Child Not Found

by Ray Daniel

  I took the gun. “Okay.”

  Sal pointed at my gun hand. “Take your fucking finger off the trigger, unless you want to shoot someone.”

  My finger had slipped beneath the trigger guard. I pulled it out, rested it alongside the gun. My hand shook and I watched it dance. Looked at Sal. “Maybe I shouldn’t have a gun.”

  Sal gripped my shoulder. “Stay behind me.” He climbed out of the car.

  Sal walked to a door, jingled through his key chain, produced a key, and unlocked the door.

  “You’ve got a key to Angie’s place?” I asked.

  He put his finger to his lips, opened the door to the hallway, and whispered, “She’s on the second floor.”

  The staircase corkscrewed up to the second floor, the steps flaring wide against the wall and narrow against the railing. We climbed, the old boards creaking with each step. This wasn’t going to be a surprise. Angie’s closed door slid into view.

  Sal knelt in front of the door, put his ear to it, stood, and put his hand on the knob.

  “You’re not going to knock?” I whispered.

  Sal shook his head. He pushed at me, getting me to move back down the stairs, around the corner. If there were bullets, he’d be taking them. I gripped the railing and waited. My finger had found its way under the trigger guard again. I slid it out, resting it on the side of the gun. I peeked around the corner as Sal tried the knob. It turned, and the door swung open to a dark apartment.

  We waited, listened. Not a sound. Cooking smells from the apartment downstairs wafted up. Tomato gravy. I remembered my mother and her gravy, my mind drifting from this place to a different time. A dining room table. My father serving spaghetti. My mother fussing over something imperfect.

  Sal took a step into the apartment. Still no sound, no light. I moved to the top of the stairs. Light from the hallway spilled into the apartment. Sal motioned for me to enter and close the door. Finger back to his lips, and a downward patting motion. Stay here. We weren’t surprising anyone in this place. The door and the hallway light took care of that. A living room opened to one side of the door; a hallway with two bedrooms off it led to the kitchen.

  Sal worked his way down that hallway, peeking into each bedroom as he slipped past. He reached the kitchen, stepped past it into another room. Turned on the kitchen light.

  I stepped inside, locked the door behind me, and joined Sal in an oak-paneled kitchen with an office and bathroom off it. Apartment envy wormed its way into my thoughts. I pushed it aside and focused.

  “Why was the door unlocked?” I asked.

  “Good question,” said Sal. “Check the office and bathroom. I’ll check the rest.”

  I glanced through the small bathroom, peeked into the shower. No place to hide. Checked out the sink. Something was missing. Took an inventory: bar of soap, hand cream, a tube of some ointment best left alone.

  No toothbrushes. No toothpaste.

  The office would take longer. I surveyed the layout.

  Sal called, “Tucker, come look at this.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Come look.”

  I walked back down the hall and entered a girly bedroom with light pink wallpaper and a floral bedspread. Sal had opened a drawer in the dresser. It was full of little clothes.

  “These are Maria’s,” Sal said.

  “So she is with Angie.”

  “Yeah, but where are they?”

  We stood, thinking. Not talking. If we had been talking, we wouldn’t have heard it.

  A footstep squeaked on the hallway stairs.

  Sal slammed his hand across the light switch. “Kill the kitchen light!” he hissed. “Stay there!”

  I hustled into the kitchen. Killed the light and crouched by the refrigerator, peering around the corner at the front door. Sal crouched in the hallway in front of me, aimed his gun at the door, waited.

  The door lock rattled, banged as something slammed into it, then spun, moving the dead bolt. Then nothing. I slid forward down the hall, next to Sal.

  “What’s going on?” I whispered.

  “Shh. The fucker is waiting for us to make a sound.”

  Silence stretched: a minute, two minutes. Sal lowered his gun.

  “Damn thing is heavy,” he whispered.

  Three minutes. Four minutes. Five minutes.

  “Did he leave?” I whispered.

  Sal shook his head. “He’s—”

  The door kicked open. An explosion and a ball of light knocked me on my ass. I couldn’t see. My ears rang. I scrambled around on the floor. Got to my knees. Looked up. A black gun bore into my face. Gloved hands held the gun steady, unmoving. I followed the line of arm. Black sleeves. Black jacket. Black hair. Beautiful eyes.

  Jael Navas had the drop on us.

  Forty-Three

  Fading tinnitus rang through my ears, but I could still hear Sal say, “What the fuck, Jael?”

  We stood. Jael’s gun slid from view. She turned on the light and locked the door. Said to me, “I heard you were taken in the street.”

  “I was taken in the street,” I said.

  Jael said to Sal, “I thought you were in jail.”

  “I was in jail,” Sal said.

  “So our situation has improved.” Jael, master of the understatement.

  I said, “The guys who took me were going to kill me. They had me”—Sal shot me a look—“in Charlestown. Sal saved me.”

  “How did you find Tucker?” Jael asked. “His GPS was offline.”

  “I knew where to look,” Sal said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Tucker’s GPS came back online. I thought he was being held.”

  “By Angie?” asked Sal.

  “Angie?”

  “This is Angie’s house.”

