Little Girl Lost

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Walk away? How is that wise?” asked the most recent woman with whom he shared that theory. “Practice makes perfect. If at first you don’t succeed . . .”

  “Maybe that’s true if you’re working on a jump shot. But not in relationships, where other people can get hurt.”

  The words were suitably noble. Sometimes, his intentions are not.

  If he ever meets a woman he can’t let go . . . well, maybe he’d attempt monogamy. But the rest? No way. No wedding rings. No kids.

  He congratulates Bub Carson, who ropes him into doing a couple of shots—not that he protests. Haunted by concern for Wash, he doesn’t want to think about what might be ailing his friend if it isn’t pneumonia. After the shots, Bub’s longtime partner on the Missing Persons Squad, Frank DeStefano, buys a round of drinks. Barnes requests his usual, Jack Daniel’s on the rocks.

  “Get the good stuff, kid,” Stef says.

  “That is good stuff.”

  “There’s better stuff, and it’s on me.”

  A minute later, Barnes finds himself sipping Wild Turkey as Stef shares a couple of anecdotes, including a dirty joke about Bub and a case involving a missing stripper.

  It results in more squirms than laughter, and Barnes raises a brow at Marsha.

  She rolls her eyes and heads over to the bar, settling on an empty stool.

  Barnes joins her. “Not a great joke for him to tell in mixed company, huh?”

  “Or, you know . . . ever.” She shakes her head. “Stef’s not known for his tact. I feel sorry for Jason.”

  “Who?”

  “His new partner. Jason Sturgis. Didn’t you hear? He just got his shield.”

  Stone sober, Barnes probably would have been happy for the kid. Or at least, pretended to be. He has nothing against Sturgis, a young, earnest sort, and it’s always nice to see a fellow officer succeed. Still . . .

  “I should’ve gotten that. I’ve been here a few years longer. And I’m definitely a few years older.”

  “But you”—Marsha points a finger at him—“are the wrong color for Stef.”

  “What? You mean . . .”

  “I mean you’re not white.”

  “So?”

  “So he lives out in Howard Beach.”

  The Queens neighborhood has become synonymous with racial tension. Just before Christmas, a gang of white high school kids attacked a trio of stranded black motorists. One victim fled in terror onto the Belt Parkway and was killed in traffic. The resulting marches and protests, uncooperative witnesses, and unfolding murder trial are national news and tabloid fodder, featuring the outspoken Mayor Koch perpetually at odds with the equally outspoken Reverend Al Sharpton.

  “Come on, Marsha. Living in Howard Beach doesn’t make someone a racist. If you think that, then you’re just as guilty as—”

  “Look, Stef goes way back with the families of a couple of the kids who were arrested for murder, okay? He’s been saying the whole story hasn’t come out, that it was self-defense—”

  “He said that to you?”

  “He never says anything directly to me. Us. Just about us.”

  Barnes looks over at Stef. Then he takes a long sip of his bourbon. Smooth.

  “I don’t know . . . I think he’s just old-school. You know . . . conservative.”

  “You say conservative, I say misogynistic racist.” Marsha plunks her beer bottle onto the bar. Bud Light. For as long as Barnes has known her, she’s been trying to shed the excess pounds fleshing out her waistline, hips, and pretty face.

  “I’ll buy you another,” he offers.

  “Can’t. I gotta get home and walk Krypto.”

  “What about your roommate?”

  “She’s working the late shift.”

  “Come on, stick around for one more. I just got here. The night is young.”

  “So is my Great Dane. And you don’t want to know what he’ll do if I leave him alone for much longer.”

  “What about me?”

  “Are you going to barf the sock I’ve been missing onto the rug? Eat a shoe? Poop on my bed?”

  Barnes laughs and shakes his head.

  “Then you, my friend, will be just fine on your own. See ya, Barnes.”

  He lifts his glass in a silent farewell, in no hurry to follow Marsha out into the swirling snow beyond the plate glass window. Should he order another drink? He’s off tomorrow. But he needs to see Wash again first thing, try to find out what—

  “Excuse me?”

