Last Night

by Karen Ellis

  He bends to push a hand into his boot and massage the muscle. Slides his phone into the back pocket of his jeans and heads for the stairwell down to the first floor.

  Out on West Eighth Street in the moonlit darkness he listens to the roar of the ocean. Coney Island is uncharacteristically quiet, the Wonder Wheel at rest, Luna Park’s dazzle switched off. The solitude grips and terrifies him. He reaches for his phone and almost calls Adam, but resists the urge. Let Adam be the one to break the silence.

  Toby clips past, jangling a set of keys to one of the precinct cars. “Caught one. I told Minnick you’re out here if someone else comes in.”

  “Thanks,” Lex says. Whatever lands next will be his. After that, new cases will have to wait in line for whoever gets back first.

  Just as he’s about to head inside, his phone vibrates and he stops breathing. The screen comes alive in his hand, but not with Adam’s name.

  A text from his brother, David:

  Sorry to ask but any chance you could bring Ethan to school tomorrow morning? Babysitter’s sick and I’ve got an early meeting with the AG.

  David’s been angling since late winter for that meeting with the New York State attorney general, wanting to discuss a judgeship that’s about to open. Justice David Cole. Smiling, Lex taps out his response.

  Short answer-yes. Long answer-if I don’t get derailed by a case. Better arrange a backup. Otherwise see u @7, that work?

  Yes and will do and I owe you one.

  Another one u mean.

  ☺

  Second time this month. David should consider finding either a new babysitter or a second wife. But in truth, Lex enjoys his rare one-on-one time with his nine-year-old nephew. Once Ethan is old enough to get himself back and forth to school and spend a few hours alone in the apartment, there won’t be any more calls for standby parenting on David’s custody days. Lex doesn’t look forward to the moment he’ll stop being the cool cop uncle and become just another asshole authority figure.

  On his way through the lobby he nods at Minnick, the front-desk officer, mealy in his uniform, with a fringe of thinning hair poking out from beneath his cap. Minnick nods back in acknowledgment of the detective’s return.

  A small woman clutching her purse to her side blasts through the precinct entrance and announces to Minnick, “My son is missing!” Her shoulder-length brown hair is frizzed from the moist night air, defying an apparent effort to straighten it. Lex pauses in the stairwell door. This is unusual, someone coming on foot to report a missing person; typically they panic and pick up the phone.

  He turns and watches Minnick suck in his cheeks as he faces the monitor on his desk and clicks through to open a new case report. The officer asks, “How old is your son?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Minnick clicks through to a different page, presumably having opened a report for a missing minor, based on the mother’s relative youth and her level of agitation. As he takes down the basics, Lex backtracks to the front desk; the case is just going to find its way upstairs to him anyway. Glad for something to think about not-Adam, he takes the printout that Minnick hands him.

  “I’m Detective Lex Cole.” He gives the mother his card. “How can I help?”

  Her forehead ruts. “My son never came home tonight. He was arrested yesterday and then—”

  He glances at the report—her name is Katya Spielman—and interrupts, “Mrs. Spielman, let’s go talk somewhere quieter.”

  “It’s quiet right here.” Impatience spikes her tone. “And it isn’t Mrs. I’m divorced.”

  “My mistake.” He says it gently, in the hope of knitting a strand of calm into her worry. He leads her to one of the first-floor interrogation rooms, windowless gray walls that might have been white once, the metal table etched with someone’s initials.

  She looks at his card, then at him. “Your full name is Alexei.”

  “Yes, but everyone calls me Lex.” He sits, and gestures toward the opposite chair. “You were starting to tell me that your son,” he looks at the report, “Titus—”

  “He also doesn’t use his given name. He goes by Crisp.”

  “Crisp. That’s unique, but then so is Titus.”

  “I’m so worried.”

  “You were saying that Crisp was arrested yesterday, meaning Wednesday, right? Technically today’s already Friday. Just to be clear.”

