Girl Missing (7 page)

“That’s just it. He’s a
cop
. No one out there trusts cops. Certainly Maeve wouldn’t trust him. She’d think he was out to arrest her. Or reel her in for me.”

“Is that what you’re trying to do?”

“I just want to know she’s alive and well.”

“She’s an adult, Adam. She can make her own choices.”

“What if her choices are insane?”

“Then she lives with them.”

“You don’t understand. I made a promise to her mother. I promised that Maeve would be taken care of. So far I’ve done a pretty deplorable job.” He sighed. “At the very least, I should look for her.”

“What if she doesn’t want to be found?”

“Then she should
tell
me that, face-to-face. But I have to find her first. And you’re the only one I know who’s familiar with South Lexington.”

Kat laughed. “Yeah, I guess it’s not the sort of neighborhood your dinner guests would frequent.”

“I would appreciate it. I really would. Just show me the place. Put me in touch with some of the people. I’d reimburse you for your time, of course. You only have to say how much—”

“Wait a minute.” She moved closer to him, her chin tilted up in astonishment. “You were going to pay me?”

“I mean, it’s only appropriate—”

“Forget it.
Forget it
. I’m a doctor, Quantrell, okay? I’m not the butler. I’m not the cook. I’m a doctor, and I already get paid for what I do.”

“So?”

“Which means I
don’t
need a moonlighting job. When I do a favor for a friend—and I’m not necessarily putting you in the category—I do it
as
a friend. Gratis.”

“You want to do it out of the kindness of your heart. You want me to feel grateful. And I do, I really do.” He paused, then added softly: “I also really need your help.”

Kat wasn’t philosophically opposed to helping her fellow man. And a devoted dad in search of his daughter, well, that was an appeal she could hardly refuse. But this particular dad was no charity case.

Still …

She walked over to her car and flung open the door. “Get in, Quantrell.”

“Excuse me?”

“We’re not taking your car, because a nice new Volvo’s an invitation to a chop job. So let’s go in mine.”

“To South Lexington?”

“You want an intro to the place, I know some people you can talk to. People who’d know what’s going on in the neighborhood.”

Adam hesitated.

“Listen,” she said. “You want to live dangerously or not?”

He regarded her battered Subaru. Then he shrugged. “Why not?” he said, and climbed into her car.

South Lexington was a different place at night. What by day had seemed merely drab and depressing had, by night, assumed new menace. Alleys seemed to snake away into nowhere, and in that darkness lurked all the terrible unknowns a mind could conjure.

Kat parked beneath a streetlamp, and for a moment she studied the sidewalk, the buildings. A block away, a dozen or so teenagers had gathered on the corner. They looked harmless enough, just a bunch of kids engaged in the adolescent rites of spring.

“It looks okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

They got out of the car and walked up the sidewalk, toward Building Five. The teenagers, at once alerted to intruders in their territory, turned and stared. Automatically, Adam moved close beside Kat and tightly grasped her arm.

The building was unlocked, so they went inside. The lobby was as she’d remembered it: dingy walls, nutmeg-colored carpet to hide the stains, half the hall lights burned out. The graffiti was a little more graphic and less poetic
than she remembered; the artwork had definitely taken a slide for the worse.

The elevator, as always, was out of commission.

“I don’t think it
ever
worked,” she muttered, noting the faded
OUT OF ORDER
sign. “It’s four flights up. We’ll have to walk.”

They went up the stairs, stepping over broken toys and cigarette butts. The handrail, once smoothly burnished, was now scarred by a series of initials carved in the wood. Noises filtered out from the various apartments: crying babies, blaring TV sets and radios, a woman yelling at her kids. Floating above it all were the pure and crystalline tones of a girl singing “Amazing Grace.” The sound soared like a cathedral above the ruins. As they ascended the stairs to the fifth floor, the girl’s voice grew louder, until they knew it was coming from behind the very door where they stopped.

Kat knocked.

The singing stopped. Footsteps approached, and the door opened a crack. A girl with a silky face the color of mocha gazed out over the security chain with doe eyes.

“Bella?” said Kat.

The smile that appeared on the girl’s face was like a brilliant wash of sunshine. “Kat!” she cried, unlatching the door chain. She turned and called out: “Papa Earl! It’s Kat!”

