Detective D’Orfini broke the silence. “I think it’s good that you’re going to Cologne.”
“You do?”
“Yes. You’re talented. Evelyn saw something in you. All of us saw it at your show in September.”
Although my hands were cold from the frosty air, John D’Orfini’s words warmed me. This was the detective’s ploy, so natural and used so often that he wasn’t aware he had one.
“I know you spoke to the dollologist,” he said.
Ah—the ploy!
I kept silent.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” He stopped at the corner, waiting for me to explain.
“You were late that day. Remember? You got caught in traffic, and we ended up going to MOMA to watch a performance artist upstairs. I told you that the shop’s sign read CLOSED. I was there for less than fifteen minutes.”
“Obviously, somehow you walked in there, closed or not.” He took my hand but spoke with his face looking straight ahead. “Why didn’t you trust me to know you spoke to Kosinski?”
My foot throbbed out of the blue. “Let’s get a hot chocolate. I need to elevate my leg.”
“You’re changing the subject,” John D’Orfini said, looking around like a scout for an ornithological expedition.
“We didn’t say much. I asked him about the period clothes on his dolls. That’s all.”
John D’Orfini brought his gaze to mine. He held my hand more tightly, and I shivered. We stopped at a coffee shop and found a seat too close to the door. A shot of cold air blew inside. I stretched my leg out under the table. Quietly, he lifted it and rested it against his knee. I picked up my cup and blew on the surface to cool the steaming foam.
“I mean it. We didn’t say much,” I repeated.
“I still don’t understand why you had to go. Why couldn’t you wait? Why do you always have to charge in?”
I hesitated before I spoke. I was close—so close—to telling him that Kosinski was the man in the black limousine. That he promised me I would see Vinni if I waited and stopped asking questions. That I was terrified it was all a lie. A ploy to shut me up and keep me from watching across the street at the alleyway that swallowed up young girls.
“Waiting is all I’ve been doing,” I said, breathing air in between the words. My eyes filled, but I continued. “The babies in the paintings—they’re all mine. They’re screaming in my head, looking for their limbs to be returned. To be whole. Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night and I see a crowd in the bedroom—all children begging me to paint them. Give them wholeness. Call it hallucination if you like. But I see them all waiting for me to do something. I thought painting them would make them go away, but last night I woke again and they were all there. Only this time, one child moved forward and sat on the edge of the bed. The closer I moved to the child, the more she looked like Vinni. The room was dark. I could hardly see, but the moon slipped a sliver of light onto the side of the child’s face. It was so real. When I woke up, I was thirsty, as if I had talked aloud to the children in the room all night.”
John D’Orfini’s face changed as I spoke. It softened into the man I slept with, who made me groan in the dark.
“You’re right. I didn’t tell you everything, but I’m telling you now.”
“I can’t help you the way I want if you don’t trust me,” John D’Orfini said.
“It’s not about trust.”
“It’s always about trust.”
“Not this time. This time it’s about Vinni.”
THIRTY-FOUR
THE WEATHER FORECASTERS PREDICTED A WICKED Snowstorm. If they were right, there was a good chance the subways might shut down and I’d have to postpone going to Brooklyn. My obsession to find out what was at the end of the alleyway by Mueller’s showed in the pictures I shot from my position at the window. Day by day, they bloomed into something I could barely contain.
Where did the girls disappear to?
Once upon a time, I had had a good life. Now it was gone. If I tried to figure things out, I knew I’d go mad. Maybe that was what happened to my mother when she tried explaining why people who carried groceries in brown bags ignored possibilities.
I COULDN’T LOSE the images of the girls vanishing down the alleyway. I struggled with a clawing in my chest, as if I were being singled out to save them. I doubted my original decision to wait in silence. I imagined a made-up misery where I hid behind the drawn curtain with closed eyes and missed sighting Vinni from my window across from Mueller’s. Vinni was older now. Appealing. Her young body—almost thirteen. Younger for sure, but not by much, than the girls I saw from my window.
