Forever Haunt

by Adam Carpenter

  “Was it true, that the girl had been abused?”

  Maggie nodded. “That’s what your father said. He said he knew someone had done it. He just had no proof.”

  “A neighbor? Or someone in the family? One of her brothers, her father?”

  “Joey said he never found out,” Maggie said. “It wasn’t his case, he was a patrolman, and besides, if he opened up an investigation, Lawrence, who was more highly decorated in the NYPD than your father and on his way up in the ranks, he could have made it worse. He could have spun it around. So my Joey went silent on the matter, but it changed him, his inability to seek justice for Cassie.”

  “Not like him to shy away from a challenge.”

  “Oh, Jimmy, he did it for us. He couldn’t help the Dean family, but he could protect us.”

  “God, what a mess.”

  “Jimmy, don’t go looking into this. It’s ancient history, nothing good can come of it.”

  “I will still find out who killed my father, and why. I have no other option. The cops never solved it.”

  “Oh, Jimmy, they couldn’t.”

  Her words stopped him short. His breath caught in his throat. Just what had she meant by that? He reached over, trying to take hold of her arm, but she pulled back like it was a hot poker. She got up quickly, busied herself by putting the tea kettle back on the stove, the mugs in the sink. Pushing a stray hair out of her face next, it was obvious she was flustered, leaving Jimmy more so, frustrated.

  “Ma, what do you mean, the cops couldn’t. They couldn’t what, investigate his death?”

  “Jimmy, this isn’t the time. Please, let it rest. Let your father rest.”

  “I’m not going to. Tell me why the NYPD never solved the murder of Joseph McSwain.”

  Maggie looked cornered, wringing her hands with a dishtowel. A very un-Maggie like way of behaving. He’d not only touched a nerve, he’d unearthed a secret, perhaps one she’d buried years ago, hoping to never dig it up again. But it was now partially uncovered, waiting for the final exhumation.

  “Ma, talk to me…”

  A sudden knocking on the door brought them both out of the tense moment. Jimmy turned to the front entrance of the apartment, his mind wondering who it could be. Not like anyone could gain access to the building without being buzzed in. It had to be someone from within, a neighbor. Taking one last look at his mother and feeling like a lost boy, he dashed over to the door just as another, more urgent knock came. He flung open the door to see Carmen Ramirez, standing there, shaking. She rushed into his arms, crying.

  “He’s gone, Jimmy. My Sonny, he’s gone.”

  As Jimmy held her, his eyes darted to the kitchen, which was empty. His mother was gone, too. Lost people were everywhere.

  § § § §

  “No, I don’t want to go in there, not without my Sonny.”

  She had her arms wrapped around her still trembling body, fighting off new tears.

  Jimmy thought how possessive people could be. His mother had used only minutes ago the same phrase, calling her husband my Joey. Carmen doing the same with her son. Jimmy fleetingly thought if he would ever call Frisano “my Frank.” He doubted it. People were their own selves. But when you lost someone, an instinct won out. He himself wavered between ‘my father’ and ‘Dad’. There was a sudden need to hold them as close as you could, not quite owning them but still clinging to them, their memory.

  “Carmen, I need you to focus now and tell me what happened,” he said, the two of them in the echoing stairwell between the front door of the building and her rear apartment. “If not there, where do you wish to talk?”

  “Outside, I need some air. Also, so no one can overhear.”

  He didn’t want to ask why someone might hear them in the privacy of her home. Was Nana Lourdes still there? And if so, did she know something about Sonny’s disappearance, assuming he hadn’t run away on his own volition? Truthfully, Jimmy knew nothing yet. He needed Carmen to finally come clean about what was happening if he was going to help her. Help her boy.

  “Let me get some coats, it’s cold,” Jimmy said.