  “Yes, Wednesday. On his way home from school.”

  Lex listens carefully, taking notes as she unspools the story: her son’s ticket for riding his bicycle on the sidewalk, followed by a “wrongful arrest” for assaulting an officer, “which he would never, ever do.” He spent a night in the Brooklyn House of Detention before finally appearing on the arraignment roster at around noon. She explains, “When he got home this afternoon—no, that would be yesterday afternoon now, Thursday—he wasn’t good. He looked exhausted, obviously, but it was more than jail. It was missing his graduation yesterday morning—speaking at his graduation—the honor of being valedictorian gone because some cop was trying to meet his quota. The principal himself tried pulling strings, but it was too late.”

  “If the arrest was wrongful,” Lex assures her, “the charge will be thrown out.”

  “It was wrongful. But then…” She lowers her face into her hands to stifle a groan of frustration. “I never should have told him that the Princeton dean’s office left a message. That was a mistake.”

  “It upset him?”

  “They gave him a full scholarship—everything, even housing. He must be worried they found out about the arrest, but who knows why they called? He said he’d return the call later, but I pressed the issue, and then he stormed out—and that was that.”

  “He’s nineteen.”

  “Yes.”

  “An adult.”

  “Only technically.”

  “Yeah, I get that, I do. But usually we give it a little time when it’s an adult, especially when it’s an older teenager.”

  “This is a good boy. An unusual boy.”

  “You said you’re divorced—could he have spent the night with his father?”

  “My ex-husband isn’t in the picture, not since Crisp was a baby.”

  “Does he have a girlfriend? Buddies he stays over with sometimes?”

  “No girlfriend, no friends close enough to stay over. He’s more of an…an…intellectual. He spends time with the family, me and his grandparents, and he reads. A lot. He has never gone out and not come home. Crisp would call, absolutely, unless something prevented it. This is a good boy—valedictorian of his class.”

  Lex realizes that she’s started to repeat herself; it’s not unusual for worried family members to lose themselves in a loop. The wall clock tells him that it’s coming on three a.m. Pushing back his chair, he makes a promise. “Katya, I’ll do everything I can to find your son as soon as humanly possible.”

  “Thank you.” She picks up her purse as if about to stand, but pauses. “Detective, if you don’t mind—do I hear an accent? Russian, maybe?”

  “You’ve got a good ear. Most people don’t hear it.”

  “I grew up with Russian parents. I still live with them; they helped me raise my son.”

  Lex smiles. “That’s nice.”

  “I’m curious: How long have you been here?”

  “Twenty-two years, since I was a kid.”

  “You came with your parents?”

  “No. Long story.” He stands. “I’m curious about something too: Why did you come all the way here instead of calling?”

  “We live nearby, in Brighton Beach.” The runnels deepen across her forehead. “Also, our apartment is small and I didn’t want my parents to hear me talking. My mother had a massive heart attack last year. I can’t worry her unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

  “I’d probably do the same thing,” he reassures her, though in fact he has no idea what it’s like to be an adult child with aging parents. His didn’t stick around long enough
to sprout gray hair. “I’ll get in touch the minute I know something.”

  “Thank you, Detective Cole.”

  “Lex.”

  “Thank you, Lex.”

  Back in the squad room, the pluck of classical guitar tells Lex that Gaston Fulton got back sometime while he was downstairs with Katya Spielman. Some of the guys did that when they found themselves alone: playing their own music right in the common space. If it was Toby, it would have been jazz. Jason Kahn, rap. Tag Riordan, salsa. Lex never plays music here, even when he has the chance—a habit, he realizes only now, from home, where Adam is the resident DJ.

  The trill of notes cuts off abruptly as soon as Lex walks in. “No need,” he tells Gaston. “I like it.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  The music resumes.

  At his desk, Lex can’t help wondering if Katya Spielman overreacted by reporting her son missing so soon. It’s not unusual for nineteen-year-olds to stay out all night, regardless of how angelic their mothers think they are.