  “The records say this apartment is yours.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s Angie’s.”

  “Tucker was taken just around the corner.”

  “This is the North End,” Sal said. “Everything is just around the corner.”

  “Who told you about me being taken?” I asked.

  “A friend.”

  “Who?”

  “It is not important.”

  “How is that not important?”

  Sal said, “Can’t you see she doesn’t want to tell you?”

  “Yeah, I can see that,” I said. “I just want to know why.”

  “Well, you do have a big mouth,” Sal said.

  You never expect the last straw to actually break the camel’s back. It’s a friggin’ camel, for God’s sake. It should be able to handle one more straw. Just like I should have been able to handle one more jibe, some cousin-to-cousin banter. A little joke with maybe a tiny kernel of truth. But this camel had been kicked, punched, knocked unconscious, shot at, flash-banged, and shoved face first against his own mortality. I had nothing left.

  “Who do you think you are?” I asked Sal.

  “What?” Sal said.

  “Who do you think you are to talk to me like that? Like I’m a stooge. An idiot.” I advanced on Sal. He took a step back.

  “You hit me again, Tucker, and I swear—”

  “You swear? What do you swear, Sal? You swear you’re going to beat me up? Then who’s going to look for Maria? You? Mr. She’s Better Off Without Me? Mr.—”

  “Tucker,” Jael said. “This is not helping.”

  “What? What? You’re defending him? You won’t even tell me who sent you, and you’re going to defend him and his fucking secrets? His lies?”

  “Hey, I never lied to you,” said Sal.

  “No. Just don’t tell me what’s going on. Don’t tell me what I need to know to—”

  “To what?”

  “To save your daughter, you shithead. To save your daughter from wh
atever secret bullshit deal you’re pulling.”

  “I’m not pulling any deal.”

  “Oh, and the contract on Anderson? What’s that?”

  “You shut your mouth about that.”

  “Why? You think it’s a big secret? The FBI told me about it. Frank Cantrell knows, Sal. The FBI already knows.”

  “I said shut up! You want to make Jael an accomplice?”

  Jael said, “It makes no difference.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Because none of us is innocent.”

  “That thing on Hanover Street? That was self-defense.”

  Sal asked, “What exactly happened on Hanover Street?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Sal, “I would like to know, and you’re gonna tell me.”

  “Or else what?”

  Sal cocked his fist. “Or else I swear to God—”

  “Enough!” said Jael. It was the first time I’d ever heard her raise her voice. “Enough of this foolishness.” Jael pointed at me. “You are lucky to be alive after your recklessness.” She pointed at Sal. “You are lucky to have someone who risks his life for your daughter.” She pointed between us. “Apologize.”

  Sal and I looked at our shoes. I chanced a peek at Sal as he was doing the same. Our eyes met. We stuck out our hands to shake. Sal grabbed my hand, pulled me in close for a bear hug.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I know,” Sal said. “It’s okay.”

  I called it a win.

  “C’mon, let’s have some coffee,” Sal said. “It’s freezing in here.” He turned and headed for the kitchen.

  Jael and I followed. In the kitchen Sal bustled around like a short order cook. He took a Bialetti coffeemaker off the stove, unscrewed it, and filled the lower reservoir with water. Reached up into a cabinet, pulled down a can of coffee, popped the plastic cover off, scooped out some black coffee.

  “You look like you know your way around this kitchen,” I said.

  “I should,” said Sal. “I own it.”

  “I thought you said Angie lives here.”

  “She does live here.”

  “So how do you know the kitchen so well?”

  “Figure it out, college boy.”

  Ah. Well. Time for a subject change. “What happened with you and Anderson?” I asked.

  Sal screwed the Bialetti together, put it on the smallest gas burner, and turned up the fire.

  “I needed a place to put cash,” Sal said.

  “You mean launder?”

  “No. The cash was clean. I needed an investment.”

  “What happened?”

  “He took a half mil from me, then—”

  The front door rattled. A key scraped in the lock, turned. The door creaked open.

  “Hello?” I called out.

  “Shhh,” said Jael. But she was too late. The door slammed shut.

  The three of us bolted down the hallway. Pulled the door open in time to hear the downstairs door close. I ran down the stairs.

  I scrambled out through the front door, looked down the alley, saw nothing, looked down the other way.

  Saw a little girl in an orange pom-pom hat turning the corner.

  Forty-Four

  Jael and Sal clambered through the door and into the street next to me. They had winter coats. The cold blew through my sweater.

  I pointed. “It’s Maria.”

  We ran down the alley, reached the end, and looked down the street. No pom-pom. She must have been running.

  Like the maze from the old Adventure game, the North End was a twisty maze of passages all alike. One set of abutted brick buildings led you to another. Alleys, courts, parks provided plenty of hiding to a person with home field advantage. Fortunately, we had Sal.

  I reached the end of the street. I looked both ways, didn’t see a little girl or an orange pom-pom. Sal caught up to me, turned without hesitation. I followed with Jael.

  “Why are we going this way?” I asked.

  “If it’s Maria, she’ll be heading home. This way is home.”

