by Con Lehane
Dominic stopped and turned. He looked past Ambler at the police cruiser parked in front of Emily’s apartment. “You’re pretty brave when you got backup, librarian. One of these times, I’ll get you alone.” His eyes met Ambler’s, his expression eerily lifeless. “How about we take a walk together over toward the river? Nobody bothers us over there.”
“I want to talk to you about Emily.”
Behind Dominic, the Ninth Avenue traffic hummed, punctuated by blasting horns, lights flickering as headlights passed the intersection. The air around them was still. Dominic shifted his stance. “You’re gonna be sorry you ever laid eyes on her.”
“If you’re trying to protect her, you’re doing a lousy job.”
Something changed in Dominic’s stance, a flinch, a flicker in his stone-like glare. “You don’t know nothin’ about Emily.” He moved closer to Ambler, inches from him. He was taller, with the sloping shoulders of a weight lifter, his neck thick.
Ambler stood his ground, though he shifted his stance—legs shoulder width, most of his weight into his front leg, knees bent. “You do take care of Emily, don’t you?”
Dominic moved back a step. A deadly seriousness replaced the bluster. “What’s that mean?”
“How much do you know about her past?”
“More than you—” Another deadly pause. “Maybe not. I asked you what you think you know.”
“Did you know James Donnelly?”
The coldness of Dominic’s stare was unsettling, different from the earlier standoff when it was a man-to-man thing. Ambler felt he was looking into the eyes of an executioner. “Sometimes you know too much.”
“Whatever it is,” Ambler said. “You could leave Emily out of it.” As he spoke, he sensed, heard, rather than saw a car behind him. A nondescript gray Dodge pulled up alongside the parked cars in front of them.
Dominic turned when he heard the car. “Fuck,” he said, and turned to walk away.
Ford was out and had Dominic jacked up against a parked car in a flash. He patted him down and stood him up. Turning to Ambler, he said, “Take a hike.”
Ambler joined Adele next to the cruiser parked in front of Emily’s apartment. He watched another nondescript car pull up behind Ford’s and two men get out, young, husky guys, one white, one black, dressed like they might be longshoremen or truck drivers. Shortly after they arrived, the uniformed officers came out of the apartment and joined Ford and the other two men. They talked together in something resembling a football huddle for a minute until the uniformed cops walked back to their car. The talkative uniformed cop beckoned to Ambler.
He looked up to see the door to Emily’s building closing behind Adele and started to follow her, but the cop flagged down a cab that had emptied down the block. He held the back door open for Ambler in a way that brooked no resistance. Once in the cab, Ambler checked his voice mail, hoping to find something from Cosgrove. Instead, he found Benny’s message. After listening, he called Benny.
“She’s leaving.”
“Keep her there.”
“I can’t, Ray.”
“Can you find out where she’s going?”
“We try to find a friend or relative they’re comfortable with. She didn’t come up with anything.”
“You’re going to let her go out into the night, just like that?”
“I’m trying to talk her into letting us contact her parents.”
“Can I talk to her?”
“I’ll ask her.”
“Hello?”
“Denise. It’s Ray Ambler. Will you wait there for me?”
“Not if you’ll tell my father.”
Ambler hesitated. “I won’t.”
Chapter 23
Emily opened the door, a cigarette in her hand. Dragging on the cigarette, she met Adele’s gaze and quickly looked away. Scared and nervous, she seemed fragile.
“You poor kid,” Adele said.
“What do you want?” Her tone was gruff, but the expression in her eyes told a different story. She was close to tears.
“I want to make sure you and Johnny are okay.”
Emily stared into the empty space of the hallway, sneaking a peek at Adele. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking. After what seemed a long time, she swung the door open and walked into the apartment. Adele followed and waited next to the couch while Emily went into the kitchen. She came back with a bottle of vodka, two glasses, and a carton of orange juice. She poured two drinks, mostly vodka.
Adele took a sip. The drink tasted awful but she took another swallow anyway.
“Johnny’s asleep finally. Why’d you come here when I wasn’t here? What were you looking for this time?”
