by Tim Green
“Uh, there was an adoption agency that used to be here.”
“We do travel,” she said, turning the music down. “For groups.”
“And you don’t know anything about the people before, I’m sure,” he said, forcing his eyes from the scar. “But do you know who owns this building?”
She gave him a vacant stare and shook her head.
“Do you know who would know?” he asked, looking at the closed door that led into the offices beyond. “Is the manager around?”
“He’s out for the rest of the day,” she said.
“Can I get his cell phone number?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t. But I can try him. Hang on.”
She dialed and waited, then shook her head and hung up.
“Will he call in or anything?” Jake asked.
“Usually.”
“Maybe I could check back with you?” Jake said. “Would you mind asking him who owns the building? I’ll be here for a few days. I’m working on a story for a television show.”
She stared.
“American Outrage?” he said, taking the press credential out of his wallet.
“Oh.”
“We’re doing a piece on that guy who kept those women in a concrete bunker.”
She blinked.
“The trial starts next week,” Jake said. “So, can I check back later, after you talk to your manager?”
“Wait. I can try the leasing agent downstairs,” she said, picking up the phone. “He’d know.”
She held it for a minute or so, then rolled her eyes and said, “Surprise. Half the time I have to slide the rent check under the door. Here, I’ll write his number down. You can leave a message and maybe he’ll call you back. Ask for Joe.”
Jake took the paper and peeked at her left hand. He saw no ring. His heart skittered and he said, “I appreciate the help. Maybe I could buy you a cup of coffee when you get done? At that Starbucks? Around the corner?”
Her cheeks flushed and she adjusted the curtain of hair on the scarred side of her face.
“Only if you come with the name, though,” Jake said, repressing a smile.
She looked up at him, studying his face.
“Kidding. How about five o’clock? Meet you there?”
“All right,” she said, allowing the hint of a smile. “Sure.”
On his way out, the security guard snapped his fingers and hailed him as the guy from American Outrage.
“I knew it, man,” the guard said.
Jake gave him a goofy grin and kept going. Out on the street, he slung the briefcase over his shoulder and twisted the wedding ring around on his finger. He felt naked when it slipped off, but instead of putting it back on, he clutched it in his fist.
Steve Cambareri came out right away, wearing a light gray suit and a thin mustache. He slapped Jake on the shoulder, telling him that he watched his show all the time, before leading Jake back into his office. The two of them used to go drinking when Jake was a young reporter and Cambareri was working traffic court.
“You ever marry that girl who worked for the judge?” Jake asked.
Cambareri grinned and spun the picture frame on his desk to show off his kids.
“Remember Grimaldi’s?” Jake asked. “We’d order a plate of spaghetti and old Freddy would send out steaks and lobsters? You still getting the treatment?”
Cambareri laughed at the memory. “No, the old man passed on. You help somebody with a loading zone today and they ask why it’s only thirty minutes instead of sixty.”
“That loading zone was the only way you and me were getting a taste of lobster.”
“Back then,” Cambareri said. “You must be eating five-star now. Jake Carlson, TV star.”
“Nah.”
They talked for a while longer before Jake said, “I know it’s a long shot, but I wondered if you ever heard of a guy named Ron Cakebread?”
Cambareri shrugged and asked what that had to do with the trial.
“Nothing,” Jake said. “It’s personal. He ran an adoption agency.”
“Name rings a bell. If he ran an agency, maybe one of the family court judges would know,” Cambareri said. He picked up the phone and after a minute got a judge on the line, asking the same question Jake had asked him.
“You sure it’s the same guy?” Cambareri said to the judge, leaning forward with his elbows on the desk and raising his eyebrows at Jake. “Yeah, I remember, I just didn’t remember that he ran an adoption agency. Okay. Thanks.”
Cambareri hung up and began absently cracking his finger joints one at a time.
“I knew I heard that name. We never found out who did it,” he said, gazing out the window.
“Did what?” Jake asked.
“Your guy?” Cambareri said. “This Ron Cakebread? If it’s the same guy—and they’re telling me it is—they found him about seven years ago. His car was parked in back of some grocery store. Fatal gunshot wound to the head. They ruled it a suicide, but I think it was a little sketchy.”
8
ANYBODY ASKS, I’m not chasing this stuff down for you. You got it yourself, right?”
Jake nodded. While Cambareri searched for the file, Jake went down the hall and locked down his interview with the DA for the next day before returning to his old friend’s office.
As he walked in, the phone rang. Cambareri answered it, handing Jake the thick file off his desk and pointing to the little conference room across the hall.
Jake peeled back the cover and saw the name Ron Cakebread. A black-and-white photo showed Cakebread’s profile, one vacant eye and the dark exit wound in the back of his skull. Jake sat down in the conference room and dug in. There were several newspaper articles as well as the police report. No arrests were ever made. The coroner’s report said suicide. There was ample powder residue on the fingers, but it was noted that there were also faint bruises and abrasions around the upper arms that were consistent with restraint and that Cakebread’s blood alcohol level was .23.