I TOOK AN earlier train to Brooklyn. Ed the bartender had gotten used to my blowing in and out the door, stopping to pick up an order of calamari.
“I’ll have Sasha bring it up when it’s ready,” he said. “We’re running behind tonight. I don’t want you to have to stand around here, much as I think you’re cute as hell.”
I gave him a wave, nodded, and flew up the back stairs. It was around 6:00 p.m. The snow was falling hard. I was glad to be in my room, settling in for a long night. The light upstairs from Mueller’s Bakery told me Hannah and George were still awake. Their rooms went dark at 8:30 p.m.—bakers’ hours— only to brighten at 4:00 a.m.
The wall over my sleeper couch had slowly transformed into a command headquarters. At least, that was what I thought John D’Orfini would call it. Pictures of the black limousine, the young girls exiting the vehicle, Neighbor Man, and grainy close-ups of the alleyway, so close to Mueller’s, hung tacked on the wall.
Neighbor Man was often in the photos. He was either off to the side, two buildings away from the bakery, or in the nearby alleyway, but he was there. Smoking. Looking away from the limousine, as if he had just been dropped from the sky.
A knock at the door told me that Sasha had my calamari with a small bowl of red gravy for dipping sauce. I opened the door a crack and grabbed the hot plate, careful to block the view of the wall behind the door. At least five inches of snow covered the streets, and it was still coming down. The winter wonderland—like atmosphere should have quieted me, but instead I felt an undeniable twitching in my legs.
In the middle of the night, on my watches in Brooklyn, I often sketched what I saw down the street from my perch by the window. The rooftops; the cobbled streets, rough and old; the spilled spots of light from the streetlamps. I lost myself inside the pencil work until the lights turned on downstairs at Mueller’s Bakery at 4:00 a.m. Sometimes as I dozed, my head swung down with such a jolt, I awoke in a panic, wondering where I was.
With the first light, I put on my hooded coat and boots and left the room. The streetlights cast a warm glow on the untouched powder on the sidewalk. My breath created tiny white clouds in front of me as I walked. I could hear John D’Orfini’s voice in my head, saying, Don’t get involved.
My plan was just to take a look. Walk the same path as the disappearing girls. In my mind, this was not the same as getting involved. Going to the Doll and Clock Shop proved I could rein in my mother beast.
I crossed the street and began my walk down the narrow alleyway just past the bakery. My heartbeat quickened as the snow continued to fall. I shoved my freezing hands into my pockets and followed the snow-filled path farther into the alleyway. As I neared the end of the building, I walked past a window with a shade pulled down. I came to the end of the building that paralleled the street to Mueller’s Bakery. I turned the corner, walked for about a hundred yards, and saw a sign on a patch of white lawn that read ST. STEFAN’S, THURSDAYS, 6:15 P.M. LET CHRIST SAVE YOUR SOUL. It looked like one of those pop-up religious halls where people go for a cup of soup in return for the chance for some zealot to spout oracles of faith into a handheld microphone.
There was nothing unusual in the alleyway. Just one window and one door and a makeshift holy hall at the end to help the strays. I turned back to retrace my steps to my room.
Vinni was someplace else—somepl
ace where she rode a horse and the sky was big.
I dropped my head to brace myself from the snow hitting my face, but as I passed the window, I noticed that the shade had been pulled up about two inches from the bottom sill. I was sure it had been securely lowered when I had walked by not more than three or four minutes earlier. I stopped and looked up across to the building on my left. Nothing. I half expected to see a monster pop out from the brick wall. I stepped to my right and knelt down in the snow to look under the two-inch opening provided by the raised shade. I squinted my eyes to narrow my vision, bending my chest even lower. My hands gripped the window ledge as I widened my elbows to secure a better position to look inside the room.
That’s when I saw the girl on the cot.
She locked into my eyes like a laser.
