Little Girl Lost

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Daddy said you wanted to talk to me.”

  “Yes. Would you like to speak privately, or . . .” Stef trails off as she settles on the white couch beneath her father’s protective arm. Apparently she would not.

  “Mrs. Wayland, a few things. First, did your husband own a gun?”

  “No! Absolutely not. Perry abhors violence.”

  It doesn’t mean Wayland didn’t kill Popper the junkie, but Barnes isn’t convinced the two incidents are unrelated. He just isn’t sure how the puzzle fits together.

  Stef moves on with the questioning. “We spoke with Perry’s secretary. She mentioned that he was expecting the market crash. Did you know that?”

  “He doesn’t talk about work with me.”

  “He does with me,” Biff speaks up. “That’s true. He advised me to start selling, fast.”

  “When?”

  “Last week. Good thing, or I’d have taken a big hit.”

  “Did he ever mention an investor named White? To either of you?”

  They shake their heads.

  “Or a friend, maybe?” Barnes asks. “An old friend, most likely. A Miss White?”

  “Miss White?” Kirstie echoes.

  “You know her?”

  “No, but . . . why are you asking this? Is she a friend, or an investor?”

  “Investor,” Stef says. “At least, that’s what he told his secretary. Liz mentioned that he’s had quite a few calls from her this week.”

  “Really.” Kirstie is taut.

  Biff pats her shoulder. “Don’t you go worrying, sweetheart.”

  “I’m not. If she called him at the office, I’m sure it was business.”

  “That’s likely. But we haven’t been able to identify her or track her down, so we thought maybe you—”

  “I’ve never heard of a Miss White. Sorry. Did you find anything else? Fingerprints in the car, or something?”

  “We don’t have that information yet. It takes time. We’re hoping tomorrow—”

  “All right. I’m exhausted. I need to go to bed, if you’ll excuse me . . .” Her words and posture are stiff as she rises from the couch. “I still think he was kidnapped, so stay on that.”

  She leaves the room without niceties.

  Biff looks at Barnes and Stef. “Who is this White woman, really?” he asks, with more presence of mind than they’d expect.

  “We don’t know,” Barnes says. “Really.”

  “You sure?” Gone is the bumbling drunk, and Barnes wonders if it was an act in the first place. “Was my son-in-law having an affair? Did he run off with another woman?”

  “We don’t know.”

  Silence. The man tilts his glass, swallowing the rest of his drink.

  “Mr. Billington? Do you think . . .”

  “I don’t know.” He gets to his feet. His bloodshot eyes, the same pale shade as his daughter’s, are skimmed in frost. “I’d like to turn in now, too. It’s been a long day for everyone.”

  They don’t argue.

  On the way back to the precinct, Stef shakes his head. “That Kirstie’s a chip off the old block. And the old block is a big fat ice cube. For Wayland’s sake, I hope Miss White is a hot chick.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if he dove off that bridge, either, to get away from those people.”

  Back at the precinct, they file for an office search warrant and Wayland’s phone records, finish their paperwork, and check in with Ray, their NYPD cohort over at the tow pound. He reports that they’re still waiting on the backlogged forensics team to go through Wayland’s Mercedes, but there’s no obvious evidence of foul play. They arrange to inspect the car first thing in the morning, before interviewing the household staff.

  “You want to go get a drink?” Stef asks as they step out onto the street.

  “Can’t. I’m meeting someone.”

  His partner grins. “Yeah? Does she have a friend for me?”

  Barnes ignores him, walking off into the night.

  This afternoon, Amelia had been certain she’d just lost the one person who might help her find out who she is and where she’d come from.

  Can Silas Moss take Marceline’s place?

  She has to find a way to get to Ithaca. Maybe he’ll uncover a miraculous DNA match. At the very least, it would be nice to meet someone who knows how it feels to look back and see a gaping hole in your life story. Someone who put a name to who, and what, she is.

  A foundling.

