Gone, Baby, Gone (41 page)

“So there was a palace coup in the works,” I said.

He nodded. “Unfortunately for Pharaoh, Cheese got wind of it.”

“So what did Cheese have on Broussard?” Angie said.

“Pharaoh never told me. Claimed Mullen wouldn’t say. Said it would ruin the surprise. The last word I ever got from Pharaoh was the afternoon of the night he died. He told me he and Mullen had been dragging cops all over the city the last few days, and that night they were going to collect two hundred grand, humiliate the cop, and go home. And as soon as that was done, and Pharaoh could figure what it was exactly that the cop had done, he was going to rat him and Mullen out to me, give me the biggest collar of my career, and then I’d be off his back for good. Or so he hoped.” Ryerson stubbed out his cigarette. “We know the rest.”

Angie gave him a confused frown. “We don’t know anything. Shit. Agent Ryerson, have you come up with any sort of theory as to how Amanda McCready’s disappearance plays into all this?”

He shrugged. “Maybe Broussard kidnapped her himself.”

“Why?” I said. “He just woke up one day, decided he wanted to kidnap a child?”

“I’ve heard of weirder things.” He leaned into the table. “Look, Cheese had something on him. So, what was it? Everything keeps coming back to that little girl’s vanishing. So let’s look at it. Broussard kidnaps her, maybe as a way to force the mother’s hand, come up with the two hundred grand Pharaoh told me she embezzled from Cheese.”

“Wait a second,” I said. “This has bothered me forever: Why didn’t Cheese send Mullen to beat the location of the stolen money out of Helene and Ray Likanski months before Amanda disappeared?”

“Because Cheese didn’t find out about the scam until the day Amanda disappeared.”

“What?”

He nodded. “The beauty of Likanski’s scam—while shortsighted, I admit—was that he knew everyone would assume the money was impounded along with the bikers and the drugs. It took Cheese three months to find out the truth. The day he did was the same day Amanda McCready disappeared.”

“So,” Angie said, “that points to Mullen being the kidnapper.”

He shook his head. “I don’t buy it. I think Mullen or someone working for Cheese went to Helene’s that night to fuck her up bad and find out where the money was. But instead, they saw Broussard taking the kid. So now Cheese has something on Broussard. He blackmails him. But Broussard then plays both sides up against the middle. He tells the law enforcement side that Cheese kidnapped her and demands the ransom. He tells Cheese’s side that he’ll bring the money to the quarries that night and give it to Mullen, knowing he’s going to drop them, dump the little girl, and scoot with the cash. He—”

“That’s idiotic,” I said.

“Why?”

“Why would Cheese allow himself to be perceived as the kidnapper of Amanda McCready?”

“He didn’t allow himself. Broussard set him up for it without telling him.”

I shook my head. “Broussard
did
tell him. I was there. We went to Concord Prison in October and quizzed Cheese about the disappearance. If he were complicitous with Broussard, they both would have had to agree that the blame would fall on Cheese’s men. Now why would Cheese do that, if, as you say, he had Broussard by the balls? Why take the fall for the kidnapping and death of a four-year-old when he didn’t have to?”

He pointed his unlit cigar at me. “So
you
would believe it, Mr. Kenzie. Haven’t you two ever wondered why you were allowed so deeply into a police investigation? Why you were named to be at the quarry that night? You were witnesses. That was your role. Broussard and Cheese put on a show for you at Concord Prison: Poole and Broussard put on another one at the quarry. Your whole purpose was to see what they wanted you to see and accept it as truth.”

“By the way,” Angie said, “how could Poole have
faked
a heart attack?”

“Cocaine,” Ryerson said. “Seen it once before. It’s risky as hell because the coke could easily trigger a real coronary. But if you
do
pull it off, a guy of Poole’s age and occupation? Not many doctors would have thought to look for coke, just would have assumed a heart attack.”

I counted twelve cars pass by on Kneeland Street before any of us spoke again.

“Agent Ryerson, let’s back up again.” Angie’s cigarette had burned to a long curve of white ash in the ashtray, and she pushed the filter off the indented crevice that held it. “We agree Cheese saw Mullen and Gutierrez as threats. What if he felt he had to take them out? And what if what he had on Broussard was so bad, he put him up to it?”

“Put Broussard up to it?”

She nodded.

