He doesn’t ask why; doesn’t even seem to hear her. He picks up a framed wedding photo and stares at it.
An almost unrecognizably lanky Calvin wears a skinny tie and dark suit that would never fit him today; Bettina a full-skirted white dress and pillbox hat with a pouf of veil.
When Amelia was a little girl, she loved to look at that faded black-and-white picture. Back then, she didn’t notice that the frame wasn’t even the right size, or that it was just a square snapshot with a white border. The date is printed on the bottom, September 8, 1956. Bettina told her the church ceremony was simple, and there was no reception.
“Did you walk down the aisle with music?”
“No, child.”
“Why not?”
“Because I didn’t have a daddy to give me away, and we couldn’t afford to pay the organist.”
“That’s so sad.”
“No, it was a happy day. Happiest day of my life.”
“What about the day I was born?”
“That, too.”
Liar. You weren’t even there when I was born.
Amelia had been led to believe she’d entered the world on May 12, 1968, but that was merely the day she’d been abandoned. No wonder Calvin and Bettina never turned it into a celebration with cake and presents. She’d always thought it was because they didn’t have time or money for such frivolity. In truth, she didn’t get a real birthday because they didn’t know when she’d been born.
Calvin blows dust off the frame, sets it back on the table, and goes to the kitchen. She hears him open the fridge and clatter around for the lunch pail containing the second of his daily bologna sandwiches. Bettina sent him off with real suppers to eat on his break—roasted chicken, baked potatoes wrapped in foil, a thermos of homemade vegetable soup . . .
“How about that creamy corn chowder you used to make?” he’d ask, or good-naturedly complain that he liked his potatoes mashed and his chicken fried.
“Well, I like my men alive,” his wife would reply, and poke him in the belly.
“Woman, if you want to see alive, you make me some sausage gravy and biscuits to go with that chicken and see what happens.”
Amelia flops back on the mattress, shoulders landing with a scrunch on a half-eaten bag of Chee-tos—last night’s dinner. Sitting up again, she brushes her back and neck, peppering the dingy white sheets with salty orange crumbs.
Bettina would have a heart attack over the mess. She’d worry about stains, bugs, and unexpected company—as if that were likely. Visitors were rare in the little apartment even back when she was alive.
For all her Dixie charm and manners, Bettina never did enjoy entertaining. She’d complain that she had no room to do it properly. No time, either. She worked two jobs. When she had time at home, she wanted to do housework, or just relax. Other than church—which she attended without fail—she left the apartment only to work and run errands.
That didn’t stop people from paying their respects after she died. Not just Marceline but neighbors, church ladies, co-workers . . . more people than Amelia had ever realized cared about her mother. They trooped through the door bearing pastries and cookies in white bakery boxes tied with red string, or flowers from the Korean market down the street.
More than the forced conversation and never-ending influx of sickening sweets, Amelia resented those blooms poking like rainbow ice cream scoops from cones of stiff cellophane and printed paper. She preferred the muted blues of Marceline’s bouquet.
Bettina would have carefully unwound the thin rubber bands entwining the reedy stems and folded the paper and cellophane to use later. She’d have added the granular contents of tea-bag-sized packets bound with the stems, so that the blossoms wouldn’t have drooped overnight, submerged leaves slimy in scum-topped water greener than the pickle juice that had filled the makeshift vase. She wouldn’t have liked Marceline’s wayward wildflowers. She wouldn’t have allowed Marceline into the house.
“There’s no food. I left twenty dollars on the counter for groceries,” Calvin says. “I’ll be home in the morning.”
As if she might expect him to do otherwise?
Maybe he’s thought of walking out and never coming back to this sorrow-and-anger-drenched place that seems far smaller for two than it ever did for three. Who wouldn’t consider it? She has.
The door closes. On TV, the credits are rolling. She missed the end of the program.
If only they had a VCR. Then she could just rewind and see what she missed.
She’ll have to wait until Monday to find out what happened today, and what happens next.
