Promise Me (24 page)

M
yron was on his way to meet up with Joan Rochester—she was afraid to be home when her daughter called in case her husband was around—when his mobile phone rang. He checked the caller ID and his heart skipped a beat when he saw the name
ALI WILDER
pop up.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

Silence.

“I’m sorry about before,” Ali said.

“Don’t apologize.”

“No, I sounded hysterical. I know what you were trying to do with the girls.”

“I didn’t want to get Erin involved.”

“It’s all right. Maybe I should be concerned or whatever, but I just really want to see you.”

“Me too.”

“Come over?”

“I can’t right now.”

“Oh.”

“And I’ll probably be working on this until late.”

“Myron?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t care how late.”

He smiled.

“Whatever the time, come by,” Ali said. “I’ll be waiting. And if I fall asleep, throw pebbles at my window and wake me up. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Be careful.”

“Ali?”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

There was a little intake of air. Then, with a little song in the voice: “I love you too, Myron.”

And suddenly, it was as if Jessica were a wisp of smoke.

Dominick Rochester’s office was a depot for school buses.

Outside his window was a plethora of yellow. This place was his cover. School buses could do wonders. If you transport kids in the seats, you could pretty much transport anything else in the undercarriage. Cops might stop and search a truck. They never do that with a school bus.

The phone rang. Rochester picked it up and said, “Hello?”

“You wanted me to watch your house?”

He did. Joan was drinking more than ever. It could have been from Katie’s disappearance, but Dominick was no longer so sure. So he had one of his guys keep an eye. Just in case.

“Yeah, so?”

“Earlier today some guy stopped by to talk to your wife.”

“Earlier today?”

“Right.”

“How much earlier?”

“Couple of hours maybe.”

“Why didn’t you call then?”

“Didn’t think much about it, I guess. I mean, I wrote it down. But I thought you only wanted me to call you if it was important.”

“What does he look like?”

“His name is Myron Bolitar. I recognized him. He used to play ball.”

Dominick pulled the receiver closer, pushing it against his ear as though he could travel through it. “How long did he stay?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

“Just the two of them?”

“Yeah. Oh, don’t worry, Mr. Rochester. I watched them. They stayed
downstairs, if that’s what you’re wondering. There was no . . .” He stopped, not sure how to put it.

Dominick almost laughed. This dopey guy thought he was having his wife watched in case she was sleeping around. Man, that was rich. But now he wondered: Why had Bolitar come by and stayed so long?

And what had Joan told him?

“Anything else?”

“Well, that’s the thing, Mr. Rochester.”

“What’s the thing?”

“There is something else. See, I wrote down about Bolitar’s visit, but since I could see where he was, I didn’t worry much, you know?”

“And now?”

“Well, I’m following Mrs. Rochester. She just drove to some park in town here. Riker Hill. You know it?”

“My kids went to elementary school there.”

“Good, okay. She’s sitting on a bench. But she’s not alone. See, your wife is sitting there with that same guy. With Myron Bolitar.”

Silence.

“Mr. Rochester?”

“Get a man on Bolitar too. I want him followed. I want them both followed.”

During the Cold War, the Riker Hill Art Park, located right smack in the bosom of suburbia, had been a military control base for air-defense missiles. The army called it Nike Battery Missile Site NY-80. For real. From 1954 until the end of the Nike air defense system in 1974, the site was operational for both Hercules and Ajax missiles. Many of the U.S. Army’s original buildings and barracks now serve as studios where painting, sculpture, and crafts flourish in a communal setting.

Years ago, Myron had found this all somewhat poignant and oddly comforting—the war relic now housing artists—but the world was different now. In the eighties and nineties, it had all been cute and quaint. Now this “progress” felt like phony symbolism.

Near the old military radar tower, Myron sat on the bench with Joan Rochester. They hadn’t done more than nod at each other. They
were waiting. Joan Rochester cradled her mobile phone as if it were an injured animal. Myron checked his watch. Any minute now, Katie Rochester was supposed to call her mother.

Joan Rochester looked off. “You’re wondering why I stay with him.”

In truth, he wasn’t. First off, awful as this situation was, he was still feeling a little giddy from his phone call with Ali. He knew that was selfish, but this was the first time in seven years he had told a woman that he loved her. He was trying to push all that from his mind, trying to focus on the task at hand, but he couldn’t help feeling a little high from her response.