Ryerson leaned back in the booth, looked out the window at the dark cast-iron buildings on the South Street corner. Over his shoulder, on Kneeland Street, I noticed the familiar urban sight of a boxy, nut-brown UPS truck idling with its hazards on, blocking a lane as the driver opened the back and took out a two-wheeler, pulled several boxes from the truck, and stacked them on the upright cart.

“So,” Ryerson said to Angie, “your operating theory is that while Cheese thought he was putting one over on Mullen and Gutierrez, Broussard was putting one over on all three of them.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe. We have information that Mullen and Gutierrez thought they were picking up drugs at the quarry that night.”

The UPS guy jogged past the window, pushing the two-wheeler in front of him, and I wondered who got deliveries this late at night. Law firms burning the midnight oil on a big case, perhaps? Printers in a rush to make deadline, maybe. A high-tech computer firm doing whatever it was high-tech computer firms did while the rest of the world prepared for sleep.

“But, again,” Ryerson said, “we keep coming back to motive. If what Cheese had on Broussard was that he kidnapped the girl? Fine. But why? What was Broussard thinking when he went to the house that night to grab a child he never met and take her away from her mother? It doesn’t add up.”

The UPS guy was back in a flash, clipboard tucked under his arm, jogging faster now that the two-wheeler was empty.

“And another thing,” Ryerson said. “If we accept that a decorated cop who works for a unit that
finds
kids would do something as loony and seemingly motiveless as snatching a kid from her home, how’s he to do it? He watches the house on his own time until the woman leaves, knowing somehow that she’d leave her door unlocked? It’s stupid.”

“But yet you think that’s what happened,” Angie said.

“In my gut, yeah. I know Broussard took that girl. I just can’t for the life of me figure out why.”

The UPS guy hopped in the truck and it slipped past the window, cut into the left lane, and disappeared from view.

“Patrick?”

“Huh?”

“You still with us?”

“Not with a criminal record, you can’t.”

Angie touched my arm. “What did you just say?”

I hadn’t realized I’d said it aloud. “You can’t get a job driving for UPS if you have a criminal record.”

Ryerson blinked and gave me a look like he thought he should produce a thermometer, see if I had a fever. “What the hell are you talking about?”

I glanced back at Kneeland Street, then looked at Ryerson, then Angie. “That first day he was in our office, Lionel said he’d taken a bust—a hard bust—once, before he cleaned his act up.”

“So?” Angie said.

“So if there was a bust, there should be a record of it. And if there’s a record of it, how’d he get a job working for UPS?”

Ryerson said, “I don’t see—”

“Ssshh.” Angie held up a hand, looked in my eyes. “You think Lionel…”

I shifted in my seat, pushed my cold coffee away. “Who had access to Helene’s apartment? Who could open the door with a key? Who would Amanda readily leave with, no fuss, no noise?”

“But he came to us.”

“No,” I said. “His wife did. He kept saying, ‘Thanks for listening to us, blah, blah, blah.’ Getting ready to brush us off. It was Beatrice who put the pressure on. What did she say when she was in our office? ‘No one wanted me to come here. Not Helene, not my husband.’ It was Beatrice who kept this thing alive. And Lionel—he loves his sister, okay. But is he blind? He’s not stupid. So how does he not know about Helene’s association with Cheese? How does he not know she has a drug problem? He acted surprised when he heard she did some coke, for Christ’s sake. I talk to my own sister once a week, see her only once a year, but I’d know if
she
had a drug problem. She’s my sister.”

“What you said about the criminal record,” Ryerson said. “How’s that play into it?”

“Let’s say it was Broussard who busted him, had him on a hook. Lionel owed him. Who knows?”

“But why would Lionel kidnap his own niece?”

I thought about it, closed my eyes until I could see Lionel standing in front of me. That hound-dog face and sad eyes, those shoulders that seemed to have the weight of a metropolis pushing down on them, the pained decency in his voice—the voice of a man who truly didn’t understand why people did all the shitty, neglectful things they did. I heard the volcanic rage in his voice when he’d blown up at Helene in the kitchen that morning we’d confronted her about knowing Cheese, the hint of hatred in that volume. He’d told us he believed that his sister loved her child, was good for her. But what if he’d lied? What if he believed the opposite? What if he thought less of his sister’s parenting skills than his own wife did? But he, the child of alcoholics and bad parents himself, had learned how to mask things, to cover his rage, would have had to in order to build himself into the kind of citizen, the kind of father, he’d become.

