Lost Boy (26 page)

Ryder looked at the ball.

Thomas Trent gave it a little shake and let it lie in his open palm. “Here. It's yours. Take it.”

Mr. Starr remained silent. Ryder took the ball and looked up at the Braves' pitcher.

“Can I come in?” Trent's dark hair was flat and still wet from a shower. He wore a brown suede blazer over an open-collar shirt, with matching shoes. On his wrist was a watch so big it reminded Ryder of a gold plumbing fixture from the Pierre Hotel.

“Please do that.” Mr. Starr raised his voice from within. “And don't let me frighten you. I was once an ordinary man and like to think of myself in those terms. The look of horror on people's faces makes that difficult at times.”

They went into the hotel room and Ryder admired Thomas
Trent's attempt to control his facial expression when confronted with Mr. Starr's twisted shape.

“I'm Stephen Starr. You've already met your son, Ryder.” Mr. Starr kept going, even though Thomas Trent winced at the word “son.” “I'd shake hands but it's difficult for me.”

“That's okay,” Trent said. “I feel bad for Ryder. I know the whole thing in the clubhouse today was . . . it was pretty uncomfortable.”

“Why? Because they dragged a twelve-year-old boy out of the stadium like a terrorist? Kids are too soft these days, don't you think?” Mr. Starr's dead stare seemed to unsettle Thomas Trent.

Trent shook his head and looked from Mr. Starr to Ryder. “I'm not your father, Ryder. I don't know who you are or how you got here or anything. If Ruby Cantorelli is your mom, then I certainly knew her, but if I was your
father
, well, that's something the Ruby I knew wouldn't have kept a secret like that. I just can't believe she'd ever say I was your father.”

Ryder's eyes filled with tears. The bottom fell out of his world.

Thomas Trent stared at him for a moment, then in a quiet voice said, “She didn't say I was your father, did she?”

Mr. Starr gurgled, then spoke. “She didn't have to say it. Look at him. Same eyes. Same hair.”

Thomas Trent turned to Mr. Starr. “Look, no disrespect, but there are millions of people with green eyes and dark hair.”

“Dark
curly
hair.” Mr. Starr's head trembled.

Thomas Trent ignored him and spoke quietly to Ryder. “I'm sorry. I'm sure this is all real tough, kid. Maybe I can get
together some signed stuff to help out with a fund-raiser for your mom.”

Ryder folded his arms and tried not to sob. Tears fell straight from his face to tap the carpet. He couldn't even get the number out of his mouth, two hundred thousand. He doubted whether there were enough bats, balls, uniforms, and caps in all of Turner Field that could be signed and sold off for that much.

“So, you do feel for this boy?” Mr. Starr sounded annoyed. “You're not just some callous self-infatuated egomaniacal sports star?”

Thomas Trent scowled at Mr. Starr. “No. I'm not.”

“Wonderful.” Mr. Starr sounded truly pleased. “Then I know you won't mind taking a paternity test to make sure you're really
not
Ryder's father.”

“Listen, I'm not going to get involved in some kind of a scam thing.” Thomas Trent raised his voice at Mr. Starr. “They warned me not to even come over here, but I wanted the kid to have his ball and I wanted to set him straight.”

“It's not involved and this is not a scam!” Mr. Starr shouted Thomas Trent into silence before taking a breath to calm himself and speaking normally. “You can get one in a drugstore. You can rush the order and it takes a day
.
Swab your cheek. It's easy. It's simple and one hundred percent accurate.”

Trent took a breath and glanced at Ryder. “I can't just do something like that. I'm not—”

“You afraid of the truth?” Mr. Starr cut him off.

“No.”

“Because most people would be.” Mr. Starr's voice was calm
and rational. “But we don't want to ruin your life. Ryder doesn't need a father.”

Ryder flinched and wasn't sure that was the truth.

If Mr. Starr noticed, he didn't show it. “He just needs to save his mother's life, and if you
are
his father, I'd say you
owe
him that.”

Thomas Trent inhaled sharply, held his breath, then let it out. “I'll have to talk to my agent first, and my lawyer. You'll be here, I assume?”

“Waiting for your call,” Mr. Starr said.

Thomas Trent gave them a curt nod, then let himself out.

The phone call woke them up. Mr. Starr was lodged in his bed. Ryder had fallen asleep on top of the covers with the TV on. Outside, the lights from the city of Atlanta glowed in the blackness.

“Hello?” Ryder said into the phone, muting some show about great white sharks on Animal Planet.

“Is this Ryder?” Thomas Trent sounded exhausted, but the kind texture to his voice made Ryder ache to have this man really turn out to be his father.

“Yes.” On the TV screen, a shark broke the water's surface, its rows of sharp teeth gushing blood.

“Okay, you and your . . . friend meet me tomorrow at the Pencil Building.” Trent paused and cleared his throat. “Uh, it's 600 Peachtree. Take the elevator to the top. It's Troutman & Sanders. Ask for Leslie Spanko. She's my lawyer. We'll do the
test there. You'll have to sign some things first.”

Ryder heard a sudden shriek from the phone that wasn't Thomas Trent, but someone in the same room.

“Is that him!”
The voice was sharp and hysterical.

Ryder heard the phone being covered and muffled talking and a stretch of silence before the phone was uncovered.

“Sorry,” Trent said. “Just meet me there tomorrow at ten. Got that? Pencil Building. Top floor. Leslie Spanko. Okay? I gotta go.”

“What then?”
The second shriek was the last thing Ryder heard.