The list of interviews was unimpressive. Cakebread’s mother, who lived in Tupper Lake and swore her son didn’t have an enemy in the world. Cakebread’s landlord, who said the guy kept to himself. He had a grown daughter he never spoke with. The only thing of interest was the ex-wife. The report said she refused to cooperate and asked immediately for a lawyer. After that, there was nothing. Jake jotted down her address as well as the name of the investigating officer, Sergeant Fred Blane.
The report mentioned the adoption agency, but only as Cakebread’s self-owned business. A cashier found the car next to a Dumpster in the back of a shopping center called Westvale Plaza. Jake jotted down the location on his yellow pad, closed the investigation file, and returned it to his friend’s desk. Cambareri was still on the phone and he signaled Jake that he would give him a call later.
It was nearly five when Jake stepped out onto the sidewalk and wove his way through the crowd of workers spilling from the office buildings. Zamira sat at a small table in the Starbucks by herself, staring out the window. She wore a trim brown leather jacket over her sweater and its matching skirt. The long scar faced him, but he still felt the urge to touch the long silky hair.
“What do you like?” he asked, stepping up to the table.
She stood up, shaking her head, and said, “I have to go, but I brought you the number. My boss wanted me to ask why you wanted it.”
She handed him a scrap of paper. He took it, looked at the name, and said, “Come on. You’ve got to let me live up to my part of the bargain. Too late for coffee? You want a drink?”
“What happened to your wedding ring?” she said, glancing at his hand.
His face warmed and he took a breath.
“My wife passed away,” he said, looking into her eyes. “About a year ago. I usually wear it anyway.”
She held his gaze, studying him before she said, “I think it’s nice that you wear it.”
“But not that I took it off,” he sai
d. “Stupid. Anyway . . .”
“Anyway,” she said, sitting back down. “I’ll have a cappuccino.”
Jake got the coffee and sat down across from her. He kept his eyes fixed on hers and felt his heart pick up. The white scar only made him think about how perfect her face must have been.
“This show I do? I interview all these Hollywood assholes who leave their wives for every other costar,” he said, taking a sip. “I try to be different.”
“Wearing the ring is different,” she said. “A year is a long time.”
“First time I took it off,” he said. “Something about you, I guess. A feeling.”
Her brow furrowed.
“Funny thing was, she tried to make me promise I’d move on,” Jake said. “How many women would do that?”
“I think I would,” she said. “If you care about someone, you want them to be happy.”
Jake looked at his coffee and took a drink, then he looked out the window.
“So,” she said after a few moments, “why do you want to know about the owner of the building?”
“Did you know about the guy who ran the agency that used to be in your office?” Jake asked, turning his attention back to her. “Did you hear about him? What happened?”
“Is it something to do with the women in your story? The women in that bunker?”
“No,” he said, “this is a separate thing. He was killed. They’re not sure if he did it himself, or someone else.”
“Are you doing a story about him?” she asked, sipping her drink and looking at him over the rim of her cup.
“Not a story,” Jake said. “Not yet anyway. Maybe. I wasn’t planning on it, but in the work I’m in I guess you’re always looking for a story. Everyone has one. You too, right?”
“I guess,” she said.
Jake’s cell phone rang. The caller ID read it was Muldoon. Jake held up a finger and answered it. He didn’t say anything to Muldoon about what had happened in Brooklyn, but he spoke with a cool detachment as he shared the interview times he’d already set up for the DA and the bunker man. Muldoon had just landed and he asked Jake to meet him for dinner so they could go over the schedule. Jake told him he already had plans, but that he could meet him later at the hotel bar.
When he got off, Jake said, “So, how about your story? Where are you from?”
“Albania,” she said. “Fifteen years ago I came over. Things were bad.”
“Albania?” Jake said. “Your English is excellent.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I went to school at night, and I like to watch old movies.”
“Like, black-and-white old?”
“Katharine Hepburn. Cary Grant. Orson Welles. All of them.”
“Ever see Touch of Evil?”
“Charlton Heston.”
“They did a director’s cut,” he said. “Cut it the way Orson Welles supposedly wanted it. It’s amazing.”
“I didn’t see that,” she said.
Jake sat back in his chair, studying her.
“Ever been married?” he asked.
She lowered her eyes. “No.”
“Fought them all off,” he said.
Her fingers strayed to her face.
“I do need to go,” she said, swinging her legs around to get up.
“Wait. I’m sorry. My wife and I adopted our son through the agency that used to be in your office,” he said, touching her arm. “He’s going through a hard time and I want to find his mother for him. His biological mother. If there’s a story to it, well, okay, like I said, but that’s not what it’s about. It’s about my son.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He’s from Albania, my son,” Jake said. “The agency had a pipeline over there for children. I just don’t think it’s total coincidence that you’re from there, too.”
Her eyes widened and she opened her mouth for a moment before snapping it shut.
“What?” he said.
“Many people came to this country from Albania. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t know anything about your son. Thank you for the coffee.”
She stood and Jake got up with her, shouldering his case and walking her to the door.
