Why am I telling you this?
Because the next morning, I had to depart the retreat early. I woke up at 5:30 a.m. and hit the breakfast room at six. When I arrived, only one person was up. You guessed it.
“Good morning, Win!” Ted called out to me. “Sit with me.”
He was reading the Washington Post with a cup of coffee, a mountain of food on the plate in front of him. Ted was clear-eyed and showered and wide awake. We had a spirited discussion on a variety of topics, but the gist is this: I have never seen someone handle spirits quite like that, and I don’t know whether that was a positive or negative.
My guess is, it was a negative.
The long and short of my name-dropping tale? I am very good at handling spirits. But I’m no Ted Kennedy. My head aches when I wake up. I let out a low groan and as though on cue, there is a knock on my door.
“Good morning!”
It is Nigel. I groan again.
“How are we this morning?”
“Your voice,” I manage.
“What about it?”
“It soothes like a jackhammer against a cranial nerve.”
“Are we hungover, Master Win? Be grateful. I brought you my top-secret cure.”
He drops two pills into my palm and hands me a glass.
“It looks like aspirin and orange juice,” I say.
“Shh, I’m thinking of applying for a patent. Should I open the curtains?”
“Only if you want to get shot.”
“Cousin Patricia is getting dressed.”
Nigel leaves the room. I shower for a very long time and get dressed. Patricia is gone by the time I get downstairs. I down a quick breakfast with my father. The conversation is stilted, but that’s not a surprise. When I’m done, I head out to see Edie Parker’s mother and Billy Rowan’s father at the Crestmont Assisted Living Village in New Jersey.
Mrs. Parker gave me her first name, but I don’t recall what it was. I like to use titles, such as Mr. or Mrs., when I converse with my elders. It is how I was raised. The three of us are in Mr. Rowan’s room, which has all the warmth of a dermatologist’s office. The colors are beyond-bland beige and golf-club green. The décor is Contemporary Evangelical—plain wooden crosses, tranquil religious canvas prints of Jesus, wooden signs with biblical quotes like PUT GOD FIRST, which is cited as Matthew 6:33, and one that really catches my eye from Micah 7:18:
FORGIVE AND FORGET
An interesting choice, no? Does Mr. Rowan really believe that, or does he need the daily reminder? Does he look up on that wall every day and think about his son? Has he come to terms with it? Or is it more the flip side? Does Mr. Rowan embrace this particular passage in the hope that the victims of the Jane Street Six will pay heed?
Mr. Rowan is in a wheelchair. Mrs. Parker sits next to him. They hold hands.
“He can’t speak,” Mrs. Parker tells me. “But we still communicate.”
I assume that I am supposed to ask how, but I’m not all that interested.
“He squeezes my hand,” she tells me anyway.
“I see,” I say, though I don’t. How does squeezing a hand lead to genuine communication? Does he squeeze once for yes and two for no? Does he squeeze out some kind of Morse code? I would ask, but again I can’t see the relevance for me or what I’m after here. I soldier on.
“How did you and Mr. Rowan meet?” I ask.
“Through my Edie and his Billy.”
“May I ask when?”
“When…” She makes a fist and puts it up to her mouth. We both look at Mr. Rowan. He stares at me. I don’t know what, if anything, he sees. Oxygen cannulas run from his nostrils to a tank attached to the right side of his wheelchair. “When Edie and Billy disappeared.”
“Billy and Edie were dating though, yes?”
“Oh, more than that,” Mrs. Parker says. “They were engaged.”
She hands me a framed photograph. Sun and time have faded the colors, but there were college students Billy Rowan and Edie Parker, cheek to cheek. They were on a beach, the ocean behind them, their smiles as bright as the sun, the sweat leaving a sheen on their deliriously happy (or so it appeared) faces.
Mrs. Parker says, “They look so in love, don’t they?”
And the truth is, they do. They look young and in love and untroubled.
“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”
I let myself nod.
