THE LAST BOY (8 page)

“Okay, the lake it is.” She thought of the reservoir, with its dizzyingly high hundred-foot dam, the rapids below rushing through deep gorges when the fall rains came, trees perched precariously on the lip of the ravines, their roots clinging tenuously to the crumbling shale. The lake was better. Yes. Felt safer.

“Because that's where the
really
big fish are! In the deep lake.”

Deep. Icy. Saturday. Sunday. Fishing. The last thing in the world
she wanted to do was stand on the wind-whipped shore and impale a worm on a hook. But then other parents were arriving with their children, jamming the narrow entranceway.

“And then we need to get Billy and go over to the farm to feed his uncle's lambs. He said that we could ride a horse. But we gotta be there on Saturday ’cause his Uncle goes away Sunday. What day is today?”

“Wednesday,” she said, pulling him aside so the others could squeeze past.

“When's Saturday?”

“Tomorrow's Thursday. Then comes Friday. And then—”

“Yeah, I ’member. Saturday,” he had smiled happily.

She had finally pulled loose and kissed him good-bye. A last kiss.

Deep. Icy. Saturday. Sunday. Fishing. He wanted so much, and she worried that she gave him too little.

A little before midnight there was a knock on her door. Molly, who had been sitting on the couch staring blankly into space, jumped to her feet. At the door stood a man, stocky and dark, a solidly built guy with eyes that appeared a bright green in the light spilling through the doorway. It took her a moment to recognize him. It was Freddy Tripoli's older brother. She hadn’t seen him in years, and now he had a dark mustache. The last time he was in uniform, driving a squad car. He had brought Molly's mother home early one morning after one of her binges.

“I’m—” he started.

“Yes, I know. Freddy's big brother.”

“I’m a detective now.” He started to take out his badge, but Molly had already stepped back from the door to let him enter.

“Have you heard anything?”

He shook his head, and she went back to the couch and flopped down exhausted, leaving Tripoli framed in the doorway. He noticed the
pile of photos on the coffee table next to her. Nice-looking little kid.

Molly had cut her hair since he had last seen her, but it looked good on her, framed her face nicely, and maturity had served her well. She still had that good bone structure. Heart-shaped face. Sensuous bow-shaped mouth. Her two front teeth were canted inward just ever so slightly. Just now she looked disheveled. Obviously she had been out, walking in this lousy weather.

Tripoli glanced around the trailer. It was clean and neat, but it was hardly more than a notch above a dive. He knew Freeman's Floral Estates well, having spent a disproportionate amount of time here responding to domestics and drugs, harassments and thefts. He could stand in the center of the fifty-unit park and identify the residents, home after home, citing each case and its disposition. Molly's trailer sat in the rear where the smaller, more rundown trailers were tucked away. Unlike the once lavish doublewides at the entrance, these were cramped, usually overcrowded, and their occupants tended to tack on extra rooms and storage sheds. More often than not they were usually cobbled-up structures that sagged and soon rotted, leaving them looking more like ramshackle shanties than homes.

Tripoli remained at the open door for a moment, trying to match this woman with the hell-raising high school kid he had known.

“I can remember you and Freddy, but I can’t remember your name,” Molly admitted.

“I’m Lou.”

“Right. Louie Tripoli,” Molly repeated to herself with a nod. The Tripolis were a big, extended Ithaca family. There were Tripolis that owned the dry cleaners on Seneca Street, the Tripoli Paving company, the Sunoco station, the Busy Bee luncheonette on Cayuga Street, and that new Italian restaurant—whatever its name was—up in the Cayuga Mall.

She remembered how Tripoli would pick up Freddy at the high school. He was a cop already then—which made him seem so much older—and his shiny patrol car would be waiting in front every afternoon when the kids were let out. The car with its red lights always caught her eye. It made her a little nervous and she would observe it through the corner of her eye as she sidled off with her friends, watching how Tripoli would grab Freddy and affectionately hug him in a way that men usually didn’t do—not the men she knew. Seeing that, Molly used to wonder what it was like having a brother. An older brother to look out for you.

“I’d like to ask you some questions if I could,” he said.

“You want to stand there in the door or do you want to come in?”

“Well, if you don’t mind,” he said politely.