“What if,” I said aloud, “Amanda McCready wasn’t abducted by someone who wanted to exploit her or abuse her or ransom her?” I met Ryerson’s slightly skeptical eyes, then Angie’s curious, excited ones. “What if Amanda McCready was abducted for her own good?”

Ryerson spoke slowly, carefully. “You think the uncle stole the child…”

I nodded. “To save the child.”

31

“Lionel’s gone,” Beatrice said.

“Gone?” I said. “Where?”

“North Carolina,” she said. She stepped back from the door. “Please, come in.”

We followed her into the living room. Her son, Matt, looked up as we came in. He lay on his stomach in the middle of the floor, drawing on a pad of paper with a variety of pens, pencils, and crayons. He was a good-looking kid, with the smallest hint of his father’s hound-dog sag in his jaw but none of the weight on his shoulders. He’d inherited his eyes from his mother, and the sapphire blazed under his pitch-black eyebrows and the wavy hair atop his head.

“Hi, Patrick. Hi, Angie.” He looked up with benign curiosity at Neal Ryerson.

“Hey.” Ryerson squatted by him. “I’m Neal. What’s your name?”

Matt shook Ryerson’s hand without hesitation, looked in his eyes with the openness of a child who’s been taught to respect adults but not fear them.

“Matt,” he said. “Matt McCready.”

“Pleased to meet you, Matt. Whatcha drawing there?”

Matt turned the pad so we could all see it. Stick figures of various colors appeared to climb all over a car three times their height and as long as a commercial airliner.

“Pretty good.” Ryerson raised his eyebrows. “What is it?”

“Guys trying to ride in a car,” Matt said.

“Why can’t they get in?” I asked.

“It’s locked,” Matt said, as if the answer explained everything.

“But they want that car,” Ryerson said. “Huh?”

Matt nodded. “’Cause it—”

“
Be
cause, Matthew,” Beatrice said.

He looked up at her, confused at first, but then smiled. “Right. Because it has TVs inside and Game Boys and Whopper Jrs. and—uh, Cokes.”

Ryerson covered a smile with a wipe of his hand. “All the good stuff.”

Matt smiled up at him. “Yeah.”

“Well, you keep at it,” he said. “It’s coming along nice.”

Matt nodded and turned the pad back toward himself. “I’m putting buildings in next. It needs buildings.”

And as if we’d been part of a dream, he picked up a pencil and turned back to the pad with such complete concentration, I’m sure we and everything else vanished from the room.

“Mr. Ryerson,” Beatrice said. “I’m afraid we haven’t met.”

Her small hand disappeared in his long one. “Neal Ryerson, ma’am. I’m with the Justice Department.”

Beatrice glanced at Matt, lowered her voice. “So this is about Amanda?”

Ryerson shrugged. “We wanted to check a few things with your husband.”

“What things?”

Ryerson had been clear before we left the diner that the last thing we wanted to do was spook Lionel or Beatrice. If Beatrice notified her husband that he was under suspicion, he could disappear for good, and Amanda’s whereabouts might just go with him.

“Be honest with you, ma’am. The Justice Department has what’s called the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. We do a lot of follow-up work with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Nation’s Missing Children Organization, and their databases. General stuff.”

“So this isn’t a break in the case?” Beatrice kneaded her shirttail between her fingers and the heel of her palm, looked up into Ryerson’s face.

“No, ma’am, I wish it were. As I said, it’s just some basic follow-up questions for the database. And because your husband was first on the scene the night your niece disappeared, I wanted to go over it with him again, see if there was anything he might have noticed—a small thing here or there, say—which might produce a fresh way of looking at this.”

She nodded, and I almost winced to see how easily she bought Ryerson’s lies.

“Lionel helps a friend of his who sells antiques. Ted Kenneally. He and Lionel have been friends since grade school. Ted owns Kenneally Antiques in Southie. Every month or so, they drive to North Carolina and drop some off in a town called Wilson.”

Ryerson nodded. “The antiques center of North America, yes, ma’am.” He smiled. “I’m from those parts.”

“Oh. Is there anything I could help you with? Lionel will be back tomorrow afternoon.”