“They were just dumb kids, Mr. Lockwood. That’s what William here always says, don’t you, William?”
William doesn’t blink.
“Idealistic, sure. Who isn’t when they’re young? Billy was a big lovable goofball, and my Edie wouldn’t hurt a fly. She just watched the news every night and saw those boys coming back in body bags. Her brother, my Aiden, served in Vietnam. Did you know that?”
“I did not, no.”
“No, they never talked about that on the news, did they?” Her tone is bitter now. “To them, my Edie was just a crazy terrorist, like one of those Manson girls.”
I try my best to look sympathetic, but this is where having “haughty resting face” becomes an issue. Myron is so good at this. He would put on a display of empathy that would make Pacino take notes.
“When was the last time you heard from Edie or Billy?”
Mrs. Parker seems taken aback by my query. “Why would you ask that?”
“I just—”
“Never. I mean, not since that night.”
“Not once?”
“Not once. I don’t understand. Why are you here, Mr. Lockwood? We were told you could help us.”
“Help you?”
“Find our children. You were the one who found Ry Strauss.”
I nod. It’s not true, but alas, I go with it.
“When William and I saw Ry’s picture on the news, I mean…do you want to hear something strange?”
I try to look open and accepting.
“When you found Ry Strauss…” Again she turns to look at Mr. Rowan. He doesn’t turn or even react. I don’t know whether he hears us or not. He may have aphasia, or he may be totally out of it, or he may have a great poker face. I simply don’t know. “Do you know what the weirdest part was?”
“Tell me,” I say.
“Ry was an old man now. Do you understand what I’m saying? Not old like William and me, of course. We are in our nineties, but for some reason, even though we knew better, of course, we still think of Edie and Billy as being young. Like time froze when they disappeared. Like they still look exactly like this.” Mrs. Parker takes the frame back from me. Her finger touches down on her daughter’s image, and her head tilts tenderly as it does so. “Do you think that’s strange, Mr. Lockwood?”
“No.”
She taps Mr. Rowan’s hand. “William here, he was a golfer. Do you play?” she asks me.
“I do, yes.”
“Then you’ll get this. William used to joke that he and I were on the ‘back nine’ of life—now he says the two of us are walking up the fairway on the eighteenth hole. See, we still call Edie and Billy ‘our children.’ But his Billy would have just turned sixty-five years old. My Edie would be sixty-four.”
She shakes her head in disbelief.
Normally I would find all of this tedious and beside the point, but in truth, this is why I am here. I don’t suspect that I will get any useful information from Mr. Rowan or Mrs. Parker. That’s not really the point. What I want to do is cause a stir and see what happens. Let me explain.
If Edie Parker and Billy Rowan have been alive this whole time, chances are they would have reached out to their families at some point. Perhaps not the first year or two when the heat was on them. But it has now been over forty-five years since the Jane Street Six went on the run. If “her” Edie and “his” Billy were alive, it is reasonable to assume that at some point they would have been in touch.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that Mrs. Parker (let’s leave the silent Mr. Rowan out of this for now) would tell me. Just the opp
osite. She would do all in her power to persuade me that she has not seen her daughter in all these years, even if she had. So—is Mrs. Parker telling me the truth or is she playing me?
That’s what I am trying to discern.
“How did you first hear about the”—what is the tactful word to use here?—“incident involving the Jane Street Six?”
“Do you mind if we don’t call them that?”
“Sorry?”
“The Jane Street Six,” Mrs. Parker says. “It makes them sound, well, like the Manson Family.”
“Yes, of course.” So much for my attempt at tact. “How did you hear about the incident?”
“A bunch of FBI agents crashed into my house. You’d have thought they were looking for Al Capone the way they busted in. Scared me and Barney half to death.”
I know this already. I’ve looked at the file. Again I’m not trying to gather information. I’m trying to gauge truthfulness and perhaps, as you’ll see in a bit, cause a reaction.
