So I dug a stub of a pencil out of my pocket and began to ask the usual questions. “Do you have any idea where Robbie might have gone?”
“Not the slightest.”
“She has no special friends? Boy friends?”
“Well, there’s the Caldwell boy,” Mildred said distastefully. “Bobby Caldwell. They live on the other side of Eastlawn, across Losantiville near the park. And there’s Sylvia Rostow. She lives next door.” Mildred’s eyes brightened. “She’s such a nice girl. I just wish that Robbie could be more like her.”
I felt a chill run down my spine. When I was a boy, growing up in a neighborhood very much like this one, my mother had periodically compared me to the son of a neighbor—a swarthy, pepper-haired, mealy-mouthed kid, who had a genius for pleasing adults. I wrote down Sylvia Rostow’s name with an asterisk beside it—to remind me that I wouldn’t like her.
“Did Robbie take anything with her when she left?” I asked. “Clothes? Food? More money?”
“No. She didn’t take any food or money. I’m not entirely sure about the clothes. I haven’t searched her room. If she should come back and found that I’d gone through her things...”
“Maybe we better take a look,” I said.
*****
At first glance the bedroom didn’t tell me anything new about Robbie Segal. Like the rest of the house it was a reflection of the mother rather than of the child—a middle-aged, middle-class dream of adolescence. The four-poster bed was all ruffles and white lace. The furniture—a dresser, vanity table, bedstand, rocking chair—was painted white with gold trim. The carpet was the same pale, fluffy, irreal pelt of blue that you occasionally see on stuffed animals. There were two framed photographs on the vanity table—mom and dad.
It wasn’t until I actually stepped into the room—Mildred hovering nervously at my side—that I began to see how wrong everything looked. There wasn’t a piece of loose clothing or a book or a record jacket anywhere in sight. The bed had been newly made. The carpet was spotless. Even the stereo on the bedstand had been dusted off and covered with its plastic lid. Either Robbie was an extremely neat young runaway or Mildred hadn’t been telling me the truth when she’d said that she’d left Robbie’s things untouched.
She must have sensed what I was thinking because she tapped me on the arm and said, in a slightly disingenuous voice, “I did do a little cleaning up. After all, with company coming out...”
“Mildred,” I said. “I’m not company. I’m a private detective. You’re paying me money to be here.”
“Yes, of course,” she said stiffly. “I just picked up a few things.”
“Like what?”
“A few of Robbie’s things. Nothing important.”
I glanced around the room again. It wasn’t simply clean; it was denuded, like a hospital room. There weren’t any personal items—no posters, no teddy bears, no music boxes, no postcards—none of the paraphernalia that any teenager would surround herself with. It gave me the eerie feeling that no one had ever lived there at all.
“What did you do with them, Mildred?” I said.
“With what?” she said innocently.
“All of Robbie’s things.”
“I can’t see where cleaning up a few—”
“Look,” I said impatiently, “either you show me what Robbie left behind, or you get another detective. I don’t have time to play these games with you.”
“Well, really!” she said indignantly and marched over to a closet. She opened the sliding door, bent down, picked up a large cardboard box, then marched back to me. “I’m going downstairs,” she said icily. “After all, this is still my house and I can come and go as I please. But I want you to know that I don’t like your tone of voice. And I also know that all of this junk”—she thrust the box at me—“was given to Robbie by her so-called friends. I don’t understand what kind of distorted impression you want to get of Robbie’s home life, but that junk won’t tell you a thing about the way I’ve raised my daughter.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” I said.
