by David Levien
Outside, the air was steely with cold. He buttoned his cashmere coat, twisting his silk and cashmere muffler up around his throat to block any stray wind. The winter felt never-ending and he longed to get away to the Bahamas, to Paradise Island. His joints craved some warm, humid air. He envisioned a massage on the beach, tropical drinks and a bit of time in the casino at night, smoking the Havanas that were abundant down there. He could call the travel agent and head out for a couple or three days, the only decision being which young lady to take with him. He could afford it. He still had plenty of rental income from his properties, but it just didn’t feel like the right time. His work ethic was such that when things were faltering, his first reaction was to buckle down and apply himself until they were running well again. Of course, when things were cooking, he felt the urge to push the advantage and was reluctant to break the momentum with something so indulgent as a vacation. The result was accumulated tension that at the moment was beating him. He was a workaholic and he knew it. He slid into his car, the leather seat cold as a marble slab, and kicked over the engine. He drove out of the lot and headed for the office as if on autopilot.
“I’ve got two addresses so far. An office and a residence,” Behr said when Paul got in the car. He spent some rubber pulling out and drove across town. “This guy, Riggi, he comes up as a real estate broker. I’ve got his home on Heatherstone in Carmel.”
“He must be doing well,” Paul said, handing him a sandwich.
“Yeah. I say we try the office first.”
They finished their turkey and Muenster on seven-grain sandwiches by the time they reached the small stand-alone building of a faux Tudor style that housed Hemlock Point Realty. They approached the thick brown wooden door, which was locked. They peered in through a small glass square in the door. A main room held three desks, which bore computers and listings books, but were currently unoccupied. The whole place, in fact, including the waiting area, and what they could see of some back offices, was empty.
“It’s around midday. The office could be out to lunch.”
“They could be closed for the day. Or longer.”
“Yep.” There was no sign informing them as to which.
They returned to the car and sat there, the ignition turned off as Behr had been taught, breath clouding the cold air.
“We could chase around to the home address, but we could end up missing him all over the place. I say we invest a few hours in waiting.”
Paul nodded his agreement.
They sat for a quarter hour in attentive silence, both scrupulously avoiding the events of the morning, Paul’s methodic flexing and rubbing of his hands the only tangible reminder of what had gone on. Then Behr spoke.
“It was a chance I took bringing you to County. Lots of guys would’ve collared up in that situation” — Behr put a hand near his throat in a choking gesture—”but you did good.”
“If lots of guys would’ve collared up, why’d you risk bringing me?” Paul asked.
“You’re not lots of guys.”
Paul nodded his thanks. “Neither are you, Frank.”
They fell silent again and watched midday slide through to early afternoon. Before long Paul’s breathing deepened. His eyelids began to flicker and he drifted off into a light sleep.
Paul felt his bones go to rubber. His mind released to a place without thought. A golden darkness surrounded him. He walked down a beach of powdery sand. He was in Destin, Florida. They had gone there as a family three years ago Easter, but he was there now, in a time out of time. A para-sailer floated by him, towed by a boat, black in silhouette against the sky. As the canopy cleared it, the sun shone bright in his eyes. He did not look away. He felt his thudding footsteps absorbed by the sand, sucking his feet downward. He knew he was dozing, dreaming, but the images were more real than any reality he’d known. He kept walking and began to come up on the figure of his wife. She was in a bathing suit, her body young and firm. His eyes traveled down her arm, with aching slowness, to her hand. Hers held on to the small hand of a boy. Jamie. His son’s feet moved in a youthful dance, like a colt’s, light sand kicking up around his ankles. Paul walked faster, his legs feeling incredibly heavy. Still, he gained ground, one step, two steps closer. Suddenly, his wife’s and his son’s hands broke free. Jamie skipped down the beach, nimble, free. Paul had no hope of catching him. His legs were rubber. Jamie wasn’t fleeing, though; he turned where he was, as he used to when he was a young child, exploring the boundaries of independence but wanting to be sure his parents were still there. Paul’s wakeful mind rose up and he asked himself the very clear question of whether this was a mere dream or if he was being visited by the spirit of his dead son.
His eyes snapped open and he was back in the cold car. There was no time to revel in or mourn the vision, as a man was crossing from a gleaming sedan toward the Tudor building. Paul looked out at him and saw with the fleeting, penetrating clarity that the edge of consciousness brings. He’d believed he’d faced a difficult, ugly fact of the world that morning at the jail, but in that one look through the windshield he recognized that there were layers upon layers of filth and meanness, and he’d only been at the surface.
Behr was already halfway out of the car when Paul went for his door handle.
“Yeah, Mr. Riggi, how are you?” The eyes of the man in the expensive coat darted and revealed they had the right person. “We’re interested in some property—”
“No, you’re not,” Riggi said, stopping and squaring, cutting right through Behr’s little pretext. “What do you want?”
