Generation V (7 page)

“Late night, buddy?” Matt asked. “You’re working a thousand-yard stare.”

“No, I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I’m just zoning out here. What’s up?”

“I’ve been staking out a real estate developer, ended up in the neighborhood, wondered if you were free for lunch.”

“Sure, that’s great.” My stomach gave me a fast reminder that I was overdue for a break. “Just give me a second.”

One of Jeanine’s less delightful managerial quirks was her apparent feeling that the federal regulation that employees on an eight-hour shift are required to be given a food break is designed solely to ruin her business. She had an annoying habit of never reminding us to take our breaks, hoping that we’d get so busy that we’d forget entirely. By the time I’d reminded her about how I was owed one and got out the door, Matt was waiting by his car and, from the expression on his face, had just taken a big swig of his coffee.

“I won’t feel bad if you dump it,” I said, shoving papers and files over so that I could get into the passenger seat. Matt drove an old Buick that was about the size of a boat, with beat-up leather seats and probably twelve different types of fungus brewing in the fast food graveyard that built up in the floor space of the backseat. Matt had an actual office that he shared with two Realtors and a home decorator, but no one would ever guess it from his car, which was loaded down with almost all his files and paperwork, making it basically his office on wheels.

“I miss your job at the bakery,” Matt said. “The scones were fantastic.”

“All the leftover Danishes weren’t enough of a trade-off for getting up at three a.m.” Two months on that
schedule had left me feeling more like a vampire than usual, and despite the perks, I’d quit. Regular exposure to sunshine was now one of my few job requirements.

“God, and the cannoli,” Matt reminisced as he pulled into traffic. “I gained like ten pounds from that alone.”

“Dude, where? Your arms?” Matt’s suits might look like he pulled them from Goodwill boxes, but he does serious lifting and cardio. I asked him about that once, and he said that sneaking around trailing people resulted in a lot of backyard encounters with dogs and irate boyfriends. “Anyway, what’s up with the developer? Cheating?”

“The wife thinks so, and I’ve got about six more days on payroll just to be sure, but check this out.” Matt rooted around in a stack of file folders balanced precariously on his dash, and handed me one. Years of being handed innocuous folders just like this, however, had left me cautious.

“What’s in here? I’m about to eat, you know.”

“Nothing bad, just open it.”

“There’s no sex-swing bullshit, is there? Because that’s what it was the last time you said ‘not bad.’”

“No, no.”

“No furries either. I had nightmares for a week.”

“Jeez, you have no trust, Fort. Just open it.”

I eased it open, ready to slam the folder shut again if it was something awful, then just stared.

“That’s…um…”

“Live-action role play, yeah. I got those photos two nights ago in the park.”

“And your guy is…”

“The one dressed up like the wizard.”

I peered closer. Not really what middle-aged accountant-looking guys usually were up to in one of Matt’s folders. “What’s up with the tennis balls?”

“He was yelling ‘lightning bolt, lightning bolt’ every time he threw one. It was frickin’ awesome.”

“The wife has no idea he does this?”

“Apparently not. She was sure he was doing his secretary. Guess cheating comes in many forms, and not just drunk sorority girls or people dressed up like teddy bears.”

I gagged a little. “Please don’t mention the furries.”

Matt just chuckled, then flipped on his turn signal. We pulled into the lot of one of those great corner greasy spoon diners where the parking spots are still sized for finned Chevys from the ’sixties and the waitresses all look like they miss the days where they could work with a cigarette hanging out of the corner of their mouths. I raised my eyebrows when Matt snagged another file from the dash pile.

“Is this a working lunch, Matt?” I asked. I’ve posed as Matt’s son, nephew, employee, coworker, and, on one never-to-be-discussed-again occasion, boyfriend. I guess that one of the drawbacks of knowing a private detective is that he’s almost never fully off the clock, and a lot of what he does involves subterfuge. Matt’s dating life was pretty much a wasteland, so whenever he needed a second person on a job, I tended to be tapped.

“No, the owner is a client. I just have to drop off some updates. Grab a booth. This won’t take long.”