“Help yourself,” she said.“And you might as well close the door while you’re at it.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry.” Tripoli wiped his feet free of the clinging snow, then stepped in and closed the door. Instinctively, his eyes swept the place, taking in everything in a near-single glance. On a bookshelf there were dog-eared textbooks, children's books, and on the bottom shelf he recognized a set of that
Great Books
series that Time/Life was always trying to sell through the mail.“Mind if I take off my coat?” he asked.

“Suit yourself.”

When he had taken off his overcoat, Molly saw that he had a sport jacket and tie on. He had an easy way about him. A lot more polished than his brother Freddy. For a cop he even seemed gentle.

“I’m sorry if I sound such a—” She shook her head.

“Hey,” he held up his hands, “no apologies necessary. I understand. Don’t worry. We just want to get your boy back.”

She showed him a chair, and he took it and pulled it up close to where she sat on the sofa. There was something about his eyes,
perhaps their clarity and brilliance of their light green color, that held her gaze. They looked like jewels.“Do you have any ideas?” she inquired.“Anything at all? Some leads maybe? Some—”

“Truthfully? No. But we’re starting to focus in on this thing.” He held his hands out and slowly brought them together as though narrowing a gap.

“What exactly does that mean?”

“I got ahold of Bea Bruce—”

Molly perked up.“And?”

Tripoli shook his head.“She didn’t know anything. Neither did her girl. I got ahold of the Ruzickas. But you already talked to them, so I hear.”

“Okay, so what do we do now?”

“Sit tight.”

“That's what everybody keeps saying. Sit tight. Hang in there. Wait.” She could feel herself getting angry, and fought to stifle the bitterness.

“I’ve got three investigators out canvassing the whole town and questioning everybody—including the other kids from the daycare,” he said. Then he turned quietly thoughtful.“Look, do you have any idea of where your boy might go if he wanted to leave home?”

“
Danny?
Hell, you couldn’t pry him away from me.”

“Is there some place he might have talked about wanting to go—you know, kids get all kinds of ideas.”

“He kept going on about fishing this morning. But he’d never…”

“Fishing where?”

“We always go to the reservoir.”

Tripoli lifted an eyebrow.“Reservoir?”

“Not a chance. Anyway, he was tired of that and wanted to go fishing in the lake.” For an instant she was assaulted by the vivid image of Danny in a row boat drifting out on the dark, snowy lake. “Come on, there's no way he could get down to the lake. He's just
a little boy.” She could hear the element of uncertainty creeping into her own voice. Tripoli said nothing for a few moments.

“The boy's father—” he began.

“Chuck?
Chuck?
” She gave a loud laugh.“My ex-husband? You think he took Danny?”

“I don’t know,” said Tripoli.

“Let me tell you about Chuck. He took off the day Danny was born. We’re talking almost five years now, and I’ve never heard from him since—that's how much he cared about Danny! I couldn’t even find him to serve the papers for a divorce. Do you
really
think he's going to come back to claim a kid he's never even seen?”

“Anything's possible. I’ve got to explore every lead.”

“You got a cigarette?” she asked.

He reached into his breast pocket, then caught himself. “No. I don’t smoke anymore. If you want, I could get—”

“Naw. Forget it. Gave it up myself. I just don’t know what to do with my hands.” She threw them up in the air and let them fall back into her lap.

“Do you at least have any idea where Chuck might have gone?”

“Not a clue.”

He took out his pad.“What's his last name?”

“Halliday. I used to be Halliday, too, but…well…”

“Chuck Halliday. Hey, I know who that is,” said Tripoli. “He used to run that contracting business—”

“Out of the back of his truck. Yup, that's the winner.”

“Just took off, huh?”

“Disappeared. Didn’t even leave a note. It was like aliens came in and plucked him up into outer space.”

“Did you report him missing?”

“Missing? Nobody was missing him! That jerk was still stretching rubber on our checking account and running up charges on our plastic.”

“Any relatives?”

“A mother in Cleveland. I tried calling her when I realized that he had taken off, but she didn’t know where he was—they hadn’t been talking for years. Nor had his uncle in Dallas. Or his cousin in Milwaukee. I’m telling you, the guy simply vanished into thin air.”

Tripoli was hastily jotting notes. He looked up from his pad. “Left you high and dry?”

