Heart of the World (3 page)

Josefina Parte was the name I was looking for, and I found it, a battered tag, J. Parte, under a mailbox that read 4C and showed the scars of a recent crowbar assault. I rang the bell and waited in a pocket-sized vestibule maybe ten degrees warmer than the frigid outdoors. No response. I rang again.

Through the pebbled half-glass of the interior door, the stairway was narrow and steep. I could see it if I shaded my eyes and slanted my glance sideways. A direct stare brought only my own reflection, a pale oval of a face, wide-apart hazel-green eyes, slightly crooked nose. It was the eyes, I thought, that showed it most, the effect of two sleepless nights. The glass grayed my face, leaching the color from my skin and hair, and I had a sudden vision of myself grown old.

If I lived on Orchard Court Road and someone rang my bell, I might not answer it either. Not if I wasn't expecting a friend or relative to drop by. Good news probably didn't climb to the fourth floor often, and Josefina Parte might have long since stopped expecting it.

Josefina was the aunt or possibly the great-aunt of one Diego Martinez, and it had taken me a while to trace him, because juveniles who aren't registered in the system, who live with people who have different last names than their own, who go to a high school in an area they have no business going to, can be hard to find. I wasn't planning to bust Diego for lying to the Cambridge school system. He wasn't a crook or a bail jumper. I wasn't going to get paid for finding him. He was the current boyfriend of my little sister, Paolina, and she'd been gone for three days, possibly five. Two nights and a day had passed since Marta had
needed the girl to babysit for her younger brothers and so noticed that she was inconveniently missing.

I swallowed the bitter taste in my mouth. I was running out of places to look for my sister. I didn't know what I'd do, where I'd go if Diego wasn't there, if she wasn't there with him.

The inner door of the Orchard Court building had a lock that wouldn't have taken more than a minute to pick, but I punched other doorbells first, to see whether some foolish tenant would buzz me in sight unseen. There's usually somebody, a kid home alone, an elderly woman eager for conversation. The vestibule didn't have the usual intercom, so no one could inquire who was there. No one bothered to look, but the buzzer sounded. I pushed my way inside. The door was heavy.

The stairwell—you couldn't call it a lobby—smelled of grease and disinfectant and rotting rubber mats. The wallpaper was peeling at the joins and defaced with gang grafitti.

A door opened above and a low voice yelled, “Somebody there?”

“Forgot my key,” I answered. “Thanks a lot.”

The door slammed shut in response to my reassuringly female voice and I began climbing the steep stairs. I started hearing voices at the second floor. They grew louder at the third and crescendoed outside 4C. Someone was very much at home or else the TV had been turned up to entertain the house plants and keep away the burglars. I raised my hand, about to knock.

Either they were listening to Spanish language TV or they were arguing. I let my hand drop to my side and made no bones about eavesdropping.

It takes a moment for Spanish to land in my head as distinct words and sentences. At first I hear it as a rush of sound, but then something clicks and I'm back in Mexico City where I spent childhood days with my mother's cousins, time stolen from Detroit winters, coinciding not with school vacations but with periods my mother and father didn't get along. I forgot my Spanish when I returned to the States, then relearned it as a cop, specializing in what we called “perp Spanish.” Paolina helped me regain some fluency and I needed it. These people weren't speaking slowly. I could distinguish two arguing voices, one male, one female. “Diego,” I heard, several times, and swearing, too. I'm fluent in that.

I knocked firmly.

Sometimes I miss the days when I could follow up that authoritative knock with the word “police.” “Police” opened doors. It gave people a reason to answer when I asked questions.

I knocked again. A silence had started with the first knock so I knew they'd heard me.

“Senora Parte,” I said clearly, “please open the door. I just want to talk.” I spoke in Spanish. Why not?

The door opened slowly and a young woman peered out through a narrow crack. She had dark hair pulled back into a tight knot and an anxious expression on a sweet earnest face. I got the toe of my boot past the sill but didn't force my way in.

“What do you want?” she said. “I'm busy here.”

