Blood Ties (3 page)

“I've been in there myself,” I said.

“Yeah.” He started to grin, then stopped. He flushed, as though he'd said something he shouldn't. He bit into a piece of toast. “How come you don't come see us?” he suddenly asked.

“Hard when I don't know where you are.”

He poured a glass of milk. “You and my mom . . .”

He didn't finish his sentence and I didn't finish it for him. I said, “It happens, Gary.”

After that I waited until he was done: all the eggs, four pieces of toast, two glasses of milk, a banana.

“Feel better?” I asked when the action had subsided.

He sat back in his chair, smiled for the first time. “You got anything left?”

“You serious? I could dig up a can of tuna.”

“Nah, just kidding. I'm good. Thanks, Uncle Bill. That was great.”

“Okay, so now tell me. What's going on, Gary?”

The smile faded. He shook his head. “I can't.”

“Don't bullshit me, Gary. A kid like you doesn't come to New York and start rolling drunks for no reason. Something wrong at home?”

“No,” he said. “What, you mean Mom and Dad?”

“Or Jennifer? Paula?”

“They're kids,” he said, seeming a little mystified at the question, as though nothing could be wrong with kids.

“Are you in trouble?” I kept pushing. “Drugs? You get some girl pregnant?”

His eyes widened. “Hell, no.” He sounded shocked.

“Is it Scott?”

“Dad?” Under the pallor, he colored. “What do you mean?”

“I told Hagstrom it wasn't. That you wouldn't run away to get away from Scott. But guys like Scott can be tough to live with.”

He didn't so much pause as seem caught up, blocked by the confusion of words. His shoulders moved, his hands twitched, as though they were trying to take over, to tell me something in the language he was used to using. “It's not like that, Uncle Bill,” he said, his hands sliding apart, coming back together. “I told you, I need to do something. Dad, he gets on my case sometimes, I guess. Whatever. But he's cool.” His hands were still working, so I waited. “I mean,” he said, “this would be, like, cool with him. If he knew.”

“Then let's call and tell him.”

I hadn't expected anything from that, and all I got was another shrug.

“He gets on your mom's case, too, am I right?” I asked. “And your sisters'? That can be hard to take.”

“I—” He shook his head, not looking at me. “This isn't that. That's not what it is.”

“Then what?”

“I can't tell you.”

“Christ, Gary.” I put down my coffee. “How long since you left home?”

“Day before yesterday.”

“Your mother must be worried.”

“I left a note.”

A note. “Saying what?”

“I said I had something to do and I'd be back as soon as I could. I said not to worry.”

“I'm sure that helped.” I was sorry about the sarcasm when I saw his eyes, but it was too late to take it back. “We have to call them, Gary.”

He shook his head. “We can't.”

“Why?”

Nothing.

“Where are you guys living now?”

“Uncle Bill. Uncle Bill, please.” He was leaning forward the way he had in the police station, and his eyes looked the same. “You got to lend me a few bucks, let me go do what I got to do. I'll pay you back. Real soon. Please—”

“You left home without any money?”

He glanced away. “I had some when I got here. But some guys . . .”

I looked at the skinned knuckles, the bruise. “You got mugged.”

“Three of them,” he said quickly, making sure I knew. “If it was just one—”

“They don't play fair in that game, Gary.”

“Yeah,” he said, deflating. “Yeah, I know. Look, Uncle Bill.” I waited, but all he said was, “Please.”

“No,” I said. “Not a chance. Not if I don't know what's going on.”

He shrugged miserably, said nothing.

“Gary?” He looked up at me. I asked, “Did you know I had a daughter?”

He nodded. “She . . . she died, right?”

“In an accident, when she was nine. She'd be a little older than you are now, if she'd lived.” I looked into my cup, drank coffee. “Her name was Annie,” I said. “I never talk about her to anyone.”

He said, “That's . . . I get that.”

“Do you know why I'm telling you about her?”