“Don’t rush me,” grumbled a voice from the next room. “I don’t go runnin’ for no one.”

Bella gave Kat an embarrassed look as they stepped into the apartment. “Those bones of his,” she murmured. “Ache him real bad in this weather. He’s in a foul mood …”

“
Who’s
in a foul mood?” snapped Papa Earl, shuffling into the room. He moved slowly, his head tipped forward, his once jet-black hair now a grizzled white. How old he had gotten, thought Kat sadly. Somehow, she had never thought this man would be touched by the years.

Kat went forward to give him a hug. It was almost like hugging a stranger; he seemed so small, so frail, shrunken by time. “Hi, Papa Earl,” she said.

“You got your nerve, girl,” he grumbled. “Go two years, three, not even droppin’ by.”

“Papa Earl!” Bella said. “She’s here now, isn’t she?”

“Yeah, got good ’n’ guilty, did she?”

Kat laughed and took his hand. It felt like
bones wrapped in parchment. “How you been, Papa Earl? Did you get the coat I sent?”

“What coat?”

“You know,” Bella said, sighing. “The down jacket, Papa Earl. You wore it
all
winter.”

“Oh.
That
coat.”

Bella gave Kat a weary
you know how he is
look and said, “He
loves
that coat.”

“Papa Earl,” said Kat. “I brought someone with me.”

“Who?”

“His name is Adam. He’s standing right over here.”

Gently she turned the old man to face Adam. Papa Earl extended his arm, held it out in midair for the expected handshake. Only then, as the two men faced each other, could Adam see the snowy cataracts clouding the old man’s eyes.

Adam took the offered hand and grasped it firmly. “Hello … Papa Earl,” he said.

Papa Earl let out a hoot. “Makes you feel dumb, don’t it? Big fella like you callin’ a shrimp like me Papa.”

“Not at all, sir.”

“So what you got going with our Katrina here?”

“He’s just a friend, Papa Earl,” said Kat.

There was a pause. “Oh,” the old man said. “It’s like that.”

“I wanted you to meet him, talk to him. See, he’s looking for someone. A woman.”

Papa Earl’s grizzled head lifted with sudden interest. The blind eyes seemed to focus on her.

“What do I know?”

“You know everything that goes on in the Projects.”

“Let’s sit down,” the old man said. “My bones are killing me.”

They went into the kitchen. Like the rest of the apartment, the room was on the far side of used. Linoleum tiles had worked loose below the sink. The Formica counters were chipped. The stove and refrigerator were straight from the
Leave It to Beaver
era. Papa Earl’s other grandchild, Anthony, sat hunched at the table, shoveling spaghetti hoops into his mouth. He scarcely looked up as the others came in.

“Hey, Anthony!” barked Papa Earl. “Ain’t you gonna say hello to your old babysitter?”

“Hello,” Anthony grunted and stuffed in another spoonful of spaghetti hoops.

Their personalities hadn’t changed a bit, Kat realized, watching Anthony and Bella, remembering
all those evenings she had looked after them while Papa Earl worked. Back in the days when the old man still had his vision. These two might be twins, they might have the same mocha coloring, the same high, sculpted cheekbones, but their personalities were like darkness and light. Bella could warm a room with her smile; Anthony could chill it with a single glance.

Papa Earl shuffled about the familiar kitchen with all the sureness of a sighted man. “You hungry?” he asked. “You want something to eat?”

Kat and Adam watched Anthony noisily lap tomato sauce and they said, in the same breath, “Nothing, thanks.”

They all sat down at the table, Papa Earl across from them, his cataracts staring at them eerily. “So who’s this woman you looking for?” he asked.

“Her name is Maeve Quantrell,” said Kat. “We think she’s living in the Projects.”

“You have a picture?”

Kat glanced at Adam.

“Yes. As a matter of fact, I do,” he said, and reached for his wallet. He placed a snapshot on the table.

Kat had been expecting to see a version of what he’d described to her, a hellion in black leather with Technicolor hair. What she saw instead was a fragile blond girl, the sort you’d find shrinking in the corner at a school dance.

“Bella?” said Papa Earl.

Bella reached for the photo. “Oh, she’s real pretty. Blond hair. Sort of shy looking.”

“How old?”

