Child Not Found

by Ray Daniel

  “Oh, pshaw. I’ll bet you say that to all the nerds.”

  “You want to get dinner tonight?”

  “Like a second date? Sure.”

  Caroline shifted on the sofa, leaned into me, her leg and flank pressed against mine. She took my arm, wrapped it around herself, settled in.

  “So tell me why you’re sad,” she said.

  This was good. It was the first good I’d felt in a long time. The first time I’d felt that I could trust someone. So I took the plunge and told Caroline everything. Almost everything. Told her about Hanover Street, about Cantrell. About chasing Maria in the North End, about falling through the ice and Graxton’s email. I didn’t tell her about the shipping crate. That was between Sal and me. He could tell her.

  When I was finished, Caroline said, “Damn!”

  “Damn indeed.”

  “Have you told anyone about all this?”

  “You’re the first one.”

  “You’d better keep me the only one. If you start talking, it will just keep you from your top priority.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Finding Maria.”

  “Right. But I have no idea what to do next. It’s all dead ends.”

  “Not all dead ends,” said Caroline.

  “No?”

  “You can still talk to Hugh Graxton.”

  “Yeah, but he’s hiding or something. I don’t know where to find him.”

  “I know where he likes to hide,” Caroline said.

  “Aren’t you talking outside attorney-client privilege?”

  “I don’t think this counts as privileged information.”

  “So where is he?”

  Caroline smiled a little. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Try me.”

  So she told me, and she was right: I didn’t believe it.

  Fifty-Three

  Poor Chelsea, Massachusetts, is kind of like Boston’s appendix: a small protuberance jutting from the city that everyone ignores until it flares up and requires intervention. The last intervention was in 1991, when the state disbanded Chelsea’s corrupt government and installed a new one. The city consists almost entirely of triple-decker houses, three-family structures with apartments stacked like Lego blocks.

  My Zipcar rolled down Marlboro Street as I looked for Graxton’s hiding place. The address pointed me to a brown triple-decker with open porches running up its face. Fresh paint shone in the pale winter sun, a contrast to the peeling faces of the houses next door. I climbed the steps and found the name next to a painted-over doorbell: Graxton. Pressed the button. A buzzer sounded on the first floor. An inner apartment door opened, then the door in front of me.

  An old woman looked up at me. Her translucent skin stretched over a pinched face. “Yes?”

  “I’m here to see Hugh,” I said.

  “Well, come on in and shut the door. All the heat’s getting out.”

  She turned and led me into the apartment. “Hugh!” she called, then plunked herself down in a recliner, reclined, and picked up a remote. Wheel of Fortune resumed.

  I stood by the front door. A long hallway ran down the length of the house, bedroom doors breaking the wall on one side. I could see a refrigerator in the kitchen at the end of the hallway.

  Hugh Graxton appeared around the refrigerator, yelling, “What is it, Ma?” He saw me and ducked back behind the fridge. I looked at Hugh’s mom, pointed down the hall. May I? She motioned me along with a wave of her remote. I walked down the hallway, noting the fresh paint and clean bedrooms. Reached the kitchen, peeked around the refrigerator to find a closed door.

  Knocked on the door. “Hugh?”

  Nothing.

  Knocked again. “C’mon Hugh, I know you’re in there.”

  Nothing.

  “If you don’t open this door, I’m going to tell your mom.”

  “Go away!”

  “I swear I’ll do it, I’ll interrupt her show.”

  “She’s got a DVR.”

  “All right, you asked for it.” I called out, “Mrs. Grax—”

  Hugh pulled the door open. “You’re a bastard.”

  “Hugh!” Hugh’s mom called from the easy chair. “Do I have to come down there?”

  “No, Ma, no! Tucker was just being a jerk.”

  “You boys play nice.”

  Hugh was wearing a gray UMass sweatshirt with flannel Snoopy-dancing-with-Woodstock pajama pants. I arched an eyebrow at him.

  Hugh said, “What? You’ve never seen a guy relaxing around the house?”

  “Woodstock?”

  “Woodstock is cool. You leave Woodstock alone.”

  “Hugh, what are you doing here? Where’s Angie?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Because you emailed her, met her at the Harvard Bridge, and threw her cell phone onto the river.”

  “That’s crazy.” Hugh stepped past me and grabbed a teapot off the stove. He ran water into it. “How did you find me here?”

  I ignored the question. “Where’s Angie—and Maria?”

  Hugh ignored me back, placed the teapot over a gas flame. “You going to tell me how you found me?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Then screw you.”

  “Why should I tell you? You’re the one who kidnapped Angie and Maria.”

  “I don’t know anything about Angie.” Hugh pulled two mugs from the pantry. “Nobody’s supposed to know I’m here. That’s the whole point of hiding. Does anyone else know I’m here?”

  “Nobody knows. I was just guessing.”

  “Hmmph. Lucky guess.”

  “Where’s Angie?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve got enough problems without dealing with that crazy bitch.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  The teapot whistled on the stove. Hugh shut off the gas, pulled tea bags out of a box, threw them in the mugs, poured water over them.