Adele told her the truth. She’d read something in the papers she’d taken from the briefcase that Ambler thought might belong to James Donnelly.
“He thinks Dominic killed James. Does he think he killed my father, too? It’s a different briefcase. I told him.”
Adele hesitated. “I read something disturbing—”
Emily sat still, staring beyond Adele. “I don’t know what you read. I told your boyfriend. I was helping James. We were writing something together. I changed my mind. I didn’t want to do it anymore. He gave me back the book. James and I were okay. Dominic didn’t kill him.”
“It’s true? What I read?”
Emily looked at the wall beyond Adele. “Our super-close, father-daughter relationship?”
“No wonder you ran away.”
Emily continued to stare at nothing. “I’m sorry you read it. What happened is no one’s business. That’s why I didn’t want to do the book. It’s why— You’re not helping me. I don’t need pity.”
“I didn’t read it on purpose.” Adele took another swallow of her drink, this time for fortification. “Emily, all of this is awful and terribly unfair. But you need to think of Johnny. You need to take him and get away from Dominic—no matter what he’s done for you, no matter what you think you owe him.”
Emily finished her drink and poured another one. “Everything I did, I couldn’t help doing. It was decided long ago, everything I’d do. You don’t understand. I was evil. I was born evil—possessed. I didn’t hate my father. I wanted to be with him—me and him.”
Adele reached for Emily. “You’re not evil. You loved your father. You felt what little girls feel—”
Adele heard the door to the apartment open. So intent was she on getting through to Emily she didn’t think about what it meant until she saw Dominic. The police hadn’t taken him in.
* * *
Mike Cosgrove watched his hands shake as he sat in his car. It was guilt. Shame. Rage. He was a fucking fool, like one of those slimy, behind-the-back street punks, stealing from people worse off than they were, ratting on a partner the first time push came to shove. He was wrong, and being wrong had no courage. He loved Anne. She loved him. Why couldn’t they stand up and say so? Take their lumps. He’d made a mess of his life. Now, Denise would follow in his footsteps. He started the car.
On the way back to Manhattan, he called the Missing Persons Squad and asked for George Ehnes. He’d worked a couple of cases with Ehnes, sad ones, when homicide compared notes with the runaway team. “My daughter’s missing … ran away,” he said after the briefest of preliminaries, the most difficult admission he’d ever made.
He gave Ehnes the particulars, said he’d drop off a photo later, and headed down the BQE toward the Williamsburg Bridge and the Lower East Side. The LES had become trendy, beyond trendy now, the shooting galleries and flophouses of years past overrun by gentrifiers, except for the building here and there where rent stabilization protected a few longtime tenants.
Danny O’Neil was probably a good kid, not some degenerate who picked her up at the Port Authority and put her on the street. Now, he was kidding himself, whistling past the graveyard. He drove up one teeming, narrow street and down the next—from Delancey to Houston, from Bowery to the projects. At one point, he parked on Ludlow Street and walked th
e narrow sidewalk of Rivington Street, sticking his head in the doors of bars, walking the aisles of small, stuffed-to-the-gills grocery stores.
He knew what he looked like to the few people he happened to ask. He’d seen people like himself too many times, the haggard expression, the begging eyes, the fading hope that a missing husband or son or wife or daughter wasn’t dead, that there was some mistake. Now, it was his turn, he who all his child’s life knew the dangers beyond the walls of home, saw each day how evil lurked everywhere. He who knew better than anyone, in the end, couldn’t protect her. When his phone rang this time, he saw that it was Anne, and answered.
“I found Danny O’Neil’s address.” She gave it to him, speaking in a hurried whisper.
“Are you okay?”
“I’ll be all right.”
That wasn’t the same. “Do you need to get out? I can find somewhere for you to go.”
“One crisis at a time, Mike. I can’t leave Kate and her brother, and he wouldn’t let them go. He’d come after us. It’d be war.”
“We can’t keep on doing—”
“Find your daughter, Mike. Gotta go.”