  After learning the truth last spring, she had snooped around the apartment hoping to stumble across some clue about her abandonment and discovery. As expected, she’d found nothing.

  At the time, she’d been so consumed by the toxic blur of fury and funeral that she barely remembers the search. Maybe she missed something.

  In the small bedroom that now belongs to Calvin alone, she finds the bed unmade, clothing strewn over it and the floor. She steps around a bath towel and his second pair of shoes, scattered facedown, laces frayed, soles nearly worn through.

  Though the apartment is small, this room has always been off-limits to her. Calvin and Bettina had their space and Amelia had hers, though it didn’t come with a shred of privacy. She’s accustomed to it, though in retrospect, she assumes things might be different if she hadn’t dropped into their lives without warning nineteen years ago.

  Surely they’d have provided more comfortable accommodations for her if they truly considered her their child. If they’d been planning for her, had conceived her . . .

  They wouldn’t have tossed a biological child into their living room like an overdue library book they’d stumbled across, one that might be snatched away any second. They’d have moved to a bigger place, in a safer neighborhood—a real home.

  Instead, their parental existence seemed to have hung in a state of suspended animation, as if they expected her to vanish from their lives as abruptly as she’d appeared.

  She glares at the framed black-and-white baby portrait on the bedside table. In it, she’s Brillo haired, chubby cheeked and scowling, wearing a limp, tatty-looking knit dress. Bettina had once pointed out a faint stain by the collar, and mentioned that she’d been sick with a stomach flu the day the picture was taken.

  “Why didn’t you change my clothes?”

  “How many dresses do you think you had, child? Santy Claus brought this for you on your first Christmas.”

  “And it was the only one I had?”

  “Mmm-hmm. And no matter how much I scrubbed that spit-up stain, there wasn’t enough borax in the world to get rid of it.”

  “You should ʼa waited till I was better to go have my picture taken.”

  “Child, we didn’t go anywhere. Back then, a photographer would go door to door in the building. That was just the day he showed up. I still don’t know how we even managed to scrape together the money for the sitting fee.”

  “How old was I?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. At least seven or eight months, I guess, if it was after Christmas.”

  Back then, her mother’s vague answer didn’t set off any alarm bells. Nor did the fact that there were no other baby pictures of her.

  “That photographer never came back, so this is all we have,” her mother said when she asked.

  “I hate it. It’s not cute. I look mad.”

  “You just wouldn’t smile that day, no matter what that poor man did. Finally, he gave up, and this is what we got.”

  Stuck with an ugly picture, just like you were stuck with me.

  Amelia turns away from the photo, toward the two simple wooden dressers crammed side by side against the wall opposite the bed. One contains Calvin’s belongings, the other Bettina’s.

  Over the summer, one of the church ladies had come by to see if the Crenshaws could donate Bettina’s old clothing to the fall clothing drive. Calvin wasn’t home, and Amelia told her they hadn’t yet gone through her mother’s things.

  “It’s not goo
d to keep all those reminders around,” the church lady said. “I know how hard it is for the husband to part with anything. And maybe even for you. I’m sure you probably want to keep a few sentimental—”

  “No,” Amelia said. “I don’t.”

  “Then I’d be happy to help you—”

  “No, thanks,” she said, and all but closed the door in her face.

  Calvin heard about it the following Sunday from Pastor Hawke.

  “I didn’t raise you to be rude,” he scolded.

  “You didn’t raise me to go inviting strangers into the house, either, remember? That’s what you said when Miss LeBlanc paid her condolence call.”

  “That’s different. This was a good woman doing charitable work, not—”

  “Good woman? She’s circling like a vulture, trying to get her claws on Mama’s things.”

  An exaggeration, maybe. Bettina didn’t have designer clothes, furs, or jewelry other than her wedding ring and gold cross necklace. She’d worn both daily in life, and continues to do so in death, along with her Sunday dress.