She turned on her heels and walked out of the room. I went over to the bed, put the box on the mattress, and began to sort through the contents. It was like breaking into Pharoah’s tomb. Mildred Segal had boxed up her daughter’s entire life—everything that Robbie cared for—and stuck it in a closet, safely out of my way. There was a pair of granny glasses with yellow plastic lenses. A gold bracelet with the initials “R.C.” on the shank. A necklace with a peace symbol emblem. A black T-shirt with Pentangle printed in silvery letters across the breast. A paperback copy of Gurdjieff’s Conversations with Famous People. A paperback copy of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex. A Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogue. A ceramic hash pipe that had never been used. An unopened box of Zig-zag papers. Strawberry incense sticks. A bottle of patchouli oil. A snapshot of a pretty blonde girl in shorts and halter top.
There was a good deal more. But it was all just as innocuous and just as indicative of the kind of life that Robbie Segal had been trying to live in that big, white pillow of a room. It took a perverse imagination to see anything more than a normal teenager’s normal adventurousness in any of it. I studied the snapshot and wondered if it was a picture of Robbie. If so, she was a beautiful kid, with long blonde hair and sad blue eyes and a crooked, engaging smile. There was a tenderness and a vulnerability about that face that moved me; but since I’d inched closer to forty, most young faces moved me in the same way.
And, suddenly, I wanted to find Robbie Segal. Not for her mother, with all her guilts and proprieties. Not even for Robbie’s own sake. But for me. For the opportunity to tell her that the world of Eastlawn Drive was not without end. The feeling only lasted a moment, after which I began to feel foolishly adolescent myself. I knew perfectly well that, like it or not, the girl would have to be brought back home—back to that world without end—and that any sentimental speech about freedom and conformity would sound worse than a lie coming from the man who was taking her back to Mildred. And, at the same time, I knew that I’d probably go ahead and make that speech, if I did find her. To give her what little comfort I could and, perhaps, to console myself for the false positions that life is always forcing us into.
3
I FOUND Mildred sitting in the kitchen, straight in her chair—her hands flat on the table, her face unfocused and full of grief. She’d been crying again. Her eyelids were puffy and rimmed with red, and her nose was a little damp at the nostrils. When I sat down across from her, she drew her hands back from the tabletop, like a pianist who’d just finished a piece, and folded them in her lap. Her big green eyes looked so vacant, her long, drawn-out face looked so bereft of hope, that I felt a part of me relent—again. Charity, Harry, I reminded myself. Charity.
“I’m sorry I snapped at you, Mildred,” I said.
“That’s all right,” she said in a forlorn voice. “I deserved it. Imagine putting a clean room before my daughter’s safety! I shouldn’t have been allowed to have a child.”
It sounded like something she’d heard in a movie. A good deal of her conversation did, which is usually the case with people who have no talent for intimacy. I told her, “It’s just not that bad.”
She shook her head and bit her lip and her green eyes welled with tears. “I don’t understand people. Not children or adults. I’ve tried so hard to please them—to keep everything neat and orderly and livable. But I always end up looking hateful and ridiculous.”
I pulled a fresh handkerchief out of my pocket and handed it to her.
“Thanks,” she sniffled.
“Maybe if you didn’t try quite so hard to please,” I said gently.
“I can’t help it!” she sobbed and threw her hands up in distress. “I don’t know any other way to be.”
“I guess not.” I stared at her and thought, all fates are worse than death, Harry. It was just Mildred’s bad fortune to have been born into a world she could never quite tidy up. I patted he
r on the shoulder and said, “If we’re going to avoid these fallings-out, maybe we’d both better be a little more patient with each other.”
She nodded heavily and tried to smile.
“I found this photograph in the box,” I said, handing her the snapshot of the blonde girl. “Is this Robbie?”
She nodded a second time and her smile blossomed with affection. “She’s so beautiful, isn’t she? It’s a miracle she’s mine.”
“She is very beautiful,” I said.
“Oh, God!” Mildred cried. “I do love her, Mr. Stoner. I do. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if anything happened to her.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to her,” I said, even though I knew that I shouldn’t have said it. “She’s probably in a shelter right now.”
“Do you think so?”
I nodded. “There are several dozen shelters and vicarages around the city. I’ll run the standard checks in the morning.”