Second—and maybe more relevant—Myron had long ago stopped trying to figure out relationships. He had read about battered woman syndrome and perhaps that was at play here and this was a cry for help. But for some reason, in this particular case, he didn’t care enough to reach out and answer that call.

“I’ve been with Dom a long time. A very long time.”

Joan Rochester went quiet. After a few more seconds, she opened her mouth to say more, but the phone in her hand vibrated. She looked down at it as though it had suddenly materialized in her hand. It vibrated again and then it rang.

“Answer it,” Myron said.

Joan Rochester nodded and hit the green button. She brought the phone to her ear and said, “Hello?”

Myron leaned close to her. He could hear a voice on the other end of the line—sounded young, sounded female—but he couldn’t make out any of the words.

“Oh, honey,” Joan Rochester said, her face easing from the sound of her daughter’s voice. “I’m glad you’re safe. Yes. Yes, right. Listen to me a second, okay? This is very important.”

More talking from the other end.

“I have someone here with me—”

Animated talk from the other end.

“Please, Katie, just listen. His name is Myron Bolitar. He’s from Livingston. He means you no harm. How did he find . . . it’s complicated. . . . No, of course I didn’t say anything. He got phone records or something, I’m not really sure, but he said he would tell Daddy—”

Very animated talk now.

“No, no, he hasn’t done that yet. He just needs to talk to you for a minute. I think you should listen. He says it’s about the other missing girl, Aimee Biel. He’s looking for her. . . . I know, I know, I told him that. Just . . . hold on, okay? Here he is.”

Joan Rochester began to hand him the phone. Myron reached out and snatched it from her, afraid of losing this tenuous connection. He strapped on his calmest voice and said, “Hello, Katie. My name is Myron.”

He sounded like a night host on NPR.

Katie, however, was a tad more hysterical. “What do you want with me?”

“I just have a few questions.”

“I don’t know anything about Aimee Biel.”

“If you could just tell me—”

“You’re tracing this, aren’t you?” Her voice was cracking with hysteria. “For my dad. You’re keeping me on the line so you can trace the call!”

Myron was about to launch into a Berruti-type explanation of how traces didn’t really work that way, but Katie never gave him the chance.

“Just leave us alone!”

And then she hung up.

Like another dopey TV cliché, Myron said, “Hello? Hello?” when he knew that Katie Rochester had hung up and was gone.

They sat in silence for a minute or two. Then Myron slowly handed her back the phone.

“I’m sorry,” Joan Rochester said.

Myron nodded.

“I tried.”

“I know.”

She stood. “Are you going to tell Dom?”

“No,” Myron said.

“Thank you.”

He nodded again. She walked away. Myron stood and headed in the opposite direction. He took out his cell phone and hit the speed-dial number one slot. Win answered it.

“Articulate.”

“Was it Katie Rochester?”

He had expected something like this—Katie not cooperating. So Myron had prepared. Win was on the scene in Manhattan, ready to follow. It was, in fact, better. She would head back to wherever she was hiding. Win would tag along and learn all.

“Looked like her,” Win said. “She was with a dark-haired paramour.”

“And now?”

“After hanging up, she and said paramour began heading downtown by foot. By the way, the paramour is carrying a firearm in a shoulder holster.”

That wasn’t good. “You’re on them?”

“I’ll pretend you didn’t ask me that.”

“I’m on my way.”

J
oan Rochester took a pull from the flask she kept under the car seat.

She was in her driveway now. She could have waited until she got inside. But she didn’t. She was in a daze, had been in a daze for so long that she no longer remembered a time when she really felt truly clear-headed. Didn’t matter. You get used to it. You get so used to it that it becomes normal, this daze, and it would be the clear head that would throw her out of whack.

She stayed in her car and stared at her house. She looked at it as though for the first time. This was where she lived. It sounded so simple, but there it was. This is where she was spending her life. It was unremarkable. It felt impersonal. She lived here. She had helped choose it. And now, as she looked at it, she wondered why.

Joan closed her eyes and tried to imagine something different. How had she gotten here? You don’t just slip, she realized. Change was never dramatic. It was small shifts, so gradual that it becomes imperceptible to the human eye. That was how it had happened to Joan Delnuto Rochester, the prettiest girl at Bloomfield High.

