Dina Santorelli

by Baby Grand

  Reynaldo shrugged. The last vacation he had taken was more than twenty years ago when he was a teenager and his twelfth-grade class spent the weekend in New York City for its senior trip. Even then his father was reluctant to release him from his garage responsibilities for four whole days, but his mother had insisted that "it was good for him to be with kids his own age." Reynaldo could still remember sitting on the bus and watching the New York City skyline come into view, the small, glinting buildings growing larger with every mile driven south. Without any obligations other than checking in with his chaperone twice a day for meals, he spent the entire weekend canvassing the city's museums, eating hot dogs, and lying on park benches until his face sunburned. It wasn't until he had climbed the bouncy steps of the coach bus to head back upstate that he would again be around kids his own age.

  "I wouldn't even know where to go," Reynaldo said, holding a gnarled pair of socks.

  "Rey." Pedro took the clothing from his brother's hands and placed it in the suitcase. "No joke. I love you. You've been like a father to us since mama died and papa moved south to chase wrinkled panocha. But, Rey, you are not our father. We are grown men."

  "Well..."

  Pedro punched Reynaldo in the arm. "You know what I mean. I can watch the garage for a few days. What's the worst that could happen? Don't answer that."

  Reynaldo smiled. "But the taxes..."

  "Leave after that. Rikki and Terry are coming and will stay with Aunt Ro. You can meet with the scary tax guy on Friday, and then go away for the weekend. Just go. Drive until you don't want to drive anymore."

  "I don't know," Reynaldo said, closing his suitcase and dragging the zipper all the way around its perimeter. "I may never come back."

  Chapter 44

  When Jamie opened her eyes it was still dark although the outline of the clouds through the windows were visible, which meant sunrise wasn't far behind. She could feel Bailino's hand on her stomach. He was sleeping right behind her, up against her. Spooning.

  It was difficult for Jamie to think about what had happened during the night without feeling partly responsible this time. Bailino had been gentler, that was for sure, but she had put up less of a struggle. That had been intentional, and not. Everything was so blurry—for what was probably the first time in her life, she was coloring outside the lines of what she had been taught was appropriate and right, and she found it disorienting and scary, but strangely liberating. She worried that if she ever got out of this, she would never be the same, but at the same time it was that very thought that was driving her.

  Charlotte stirred in her crib, and, as if on cue, Bailino lifted his hand from Jamie's stomach, running it over the outline of her hips before taking his hand away. Jamie got up from the bed and put on the T-shirt and jeans that she had on the day before, which had been tossed onto the floor. By the time she got to the crib, the sun was creeping up over the horizon, illuminating Charlotte's wrinkled face as she peered over the top rung of the crib. Her eyes twinkled when she saw Jamie, and she put her hands in the air.

  "Up," she said, clear as day.

  "Wow," Jamie lifted Charlotte high into the air. "Did you say 'up'?" she said in a low, cheerful voice. It was difficult not to smile back at that happy little face. "Did you just say 'Upppp'? Jamie lifted the little girl higher, and Charlotte cooed.

  When Jamie brought her back down, Charlotte pointed out the nursery door. "What do you want, sweetie?" Charlotte leaned her body as far away from Jamie as she could and pointed toward the far end of the bedroom, in the direction of the baby grand piano, which was barely visible in the low light. It never ceased to amaze Jamie the memory children had for the things they wanted.

  "Oh, I don't think we can do that right now, honey. It's too early."

  Charlotte put her fingers together. "Mo," she said.

  "Shhh..."

  "Mo," Charlotte repeated, whispering.

  "Not right now..."

  "No, go ahead," Bailino said, sitting up on the bed. "I have to get up anyway." He clicked the lamp on. When the piano came into clearer view, Charlotte stiffened her body like a board so that Jamie would put her down, and she toddled over to the piano. Jamie went to follow her, when Bailino grabbed her arm.

  "I'm going in the shower." He planted a firm kiss on Jamie's lips.

  "Okay," Jamie said, her body tensing as Bailino released her and went into the bathroom and shut the door. She glanced at the bedroom door, as was her habit, but it was closed, the small red light aglow.

  "Mo, mo!" Charlotte was putting her hands on the piano key cover.

