I was supposed to encourage the boys to study, but I didn’t. I let them play cards for swiss cake rolls instead. They were thus engaged on that first Friday afternoon when a seventeen-year-old named Joey arrived. I heard Cesar speak up.
“So?” he said.
“Nope,” said Joey.
“Why not?”
“It was the old man.”
“Damn.” A general disappointment in the room, clucking and sighing. “You going to go again?”
“No, man. Are you kidding? Somebody else go.”
“Hmm,” someone said. I could feel eyes on me. The legs of a chair stuttered across the floor; someone moved a bag so someone else could sit down. I kept writing, the pen scratching quietly.
Félix had the spot closest to the window, which was good because he didn’t like to be too closed in, but bad because the frame leaked air and it was cold now. In the Indian summer weeks he had boiled, and now he froze. He didn’t sleep much anyway since Mrs. Villanueva died. If he was lying there staring up into the dark with that dry feeling in his brain, he would just get up and read. He got books from the library and there was a free bin there too, so sometimes he had books he didn’t need to give back. He had taped a sheet of heavy paper around the bottom of the lampshade, which made the light shine downward in a circle no bigger than a dinner plate. As long as he used only that lamp, nobody complained if he was up in the middle of the night. At least, nobody but Carmelo. Carmelo complained about everything. Carmelo was sensitive to the pitch of other people’s breathing.
Carmelo was there that night, so: no reading. The boy lay in the dark, with that stiffness in his legs that meant he could keep turning over and over and would never be comfortable. He had a set of thoughts for these occasions, laid specially aside in a mental storeroom. Those thoughts were:
1.What is the perfect meal
2.What is the perfect girl
3.If I had a million dollars
He took number three out and considered it. His memories of the island were beginning to fade, which frightened him. But there were other boys from the Dominican Republic, and one of them talked about it so much that it helped bring some things back. If he had a million dollars, he would live in a mansion in Punta Cana, with a four-car garage. He would walk out the front door, past a fountain like the one Sean Connery had in Los Angeles, and right down to a white-sand beach, which would be full of beautiful girls. He thought of the beach he used to visit with his mother and father; the pink light through a red beach umbrella; a man selling Cokes out of a rucksack, and a jingling sound like change in a pocket. He remembered a yellow dog standing in the surf. Why had the dog lasted so long in his memory? It stood looking out to sea. Columbus landed first in the Dominican Republic. When he had learned that lesson in school he had thought of the beach he knew, with the dog and the man with the rucksack, and white sails just visible, far out at sea. He tried not to think of the white sails now, but once he had started it was hard to stop. They silently appeared on a diffuse horizon. It made a particular feeling happen in his chest, a cold space filled with movement, like the draft through the window. Sometimes the horror of the white sails was that they had always been there.
He went into his memories of the house in San Cristóbal. Sitting and waiting in a cool place, with his face against a banister. Being scolded for wearing no shoes.
If he had a million dollars, one of the cars in the four-car garage would be an Impala. He had discussed the issue with Richard at length, even though it tired him out to speak English for so long, and Richard didn’t speak Spanish. Richard said the Impala was the best, because his brother had one and had let him drive it on Long Island, and it was beautiful. What about a Ferrari? Félix had said. Pffft, said Richard. A Ferrari. You spend too much on parts. Félix felt that he shouldn’t have suggested a Ferrari to Richard, because it was too obvious. These things were complex and the obvious answer was not always the right thing to say.
The perfect meal was lechón and tostones and rocky road ice cream. Richard may have had a different answer but Félix didn’t care what Richard had to say on this subject.
I found Robert Candelario’s chart, misfiled with the Fs, in the annex on the second floor of the administration building. There were no home inspections listed, no relatives to host him on weekends or holidays. He was five feet four inches tall and weighed ninety-six pounds. He had brown eyes and black hair, and a scar across the knuckles of his right hand, indicated with a slash on the outline of a human body that was included in each chart to record distinguishing marks. In the photo his chin was lifted, his shoulders pitched forward, as if he were searching inside the camera for someone he knew. Maybe there was a trace of the little boy in the studio photo there. Maybe I only wanted to see it. I looked for a resemblance to Mr. Ibarra, but couldn’t be sure of that either. He was so young.
One of the last notes was written on November 8. Met with resident in the cottage to discuss his progress in care. Resident stated that he had an alarm clock which was stolen. Resident admitted that the clock was not secured in his locker when he left the cottage for class on 11/7/67. Resident was reminded to secure personal belongings.
Then, dated 12:00 AM on November 9, 1967: Resident is AWOL. Eight hours later, as the morning shift came on, an addendum: Resident’s room was searched. Bag and coat are missing. On the next page, much creased, there was a missing child report and the name of the officer at the Oakwood Police Department who had taken it.
For an instant I entertained the notion that he’d been kidnapped by allies of the regime. But no: he had taken his bag and coat. Where did the boys go when they ran away? Someone here would know where a boy like Candelario—young, angry about the theft, without relatives to indulge him—would go. This knowledge marked the boys off from adults without diminishing them, and therefore it was precious and would be guarded carefully.