You fall in love with a man because he is everything your father isn’t. He is strong and tough and you like that. He sweeps you off your feet. You don’t even realize how much he takes over your life, how you start to become merely an extension of him, rather than a separate entity or, as you dream, one grander entity, two becoming one in love, like out of a romance novel. You acquiesce on small things, then large things, then everything. Your laugh starts to quiet before disappearing altogether. Your smile dims until it is only a facsimile of joy, something you apply like mascara.

But when had it turned the dark corner?

She couldn’t find a spot on the time line. She thought back, but she couldn’t locate a moment when she could have changed things. It was inevitable, she supposed, from the day they met. There wasn’t a time when she could have stood up to him. There wasn’t a battle she could have waged and won that would have altered anything.

If she could go back in time, would she walk away the first time he asked her out? Would she have said no then? Taken up with another boyfriend, like that nice Mike Braun, who lived in Parsippany now? The answer would probably be no. Her children wouldn’t have been born. Children, of course, change everything. You can’t wish it all never happened, because that would be the ultimate betrayal: How could you live with yourself if you wished your children never existed?

She took another swig.

The truth was, Joan Rochester wished her husband dead. She dreamed about it. Because it was her only escape. Forget that nonsense about abused women standing up to their man. It would be suicide. She could never leave him. He would find her and beat her and lock her up. He would do lord-knows-what to their children. He would make her pay.

Joan sometimes fantasized about packing up the children and finding one of those battered-women shelters in the city. But then what? She dreamed about turning state’s evidence against Dom—she certainly had the knowledge—but even Witness Protection wouldn’t do the trick. He’d find them. Somehow.

He was that kind of man.

She slipped out of her car. There was a wobble in her step, but again that had become almost the norm. Joan Rochester headed to her front door. She slipped the key in and stepped inside. She turned around to close it behind her. When she turned back around, Dominick stood in front of her.

Joan Rochester put her hand to her heart. “You startled me.”

He stepped toward her. For a moment she thought that he wanted to embrace her. But that wasn’t it. He bent low at the knees. His right
hand turned into a fist. He swiveled into the roundhouse blow, using his hips for power. The knuckles slammed into her kidney.

Joan’s mouth opened in a silent scream. Her knees gave way. She fell to the floor. Dominick grabbed her by the hair. He lifted her back up and readied the fist. He smashed it into her back again, harder this time.

She slid to the ground like a slit bag of sand.

“You’re going to tell me where Katie is,” Dominick said.

And then he hit her again.

Myron was in his car, talking on the phone to Wheat Manson, his former Duke teammate who now worked in the admissions office as assistant dean, when he realized yet again that he was being followed.

Wheat Manson had been a speedy point guard from the nasty streets of Atlanta. He had loved his years in Durham, North Carolina, and had never gone back. The two old friends started off exchanging quick pleasantries before Myron got to the point.

“I need to ask you something a little weird,” Myron said.

“Go ahead.”

“Don’t get offended.”

“Then don’t ask me anything offensive,” Wheat said.

“Did Aimee Biel get in because of me?”

Wheat groaned. “Oh no, you did
not
just ask me that.”

“I need to know.”

“Oh no, you did
not
just ask me that.”

“Look, forget that for a second. I need you to fax me two transcripts. One for Aimee Biel. And one for Roger Chang.”

“Who?”

“He’s another student from Livingston High.”

“Let me guess. Roger didn’t get accepted.”

“He had a better ranking, better SAT scores—”

“Myron?”

“What?”

“We are not going there. Do you understand me? It’s confidential. I
will not send you transcripts. I will not discuss candidates. I will remind you that acceptance is not a matter of scores or tests, that there are intangibles. As two guys who got in based much more on our ability to put a sphere through a metallic ring than rankings and test scores, we should understand that better than anyone. And now, only slightly offended, I will say good-bye.”

“Wait, hold up a second.”

“I’m not faxing you transcripts.”

“You don’t have to. I’m going to tell you something about both candidates. I just want you to look it up on the computer and make sure what I’m saying is true.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Just trust me here, Wheat. I’m not asking for information. I’m asking you to confirm something.”

Wheat sighed. “I’m not in the office right now.”

“Do it when you can.”

“Tell me what you want me to confirm.”

Myron told him. And as he did, he realized that the same car had been with him since he left Riker Hill. “Will you do it?”

“You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?”

“Always was,” Myron said.

“Yeah, but you used to have a sweet jumper from the top of the key. Now what do you got?”

“Raw animal magnetism and supernatural charisma?”

“I’m going to hang up now.”

He did. Myron pulled the hands-free from his ear. The car was still behind him, maybe two hundred feet back.

