“Jeff!” Brenda gasped.
“What? That’s what they’re thinking, aren’t you, Mikey?” Jeff said, emptying the bottle in four gulps before returning to the kitchen and pulling another from the fridge. “Thinking that it was the father who did something. That’s what they’re all saying, aren’t they? But I’ll tell you, mister, I never touched my little girl.”
“So where’s the phone?”
“I don’t fucking know.” Jeff tossed the beer cap at the sink. He missed and the cap bounced off the counter as Brenda turned away and began to weep.
“Well,” Mike said as he placed his business card down on the kitchen table, “if you do come up with any ideas, give me a call. My cell number is on the back.”
*****
“Aren’t you the compassionate one, eh?” Sal commented as he and Mike drove off.
“One of them is lying,” Mike muttered as he scanned the busy street for a coffee shop.
“No shit, Sherlock, but wow, you were brutal!” Sal reached into his pocket and pulled out an unopened package of sunflower seeds. “Do they know that their little girl is a prostitute now?”
“I suspect so.”
“Have you told them directly?”
“No. You’re not going to start with those again, are you?”
“You surprise me, Mikey,” Sal said, looking out the window for a moment as he chewed the handful of seeds he had just pushed into his mouth. “You’re the one who’s all about full, frank, and fair disclosure and all of that shit.”
He spat a wad of shells onto the floor between his legs.
“You’re disgusting,” Mike said, turning the car into a strip mall parking lot. “Anyway, I was hoping one of them would say something about the phone.”
“Like what? We’ve spoken to them at least a hundred times over the past couple of years. I think you need to let the phone thing go.”
“I can’t. It makes no sense to me.” He pulled the unmarked car into a spot in front of a high-end coffee shop.
“Of all the things we see and do, this is the thing that makes no sense to you? You are a complex man, Michael O’Shea.” Sal shook his head in bemusement.
“Whatever. You want or…?”
“I don’t have the kind of coin you have to blow on coffee.”
“Right. You’re a single guy. Still living with your mom?”
“This from the guy whose mother practically lives with him.”
“For childcare purposes,” Mike objected.
“Fair enough,” Sal conceded. “I still wouldn’t spend that kind of cash on a coffee. Hell, I wouldn’t even buy a girl a drink if it was that expensive.”
“Classy, classy, classy, Sal,” Mike said, getting out of the car. “Remember, quality costs. What do you want? I’ll buy.”
*****
Mike returned to the car carrying two coffees. He took a sip and choked.
“Not to your liking?” Sal smirked.
“This tastes like shit!”
“I’m tellin’ ya. This high-end coffee thing is a scam. Bean is bean.”
“There she is!” Mike suddenly shouted. He jumped out of the car, coffee in hand.
“Who?” Sal jumped out of the car after his partner, spilling hot coffee down his pants. “Fuck!”
“Brenda Hendricks. Stay here.”
“Fuck!” Sal repeated, upturning his empty coffee cup as he stared down at his soaked jeans.
“Brenda!” Mike called out. He walked quickly over to where Brenda was parked.
“Oh, come on, Mike!” she replied, having gotten too far out of her car to get back in. “I haven’t seen you in a dog’s age, and now you’re everywhere. Leave me alone, okay?”
“Just talk to me,” Mike said, standing on the passenger side of her car.
“How did you even know I’d be here?”
He shrugged. “You were out of gin and Jeff’s too pissed to drive. I figured you could last only so long drinking that pony-piss beer he drinks. It’d be a long night without more booze.”
“You pegged that one right.” Brenda laughed bitterly. “Weekends are the hardest. And when we drink the most. At least during the week, we’re at work and don’t hit the sauce until we get home. Helluva way to spend your days, eh?”
“Yeah, but I get it. Doesn’t have to be like this, though,” Mike pointed out, staying where he was, giving Brenda some space.