At the Maryland Youth Center, the girls who went AWOL were always said to be with a boyfriend, whether they had been known to have one or not. There was a man in Hampden who, I heard at the time, ran a kind of crash pad for runaways. The girl who told me about it shrugged. “He’s all right,” she said. “He lets you take whatever you want out of the refrigerator.” But another girl who was rumored to have gone there came back with a haunted look.
On a Saturday, Mr. Ibarra left a message with my service saying he wanted to meet me. For an update on the case, he said. He wasn’t far away and would be downtown in the afternoon. I was tired from my work week at Saint Jerome and wished I could have stayed at home and reported over the telephone. But it wasn’t a good idea to be grudging with clients. I decided to make the most of the trip and take some furniture with me. I had found a good bookshelf on the curb outside a medical practice, dark wood with grooved and beveled edges. I thought it would make my office look more legitimate. I was self-conscious about the worn cushion on the chair and the scarred legs of the desk. I loaded the bookshelf into the back of my car and drove into the city.
I couldn’t find parking on the block, so I had a difficult walk to the building, carrying the awkward object in the rain, stopping often to rest my hands and back. Once I arrived, I had only a few minutes to choose a place for it and catch my breath before Mr. Ibarra knocked at the outer door. He came in folding a wet umbrella. He glanced around the office and concluded, with obvious irritation, that there was no stand to put it in. I took it from him and propped it against the radiator. I tried to imagine Philip Marlowe performing such a maneuver for a client and failed.
“Would you like a drink?” I said. “To take the cold off.” I had put a bar cart in the corner by the window. Until I could get together the money to fix the leak in my roof, I was filling expensive bottles with cheap whiskey.
“No, thank you. Only the news.”
“All right.” I sat behind the desk. “There’s a boy listed in the records at St. Jerome’s who arrived around the right time to be Félix,” I said. “But his name isn’t the one that
was given to the city after Mrs. Villanueva died, and his birthday isn’t right. They’re close, but not the same.” I had taken the photo from the chart room; I would put it back on Monday. I slid it across the desk. “Could this be him?”
His face changed. He rested his fingertips on the paper. I watched his eyes move over it.
“He looks just like his father at that age,” he said.
A bubble of happiness rose in my chest. We both sat and looked at the photo. I wished that Mrs. Ibarra could be there too, to see that I had found their boy and was only a few steps behind him. He thought he had no one, but he had these two, who were a line connecting him to his parents.
“You must bring him to us,” Mr. Ibarra said.
“He’s missing,” I said. “This boy, if he’s Félix, he ran away from the school in November.”
“Missing?”
“He was marked AWOL on the ninth of November. They filed a police report. If you’re confident that this is Félix, you and your wife can contact the police in Oakwood and tell them—”
“Are you crazy?” He was shocked. “If this were a matter for the police, we would have gone to them in the first place, not you. This is dangerous. This boy’s parents have enemies. Dissidents have disappeared in Puerto Rico, in Spain. You think Balaguer can’t reach New York? Every Dominican who works for the New York Police Department came up in the guardia.”
“Of course, of course,” I said, trying to calm him. “There are ways for us to handle this ourselves. It was only a suggestion.”
“I had my doubts about you from the beginning,” he said.
I pulled back. On an impulse, I took the photo from the desk and dropped it into a drawer.
“If my services aren’t meeting your standards,” I said softly, “you’re welcome to terminate our agreement and find someone else.”
The wind had grown stronger, and now gusts were throwing rain against the window. The cars passing on Fifteenth Street made a rushing sound on the wet pavement. A ringing phone in the travel agency above my office filtered down to us.
“No, of course not,” he said finally. “I only need you to understand.”
“And I do.” I folded my hands, searching for a way back. “What kind of little boy was he, when you knew him?”
Mr. Ibarra relaxed. “Oh, a good Dominican boy,” he said, smiling. “An Ibarra. Strong, fast. Playing football with the other children. He was the best player in the neighborhood before they had to send him away. All the other little boys followed him around.”
Once, when I was ten years old and taking swimming lessons at the YMCA, I climbed out of the pool too quickly on an empty stomach and almost fainted on the pool deck. I remember my ears ringing from the approaching syncope. Now, in my office, I felt the same pressure and uncanny weightlessness. Under the desk, my feet braced, as if I might have to jump up from my chair. But I kept my voice light. “Ah, an athlete!”
“Oh, yes. And he hated to lose, even then. Like his father. It’s a family trait.”
“Those things are passed down,” I said. “Certainly. From father to son.” I was aware of a light going on in the window of an apartment across the alley.
“They are.” He nodded slowly, passed his hand over his chin. “I should be going. Please telephone me with any news. Yes?”
“Of course. I’m glad you could identify the picture.”
“Mrs. Ibarra will be relieved to know that we are so much closer. But very distressed that he is missing.”
“Yes, I wish I had better news.”
I gave him his umbrella. He stood and fitted his hat back down over his gray hair, patted the pockets of his coat, gave the umbrella two shakes. I opened the door for him and he pressed my hand. “We only want him back,” he said.
After I had closed the door behind him, I went to my desk and removed the sheet of paper with the photo of Félix. I turned it over and read the back for the second time.