  He hated to leave her, but he had no choice. He ran upstairs and retrieved his leather jacket, donned it while looking around at the silent apartment. No sign of his mother, and he wondered if she was hiding in her room, replaying the conversation they’d just shared. A conversation that had not found a natural conclusion. There was more to discuss but they’d already waited fifteen years, what were a few more days. For now, a six-year-old boy had gone missing and Jimmy redoubled his efforts, was back down the stairs in seconds. That’s when Jimmy noticed Carmen was already wrapped up in a winter coat. Had she just returned home from work, only to find Sonny missing and come directly to Jimmy? There were too many questions inside his brain. As usual, not enough answers.

  “Come on,” he said, escorting her out of the building and onto 10th Avenue.

  A breeze was coming off the river, fierce at this quiet hour. For a usually bustling city, over on the west side life had seemingly gone indoors. Few people walked the sidewalks. Jimmy wasn’t sure where she wanted to go, doubted she had a specific destination. They just started walking, the two of them like an innocent pair of lovers out for an aimless stroll on a late-winter night. No one that passed them could have guessed at the awful nature of their conversation.

  “I think Ranuel took him,” she said. “With Lourdes’ help.”

  “You said your husband was out of the picture. Is this an Amber alert? Have you called the police?”

  She shook her head. “No please. That’s why I came to you. You are a detective?”

  “I am, and I promised I would help you. But if Sonny is in any immediate danger, we need to notify the police. There’s only so much I can do. They have much better resources.”

  She stopped walking. “If you insist on involving the police, I will say nothing more.”

  He could tell, both in her defiant stance and the conviction in her voice that she wasn’t going to negotiate. For now, Jimmy acquiesced to her request. He’d learn what he could from her and then act upon the information in whatever way appropriate. The key component here was the return of Sonny, unharmed, into his mother’s arms.

  “Carmen, I offered my help, you have it. Perhaps I have other resources as well,” he said, thinking about Help Is Here. The charity’s chairperson, Melissa Harris-J’Arnoud was not without influence in certain circles, both in high society and with a less than questionable element. She had helped many troubled families who might have some underground connections. Jimmy had a few of his own, too. “Tell me why you think Sonny’s father has taken him?”

  “Who else would it be?”

  “Only you can answer that.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Carmen, we’ve only just met but I know a lady in distress when I see one. And while you are under no obligation to reveal personal details to me, I feel that you wanted to the other night. Perhaps you were scared, or not able to trust a stranger who only offered to carry a heavy box into her new home. But then I told you I was a private investigator and I saw something change in your eyes. Maybe I saw hope. Or maybe that’s what you saw in mine. So, tell me about your husband. Ranuel Inshan? Not gonna find many of them in the phone book.”

  She gave Jimmy a puzzled look. “I don’t understand, why would we try to find him there?”

  “Just an expression, never mind. You and Ranuel, how long have you been married?”

  “Three years.”

  “Yet Sonny is six.”

  “It’s a long story,” she said.

  “I have all night, longer if it means Sonny’s safe return to you. The more I know, the better I can help.”

  She nodded. They had been walking down West 47th Street, where they came upon a small park. Beyond the closed gates, caught in the light of the moon that shined down, were a swing set, a slide, and several other children’s playthings. Carmen seemed to stare at them, maybe imagining her
little boy laughing and smiling, pumping his legs while trying to achieve new heights on the swing. Jimmy jostled the catch on the gates, watched as the door opened.

  “I thought they locked it after dusk,” she said, “Sonny and I walked past here yesterday.”

  “Sometimes they forget. Come on,” Jimmy said.

  He and Carmen entered the small park, mostly concrete with just a few patches of grass along the edges. Such was urban recreation amidst the skyscrapers of New York. He guided her over to a wooden bench but she shook her head and ventured over to the swings. She wasn’t a big woman, so she eased into one of the sagging seats, gripping the steel chains to steady her. Jimmy saw her shoulders relax, almost as if she could feel a connection with Sonny. He leaned against the angled steel post, wrapped his arms around it.

  “The swings were Sonny’s favorite,” she said.

  “Are,” Jimmy said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The swings are his favorite. Sonny is fine, Carmen, he’s out there.”

