’s such a cruel stereotype.”

“Yeah, I know I’m awful. I could be talking on the phone at the same time or, hell, breast-feeding Hector, Tom wouldn’t blink. Plus this will give him more time to play golf. Golf and sex, Myron. It’ll pretty much be Tom’s dream honeymoon.”

“I’ll make it up to you.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Esperanza?”

“I know it’s been a while since you’ve done something like this,” she said. “And I know I made you promise you wouldn’t again. But maybe . . . maybe it’s a good thing.”

“How do you figure?”

“Damned if I know. Christ, I got more important things to worry about. Like stretch marks when I wear a bikini. I can’t believe I have stretch marks now. The kid’s fault, you know.”

They hung up a minute later. Myron drove around, feeling conspicuous in his car. If the police decided to keep an eye on him or if Rochester decided another tail might be in order, this car would be inconvenient. He thought about it and called Claire. She answered on the first ring.

“Did you learn something?”

“Not really, but do you mind if I switch cars with you?”

“Of course not. I was about to call you anyway. The Rochesters just left.”

“And?”

“We talked for a while. Trying to find a connection between Aimee and Katie. But something else came up. Something I need to run by you.”

“I’m two minutes from your house.”

“I’ll meet you in the front yard.”

As soon as Myron stepped out of the car, Claire tossed him her car keys. “I think Katie Rochester ran away.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Have you met that father?”

“Yes.”

“Says it all, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe.”

“But more than that, have you met the mother?”

“No.”

“Her name is Joan. She has this wince—like she’s waiting for him to smack her.”

“Did you find a connection between the girls?”

“They both liked to hang out at the mall.”

“That’s it?”

Claire shrugged. She looked like hell. The skin was pulled even tighter now. She looked like she’d lost ten pounds in the last day. Her body teetered as she walked, as though a strong gust would knock her all the way to the ground. “They ate lunch at the same time. They had one class together in the past four years—PE with Mr. Valentine. That’s it.”

Myron shook his head. “You said something else came up?”

“The mother. Joan Rochester.”

“What about her?”

“You might miss it because like I said, she cowers and looks scared all the time.”

“Miss what?”

“She’s scared of him. Her husband.”

“So? I met him. I’m scared of him.”

“Right, okay, but here’s the thing. She’s scared of him, sure, but she’s
not
scared about her daughter. I have no proof, but that’s the vibe I’m getting. Look, you remember when my mom got cancer?”

Sophomore year of high school. The poor woman died six months later. “Of course.”

“I met with other girls going through the same thing. A support group for cancer families. We had this picnic once, where you could bring other friends too. But it was weird—you knew exactly who was really going through the torment and who was just a friend. You’d meet a fellow sufferer and you’d just know. There was a vibe.”

“And Joan Rochester didn’t have a vibe?”

“She had a vibe, but not the ‘my daughter is missing’ vibe. I tried to get her alone. I asked her to help me make some coffee. But I didn’t get anywhere. I’m telling you, she knows something. The woman is scared, but not like I am.”

Myron thought about that. There were a million explanations, especially the most obvious—people react differently to stress—but he wanted to trust Claire’s intuition on this. The question was, what did it mean? And what could he do about it?

“Let me think this through,” he said at last.

“Did you talk to Mr. Davis?”

“Not yet.”

“How about Randy?”

“I’m on it. That’s why I need your car. The police ran me off the high school campus this morning.”

“Why?”

He didn’t want to get into Randy’s father so he said, “I’m not sure yet. Look, let me get going, okay?”

Claire nodded, closed her eyes.

“She’ll be okay,” Myron said, stepping toward her.

“Please.” Claire held up a hand to stop him. “Don’t waste time handing me platitudes, okay?”

He nodded, slipped into her SUV. He wondered about his next destination. Maybe he’d head back to school. Talk to the principal. Maybe the principal could call Randy or Harry Davis into his office. But then what?

The cell phone sounded. Again the caller ID gave him no information. Caller ID technology was fairly useless. The people you wanted to avoid just blocked the service anyway.

“Hello?”

“Hey, handsome, I just got your message.”

It was Gail Berruti, his contact from the phone company. He had forgotten all about the crank calls referring to him as a “bastard.” It seemed unimportant now, just some sort of childish prank, except that maybe, just maybe, there was a connection. Claire had noted that Myron brought destruction. Maybe someone from his past was out to get him. Maybe somehow Aimee had gotten tangled up in that.

It was the longest of long shots.

“I haven’t heard from you in forever,” Berruti said.

“Yeah, I’ve been busy.”

“Or not busy, I guess. How are you?”

“I’m pretty good. Were you able to trace the number?”

“It’s not a trace, Myron. You said that in your phone message. ‘Trace the number.’ It’s not a trace. I just had to look it up.”

“Whatever.”

“Not whatever. You know better. It’s like on TV. You ever watch a phone trace on TV? They always say to keep the guy on the line so they can trace the call. That’s nonsense, you know. You trace it right away. It’s immediate. It doesn’t take time. Why do they do that?”

“It’s more suspenseful,” Myron said.

