“Not a clue.”
He took out his pad.“What's his last name?”
“Halliday. I used to be Halliday, too, but…well…”
“Chuck Halliday. Hey, I know who that is,” said Tripoli. “He used to run that contracting business—”
“Out of the back of his truck. Yup, that's the winner.”
“Just took off, huh?”
“Disappeared. Didn’t even leave a note. It was like aliens came in and plucked him up into outer space.”
“Did you report him missing?”
“Missing? Nobody was missing him! That jerk was still stretching rubber on our checking account and running up charges on our plastic.”
“Any relatives?”
“A mother in Cleveland. I tried calling her when I realized that he had taken off, but she didn’t know where he was—they hadn’t been talking for years. Nor had his uncle in Dallas. Or his cousin in Milwaukee. I’m telling you, the guy simply vanished into thin air.”
Tripoli was hastily jotting notes. He looked up from his pad. “Left you high and dry?”
“But not exactly empty handed.”
A lot of guys could give you a baby, thought Tripoli, though he didn’t say anything.
“And Danny's no ordinary kid. He's smart as a whip. He knows what he wants and he can wait for it. Plan for it.” She picked up his photo. Whenever she gazed at Danny's face, she couldn’t help seeing Chuck—whether she wanted to or not. Those dreamy eyes and long, long lashes—bedroom eyes, she used to call them when she still loved him.
Tripoli nodded.
“You know, Louie—I mean, hey, what am I supposed to call you?”
“Lou's fine,” he smiled.“Louie, well that's my Uncle Louie. I was Louie when I was a kid.”
“Lou,” she repeated absently. She was thinking about Chuck. And her father. How when it came to the crunch, you just couldn’t rely on a man.
Tripoli was saying something to her. “Huh?” she said, waking from her reverie.
“I was asking about your work? The people you work with?”
“You mean Larry Pierce?”
“Well everybody,” he said and she gave him a quick rundown of the magazine, about Sandy and Ben and Doreen. He kept probing, asking about the company's finances, its backers, the people who came and went at the office—which seemed odd. All the while he kept taking notes.
Tripoli lifted Danny's photo from the pile that lay strewn on the low table.“We have your description of Danny, but I just want to go over it with you again.” He replaced the photo and picked up his notepad.“Sometimes people miss things.”
Molly went through her litany, the plaid shirt, the bib overalls, the sneakers.
“Any identifying marks, that might help us? You know, a chipped tooth or a…”
Molly though about it.
“He has a small scar on his forehead, on his right side just above his eyebrow. Got it when he fell off the monkey bars.”
Tripoli noted it down.
“He chipped a tooth. But just a little bit. You can hardly see it.”
“Anything else?”
Molly thought for a moment.“Well, he has this small birthmark on the back of his neck.”
“What color?”
“Sort of wine red. The kids at daycare used to tease him about it, but he never let it bother him. He told them it was his star for being good.”A tear dropped into Molly's lap.“It almost did look like a star with points.”
“Anything else?
“No, I think that's all.”
When he was satisfied, Tripoli closed his notebook and sat thoughtfully for a moment.“Do you think I could see where Danny sleeps.”
Molly looked at him surprised. “Why would you want to do that?”
“Sometimes you can pick up—well, not a clue but an idea.”
“You’re not into that psychic stuff, are you?”
He smiled and shook his head.“No way.”
“Last thing in the world I want,” she said, leading the way to the rear of the trailer,“is a cop who thinks he can get my kid back with some mumbo jumbo.”
Tripoli could feel the trailer sway under his feet as they walked, as if it were a boat loosely moored to its pier.
“We share this room.” Molly sounded apologetic. “It's just till I can get a bigger place, a nicer one. We’ve been saving,” she said. “Danny and me. We have this plan.”
She watched Tripoli as his eyes searched the room in which there was barely enough space to accommodate the beds that met head to head in the far corner. The small area in the center was littered with toys. There was a fort made of blocks peppered with little plastic soldiers. Military men with bazookas and automatic weapons.
