Brothers and Bones (7 page)

“I didn’t say I was going to call him back.”

“You’ve been doing so well, Charlie,” she said sadly. “Not long ago you said you’d consider leasing yourself a decent car and scrapping your junker. You’re finally starting to put away some savings. And you know I have plenty of money for the both of us, so it’s not about money. Or status. I wouldn’t care that you’re still driving your old Corolla and living in this shoe box if you were using your money to pay back student loans or were saving toward our house or something like that. But you aren’t. You own very little. You’ve saved very little. And why? Because for years you gave your money to scam artists who had no compunction about taking advantage of a man in pain. I hated to see it then, Charlie, and I’d hate it even more to see it now, just when you seem to finally be putting it behind you.”

As I said, when my parents died, Jake essentially raised me with his own hard-earned money and held the insurance money in trust for me to use someday. And after he was declared legally deceased six years ago, his insurance money was added to the pot. I used this money to pay off my undergraduate and law-school student loans. In essence, my future grew from ground watered with the blood of my loved ones.

So with my education paid for and a small trust fund to draw upon when absolutely necessary, I should have been in good shape financially. That’s not the way it worked out, though. Instead, a few months after I graduated from law school, when I was an Assistant DA, I hired a private investigator to look into Jake’s disappearance. I’d already hit a dead end myself. I figured he was missing because of something to do with his job at the newspaper, some story he was working on. I’d questioned his editor, as well as the reporters he’d worked with, and learned nothing useful. I requested that all of Jake’s notes on his computer and in his files at the
Boston
Beacon
be turned over to me. The
Beacon
’s policy, however, was to destroy the notes of reporters who left the paper’s employ for any reason, unless the notes could be used by another reporter picking up any of the stories. A couple of months after Jake disappeared, I pulled out all the stops to get the notes. The paper was inflexible. I was an ADA at the time, so I started by saying that they were evidence in a missing person case. The paper fought me in court and the judge ruled for the
Beacon
, finding that there was no evidence of foul play. Next, I threatened the paper, saying that neither I nor any of my colleagues would cooperate with the paper on stories. No scoops, no good quotes. The paper called my bluff, knowing full well that most lawyers, including—and maybe especially—those in the DA’s office, love to see their names in the paper. Finally, I sued for possession of the notes in civil court and obtained a temporary injunction preventing the paper from destroying them without a court order, at least until the court decided who owned them. I got the injunction but ultimately lost the fight and the paper shredded Jake’s work, and with it, I believed, the best evidence of what happened to him. All I was left with was a thin stack of pages, handwritten notes Jake had kept in his apartment, which I cleaned out a few months after he disappeared. The notes pertained to potential stories Jake was working on. One of them involved alleged ties between midlevel employees in the mayor’s office and the Italian mob. It was that mob angle that convinced me years ago that this was the story that led to Jake’s disappearance, that made me believe the Italian Mafia was behind it. I just had to prove it.

Being an Assistant DA, I had friends in law enforcement. I called in a few favors and had the authorities look into it, but they found nothing. I wasn’t ready to give up yet, so I banged on some doors myself, waved my ADA badge around, annoyed some big mob guys, but came up empty. Eventually, I had to admit to myself that I was getting nowhere. I’d hit a dead end. I wasn’t a private detective. So I hired one. I gave him two thousand dollars up front and another fifteen thousand over the ensuing six months. Every time I became frustrated with his lack of results, he’d tell me he was close, was running down a new lead, had met a guy who knew a guy who’d spoken with Jake just before he disappeared, and so on. And I’d throw more money his way until it became obvious I was being ripped off. Then I’d turn to the next in a long line of shysters. I think my name might have gotten around the private investigation circles, because, once my blood hit the water, they began circling like great whites. And, one after another, I let them chew away at me until I came to realize I was being taken by the current one, then I’d move onto the next lucky contestant to play “See How Long We Can Keep Charlie on the Hook.” Over the years I’d spent nearly half of my take-home pay on private detectives, sometimes having two or three PIs on the case at the same time. And, in the end, I had nothing to show for it but more empty space in my bank account.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, I’m not stupid. But I always did seem to make…well…questionable decisions when it came to this matter. I think Jessica saw it as gullibility. I saw it as loyalty. Everything I have, everything I am, is because of Jake. He would have done anything for me. And as long as there was the slightest doubt he was dead, I thought I owed it to him to find him. And if he was dead at somebody’s hands, I owed it to Jake to deliver that somebody to the cops, gift-wrapped and ready for fingerprinting. And if Jake was, in fact, dead but ended up that way by accident, then I wanted to find him anyway and put him to rest beside my parents, where he belonged.