“You’re right, it’s not about property. It’s about your side business—”
“Side business? No. I’m a Realtor. If it’s not about property, there’s nothing I can do for you.”
“We spoke to an associate of yours, a nasty guy in a nasty place. He says different.”
“Oh, yeah? Who was that?”
“Garth Mintz.” Behr watched Riggi’s jaw work, his face going a bit more florid than even the cold demanded.
“I don’t have any associate by that name. What is it you want?”
“Yeah, you do—”
“What, exactly, do you want? It’s the last time I’m asking.”
Behr recognized that they had reached the point where there was nothing to do but plunge forward. “We’re here about a boy named Jamie Gabriel, who went missing.”
Amazing things happened on Riggi’s face. Several complex emotions began and were then reined in, no single one allowed to reach full bloom. The net effect was a vacant sort of expression that revealed nothing. The guy was harder to read than a Chinese Bible. Behr realized he was witnessing deception on a very high level. He would need hours with the man, in a controlled environment, applying an array of interrogation techniques, if he hoped to be sure of a truthful response. When Riggi spoke, his voice was even and unhurried.
“Never heard the name. Don’t know anything about it. If this Mintz said I did, I should probably go talk to him about it. Where’s he at?”
Behr respected the man’s effort at turning the inquiry into a question of his own. “Don’t worry about that,” he countered.
Riggi’s chest practically heaved under his overcoat as he asked his next question, though his voice remained level. “Who are you, then? You know, in case I think of something that’ll help, so’s I can pass it on to you.”
Behr stared across the short distance into Riggi’s eyes. They were porcine, black and cold, but intelligent. He reached into his pocket and drew out a business card. It was a smart move by Riggi, putting Behr in a position to give information about himself.
“Here.” Behr handed him the card. Riggi looked it over.
“Okay, Mr. Behr.” Then Riggi’s eyes tracked over to Paul. “And how do I reach you, quiet guy?”
Behr answered for him. “Quiet guy’s my associate. He doesn’t have a card. You can reach him through me.”
Riggi nodded as if the answer told him much more
than the words seemed to. “I see.” He tucked the business card away and made to move toward his office. “I’m going now. If you two ever plan on coming back, you better make an appointment first.”
“We’ll do that,” Behr said, matching Riggi’s stare. The man before him was no pervert wrestling with his desires. He was an organized man, a businessman. If Behr had thought he’d been in the presence of evil in the interrogation room at County, he knew he had now witnessed a much more evolved version.
Riggi sat in his vacant office in the dark. He’d locked the door behind him and drawn the blinds. A bottle of Lagavulin was in easy reach of one hand, the business card rested in his other. FRANK BEHR, INVESTIGATIVE SERVICES. There was a telephone number, a cell phone number, and a fax number. All the information he could possibly need. He’d read bad news off the guy as soon as the fucker and his mute friend had rolled up on him. And now, a few hours later, as he thought it over slowly, carefully, he was sure Behr was the same man who’d put the bitch-slapping on Tad Ford. He was certainly big enough to do it, and he must have had plenty of drive to end up on his doorstep. Riggi had assumed, or perhaps hoped, that Tad hadn’t given anything up the night he’d been braced, that there hadn’t been time before Tad was no more. He had half talked himself into believing that was the case, as time had passed since the incident and there’d been no further ripples. But he saw now that he’d been wrong. He had deluded himself. Believing what he wanted to, rather than seeing what was, was no way for a serious man to operate. There had been an article in the paper about a female cop being beaten. Police hadn’t released the name of the assailant. He had his guess. Either that, or Tad had spit out enough for this detective to have found Rooster, and the man had found some damn way to make Rooster talk. Riggi took a swallow of scotch against the chill that this thought delivered. Now it was all pressing up on him. He didn’t like that. It was time to make ready for war.
He reached across his desk, picked up the phone, and dialed.
“Wenck?” he said. “It’s Oscar. Is Gilley with you? Good. It’s time we did business.”
TWENTY-FIVE
BEHR SAT IN PAUL’S OFFICE using the computer late into the afternoon. He began by checking Riggi’s name with various search engines and newsgroups. No mention appeared. Most people were referenced in some fashion, by wedding, funeral, or various other announcements that invariably found their way onto the Internet. Behr considered whether he was dealing with an alias or a changed-name situation. He leaned back and noticed the plaques that hung on the office walls around him, proclaiming Paul’s achievements in sales, completion of seminars, and qualification in various financial instruments. He glanced at the photos on Paul’s desk — Carol, Jamie, the three of them — smiling in testament to the family they’d once been. The images sent him back into the stream of data that filled the computer screen before him. Paul stepped in and out from time to time to retrieve documents from his file cabinets for the next client meeting, which he took in a conference room down the hall as Behr continued on into a more exhaustive background search. Paul’s secretary also popped in and out of the office, fetching and dropping off papers, giving him a quizzical look each time, but Paul had her trained well and she asked him no questions. Behr entered into the Indianapolis municipal records database and searched property titles. It was there that he began getting hits. Riggi owned more than half a dozen commercial properties. There wasn’t much information beyond location, assessments, and the fact that the taxes were current. Behr wrote down the addresses, and when he looked up, he realized it had grown dark.