“Oh? What plan is that?” He was kneeling down in front of the toy shelf, examining the boy's toys. A Mutant Marauder Mobile Command Unit. Nerf soccer ball. Puzzles. Two cowboy hats. Spurs. A sheriff 's badge. And guns, lots of guns. A pair of western six shooters in a holster. A Supersoaker. Three different light sabers.
“We were…are…going to buy a little place in the country. Danny loves being outdoors. And he wants a puppy so bad. I promised him we’d do it. When he wouldn’t let me leave him at daycare in the beginning, I told him I was working to…” Molly felt her throat close and tears start to come, but she caught herself. “I was working so that we could get the money to buy a little farm. Not a real farm, you know, but a…” she blinked to clear her eyes.“Which is why every morning he’d let me…” She couldn’t go on. Why was she running at the mouth, telling Tripoli all this? What difference could it make?
Tripoli picked up the Supersoaker and hefted it in his hands. It still had water in it.
“This whole arsenal,” said Molly reading his thoughts. “Believe me, it was not my idea. Danny's fascinated by guns and swords. Lord only knows why. I suppose it's just little boys.”
“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I don’t have any. Kids, that is.” He wondered why he said it. He thought with a touch of emptiness about his ex-wife, Kim, who never really wanted children.
She looked at him for a moment. Wondered why he had mentioned it. Wondered how it would affect the search for Danny. Could he really understand what she was going through?
He bent down and picked up the Lego windmill that lay on the floor.“Your boy make this himself?”
“Certainly wasn’t me.” Molly swallowed the lump in her throat and tried to smile.
“Pretty neat for a four-year-old,” he said spinning the blades.
“The only thing I was worried about was that he might go into contracting,” she said with a sad smile as she picked up his Nerf gun. She loaded it and shot it against the wall and watched as the Nerf bounced to the floor.“This was his favorite toy. He was always going around shooting everybody with it. Kept shooting me in the butt while I was trying to do the dishes,” she laughed and cried at the same time. “He played with the Pakkala kids in the other trailer. They have them, too. They’d have these Nerf wars.”
Molly dropped the gun and walked over to the dresser to pick up the empty picture frame. She held it as if the picture were still there.“He had such beautiful eyes. The longest lashes—” She finally realized what she had been saying.“I mean has…Has! He has beautiful eyes. He plays with the kids. Not played!”Then she broke down and wept. She cried and cried and couldn’t stop. Lou Tripoli put his arm around her and held her convulsing shoulders.
Molly was so tired she was numb. She put water on the stove to boil and sat staring into space, telling herself that as long as it was night there still remained a reasonable chance Danny would pop up. In her mind, daylight became the enemy. It represented a new phase, a new page. She thought back on Tripoli…
“You gonna be all right?” he had asked when she had finally calmed down.
She wiped her eyes and nodded her head.“You want coffee or something? I can make some fast.”
“No, I’ve got to get moving,” he had explained.
“
To where?”
“I’ve still got some ideas. Hey, mind if I take one of these?” he asked picking up one of the photos of Danny.
“Take a bunch. Take them all.”
“All I need is one. We’ll copy it into a report and every officer will have one in his hand.”
She took a piece of paper toweling from the kitchen and blew her nose.“You said you had ideas. Like what?”
Tripoli didn’t dare mention the red pickup, didn’t want to needlessly alarm her. He just shrugged and smiled encouragingly.
“You’ll find him, won’t you,” she said when he didn’t reply.
“I’m going to stay on top of it,” he responded, sidestepping the question. The answer, of course, was probably yes. Ultimately, the whereabouts of missing kids always became evident—in one form or another. Given the time that had already passed, unless an ex-husband or someone who had an insatiable longing for a child had abducted Danny, the probability of a happy resolution was rapidly diminishing. It was best she somehow prepare herself for the unthinkable, perhaps even get ready to bear the unbearable. But he didn’t say any of this.