“She’s twenty-three,” said Adam. “She looks different now. Probably dyed her hair some crazy color. Wears more makeup.”

“Anthony? You seen this girl around?” asked Papa Earl.

Anthony glanced at the photo and shrugged. Then he rose, tossed his empty bowl in the sink, and stalked out of the kitchen. A moment later they heard the apartment door slam shut.

“Like a wild animal, that boy,” Papa Earl said with a sigh. “Comes and goes when he wants. Don’t know what to do ’bout him.”

Bella was still studying Maeve’s photo. Softly she asked, “Who is she?”

“My daughter,” said Adam.

Papa Earl sat back, nodding with instant understanding. “So you lookin’ for your girl.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Adam shook his head, puzzled by the question. “Because she’s my daughter.”

“But she run away. She don’t want to be found. Girl like that, you ain’t never gonna find her ’less she comes to
you
.”

“Then I suppose …” Adam looked down wearily. “I suppose I’d settle for just knowing she’s all right.”

Papa Earl was silent a moment. It was hard to tell what thoughts were going on behind those clouded eyes of his. At last he said, “You’ll want to talk to Jonah.”

“Jonah?” asked Kat.

“He’s the big man now.”

“Since when?”

“Year ago. Took over when Berto went down. Anything you want ’round here, gotta go through Jonah.”

“Thanks,” said Kat. “We’ll follow up on that.” She was about to stand when another question occurred to her. “Papa Earl,” she said, “did you know a boy named Nicos Biagi?”

The old man paused. “I heard of him, yeah.”

“Xenia Vargas?”

“Maybe.”

“Did you hear she died?”

He sighed. “Lotta people die ’round here. Don’t stick in your mind much anymore, people dying.”

“They both took the same drug, Papa Earl. This drug, it’s moved into the Projects and it’s killing people.”

He said nothing. He just sat there, his sightless eyes staring at her.

“If you hear anything, anything at all about it, will you call me?” She took out her business card and laid it on the table. “I need help on this.”

He touched the card, his bony fingers moving across
KAT NOVAK, MD
printed in black. “You still workin’ for the city?” he asked.

“Yes. The medical examiner.”

“Don’t understand you, Katrina. You a doctor now, and you takin’ care of dead people.”

“I find out why they die.”

“But then it’s too late. Don’t do ’em no good. You should be in a hospital. Or open your own place out here. It’s what your mama wanted.”

Kat was suddenly aware of Adam’s gaze on her.
Damn it, Papa Earl
, she thought.
Save the lecture for another time
.

“I like my job,” she said. “I couldn’t stand it in a hospital.”

Papa Earl gazed at her with sad understanding. “Those were bad times for you, weren’t they? All those months with your mama …”

Kat rose to her feet. “Thanks for your help, Papa Earl. But we have to leave.”

Bella and her grandfather escorted them through the living room. It never changed, this room. The chairs were set in precisely the same places they’d always been, and Papa Earl navigated past them like a bat with sonar.

“Next time,” he grumbled as Adam and Kat left the apartment, “don’t you wait so long before visits.”

“I won’t,” said Kat. But it sounded hollow, that promise.
I don’t believe it myself
, she thought.
Why should he?

She and Adam headed back down the four flights of stairs, stepping over the same broken toys, the same cigarette butts. The smells of the building, the echoes of TV sets and babies’ squalls, funneled up the stairwell and unleashed a barrage of memories. Of how she used to play on these steps, used to sit outside her apartment door, her knees bunched up against her chest. Waiting, waiting for her mother to calm down. Listening to the crying inside the apartment, the sounds of her mother’s anguish, her mother’s
despair. The memories all rushed at her as she walked down the stairwell, and she knew exactly why she’d waited three long years to come back.

On the third-floor landing, she paused outside apartment 3H. The door was a different color than she’d remembered, no longer green. Now it was a weirdly bright orange, and it had a built-in peephole. It would be different inside as well, she realized. Different people. A different world.

She felt Adam’s hand gently touch her arm. “What is it?” he asked.

“It’s just—” She gave a tired little laugh. “Nothing stays the same, does it? Thank God.” She turned and continued down the stairs.

He was close beside her.
Too close
, she thought.
Too personal. Threatening to invade my space, my life
.