“It’s dumb. They do everything ass-backward on TV. I’m watching some cop show the other night, and it takes five minutes to do a DNA test. My husband works in the crime lab at John Jay. They’re lucky if they get a DNA confirmation in a month. Meanwhile the phone stuff—all of which can be done in minutes with the touch of a computer—that takes them forever. And the bad guy always hangs up just before they get the location. Have you ever seen the trace work? Never. Pisses me off, you know?”

Myron tried to get Berruti back on track. “So you looked up the number?”

“I got it here. Curious though: Why do you need it?”

“Since when do you care?”

“Good point. Okay, let’s get to it then. First off, whoever it was wanted to be anonymous. The call was from a pay phone.”

“Where?”

“The location is near one-ten Livingston Avenue in Livingston, New Jersey.”

The center of town, Myron thought. Near his local Starbucks and his dry cleaner. Myron thought about that. A dead end? Maybe. But he had a thought.

“I need you to do me two more favors, Gail,” Myron said.

“Favor implies nonpayment.”

“Semantics,” Myron said. “You know I’ll take care of you.”

“Yeah, I know. So what do you need?”

Harry Davis taught a lesson on
A Separate Peace
by John Knowles. He tried to concentrate, but the words were coming out as if he were reading off a prompter in a language he didn’t quite understand. The students took notes. He wondered if they noticed that he wasn’t really there, that he was going through the motions. The sad part was, he suspected that they didn’t.

Why did Myron Bolitar want to talk to him?

He did not know Myron Bolitar personally, but you don’t walk around the corridors of this school for more than two decades without knowing who he was. The guy was a legend here. He held every basketball record the school ever had.

So why had he wanted to talk to him?

Randy Wolf had known who he was. His father had warned him not to talk to Myron. Why?

“Mr. D? Yo, Mr. D?”

The voice fought through the fog in his head.

“Yes, Sam.”

“Can I, like, go to the bathroom?”

“Go.”

Harry Davis stopped then. He put down the chalk and looked over the faces in front of him. No, they weren’t beaming. Most of them were eyes-down in their notebooks. Vladimir Khomenko, a new exchange
student, had his head down on his desk, probably asleep. Others looked out the window. Some sat so low in their chairs, with spines seemingly created from Jell-O, Davis was surprised that they didn’t slip to the floor.

But he cared about them. Some more than others. But he cared about all of them. They were his life. And for the first time, after all these years, Harry Davis was starting to feel it all slip away.

M
yron had a headache, and quickly realized why. He hadn’t had coffee yet that day. So he headed over to Starbucks with two thoughts in mind—caffeine and pay phone. The caffeine was taken care of by a grunge barista with a soul patch and long frontal hair that looked like a giant eyelash. The pay phone problem would take a little more work.

Myron sat at an outdoor table and eyed the offending pay phone. It was awfully public. He walked over to it. There were stickers on the phone advertising 800 numbers to call for discount calls. The most prominent one was offering “free night calls” and had a picture of a quarter moon in case you didn’t know what night was.

Myron frowned. He wanted to ask the pay phone who had dialed his number and called him a bastard and said that he’d pay for what he’d done. But the phone wouldn’t talk to him. It had been that kind of day.

He sat back down and tried to figure out what he needed to do. He still wanted to talk to Randy Wolf and Harry Davis. They probably wouldn’t tell him much—they probably wouldn’t talk to him at all—but he would figure a way to get a run at them. He also needed to interview that doctor who worked at St. Barnabas, Edna Skylar. She had purportedly seen Katie Rochester in New York. He wanted some details on that.

He called St. Barnabas’s switchboard and after two brief explanations, Edna Skylar got on the phone. Myron explained what he wanted.

Edna Skylar sounded annoyed. “I asked the investigators to keep my name out of this.”

“They have.”

“So how do you know it?”

“I have good contacts.”

She thought about that. “What’s your standing in this, Mr. Bolitar?”

“Another girl has gone missing.”

No response.

“I think there may be a connection between this girl and Katie Rochester.”

“How?”

“Could we meet? I can explain everything then.”

“I really don’t know anything.”

“Please.” There was a pause. “Dr. Skylar?”

“When I saw the Rochester girl, she indicated that she didn’t want to be found.”

“I understand that. I just need a few minutes.”

“I have patients for the next hour. I can see you at noon.”

“Thank you,” he said, but Edna Skylar had already hung up.

Lithium Larry Kidwell and the Medicated Five shuffled into Starbucks. Larry headed right for his table.

“Fourteen hundred eighty-eight planets on creation day, Myron. Fourteen hundred eighty-eight. And I haven’t seen a penny. You know what I’m saying?”

Larry looked as awful as always. Geographically, they were so close to their old high school, but what had his favorite restaurateur, Peter Chin, said about years flying by but the heart staying the same? Well, only the heart then.

“Good to know,” Myron said. He looked back at the pay phone and a thought struck him hard and fast: “Wait.”

“Huh?”

“Last time I saw you there were fourteen hundred eighty-seven planets, right?”

Larry looked confused. “Are you sure?”

“I am.” Myron’s mind started racing. “And if I’m not mistaken, you said the next planet was mine. You said it was out to get me and something about stroking the moon.”