I took a business card from my wallet. It said C
ARLOTTA
CARLYLE,
P
RIVATE
I
NVESTIGATIONS
. She studied it for a long moment with her tongue fixed firmly between her small teeth and then passed it behind her.

“¿Polída?”
It was the man's deep voice. “So sorry if we bother any of the old bitches in the apartment downstairs.”

“Senor,” I said, raising my voice, “there are no complaints about you.”

The door opened to display both of them. He was a thin wiry man with badly pocked skin.

He said, “Then what you want? Collect for the church? They can find their own money, sell their gold candlesticks for all I care.”

“Senora, your nephew, Diego, I need to speak to him.”

The man glanced automatically down the hallway to his right. “What about?”

“He's in no trouble from me. But he hasn't been in school the past three days.”

“You're from the school?” “No.”

“What you care then? The boy's sick. When he's better, he go to the school. Nosy goddamn busybodies. Time I'm his age, I work full time.” “I need to talk to him about a girl in his class.” “Hah, he do something to a girl?”

“Senora,” I said to the silent woman. “Let me talk to him.” She looked stricken, like a deer in the headlights, her mouth half open.

“He's not here.” The man gave the door a push, but my foot held it ajar and I wedged myself through.

“A girl in his class is missing and he may know where she is. His room's down here?”

The single front room was sparsely furnished, ashtrays overflowing on the stained coffee table. A narrow archway led to a corridor.

“Diego? You here?” I moved quickly.

“I already told you—” The man moved quickly, too, edging between me and the hallway.

“Look,” I said, “if he's not here, it's because he's run off with my sister, Paolina Fuentes. You know that name? If he's not here, I'm going to get in your business big time, so it's better for you if you let me see him.” I raised my voice, hoping Diego would hear.

Behind the wiry man, in the corridor, I heard a door creak.

“Hey.” The voice was low and sullen.

“Don't you come out of that room!” the man thundered.

Josefina finally moved, putting a restraining hand on the man's shoulder. I walked past him to the half-open door on the right-hand side of the hallway.

“Hey,” the kid said. “What's the deal?”

I shoved the door, my eyes flicking from the unmade bed to the narrow chest of drawers. No one else inside the small room. No closet. No place to hide.

“Where is she, Diego?” I addressed the back of his lanky frame, his dirty white T-shirt and long dark hair. “Diego?”

He turned to face me, an eruption of acne on his left cheek, but that wasn't what I noticed first. His nose was pushed to one side of his face and his left eye was puffy and swollen. Dried blood decorated the front of his shirt.

“Jesus, Diego, was she with you when it happened? Where is she?” “What is this shit?”

“You were at a party Friday night, with Paolina Fuentes.”

“Paolina? For a while, yeah. Then she left.” He sounded angry and puzzled. The way he stood in the doorway was stiff and unnatural, like he had bruises under his thin T-shirt, maybe broken ribs.

“She left alone?”

“That's what I'm saying.”

“You two break up?” “What if we did?”

“Did she go with a new guy? Is he the one who hit you?” He shook his head. Maybe it hurt to move his mouth. His lips were swollen.

“He fell down the stairs,” the man said loudly. “That's all.”

Josefina Parte made a noise.

“Boy's clumsy like an ox,” the man said.

I studied Diego's eye. The injury was recent, more recent than Friday night. The man's reluctance to let me near the boy suddenly made sense. My right hand clenched, but I kept my eyes focused on Diego. “She say anything about running away?”

He shook his head again, more slowly. “That's dumb, man, running away.”

“Was she happy, sad, excited? Different?”

“Yeah, man, she was different, okay. She was hard, ya know? She was like way into herself, and I don't put up with that kinda shit, ya know? Not from a girl.”

“That's right.” The man's voice again, grating like metal on glass. “You don't take no shit from girls. You don't answer no more questions either.”

Frustration simmered behind my eyebrows. All the time I'd wasted tracking him, for nothing. All the certainty that Paolina's disappearance was linked to his, unfounded. The boy shifted his weight in an attempt to get more comfortable. I could smell the sweat on his body. I looked at the silent scared woman, the wiry lying man, telltale damage on his knuckles, and anger kindled like a flame.