  He turns to see a fine-looking woman with a halo of honey-dyed Jheri curl, short skirt, long legs, bountiful cleavage.

  “Someone sittin’ here?”

  “All yours.”

  She looks at the bar stool, and then at him. “The seat?”

  His grin is slow and easy as a bourbon buzz. “That, too.”

  After their sleepless night, Calvin goes to church on Sunday morning. He expects Amelia to join him, but she refuses, and for once, he doesn’t force her to obey him. Home alone, she lets the bitter tears fall, grieving not just because Bettina died, but because she’d lied.

  Huddled on the couch in pajama pants and a moth-bitten olive green sweater, hair still matted from the rain and snow, Amelia is startled by a knock on the door. Too soon for Calvin to be back. Maybe one of the neighbors has already heard about Bettina. Bad news always travels fast around here. She ignores the knocking until a familiar female voice calls her name.

  Startled, she hastily dries her eyes on her sleeve and opens the door to Marceline LeBlanc, wearing a bright cobalt turban and dangling earrings big as dinner plates. She holds a big cardboard carton and a bouquet of blue and white wildflowers that look like they’ve just been picked in a meadow.

  “Come to pay respects,” she tells Amelia with a nod.

  “Who told you?”

  “No one.”

  “Then how did you know?”

  “I just do.”

  Her accent is far thicker than Bettina’s ever was, laced with a dialect born in some foreign tongue.

  “My father isn’t home right now, Miss LeBlanc, so if you come back—”

  Marceline has already crossed the threshold into the untidy apartment as though she’s been here a thousand times before. Amelia follows her to the kitchen, where she sets the cardboard box on the cluttered countertop. The sink is full of dirty dishes, and the trash can is full of garbage that’s spilled onto the floor around it. Bettina would be furious, having company see the place in such disarray.

  No, that’s not why she’d be furious.

  How could you let that voodoo crackpot into my house? Bettina demands in Amelia’s head.

  I didn’t, Mama. I opened the door, and somehow she was just . . . in. And even though you never gave Marceline the time of day, she’s paying her respects. Because that’s what people do—people who do the right thing. You didn’t care much about that, though, did you, Mama. About doing the right thing?

  Marceline picks up a pickle jar lying on the floor near the garbage can, filled with green liquid. She rinses it, fills it with fresh water, and sets the wildflowers in it. Then she reaches into the sink and grabs a cleaver Calvin had used to hack the last salty bits of flesh from a ham bone.

  In that moment, Amelia wishes she hadn’t opened the door; wishes she’d heeded Bettina’s long-ago warnings about evil and voodoo. Trembling, she takes a step backward, and then another, wondering if she can reach the door before Marceline—

  But the old woman has turned her attention to the box on the counter. Dark smudges ooze along the sides. She uses the blade to slice neatly across the masking tape sealing the box, then tosses the cleaver back into the sink. She sets a pair of roaster pans on the table, peels back the foil, and beckons Amelia.

  “What . . . what is it?”

  “Supshun.”

  “What?”

  “Supshun . . .” She flashes a rare smile and rubs her belly. “It means good for you. Not like that buckrahbittle.”

  “W
hat?” Amelia asks yet again.

  “Buckrahbittle.” Marceline points at a cereal box on the counter. “White man’s food, we say where I come from.”

  “Where do you come from?”

  “Down south, like your mama. This is Frogmore,” she goes on, pointing to one pan, “and that’s Hoppin’ John.”

  The words mean nothing to Amelia, but the food smells delicious. She takes a few cautious steps forward and leans in to see shrimp, sausage, rice, corn . . .

  So the stain on the box was grease, and not . . .

  Whatever grisly item her imagination had conjured, thanks to Bettina’s dire warnings over the years.

  The gesture is so ordinary—a meal, a condolence call, flowers, a meal.

  “Eat, child.”

  Child.

  Bettina always called her that, too.

  Amelia is struck by a sudden and profound longing for the woman who had raised her, despite the lies, despite . . .

