Girl Who Wasn’t There

by Vincent Zandri

  For a weighted minute, the room turns as still and cold as a morgue. But then Walton breaks the ice by leaning up in his squeaky swivel chair. “Who was the last to see Chloe before she disappeared … let me see, here … on the beach behind the Golden Arrow Hotel?”

  “A man and a woman by the name of Stevens,” Penny offers. “Claudia and Burt. Chloe was playing in the sand with their little girl. A girl about her own age.”

  “A stranger?”

  “Yes,” Penny goes on. “Chloe is very friendly like that.”

  “Sounds like you have done a stellar job of raising her under very difficult and stressful circumstances, Mrs. O’Keefe,” Walton offers with a wink of his eye. His irony does not go unnoticed.

  He writes something down, then looks directly at me.

  “Question,” he says. “Why were the Stevenses the last people to see Chloe before she went missing?”

  The room falls quiet for a moment because he’s just asked the one Gotcha question I’ve been hoping to avoid.

  “Of course, we had our eye on her, too,” I say, feeling the blood fill my face along with the lie.

  “Oh, Sidney,” Penny interrupts with a shake of her head. “Let’s just tell him the truth, for God’s sakes.”

  Chief Walton gazes at Penny, then at me.

  “Which truth?” he asks.

  Me, exhaling. “Penny and I had taken a moment to be alone. In the hotel room. It was the first time in years. Ten years.”

  Holding up his hands again.

  “Okay, okay,” he says, once again sitting back in the swivel chair. “I get it. You left your daughter alone on the beach with some strangers so you could get some action.”

  “It wasn’t exactly like that,” Penny protests. “Chloe is very mature, and our room is located on the bottom floor, beach level. We were literally just a few feet away. Sidney had a small, very personal gift he wanted to share with me while we had a brief spare moment alone.”

  She doesn’t show him the metal ring, but she does twist it on her finger, self-consciously.

  “But you weren’t watching her,” he clarifies. “Technically speaking. I’m just trying to paint a clear picture inside my head here.”

  “No,” I confirm. “We weren’t watching her. We were together in that room, with the curtains closed. That answer your question … Chief?”

  “Take it easy, Mr. O’Keefe,” Walton says after a long beat. “No need to get all worked up over nothing. Best to keep that temper in check, wouldn’t you agree?”

  … worked up over nothing …

  He slowly, dramatically, sits back and then up again, the swivel chair sounding like it’s about to collapse under his weight. His eyes on the desk, he shuffles through Chloe’s file, taking a second or two to study her photo. He picks up the pen, taps out a few beats on the metal desktop, then quite abruptly, stands.

  “Mrs. O’Keefe,” he says, both his thumbs jammed into his black leather utility belt. “Would you mind stepping outside for just a moment? I’d like to have a word with your husband, alone.”

  He follows up with a polite smile. But other than politeness, there’s nothing in the smile that conveys friendliness or happiness. Penny rises, nods, and heads for the door, but not without brushing the fingertips on her right hand against my left hand. The touch sends a kind of electric wave up and down my spine.

  “I’ll be right outside, Doc,” she whispers.

  The door opens and closes hard, the loud violent noise startling me like a gunshot to the heart.

  CHAPTER 18

  WALTON STARES AT me for a while. It’s not like he’s eyeing me so much as MRI’ing me with his special eyes. Trying to see inside me, see what it is I’m hiding.

  “What’s this all about?” I say, not hiding my anger. “Or is this just another stall tactic to keep you from looking for my daughter?”

  “Love the attitude, O’Keefe,” he says, gritting his teeth. “But I’m gonna lay it on the line now that your wife is out of the room. I know exactly who you are, what you’re all about, and what you did to that Chinese family back in ’07.”

  “I didn’t do anything to that Chinese family.”

  He rolls his eyes around in their sockets, sticks out his already pronounced chin.

  “You pick the devil you sleep with, O’Keefe,” he says. “If I had a dime for every asshole I put away who says, Gee, I didn’t do it, or I swear, I’m really not a bad guy, I wouldn’t be working this shitty job chasing out-of-town drunk drivers every weekend. I don’t really give a crap who killed them or why. What I do give a crap about is a little girl who’s apparently gone missing in my village while her parents were busy fucking their brains out inside their hotel room, and it don’t sit right with me.”