  Jamie pulled out the piano bench and sat down. She placed Charlotte on her lap and folded back the cover, revealing the smooth black and white keys. Charlotte started banging, and the noise rocked the bedroom. Jamie had no idea where the other men were or where they slept, or if they slept, but she couldn't imagine anyone being able to rest through this racket, soundproofed or not.

  Charlotte grabbed Jamie's hands and put them on the piano keys.

  "Mo!" she said, pressing them down.

  "You want me to play? Me?"

  Charlotte clapped with glee.

  Jamie knew one song. That was it. The theme from Hill Street Blues—and only the first few bars. She'd taught herself how to play it when she was eight years old for her mother, who was a big fan of the show. She put her hands on the keys and as the first chord played, Charlotte clapped along. It took lots of coordination to balance the excited child on her thighs and use both hands to work the piano keys. Jamie smiled and kissed the top of Charlotte's head as she finished off with a dramatic, slowed-for-emphasis ending. After the final keystroke, an abrupt sound came from behind them.

  Someone was clapping.

  Leo stood in the doorway of the bedroom.

  Clap. Clap. Clap.

  "Bravo," he said, one of the electronic keys dangling from his right middle finger. He jiggled it in the air. "Lookee what I found," he said, gently pushing the door closed.

  Charlotte lurched toward Jamie and buried her head into her neck. Jamie held her firm and stood up.

  "Your talents continue to amaze me," Leo said. There was a wildness in his red, glassy eyes. She looked toward the bathroom.

  "Who you lookin' for?" Leo sneered. He reached into his jacket and took out a small handgun, the sight of which made Jamie's heart thunder in her chest. He held it out casually, as if he were showing it off, and then aimed it toward Jamie as he walked over to the small table near the piano, pulled out a chair and put it under the knob of the bathroom door.

  "Put the kid down." Leo came toward her, pointing the gun at her head.

  Hesitating, Jamie said, "I... She's... scared."

  "Put the fuckin' kid down now, or I will." He pointed the gun at Charlotte.

  Jamie unclasped the small arms of Charlotte Grand from her neck and placed her on the floor near the piano bench. Charlotte was crying now. She tried to stand, but Jamie looked at her firmly and said, "No," which caused Charlotte to wail and wrap her arms around Jamie's legs.

  "You're a fuckin' beauty, aren't you?" Leo said. He was standing so close that Jamie could smell the liquor on his breath. "You got anything to say to me?"

  She glanced at the bathroom door.

  "Stop looking at the fuckin' bathroom door," Leo yelled.

  Jamie reached deep down and pulled her own voice out from its hiding place. "Let me bring the baby to the nursery," she said.

  "Nursery? You think that's a fuckin' nursery. It's a fuckin' closet. I don't care what you do in there. I don't care if you fuckin' paint a fuckin' purple dinosaur on the walls and sprinkle rose petals across the floor. It's still a fuckin' closet." Unsteady, Leo began to rock from side to side and then looked at her quizzically as if she were the one making him dizzy.

  Jamie eyed the bathroom door again, compelled to look despite Leo's warnings, as she had been in Bryant Park to see if Bailino had been following her. She tried not to think about how baffling it was to want the
protection of the very person who had inflicted the most harm on her. She almost yelped with glee when she thought she saw the doorknob turn.

  "Who you lookin' for?" Leo taunted. "Your knight in shining armor?"

  Jamie said nothing.

  "You're not going fuckin' anywhere." Now there was banging on the bathroom door, a pulling so that the door was being ripped off its hinges, and Jamie could hear Bailino's muffled yells.

  Charlotte stood up again, her cries intensifying. "Shut the fuck up," Leo told her.

  "Leave her alone, you son of a bitch," Jamie yelled.

  Leo slapped Jamie hard. Her face hit the wall, and blood sprayed from her nose. Leo grabbed her shirt and banged her head against the wall again as the baby screamed.

  "Fuck you," Jamie managed, pushing against his bulky frame, but Leo's strength, to Jamie's surprise, surpassed his tallness.

  "Fuck me?" Leo pushed Jamie down on the floor. "Fuck me?"