  I read the box. “Earl Grey,” I said. “Hot.”

  “Yes, nerd,” said Hugh, “just like Picard drinks.”

  “I thought you were a coffee guy.”

  “I’m off coffee for a while.”

  “What makes Angie a crazy bitch?” I asked.

  Hugh said, “Well, first, she’s a woman.”

  “Oh, nice.”

  “But more specifically, she can become—possessive.”

  “Possessive?”

  “Once you sleep with her.”

  “You’ve slept with her?”

  “Shhh!” Hugh looked over his shoulder. His mother was watching somebody buy a vowel. Hissed, “Yes, I slept with her. She’s—

  enthusiastic.”

  “Did she become possessive afterwards?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “What did she do?”

  “Kept following me around, emailing me, getting in my way. Finally asked me to marry her.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told her, ‘Hell no!’ She threatened to tell Sal about us, and I told her to go ahead.”

  “Was Sal pissed off?”

  “Why would he be pissed off? Angie is kind of like the Common. A shared resource.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Angie just keeps trying to get one of us to marry her. Me, Sal, Marco, Joey. Well, not Joey so much, though he probably got some action. She hasn’t fucked you?”

  “No.”

  “Man, you’re even lower than Joey. That’s sad.”

  “If she’s so common, why would Sal buy her a condo?”

  “Sal didn’t buy it for her. He had it for a couple of years. He called it his fuck pad, said he got the idea from Marco. Of course, Marco had a little more class. He called his a man cave.”


  “So how did Angie get it?”

  “Well, she probably had a key, made it easy for her to be there. Anyway, when the time came, Sal just told her to live in it.”

  “When the time came? What time?”

  Pause. “You’ll have to ask Sal.”

  My tea was finally cool enough to drink. I got back to the point. “Why did you email Angie? Get her to the Harvard Bridge?”

  “What is it with you and this email? I didn’t email her.”

  I drank some tea, maybe Picard was onto something. “I saw the email, Hugh. On Angie’s phone. From your Yahoo account.”

  Hugh got up, went into his room, closed the door. Came back out having replaced his pajamas with jeans, and carrying his MacBook Air. He sat. Gestured at the Mac Vanna White style, opened it, and clicked on a link.

  “I haven’t sent her an email,” said Hugh. “I haven’t even been on this account this week. I don’t use email.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s like a friggin’ evidence vault. I don’t want to see my emails at a trial.”

  Hugh typed in his username and password. Got it wrong. Typed it in again. Got it wrong again. “Dammit,” he said. He typed his email a third time.

  The website switched to a helpful page: Forgot your Password?

  “No,” said Hugh to the computer, “I didn’t forget my password. You did.” He clicked on the “Reset your Password” link.

  I had a bad feeling about this.

  Five minutes later, Hugh was still waiting for the reset email to arrive.

  “You’ve been hacked,” I said.

  Hugh said, “Jarrod, you little shit.”

  Fifty-Four

  Dead winter ivy clung to the archways in Columbus Park, its brown vines frozen to the latticework that covered the park’s walkways. The city had compensated by encrusting the arches in purple lights, but the lights were off in the middle of the afternoon. A fishy wind blew off the harbor, chilling our faces.

  We stood at the base of Columbus’s statue. Columbus gazed across the harbor toward Logan Airport, clearly thinking that his life would have been much easier if he had air travel in 1492. I followed Columbus’s gaze, not wanting to make eye contact with Sal, who glared at Hugh.

  “You killed fucking Pistol?” asked Sal.

  “Well, to be fair,” said Hugh, “he started it.”

  “Let me get this straight. My wife is dead. Maria is missing. You killed Pistol—”

  “Not just Pistol. Jael killed another one.”

  “Whatever, so you killed two of my guys and I killed three. That’s all of them.”

  “Yup.”

  “As I was saying: my wife’s dead, my crew’s dead, my daughter’s missing, I’m under indictment, and you’re bitching to me that Jarrod Cooper hacked your email account? Do I have that right?”

  “Cooper works for David Anderson,” Hugh said.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “PassHack went under. Jarrod doesn’t have a job.”

  Hugh turned on me. “Wake up, Tucker. You think we ever expected PassHack to succeed?”

  “You didn’t?”

  “With a name like PassHack? Seriously?”

  “Why would you want it to go under?”

  “Because the money in PassHack doesn’t come from selling the service to idiots, and it won’t come from selling PassHack to Google. It comes from hacking into businesses and—” Hugh looked to Sal. “Should I tell him?”

  Sal said, “Go ahead. Tell him. He’s in up to his neck anyway.”

  Graxton said, “Anderson and Jarrod use the technology to hack into businesses and rob their bank accounts.”

  “Oh my God. And you knew about this?”

  “Knew about this? Of course we knew about this. That was the point.”

  “Tucker, you worked there,” said Sal.

  “Yeah, I helped Jarrod set up a hacking system, but that was for a good cause.”

  “Yeah,” said Sal. “The good cause of making us some dough.”

  I was going to be sick. “It’s illegal!”