Candelario, Robert
Date of birth: 7/22/1953
Next of kin: NONE IDENTIFIED
Allergies: NONE
Medical alerts: HEMOPHILIAC. EXEMPT
FROM PHYS. ED.
I sat for thirty minutes in the empty office after he had gone, my hands flat on the blotter. Then I did a peculiar thing. I called my mother.
She answered on the fourth ring. She liked a hot whiskey and lemon on a cold, damp Saturday afternoon like this one, or she had once, when we had lived together. She would take it in the sunroom, with the paper. Two came to the house. When she picked up the telephone I could hear irritation in her voice at being interrupted, or maybe I imagined it; it was as much a part of her as her accent, which was from the sandy pine flats of north Louisiana and east Texas, or her light rose perfume, a scent I had always thought was too mild for her.
“Kelly residence,” she said.
“Hi, Ma.”
A pause. “Well, this is a surprise.”
I leaned over to the right. If I stretched, I could get hold of the neck of the rye bottle glowing gently in the rainy light. “How are you?” I said.
“I’m fine. Just got back from an association meeting.” She was chapter head of the Newswomen’s Association of America. “Total chaos, like usual.”
Were we chatting? It seemed that we were. I unscrewed the cap and poured a finger into a dusty glass, regretting instantly that I hadn’t wiped it out with the hem of my skirt first.
“How are you?” she said.
“I’m all right. Just some—a problem at work.”
“Oh!” she said. I was sure that I knew exactly what she was thinking: that finally, after all these aggravating and disappointing years, I had called her with exactly the type of problem that she knew how to solve. She had always been terrific at working. “What kind of problem?”
The rye was practically serrated. I gasped. “They gave me an assignment at the station,” I said, feeling it out. “But once I got started on it, it changed.”
“Well, that happens.”
“I guess it does.” The woman in the apartment across the alley was washing dishes. Her kitchen was warmly lit. I wondered if she could see me, in the dark of the office. Probably not. “I can’t trust the boss now, is really what the problem is. The difficulty.”
“Ah.” She had worked in news for thirty years, and knew all the time that any of her bosses would be happy to cast her aside, given half a chance, and give her desk to someone else. “Well, I can tell you what your problem is, then,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Your problem is that you trusted him in the first place.” She laughed.
“Right as usual, Ma,” I said. “Well. I’ll talk to you later.”
“You will?”
“Sure, I will.”
“I thought you had forgotten this number.”
“You have mine too, Ma.”
After I hung up the phone, I didn’t like the look of the office anymore. It was too still and too dark. I had smoked a joint with Jane once, and it had infused the ordinary shadows of a familiar room with menace; that was what was happening now. I stood up and put on my coat, and was already outside and halfway down the block before I noticed I had buttoned it up crooked.
CHAPTER 7
I didn’t realize how much I was hoping to see Max until I pushed open the heavy door of the Bracken and saw her there behind the bar. She smiled as I came across the room and poured me a drink. Another girl I knew, a waitress from Staten Island who never begrudged a cigarette and was happy to tell the same funny stories as many times as you wanted to hear them, was reading a paperback under a red-shaded lamp on a chain. Everyone called her Peach. There was a dangerous loosening in my throat when I saw them, these two women who knew me a little, at least.
“Thanks, doll,” I said to Max, then regretted it, then brazened it out with a smile. She winked.
“Haven’t seen you in a million years,” said Peach. She tapped the lip of her drink against mine.
“I’ve been busy.”
“So busy you’ve neglected your drinking?”
“I’m ashamed to admit it.”
Max was occupied with other customers, moving back and forth along the length of the bar. The place was beginning to fill up as Saturday afternoon turned into night. I drank slowly, remembering that I would have to drive home, and trying not to think about the cold and dark of the car. I chatted with Peach. As the crowd in the room grew, my face began to flush and my hands itched.
“I’m going to get some air,” I said to Peach.
Night had fallen. I let the door swing shut behind me and leaned back against the wall, breathing deeply. The dark gleam of the cars parked along Jones Street was comforting, a reminder of other, happier nights.
I had thought I was doing a good thing with this job. I’d been very stupid. I’d hoped I could do something good and be paid well for it, and now that felt like the ugliest kind of ego and naivete.
Since they were not and could not be his family—since there was no possibility that the hemophiliac son of a wealthy dynasty would be allowed to crash around playing soccer—who were they? I was sure now that the boy was Félix. His birth date, a month and a day off from the real one; and the way Mr. Ibarra had reacted to his photo.
I lit a cigarette and tried to let my mind empty out. Some obvious way forward would come to me if I could only be quiet for a minute.
In an uncurtained window across the street, I saw a man in an undershirt drinking a glass of water. Farther down, a backlit child sat up in bed. I liked how everyone was on top of each other in the Village, the buildings as high as a tall tree and no higher, the apartments on the upper floors close enough that from the street I could make out the figure of a Madonna and child in a lithograph above a stove. In summer, I could hear radios playing through the dense upper branches of the trees. Open windows were such a pleasure.
Vera Kelly Is Not a Mystery Page 5