I steadied my hold on the sill with my frozen fingers. Her eyes pierced mine as the snow swirled around me. We held each other still for maybe ten seconds, until her eyes darted back and forth—to her left, to me, to her left, to me. I moved my knees, frozen from the snow, to get a better look into the room.
What was the girl trying to show me? And then I saw.
A giant of a man sat on a chair with his head flopped against his chest. An open bottle of vodka rested on its side on the floor. My eyes returned to the girl—the child—who was small enough that she didn’t reach the end of the cot, or else she was huddled with her knees pulled up close for warmth.
I focused on her face—so hollow that her cheekbones protruded like half moons. A second cot—empty—was next to the girl’s. A slit of light from the raised shade splashed a bright strip against the floor. I wondered if the room carried the smell of young girls’ terror.
The snow kept coming. The neighborhood would wake soon. The bakers would ice cakes and whip custard for ordinary people who passed the alleyway on their way to work. They wouldn’t see the girl who needed saving.
Didn’t Vinni need saving also?
Could I save them both? One here and now. The other across the ocean.
What about the warning from Kosinski to stop sniffing? He had told me that I might not see my child again if I didn’t stay out of his business. Was I taking a chance with consequences too large to handle? I hated this choice. I hated it so much that I dropped my head and let myself sink into the snow. As the cold swept me up, I had a vision of Vinni in the photo—the one where she was smiling, as she held the reins of the horse.
The girl on the cot was not smiling.
The girl on the cot needed saving.
If I abandoned this child, I could never call myself a mother. I could never ask for absolution. Somewhere, a childless mother knelt praying for her girl’s return. Never, never, never could I face myself if I did not try to help this other mother’s child. Yes, Vinni was my daughter, but that did not mean that this child was not mine to save as well. I knew she was one of the girls the black limousine dropped off. Their hair, always fallen in front of their faces—this child’s hair hung the same. Only when she had moved did I see her bony face; however, her eyes stayed strong, never leaving mine. Another ten—no, maybe longer, twenty—seconds, we held each other without words or movement, until I shifted my gaze to see the man in the chair stand and stumble out the door. I scooted on my knees to the edge of the building and peeked out to see the man open his trousers and pee onto the clean snow. I was only about twenty feet away when I saw him weave and fall face-first into the snow where his urine spotted the clean powder. I waited, but he didn’t move.
The snow kept coming, falling on the man’s head, burying him. He lay motionless. I stood up and ran toward the door with my eye on the drunk. My heart was pounding.
Please, God, let this have nothing to do with Vinni!
There was no time to make a deal with someone in the sky. When I opened the door, I found the girl standing, shivering in a loose sweater and tiny skirt. Her knees looked about to buckle as I reached for her and she collapsed into my arms. She spoke a few words, repeating the same ones over and over with a desperation, a pleading, in her voice, but in a language that I couldn’t understand. I wrapped my arm around her waist. Her weight fell into the side of my body so hard that I wondered if I’d have to drag her down the alleyway. When I opened the door, I saw the man still flat on his face and I thanked God that he hadn’t awakened. The girl took steps with me as we moved silently down the alleyway. I felt her ribs protruding like sticks. I kissed the top of her head, the way I would have if she had been my own.
The snow swirled in front of us with such ferocity, I prayed the girl would make it across the street.
A voice said my name, or had I imagined it inside the howl of the wind?
“Maddy, give her to me.”
Neighbor Man swooped the child up in his arms and steered me across the street to my building. The snowstorm fought us every step, but I could feel his grip on my elbow. I unlocked the outer door and raced ahead up the stairs. The girl must have said something, because I heard the man say, “There’s no need to be afraid.”
I didn’t stop to think who or what I was allowing into my room. It was about the child.
You must know this. And you must remember it. It was about the child.
Her whole body shook. Yes, the night was cold, but I believed it was fear that made her tremble.
How did the man in the hat know my name?