The address was on Rivington Street, a few blocks back the way he’d come. He walked quickly, working out what he’d do if Denise was there. And if she wasn’t, he’d have to judge real quick whether the guy was lying about knowing where she was.
He rang the bell for the apartment, on the third floor of what was once a tenement, above an art gallery. Right away, someone buzzed the door open. No intercom. When he reached the apartment, he took a deep breath and knocked.
A male voice asked who was there, naturally enough. The tone was calm, easygoing, a kid’s voice, not someone who had an argument with the world.
“Mike Cosgrove—” He was about to explain who he was to the closed door, when the lock clicked and it opened.
“You’re looking for Denise?” He was a normal enough looking kid, no shaved head, no tattoos, no rings in his nose. His eyes met Cosgrove’s; his expression was earnest.
“Is she here?”
The boy shook his head. “She called. When I first met her, I didn’t know how old she was.” The boy had trouble holding Cosgrove’s gaze. “I never went out with her … just hung out. Someone told me she was thirteen, so I stayed away after that.” His gaze steadied. “She was nice to talk to, smart. When she called, I told her she couldn’t come here. I’d get in a lot of trouble. I told her to go home. She wouldn’t, so I told her about a runaway center near Port Authority.” He looked at Cosgrove. “I went there once, years ago when everything was crazy in my life.”
Cosgrove took out his business cards and handed one to Danny O’Neil. “I’m sorry about your dad. If I can ever do anything, you call.” He turned and left.
* * *
“I promise, Denise,” Ambler said to the slim, pretty girl in front of him. She seemed older than thirteen when he first saw her. But when she began to talk, her eyes shifting away from his, her voice quiet and uncertain, she seemed a shy young girl. “Let me buy you dinner. I won’t call your dad until you tell me it’s okay.”
She’d remembered him, of course. They’d been pals when she was younger, when her dad took her to a Knick game or Yankee game with Ambler. He hadn’t seen her much in the last couple of years. She’d outgrown ball games with her dad.
As they walked up Eighth Avenue, Ambler suggested a couple of places they passed, Chinese, Indian, a French-style bistro; she held out until after a few blocks they found an all-night Greek diner. With a laugh and a little dance, she asked, “Can we go here?” holding her hands together, a playful supplicant. “Dad goes to these hoity-toity gourmet places. When I was little, he took me to the diner in the neighborhood and I loved it. I know exactly what I want.”
When she relaxed and smiled and chatted, he remembered her cheerfulness and chatter when she was a youngster at the ballpark or the Garden. The sullen, taciturn girl he’d come upon at the runaway center was hard to like. The high-spirited girl with her head buried in the giant plastic menu, cheerful in spite of herself, was cute and likeable. He for damn sure wasn’t going to turn her loose on the street again, not until she said “uncle” and he could return her to Mike.
* * *
“What are you doing?” Emily screamed at Dominic.
He’d grabbed Adele as she ran for the door. She’d done it instinctively. Now, his hand over her mouth was rough and smelled of stale cigarettes and something else repulsive. It constricted her breathing as well as muffling her screams; his arms were strong and hard, sinewy, so it hurt when she struggled, like banging against a fence post. She tried to kick at him but couldn’t stand well enough to get any power into the kick, and he’d push his hand harder into her face and mouth and squeeze her arms tighter with his other arm when she tried.
“Get me something to put in her mouth.”
“Let her go,” Emily screamed. “Leave her alone.”
“Get me something to put in her mouth, God damn it, or I’ll put her lights out—” He tightened his grip on Adele. “Stop screaming or I’ll smack you—”
“She’ll stop. Leave her alone.” Emily went up close to Adele. Her breath smelled sour, too, of vodka and cigarettes. “Shut up,” she said. “Shut up for a minute.”
Adele did. She stopped screaming and stopped struggling. Dominic didn’t let go, but he relaxed his grip. All three of them were breathing hard.
Emily moved up face-to-face with Dominic. “What’d you do that for? Why’d you grab her like that? We were talking.”
“You’re an idiot. She’s onto you. We got to do something with her.”