  He starts by opening the arrest record. Just as his mother described, Crisp was stopped for riding his bicycle on the sidewalk, and then the incident escalated. The report details an arrest for “disorderly conduct after the subject verbally berated the arresting officer.” Lex shakes his head, seeing that; it’s perfectly legal to curse out a cop. What exactly did the kid say? Or is PO Mario Russo especially thin-skinned?

  From there, everything Lex learns using the information and log-ins that Ms. Spielman gave him only confirms her glowing assessment of her son. In his college recommendations, his high-school principal calls him “one of the best students we’ve ever had here, and that’s saying something.” His history and literature teachers call him “exemplary” and “brilliant.” His math teacher says that Crisp is “really impressive for a humanities kid.” His French, Latin, Spanish, and Italian teachers all cite an “extraordinary gift” for languages. Lex learns that Princeton isn’t the only fancy school to offer him a full ride: so did Stanford, and Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and Brown all came close.

  Lex sits back, stares at the ceiling, listens to a tricky onslaught of guitar notes. Maybe the mother was right to worry. But at nineteen, it’s too soon to raise an alarm.

  His calf twinges and he hoists his boot onto the desk and digs in to massage the muscle and silence the cry. In a gap of thought, he recalls the last things he and Adam said to each other the night before. Their argument—no, fight; that’s how nasty it got, their words flying at each other like precision weapons only people who know each other well can deploy with real damage. He accused Adam of keeping secrets. Adam accused him of being paranoid. They both said things they shouldn’t have said and could never take back. “Devious.” “Monster.”

  “Just tell me what you’re doing every night,” Lex demanded. Again. Adam was a doctoral student in psychology who, if he wasn’t at the library, spent a lot of time at home. There was no obvious reason for him to slip out so often, so late and for so long. It had been going on for over a week.

  Again Adam answered, “Nothing.”

  “You never lied to me before. I’ve always trusted you.”

  “You can still trust me, Lex.”

  “Where do you go?”

  “I told you: I’m doing something to help a friend.”

  “Who?”

  “Please stop asking.”

  But Lex knew: Adam was seeing someone else. And then he would leave Lex, because that’s what Adam did. He’d lived with his last boyfriend, William, for nearly three years before their breakup just over a year ago—a breakup triggered by what started as a fling with Lex. He remembers seeing Adam for the first time, at a party thrown by their mutual friend Diana; he was holding a beer on her light-strung roof-deck. Remembers how good Adam looked in his dark jeans and purple shirt. How drunk and disorderly William became before he was dragged home by his long-suffering partner. Soon after, Lex and Adam met for coffee, then kept meeting. Adam admitted that he’d had enough of his valiant efforts to keep his alcoholic boyfriend afloat. That was when Lex put out his hand and his heart, and Adam took them both. At the time, Lex saw Adam’s leaving William as an act of strength, not a foretaste of the weakness that would not only destroy them too, but lead Lex back to his own worst place.

  “You know what?” Lex blurted. “I’ve had enough. Don’t come back. Stay with him, whoever he is this time.” Why should he wait to be left? He’d never said anything like that to Adam before and it startled them both. And Adam, compassionate Adam, had never looked at him so blankly, as if something inside him had snapped. Lex felt suspended in middle space—that moment after you’ve broken something delicate and beloved, when you wish you could rewind time but you can’t.

  “You got it,” Adam said. “I’m out.” The door slammed and the apartment shook and Lex was alone.

  Adam wasn’t home when Lex got back from work in the morning. He darkened the bedroom and tried to sleep but, despite exhaustion, couldn’t. Eventually he gave up and took his surfboard to the beach, desperate to free his mind of suspicion, but the questions followed him and the moment he thought he saw Adam on shore…well. That was pretty much how it had happened in college with his baseball injury: a moment of distraction, a misplacement of form, the backward snap of his wrist in service to a home run, followed quickly by blackout, hospital, opioid haze, and, within a year, that single treacherous taste of heroin. The opening of a hole, an abyss, of perpetual craving. A person-size hole now, with the prospect of Adam leaving.

