The Odds (33 page)

Never could do good-byes, never could.

He puts on the sweatshirt, zips it, puts on the faded cap Laurie brought him. ABC CONSTRUCTION, it says. In the back-and-forth game they’ve been playing, he takes the wallet from the kitchen table and removes all the cash except a twenty, and two ones for the city bus, but he doesn’t remove the key or the ID.

Quietly, he unzips the backpack, curious. A book, one of Susannah’s drawings, duct tape, the pajamas, and the funny cut-up sweatpants, his right shoe. He manages to get the backpack on. He’s nervous about the crutches and getting onto a bus with them, so he contemplates leaving the backpack behind. He decides, better to try it, dump it if he has to.

If anything, leaving early will make him especially noticeable—a man on crutches moving slowly down the street before five in the morning. But something tells him to make the break now, mean and clean. City transportation might not be running yet, but he can go to the park. Plenty of homeless people sleep in the park. If he burrows in, he can rest on a bench until he’s ready to move on again.

He stands at the door for a moment, listening to the quiet. He opens it, steps out, closes it behind him. It’s June, but it got cold last night. He thinks there are stray snowflakes in the air, pretty, drifting toward him. They’re blossoms, it turns out, some landing on his face.

Hobbling down the street in the predawn, he’s prepared for a gunshot to ring out. Any time, any time. After doing the better part of a block, he crosses the street into the park. No gunshot yet, but he’s cold and his arms ache and he wants to rest. Fine. There’s time. He chooses a bench and just sits. It’ll be plenty warm in the bus. He thinks ahead to that.

He sits for a long time. Twenty dollars. A bus out of town? Or a city bus to a suburb, where he can wait for a restaurant that has a bar to open? Or go back to the kids? Or … call the police, and be done with it? Make them proud. So, four options.

The sky is going to be almost completely clear today. The sun is coming up and the park is nothing but pretty.

Delay. That’s his decision.

People begin to come into the park. Church bells ring. He can see up ahead a few old women going into the Catholic Church—a good place to hang for a while, to think, and it’s just about the distance he can handle before he needs to rest up again.

He works the crutches under his arms, walks slowly to the church to face a new challenge, a set of steps, but he manages them. Oh, man, he can’t remember when he last saw inside a church. Never believed in any of it, but still it’s pretty to look at, one saint after another in stained glass, the bowl of water at the back. He takes a seat. An hour or so to figure things out can’t be a bad thing.

In the quiet hush, people filter in at a steady rate.

About now, he realizes, Meg will be making herself something to eat, maybe even making a cup of coffee … or maybe she drank it only to keep him company. She’ll be weeping that he left without saying good-bye. When the others wake, Joel will be philosophical, Laurie angry, Susannah plain sad.

An old lady takes a seat beside him in the pew. She smiles at him and nods toward his leg. He nods back. She opens a missal for him, points to the correct date. Obediently he tries to follow along. The old lady appears to be a great hand at the game, flipping back and forth in her own missal like a champ.

When a woman with a sad, halting voice stands at the front, reading, the old lady points out the passage in his missal. Even with it in front of him, he can’t make heads or tails of it:
When I was born, there were no oceans or springs of water. My birth was before mountains were formed or hills were put in place
. He smiles to thank her anyway. She’s definitely good at church, because she speaks along with the congregation the next passage also in the missal; he reads along, almost catches up with it. A wee bit of meaning comes through.
Yet thou hast made him little less than God … thou hast put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the sea
. Meg would understand the Bible passages. She’d be able to explain them.

When the lady with the timid voice reads again, he almost gets it—it’s a message about the kids, Meg in particular.
We even boast of our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us
.

After the service is over, he continues to sit. He doesn’t know yet whether to go back to the kids, or go to the police, or go to the bus station. Does he want hope, endurance, or escape? Why did he take only twenty dollars to get out of town? It’s not enough for a bus ride
or
a bender. The old lady looks at him curiously. Maybe she recognizes him from the news. Is she danger, sitting right beside him?