“But not exactly empty handed.”

A lot of guys could give you a baby, thought Tripoli, though he didn’t say anything.

“And Danny's no ordinary kid. He's smart as a whip. He knows what he wants and he can wait for it. Plan for it.” She picked up his photo. Whenever she gazed at Danny's face, she couldn’t help seeing Chuck—whether she wanted to or not. Those dreamy eyes and long, long lashes—bedroom eyes, she used to call them when she still loved him.

Tripoli nodded.

“You know, Louie—I mean, hey, what am I supposed to call you?”

“Lou's fine,” he smiled.“Louie, well that's my Uncle Louie. I was Louie when I was a kid.”

“Lou,” she repeated absently. She was thinking about Chuck. And her father. How when it came to the crunch, you just couldn’t rely on a man.

Tripoli was saying something to her. “Huh?” she said, waking from her reverie.

“I was asking about your work? The people you work with?”

“You mean Larry Pierce?”

“Well everybody,” he said and she gave him a quick rundown of the magazine, about Sandy and Ben and Doreen. He kept probing, asking about the company's finances, its backers, the people who came and went at the office—which seemed odd. All the while he
kept taking notes.

Tripoli lifted Danny's photo from the pile that lay strewn on the low table.“We have your description of Danny, but I just want to go over it with you again.” He replaced the photo and picked up his notepad.“Sometimes people miss things.”

Molly went through her litany, the plaid shirt, the bib overalls, the sneakers.

“Any identifying marks, that might help us? You know, a chipped tooth or a…”

Molly though about it.

“He has a small scar on his forehead, on his right side just above his eyebrow. Got it when he fell off the monkey bars.”

Tripoli noted it down.

“He chipped a tooth. But just a little bit. You can hardly see it.”

“Anything else?”

Molly thought for a moment.“Well, he has this small birthmark on the back of his neck.”

“What color?”

“Sort of wine red. The kids at daycare used to tease him about it, but he never let it bother him. He told them it was his star for being good.”A tear dropped into Molly's lap.“It almost did look like a star with points.”

“Anything else?

“No, I think that's all.”

When he was satisfied, Tripoli closed his notebook and sat thoughtfully for a moment.“Do you think I could see where Danny sleeps.”

Molly looked at him surprised. “Why would you want to do that?”

“Sometimes you can pick up—well, not a clue but an idea.”

“You’re not into that psychic stuff, are you?”

He smiled and shook his head.“No way.”

“Last thing in the world I want,” she said, leading the way to the rear of the trailer,“is a cop who thinks he can get my kid back with some mumbo jumbo.”

Tripoli could feel the trailer sway under his feet as they walked, as if it were a boat loosely moored to its pier.

“We share this room.” Molly sounded apologetic. “It's just till I can get a bigger place, a nicer one. We’ve been saving,” she said. “Danny and me. We have this plan.”

She watched Tripoli as his eyes searched the room in which there was barely enough space to accommodate the beds that met head to head in the far corner. The small area in the center was littered with toys. There was a fort made of blocks peppered with little plastic soldiers. Military men with bazookas and automatic weapons.

“Oh? What plan is that?” He was kneeling down in front of the toy shelf, examining the boy's toys. A Mutant Marauder Mobile Command Unit. Nerf soccer ball. Puzzles. Two cowboy hats. Spurs. A sheriff 's badge. And guns, lots of guns. A pair of western six shooters in a holster. A Supersoaker. Three different light sabers.

“We were…are…going to buy a little place in the country. Danny loves being outdoors. And he wants a puppy so bad. I promised him we’d do it. When he wouldn’t let me leave him at daycare in the beginning, I told him I was working to…” Molly felt her throat close and tears start to come, but she caught herself. “I was working so that we could get the money to buy a little farm. Not a real farm, you know, but a…” she blinked to clear her eyes.“Which is why every morning he’d let me…” She couldn’t go on. Why was she running at the mouth, telling Tripoli all this? What difference could it make?

Tripoli picked up the Supersoaker and hefted it in his hands. It still had water in it.

“This whole arsenal,” said Molly reading his thoughts. “Believe me, it was not my idea. Danny's fascinated by guns and swords. Lord
only knows why. I suppose it's just little boys.”