They left together, Paul locking up the office behind them. They crossed to the parking lot. He’d been riding with Behr all day and would need a lift home.
“What did you come up with?” he asked.
“So far Riggi’s story is true. He owns rental property all over town. You got a minute before I drop you?”
Paul was drained after the long day, but he nodded. They headed toward the first address, Behr referring to a handwritten list as they drove.
The first property was a small strip center off Binford Boulevard. It housed a taco joint, a watch shop, a dry cleaner, a pediatrician’s office, and a frozen yogurt shop, which was the only business still open at the time. They looked at it for a moment from across the street, then drove along the storefronts, the dark glass reflecting the pinpoints of streetlights back at them. They continued on, looping around the back, where they found a row of Dumpsters and two parked cars. Behr paused to write down the license plate numbers. The back door to the fro-yo place swung open, a peel of light spilling out from the inside. A diminutive dark-skinned man dragged an industrial-size trash bag out. He rocked back and forth from foot to foot for a moment, gaining momentum, then slung the garbage up and into a Dumpster. The man paused, dusted off his hands, and stared at them in the car for a few long beats. Paul wondered if Behr would go and question him. Instead he put the car in gear and slowly pulled out.
The second location was a minimall similar to the first. There was a tanning salon, a Subway shop, an herbal health-food store, an out-of-business independent video store, and a beauty salon. They stared for a while, and then Behr shrugged and drove on.
“These addresses mean anything to you?” he asked, handing Paul the list.
Paul looked it over. “These street numbers don’t, but if this one is at the intersection of Shade-land and Forty-sixth, I do know it,” he said, pointing at the fourth location down the list.
They had reached the third center, Behr trolling slowly along past more nondescript businesses. “That’s the second pediatrician’s office,” Behr noted, the air seeming to hang still in the car. “What’s the address you know?”
“It’s where Jamie went to the dentist,” Paul answered.
Behr goosed the accelerator, causing the car to leap out into traffic.
They continued through the rest of the dozen properties, the collective adrenaline level rising at each stop. All but two of the properties housed doctor and dental offices that were pediatrics-based or family practices.
“Frank, my stomach’s churning here. This is no coincidence, is it?” Paul asked.
Behr shook his head slowly. A sense of knowing emanated from him even as he pulled over, turned, and removed a thick file folder from the backseat. “I’ve researched the other missing children in the area who fit the profile. This is my case file,” Behr explained.
“You’re checking if any of them were patients?”
“Right.” Behr turned the pages of police records. “There were seven cases in the past three years of boys who went missing in greater Indianapolis under circumstances similar to Jamie’s. There were actually nine total, but two turned up. One visited a shopping mall on the other side of the city, got lost, feared trouble with his parents, and stayed on the streets for close to a week before returning home. Case closed. The other is dead, the body discovered ten days after the disappearance, having been struck by a car and dragged into a wooded area. Again, case closed.” It was as much as Paul had ever heard Behr speak at one time.
Behr began writing down a list of the names of the other seven boys.
“The police reports don’t list their doctors and dentists, do they?” Paul asked.
“Not usually, unless there’s a reason,” Behr said, glancing over the documents on the odd chance that they did. “And no, not in this instance.” He closed the folder.
“Are the doctors involved?”
Behr seemed to turn the question around in his mind like someone playing with the old Rubik’s Cube before he answered.
“I’ve never seen a connection between the missing kids. I’ve been working under the assumption that the abduction was related to the newspaper delivery route. I was wrong. I’m guessing Riggi, or someone who works for him, follows certain patients home. Or they case the offices. Maybe they access the practices using passkeys to get names and addresses.”
Behr turned around with the
case file and dropped it in the backseat. He looked at the list in his hand. The names of seven boys, ages eleven to fourteen, all gone. “There’s nothing else to be done tonight,” he said.
“Shit,” Paul breathed.
“I’m at the first doctor’s office at 8:00 A.M. Yo u with me?”
“Hell, yes.” Paul nodded.
Behr went into Dr. Milton Howard’s practice minutes after it opened and found it already busy. Walk-ins, mothers with sick infants and toddlers, were in the waiting room. He’d left Paul in the car, as numbers didn’t help in this kind of task. He approached the desk, where an attractive Latin woman wrestled with patient records, the ringing phone, her morning coffee, and the tremendously large hoop earrings she was wearing. When Behr reached her, she didn’t even look up.