“Easy for you to say. You’ve got a little boy, right? No worries there. Girls are different. And even when you do worry, they still end up…” Brenda looked down at the car keys in her hand.
“Where’s the phone, Brenda?” Mike asked softly.
“Jeff has it,” she murmured.
“Why?” Mike asked, moving around the back of the car to approach her as another car began pulling into the space where he had been standing.
“To protect me,” she answered.
“From what?”
“Stupid stuff. Mother–daughter stuff. Stuff that I would take back in a heartbeat if I had the chance.”
“Like what?” Mike was now by her side, with only the open car door blocking her from walking away.
“Like our last argument.” Brenda sighed, looking at him. “The one where I said—no, screamed—that she was a little whore and I didn’t want her at home any more.”
Mike and Brenda locked eyes for a moment before Brenda looked down. The sunlight bouncing off the hood of the car made them both squint.
Brenda began to cry.
“But—” Mike started.
“No, Mike. It’s a horrible thing to say to your daughter. To anyone. I was just so worried that she was getting involved with the wrong crowd, and Jeff wasn’t doing anything about it. I was at my wits’ end, Mike. Or what I thought was the end then. Funny how that end line changes, eh?”
Mike’s thoughts wandered to one of his many end-line changes.
“I blame myself every single moment of every single day, you know. Maybe if I hadn’t called her a whore, or told her to get out, or—”
“Or the sky was purple and the grass was orange,” Mike cut in, giving her the advice his mother had so often given him. He looked over at the unmarked car. Sal was still taking stock of his soaked jeans.
“Thanks.” Brenda smiled at Mike, wiping the snot off her nose with her sleeve.
“But what does that have to do with the phone?” Mike continued.
“She took a video of the whole thing,” Brenda said, the premature lines in her face deepening. “She told me afterwards that she wanted everyone to know how horrible I was to her. Thing of it is, Mike, I didn’t care. I was so mad at her that I —”
“Where’s the phone now?”
“It’s in the shed out back. Jeff keeps it charged up. He’s stopped expecting her to call. Now he just goes back there to look at the pictures she took of herself on it.”
“How long have you known about this?”
“I always knew. Right after she went missing, I told him about what I had said to Chels and that she’d got it on her phone. When you guys came around, he said not to worry, that he’d hidden the phone.”
“But why wouldn’t you just say—”
“Because it’s my fault, Mike.”
“I’m just going to go back to the coffee joint and get some napkins, if you’re okay with that, Mikey,” Sal called out.
Mike looked over at his partner and nodded. Then he looked back at Brenda.
“Brenda, you didn’t drive her—”
“Really? Well, it certainly feels like it. And that video certainly makes it look like I did. Jeff said that if you guys knew about it, you’d be looking at me like I did something to her. I don’t know, Mike. It seems like it was a long time ago and it seems like it was yesterday. Anyhow, I gotta go. Jeff’ll be worried.”
But she made no attempt to get back into her car, just stood where she was for a few seconds, looking past Mike.
“Jeff won’t let me.”
“But you’re not a susp—”
“It’s about the pictures now. And if we’re gonna be honest here, I sometimes go back to the shed and look at that video she took of me screaming at her. What the hell was I thinking, Mike?”
“You were thinking that you care, Brenda. Nothing more, nothing less,” Mike reassured her. “Can you get the phone for me? Maybe leave it out somewhere?”
“Like Jeff isn’t going to notice that.”
“What time does he go to bed at night?”
“You mean pass out on the couch? Any time after his tenth beer.”
“And what beer are we at now?”
“He was pretty close to that when I left the house,” she looked at her watch, “about ten minutes ago.”
“So grab some more beer and a bottle of gin like you were planning to, go home, enjoy your drinks, and when he’s passed out, get the phone from the shed, put it in your mailbox, and give me a call. I’ll come by and pick it up, and that’ll be the end of it.”
“What happens when he wakes up and goes out to look at her pictures?”