“Wouldn’t they call me—if she was in a shelter?”
“Not unless Robbie wanted them to,” I said.
Her face collapsed. “I see.”
“Or she could be staying with a friend or relative.”
“Oh, I think I would know by now if she were still in the neighborhood. One of the parents would have called me. Even that dreadful Caldwell man.”
“Why do you say the Caldwells are ‘dreadful’?”
“Because they’re trash,” she said severely. “Poor white trash.”
I started to chide her, but she held up a finger, as if to say on this matter her prejudices could not be shaken. “They are dreadful people, Mr. Stoner. Believe me. Their house is a pigsty; they both dress like hobos; and they haven’t a penny to their name. The father lives off Welfare—some kind of mental problem which he claims as a permanent disability.”
I thought of the gold bracelet I’d found in Robbie’s room, with the initials “R.C.” on the shank, and asked her what Caldwell’s son, Bobby, did for a living.
“Nothing. He’s still in high school, I think. That is, he is when he decides to go to school. From what I can tell, he spends most of his time at home, working on his automobile or playing the guitar. He’s actually a good musician—or so Robbie tells me. I think that’s the only reason she likes him. They have nothing else in common.”
“Does he play professionally?”
“I don’t know,” Mildred said. “I wouldn’t think so, though. He’s only sixteen.”
I stared at the photograph and said, “Is this a fair likeness of Robbie?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know who took the picture?”
“Oh, yes,” she said and her eyes brightened again. “That was taken on a picnic with the Rostows. We all went out to Kings Island for the day.”
“What does Rostow do for a living?”
“He’s in antiques,” she said, as if “antiques” were an exclusive men’s club.
“And how old is Sylvia?”
“Robbie’s age, fourteen. She’s such a nice girl,” Mildred said with that same fulsome warmth. “She and Robbie are very close. I’ve done my best to encourage their friendship. Little girls need a confidante of their own age, don’t you think?”
I told her that she could fit all I knew about little girls in a bug’s ear.
“You have no children of your own?” she said with surprise, as if, in Roselawn, children were one of the ten curses.
I shook my head. “Never been married. Although I’ve come close a couple of times.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know, Mildred,” I said wearily. “I guess I’m just not marriageable.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “A good looking man like you.”
“Why don’t we stick to Robbie?”
She flinched as if I’d slapped her. “I was being polite,” she said in a wounded voice.
“I know you were, Mildred. That’s just not one of my favorite subjects.”
“Losing my only daughter is hardly one of mine, you know,” she said, with some justice.
We were headed toward another argument. Deep down, in spite of the charity I’d subscribed to a few minutes before, I knew that she and I would always be headed in that direction. People like Mildred were simply too easy to hurt. So I asked her for the addresses of the Caldwell boy and the Rostow girl, copied them down in my notebook, got up, and walked to the door.
“You will call me?” she said as she scurried up behind me.
“I will when I’ve found something out.”
“And you do think she’s all right?”
“I told you I did.”
“I just couldn’t stand it if anything happened to her,” she said again and twisted her hands to punctuate the thought.
I was tempted to tell her that what had happened to Robbie had started a long time before she’d run away. But I checked myself. It would have hurt Mildred too deeply. And besides, it was something that she already knew.
4
IT WAS still drizzling—a fine gray mist that wet my face as soon as I stepped out the door. I didn’t mind the damp. After the hour I spent with Mildred in that dry, cramped house, the weather felt good. I looked back over my shoulder when I got to the end of the walkway and saw her peering anxiously out the front window—a dour, befuddled woman waiting for her only child to return home. I hadn’t told her that there was a slim chance that Robbie wouldn’t be coming home, that her daughter might have used the money she’d stolen from her mother’s purse—plus whatever else she’d been able to panhandle or steal—to buy a one-way ticket away from that drab brick house on that drab brick street. That it might be months or years before Mildred heard from her again—a tiny, worn-out voice on the phone begging for money or a plane ticket home. And what Mildred would be buying back would be a very different person than the rebellious teenager who’d run away from Eastlawn Drive. What she’d be buying back could have been so damaged and exploited that it might never raise its head again. Or it might have turned so callous that it wouldn’t think twice of robbing the woman and bolting back into darkness. I hadn’t told Mildred that, for the obvious reasons and for some slightly better ones.