But then I met Jessica and, after years of watching me support my local private investigation community nearly single-handedly, she convinced me that I was being robbed blind, that these people weren’t going to find out what happened to Jake—if they were even trying—and that I should accept that he was gone and move on with my life. I realized she might be right. Maybe I was wasting money. Even worse, maybe I was wasting my life waiting for a clue or a sign or a lead that was never going to come. Maybe I was waiting to see a face that was gone forever, to hear a voice that was silenced thirteen years ago. So a year or so ago I hung a figurative “Out of Service” sign on the human ATM I’d become and stopped dispensing cash. Sure, every now and then one of the private eyes I’d hired in the past called me—like the one tonight—and said he had a new lead, one that can’t miss, and all I had to do to get to the bottom of it all was to send a check. And though I was always tempted, I never did. And now, thirteen years after Jake disappeared, I was finally starting to let him go.

And then that damned homeless guy—or was it, could it possibly have been, Jake?—called me Wiley. Not only was Jake the only person who ever called me that, but, at my insistence, no one else even knew of Jake’s nickname for me. Jake swore that to me. How was I supposed to let this drop?

“I know what you’ve been going through, Charlie.” Jessica’s voice was softer now.

“You do?” My voice wasn’t very soft.

She looked a little hurt, a little angry. “You’re not the only one who’s had to deal with loss.”

“I know.” I paused for a moment. “Look, I don’t want to minimize your loss, Jess, but you were two when Tommy was killed, and, what were you again, not even four when your mother died?” The doctors said cancer took her mother away, but Jessica always believed grief had a lot to do with it, sapping her will to survive, to continue sending reinforcements to the front lines in her war against the disease.

“What’s your point?”

“I know you love me and feel my pain, but despite your own loss, you can’t comprehend the depth of mine. You lost a mother but still had a father. You lost a brother, and that’s tragic, but you barely knew him. I lost
both
my parents when I was six and was left with no one, no other family, but Jake—Jake, who raised me and taught me and loved me above all else, until he
disappeared
. Death is one thing, Jess. It sucks mightily, but it’s certain. The disappearance of your
last
loved one leaves you alone, but it also leaves you with excruciating uncertainty that never,
never
goes away. Not until you find out the truth. So while you lost a brother and mother, you still had your father.”

“After a while,” she said.

I nodded. I knew what she meant. After Tommy was killed, Lippincott went into his depression, withdrawing from the world, from her. His career suffered dramatically. Jessica suffered even worse. Finally, after almost a year, Lippincott pulled himself out of his dark despair and once again became a father to his love-starved daughter. He resolved to try to be personally perfect. In his life. As a father. In his job. And he came darn close. Jess flourished as a child and grew into an extraordinary woman. Lippincott muscled his career back onto the rails and it started cruising along at a good clip, picking up speed as it went.

I repeated my point. “Jess, you got your father back and you two are as close as any father and daughter could be. Me? I lost everyone who mattered to me.”

She was silent, thinking. I felt bad but not horrible. I’d spoken truthfully. Not to hurt, but so she’d understand, at least a little.

When she spoke, it was very quietly. “Everyone who matters to you?”

I shook my head. “Until I met you, Jess. That’s what I meant. Until you.” I touched her cheek gently.