  Her hand flew to her mouth, a horrified expression on her face. “Oh, how could I…”

  “Natural response. So, we’re settled. Talk to me. Tell me what you think is important.”

  “Ranuel and I met in the city back when we were both twenty. He had moved from Guyana and I from Puerto Rico. We met at church,” she said.

  Jimmy smiled. Second time tonight he’d heard such a story. He felt a closer connection to this woman, a strong desire to ease her pain. Because he still could, with her, not so much with his mother.

  “My family was unhappy when I found out I was pregnant. Embarrassed, I suppose. Not like it hadn’t ever happened to a girl my age; heck, younger than me. I saw it all the time up in the Bronx where we lived, so I never understood why my mother reacted so strongly.” She paused, as though the memory was fresh in her mind, or maybe seared. “I was sent back to Puerto Rico to have the baby. I never even got the chance to tell Ranuel about the baby. He confessed later, after we were reunited, that he thought I just didn’t love him and ran away.”

  “How did he find out?”

  “My mother changed her mind. She’d heard Ranuel had gotten himself a good job, that he could provide for the baby better than the family could in PR. So I was sent back to New York and Ranuel and I were married two months later. He couldn’t wait for the three of us to be a family. Promised me on our wedding day that he would cherish us both. He would do anything to ensure our happiness.”

  “Big words,” I said, “which often either lead to disappointment…”

  “Or bad choices.”

  Jimmy thought of Officer Denson Luke and the lavish gifts he had presented to his family. A well-meaning man who got caught up in something untoward? Was that the same situation with Ranuel Inshan? That need to provide overriding common sense? A father’s instinct to do whatever he could for the wife and kids who depended upon him.

  “Tell me about the bad choices,” Jimmy said.

  She said nothing for a moment. Carmen had allowed herself to swing a bit, a grown woman reverting to happier times. To coax the next words from her, Jimmy took up the adjacent swing, a tight fit for his six one muscular frame, but he managed. He hoped the swing set could handle it. Carmen actually allowed a laugh.

  “A man unafraid of childish things, that’s a man I can trust,” she said.

  “So then tell me. What did Ranuel get himself involved in?”

  “He got a job as a driver for an influential man, Mr. Wu-Tin.”

  Jimmy had heard the name. In his circles, you heard things. “Chinese mob?”

  “It certainly wasn’t presented that way, at least not in the beginning,” she said. “But I began to suspect Mr. Wu-Tin wasn’t on the up and up. Always riding in a limo, wearing expensive suits, jewelry, flashing a thick roll of cash, peeling off a hundred or two and handing them to me, telling me to buy Sonny new clothes, toys, whatever he needed. Mr. Wu-Tin was never shy about showing off his wealth. Like he was proud of it, and I suppose he was. But one night a couple months ago I asked Ranuel whether Mr. Wu-Tin was proud of the way he’d gained it all.”

  “What did he say?”

  “I’m just his driver, I know nothing.”

  “My experience, chauffeurs usually know the most. They hear the phone conversations.”

  “Our relationship changed after that. I don’t know if it was out of a sense of loyalty to his employer, or because he was already…how do you say it, in deep?”

  “Right on target,” Jimmy said.

  “Ranuel grew silent, more distant. Worked longer hours. When I asked him what was going on, he grew angry with me. Told me to mind my own business. He said he was working on finding us a better home. We were still living with his mother, Lourdres—who I understand you met—and her family at her tiny apartment in the Bronx. A section called Kingsbridge. He was trying to save up money for a place further down, he said. That was his end game, a nice place in Manhattan. To him, that meant success.”

  “The apartment you just moved into, was that his idea?”

  “No, mine. How lucky I was to find it, through an associate at work.”

  “You never told me what you do.”

  “I’m an administrator over at Roosevelt Hospital, very close to this new home. The woman I work beside said it had been her mother’s, they still owned it and she would offer it up at a good rent. How could I pass it up?”

  “Had Ranuel disappeared by then?”

  “Yes, two months. That was…four months ago. Last fall. He left all his belongings.”

  “But you know he’s alive?”