I try to make my voice properly solemn. “And you never saw your daughter again?”
She nods once. No words. Not much emotion. Just a nod.
“And you never spoke to her either?”
“I spoke to her,” she says.
I wait.
“That night. An hour before the FBI came.”
“What did she say?”
“Edie was crying.” She looks over at Mr. Rowan. He still doesn’t move, but his eyes start to water. “She said something went terribly wrong.”
“Did she say what?”
Mrs. Parker shakes her head.
“What else did she say?”
“That she and Billy would have to go away, maybe for a long time, maybe forever.”
A single tear runs down Mr. Rowan’s face. I glance at their hands. They are gripping one another’s so tightly, their skin is transforming from parchment to white.
“And then?”
“That’s it, Mr. Lockwood.”
“Edie hung up?”
“Edie hung up.”
“And?”
“And I never heard from her again. And William, he never heard from Billy.”
“What do you think happened to them?” I ask.
“We are the parents. We are the worst to ask.”
“I’m asking anyway.”
“We thought they were dead.” Mrs. Parker bites down on her lip for a moment. “I think that’s why William and me got together. After our spouses died, of course. We would never before that. But it was like our relationship was an echo of our children’s, like a tiny sliver of their love lived on and brought the two of us together.” Then Mrs. Parker echoed my very thoughts: “If my Edie and his Billy were alive all this time, they’d have found a way to let us know. That’s what we used to believe anyway.”
“You don’t believe that now?”
She shakes her head. “Now we don’t know what to believe, Mr. Lockwood. Because we also thought Ry Strauss was dead this whole time. So now, well, that’s why you’re here.”
With her free hand, Mrs. Parker reaches out for mine. I want to pull away—gut impulse, sorry—but I make myself stay still. Now her left hand holds my hand, her right hand holds Mr. Rowan’s. We probably stay that way for a second, maybe two or three, but it feels much longer.
“Now William and I have hope again,” she says, choked up. “If Ry Strauss survived all these years, maybe our children did too. Maybe Edie and Billy ran off somewhere and got married. Maybe they have children and even grandchildren of their own, and maybe, just maybe, we can all be reunited before, well, before William and me finish that eighteenth hole.”
I am not sure what to say.
“Mr. Lockwood,” she continues, “do you think Edie and Billy are alive?”
I choose my lie carefully. “I don’t know. But if they are, I will find them.”
She looks into my eyes. “I believe you.”
I wait.
“Will you contact us when you learn the truth?” Mrs. Parker asks. “Either way. We’ve been waiting a long time for closure. Do you know what that’s like?”
“I don’t,” I admit.
“Promise us you’ll tell us when you learn the truth. No matter how awful. Promise us both.”
And so I do.
CHAPTER 26
I sit in the passenger seat of a parked tow truck driven by a man named Gino. I know his name because the name is sewn in red cursive on his work shirt.
“So now what?” Gino asks me.
I am watching Elena Randolph, the woman who purportedly dated Arlo Sugarman at Oral Roberts University, through her storefront window at the CityGate Plaza in Rochester, New York. The other strip mall tenants include a psychic, a tax service, a Dollar Palace (cue my shudder), and a Subway (cue my double shudder). According to the flashing neon sign, Elena Randolph’s beauty parlor or hair salon or whatever terminology they now use for such establishments is called Shear Lock Combs. I don’t know whether to applaud or put a bullet through the sign.
Elena Randolph’s 2013 Honda Odyssey has the vanity plate DO-OR-DYE. I frown. I wish Myron were here. He enjoys these sorts of puns. He and Ms. Randolph would, no doubt, get along.
“We just gonna sit here?” Gino asks.
My phone rings. It’s Kabir.
“Articulate,” I say.
“No calls,” he says.
I am not surprised. We’d been monitoring Mrs. Parker and Mr. Rowan since I’d left a little more than an hour ago. My hope was that they were lying to me and once I left, they would reach out and warn Edie and Billy that I was searching for them. But alas, that didn’t happen. Onward.