  The church lady may not have come here out of greed, but she’d certainly seemed nosy. Marceline LeBlanc had visited out of the goodness of her heart, resulting in a secret friendship Calvin would never have condoned.

  Filled with renewed determination to uncover the truth, she opens the top drawer of Bettina’s dresser.

  If Calvin comes home early, she’ll tell him she’s decided it’s time to start getting rid of things.

  After all, it’s the truth. She’s shed a good deal of the weighty grief for the woman who raised her. Somewhere out there, another woman might be aching for Amelia at this very moment. A woman who, like Dolores Minsk, was told her baby deserved better. Or a woman whose baby was stolen away by someone who believed that was the case, or maybe . . .

  Maybe by a couple who’d buried one child and wanted another so desperately that they’d make up a story about a baby being left in a church.

  Red sucks in the cool night air, sweet scented by contrast to the cottage that had smelled as if the carpet had flooded and dried without benefit of disinfectants or open windows. Judging by the stains, that’s exactly what happened, probably several seasons ago.

  The small room had been overheated and overcrowded—three people shoehorned in with one chair and a double bed covered in a clammy, silky—not in a good way—bedspread. Somehow, Wayland, accustomed to luxury, seemed to take it in stride.

  Not Wayland. Black.

  “No names!” White admonished at every slip. There were many. That’s what happens when you’re overtired.

  Not for long, though.

  The television light is gone, the office now dark, so Red stops to feed two quarters and a dime into the vending machine. Only one drink isn’t sold out, a dark green can of lemon-lime soda that tumbles down the shoot with a deafening clatter.

  Teem—wasn’t this stuff discontinued a few years back?

  Probably. The swig is flat and metallic tasting, but serves its purpose, washing down one of the little white capsules White had provided.

  “They’ll keep you alert in the days and nights ahead.”

  “Tylenol?” Red asked, reading the label on the plastic pill bottle.

  Black found that hilarious. “Tylenol! How stupid are you?”

  “That’s what it says! See that? T-Y-L-”

  Black only laughed harder, and White shushed him, but seemed to be amused, as well. That hurt. A lot.

  All because of Black.

  “This medicine will help you stay alert,” White said. “Just make sure you’re careful. It’s highly addictive.”

  “And highly expensive,” Black put in. “So don’t pop it like M&M’s.”

  “Like you can’t afford it?”

  “What do you know about what I can afford, you little—”

  “It’s not about affording it,” White cut in. “It’s about waste. Red’s not going to waste it. Or get wasted. Right, Red?”

  “Right.”

  “Because if you take too much, you’re going to get antsy and make a reckless mistake.”

  “I won’t. No mistakes.”

  Before leaving, Red used the dingy bathroom. There were two toothbrushes in the holder. A cosmetics bag and a shaving kit on the back of the toilet seat. A nightgown and starched shirt draped on the back of the door. Cozy. The two of them holed up here while Red is the one out there risking everything. Why doesn’t Wayland—Black—have to get his hands dirty?

  This is no longer about sin and immortality. Now it’s criminal, snuffing out lives, not in self-defense or revenge, but because White says the women and their children are a threat.

  I’m not questioning that. I’ll do what has to be done. But if anyone’s going to get caught, it’s not going to be me.

  When Red emerged, the others stopped talking and exchanged a look. Black walked over. “Before you go . . .”

  Did he know? How could he know? Did they have a hidden camera in the bathroom?

  Standing face-to-face with Perry Wayland, staring into his hard blue eyes, Red flinched at his sudden movement, then realized he was only offering a handshake.

  “I forgot to thank you,” he said. “For meeting me last night at the garage and for dropping me at Penn Station, and taking my car out to the bridge. I owe you one.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “He does,” White said, and nudged him. “You do.”

  Black reached into the pocket of his jeans—the denim too dark, too stiff, too new—and handed over a wad of cash.

  “What’s this? I already have money for the—”

  “It’s extra. My way of showing appreciation for what you did for me.”