He had put his hand on her arm. She had looked down at where he touched her. His hand was big and broad and there were little tufts of dark hair on the backs of his fingers. Then he had left…
The pot of water on the stove was boiling over, and it brought her back to the present. She stared at the dead screen of the television. Danny loved to watch cartoons—especially the old ones like Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote. He would roar with laughter at Road Runner, then run in dizzying circles around the trailer making beep-beep noises and bumping into everything. Oh God, she moaned, he's still such a baby. If there has to be something bad, let it happen to me, not him.
Later, when she looked out the front window, there was still no hint of light. Good, she told herself, good, there's still time.
About five in the morning she dozed off, still sitting on the couch. The sound of a noisy truck starting its engine insinuated itself into her trailer. It was probably Rick Dolph going off to his job as a custodian, she reasoned somewhere in sleep. Then she dreamed. Disjointed, confused dreams. Dreams about a phone urgently ringing…
But the phone really was ringing. Molly popped open her eyes, trying to orient herself. She was sprawled half off the sofa, and the trailer park was humming with activity, radios and TVs blaring, babies crying, motors running. She could smell bacon frying. The sky had already lightened in the east. Morning. And Danny. He was still gone. The ringing kept going. Danny. Danny! Molly lunged for the phone.
“Molly!” cried a familiar voice. It was Rosie Green. They had been friends since junior high when she was Rosie Lopez.
“I just got to work,” exclaimed Rosie, “and I saw the morning paper. And my God—there's Danny's picture!”
“He's—” Molly started to cry.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“I did. I did! I kept trying, but no one was—”
“I was overnight at my cousin's, remember?”
“Oh!” exclaimed Molly.“Damn! I forgot. I wasn’t thinking.”
“And Ed, he was—”
“Oh, Jesus!”
“I’m coming right over,” she said and hung up.
Ten minutes later she came rushing into the trailer. Molly threw herself into Rosie's arms and wept.
“What happened?” asked Rosie, stroking her.
Molly pulled her hands through her hair and shook her head.
“Did someone take Danny?” asked Rosie.
“I don’t know,” she sobbed.“I just don’t know. Nobody knows.”
Rosie sat Molly down and clutched her tightly. Simply waited for her to speak. Haltingly, Molly related how she had gone to Kute Kids to pick up Danny.“I was late!”
“That has nothing to do with anything. They’re supposed to be watching the kids, right? And the cops, what the hell are they doing?”
“They’re looking,” said Molly.
“What's that supposed to mean?” Rosie was now crying, too.
“Yesterday was a complete nightmare. Nobody's talking to any-body. The State Police didn’t even have a clue. And—”
“That's the police for you. When you don’t need them, they’re all over you, hassling the shit out of people. Then, when you really need them—”
“But Freddy's brother was here. He's on the case.”
“Who?”
“You remember Freddy Tripoli.”
“Sure.”
“Well his brother Lou is a cop. A detective now.”
“Oh, yeah. That's right…that's the guy who kept harassing my brother.”
“Well, he's in charge.”
“And we’re supposed to feel good about that?” asked Rosie.
“He seems like a smart guy. And he's really on top of it.”
“Well, maybe,” said Rosie grudgingly, “but I wouldn’t screw around. I’d get myself a private detective. Ed's got a cousin who's married to a…”
Molly weighed the idea. Thought about Lou Tripoli's visit.“No,” she said finally.“Not yet. We’ve got to give the cops a chance. I think they’re on top of it now. They’re going to find him. You’ll see.”And she tried to smile. Obviously Rosie didn’t really know what to do either. She kept pacing the trailer, wringing her hands and trying to come up with schemes. She’d get all her friends and relatives together and they’d form a search party. And they should call the FBI, of course! It was a kidnapping, right? And that was a federal offense.
“And how did Danny get out? Little boys don’t just evaporate.”
“I don’t know.” Molly tossed her hands.“That's the mystery.”