The line went dead and he sat there on the edge of his hotel bed with the phone in his hand and Mr. Starr lay on the other bed, blinking at him.

“Well?” Mr. Starr whispered.

“He's gonna do it,” Ryder said. “Tomorrow.”

Mr. Starr let out a long breath. “Well, good. This is very good, Ryder.”

“How do you know?” Ryder's heart thumped against his ribs.

“This man is your father.” Mr. Starr lay like a corpse, but his eyes flickered in the wavering blue light from the TV screen. “They're going to lock us down, but they'll give us what we need.”

“Lock us down?” Ryder thought of the shrieking in the background of the phone.

“You're not going to be able to make any claims against him or his estate, but they'll give us the money we need for your mom.”

“Mr. Starr, how do you know?” Ryder's voice trembled at the thought. They were so close, and he could really save his mother.

If Mr. Starr was right, this was it.

“Because I know. We'll have the money wired to New York and get this operation going. There's no reason to take chances. Then we'll catch the train back. Turn the TV off and get some sleep. Tomorrow is a big day.”

Ryder did as he was told and got into bed, pulling the covers up to his chin, even though he knew he wouldn't sleep.

He could barely breathe.

“I'm Ruby Shoesmith now.” Ryder's mom smiled at Thomas Trent and the two of them hugged.

“Mom?” Ryder didn't think they knew he was there.

Trent wore a look of disbelief. “Not him.”

“No,” Ruby said. “Not him.”

“Ryder,” said a strange voice.

They were on the top of a skyscraper, at the edge, but when Ryder looked over he didn't see streets or buildings or traffic down below. He saw an angry, twisting ocean.

“Not you either.” Thomas Trent was talking to Ryder's mom now. She wore her yellow puffy coat and her hair looked so black against it, like a traffic sign.

“Ryder,” said the voice again.

Trent took her by the shoulders and threw her over the edge.

The great white shark just like the one from the Animal Planet
show broke through the water's surface like an angry missile, showing nothing but teeth and blood.

Ryder screamed and bolted upright in his bed.

“Ryder?” Mr. Starr said. “Easy. It's time. You've got to help me up and get ready. I let you sleep, but we've got to get moving.”

Ryder shook the dream from his mind, but the sick feeling remained. Outside it was cloudy and dark. The clock read 9:07.

Panic flooded Ryder's brain. “Mr. Starr? Can we make it? Won't we have to get a connecting bus?”

“Easy, easy. We're gonna splurge and call a cab. We deserve it. Now help me up.”

Ryder helped Mr. Starr get ready, including wiping down his upper body with a soapy washcloth and helping him put on a clean shirt.

“Should I bring the baseball?” Ryder held it up.

“Absolutely. We need all the luck we can get,” Mr. Starr said.

Ryder fed Mr. Starr some oatmeal and a banana in the dining area, but he could eat nothing himself. His stomach crawled with a strange mixture of excitement and horror. The dream stayed fresh in his mind and he couldn't shake the heavy, dismal feeling that something would go wrong.

His stomach said so, and so did the dark Atlanta sky as they rode in the wheelchair-accessible Checker Cab into the city of Atlanta. It took a few minutes to get Mr. Starr back out of the cab and loaded into his chair. The driver was as cheerful and friendly to them as some long-lost uncle. Even Mr. Starr lost his
grouchiness for a few moments in the face of the driver's brilliant, grinning teeth.

Ryder looked up at the towering building in front of them as he wheeled Mr. Starr up the reddish-brown granite ramp. He saw why they called it the Pencil—it was tall and thin and pointed, and stood alone, a good mile from the other skyscrapers clustered in the city's center. They rode the elevator up to the fifty-third floor and asked the woman at a polished wood reception desk for Leslie Spanko. She made a call and Leslie Spanko's assistant appeared, a young man who introduced himself as Giovanni Castiglione.

“You can call me Gio.” The young man grinned at them and shrugged, then led them to a conference room as if he had no idea what was about to happen.

“Can I get you water or coffee?” Gio treated them the same as the cabdriver, like friends, but Ryder shook his head no. He couldn't drink anything. Mr. Starr stayed silent.

“I'll tell Ms. Spanko you're here,” he said, still smiling.

One wall was all windows and it looked out across the suburbs of Atlanta to a huge low mountain hunkered down all alone in the middle of a flat sea of trees. Ryder parked Mr. Starr at the end of the table and sat down in the black leather chair closest to him.

“What's that?” Ryder pointed at the mountain.

A serious-looking woman with short red hair and glasses, wearing a dark gray pants suit, walked into the room and looked where Ryder was pointing. “Stone Mountain,” she said. “It's the biggest single rock on the continent.”

“It's a rock?”

“One big rock left by a glacier, all by its lonesome. Powerful, right?” The woman held out a long, cool hand for Ryder to shake, surprising him with her grip. “I'm Leslie.”

Leslie turned to Mr. Starr, held out her hand, but retracted after a long moment of Mr. Starr's silent glare.

“I don't do handshakes,” Mr. Starr said.

“That's fine.” Leslie didn't seem to mind one bit. She sat down across the table from Ryder and set a file down in front of him before slapping down a chubby black-and-gold pen. “So, business.”

“Where's your client?” Mr. Starr asked. “We're not doing this without him.”

“Of course, of course.” Leslie looked at her watch. “He tends to run late, but I wanted to explain the terms of the deal to you two anyway . . . in case you need to think about it. Now, are you the boy's guardian?”