The whole place had that kind of look that could’ve passed for deliberately retro, but it hadn’t been cleaned in so long that it was obviously original. I’m not sure why, but these kinds of health-code-flaunting places always
seem to make the best burgers. I had to engage in a brief tussle with my principles when the kitchen door flipped open and I got a full whiff of the sizzling, grease-soaked meat. My stomach gave a very audible rumble.

While Matt went straight into a back room that said
EMPLOYEES ONLY
, I sat down in a booth that was probably bright aqua once but that a thousand shifting butts had worn down to a mix of dull aqua and powder blue. It was one of those squeaky vinyl ones, repaired in a few points with duct tape.

I flipped through the menu, looking for something vegetarian that could be a worthy trade-off for the burger that my saliva glands were craving. Since this place probably hadn’t changed its menu since Eisenhower was president, that was a tough task.

Matt’s definition of “won’t take long” is pretty elastic, so I was surprised when he dropped into the booth before I’d even gotten through the list of hot dog combinations.

“That really was quick,” I said.

Matt grunted and pulled out a menu. “Not much to say.”

I glanced over at him again. His mood looked a lot gloomier than it had in the car, and he was tapping one hand against the table as he paged through the menu.

“What’s this case about?” I asked.

Matt’s mouth thinned, and for a minute I thought he wouldn’t tell me, but then he shrugged and pushed the folder across the table.

“Owner’s daughter. Senior in high school. Told her parents she was going out to a party one night. Never arrived there, never came home. Cops thought it looked like she ran off with her boyfriend, but the family always maintained that she must’ve been kidnapped.” Matt’s
voice was clipped and professional, very Joe Friday. Just the facts, ma’am.

“How long ago?” I flipped open the file and my jaw dropped when I saw the photo, which featured some extreme Farrah Fawcett hair.

“’Seventy-seven,” Matt said blandly.

The waitress chose that moment to come over, plopping glasses down and filling them with water. With her frizzy, overdyed hair, wide hips, and tendency to call both of us “honey,” she matched the diner. I liked having waitresses like her—her smile was forced, and she was probably as tired as she looked, but she had the menu completely memorized, and she didn’t even have to bother to write our orders down.

Matt ordered a bacon burger with all the fixings, while I settled on a grilled cheese sandwich with extra fries on the side.

“You’re still sticking with the no-meat thing, huh?” Matt shook his head. “Once a girl cheats on you, I’d say you should feel free to get some sausage of your own. No pun intended on that one.” Matt wasn’t a fan of Beth. He thought about it for a second, then amended, “No implications either. What’s the female equivalent of sausage? Skirt steak? Hamburger patty?”

“It’s not for her anymore,” I said, brushing the topic off. “But this missing girl. Nineteen seventy-seven? So she’d be…?”

“Fifty-three this year, yeah.” Matt took a swig of his water.

I blinked, feeling blank and uncertain. “They’ve been looking for her the whole time?”

“Since the day she didn’t come home. Police poked
around for about two months because the parents kept calling, but that was it.”

“How long have you been on it?”

“The parents hired me on about ten years ago.”

I stared at Matt for a long second, surprised. I’d thought I knew what his job was like, with a lot of time spent in public offices tracking down people’s paper histories, and even more time spent sitting in his car trying to see if someone was cheating, but he’d never told me about this or anything like it. The only lost thing he’d ever mentioned was pets or the occasional piece of artwork that he’d been hired to hunt down.

“Have you found anything?” I asked cautiously.

Matt shook his head. “I told the parents when they hired me that we’d probably never know anything. The trail has been cold too long, and if she was still out there she would’ve found a way to contact them by now, if that’s what she wanted. In all likelihood, she died years ago.”

“So why are you looking?” I asked. “Is it the money?” I knew that there’d been a few times when Matt had ended up living out of his office because he couldn’t afford an apartment.

“Nah, I stopped charging them years ago. Told them they were wasting their money. We ended up agreeing that they’d comp me meals in exchange for me keeping up with it. It’s not that much, really. I keep an eye on morgues, halfway houses. Sometimes if I’m talking with working girls or druggies, I’ll flash her photo, see if anyone recognizes it. Run Web searches for her name every now and then. Whenever I’m out of town I’ll stop by the local police station, ask around.”

