Child Not Found

by Ray Daniel

  Lee swung the door open. The familiar smell of burnt coffee wafted out, stale and greasy.

  “Nobody cleaned the coffeemaker?” I asked.

  “Nobody touched anything. At least not since we finished with the crime scene.”

  “Sal’s going to come home to this.”

  “God willing, Sal will stay in prison.”

  “Nice thing to say about my cousin,” I said, stepping into the apartment.

  Lee followed. “You’ve never admitted it to yourself, have you?”

  I skirted the fully extended dining room table that filled the small living room. Crunched through some discarded wrapping paper and headed for Maria’s room. “Admitted what?”

  “That your cousin is a criminal. A murderer.”

  I ignored the dig, pushed open Maria’s door. Looked around.

  “No comment?” Lee said.

  I said, “There’s something different in this room.”

  Lee stood next to me, peering into the room. “I’ve got pictures.” Lee produced an iPhone and pulled up a panoramic view of Maria’s room from the day after Christmas. We stood, heads together, comparing the photograph to a new reality.

  “The iPad was on the dresser,” I said.

  “It’s gone now.”

  “And that drawer was closed.”

  The dresser’s top drawer kicked out a bit where an errant piece of underwear had lodged. I stepped into the room.

  Lee grabbed my arm. “Don’t touch anything,” he said. “If someone was in here, we may be able to get new prints.”

  Lee stood next to me as I pulled on my winter gloves, padded to the dresser, gripped the bottom of the drawer, and slid it out. The underwear fell back into an empty drawer.

  “Cleaned out,” I said. “Someone took all her underwear.”

  Lee said, “And her iPad.”

  So much for Twitter.

  I reached for another drawer, but Lee shook his head. “There’s no way to open it without destroying prints.”

  “Sure there is.”

  I lay on my back, reached my hand under the dresser, and hooked my fingers around the underside of the bottom drawer. Jiggled at it until the drawer was a couple of inches open, then slid it open the rest of the way from the front. The bottom drawer was empty.

  “What was in here?” Lee asked.

  I thought back to the pandemonium of getting ready for the sledding trip. “Sweaters. They took her sweaters?”

  The closet door hung open, Lee swung it open the rest of the way. “How many winter coats did she have?”

  “She got one for Christmas, so at least two,” I said.

  “I don’t see any here.”

  We backed out of the corrupted room, moved through the apartment. The kitchen was as Sophia had left it. A Bialetti full of rancid coffee sat in the sink. The bedroom was the same, except that crime scene markings had replaced Sophia’s body. The living room had been tromped through to reach the other rooms. No telling what had happened in there.

  Lee said, “They took only Maria’s things.”

  “Why would a kidnapper come back for clothes and her iPad?” I asked.

  “Let’s go.” Lee headed for the door. “Before we contaminate things further.”

  I followed Lee out into the hall. As he locked the door, I picked at the implications of the missing clothes. Remembered George Carlin talking about stuff, about how you had all this stuff, but when you went away for a vacation you took along a subset of your stuff, and then an even smaller subset for a weekend.

  Lee headed down the stairs.

  I followed. “Somebody came for her stuff.”

  “Her stuff?” Lee asked.

  “Yeah. Like for a vacation. Except they took it all.”

  “Why would kidnappers take all her clothes?”

  My Droid chirped its text message noise. I looked at the screen: Angie. RU there?

  “Do you mind not texting when I am talking to you?” Lee said.

  I said, “Mmmhmm” while texting. Yes. Got a weird clue about Maria.

  LOL

  LOL?

  Lee said, “I don’t have time for this.”

  My phone rang. It was Angie.

  “Can I see you?” she asked.

  “I’m glad you called. I’m at Sal’s house. I’ve got a question for you.”

  “Could you meet me at the bocce courts in ten minutes?”

  “Sure.”

  I looked up. Lee had left me standing in the hallway. I headed out Sal’s front door, pulled my jacket closed and my hat down against the cold. Looked up and down Salutation Street. Lee was long gone. Must have driven off in a self-righteous, anti-texting snit.

  I was alone in the North End.

  Forty

  Wind whipped off the ocean and charged across the baseball diamonds and swimming pools that the North End had gotten as compensation for a polluted beach. The bocce courts were at the other end of the park. They’d be empty now, filled with snow. The Bruins foghorn on my phone echoed across the frozen ball fields.

  I pulled off a glove so that the touch screen would recognize me as human, and swiped at the phone.

  It was Jael. “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “I’m going to—”

  “This computer says you are in the North End.”

  “I am in the North End.”

  “It says you are walking down Commercial Street.”

  “I am walking down Commercial Street.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You are walking alone there after someone tried to kill you?”

  “Well, not me, really. They wanted Hugh.”

  “I told you not go back to the North End without me.”

  “Lieutenant Lee drove me.”

  “He is not with you now?”

  “No. He dumped me.”

  “Stay where you are. I will meet you.”

  “But it’s freezing here.”

  She hung up.

  I shoved my phone back into my pocket and pulled on my glove. My aching hand chilled the interior of the glove. I’d said I’d wait here, but “here” included the park, and the park included the bocce courts. I could still meet Angie.