Emily closed her eyes and shook her head. “You aren’t going to hurt her, you fucking asshole! No sir. You can’t hurt her.”
Dominic balled up his fists at his side, twitching from head to foot, looking first at Emily and then at her like he’d batter each of them in turn. He snorted through his nostrils like a horse.
Hearing something, Adele turned and saw Johnny, small and white in his pajamas, his eyes ovals of wonder, watching from the doorway of his room. Her movement must have alerted Emily. She turned also.
“Look what you’ve done.” She half pushed, half punched Dominic in the chest and moved toward Johnny. “Go back to bed!” He looked helplessly at Adele and turned back into the darkness behind him.
“Okay. Okay.” Dominic shoved Adele onto the couch. “Stay put. If you get up, I’ll drop you before you get to the door, so help me.”
Adele measured the distance to the door. He’d caught her once, faster on his feet than she thought he’d be. In a strange way, it felt better doing what he told her, safer, even as she feared what he’d do.
He pushed Emily toward the kitchen, standing in the doorway where he could talk to Emily and watch Adele. Grimacing, gesturing, he spoke heatedly in a sort of growling whisper, so Adele couldn’t understand what he said. She didn’t hear Emily’s voice at all. She looked at the door, her escape, and waited. Strangely, she was calm, believing something would happen that would tell her what to do next. She didn’t think making a run for the door was it.
Whatever happened in the kitchen was over quickly and Dominic and Emily were back in the living room. Dominic looked like he wanted to rip her apart but he didn’t come any nearer. Without any change in his menacing expression, he nodded toward the door. Her heart jumped. What was he telling her? She didn’t dare to hope.
“Get out,” he said.
* * *
“I don’t care what your fucking rules are.” Cosgrove spoke through gritted teeth. He knew he was wrong, abusing his authority, but couldn’t stop. “This is my daughter.”
“I know. All I’m willing to tell you is she was fine and she left,” Benny said.
“You’re a fucking librarian, not a social worker. What the hell do you know?”
“I’ll get the social worker.”
Cosgrove shook his head. Benny was easier to deal with than a social worker. Wi
th him, he might have some leverage. “Look. I know what you think about why kids run away … their families, abuse and neglect and— This isn’t like that. Denise is rebellious. Her mother gets on her. They fight.”
“Kids run away for a lot of reasons.” Benny’s tone was sympathetic. “Right now, she’s not ready to go home. I can tell you she’s safe.”
“Do you know where she is?” Before he answered, Cosgrove knew he did. “Let’s say you do know and you won’t tell me. I can bring you in for harboring a runaway.”
“I don’t think so.” His answer surprised Cosgrove. He didn’t know what the law was on runaway centers; he should’ve asked Ehnes. “And if that’s what you need to do, okay. It won’t do you any good. She’s safe. I hope she’ll call and tell you that much. I asked her to. But she’s mad at you, so she might not.”
Cosgrove considered his options. There weren’t many. Standing in front of Benny, his hands balled into fists, he felt a wave of exhaustion and something else, something weird happening with his eyes. Benny began wavering, bigger, smaller, closer, farther away; the room was spinning, shimmering walls … a confused sound of voices, nothing he could understand.… Darkness.
Chapter 24
“Dad used to say baked chicken in a Greek diner was one of the best meals in the city.” Denise was chattering away about anything that entered her head. They’d finished eating and walked along 42nd Street without a destination in mind. He wanted to take her to Adele’s, but Adele wasn’t answering her phone. The first time he’d called she’d answered—or someone answered—and when he said her name, the phone was disconnected. Now when he called, he got her voice mail.
“I’m hoping you can stay with a friend of mine until you decide what to do next, but I can’t get her on the phone.” They waited to cross Sixth Avenue, Bryant Park and the library in front of them, traffic charging up Sixth Avenue.
“I’ll be okay,” Denise said. “You don’t need to find a place for me.”
“Oh? And where would you go?”
Her smile faded. “I have friends … I haven’t been able to reach them. That guy at the center said I could crash there, but it’s sort of creepy.”