  Through the raised window he sees a plane buzz across the sky.

  Moving his sore leg off the desk, Lex promises himself, as he did last night, that if Adam isn’t leaving him, if he does come home, he’ll follow his boyfriend next time he gets the chance. Then, just as forcefully, he promises himself that he would never sink so low. Things between them were so easy, so good, for so long. When did that change?

  He awakens his monitor and there again is the problem of Crisp Crespo. Lex makes a decision: if the teenager still doesn’t turn up soon, he’ll head over to Brighton Beach and canvass the area for anyone who might have seen him after he left his family’s apartment. If he does turn up, Lex will head to Brooklyn Heights and take Ethan to school. Work. Plans. That is how to fill the hole.

  5

  Detective Saki Finley pretends not to notice her colleague Jack Dinardo’s low thrum of laughter as she arrives for her early-morning shift. The sound of the squishy soles of her Wallabees squeaking across the tiled floor of the 8-4 squad room has never failed to amuse the old fart.

  Maybe, she thinks, eyes anchored to the goal of her neatly organized desk at the far end of the unit, maybe if Dinardo ever did any real work he wouldn’t have so much attention to spare for her sartorial preferences. Once, he came right out and asked why she always dressed in black—if it was an emo thing, or if she was trying to be cool—and she told him, without a glint of humor, “Because it’s practical.” Rarely any jewelry, because it gets in the way, and never her engagement ring, because it attracts attention she doesn’t want. By the time she reaches her desk, Dinardo is focused back on his movie or whatever it is he’s looking at to tick out overtime on top of his regular shift.

  Saki leans down to open the bottom drawer of her desk, removes her lumbar support cushion, and stows her black fanny pack in its place. At first, it wasn’t just Dinardo: nearly all the other investigators needled her for her various comfort accommodations given that she’s only thirty-two and in excellent condition. It was a relief when the jokes mostly stopped coming; she didn’t really understand them, and it took time to explain herself, and she hated the distraction from more important business.

  She pulls her ginger hair into a ponytail and secures it with the band from around her wrist. Removes her dark aviators and folds them into her shirt pocket. Turns on her monitor, refreshes her screen, and clicks open the log.

  The most recent case, entered by Dinardo fifty-se
ven minutes earlier, was instigated by a call from a Margaret O’Leary-Dreyfus. The mother reported that her eighteen-year-old daughter failed to come home last night. Dinardo’s notes read, Teenager with problems, wait and see. A flash of irritation and Saki glances across the unit at her colleague, yawning now, stretching, turning off his monitor, standing up. She dials the number on the report.

  A woman answers, high voice strung tight: “Hello?”

  “This is Detective Saki Finley, Eighty-Fourth Precinct, following up on your daughter. Am I speaking with Ms. O’Leary-Dreyfus?”

  “Yes.” The voice higher now, tighter.

  “Any word yet from—” Saki checks the report for the girl’s name.

  The mother jumps into Saki’s brief pause. “Glynnie. Her name is Glynnie.”

  6

  Last Night

  Crisp pulls the buds out of his ears when Glynnie appears on the Dreyfus stoop across the street, and he taps his phone to silence the Strokes (noticing that his mother has now tried calling him three times). One-of-a-kind Glynnie in orange flip-flops, ripped jeans, and a striped T-shirt, her thin blonde hair tucked behind her ears. Just like last time they met, she has this perpetual look of messiness about her. No makeup on her face, green polish on her toenails. Wireless Beats hanging off her neck like a broken choker. He’s wanted to set the record straight with her, make sure she understands why he was up there in that cage yesterday, and after a terrible homecoming this afternoon he decided he might as well tell her in person. He had to go somewhere, see someone, and all his friends were out celebrating with their families. He hopes she doesn’t feel he overstepped by showing up.