Neighbor Man gently placed the girl on my couch, underneath the gallery of pictures of other girls dropped off at the alleyway. The girl reached for my hand. I sat close to her, held on to it, and squeezed. I wanted her to know that she was safe. Her blue eyes belonged to a child lost at sea and on land. You could drown in them.
“I’M AL DOBSON, FBI.” Neighbor Man reached into his jacket and pulled out a badge. “I’m undercover for an investigation of a Russian prostitution ring. We started to zero in on this area of the city about six months ago. That’s when I came onboard. We got close to moving in on it, but then something happened and the whole thing went cold.”
“Cold?”
“Look at your photos. When was the last time you saw a drop-off? My guess is it was three weeks ago. Which means they’re off schedule. It used to be every two weeks. Two girls at a time. No more. The girls were filtered out through St. Stefan’s. They’ve got to be onto something.”
“That’s why I never saw them leave from this side of the alleyway,” I said.
He nodded but returned to the photos that I had tacked up on the wall. I touched the girl’s forehead with a gentle stroking back and forth. I wondered how long it had been since someone had extended a small kindness, or told her they loved her.
A quiet hung over the room. I lifted the girl’s head to rest in my lap. I looked up. “How do you know me?” I asked the agent.
“I met John D’Orfini in Quantico.”
My sweet detective.
“He knew I was working in Brooklyn, and one night he mentioned the case of a missing child and Mueller’s Bakery. He said there was no proven connection but he had a hunch that hadn’t panned out yet.”
Neighbor Man removed his wet hat and stepped closer toward the wall where dozens of photos hung above the couch. “I had my own hunch that you were the mother of the missing child from Spring Haven. What made you walk down that alleyway tonight of all nights?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
Was it love?
Without Vinni, where could I put my love? Without her face, where would I find her eyes?
The child began to cough. Veins in her thin neck pulled taut like elastic bands colored blue. Her head jerked hard against her chest. Her cough got louder, and she opened her eyes wide. I tried to pull her up to help her catch her breath, but she was too weak to sit. She fell across my lap and opened her mouth. Blood splatted onto the carpet.
I looked over at the agent, but he had turned away, speaking into his cell phone or a plate on his chest or whatever undercover agents did when they needed to call for help.
&
nbsp; He spoke over his shoulder. “They’ll come around the back and bring her to the hospital. The guy in the snow’s been carted off on his way to the station.”
“In the kitchen, please, there’s a cloth by the sink,” I said.
He ran it under cold water and handed it over. I wiped the girl’s face. She turned her cheek to face me. We were so close, I leaned in and kissed her forehead. This was someone’s missing child. For the smallest of moments, I wanted to be her mother, to soothe her the way her mother would. I hadn’t soothed a child in such a long time. My heart beat wildly, broken to see this girl child in such pain, speaking a language that no one understood.
Al Dobson removed his straw fedora, now drenched in melted snowflakes.
The wall-to-wall gallery had been in progress for four months. I had enough photos on it to build a house of horrors. He kept looking at it, rubbing his hands together in an attempt to warm them—or was he stalling for time to find the right words? I didn’t know if undercover agents did that kind of thing.
What did I know about any of this?
“We’ve been documenting the Russians for two years . . . and not just here. They’re in Chicago and Miami also, which means so are we. This is big. Damn dangerous. We were about to close in on this hideaway in Brooklyn—there’s two others— but they all got quiet at the same time. This girl’s the break we were looking for.”
“I guess you think I fucked up your investigation,” I said. The girl’s head lay still on my fleece pants. “Do you expect me to say I’m sorry?”
“No, ma’am. It’s just that there’s a guy named Kosinski we’ve been watching. Looks like his ‘uncle’ groomed him to take over his business.”
“The Doll and Clock Shop,” I said.
Dobson spoke with his eyes cast downward. He avoided eye contact unless he was undercover, as if it might tire him to pay such close attention without a disguise.
A Matter of Chance Page 23