She sighs and stands up, reaching to turn off the channel. A voice-over stops her.
“All over the world, abandoned children and adoptees have hit a dead end trying find their birth parents. Now, Silas Moss can help. Tonight on 20/20, Barbara Walters will interview a man whose revolutionary research might finally answer the burning question, ‘Who am I?’”
Perry Wayland’s office is located in the financial district, at 195 Broadway. Built in the early 1900s, the ornate twenty-nine-story office building once housed American Telephone and Telegraph, now known as AT&T.
Barnes and Stef learn this fun fact from Gene, a balding, jowly-faced after-hours lobby security guard.
“But that’s not the most interesting thing about it.”
“No way, there’s more?”
Stef’s undercurrent of sarcasm escapes the guard, who leans in conspiratorially. “You bet there’s more. You hear about that new Michael Douglas movie?”
“Fatal Attraction.” Barnes nods. He saw it a few weeks ago at the newly renovated Loew’s Victoria on 125th Street. If ever there was a movie that reinforced his intention never to marry, that was it.
“No.”
“No?” he echoes, as Gene shakes his shiny head.
“Wall Street. Not out yet.”
“If it’s not out yet, then how would we know it?” This time, Stef sounds outright prickly. It’s late, and it’s been a long day. They’re waiting for Perry Wayland’s secretary, Liz, who was supposed to come down ten minutes ago.
“I’m surprised you haven’t heard about it. There’s been a lot of buzz.”
“Yeah? What’s the buzz?” Barnes asks, taking out his cigarettes.
“It was filmed right here.” He gestures around the majestic marble lobby, lined with bronze and alabaster chandeliers and towering Doric pillars. “I got a picture with the brother of that guy from The Breakfast Club. What’s his name—Martin Sheen’s son.”
“Emilio Estevez? He’s in it?”
“No, his brother. The kid from Platoon. Charlie Sheen. You ever see—”
He pauses as elevator doors slide open. An attractive brunette steps out, smoking a cigarette. Her panty hose and white sneakers peek out beneath a long tweed dress coat with enormous shoulder pads, and she carries an open leather tote with a pair of high-heeled pumps poking from the top. Her shoulder-length permed hair is nearly as tall as it is long. To Barnes, the tuft of bangs sprayed vertically above her forehead look like something out of Dr. Seuss, despite the Vogue magazine cover he glimpsed back at the Waylands’ apartment. Anyway, this pleasant-but-plain-faced woman is no Cindy Crawford.
“That’s Liz,” Gene tells them.
“Sorry I’m late,” she calls, her voice echoing in the cavernous space as she hurries toward them. “It’s hard to get out of there on a Friday, especially with . . . you know.” She glances at Gene, as if wondering whether to mention the reason for their visit.
“They told me about Mr. Wayland,” the guard informs her. “I told them I wasn’t working last night, so I didn’t see him leave. They’re going to talk to Ralph. He was here. Maybe he knows something.”
Barnes doubts it. Whatever happened with—or to—Perry Wayland likely unfolded after he left the office.
They step out onto the sidewalk teeming with office workers, most of the female commuters carrying their dress shoes and scurrying along i
n sneakers, like Liz. “We parked near a diner around the corner. You want to get a cup of coffee?”
“At this hour, I’d rather have Chardonnay.”
“Me, too,” Stef says, though he’s more of a Wild Turkey guy. “But we’re on the job, so . . .”
“It’s okay. I’ve got to get home. My son has a game tonight—high school football. I never miss it.”
“Where do you live?”
“Staten Island.”
“You take the ferry?”
She nods and lifts a sneakered foot. “That’s why I wear these. Every night, I walk down to Whitehall. Helps me clear my head.”
“We’ll walk and talk, then,” Stef says. “We can all clear our heads. Come on, Barnes.”
As they head south, toward the Staten Island ferry terminal at the foot of Manhattan, Stef asks Liz about her job working for Perry Wayland and discerns that she does everything from answer his phone to order his lunch—same thing every day.