  A car pulled up next to me and two guys got out. They wore Bruins jackets, jeans, and sneakers. They started toward me, eyeing me the way a dog eyes a rat. I wanted none of that. I climbed over a snowbank and ran.

  One of them yelled, “Hey!” Not sure why that was supposed to make me stop.

  Snow and parked cars blocked my way to the far sidewalk, so I ran down Commercial the wrong way, counting on drivers to do the right thing. A big Lincoln pulled out of a side street. The driver saw me and swerved—toward me. He clipped me with his bumper, knocking me up onto his hood. I hit my head on his windshield and rolled off to the side. The two guys who had been chasing me grabbed me up off the street and shoved me into the back seat of the Lincoln.

  Once they had me inside, one of them shoved a gun in my neck. “Give me your fucking phone.”

  “Wha—?” I said.

  He hit me with the gun. Lights flashed across my vision. “Your fucking cell phone. Give it to me.”

  I reached into my coat and pulled out the phone. The guy opened it, pulled out the battery, shoved it in his pocket. Then another smash across the back of the head, and blackness.

  Forty-One

  Cold slapped me awake as a guy in a Bruins jacket dragged me out of the car by the ankle, my coat scraping across concrete.

  I shook my ankle loose. “Get off me.” I flipped over onto my stomach, rose to hands and knees, and spewed my chowder across the frozen ground. The vomit spread in a steaming white puddle.

  “That’s fucking gross,” one of the guys
said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said another. “Get him up.”

  They pulled me to my feet. I was standing on a concrete plain. Flatbed shipping containers rested in stacks around us, forming streets and alleys. The sun had just given up on another winter’s day. Purple clouds smeared across the sky. Two guys held my arms. Another stood in front of us with a gun.

  “Sal’s going to be pissed,” I said.

  The guy with the gun wore a torn knit Red Sox beanie. He pulled it off, tossed it aside, and smiled at me with a black-gapped grin. He stepped close and pulled off my new beanie. The cold was even worse than before. It had a gnawing marine quality. The guy pulled my hat onto his head.

  “This is a good fucking hat,” he said.

  “I’m serious about Sal,” I said, pushing on my only leverage.

  “Fuck Sal,” the guy said. “I worked for that guy for five years; he couldn’t tell you my fucking name. He called me Gappy. He’d tell Pistol, ‘Get Gappy to do it.’ and Pistol would tell me, ‘You heard him.’ Fucking guys. I’m the boss now.”

  “So what’s your real name?” I asked.

  “Vince,” he said.

  “Vince Ferrari?”

  “Yeah. How did you know?”

  “You were in the paper. You’re famous.”

  Vince smiled his gap grin at the two guys holding my arms. “You hear that? I’m famous.”

  “You don’t have to kill me, Vince,” I said.

  “Well, I sure as fuck do now, right? Kidnapped you and all that shit. Like the paper said, there’s a new boss in town.”

  “Who?” I asked. “Hugh Graxton?”

  Vince slapped my face. The two guys holding my arms snickered.

  “Fucking Graxton? You think I’d work for that faggot? He’s next. I’m the new boss.”

  My stomach twisted. I pictured a bullet cracking through my skull. A gun held to my forehead. Then nothing. Bad time to be agnostic. I pulled at my arms and twisted, but the two goons held firmly.

  “Don’t kill me, Vince,” I begged. “I’ve got nothing to do with any of this. I’m just Sal’s cousin. That’s all.”

  Vince punched me in the nose. Warm blood spurted down my face, steaming.

  “Shut the fuck up,” he said, then to the others, “let’s get this over with.”

  Vince led the way as the guys dragged me down a street of shipping containers. I kicked and scrambled. It made no difference. We turned down a shipping-container alley and reached the end of it. There was a blue container secured with a padlock. Vince produced a key and worked the lock. The container would mute gunshots and screams.

  “Don’t do this, Vince,” I said.

  Vince pulled the chain off the door and opened it. Beyond the maw of a door, the container was pitch black. The two guys dragged me inside. Vince followed. He pulled the door shut behind him, blocking out the last rays of dying, purple sunlight.

  “Get the light, Vince,” said one of the guys holding me.

  “Hold your fucking horses,” said Vince. “I got it.”

  A bare incandescent bulb glared yellow. Sal stood beneath the bulb, gun in hand.

  He shot Vince through the leg. Vince’s guys let go of my arms. I dropped to the floor and scrabbled away. Gunshots boomed behind me. The blasts echoed in the shipping container, knocking me to the floor.

  I got to the wall, turned. One guy lay on the ground and Sal was shooting the other one: two shots in the chest. Sal turned to Vince, kicked Vince’s gun away, and pointed his own gun at Vince’s nose. Vince lay on the floor, pressing his hand against a wound in his thigh.

  “Fucking Vince,” said Sal. Apparently he did know the guy’s name. “What happened to Pistol?”

  Vince pointed at me. “That guy killed him.”

  Sal looked at me. Looked back at Vince. “Yeah, right.”

  “Honest to God, Sal. It wasn’t my fault.”