  He goes quiet for another beat, but his words are somehow still bouncing off the walls like ricocheting bullets.

  “So what are you getting at, Chief ?”

  “I’ve made a few calls, your parole officer being one of them … what’s his name.” He shuffles through the paperwork again.

  “Lochte,” I say. “Drew … Lochte.”

  “Yeah, Lochte. That’s it. We discussed your parole and why you were able to get such a sweet deal on the outside.” Smiling again. “Yeah, that’s right, I know about the pricks who came after you in the joint. I also know how you managed to put them down, Sidney Van Dam. You got the bleeding-heart tattoo on your bicep. Whad’ you do, tell your old lady it was a heart to remember her by?” He snorts. “You’re a badass motherfucker, O’Keefe. A killer. You should be proud of yourself. Men, women, and children fear you.”

  “But not you, Chief.”

  He grins. “Now we’re making some real progress.”

  Heart beating, pulsing, pounding. I’m swallowing something hard and bitter, my mouth entirely dry, my teeth digging at my bottom lip. Severe agitation, clinically speaking. Severe restlessness, aggravation, anxiety. I’m absolutely seething, and Walton knows it because Walton is going out of his way to provoke me. Non-clinically speaking, he’s pulling every one of my triggers.

  I inhale a breath, release it slowly.

  I say, “Wow, guess you’ve done your homework after all, Chief.”

  “Yah, I have. ’Cause that’s what I do.” Picking up the file and releasing it so that it drops back down on the desk. Then, “Here’s what I’m guessing about you, O’Keefe. As lucky as you’ve been at keeping your own neck from being cut wide open, you knew that your luck was about to run out. That Rabuffo was gonna get to you sooner or later, just to make sure you kept your mouth shut for all eternity plus one hundred years. To make sure you suddenly don’t start mouthing off about his not so legal business affairs.” He smiles. “How’s that TV jingle go? You seen it yet since you been out?”

  “Rabuffo’s Custom Clothiers …” I half sing, half mumble.

  “That’s it, O’Keefe,” he says. “You can carry a tune. That damn jingle runs every five minutes on TV and radio, I swear. I sing it in my goddamn sleep.”

  “Daylight’s wasting, Chief.”

  “Okay, so Rabuffo knows that eventually your dick is gonna get itchy and you’re gonna one day wake up and it’s gonna be Popeye time. You’re gonna look in the mirror and scream, Enough is enough, and enough is too much! So what do you do?—”

  “—I make contact with my lawyer, tell him to tell the DA I’m ready to talk. It’s Rabuffo’s worst nightmare.”

  “I love it when somebody like yourself is on the same page with me,” he says. “Makes this shit so much easier.”

  “Glad I can help.”

  “So you went to Albany, got down on your knees, sucked the DA off, swallowed his load, and now you’re free and the FBI is building up its case against that rich-as-Jesus trafficking asshole.” Tapping his temple with his index finger. “He knows you spilled everything, and in my mind at least, he’s not happy about it so now he’s going after you in a different way. He wants to make you suffer. He wants to torture you. So what’s
he do? He follows you up here, or one of his goons follows you up here anyway, and they snatch your daughter off the beach while you’re getting your rocks off. Sound like a logical possibility to you?”

  My eyes lock onto his. They’re so focused I can make out the jagged lightning strike–like broken blood vessels that mar his whites. My guess is that Walton likes his beer and whiskey chasers so much, he’s a shorthair away from a stroke, or at the very least, minor myocardial infarction. If his tired eyes don’t give him away, then his wheat belly and friendly demeanor do.

  “You listen to me, Chief,” I say, my voice low, but somehow screaming. “Penny doesn’t know shit about Rabuffo. All she knows is I worked for him as a driver that night in 2007, and because of it, I did time. I’d very much appreciate it if that’s the way it stayed.”

  He crosses arms over barrel chest.

  “So she really doesn’t know, does she?” he says. “She doesn’t know the extent of it. How the hell does she think you went from incarcerated for pretty much life to suddenly scot-free with the snap of a finger? She doesn’t know the things you know about Mickey. Some of his deepest, darkest secrets.”