What was up with all the car tails today? In the old days, a suitor would send flowers or candy. Myron pined for a brief moment, but now was hardly the time. The car had been on him since he left Riker Hill. That meant it was probably one of Dominick Rochester’s goons again. He thought about that. If Rochester had sent a man to follow Myron, he’d probably at the very least known or seen that Myron was with his wife. Myron debated calling Joan Rochester, letting her know, but decided against it. As Joan had pointed out, she’d been with him a long time. She’d know how to handle it.

He was on Northfield Avenue heading to New York City. He didn’t have time for this, but he needed to get rid of this tail as quickly as possible. In the movies, this would call for a car chase or a swift U-turn of some sort. That didn’t really play in real life, especially when you need to get to a place in a hurry and don’t want to attract the cops.

Still, there were ways.

The music store teacher, Drew Van Dyne, lived in West Orange, not far from here. Zorra should be in place now. Myron picked up his cell phone and called. Zorra picked up on the first ring.

“Hello, dreamboat,” Zorra said.

“I assume there’s been no activity at the Van Dyne house.”

“You assume correctly, dreamboat. Zorra just sits and sits. So boring this, for Zorra.”

Zorra always referred to herself in the third person. She had a deep voice, a thick accent, and lots of mouth phlegm. It was not a pleasant sound.

“I have a car following me,” Myron said.

“And Zorra can help?”

“Oh yes,” Myron said. “Zorra can definitely help.”

Myron explained his plan—his frighteningly simple plan. Zorra laughed and started coughing.

“So Zorra like?” Myron asked, falling, as he often did when speaking to her, into Zorra-talk.

“Zorra like. Zorra like very much.”

Since it would take a few minutes to set up, Myron took some unnecessary turns. Two minutes later, Myron took the right on Pleasant Valley Way. Up ahead, he saw Zorra standing by the pizzeria. She wore her ’30s blond wig and smoked a cigarette in a holder and looked just like Veronica Lake after a real bad bender, if Veronica Lake was six feet tall and had a Homer Simpson five o’clock shadow and was really, really ugly.

Zorra winked as Myron passed and raised her foot just a little bit. Myron knew what was in that heel. The first time they met, she had sliced his chest with the hidden “stiletto” blade. In the end, Win had spared Zorra’s life—something that surprised the heck out of Myron. Now they were all buddies. Esperanza compared it to her
days in the ring when a famed bad-guy wrestler would all of a sudden turn good.

Myron used the left-turn signal and pulled to the side of the road, two blocks ahead of Zorra. He rolled down his window so he could hear. Zorra stood near an open parking spot. It was natural. The car following Myron’s pulled into the spot to see where Myron was headed. Of course, he could have stopped anywhere on the street. Zorra had been ready for that.

The rest was, as already noted, frighteningly simple. Zorra strolled over to the back of the car. She had been wearing high heels for the past fifteen years, but she still walked like a newborn colt on bad acid.

Myron watched the scene in his rearview mirror.

Zorra unsheathed the dagger in her stiletto heel. She raised her leg and stomped on the tire. Myron heard the whoosh of air. She quickly circled to the other back tire and did the same thing. Then Zorra did something that was not part of the plan.

She waited to see if the driver would get out and accost her.

“No,” Myron whispered to himself. “Just go.”

He had been clear. Stomp the tires and run. Don’t get into a fight. Zorra was deadly. If the guy got out of his car—probably some macho goon who was used to breaking heads—Zorra would slice him into pizza topping. Forget the morals for a moment. They didn’t need that kind of police attention.

The goon driving the car yelled, “Hey! What the—?” and started getting out of the car.

Myron turned around and stuck his head out the window. Zorra had the smile. She bent her knees a little. Myron called out. Zorra looked up and met Myron’s eye. Myron could see the anticipation, the itch to strike. He shook his head as firmly as he knew how.

Another second passed. The goon slammed his car door shut. “You dumb bitch!”

Myron kept shaking his head, more urgently now. The goon took a step. Myron held Zorra’s gaze. Zorra reluctantly nodded.

And then she ran away.

“Hey!” The goon gave chase. “Stop!”

Myron started up his car. The goon looked back now, unsure what to do, and then he made a decision that probably saved his life.

He ran back to his car.

But with slashed back tires, he wouldn’t go anywhere.

Myron pulled back onto the road, on his way to his encounter with the missing Katie Rochester.