Sacrifice Fly (12 page)

There were only eight houses on Bevier Court, and even if I hadn’t known the address,
there’d be no mistaking the huge white house I parked in front of. It looked just
like the photo I was holding. From what I could tell, it was the last original house
on the block, but there was enough scaffolding along the side to launch a space shuttle.

I tossed my umbrella into the backseat, grabbed my suit jacket, and stepped out of
the car. The suit—last worn at a wake or a wedding or a court date—was too tight in
the waist, but it was the only one I owned.

As I adjusted my tie and stepped onto the driveway, I could see that the scaffolding
went around to the back of the house. Roberts was expanding the top floor. Royce had
told me Roberts was expecting another child. At the end of the driveway was the small
barnlike structure I had seen in the crayon drawing of the house. It looked as if
it served as a garage.

The sound of laughter came from somewhere inside the house, followed by the side door
crashing open. A young girl—long blond hair, maybe three years old—in a flowery sundress
came screaming down the steps, followed by a very pregnant dark-haired woman wearing
an identical dress. The girl let the woman catch her, and she received a bunch of
tickles in return. The girl’s skin was a shade lighter than her mother’s. They both
stopped laughing when they noticed me. The daughter looked at me curiously, the mother
with annoyance.

“I told you people,” she said, “my husband is handling everything with the loan, and
he is not going to be home until this evening.”

Here I was trying for cop, and I got banker.

“Mrs. Roberts?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, still annoyed.

“My name is Donne, and I’d like to talk to you about—”

“I told you,” she said. “John will not be home—”

“—your cousin Frankie.”

She gave me a worried look and put her hand on her daughter’s head. “Frankie?” she
said, her tone a mix of excitement and concern. “Have you found them?”

“No,” I said. “We have … they have not been found. That’s why I’m here.”

“My husband told you people … Detective Ross, I think … we don’t know anything about
where they are.” Back to annoyed. “Don’t you people talk to each other?”

“Detective Royce,” I corrected. “Of course we do, it’s just that—”

“As a matter of fact, my husband is down in the city today and planning on talking
personally to Detective … Royce. So I’m afraid you have wasted a trip, Detective…”

“My name’s Raymond Donne, Mrs. Roberts.”

“Well, Detective Donne, you’ll just have to drive back down and talk to my husband
there. I’m sorry.”

Anita Roberts took her daughter by the hand and started walking to the back of the
house. The little girl gave me a smile as she looked at me over her shoulder.

“Elsa told me to say hello,” I lied.

Anita stopped and turned back to me.

“You spoke to Elsa?”

“Absolutely. She’s been quite cooperative.” I took a few steps forward. “She gave
me the impression that you’d do the same.”

I listened to the wind blowing through the trees and the siren calls of the cicadas.
The sounds reminded me of the hot summer days in my own backyard when I was a kid.
It was easy to understand why this place felt safe to a couple of kids from Williamsburg,
Brooklyn.

“I have already been cooperative,” Anita said. “My husband is handling the rest of
the matter, and, if you don’t mind, we don’t have a lot of time before it gets too
hot out here.”

That was the third time she told me her husband was taking care of everything. When
someone keeps repeating things, it makes me wonder what they’re avoiding.

“When was the last time Frankie and Milagros were here, Mrs. Roberts?”

She looked at me again and realized I wasn’t going to go away as soon as she would
have liked. “Gracie,” she said, and leaned down to whisper something into her daughter’s
ear. The little girl twirled around a few times, showing off her dress, then ran toward
the swing set in the backyard. Anita gave her attention back to me. “Christmas,” she
said. “We bring them up for a week during the vacation and again in the summer. So
they were here last at Christmas. Frankie
and
Milagros.”

“Mee lah grows.” Gracie was pushing a swing back and forth, singing the name she’d
just heard her mother speak. “Mee lah grows.”

Anita and I shared a smile. “Can we talk in the shade?” I gestured to the patch of
grass under the maple tree by the swing set.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s getting close to Gracie’s nap time and—”

I reached inside my jacket, pulled out the picture of her house, and handed it to
her. “Frankie had this picture in his school notebook, Mrs. Roberts, and Milagros
had a drawing of it on the refrigerator. Your house is very important to the both
of them. I really just have a few quick questions, and I’ll be on my way.”