But she’s still smiling.

“Does everybody have to leave?” he asks.

“Heavens, no. You can stay for another dose of it.”

“Maybe I’ll sit for a little bit.”

“Going to be a beautiful day.”

He watches her go to the vestibule, shake hands with the priest, and leave.

The church becomes quiet except for the puttering of a couple of workers. He studies the stained glass. Feet. Lots of saints’ toes. He counts the candles burning. He sits for so long after everyone else has left that one puttering worker comes up to him. “Everything all right?”

“Is there another service?”

“Yeah, but not till nine thirty.”

“Thanks.”

The smell of incense, the fact of his hunger, the thump-thump of the broom keep him from sleeping, something he would very much like to do. It’s almost 7:40. He thinks of his bed back at the little house where the kids live.

Meg, Joel, Laurie, Susannah.

He doesn’t want to leave yet. He smiles to remember the old lady’s phrasing. He wants another dose, but he doesn’t stay for it.

When he leaves the church, he walks another five minutes to catch the 500 bus. By now, his armpits are sore and his ribs are sore, too, but nobody bothers him, and the driver waits patiently while he gets onto the bus.

Riding toward downtown, he tries to work out how he can pay the kids back. A job, an anonymous envelope with money sent to them every month. It pleases him to think that. He will be Charlie Philips, working quietly, sending money home to his kids. What form, what form? Cash, dangerous. Money orders—can be traced. Checks, ditto. It’s going to have to be cash. A risk.

He can go back to fishing eventually, some port where he isn’t known, but in the meantime—maybe another pizza shop, maybe baking, a bakery. A place where they let him rest his leg. Pop a loaf in the oven, take a sit.

So long as he gets to a town where he isn’t recognized, he’ll get work. He’ll be Charlie Philips, bum leg healing, a man in need of a job.

   SHE’D CALLED POTOCKI FROM her kitchen phone, finding him already awake, sounding grumpy. “You could have come over last night, awakened me in person this morning,” he said.

She almost admitted to wishing she had. But there was no time for stupidity. “See you at eight. Partner.”

Coffee and a bagel later, she burst into the office.

Janet Littlefield said, “You sure seem high-spirited lately.”

“Do I? How?”

“Way up on the tightrope. Really working this case, huh?”

“Making headway finally. And I’m keeping
some
kind of info going to Farber all the time.”

“So you’ve done the miracle?”

“What miracle?”

“Servant of two masters. It’s keeping you lively.”

“Guess so.”

She settled herself at her desk and, in spite of the hour, called the principal of the school system that Sean Zero and Peter MacKensie went to, the woman she’d made contact with yesterday. “Sorry about a Sunday-morning call,” she began, “but we need to know ASAP about the frequent contacts for MacKensie and Zero. And also, especially any Joel they might know. In fact, all the Joels in the school. I’m sorry again about the hour and the day.”

The woman grumbled a little. “I don’t know who they hang with. I just don’t know that. On the other question, I could go look. I only know of one Joel off the bat. He’s our star pupil. Too young to hang out with those others.”

“How old?”

“Seventh grade. Young, though, skipped a grade.”

It didn’t sound quite right to Colleen, but she continued, “It’s a start. Last name and address.” After she wrote down
Philips
and an address only blocks from where she was, she added, “If you’d look over the rosters anyway for other Joels. I’ll get started on the Philips kid.”

“If ever there was a kid who
wouldn’t
be in trouble, it’s the Philips boy.”

While she gave her own phone numbers, Colleen retrieved on her computer the interview records from the files Hrznak and Nellins had typed in. Potocki came in, noted her presence, and kept going to his cubicle without stopping to listen to her half of the phone call.

She could see Nellins had interviewed the Philipses. Charles, Alison, and a bunch of kids when he was looking for information on Higgins. “Before we hang up, tell me,” she said, reading her screen, “anything you know about the Philips family.”

“Best students we have. Single mother.”

“Know anything about the mother?”

“Not up to the smarts of her kids.”

“How many of them?”

“Four.”