  Dammit. The tears are back.

  Marceline makes no move to console her, not even when she wipes her streaming nose on her sweater’s frayed cuff. She just stands watching her.

  Oddly, Amelia finds the lack of sentiment more comforting than if Marceline were to hug her and tell her how sorry she is about her mother. Is she keeping a respectful distance, or simply unsympathetic? Maybe a little of both, along with a keen awareness that Amelia doesn’t want to be touched or comforted in this moment.

  “She wasn’t my real mother, you know,” she blurts, and Marceline nods, as if she’s not surprised to hear it, or maybe . . .

  “Did you know that?”

  Another nod.

  Stunned, Amelia asks, “Who told you?”

  “No one told me.” She heads for the door. “I just know.”

  “Wait! Miss LeBlanc! How—”

  “Not the time for questions,” she says firmly, opening the door. “Time to mourn the dead.”

  With that, she’s gone, leaving Amelia to mourn the dead and wonder if she’s just uncovered the real reason Bettina warned Amelia away from Marceline all these years.

  She waits with the other inmates’ family members in a drab room where nothing wonderful has ever happened. No, she can’t know that for certain, but the pall hangs thicker than the fog she left behind in northern Maine. No one is talking, not even the people who came together. They mill around or sit on hard benches avoiding eye contact. Most wear shabby clothing. Her own distressed denim and scuffed combat boots are a fashion statement, while the others are merely poor, and some of them smell. The whole place reeks of noxious cleaning chemicals that can’t mask body odor or unsavory food or dank filth.

  When she got his letter requesting this meeting, she was tempted to ignore it. Hadn’t she just been here three months ago, on Christmas? Won’t she be back in another three months, on Father’s Day? Doesn’t he know how long and difficult a road lies between the prison and her cabin in northern Maine? Hasn’t she dutifully visited him twice a year, every year, since she was fifteen years old?

  Back then, she didn’t have far to go—half an hour by bus across the Tappan Zee Bridge from Rockland County. The trip became more complicated when she went to college in New England, but she managed then, and in all the years since, even though she lives seven hundred miles away now—treacherous ones, especially at this time of year.

  At thirty-three, she’s spent more than half her Christmases in this place, along with countless June Sundays when other families were picnicking in the sunshine. Here she’s sat, across from a grizzled man in an orange jumpsuit and shackles who bears no resemblance to the handsome hero who was once her whole world. After his arrest, the system took over: foster care for her, corrections for him. Same difference, she thought then. But now that she has her freedom, and he has no hope of getting his . . .

  Not really the same. Her own grim days are a distant memory. His march to infinity. That’s why, when he summoned her, she made the trip. She set out yesterday morning, not sure what to expect of the drive that took at least twelve hours in June and often twice as many in December. Some mountain roads were closed due to snow, and it was ice by the time she reached Boston.

  The room stirs with expectation. Guards are congregating. Doors buzz, clank, and open. The inmates have arrived.

  For every six months she sees her father, he ages at least a couple of years. His hair and razor stubble are always grayer; his ashen skin more creviced; posture increasingly hunched.

  Today, however, it’s the opposite. He seems taller, younger, almost cheerful. So he didn’t summon her here to share bad news, as she’d speculated?

  Now that she thinks of it, what would constitute bad news when he’s serving six consecutive life sentences without parole? Even a terminal illness would be a reprieve. He told her that once, when she was young enough to go home and cry for him. She hasn’t done that in years—cried for him, or for anyone else, including herself.

  They follow the rules, as always—a brief embrace before they sit across from each other, hands resting on the table in full view.

  “I’m glad you came.”

  “Of course I came. You asked me to.” As if she hadn’t hesitated.

  He studies her, and she shifts her gaze away from his. No one else in this world is capable of making her uneasy. But her father cultivated omniscience long before they parted ways, and she sometimes believes he can read her mind.

  Now that the other families have settled in with their incarcerated loved ones, they’re sneaking curious glances in this direction. Oran Matthews is arguably the facility’s most notorious current inmate, if not of all time.