She looked at the picture and then up at the scaffolding. No work was being done at
the moment, and that struck me as odd. It was just past noon on a Friday. Anita held
the picture for a few more seconds and handed it back. “Five minutes,” she said.

“Absolutely,” I answered, following her under the tree. Anita Roberts picked up her
daughter and placed her in the swing. Gracie held on to the chain and closed her eyes
as her mother slowly pulled back and let go. The girl kept her eyes closed and squealed
as the breeze played havoc with her hair.

“I really don’t know what more I can tell you, Detective,” Anita said. “I hadn’t seen
Francisco for months. He works—worked—for my husband.”

“And you haven’t seen the kids since Christmas?”

“I speak to Frankie every other week or so when I call to check on my aunt. I only
speak to Milagros if she happens to be there.”

“Mee lah grows,” Gracie sang as the swing slowed down. “Mee lah grows.”

“How often is your husband down in Brooklyn?”

“Every week,” she said. “He—we—have an apartment down there.”

“And you?”

“I haven’t been down since Christmas.”

“Ball!” Gracie yelled, leaning forward as the swing started to slow down. “Baaallllll.”

“Okay, okay,” her mother said, just barely getting her arm around the girl before
she jumped off the swing.
“¡Cuidado!”

Gracie jumped down, sprinted after the ball, and kicked it into the corner of the
yard.

“She’s got quite a lot of energy,” I said.

“Yes,” Anita said, placing her hand on her pregnant stomach.

“Is she growing up bilingual?”

“No,”
Anita said, realizing it had come out a bit harsh. She allowed herself a long breath.
“It’s getting very warm, and we only have a little more time to play outside. If that
is all…”

“When are you due?” I asked, to keep her talking.

“Two months.”

End of July, I thought, and again looked up at the workerless scaffolding. They were
cutting it close with all the work that needed to be finished before the new baby.

“Gets hot up here over the summer,” I said. “Can you run the air conditioner with
all that open space on the top floor?”

“We’ll go up north for a while,” she answered. “John’s parents own a house in Maine.”

“Nice.”

The soccer ball came rolling to a stop at my feet and Gracie came over. She eyed me
cautiously and watched as I maneuvered my foot under the ball and lifted it over her
head toward some bushes. She gave me a smile and ran after it.

“Yes,” Anita said, watching her daughter pull the ball out of the bushes. “I don’t
remember you showing me any identification, Detective.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your identification. A badge. Detectives do carry badges, don’t they?”

“Of course,” I said. “But I’ve taken up enough of—”

“MUN NEE!” Gracie yelled from the bushes. We both looked over as the little girl sang
out again. “MUN NEE!”

She came running over to us, waving what looked like a dollar bill. She handed it
to her mother, who looked at it and said,
“¡Ay dios mio!”

“Problem?” I asked.

She held out the bill for me to see. It took me a few seconds to realize that it was
not a dollar bill. It was a hundred.
Ay dios mio,
indeed.

I held out my hand and she gave me the bill. I then did what most people do when holding
a bill of that denomination: I took it by the edges and pulled. It was real. I turned
it over and saw that it had Anita’s address written on the back. There were also some
numbers: 710 and 410 and the letters “PA.”

“This is Frankie’s handwriting,” I said to Anita.

“How can you be sure of that?” she asked.

“I recognize it from class,” I said before realizing my mistake. “From some classwork
of his I’ve seen.”

Anita Roberts squinted at me, studying my face.

“Gracie,” she said. “Come here.”

Her daughter did as she was told, reacting more to the tone of her mother’s voice
than to the actual words. The two of them stood there as one, holding hands, looking
at the stranger who had invaded their privacy.

“Who are you?” Anita asked.

“I told you,” I said. “I’m looking for Frankie and Milagros.”

“Who are you?” she repeated, taking a step back toward the door she had come running
out of a short while ago.