  “Like what?”

  “I can bet Rabuffo has quite the stash stored away in a vault somewhere. Maybe even a vault kept deep down inside the basement of his house. You two were as close as a father and son, I’m told. Might be reasonable to suspect you know more than you’re letting on about when it comes to accessing that little fortune.”

  In my head, seeing myself side by side Rabuffo, riding an elevator down into the subterranean depths beneath his mansion, where the true Rabuffo operation was run. How is it the chief of an upstate mountain backwater is privy to all this?

  “Mickey Rabuffo,” he goes on. “Must be he let you in on lots of secrets. How he operated his various smuggling ops, his Chinese restaurants, the tailor shops, who he trusted, who he didn’t. Maybe even, where he kept his money.” He laughs. “Because he damn sure didn’t keep it all in the KeyBank down the road. I imagine he saved you from a whole lot of hurt from those card shark assholes you owed. Maybe … just maybe … Mickey Rabuffo saved your life when it needed saving the most.”

  I see myself walking the grounds behind Mickey’s house in North Albany. We’re surrounded by woods. There’s an Olympic-sized swimming pool that’s a girl magnet. A few of them are lounging around it, their tops off. Beautiful girls with long blonde, red, and brunette hair. They tease one another, drink champagne with one another, snort lines off one another’s flat bellies, kiss one another’s Botox-injected lips. The house beyond the pool is a large white Colonial. There’s a separate wing for the maids, butlers, and cooks. Rabuffo is living in a decadent Caligula-like world long since passed and he’s loving it.

  He’s wearing a white robe over long red swimming trunks. He’s got these big sunglasses on that look like something Elvis would have worn back in the mid-seventies. Hanging off his neck is a thick gold chain. He’s smoking a big cigar delivered from Cuba via his own plane, which also made a pit stop in Mexico City. No doubt the plane contained a good-sized shipment of El Chapo love powder. He sets his hand on my shoulder, gives it a pinch. Something a loving father might do to his young adult son.

  “Sidney,” he says, “I like you. I like paying for you. I like helping you. You know why?”

  “Why’s that, Mick?” I say, staying close to him, answering only when spoken to.

  “Because you’re smart. You’re not like the other morons who work for me. That fucking Wemps and Singh. Meatheads. They are loyal, I will admit. But you. You’ve got class. You’re educated. You have manors. You’re confident, even after that bullshit your ex-wife pulled on you. You don’t even like carrying a gun.”

  “Why would I need a gun, Mick?”

  He stops, laughs, pulls the cigar from his mouth.

  “Now that’s funny,” he says. “You, the young man who could have been a surgeon or a heart doctor or the guy who cured cancer, if only you’d stayed in med school. But then that horrible bitch came into your life and robbed you blind. But now you’re going to have a new life. I’m going to take you into my confidence, Sidney. In exchange for your loyalty, I’m going to let you work off your debt, and in the process, I’ll make you rich beyond your wildest dreams. I’m going to make you one of my own, like my very own son.”

  My thoughts, drifting back to the here and now.

  “She knows,” I say.

  “Who knows what, O’Keefe? You’re talking in riddles.”

  “Penny,” I say. “That I leveraged my inside information on Rabuffo in order to negotiate parole. And a very sweet parole deal at that.”

  “Didn’t you just tell me she thinks you were the driver and that’s all?”

  “Let me be clear,” I say. “She hasn’t exactly come out and said she knows what I did in order to get paroled. But trust me, she knows. I feel it in my gut that she knows. How could she not know, Chief ?”

  “And she knows Mr. Custom Clothier-slash-Chinese restaurant mogul is about to face FBI arrest any minute? Thanks to you.”

  “She knows I was working for him at the time of my arrest, but I always kept my true connection to him a secret—to protect her. To protect my baby.” Shaking my head. “Christ, I only started in with him because I needed the money. I was a bag man. Nothing dangerous. Then, I guess, one thing led to another. Like you said, I slept with the devil and got burned.”