“Anything else?”
“I did some research on Trey Lyons. You were right. Ex-military. Works security in a variety of countries.”
I consider that. “Put two more men on him.”
Trey Lyons will be a festering problem if I don’t take care of it soon. How had he put it in the van? He can’t let me live, and I can’t let him.
I check my watch. It’s half past three p.m. and Shear Lock Combs—the name is growing on me—doesn’t close until five. Enticing as the prospect of chilling with Gino for the next ninety minutes may be, I choose to forgo the pleasure and get moving.
“Wait for my signal,” I tell Gino.
“You’re the boss.”
I step out of the tow truck and head toward the salon’s door. When I enter, all eyes turn to me, though some do so via mirrors. There are three chairs, all in use. Three women clients in black chairs, three women beauticians. Two more women lounge in a waiting area. The coffee table is blanketed with gossip magazines, but both waiting women prefer their phones.
The ladies all smile at the male interloper, save one. Elena Randolph is tall and slender. Despite being sixty-five years old, she wears tight slacks and a sleeveless top, and it works well enough on her. Her hair is gray and spiky, her face birdlike, her expression harsh. Reading glasses hang from a chain around her neck.
“Can I help you?” she asks.
“We need to talk,” I say.
“I’m with a client right now.”
“It’s important.”
“We close at five.”
“No, sorry, that won’t do for me.”
There is what some might call an uncomfortable silence, but as I think we’ve established by now, I find no silences uncomfortable.
The fleshy redheaded beautician working the chair next to Elena’s says, “Uh, I can finish Gertie for you.”
Elena Randolph just stares at me.
The redhead bends down to an old woman whose hair is covered in tinfoil. “I can finish you up, can’t I, Gertie?”
Gertie shouts, “Huh?”
Elena Randolph slowly puts down a comb and scissors, places both hands on Gertie’s shoulders, bends down, and says, “I’ll be right back, Gertie.”
“Huh?”
Elena’s eyes shoot daggers at me. I deflect them with a smile that could best be des
cribed as disarming. She marches out the door so that we are now both in front of the window of her salon. All eyes stay on us. No one goes back to work.
“And you are?” Elena asks.
“Windsor Horne Lockwood the Third,” I say.
“Am I supposed to know you?”
“I believe you spoke to my assistant Kabir on the telephone.”
She nods as though she expected this. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“It would be wonderful if we could just skip this part,” I say.
“Pardon?”
“The part where you say you won’t talk to me and then I start my barrage. It really is such a waste, and in the end, you will cave.”
She puts her hands on her narrow hips. “Are you a cop?”
I frown. “In these threads?”
That almost makes her smile.
“Tell me about Ralph Lewis.” I hand her the scan from the yearbook with the medieval band. “You two dated at Oral Roberts University.”
Elena doesn’t so much as glance at the page. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I sigh dramatically. I had hoped to avoid this, but my patience is wearing thin. I raise my hand and snap my fingers. Two seconds later, the tow truck pulls into the lot and stops behind her Honda Odyssey. Gino jumps out, slips on a thick pair of gloves, and pulls a lever to start lowering the flatbed.
“Hey,” Elena shouts. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“That’s my main man Gino,” I say. “He’s repossessing your car.”
“He can’t—”
I hand her the orders. “You are in heavy debt, Ms. Randolph. On your vehicle. On your house.” I point to the salon. “On your place of business.”
“I’ve made arrangements,” she says.
“Yes, with the old collection agency. But I’ve purchased your debt, and so now you owe me. I’ve examined your financial situation and feel that you are a bad risk, ergo, per my rights, I’m foreclosing on your assets as of right now. Gino here will take the Honda. I have two men who are at this moment padlocking the front door of your home. In ten seconds, I will open the door to your business and inform your customers that they will have to vacate the premises immediately.”
WIN Page 22