  Jamie kicked at Leo, who was unbuttoning her jeans and trying to pull them down. He punched her in the left leg, which instantly buckled, a sharp pain shooting up through her thigh. He continued fussing with the zipper of the jeans, but she arched her body, making it difficult to remove them. "Fuckin' whore," he said, unzipping his own jeans. "Fuckin' Hill Street Blues," he laughed. "Be careful out there..."

  Jamie slapped at Leo, forcing him to stop fiddling with her jeans and to deal with her hands. There were intense, intermittent bangs coming from both the bathroom and bedroom doors now. Leo managed to pin Jamie's arms above her, the gun crushing the fingers of her right hand, and out of the corner of her eye, Jamie saw Charlotte's blotchy face crawling over to them, and terror seized her as Leo shoved the little girl back—hard—making her fall onto her head.

  "You son of a bitch," Jamie said, landing a punch under Leo's left eye. "She's only a baby. Big fuckin' man, right? You fuckin' bastard."

  Leo slapped Jamie across the face again, and she lost her bearings. When the pain subsided, she realized that Leo had gotten her jeans down around her knees and that his were down as well.

  "Noooo," she cried and tried to crawl away on her stomach, but Leo pounced on top of her, knocking the wind out of her. She gasped for air.

  "You want it in the ass? Is that it?" he asked, pulling Jamie's body toward his with one hand and pulling down her underwear with the other.

  Jamie was lightheaded and her chest burned, but she thought she could manage an elbow in the groin when suddenly Leo was off her.

  She turned over onto her back, her breathing now a painful wheeze, and saw Bailino pressing Leo against the wall. He was soaking wet, in a bathrobe, and Leo's pant legs had fallen around his ankles showing his hairy, white legs. They were struggling over the gun, which Leo held straight in the air.

  "I'll fucking kill you," Leo said, spit flying from the corners of his mouth.

  Bailino forced Leo's hands back and as he held them there, he turned, with an eerie calm, to Jamie. "You all right?" He banged Leo's arm against the wall, and the gun fired, causing flakes of plaster to shoot across the room, coating them all with a white dust. The gunshot had so shocked Charlotte that she stopped crying and crawled like lightning over to Jamie, who was scrambling to get dressed. "No," Jamie screamed. "I'm not."

  The two men, pressed up against each other, fell onto the baby grand piano.

  "Take the kid, and bring her into the nursery," Bailino yelled as he banged Leo's arm on the piano again to release the gun from his grip. "Go!"

  "You fuckin' shit," Leo yelled. "I know what you did to my sister, you fuckin' bastard."

  Jamie struggled to her feet and, with Charlotte in hand, limped toward the nursery and shut the door. In the sudden darkness, she felt around until she reached the back corner of the room, slunk down onto the floor and plopped the shaking baby onto her lap. A small thread of light shone from the opening at the bottom of the nursery door, when another shot was fired.

  Her eyes were fixed on that light, praying for it not to widen, for the door never to open, as she heard Leo's voice piercing the air. She ran her hand along Charlotte's curls, but the little girl had stopped shaking and had become very still. Then there was a solid thud, followed by another gunshot, and everything was quiet, except for Jamie's heart, which was pounding so hard that she thought blood was going to spill out of her ears.

  She tilted her head back against the wall, her fingers pinching her nose to stem the bleeding while her other hand continued to caress Charlotte's head. The pounding had morphed into an incessant ringing in her ears, and she thought she heard new voices coming from the bedroom. She took her hand from Charlotte, her curls sticking to the blood and sweat on Jamie's palms, and felt around in the dark on the floor until she found the container of baby wipes. She pulled one out and stuck it into her left nostril. The little girl's breathing was steady. Incredibly, she'd fallen asleep again.

  The closet door opened, throwing sudden light into the room. Jamie braced herself, shielding Charlotte's eyes, when a familiar shadow appeared in the doorframe.

  "Are you all right?" Bailino asked. He had changed from his bathrobe into a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt.

  "No." The tears were free-flowing now.

  "Is she sleeping?"

  Jamie nodded.

  Bailino reached down and put his arms on Charlotte's small body.

  "No." Jamie was speaking softly, but firmly. "Don't."