“You want to leave here, Diego?” I said softly. “You want to see a doctor about that nose?”

I could sense the man behind me stiffen, feel the tension rise.

“If you want to leave, I'll take you out.” I wasn't carrying, but it was no idle boast. I was furious. I wanted to hit somebody, I had the height advantage, and I'd learned to fight dirty at an early age.

“I'll stay with my aunt,” Diego said.

“You get outta here now, bitch.” The wiry man's brown eyes had an edge of yellow. He looked defiant, almost proud of himself for what he'd done to the boy, and I considered a shot to the nose or a punch in the gut.

“Please, just go.”
Josefina stepped between us.

“Walk me out, Senora,” I said. She must have thought I wanted safe passage past the wiry man, so she did what I asked and accompanied me through the hallway. Behind me, I heard the sharp crack of Diego's swiftly closing door, and I thought, good for you, boy, keep it shut. Josefina opened the apartment door to dismiss me, but I urged her through it, and spoke in a low voice.

“What are you going to do?” I said.

She looked at me, her frightened eyes so wide that white showed all around the pupils.

“Are you married to that man?”

“Por favor,”
she said, shaking her head, “understand. I love him. I love them both.”

“Your nephew needs a doctor. Otherwise his nose will stay crooked. They'll need to break it again to reset it.” “Please. They'll put him in jail.”

Where he belongs, I thought. “Diego needs to go to school,” I said. “He'll go, he'll go. Tomorrow, next week, soon. You go now.” “You make a choice, understand, Senora? You have to make a choice.”

“What do you mean? I got no choice.”

“Take your nephew to the hospital. I'll stay until you go. I won't let him hurt you.” “I can't.” “You can.”

I waited for her response in the dingy hallway. The next-door neighbors' alarm clock buzzed, their cat yowled, and Josefina Parte stared at the worn linoleum like she was waiting for the channel to change.

“If you choose to do nothing, Senora,” I said, “that's also a choice.”

“Leave. Go away. You make only trouble.”

The apartment door opened a crack. The wiry man didn't come outside, but both of us could hear him breathing. He wanted Josefina to know he was listening.

“I'll help you,” I said.

“Just go away.”

“It's your choice,” I said.

She turned and reentered the flat without meeting my eyes.

I waited, but I didn't hear raised voices much less the sound of physical blows. The wiry man didn't venture into the hallway, so I didn't get to hit him. Instead, on the way downstairs, I made the choice for Senora Parte, using my cell to phone the cops. I told them to send a unit to check out a minor in need of protective services. I told them to use extreme caution because the perp was on the premises. Then I jammed my hands back in my pockets and trudged downhill to my car, thinking I'd hit a dead end, another dead end, the last dead end. Thinking that now I didn't know where the hell else to look for Paolina.

I barely felt the cold.

CHAPTER 2

In a homicide investigation the first twenty-four hours
are crucial. A missing persons case takes as long as it takes; there's no cut and dried rule, no drop-dead critical time frame. Small children stumble home unharmed after two days and nights in a snowy forest. A teenage boy moves into the garage and his parents don't realize he's living there until he starts a fire in the charcoal grill. Middle-aged adults discover their grown siblings living down the block after a bitter separation of twenty-seven years and wonder why they ever stopped speaking in the first place.

Delay didn't mean defeat, I told myself, but the knowledge didn't lessen my growing panic. There are plenty of other tales, grim tales, brutal tales: a sixteen-year-old lifeguard never returns from a sunny morning at the beach; a three-year-old wanders from a campsite and is never anything more than memories and smudgy photographs.

I leaned against the rusty fender of the rental, suddenly exhausted, deflated as a leaky tire. The search for Diego, the conviction that finding him would yield Paolina, had sustained me thus far. Now I felt hungry, hollow, scared. I fumbled for the car keys in the pocket of my coat and wished Josefina Parte had found the courage to call the police herself.

Back in the car, I tried for some heat. A few gulps of chilly air coughed through the vents as I veered off Route 9 onto Harvard Street. Rush-hour-heavy traffic headed mainly in the other direction, so I
counted my blessings: Traffic was moving; the child-beater hadn't pulled a gun.