“My pleasure. Hey, do you want to maybe have dinner one of these nights?” he asked. “Tonight, even. What did I say? Just dinner.”
“I have to go,” she said. “Thank you.”
She turned and hurried down the sidewalk, back in the direction of her office.
“Can I call you?” Jake said. He was sure she heard him, even though she made no sign.
He watched until she disappeared around the corner.
9
JAKE FOUND A RIB PLACE called Dinosaur Bar-B-Que a few blocks away. While he waited for his food, he dialed the real estate company that owned Zamira’s building. There was no one in, so he left a message, saying he was interested in some space in the same building as AA European Travel. Then he called information and got the address of the real estate company, jotting it down underneath Zamira’s writing on the same scrap of paper. The food came quickly.
Jake knocked down two pints of Blue Moon Ale and ate a rack of ribs so good he scraped the bones clean with his teeth. The sun had dropped by the time he walked out, but the warm air left him feeling unhurried. Three motorcycles rumbled past with girls clinging to the backs of their riders. Jake touched his wedding ring before taking a toothpick out of his front pocket and going to work on the shreds of meat stuck in his teeth as he walked back to his hotel.
The lobby smelled newly renovated. Up by the ceiling, a strip of masking tape still clung to the molding bearing the colors of the sea-foam-green wall. Brass floor lamps and hanging fixtures gleamed and sparkled. The corners of tables, chairs, and sideboards cut perfect angles, unmarred by the usual chips and dents. The faux-marble floor leading into the bar bore one lone black scuff mark. Muldoon hadn’t arrived at the bar and that was just as well. Jake went upstairs to use the bathroom and call Sam from his room.
“How’d it go?” Sam asked as soon as he picked up the phone.
“No ‘I miss you, Dad’?” Jake said. “No ‘This place just isn’t the same without you, Dad’?”
“What’d you find?”
“Not much,” he said. “I went back to the agency where we got you and it’s not there anymore.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you check the phone book?”
“Of course.”
“A lot of cities have a business directory. Did you go to the other agencies? They might have just changed the name.”
“I looked. There’s nothing.”
“What about the people who worked there?”
“I only knew the director,” Jake said, thinking about the bloody cavern in the back of Cakebread’s head. “He’s . . .not around either.”
“How about your friend in the FBI? They’ve got stuff people don’t even know about.”
“Tell you what,” Jake said. “I’ll give him a call. That’s one thing I didn’t do.”
“’Cause like you said, this isn’t going to be easy.”
“You’re right, but with the Dynamic Duo on it, she doesn’t stand a chance.”
The phone was silent for a minute. Jake thought he heard Sam breathing.
“That’s like, Batman,” Sam said.
“I was kidding,” Jake said.
“You think she’s alive, right?” Sam said in a flat voice.
“There’s no reason to think she’s not. I’m sure she’s a young woman.”
“Mom died,” Sam said.
“Most don’t,” Jake said, his throat tightening.
“I know,” Sam said. “They say stress causes cancer lots of the time.”
“Lots of things do,” Jake said.
“I wasn’t always a bad kid, right? I mean when I was little?”
“You’re not a bad kid now. What are you talking about?”
“Just all the trouble,” Sam said.
<
br /> Jake heard him cover the phone for a moment.
“You know what you were to her?” Jake said. “You were what she dreamed about. You gave her ten years they said she didn’t even have.”
Tears ran down Jake’s face, but he kept his voice even and strong.
“You think?”
“I do,” Jake said. “Now get to bed. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Jake hung up and wiped his face, then blew his nose in the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. The blue in his eyes seemed duller. No question the blond in his hair had faded, closer to gray than the wheat it had once been. Wrinkles radiated from the corners of his eyes. For TV, his agent did her best to sell looks like these as rugged or distinguished. A woman with chinks like his would get labeled as old.
Jake looked at his watch and hurried downstairs so that he could get around a few more drinks before he had to see Muldoon. Two women in business suits gawked at him. He walked to the far end of the empty bar for a stool, ignoring the blonde with the bright red lipstick when she winked at him. From that spot, he could watch the entrance without looking at the women and still keep Muldoon from sneaking up on him. Jake sniffed at the smell of new carpet and ran his hand over the glassy surface of the oak bar. The bartender had a stutter, but turned out to be a friendly college kid who poured a heavy-handed vodka tonic.
The corners of the ice cubes in his first drink had melted off when his cell phone rang. Cambareri gave Jake a cell phone number for Sergeant Blane.
“I asked around,” Cambareri said. “They ruled it suicide because it fit and there weren’t any suspects. The wife’s alibi was rock-solid, some engineer’s conference in Miami. No real connection between her and Cakebread since their divorce three years earlier anyway. They wrote the lawyer thing off to paranoia.”
Jake thanked his old friend and dialed Blane. The sergeant reinforced Cambareri’s recollection of the wife acting strange, but gave him nothing he didn’t already have, so he ordered a fresh drink and called information. There was a D. Cakebread in Otisco. Jake took the notepad from his briefcase. The address matched the one he’d written down from the police report.