  He, however, is focused only on his daughter. “You read my letter?”

  “Of course I read it!”

  “And . . . ?”

  “And you asked me to come, so I came.”

  “What about the rest?”

  She frowns, thinking of his note scrawled in longhand on loose leaf paper. Had she missed something?

  “The Bible passages!”

  Ah, yes. As always, he’d closed with several verses. She’d merely skimmed them, knowing them by heart, of course.

  He glances around and lowers his voice. “The prophecy has come to pass. War, drought, famine, epidemic, natural disasters . . . you know what it means.”

  “Yes.” All her life, he’s been preparing her for the end of their time here on earth, and eternal salvation—not for all, but for the chosen few. Oran, and his offspring.

  “Are the resources in place?”

  Resources—money, and manpower. She nods. She knows where to find both; has been laying the groundwork for years, though she wasn’t entirely convinced that her father’s prophecies, or even the Bible’s, would come to pass in her lifetime.

  He gives an approving nod. “All right, then. Go forth now and find your sisters and brothers. Assemble them and wait.”

  She and Oran may have studied the same Bible, but her interpretation differs from his.

  She’ll find them, all right.

  Find them, and destroy them.

  Chapter Five

  Thursday, October 22, 1987

  The diner, on Tenth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen, is no frills, with a stool-lined counter, Formica-and-vinyl booths, and a glass case filled with rotating triangles of pie. Seven mornings a week, Red orders a slice of apple and a cup of coffee for breakfast. On six of them, Barb, the tired-eyed waitress, offers Red the same greeting. “What’s new, pussycat?”

  Tuesdays through Fridays, when Red leaves, she says without fail, “Have a great day at work.”

  Saturdays and Sundays, she says, “Enjoy the rest of your weekend.”

  Mondays, she’s off, volunteering at a local animal shelter.

  Right on schedule, Barb bustles over to the booth to clear the empty plate and cup and asks how breakfast was.

  “Great,” Red says, same as always.

  “Great.” She smiles and drops the check.

  No need to loo
k at it. Four dollars and fifteen cents, totaled alongside a smiley face and “thanks!”

  Red usually leaves a five on the table.

  Today . . .

  What the hell? It’s not my money, and this might be the last day.

  Red drops a ten-dollar bill and heads outside to take the subway to the East Village.

  Steam rises from a manhole as if the gates of hell yawn beneath. An emaciated woman weeps on the dirty sidewalk beside a hand-lettered cardboard banner that reads AIDS, PLEASE HELP. Overhead, a hedonistic porn marquee advertises Wet Tramps. Steeped in ignorance, pedestrians hurry blindly past prostitutes, thieves, and beggars.

  Stocks Plunge 508 Points, the New York Times had screamed on Tuesday, and the city—the whole world—was stunned. Not Red, thanks to White.

  It was just as foretold in Revelations: Woe! Woe to you, great city, where all who had ships on the sea became rich through her wealth! In one hour she has been brought to ruin!

  The media is calling it Black Monday. The irony is not lost on Red.

  Beyond the Bowery, Alphabet City lies steeped in lethargy and stink, like a vagrant sleeping off last night’s binge. Many are doing just that on rubble-and-syringe-strewn streets, as the neighborhood’s dwindling population of respectable residents—students, immigrants, old-timers—go about their business.

  Red settles into a handbill-papered alley to watch the tenement across East Sixth Street, having learned the hard way not to venture inside. You don’t wander up and down the corridors of a building like this without being propositioned and threatened, roughed up, and robbed.

  After a long time, hours, Margaret appears. She’s wearing a man’s suit coat that on anyone else might be the height of current fashion, plucked from one of the vintage clothing boutiques that dot the Village. Hanging on her emaciated frame, it’s just shabby.

  She’d once been a pretty girl, with enormous dark eyes and deep dimples, smiling from her senior class portrait printed in a 1968 newspaper article about the murders. Her long hair had been teased high above a prominent widow’s peak, the ends flipped above slender shoulders bared between a classy black drape and pearls.