“Does he do it that often?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” he sighed, “maybe you could leave the shed door open and throw some tools around when you get the phone. Maybe make it look like someone broke in?”
“Do you watch a lot of cop shows, Mike?” Brenda smiled.
“My life is a cop show, Brenda.”
*****
Mike could almost hear the seconds ticking away on his wristwatch as he waited for Brenda’s call. He was parked outside Sal’s place while his partner ran in to put on another pair of jeans. The spill didn’t seem that significant to Mike, but Sal wouldn’t shut up about it. His apartment wasn’t that far from the parking lot where they had met Brenda, so using some of their wait time to drop by seemed like a prudent thing to do. Especially if it would shut Sal up.
Mike figured there would be lots of pictures of the lure on Chelsea Hendricks’s phone. All teenage girls seemed to love taking selfies with their latest love-of-their-life. Mike was pretty sure there’d also be enough background in the photos to allow the JPTF to identify the mall where she had been targeted. Good intel for a pre-emptive strike against these assholes. He sighed. Not as if they wouldn’t soon find another place to pick up girls.
“These are the cleanest ones I could find,” Sal said, getting back in the car.
“Livin’ la vita loca, eh, Sal?” Mike smirked. “Too busy to do laundry? Ah, those were the days…”
“You had your chance, brother,” Sal laughed. “But no, Mike O’Shea has to marry her.”
“It was the right thing to do.”
“Yeah, right,” Sal groaned. “For about the first…what? Three months? Besides, why should I deprive the female population of any of this magic!”
“I dunno, man. You were looking pretty doe-eyed at that friend of Julia’s the other day.”
“Like fuck. I had pink eye.”
“Pink eye? Then what the hell were you doing at work, you asshole? Do you know how contagious that is—”
Mike’s cell phone rang.
“Ish in th’ mailbox,” Brenda slurred and then hung up.
“Yes! This is it, Sal. We gotta go.”
*****
“This is fucking gold, Mike!” Sal exclaimed as he scrolled through photo after photo of Chelsea Hendricks and a dozen or more images of the steroid-fuelled boy they suspected was the ring’s lure.
“Not bad, eh?” Mike had to admit as he drove back to the office.
“I wonder if they used the same kid to lure Britney?”
“Dunno. Does he look familiar to you?”
“Kind of. I’m thinking I’ve seen his face somewhere. You?”
“You’re the one looking, Sal. You tell me.”
“He looks a lot like that kid we charged as a found-in at that rub-and-tug a few years ago. His name was Teddy Bear or something like that. He had a good lawyer and we had a shit judge. Didn’t that judge get punted from the bench a while later after Morality did a play he was involved in?”
“I dunno, but if it’s the kid you’re thinking of, his real name is Theodore LeBaron.”
“Yeah. That’s it. And I’d bet you one of your high-flying coffees that this guy here is the same guy.”
“If he is, we can pay him a visit. We know where he lives.”
“Do we?”
“You ever read the newspaper? I mean, a legit news source?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Last week. Front page news. Major fraud ring bust.”
“Well, who the fuck cares about fraud rings?”
Mike rolled his eyes in despair. “Arrested four people. Three guys, one girl. Our boy, Teddy Bear, was one of them. Still in custody.”
“Since when do you follow the news?”
“Truth? My mother read it in the paper and came over to tell me all about it. Thought Teddy Bear was an odd name for ‘a lad with the face of a festered fig,” Mike said, doing a very credible imitation of his mother’s thick Irish brogue. “Speaking of which, we have to get going for dinner at Mom’s. You’re not wearing those jeans, are you?”
“What’s wrong with them, and do we really have time to go to your mom’s place for dinner?”
“Well, they’re kinda stained in an awkward place…”
“Chicken wing sauce.”
“And they seem kinda tight around your gut…”
“The beer that goes with the chicken wings. Your mom won’t really care, will she?”