“Who the hell was watching him? Hey, wait! Did Danny do anything different that day? Say anything? Like maybe he wanted to go somewhere?”
Rosie kept going, searching for clues, but Molly realized that she was running through the same maze of questions that had plagued her all night. Yet there was comfort in having Rosie here, tracking back and forth, racking her brain. At least she wasn’t alone. She thought back about Rosie. How they’d been going to the same schools since the third grade. Most of the kids Molly had grown up with had left town in search of jobs and better lives—and some had ended up bouncing in and out of jail. Rosie had been one of the few to stick with her family in Ithaca. One of the few old and trusted friends she had left.
“I don’t believe this,” uttered Rosie, slumping back down on the couch next to Molly and taking her hand.“Oh, God, little Danny.” Her voice cracked.“He's like my own little boy.”
It was true. Rosie had helped take care of Danny since he was a toddler. It was little more than a month after Rosie had lost her own baby that she and Ed had taken Danny into their home so that Molly could commute to classes in Cortland. Without them, she would never have made it through the community college. And they had refused to accept a penny. If that wasn’t friendship, then…
“Listen,” said Molly finally. “You’d better go back to work. I don’t want you getting in trouble.”
“I’m not leaving you,” said Rosie fiercely.
“I need to be alone a little,” she lied. “I haven’t slept and…”
Rosie looked askance at her.
“I’ll be okay. You’ll come back, right?”
“Of course!”
After Rosie left, Molly felt even more alone than before and regretted sending her off. She kept thinking about Rosie, whose newborn baby had died in her arms after four agonizing and uninsured days in the hospital. At the time, Rosie had been working at the auto body shop out on the Elmira road, keeping the books and inventory. Molly had once gone out to the shop to deliver something to Rosie. The building was enveloped in a fog of wretched-smelling solvents and paint, and Molly couldn’t guess how she could stand it. When Rosie had lost her baby, she was convinced it was because of the chemicals and swore she would never again expose her body to those kinds of poisons.
Now Rosie stood anc
hored to a cash register at the East Hill P&C, still working off the medical bills. Laid out end to end, the groceries she had checked through her line would probably reach another solar system. Her husband Ed, a black guy who was a union mason, earned a decent hourly wage when he worked. The trouble was that the building trades had come to a virtual stop. The last thing Rosie needed was to lose a day's precious wage.
chapter four
Tripoli had trouble finding the magazine office. It shared the rear quarters of a low-slung, brick structure that sat on the edge of the industrial park by the airport, a drab affair in which someone had planted some young maples in the rear to break up the institutional bleakness. The building had been chopped up into a myriad of sections. Inside were a number of tiny biotech labs and a couple of startup electronic and software companies. The place smelled of chemicals and human sweat. The signs were confusing and, when he finally found it, there was no one at the front desk. Tripoli walked past the receptionist's desk and directly into the publisher's office.
Larry Pierce, who was on the phone, looked up, annoyed. “I’m busy,” he said covering the mouthpiece, “and my assistant's out. If you could—”
“I can wait,” said Tripoli calmly and seated himself, Larry letting out an impatient sigh and making no attempt to hide his annoyance. He watched Larry in amazement as he banged out an email, checked his Palm Pilot, fished through a drawer for a file, and checked the Caller I. D. readout on his cell phone clipped to his belt, all the while keeping rapid-fire conversation going. The man seemed to give multitasking a new dimension.
Tripoli took in Larry's side of the discussion. Something about rate of return, loans to the magazine that would be convertable stock. Clearly he was hustling someone, trying to be smooth, but Tripoli could feel the waves of energy coming off the guy. Maybe this was the speed of the city, but he certainly was out of place in Ithaca.
From what Tripoli had managed to learn, Pierce had been a top editor at a New York magazine, the kind of bigshot for whom people would drop everything just to see him—cancel their appointments and divorce their wives. Yet here he was in a kind of self-imposed exile which Tripoli found a little hard to comprehend.
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