That didn’t sound like not much to me, but the waitress
came by and set a huge plate of food in front of each of us. Matt took a big bite out of his burger, and I gnawed away at some fries for a second, thinking about everything.

We ate in silence for a few minutes before I finally asked my question. “So, why keep looking?”

Matt lifted his eyebrows. “She’s their kid, Fort. They’re never going to stop until they have an answer.”

“Not them, you. She’s not your kid, and you don’t know her. You’re not getting paid for this.” Matt looked annoyed, and I rushed to explain. “I’m not trying to be a jerk and say you shouldn’t. I just really want to understand.”

Matt chewed for a long second, considering. “It’s like this,” he said finally, speaking in a low, tight voice. “When I was a cop, I saw a lot of really bad stuff. People whose kids or parents just disappeared one day, never to be seen again. Or someone was murdered, and we never really found out why.” We very carefully didn’t look at each other for that, because I knew he was talking about Jill and Brian. “And you could see how it just tore people’s lives apart. We’d look for a while, but eventually the brass would sit you down and say that it wasn’t going anywhere, and that you had to move on to something else. Now, though, I don’t have anyone saying that I can’t keep looking, and I always think to myself, what if I stopped and I could’ve actually found something if I just kept on it? Give someone answers, give some closure, or maybe even bring someone home who might not get there if I wasn’t there to help. And once I think that, I feel responsible, like I have to keep going.” Matt gave a small shrug, then an uncomfortable smile. We usually didn’t get this deep. “I’m starting to feel like I’m in a
chick flick, all this feelings shit, Fort. We’re going to have to start talking about baseball.”

We both laughed for a minute, and then I glanced over at him again. I remembered that when I was little, Matt always seemed to be laughing, and that he had a revolving series of girlfriends, but now there were a lot of frown lines around his perpetually tight-lipped mouth, and I knew that his relationships usually couldn’t outlast green bananas. I felt like I wanted to ask him more about it, but he was clearly uncomfortable, so I let it go while he started a long monologue about the Red Sox that lasted through the rest of the meal.

When we were heading out, the waitress waved us off, pocketing the check, and I knew that she must know about the owners, and who Matt was. My stomach was full, but for a second I thought about the owner, still looking for a daughter who he must know was dead, and I actually felt guilty for the free meal.

My guilt lasted through Matt dropping me back off and the rest of my shift. I managed to miss my bus again, and I counted all the things that I had to do on the long walk home. It was a warm afternoon, and I’d worked up a sweat by the time I got to my apartment. The door was unlocked, an unfortunate but not entirely unusual by-product of living with Larry, who on more than one occasion had lost his keys and just left the door itself unlocked when he went out.

I opened the door slowly and cautiously, just in case a thief had finally taken Larry up on this repeated offer to steal all of our stuff. But instead of some crackhead bent on financing a drug addiction, I found something far more unexpected in our kitchen.

Beth, my girlfriend—if I could even call her that anymore.

I hadn’t seen her in almost three weeks, after a shared trip down to a film festival on the Brown University campus. It had been a great date, with lots of clandestine groping and making out intermixed with whispered comments about directorial decisions. Later, Beth got us into a festival after-party organized and hosted by the film studies department, and I’d finally begun hoping that we were getting over the whole sex-with-my-roommate business. She’d excused herself to go to the bathroom, and I was going for a second pass at the buffet table when a casual glance over my shoulder revealed what she was actually doing: giving her phone number to a doctoral candidate in his thirties who, judging by his bright red slacks, was clearly a tool. The evening had ended in one of those crappy party situations where you’re having a fight in a hallway, and everyone you know ends up walking past you. The result of the fight had not been positive—Beth had accused me of having repressively traditionalistic gender and sexual beliefs and told me to read Judith Butler. I’d ended up so much on the defensive that I actually apologized to her when I dropped her off at her apartment. Two days later she’d sent me a sixteen-page e-mail that outlined her view of what a modern and liberated relationship was supposed to look like, which boiled down to her being able to have sex with as many people as she liked.