  Hugh said, “It’s called organized crime for a reason, dipshit. Or did you forget the crime part?”

  “No, I didn’t forget the crime part,” I said. “So what happened with you three?”

  Sal said, “We caught Anderson stealing from us.”

  I said, “He told me that you lost your money when PassHack went under.”

  “Yeah, he fucking lied to you.”

  “He was skimming,” Hugh said. “Jarrod got drunk with us once and let it slip.”

  “Anderson called it a fucking—fucking—” Sal snapped his fingers at Hugh. “What did he call it?”

  Hugh said, “Management fee.”

  “Yeah, a fucking management fee. Cocksucker. Told him I wanted every penny back. He told me no, so I put a hit on him.”

  “When was this?” I asked.

  “Two weeks ago.”

  “That’s when it all went to hell,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  Cold wind blew in from Boston Harbor. A Southwest Airlines jet traced an arc into the sky, flying away from Boston, probably toward some place warmer, or at least less dangerous.

  “So what’s this shit about your email account getting hacked?” Sal asked Hugh.

  “It looks like Angie got an email from my hacked account,” Hugh said. “Somebody emailed her in my name and took her, and probably Maria.”

  Sal asked, “Why you?”

  “What do you mean?” Hugh asked.

  “Why would Jarrod hack your account?”

  “Why not?”

  “Why would Angie trust you? She doesn’t know you. You live in Newton.”

  Hugh crossed his arms.

  “You’re shitting me,” Sal said. “You too?”

  Hugh said nothing.

  Sal turned to me, pointing at Hugh. “Was he fucking Angie?”

  “Umm,” I said.

  Sal said, “He was fucking Angie!”

  “What of it?” Hugh asked.

  “What of it? Is there nothing I own that you won’t try to take from me?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m gone one day and I hear that you’re sitting in my spot. I get back, my place is covered in plywood because you had to come out here and play king.”

  “I was keeping the peace.”

  “Great fucking job.” Sal’s hot breath blew steam around Hugh’s head. “Now I hear you were screwing Angie.”

  “You don’t own Angie. You’re married to Sophia.”

  “What the fuck does that have to do with it? Did you fuck her in that condo I bought her?”

  “C’mon, Sal. Marco was fucking her too. So was Joey, for all I know.”

  “So you thought you’d pile on. What was she doing, pulling the train?”

  “Don’t be an asshole.”

  “An asshole? I buy her a condo, pay for her fucking abortion, listen to Sophia’s bullshit for years, and you guys get to fuck her?” Sal turned to me. “You fuck her too?”

  I said, “What? Me? No. We just had dinner.”

  “Dinner? You mean you were trying to fuck her?”

  Hugh made a placating gesture, both hands out. “Look, Sal, this is getting us nowhere. Anderson’s got Maria.”

  Sal kept yelling at me. “And whose fucking fault is that? Fucking sled.”

  I turned.

  “Don’t you turn your back on me!”

  I shouted over my shoulder, walking toward the Aquarium. “Fuck you, Sal.” Took out my cell phone, dialed. “Jarrod, we need to talk. Sal’s going to kill you.”

  Fifty-Five

  An angular pile of poured concrete, the New England Aquarium adorns the waterfront. The bad news is th
at it blocks the ocean view. The bright side is that it features a three-story ocean tank, once the largest such tank in the world. A spiral walkway carries one around the tank, down into a deepening abyss of water and concrete, while a series of windows provide a view of the fish who choose to inhabit each depth.

  I stood next to a window, halfway down the tank, watching Myrtle the Turtle cruise past with stately strokes of her flippers. The concrete and darkness gave me the serene feeling of standing underwater. A nurse shark followed the green turtle. I waited, and Myrtle came around again. I envied her routine and considered spending the rest of the day next to this tank, protected from the elements, from family, from enemies, from guilt. Just me and Myrtle, whiling away the afternoon.

  “There you are.”

  I looked at the reflection in the glass. Jarrod Cooper stood behind me. Concrete pillars framed each window, supporting the tank and providing a little alcove protected from the stream of people walking past.

  Jarrod slipped in and stood next to me at the window. “Great idea coming here. It’s private,” said Jarrod.

  “Thanks.”

  “What do you mean that Sal is going to kill me?”

  “Right to the point, eh?”

  “Is there a more important point?”

  “I suppose not,” I said.

  “So why am I in trouble?”

  “Hugh Graxton is convinced that you hacked his email account.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t lie to me. I’m trying to save you.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “What do you think, Myrtle? Is he lying?” I called through the glass. “Wave your flipper for yes.”

  Myrtle waved her flipper.

  “The jury’s in, Jarrod. You’re a liar.”

  Jarrod pointed at the turtle. “That’s ridiculous!”

  “Should I ask the nurse shark?”

  Jarrod crossed his arms, looked at the fish.

  I said, “Lying to me really doesn’t help your cause. I’m not here gathering information for Sal or Hugh. They believe what they believe, and they’re looking for you.”

  “This is completely unfair.”

  “Did you hack the account?”

  “It was Hugh’s own fault.”

  “How did you get his password?”