  Not for you, jackass.

  “How did it go?”

  “What?”

  “Last night. On the bridge. Any problems?”

  “No. No problems.”

  “Good.”

  Boarding the ferry back to the mainland, Red is almost certain they don’t know about the junkie in the stairwell last night, or the souvenir snatched from the motel bathroom.

  Almost.

  Chapter Nine

  Instead of taking the A train home to Washington Heights, Barnes gets off at 135th Street. He walks east toward the Harlem River, past the deli where the teenagers used to shoplift beer and cigarettes in Barnes’s day. The elderly owner was an easy mark. No one ever got caught, Gloss included.

  He passes the basketball court where at twelve years old, already over six feet tall, he perfected his jump shot while his old man coached from a bench, too out of breath from the two-block walk to join his son on the court. A little farther down lies the hospital where they rushed his father in an ambulance after he collapsed on the kitchen floor. The building’s elevator was out of order again that day, and no one had bothered to fix it. Every second counted, and the medics lost too many climbing up and down all those flights. Charles Barnes died of a massive heart attack at thirty-nine.

  His mother draped herself in black and refused to move away from their crime-plagued low-income building because a storefront fortune-teller convinced her that her dead husband was still hanging around the apartment. The woman, Madame Esmerelda, would visit and attempt to channel him on the Other Side.

  The séances—and small fortune his mother spent on them—were the least of Barnes’s concerns when the building crimes escalated from robbery and assault to homicide and arson. Barnes persuaded her to leave after a neighbor was killed, and the high-rise has since been torched. Beyond a graffiti-scrawled chain-link-and-plywood construction barrier at the site, a new tower climbs the sky.

  His mom now lives in a small Jersey City studio apartment, and has swapped psychics and séances for home shopping shows. She spends her days in front of the TV buying stuff she doesn’t need with money she doesn’t have and then complaining about the merchandise and her credit card debt in the same breath.

  As usual, there’s a group of deadbeats on the
corner. They eye Barnes as he passes, sizing him up. Guys like that can smell law enforcement from a mile away.

  He keeps a steady, casual gaze and gait. He’s not alone out here—down the block, he can see what appears to be a heap of rags on the sidewalk in the shadow of a condemned building. If there’s trouble, the rags will come to life faster than Kim Cattrall in Mannequin.

  Undercover cop Eric Connors came up through the academy with Barnes. These days, they cross paths on the mean streets of East Harlem, though Barnes never acknowledges him. It’s good to know that Connors and other officers are keeping an eye on things, disguised as hoodlums and vagrants.

  Lately, they have their work cut out for them all over the city, but especially here. The old neighborhood slips further every day. Barnes worries about his law enforcement friends working the streets as much as he does about his friends who still live here.

  Rounding the corner, he spies a well-kept redbrick three-story building, perched amid squalor like the lilac shrub that blooms every spring amid burned-out tenement ruins around the corner.

  Wash lives on the top floor. Barnes stops by the bodega on the first, breathing the familiar scent of coffee, bananas, and the fragrant stargazer lilies bunched in buckets just inside the door.

  Alberto Garcia stands behind the register. He has a dark mustache and thick head of black hair despite his eighty-odd years, and is still built, as he likes to say, like a quarter keg with arms and legs. His one good eye lights with recognition and crinkles with a smile, the other covered, as always, by a pirate patch.

  “Long time no see! Where have you been all week, mi amigo?”

  “I came Tuesday about midnight, but you weren’t here.”

  “I’m glad you caught me tonight. I was just getting ready to go upstairs. You want the usual?” he asks, moving over to the deli counter before Barnes even confirms it with a nod. “What’s new with you since I saw you last weekend?”

  Imminent fatherhood, that’s what’s new.

  Barnes tells him about the Wayland case.

  “You think he killed himself?” Alberto asks, slicing the roast pork and layering it onto crusty, mustard-slathered Cuban bread.