“A Cobb salad and a Coke.”
He asks about Perry’s demeanor yesterday.
“He was a little agitated, to be honest,” she says, exhaling menthol, “but who isn’t, with everything that’s been going on this week . . .”
“You mean the market?”
She nods.
“So he lost a lot of money?”
“Lost? No. Everyone else did, but Perry saw it coming, so he’s been preparing. This isn’t the first time the market’s crashed, you know. It happened in 1929, too.”
“So I’ve heard,” Stef says dryly. “So is Wayland psychic, or what?”
“Not psychic. Brilliant. Ever hear of the Elliott wave theory?”
Barnes nods as they stop to wait for the light to change. “Every action is followed by a reaction.”
“That’s right. The past can predict the future.” She tosses her cigarette butt to the sidewalk and grinds it with her rubber sole. “Perry noticed identical patterns to the market leading up to the 1929 crash. A week ago—last Friday—he thought it was shaping up to happen Monday and he said it was going to be cataclysmic.”
“How does a person prepare for that?”
“For one thing, you sell.” She takes out a pale green box of Salem Slim Lights and focuses on painstakingly removing another cigarette.
“For another thing . . .” Barnes prompts.
She shrugs. “I don’t know. I didn’t spend the weekend with him. You should ask Kirstie.”
“We did,” Stef says. “She told us they were house hunting in the Hamptons.”
She raises an eyebrow, but says nothing.
“What about that surprises you?” Barnes asks her.
“The Hamptons? Nothing. I mean, a lot of these guys have houses out there.” She waves her cigarette hand at the crowd of pedestrians, largely made up of Wall Street types heading toward home or happy hour.
“But . . .”
“I didn’t say but.”
Barnes tries another tactic as the light changes and they resume walking. “What do you think about the Waylands’ marriage?”
“What do I think? You should ask—”
“We asked her. Now we’re asking you, Liz. Did he seem happy with his wife? I’m not wondering because I have a personal interest, or because I’m nosy. This is an investigation. Your boss is missing. He might be in danger. Did he seem happy?”
She pauses to take a long drag, and offers a slightly strangled, “Not really.”
“Was he having an affair, Liz?” Stef asks point-blank.
Barnes anticipates denial, but she shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe. He’s been on the phone a lot lately with a woman. She must have called him a thousand times between Monday and when he left yesterday.”
“A thousand?”
“A lot,” she amends. “She called once or twice last month, and then more often over the past few weeks, but it’s been constant since Monday.”
“When the market crashed.”
“Yes. I mean, the phones were going crazy that day anyway, but she called a lot. And ever since.”
“Who is she?”
“Well, he says she’s an investor . . .”
“You don’t believe that.”
“Let’s just say there’s no other investor whose call he takes every time, no matter what he’s doing. And there’s something . . . I don’t know, goofy, about the way he acts when she calls . . .”
“Goofy how?”
“It’s like my son, with this cheerleader. He’s infatuated with her, and she knows it. I see her seeing the way he looks at her, but she pretends she doesn’t.”
“So Perry Wayland is . . . infatuated?”
“I didn’t say that. Just, when he talks to her, he sounds like a teenager who’s gaga over some girl. I can’t describe it.”
“I’d say you just did,” Barnes says. “So you hear him talking to her?”
“Not on purpose. It’s a small office.”
“What does he say?”
She hesitates.
“Again, I’m not being nosy. And I know you aren’t, either, if you happen to overhear their private conversations.”
“I’m not.”
“Right. So if there’s anything you’ve heard him say that makes you think she’s not an investor . . .”
“Yeah,” she admits. “There are a few things he’s said. Like I’ve heard him tell her he misses her, or that he wished he could see her again but she knew he couldn’t. I got the impression they hadn’t seen each other in years.”
“Anything else?”
“Not really. Just . . . once, I heard him talking to her about a, um, movie they’d seen together.”
“Did he say which one?”
“Yeah. It was, um . . .” She shakes her head and looks away. “It was Deep Throat.”