“Yeah. But . . .”

“Why?”

“Because, like, you're telling me something important, so I'll tell you. But I can't.”

“It's partly that,” I said. “And it's partly, I want you to know kids are important to me.” I spoke quietly. “Maybe I can help.”

A quick light flashed in his eyes, a man who'd seen water in the desert. Then his eyes dulled again: the water was a mirage, everything as bad as before.

I waited, but I didn't think he'd answer me, and he didn't.

“All right,” I said, getting up. “You look like you haven't slept in a long time. I have people who can find your folks, but I'm not going to wake them now. Take the back bedroom. I'm not going to sleep, Gary, we're three floors up, and I have an alarm system here, so don't even think about it. Just get some sleep.”

“I—”

“You can sleep, or you can sit around here with me. Or you can tell me what's going on. That's it.”

His eyes were desperate, trapped; they searched my face for a way out. What they found was not what he wanted. His shoulders slumped. “Okay,” he said, and his voice was a small boy's, not a man's. “Where should I go?”

I showed him the bedroom in back, unused for so long. I brought him sheets for the bed, offered to help him make it up. “No, it's okay,” he said, and he looked like someone who wanted to be alone, so I started out.

“Uncle Bill?” he said. I turned back. “Thanks. I'm sorry.” He shut the door.

I cleaned up the dishes, put the milk away. I went through the clothes Gary had left neatly in the laundry basket, picked up the jacket—the word arched across the back was
WARRIORS
—from off my couch. I was hoping for something, a label, some scrap of paper, that could get me closer to finding where he'd come from, but there wasn't anything. Back in the living room, I put a CD on, kept the volume low. Gould playing Bach: complex construction, perfectly understood. I kicked off my shoes, lit a cigarette, stretched out on the couch, wondering how early I could call Vélez, the guy who does my skip traces. Wondering what it was that was so important to Gary, so impossible to talk about. Wondering where my sister lived now, whether everything was all right there, the way Gary had said.

The searing crash of breaking glass came a second before the alarm started howling. I yanked myself off the couch, raced to the back, but I wasn't in time. When I threw the door open I saw the shards, saw the pillow on the sill and the chair lying on the floor, and knew what had happened. Gary was a smart kid. He'd been afraid to mess with the catches, afraid the alarm would go off before he got the window open. So he smashed it. Held a pillow on the broken glass in the frame, lowered himself out, dropped to the alley. And was gone.

I charged down the stairs and around the block to where the alley came out, because I had to, but it was useless. I chose a direction, ran a couple more blocks calling Gary's name. A dog barked; a drunk in a doorway lifted his head, held out his hand. Nothing else. Finally I stopped, just stood, gazing around, like a man in a foreign place. Then I turned, headed back to the alley. I checked under my window, where the streetlights glittered off the broken glass. No sign of blood: I let out a breath. I straightened, looked up at the window. Light glowed into the empty alley and the alarm was still ringing.

I'm sorry
, Gary had said, before he closed the door.

two

Back upstairs, I silenced the alarm, killed the music, called Vélez. I didn't give a damn what time it was.

“Better be fuckin' important,” was how he answered the phone.

“It's Bill Smith,” I said. “I need you to find someone.”

“Oh, no shit?” he groaned. “
Dios
mio
, man, they got to be found now?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“All you have to do is put on your underwear and go sit at your computer, Luigi. Come on, man, it's important.”

“What I need my underwear for? Okay, okay, tell me.”

“A family. Russell: father Scott, in his forties; mother Helen, thirty-nine. Three kids: Gary, fifteen; Jennifer, eleven; Paula, nine. Last known address, One-eighty-two Littlejohn Trail, Sarasota, Florida.”

“When?”

“Three years ago. Could be more recent than that. I don't know when they left.”

“What kind of work this guy do?”

“Trucking, shipping. He's management. In Sarasota he ran a trucking company.”