  “It’s quite possible that it led directly to your missing daughter, Sidney.” He allows his arms to fall by his sides, purses his lips, glances up at the acoustical ceiling. “Unless, of course, something else happened to your daughter.”

  “What kind of something else?”

  “You were a violent man in prison,” he says, a little under his breath, his eyes now back on me. “Some men have difficulty adjusting when they get out. Little things annoy them. Like a little girl, for instance. Kids tend to agitate some people, get under their skin.”

  The fury once more mainlined into my veins.

  “What are you accusing me of, Chief ?”

  He grins, bearing those chewing-tobacco-stained teeth.

  “Nothing much,” he says with a wink. “Just theorizing is all.”

  “My daughter loves me,” I say, my voice raised a decibel or two. “We had a loving relationship when I was away. We have one now.”

  Inhaling, biting down on my lip.

  He holds up his hands. “Hey, take it easy, Doctor Sid. I’m just talking out loud is all. We’re all friends here. We both want the same thing. We wanna see Chloe returned to the arms of her adoring family.”

  I say, “So since we both want the same thing, what’s the plan, Chief ? Are we going to find Chloe? Or do you wanna keep talking?”

  “I’ll do everything in my power to see that she’s found. I’m in touch with Canadian authorities up north and the APD down south in Albany and everywhere in between. If she’s out there, we’ll find her, Doctor Sid.”

  Turning, I go for the door.

  “Oh, and Sid?” Walton calls out.

  About-facing. “What is it?”

  “Watch your back. Rabuffo probably has one of his goons Scotch-taped to your ass. Probably has since the moment you walked out of prison a free man.”

  “Thanks for caring. I feel better now.”

  “And one more thing.”

  “You’ve still got my undivided attention.”

  “On the subject of how you handled yourself in the joint. You’ve become one formidable dude. Like I said, a badass motherfucker. Do not take the law into your own hands. You might live through it, but it will most definitely get your little girl killed.” He pokes his temple with an extended index finger. “Be a smarty. Go back to the hotel, eat something, get some rest. Keep your cell phone by your side. Anything comes up, we’ll call you right away. And check in with Lochte tomorrow. He’ll want to hear from you.”

  “Duly noted, Chief,” I say.

  Opening the door,
I step out into the corridor, fingers crossed.

  CHAPTER 19

  PENNY IS ANXIOUSLY waiting for me. She’s got her phone in hand. She’s staring at the screen, wide-eyed.

  “What’s wrong now, Pen?” I ask.

  “It’s the Amber Alert, Sid. I’m looking at it. Can’t keep my eyes off of it. There’s our daughter’s picture, plain as day. Her grade school picture. It doesn’t seem real, Sid. It’s like I have to convince myself that it’s Chloe.”

  She shows me the photo. It’s my little baby’s smiling face. Above the face are the words, “Amber Alert. Americans Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response.” I’m looking at the face and feeling the pain of her separation from us. It’s like a knife is stabbing me in the gut again and again and again. Only I never bleed out. The wound automatically cauterizes and heals. The torture never ends. It’s just like being caught up in a nightmare, but your brain refuses to wake up. Just looking at Penny’s pale, withdrawn face, I can tell it’s the same for her, too.

  The pain will only go away when we get Chloe back.

  If we get Chloe back.

  We exit the police station like we’ve just walked out of a wake. We begin our slow walk along the Main Street sidewalk back to our hotel. It’s the walk of the doomed. Not long ago, we were panicked, our bodies running at high speed on adrenaline. But now, it’s as if concrete has been poured into our veins. The concrete is hardening, making every single step a labored effort.

  “My God, Sid,” Penny utters through her tears. “What the hell are we going to do? Chloe’s out there somewhere. She’s out there, and she’s alone, and hungry. Do you think she misses us?”

  I’ve been missing my daughter for ten years. It was the price I paid for keeping my mouth shut inside prison. Truth is, I never feared for my own life, so much as I feared for the lives of my family. I knew that if I were to blow the whistle on Rabuffo once and for all, it would put them at risk. In the end, when I did finally talk, it had to occur only under conditions of the utmost security. It’s what the DA and the FBI had to agree to, or I would have chosen to remain in prison for the rest of my life if need be.