Barnes raises an eyebrow. “I’m no hedge fund guy, but I’m going to guess most of them aren’t seeing porn flicks with their investors.”
“Probably not,” Stef agrees. “Did you overhear anything else along those lines, Liz?”
“Along those lines?”
“Or any lines.”
She shakes her head.
“This woman . . . does she have a name?”
“I don’t know her first name. She’s pretty formal. Whenever she calls, she just gives me her last name.”
“What is it?”
“White. ‘This is Miss White,’ she says, and I always put her right through, like he told me.”
It gets dark earlier here, 150 miles east of Manhattan. The sky is dusky when Red boards the ferry; pitch-black when it docks on Block Island. The other passengers are met by cars, or friends, or stroll off in pairs toward the brightly lit hotels and restaurants clustered near the landing. Red has a longer walk to a darker place.
What if this is a trap? What if Black found out what happened in the stairwell?
But how? It wasn’t in the papers. Red checked them all.
Nobody cares. Derelicts die violent deaths every day in this city. That junkie’s murder was insignificant. No reason to worry.
The air is chilly and smells of dank fish and burning leaves. Somewhere out on the lapping water, a night fisherman’s boat hums along, headed out to the dark sea.
A familiar landmark appears around a bend in the road. The Plantation restaurant, tucked into a weathered cottage, is open, with a few cars in the parking lot. Bearing no resemblance to a plantation or to the diner back in New York, the place is a throwback to simpler times on the island.
So is the Sandy Oyster next door. The sign advertises Cottage Vacancies, Weekly Rates, Picnic Grove & Playground, Color TV. No phones in the rooms, though—not that high-tech. Red spots the pay phone White uses for calls. It shares a weedy patch of grass with a rusting metal swingless swing set, sagging picnic table, cinder-block fire pit, and Dumpster. Ah, the picnic grove and playground.
Gray television light flickers in the small office, and a vending machine hums at its doorstep. Red slips around it to the row of h
uts, peeling blue paint not faded enough to temper the gaudiness, even in the dark. A few windows are lamp lit with cars parked at the low concrete barriers in front of them. At the far end, an exterior doorknob is tied with a white handkerchief.
Three staccato knocks, a pause to count to four, and a final knock.
The door opens.
It takes Red a moment to recognize the man in jeans and fleece, face masked by at least a day’s growth of beard and aviator-framed glasses.
“Come on in,” Perry Wayland says. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
Chapter Eight
Amelia never did get around to cleaning up the apartment, doing the laundry, or getting groceries. Nor did she work on a paper that’s due Monday. How can she focus when, mere hours after Marceline LeBlanc slipped from her grasp, Barbara Walters is about to interview some old guy who helps people find their birth parents?
She sits on the edge of the pullout mattress as the program begins, with images of a picturesque college town tucked into gorges and rolling hills above a long blue wedge of lake.
“Cornell University professor Silas Moss has made genetic breakthroughs that are bringing long-lost family members home every day.”
Cornell? Cornell is in Ithaca.
The camera pans streets lined with stately old homes, quaint shops, and lofty trees dressed in splashy autumn reds and golds. It looks like a movie set. But it’s a real place. It could have been Amelia’s place. She could have been one of those backpack-wearing students, shuffling along through fallen leaves, laughing beside a bike rack, hanging around on a broad common bumping a hacky sack from knee to knee.
It’s been a while since Amelia thought much about Ithaca, or the high school music teacher who’d taken her under her wing. Mrs. Morse had talked Amelia into applying to her alma mater, Ithaca College, and she’d been accepted.
“You’re not going!” Bettina said. “You want an education, take business courses at city college. It’s free. We can’t afford tuition anywhere else.”
“But Mrs. Morse said there are grants and scholarships.”
“Well, bless her heart,” Bettina said. “This Mrs. Morse knows an awful lot about everything, doesn’t she. I have a mind to march right on over to that school and ask her what she thinks she’s doing, filling my daughter’s head with fool nonsense.”
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