  “He called me, two weeks ago. Said he was working on a plan, but gave no details.”

  Jimmy nodded, thinking, absorbing all he’d heard. To him, it sounded like Ranuel Inshan had tried to take advantage of his situation. Had he tried to join the organization beyond just being a driver, or worse, attempted a blackmail scheme in which Mr. Wu-Tin had no choice, for a time, but to play along. Had his life been threatened? That of his family? Why had Ranuel ran, and why not whisk Sonny and Carmen along with him? All Jimmy knew was their lives were a mess, and the end result was that Sonny was missing.

  “Have you called Ranuel?”

  She shook her head. “I no longer have a number for him. He promised he would call, every week. From a different phone each time, a burner he called them. Please, Jimmy, I’m heartbroken over my boy, even if it’s Ranuel who has taken him.”

  “What do you mean. You think maybe Mr. Wu-Tin kidnapped him?”

  She paused before finally admitting her fear. “That’s what I believe.”

  Jimmy got up from the swing, watched as it still took flight, a pendulum of lost childhood, knowing it would come to a stop eventually. Jimmy’s mind reeled with possibilities. He wasn’t totally familiar with this Mr. Wu-Tin character, just whispers. But anything involving the Chinese mob was not good news. If they had taken the boy, they would use him as leverage until they achieved what they wanted. Was all they wanted for Ranuel to return to the fold? What did he know? And would he pay for it with his life, or worse, that of his son?

  “Come on, let’s get you home.”

  “Oh, Jimmy, I don’t think I could stay there, not alone.”

  “Come on, I’ll take the sofa, assuming the furniture was delivered.”

  “You are a good man, Jimmy McSwain.”

  “Reserve that endorsements for after I bring your son home.”

  As they exited the park and headed back down 47th Street and the building they both called home, she stopped him. Her hand on his arm.

  “Remember, Jimmy, no police.”

  He didn’t say anything, he couldn’t. To make a promise to her would mean he might have to break it. He also didn’t tell her that he was on-again, off-again dating an NYPD precinct captain. He offered up his best smile, comforting, reassuring, yet one filled with determination. “Let’s get you some rest. Things will look brighter in the morning.”

  At
the front step, Carmen leaned in and hugged him. “Thank you, Jimmy.”

  “I’m glad you came to me.”

  She touched his scruffy cheek, didn’t chide him for it like his mother. “You would make a very good father one day.”

  He said nothing. Sometimes words deferred to action. He got her inside, safe.

  That didn’t stop him from looking around the quiet, darkened street, wondering who might be lurking in the shadows.

  Chapter Five

  There went his quiet February.

  Jimmy awoke on a lumpy sofa that barely fit his frame to find himself in strange territory. He was inside the apartment of Carmen Ramirez, and he soon discovered he was alone. He checked first his phone, saw that it was seven thirty in the morning, did a double check of the one-bedroom to find no sign of another person, just a quickly scribbled note on the small table near a remote kitchen. She’d gone off to work, she explained, she had no choice despite what was going on. To say there was an issue with Sonny might lead to too many questions. If Jimmy wasn’t so concerned about her missing son, he might have laughed about waking up in the apartment of a woman who didn’t wait to have breakfast with him. Not that his most recent man wanted to either.

  He thought of Frisano and considered that he should get in touch with him.

  Again, he thought a call or text seemed like the wrong approach. He needed to see him in person, be a man and apologize.

  And maybe glean some information from him.

  Just a week ago, Jimmy lacked an active case, which is why he’d gone back to the one that haunted him, the killing of Officer Denson Luke awakening a fresh desire in him to link a crime involving a cop to his own father’s murder, to uncover what he was convinced was a long hidden conspiracy. And now here he was with a real case, involving a missing child, a frightened mother, and at the heart of it, a father who’d made some bad decisions. By working for a criminal who, even in the best of circles, was considered dangerous. Jimmy thought Frisano might also be able to shed some light on this mysterious Mr. Wu-Tin. Probably tell him to avoid him at all costs.