What I’d found in that box in the girl’s bedroom was one reason. Robbie hadn’t taken any of her valuables with her when she’d left. None of the baggage she probably would have taken along, if she’d been planning a long trip. Not that gold bracelet, which she could have pawned for ready money when her own small cash supply ran out. Or the necklace with the peace symbol, which, like a badge or a talisman, might have buoyed her spirits on the long journey out. Or the snapshot I had in my coat pocket—an image of herself she could have looked back on when times were hard. And then there hadn’t been any previous flights—none of those sprints into the outside world that usually precede a long-distance run. In fact, the circumstances suggested a sudden, relatively short excursion. Probably to a place so close by that Robbie hadn’t felt the need to arm herself with money or with belongings. Probably to a place that was familiar and hospitable—a place she might have dreamed of running to for a long time. A place where all of those dreams she’d been collecting in her upstairs room—that familiar adolescent mix of instinct and idealism—would come to life.
Part of me wished her safe conduct. The part that Mildred Segal had hired trudged on through the weather—past a hedge of rosebushes spangled with raindrops and up an asphalt drive colored with the rainbow hues of motor oil slicks—up to the Frederick Rostow Residence. That was what it said on the lawn, on the chain sign that a plaster statue of a Negro jockey was holding in its rain-soaked hand: Frederick Rostow Residence.
I stared at the plaster Negro and felt a little embarrassed for Fred. Even in Cincinnati, that sort of thing had gone out with the Civil Rights Act, although I’d have been willing to bet that there were thirty thousand little Negro jockeys sitting in dark basement corners from Delhi to Indian Hill, like a race of imprisoned elves, waiting to be
returned to daylight. And some day it could happen. Cincinnatians knew that. In a way, that was the gist of their native wisdom—some day it could all come back again. Racial prejudice didn’t die in this city; it just got stored in the basement with the rest of the supplies.
The Frederick Rostow Residence didn’t quite live up to its billing. It was another two-story, red brick house with colonial trim. It did have a bay window in front and some fresh paint on the gutters. Otherwise it was indistinguishable from the other houses on the street. Same foursquare lawn. Same hedge. Same budding maple tree, its trunk blackened in the rain. I walked up to the front door and knocked.
“Just a second!” a cheerful male voice called out.
Someone laughed heartily, then the door opened and a short, smiling man stepped out from behind it. Fred Rostow, if that was who the man was, bore a disconcerting resemblance to Lee Harvey Oswald. A kind of plump, prosperous, untroubled-looking Lee Harvey Oswald, dressed in white leather shoes, gray checkered acrylic slacks, shiny white leather belt, and light blue Izod shirt.
“Howdy!” he said. “I’m Fred Rostow. And you must be the detective Mildred hired.”
I did a bit of a double take and said, “I guess I must be.”
“Oh, hell, don’t take it like that. Mildred was just on the phone with Madge, telling her all about you. And I want you to know we’ll be happy to cooperate.” He passed his fingers through his short black hair and laughed. “Geez, it’s kind of exciting, isn’t it?”
I shook my head and thought, Mildred. Just—Mildred. “Robbie Segal’s disappeared, Mr. Rostow. Did Mildred tell you that?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said cheerfully. “I didn’t mean to sound like I was glad she’d run away or anything. I just meant...well, you know, meeting a detective and all. You carry a gun?”
“Christ,” I said under my breath.
“I mean, on TV, detectives usually carry guns.”
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