She hesitated. “Okay, then, what about me?”

“I don’t understand.”

“What about me, Charlie? What about us?”

“I still don’t get you. What
about
us?”

“We have a great relationship, but where are we?”

“Engaged.”

“We’ve been engaged for two years. We’ve never set a date. We rarely even talk about it. We still have separate apartments—”

“We agreed that right now our careers are such that we could use fewer distractions—”

“I know, Charlie, I know what we said. We’ll live together when we get married. Whenever that is.” She paused. “But I don’t have to tell you what I think.” She was right. She didn’t have to tell me. I knew. But she told me anyway. “The reason real reason we’re not living together, the reason we haven’t set a wedding date, is because you’re not ready to walk through new doors, into a new life with me.”

“Because I haven’t closed the door behind me yet,” I finished for her.

She nodded.

“Closed it on Jake, you mean.”

She nodded again, which seemed harsh, but her eyes were kind. “Yes, on Jake.” She sighed. “Look, I know you miss him. But he’s gone.”

“I know. And really, Jess, I haven’t been in touch with any private eyes in a long time.” That was the truth. But then I lied. “I’m trying to let Jake go.”

She took my hand gently in hers. “I believe you. And I’m glad about that. I know it still hurts, but it’s time to move on—in your life, your career, with me.”

I hesitated, then lied again. “You’re right, Jess.”

* * *

We sat on the couch for a while engaging in only slightly uncomfortable small talk, during which I promised that as soon as the Redekov trial was behind me, we’d start talking seriously about wedding plans. After that, we made uninspired love on my living room couch. When the touching began, I was distracted and bone-tired, so I didn’t figure to set any stamina records. As it turned out, I’ve had sneezes that lasted longer. But Jessica pretended not to notice and I pretended not to care. If I’d known at the time, of course, that there was the slightest possibility it might be the last time we’d ever make love, I would have thrown more of my body and all of my soul into it. Anyway, shortly after my woefully subpar performance, I walked Jessica down to the street and, after telling her I was going to the office, I headed toward the less friendly neighborhoods of Boston to continue my search for the homeless guy in the Harvard sweatshirt.

SEVEN

Chinatown is located in the southwest part of Boston, right next to an area that used to be called “the Combat Zone.” As you can imagine, a place isn’t called the Combat Zone because it’s full of Boy Scouts helping little old ladies cross the streets and little girls in pigtails selling lemonade on the corners. No, the area used to be known for porn palaces, prostitution, drug pushers, and street gangs. But years of grassroots activism by residents of nearby Chinatown, along with city government–blessed, aggressive police work and an influx of legitimate, high-profile businesses, led to a thorough cleansing of the area. No one calls it the Combat Zone anymore.

I passed through what nobody calls the Combat Zone anymore and into Chinatown, which, though safer than the red-light district that used to be its neighbor, is nonetheless not a good place to be found alone at night. I knew this, yet there I was, by myself, wandering the darkest streets and alleys, peering into every shadowed doorway I could find. I was getting reckless and I knew it. There were still plenty of places in and around the city where the homeless tended to congregate, so I certainly wasn’t running out of places to look, but I was growing anxious. The mystery of this man, the fact that he knew something about Jake, the admittedly remote chance that he
was
my brother, imbued my search with desperation. Plus, I wanted to get to the bottom of this, whatever it was, so I could begin to really focus on the Redekov trial, like I should have been doing all along.

There were other people on the streets that night, of course, folks I felt it would be safer not to make eye contact with, and I’d had a few tense moments when I thought I might soon find a broken bottle at my throat, but the later it got, the more I had the streets to myself.

After a few hours I’d covered a lot of ground, having wound my way past countless dead, featherless ducks hanging in shop windows and into the heart of Chinatown. I was getting tired and close to calling it a night when I saw him. Or thought I did. He was on a street corner a block away, hunched over a trash can, sifting through its contents. He found something he deemed worth pocketing, then walked away. I watched him for a second before following.