“Four. What about the father?”

“He died a while back.”

“Oh. Who is Charles to the family, then?”

“I don’t know the names. I’ll go into my office. I’ll know more in, say, under an hour.”

Colleen sat for a while reading Nellins’s notes. Her head was kind of foggy. She got herself a cup of bad coffee, drank it down. Then she told Potocki, “We ought to get going.”

She asked him to drive. They went downstairs and ended up with the Century again.

He asked, “Are you doing okay?”

“I’m feeling mixed up.”

“It’s strange, isn’t it? I mean I knew I’ve had this crush on you—”

“Crushes,” she said weakly, almost unvoiced.

“I could see all this last year your crush went in another direction.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come off it. It’s all over your face every time you say his name.”

She didn’t like Potocki suddenly and wondered how she ever had. Why did he need to embarrass her?

He kept talking. “I thought about you a lot is what I’m saying. I wonder now if Judy sensed it. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this … out of control in my whole life.”

That was Potocki in a nutshell. Just when she thought she could get angry with him, he baited her sympathy. Good trick. Obviously it hadn’t worked with Judy, though.

Her phone rang.

The principal was saying, “Okay. I have the file in front of me. The father died two years ago. The mother is named Alison.”

“Father’s name?”

“Charles.”

“Thank you.” She hung up.

“What?” Potocki asked.

“Nellins being sloppy.” She tapped at the file folder.

They pulled up in front of a small house that was set back from the street, and they went to the door. Colleen gauged the girl who answered the door to be around ten, eleven.

“Police,” Colleen said. “I’m Detective Greer and this is Detective Potocki.”

The girl froze.

“Please don’t be frightened. We need to talk to your mother.”

“She is out of town, on a job interview. Our father is out right now.”

Colleen hesitated. “Where is your father?”

“Working.”

“Where is that?”

“He mans the phones at Duquesne Light.”

“Your father’s name is—?”

“Charles. Philips.”

Colleen nudged Potocki, handed him the records she was carrying. “Who’s staying with you right now?”

“My older sister. It’s okay. She’s old enough.”

“Is she here?”

“Yes. I’ll call her.”

Colleen got a literal foot in the door. “May we come in?”

“Just a minute.”

Colleen looked at Potocki, whose eyes were scanning the pages. He looked up. Something worrisome here, all right.

An older girl came toward the door. Colleen recognized her as the kid who had been applying for work at the pizza shop. She was pretty, like the one who’d answered the door. And poised—although she looked as if she’d been crying. “Yes?” she asked. Her eyes flickered nervously when she saw Colleen.

“Hey, we’ve met before. Up the street? You were looking for work? And I was there in the Dona Ana.”

“Oh, yes,” the girl said, and it looked like a lie when she added, “Sorry. I didn’t remember.”

“May we come in? Talk a bit?”

“There’s no one here at the moment.”

“It’s you we hope to talk to. And your brother Joel.” Okay, okay, it was against the rules to talk to juveniles, but she felt Potocki nudge her forward. If they didn’t break rules, they’d be nowhere.

“Could I see your badges?”

Colleen repressed a smile and handed over her ID. The girl hardly studied her ID. She did, however, look at Potocki’s carefully. “Now may we come in?”

Finally the door opened, and she let them in. Colleen could smell toast. She and Potocki sat in the clean, poor living room. The older girl’s lip was trembling. “I’ll get my brother,” she said. She went up the stairs and stayed long enough to make a hurried conversation. When she came down, there was a boy and a small girl trailing her. The middle girl stood back at the opening to the kitchen.

“You people are awfully young to be staying alone.”

“No, we’re fine. It’s just for a couple of hours.”

Potocki said, “We’re asking because we want you to be safe. Do you understand that?”

The older girl nodded, still biting hard at her lip.

Colleen took out her drawing of Nick. “Some of your friends have told us you might know where this man is.” She showed the picture. Four children shook their heads, clearly lying. She followed it up with the prison photo. They looked hard, almost eagerly, but continued to shake their heads.