Larry’s eyes lit up. “Stroking the moon sliver. He hates you bad.”

“Where is that moon sliver?”

“In the Aerolis solar system. By Guanchomitis.”

“Are you sure, Larry? Are you sure it’s not . . .” Myron rose and walked him to the pay phone. Larry cringed. Myron pointed to the sticker, to the image of the quarter moon on the ad for free night calls. Larry gasped.

“Is this the moon sliver?”

“Oh please, oh my god, oh please . . .”

“Calm down, Larry. Who else wants that planet? Who hates me enough to stroke the moon sliver?”

Twenty minutes later, Myron headed into Chang’s Dry Cleaning. Maxine Chang was there, of course. There were three people in line. Myron didn’t get behind them. He stood to the side and crossed his arms. Maxine kept sneaking glances at him. Myron waited until the customers were gone. Then he approached.

“Where’s Roger?” he asked.

“He has school.”

Myron met her eye. “Do you know he’s been calling me?”

“Why would he call you?”

“You tell me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I have a friend at the phone company. Roger called me from that booth over there. I have reliable witnesses who can place him there at the right time.” That was more than an exaggeration, but Myron went with it. “He threatened me. He called me a bastard.”

“Roger wouldn’t do that.”

“I don’t want to get him in trouble, Maxine. What’s going on?”

Another customer came in. Maxine shouted something out in Chinese. An elderly woman came out of the back and took over. Maxine gestured with her head for Myron to follow her. He did. They walked past the tracks of moving hangers. When he was a kid, the metallic whir of the tracks had always amazed him, like something out of a cool sci-fi movie. Maxine kept walking until they were out in the back alley.

“Roger is a good boy,” she said. “He works so hard.”

“What’s going on, Maxine? When I was in here the other day, you were acting funny.”

“You don’t understand how hard it is. To live in a town like this.”

He did—he had lived here his whole life—but he held his tongue.

“Roger worked so hard. He got good grades. Number four in his class. These other kids. They’re spoiled. All have private tutors. They don’t work a real job. Roger, he works here every day after school. He studies in the back room. He doesn’t go to parties. He doesn’t have a girlfriend.”

“What does any of this have to do with me?”

“Other parents hire people to write their children’s essays. They pay for classes to improve their boards. They donate money to the big schools. They do other things, I don’t even know. It’s so important, where you go to college. It can decide your whole life. Everyone is so scared, they do anything,
anything
to get their kid in the right school. This town, you see it all the time. Nice people maybe, but you can justify any evil as long as you can say, ‘It’s for my child.’ You understand?”

“I do, but I don’t see what that has to do with me.”

“I need you to understand. That’s what we have to compete with. With all that money and power. With people who cheat and steal and will do anything.”

“If you’re telling me that college acceptance is competitive in this town, I know that. It was competitive when I graduated.”

“But you had basketball.”

“Yes.”

“Roger is such a good student. He works so hard. And his dream is to go to Duke. He told you that. You probably don’t remember.”

“I remember him saying something about applying there. I don’t remember him saying it was his dream or anything. He just listed a bunch of schools.”

“It was his first choice,” Maxine Chang said firmly. “And if Roger makes it, there is a scholarship waiting for him. He’d have his tuition paid for. That was so important to us. But he didn’t get in. Even though he was number four in his class. Even though he had very good boards. Better boards—and better grades—than Aimee Biel.”

Maxine Chang looked at Myron with heavy eyes.

“Wait a second. Are you blaming me because Roger didn’t get into Duke?”

“I don’t know much, Myron. I’m just a dry cleaner. But a school like Duke almost never takes more than one student from a specific high school in New Jersey. Aimee Biel made it. Roger had better grades. He had better board scores. He had great teacher recommendations. Neither of them are athletes. Roger plays the violin, Aimee plays guitar.” Maxine Chang shrugged.

“So you tell me: Why did she get in and not Roger?”

He wanted to protest, but the truth stopped him. He had written a letter. He had even called his friend in admissions. People do stuff like that all the time. It doesn’t mean that Roger Chang was denied admission. But simple math: When one person gets a spot, someone else doesn’t.

Maxine’s voice was a plea. “Roger was just so angry.”

“That’s no excuse.”

“No, it’s not. I will talk to him. He will apologize to you, I promise.”

But another thought came to Myron. “Was Roger just mad at me?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Was he mad at Aimee too?”

Maxine Chang frowned. “Why would you ask that?”

“Because the next call on that pay phone was to Aimee Biel’s cell phone. Was Roger angry with her? Resentful maybe?”

“Not Roger, no. He’s not like that.”

“Right, he’d only call me and make threats.”

“He didn’t mean anything. He was just lashing out.”

“I need to talk to Roger.”

“What? No, I forbid it.”

“Fine, I’ll go to the police. I’ll tell them about the threatening calls.”

Her eyes widened. “You wouldn’t.”

He would. Maybe he should. But not yet. “I want to talk to him.”

“He’ll be here after school.”

“Then I’ll be back at three. If he’s not here, I’m going to the police.”