  “And now Tucker’s here. That’s not your fault?”

  Vince whimpered.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m sorry. You were gone, Sal, I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry? You’re sorry for what?”

  “For taking Tucker here.”

  “What, you’re sorry for showing him the place? Is that why you brought him here, to fucking show him around?”

  Vince averted his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  Sal said, “You know why I’m going to let you live, Vince?”

  “No,” Vince said.

  Sal shot him in the face. “Neither do I.” Sal pulled me to my feet, his giant hand engulfing mine. “C’mon. Let’s go.”

  “Wait a sec.” I walked over to Vince, checked out my beanie. It had brain flecks on it. Vince could keep it. Took my phone from his pocket. Reassembled it. “Now we can go.”

  Sal turned out the light. We stepped out into the dark night. He locked the door behind us. Sodium lights buzzed, flooding us with orange light, turning our skin gray.

  “Don’t we have to clean up or something?” I asked.

  “Why do you ask shit like that?” Sal said. “You want to get subpoenaed?”

  “I just want to help.”

  “It’s a shipping crate. It’s gonna get shipped somewhere.”

  “That’s genius.”

  “Shut up.”

  The Tobin Bridge arched above us. A black lump lay in the orange sodium lights. Sal made for it. Stood over it. “What’s that?” he pointed.

  “That’s Vince’s Red Sox hat,” I said. “He got rid of it when he took mine.”

  Sal picked up the cap, put it in his pocket. “Guy wants to take over from me and can’t do a simple job.”

  “You mean killing me is a simple job?”

  Sal said nothing. We walked on.

  “How did you get out of jail?” I asked.

  “Bail.”

  “You agreed to help them with David Anderson, huh?”

  Sal grimaced. “Why can’t you just leave shit alone? Is it so fucking hard?”

  We continued in silence along the black Mystic River.

  “Thank you for saving me.”

  “You’re my cousin,” Sal said. His mouth twisted. He stifled something. “You’re family.”

  I touched his shoulder. “Not your only family. You’ve got sisters, and we’ll find Maria.”

  “Maria’s dead,” said Sal.

  “No, she’s not,” I said.

  “Yeah? How do you know?”

  “She texted me,” I said.

  “What? Let me see the text.”

  I showed it to him.

  Sal pointed at the text. “That’s Angie.”

  “You ever text with Angie?”

  “Text? I don’t fucking text. I want to call you, I call you.”

  “Angie ever say LOL?”

  “What the fuck is LOL?”

  “Exactly. People your age don’t text.”

  “My age? What’s that supposed to mean? Angie hears you talking like that, she’ll shoot you herself.”

  “What I mean is that Angie didn’t text me. Maria texted me with Angie’s phone, then Angie took it away from her and called me.”

  “Angie rescued Maria?” said Sal. “Then they’re both as good as dead.”

  “Not if we get to them first,” I said. We had reached Sal’s Buick Regal. “You drive.”

  Forty-Two

  Sal spun his wheels, turned hard, and rocketed down a long straight road with the Tobin rising on one side and the low buildings of the Charlestown Navy Yard sitting on the other.

  I gripped the panic handle over the passenger door and asked, “How did you find me?”

  “When I got out, I called some guys, loyal guys. They heard that Vince was going to take you out. Prove he was in charge.”
<
br />   “Yeah, but how did you know he’d go there?”

  “Because he’s got no fucking imagination. He just did what he was taught. Except I never taught him to leave a fucking DNA beanie behind.”

  Taught? The truth hit. I wasn’t the first guy dragged into a crate. I was the first one to walk out. I rolled the revelation around in my head. Killing guys in a disposable murder scene. It was a business process, a competitive advantage, a trade secret. It was freaking patentable! It required planning, coordination, training, bribes, and guys to pick up the crate and put it on some ship. There had to be guys across the world who got the dirty crates and—what, dumped them? Cleaned them? The system required foresight and genius. Evil genius.

  I had been keeping Sal in a little compartment. He was Sophia’s husband, Maria’s father, my first cousin, and maybe a guy who did a little crime. That was as far as I had let myself go. Now I saw that he was a guy who owned, and probably invented, a murder processing facility. I glanced at Sal as he drove, pulling up to the end of the street, turning hard, and firing us across the Charlestown Bridge.

  Sal said, “So you’re finally quiet.”

  “I’m thinking,” I said.

  “You’re new to this stuff, baby cousin. So take my advice.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t think too much.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know how to handle yourself. I don’t know what to do. Ever since I got into this, everyone wants to either kill me or arrest me.”

  “Welcome to my world,” said Sal. We drove in silence down slushy gray streets, through scattershot intersections, and over the Charlestown Bridge into the North End.

  Sal said, “I’m glad you got into this.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re the only friend I got.”

  I had nothing to say. Sal navigated the narrow roads in the North End, turning down smaller and smaller streets until he turned at a sign that said Cleveland Pl and stopped in what was essentially a canyon cut between brick buildings.

  “We’re here,” Sal said.

  “Where?”

  “Angie’s condo.”

  Sal reached beneath my seat and pulled out a small gun. Handed it to me. “Be fucking careful with this.”