“He owned it?”

“No.”

“She work?”

“Last I heard, no.”

“What else?”

“Before Sarasota, Kansas City. Before that, somewhere in Maryland. Gary plays football. Left behind a varsity jacket that says Warriors.”

“What colors?” he interrupted.

“Maroon and white.”

“What else?”

“Mother's maiden name is Smith.” I gave him the date of her birthday.

“Hey,
chico
—”

“Yeah. So the sooner the better, okay?”

He hesitated, as though he was about to say something else, but all he did was ask, “
Chico
: These people. They looking to stay lost?”

“I don't think so.”

“
Bueno
. Makes it easy.”

We hung up. Luigi Vélez was a stick-skinny guy with curly hair and a scruffy goatee. His mother was Italian, his father Puerto Rican. He had a bloodhound's nose for the search, a predator's ability to track people through the data spoor they left behind. He almost never left his apartment. “Hey, you makin' wine, you don't go around chewin' chili peppers,
chico
,” he told me once. “Real people, they just confuse me.”

I smoked and waited for Vélez to call. I didn't know what the hell else to do while I waited so I cleaned up the mess in the bedroom, righting the chair with a vindictive roughness that made me stop, breathe, tell myself there were things that helped and things that didn't. More than once I thought about calling Lydia. She was my partner; I needed help. But I didn't call. I didn't know what she could do right now besides tell me this wasn't my fault, and I didn't want to hear it.

I left the room, closing the door behind me. I was making another pot of coffee when the phone rang. I grabbed it up before the second ring. “Smith.”

“Luigi Vélez
el
Fantastico
.”

“You found them?”

“DMV,
chico
. You get in those databases, it's pig heaven.”

“Give it to me.”

“Five-sixty-two Hawthorne Circle, Warrenstown, New Jersey.”

“Warrenstown?”

“High-class place, man. Fancy houses, trees and shit. Big football town, too. Warrenstown Warriors, division champs. Maybe you seen them in the papers.”

“If you say so, Luigi. Phone?”

“973-424-3772.”

“Sure this is right?”

“You got to ask?” He sounded hurt. “Here's how genius works, amigo: First I find Helen Russell, driver's license is new in the last three years. People move, they still got to drive. Then I—”

“Luigi—”

“—look at the birthdays for the one you said. Then Scott Russell—”

“Luigi!” He stopped. “Sorry I asked. The check's in the mail.”

I wouldn't make conversation about Warrenstown's high school football team and I wasn't willing to listen to his explanation of his methods, which would have been interesting if you had that kind of time. I could hear Vélez's disappointment in me as a client and a student of human nature in his sigh. He said, “Better be double its usual size,
chico.
It ain't even six yet.”

It wasn't, but I poured a cup of coffee, lit a cigarette, and called the number he'd given me.

The “Hello?” that answered was a woman's voice, high, soft. I spoke to her seldom, and if you'd asked me to describe her voice I wouldn't have been able to. But I'd know it, I suddenly realized, anywhere.

“Hello?” she said again, quick, anxious, weary but not sleepy. I hadn't woken her. Maybe, since Gary left, she hadn't slept.

“It's Bill,” I said.

She drew a breath; I'd caught her by surprise. “Bill? Bill, what are—?”

“Gary was here,” I said.

“Gary? Oh, thank God.” The relief that flooded her words made my stomach knot. “Thank God! Let me talk to him.”

I said what I had to: “He was here. He's gone.”

A small silence, a small voice. “Gone? Where? Where did he go?”

I told her: Midtown South, the silent cab ride, the broken window. “Why did he come here, Helen? What's he up to?”

“I . . . I don't know. He—” She broke off, said away from the phone, “It's my brother.” Then she must have covered the phone. I heard nothing, stayed on the line, smoked, waited.

The next voice I heard was a man's, hot and loud. “Smith? What the hell's going on? Gary went to see you? What the hell for?”