“Frankie’s teacher.”

A few seconds went by as my words sunk in. Anita said, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“No, ma’am, I’m not.”

“Why did you tell me that you were a detective?”

“I never told you that,” I said. “You assumed, and I didn’t correct you.”

Anita looked at me and gave me something close to a smile. “You talk like a cop.”
The smile disappeared. “Why are you here?”

“Because I knew the cops wouldn’t make the trip, and I wanted to speak to you and
your husband about Frankie.”

“To see if we knew more than we told the other—Detective Royce.”

“Something like that.” I held up the bill. “This proves they were here, Mrs. Roberts.
This
is
Frankie’s handwriting. Are you telling me that he came all the way up here and you
didn’t know about it?”

“That,” she pointed to the bill, “proves nothing. And I’m not telling you anything.
Please leave, mister…”

“Donne.”

“Oh, so that much is true? Good-bye,
Mister
Donne.”

She turned to take her daughter back into the house. When she got to the side door,
I said, “Frankie and Milagros are still missing, Mrs. Roberts. That doesn’t bother
you?”

She looked over her shoulder and gave me a look that could have boiled water. She
opened the side door. “Go inside, Gracie. Mommy will be right in.”

“Mee lah grows?” the girl asked.

“Inside,” her mother repeated and gave Gracie a light tap on her butt. Gracie gave
me a little wave and went into the house. When the door shut, Anita turned back to
me. “Do not dare take that tone of voice with me in front of my daughter, Mr. Donne.
And do not dare presume to know what bothers me and what does not.”

“There it is,” I said.

“What?”

“The accent. I picked it up before when Gracie almost fell off the swing and now again
when you slipped back into that tough
chica
from Clemente.”

“You want me to sound like Clemente?” She looked at the door to make sure it was shut.
“Get the fuck off my property or this tough
chica
is going to have you arrested for trespassing.”

“Then you can explain to the police how this”—I raised the hundred-dollar bill again—“ended
up on your property.” She thought that over. “They were here, Anita. Why would they
come all this way just to disappear again? Did something happen to them up here?”

“I DON’T KNOW!” she screamed. Again, she looked to the door her daughter had gone
through. After a few seconds, she calmed down. “I don’t know. Please”—her eyes were
filling up with tears now—“show that to whoever you want, just leave us alone.”

Anita Roberts ended our conversation by walking into her house and making sure the
door did not slam behind her. I slipped the bill into my pocket and went back to the
car with one thought: Frankie and Milagros got out of their father’s apartment and
made it all the way up here.

*   *   *

The tank was a little too close to
E,
so I pulled into a service station just past the entrance to the thruway. I filled
up, ran a squeegee over the front and back windows, and went inside to pay and pick
up another jolt of caffeine for the ride home. A Trailways bus rumbled by as I opened
the door.

The ruddy-faced kid behind the register looked up from his wrestling magazine long
enough to give me change. “How far into town is the bus station?” I asked.

He looked at me as if I’d asked him the average surface temperature of Jupiter. He
rubbed his chin and said, “Never really thought about it before. Half mile or something?”

“Thanks.”

I got back in the car and headed a half mile or something into town and pulled into
the Trailways station. Outside on the wall, the schedule was posted, and I followed
along with my finger and found the two buses that left from New York City: 7:10
A.M.
and 4:10
P.M.
, from Port Authority. I took the hundred from my pocket and checked out what Frankie
had written: 710 and 410 and “PA.” He and Milagros got up here by bus. Then what?
Walked the five miles to Anita’s? I looked across the street and saw another service
station: Downey’s Taxi.

Inside the office, a very fat man sat in a recliner reading a newspaper. A floor fan
was oscillating in the corner, moving the air-conditioned air around. He looked up
and waited for me to speak.

“I was wondering if you could help me,” I said.

“If ya need a ride or gas, I can,” he said.

“Actually, I was hoping you could give me some information.”

He pointed out the window. “Go back up another two blocks and make a left. College
is three blocks in on your right. They got lots of information there and get paid
to give it out. Me? I sell gas and drive people places. See the difference?”