“If I was wearing them, yes. Because it’s you, no. And we have to eat anyway, so we might as well grab something good as opposed to some cheap shit you’d be leading us to. We can be back in action within the hour.”
Chapter Four
Sunday, October 30th, 2005 - 5:55 p.m.
The house on Delaware Avenue was the only home Mike had ever known as a child, and aside from the satellite dish his sister Katie had talked their mother into installing, the house still looked pretty much the same, both inside and out, as it had back then. Mary Margaret O’Shea was not one for change for the sake of it. Apart from the dining room suite his parents had purchased just before his father, Jimmy, died, there had been no additions, deletions, or movement of furniture in thirty-some years.
Back when Mike and his three siblings still lived at home, the O’Shea house was practically bursting at the seams. From the outside looking in, the house on Delaware looked as if it would be hard-pressed to hold the husband, wife, and four children who actually lived there, never mind accommodating a revolving collection of temporary stop-overs.
“There must be a sign at the Dublin Airport referring every Irishman with no plans or money to come to Delaware Avenue until he gets himself sorted,” Mary Margaret often used to say. She was referring to the steady stream of cousins, neighbours of cousins, friends of cousins, or lads who’d had a pint with a cousin who ended up on the pull-out in the front room for anywhere from one night to several months, often for free. When the guests were a couple or a family, Mike and his younger brother, Petey, who shared the upstairs big bedroom at the front of the house, were relocated to the living room.
Jimmy and Mary Margaret O’Shea had been hard-pressed to be able to afford the waves of new-found family. Somehow, though, both the house and its owners managed. Even after Jimmy’s untimely death, immigrants continued to find their way to Mary Margaret’s doorstep, only stopping a couple of years ago for reasons unknown. That sign must have blown down, Mary Margaret often joked.
This afternoon, every place at Mary Margaret’s dining room table was set, including a spot each for the long-gone Jimmy and Petey: the first out of respect for the dead, the other in the hope that someday the lost lamb would return. And holding fast to the notion of the Un
expected Guest, Mary Margaret always had a third additional spot set.
Every partner Mike worked with was familiar with this table and its occupants because they, like Mary Margaret’s children and grandchildren, were expected to be there every Sunday for dinner, unless, of course, it was that rare weekend that they had off, in which case, Mike’s mother forgave them for not attending.
On this day, given that he and Mike were working, Sal was as much expected to show up as Mike was. He did not disappoint as he let himself in the front door with a familiarity that comes with any long-term partnership.
“Michael,” shouted his mother, “yer sister and her husband are in the yard havin’ a bit of a row, I’m afraid. Would you mind poppin’ yer head ‘round the corner to let them know dinner is ready. We were all just waitin’ on you and Sal. Speaking of which, lad,” Mary Margaret looked Sal up and down as she made her way around her three grandsons, carrying a steaming serving dish of mashed potatoes and cabbage, “when will we see you with a wife and a babe or two in yer arms? Mind yer Gran, Max,” she said by way of shooing away one of the children who had almost tripped her, “it’d boil the skin off of you if any of this landed on you. Sal, I’m tellin’ you now, lad, you’d be wise to do it before you start fillin’ the doorway too much more.”
“I’ll take that under advisement, Mary Margaret.” Sal laughed, seating himself at his usual spot in the middle of one side of the table while the grandsons settled in at the other end.
“Not that big bones on a man are a bad thing, mind you, but no one wants to see you goin’ down that road too soon. My Jimmy, God rest his soul, always kept himself trim. Said it made him feel better, too, not like that helped in the end. How are you feelin’ these days, Sal?”
“You’re a cop, right?” Paulie, the youngest of Teaszy and Alan’s boys asked, looking up the table past his brother and the empty place setting reserved for the Unexpected Guest.
“Of course, he is, you moron. You know he’s Uncle Mike’s partner,” Richard, his older brother, said, looking down on the younger boy with disdain. “And he’s only been coming for dinner forever.”
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