  We slipped and skidded our way to Salem Street. Stopped for a look. The Old North Church towered nearby. A moving van blocked the roadway. An old man walked a thin and shivering dog down the sidewalk. A mother hustled a two-year-old past us. A car glided past, headlights battling the impending twilight. The clock on the building across the street told us that it was four. The sun would set in twenty minutes.

  No orange pom-pom, no little girl.

  “Are you sure you saw her?” Sal asked.

  I said, “Of course I’m sure. It was her.”

  Jael asked Sal, “Which way is your house?”

  Sal pointed through the school building, the angle of his arm indicating the middle distance. “It’s over that way.”

  “How could she get there?”

  “I don’t know, a hundred different ways.”

  “Can’t be a hundred,” I said.

  “Okay, math genius. It’s a lot.”

  Jael said, “We must take different routes. Tucker, you follow this street to the end, Sal you go through the Old North Church courtyard. I will take that road.”

  “What if she went that way?” I pointed at another.

  “There are only three of us. We must gamble.”

  We bolted down the street. Jael peeled off down her street, Sal ran into the Old North Church’s courtyard, and I kept on straight. The moving van blocked my view and a good chunk of the street. A car came up behind me, forcing me off the road and behind the van. I climbed a snowbank, ducked under a ramp bridging the distance from the van to a stairwell, and popped up. Saw the orange pom-pom hat turn the corner.

  “Maria!” I called, but the pom-pom had vanished.

  Adrenaline and joy sloshed together in my gut. This was so close to being over. I ran down the street, reached the end of Salem, turned the corner, and ran into a lady carrying shopping bags. Groceries fell to the ground.

  “Watch where you’re going, you animal!” she said.

  “Sorry. Sorry.” I craned my neck around her.

  “You going to help me with this?”

  “I gotta go.”

  “Grab that can.”

  A can of tomatoes had rolled into the gutter. I reached for it, had it slip out of my fingers, grabbed at it again. I still didn’t have a coat, and the cold was starting to get to me. Grabbed the freezing metal can, shoved it at the lady, looked down the street.

  No pom-pom.

  The narrow street split. One road curved out of sight. The other, called Henchmen, split away. I ran to the intersection, my teeth starting to chatter.

  Henchmen Street? Seriously?

  I looked down Henchmen. No Maria. Either she hadn’t taken it or I’d spent too much time with Grocery Lady. I continued around the bend. The buildings formed steep walls around more twisty side streets, all alike.

  I stopped at an intersection, wrapped my arms around myself, and looked down another street. Looked the other way into a park. If I were Maria, would I have taken that street? No. It led back toward where I had just come from, and I didn’t see Maria pulling any sort of double-back trick. She was running somewhere. Hopefully to her house; we’d all meet there. I decided to go through the park.

  It’s almost impossible to shovel snow on cobblestones, and nobody had really given it a try. I crunched down a path beaten down by shortcut-takers before me. Didn’t see any little footprints in the path. A concrete seal statue waited for the spring, when kids would start climbing him again. The park narrowed ahead into an alley between two buildings. I peered down the alley onto Commercial Street. Saw the orange pom-pom hat flash past. Finally.

  I ran down the alley into Commercial, turned to chase the littl
e girl under that hat.

  Nature in Boston is, for the most part, benign. Nobody’s ever seen a rattlesnake, though they’re said to live in Massachusetts; the black bears content themselves with eating from bird feeders in the Berkshires; and the great white sharks that glide off our coast have never bitten anyone north of the Cape. Still, one killer lurks in our city.

  I don’t remember hitting the patch of black ice. Nobody ever does. One second you’re going about your business, the next you’re lying on the ground, perhaps with a concussion, definitely with some part of your body worse for having slammed into concrete coated by a transparent layer of invisible death.

  I sat up from where I had fallen. An old guy came out of a nearby entry carrying a bucket of rock salt.

  “Oh, Jesus, are you okay?” he asked.

  Was I okay? I felt the back of my head. No bump, no blood. Felt my hip, no break. My shoulder? Fine. My elbow. Holy crap! Yup. My elbow had smashed into the concrete. Probably saved my head.

  “A little help?” I said.

  The guy scattered rock salt around me. I got my feet under me, and the guy gave me a pull to my feet.

  “You sure you’re okay?” he asked.

  I flexed my arm. No grinding. No unbearable pain. A bruise.

  “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  “Where’s your coat?”

  “I was only supposed to be out for a minute.”

  “Yeah, I know how that goes. Never go out without my coat anymore. When I was young, yeah, then it was something—”

  “Thanks. I gotta get inside.” I needed to find Maria. I left the guy standing on the sidewalk, throwing more rock salt, and headed down Commercial toward Sal’s house. Walked past Holden Court where I had run along the roof so long ago. Mr. Follicle Disorder was walking up to his door. He wore a Follica knit hat instead of a Follica t-shirt.

  “Hey,” I said. “Have you seen a little girl in an orange pom-pom hat?”

  “Aren’t you that guy who wanted to get on my roof?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “With the fat, bald FBI agent?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I ought to sue you and him.”

  “Why?”

  “He pushed—”

  “So you haven’t seen her?”