  "Shhh ... It's all right." Bailino crept his hands around Charlotte's body to lift her.

  "No," Jamie whispered, putting her hand on his. "Let me do it."

  Bailino stood back as Jamie struggled to stand, pressing her back against the wall and sliding up, keeping a hold onto Charlotte. The bloody baby wipe fell out of her nostril and onto the floor. She was dizzy, but she walked across the small room and placed Charlotte in the crib and covered her with a blanket and then stood there swaying. She wanted to crawl in there with her.

  "C'mon," he said gently and extended his hand.

  Too tired to think about why or what it meant, Jamie took Bailino's hand and followed him into the bedroom. It was empty. The baby grand piano had fallen onto its side, and there was plaster and dust everywhere, colored white and red. Leo was gone.

  Bailino walked Jamie into the bathroom and pulled down the toilet seat. "Sit down," he said. Jamie obeyed, her compliance no longer out of terror but from, she feared, a growing hopelessness. He reached over her head and grabbed a washcloth, which he ran under warm water from the faucet. The bathroom air still had remnants of steam from when Bailino had showered, and it felt good in her nostrils and on her skin. Carefully, Bailino wiped Jamie's face.

  "Does that hurt?" he asked.

  She shook her head, which made her dizzier. She leaned her back against the toilet tank.

  Bailino touched around the bridge of her nose. "Your eyes are swollen," he said and opened the medicine cabinet.

  "They have been for days," Jamie said with a sniffle.

  "Have they?" Bailino asked.

  Jamie had always marveled at how people saw only what they wanted to see, particularly when it came to their own destruction, the undeniable pile of rubble left in their wake that was visible to everyone else, except them.

  "Where is he?" she asked.

  Bailino applied something to her forehead. The burn made Jamie recoil.

  "He's not gonna bother you anymore." Bailino leaned down and kissed Jamie's forehead. "Okay?"

  "Okay," Jamie nodded, looking into Bailino's once menacing eyes that had turned softer, as they had been the night before. But in the crisp daylight, suddenly another fear took hold of her. Whatever strategy she had employed, whatever game she had been trying to play to get herself and Charlotte out of there, had relied on building a trust with Bailino, on earning his respect and perhaps his confidence. But looking into his eyes right now, Jamie realized that she had been wrong. Very, very wrong. No matter what he said or what she hoped, she knew now that in the end he would never let
her go.

  Chapter 45

  There was an aching stiffness in Edward's neck as he opened his eyes and tried to remember where he was. A crumpled McDonald's bag lay on the passenger seat of his car, and there was a lingering wetness on the inner thighs of his jeans from the condensation of his Coke, which sat between his legs still full. He took a sip of the warm, watered down soda and reached for his phone. There were three missed calls from Tricia, none from Jamie. Outside, he saw a trailer truck parked in front of him. The highway cars to his left were whizzing north, a far cry from the virtual standstill of the Thruway the night before because of construction that closed all but one lane. Edward remembered pulling off to get something to eat and then parking at a rest stop at around 10:00 p.m. He must have fallen asleep. He looked at his phone. It was 6:10 a.m.

  "Damn," Edward muttered, turning the key in the ignition. He drove onto the highway and within seconds saw a sign: He was only about fifteen minutes from downtown Albany.

  Edward called his office and told them he wouldn't be in. He held off on calling Tricia even though he knew she would be worried. He didn't know what to tell her—he didn't know himself what he was doing, so he just texted a quick "I'm fine. Call you later."

  Dark storm clouds were rolling in from the west, and Edward was reminded of that day at the beach long ago. He saw a sign for the Albany police station and took the exit. The station was only a few blocks down, and he parked in one of the visitors' spots in front of the building—he was surprised to see quite a few cars there so early in the morning, but then remembered about the kidnapping of Charlotte Grand.

  Edward walked into the police station, his legs still wobbly from the long ride, and approached a big, burly man behind the front desk. "Hi, can you help me?" he huffed, his voice groggy. "I'm looking for a woman."

  "Aren't we all?" the officer said, with a smirk.

  Edward looked at the officer's badge: Det. McDonnell.

  "Does she work here?" McDonnell asked.

  "No, no," Edward said. "She's missing."