THE LAST BOY (10 page)

“You mean
Danny?
”

“You know him, then?”

“Yeah. Sure. Of course. Cute little kid. A bit on the wild side. She brought him here once and he turned the place upside down.” Pierce laughed nervously and then caught himself. “Oh my God, you mean somebody took him?”

Tripoli nodded.

“When did this happen?”

“Larry?” said Doreen sticking her head in the door.

“I want to see Lou Tripoli,” said Molly when the officer at the switchboard slid open the glass partition.

“He's out in the field on an investigation.” He checked the board.“I don’t know when he's going to be back.”

“I’m Molly Driscoll. Are you Jerry?” she asked.

“No. I’m Officer Barber.”

“You got any word on my boy?”

“You better talk to Lou Tripoli.”

Molly looked alarmed.“What does that mean?”

“Nothing. It's just that he's in charge of the investigation.”

“Okay, then I want to talk to him. How do I get ahold of him?”

“I’ll try to get a message to him. Where are you going to be?”

Molly drove back from the downtown police station to the trailer park. Her head was throbbing and she felt as if she’d been drugged. The snow had stopped, most of it had already melted, but the clouds were still low and heavy.

She noticed people with television cameras milling around her trailer. Her neighbors stood watching from the safety of their front doors. There were two vans with dish antennas mounted on top. Judging from the bright logos, one crew was from WELM in Elmira, the other from WSTM in Syracuse. Cameras were trained on Molly as she pulled up.

As she got out of her car, someone shouted, “We understand your boy is missing.”

She turned to face two lenses. “Kidnapped,” she answered bluntly.“I’ve got a picture of him, here,” she said, holding it squarely in front of her. She tried to keep her hand from trembling so they could get a good, steady shot of Danny.

Neighbors started crowding around as the television people interviewed her, asking her what had happened. She tried to explain about driving down to Kute Kids and finding the place in the process of being locked up.“I went in and found Danny's jacket still on the hook.” Her throat kept closing down, she felt on the verge of crying. But she was determined not to become one of those weepy types that television was always exploiting. “I want to ask whoever took my son to
please
bring him back safely. And to do it
now.
I wish they would ask themselves what
it would feel like if it were them—imagine that it was their child.”

They found the owner of the F-150 pickup with the ding in the door and pulled him in for questioning. His name was Charley Paul and he had a record.

An improvised command post was set up in the fire house on Green Street, not a block from Kute Kids. Already a dozen cops were out canvassing the immediate area and chasing down leads. The Tompkins County Sheriff 's office had given Tripoli three of its principal investigators, and the State Police had offered further assistance. The firehouse was busy with uniformed and plainclothes cops coming and going, phones ringing and radios crackling. They had just gotten the computer system set up and wired into their net when they brought Charley Paul in. They took him straight to the kitchen in the rear of the firehouse where it was quiet and kept him waiting until Tripoli returned.

Tripoli recognized him right away. Paul worked at the Tompkins County Solid Waste facility, and Tripoli had seen him on a number of occasions when he had gone to the dump with stuff for recycling. Besides the usual glass and newspapers, Tripoli was always dragging in corroded plumbing fixtures and odd bits of metal left over from the days when he was still remodeling his Greek Revival in Newfield. But since his wife, Kim, had left him three years ago, he had done little to the house, nothing more than carry away the detritus from those days of optimism. Charley Paul was always there at the recycling center, half sober, making sure you put things in the right bin.

Charley Paul was a scruffy figure with a pony tail and bushy sideburns. He wore a red bandanna around his forehead. Yet he was the kind of guy who in former years would jump hippies and hack at their long hair. Funny, thought Tripoli, here they were, guys like
Charley, years later adopting the very styles which they had held in such contempt.

“Whatta you wan’ wit’ me?” said Charley, hardly cowed. He sat at the mess table and stared defiantly up at Tripoli, who stood leaning over him. Tripoli had his hands on his hips, his sport jacket pulled aside enough to reveal a glimpse of the 9mm Glock parked on his belt. Charley Paul had a long record of drunk and disorderlies as well as a couple of assault charges and an order of protection keeping him away from his third ex-wife. He looked like a genuine scumbag and Tripoli pondered if he could also be into little boys.

“You were parked yesterday for a couple of hours by Kute Kids?”

“Huh?” Charley was playing with the crumbs left on the table, forming them into little lines.

“The daycare place up the street.”

“Daycare?”

“You going to answer every question with a fucking question? Come on, you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

Charley shrugged.

“You were seen there by reliable witnesses.”

“Free country, ain’t it?”

“What were you doing there?”

“Nothin’” said Charley.“Hey, don’t I get a lawyer?”

“I haven’t arrested you…yet.”

“Then I don’t have to answer any of your fucking questions, do I?” said Charley, smiling to reveal three missing teeth.

While the crews were loading their gear back into the vans, a shiny BMW that looked decidedly out of place was circling around the trailer park, bouncing along the potholed and puddle-filled road, mud splattering its fenders and doors. The driver seemed to be unsure about where he was headed as he wound through the thicket
of rust-stained trailers. Finally, he noticed the small crowd near an old trailer in the rear of the park, spotted Molly, and drove over as close as he could to the television vans. He got out and stood for a moment as if trying to orient himself. Within earshot a dozen stereos thumped, dogs barked, and children yelled. From a nearby trailer there was a sudden flurry of angry shouts, a series of doors slamming. A woman's voice viciously cursing.

Molly saw that it was Larry, her boss. He looked a bit lost. It struck her that he had probably never been in a trailer park before.

“Molly,” he said coming up to her and awkwardly grasping her hand in both of his in a way that took her by surprise. “I just heard…”

Molly's eyes flooded with tears, and Larry gave a constricted smile, unnerved by her emotion “I’m…I’m…I’m…” She didn’t quite know what she was, other than speechless at the prospect of her new boss coming all that way to see her.

“You want to come in?” she finally ventured as the television people started their engines and began to leave.

“If you’d like,” he said gently. Molly looked a sight. Her swollen eyes were underscored with dark circles, and her skin was a ghostly ashen.

He followed her in. The interior was musty and cramped. It was obvious in a glance that Molly had tried to make the best of it, everything neat and in its place. The scant rugs, though threadbare, appeared clean. A colorful blanket was draped over an old sofa which leaked stuffing. The kitchen was orderly, though the linoleum was cracked and stained, and the cabinets looked worn and chipped. He had never really given much thought to how she lived, never realized that she was existing in such marginal conditions.

“I…I…blame myself for this,” he said, stammering for the first time that Molly could recall.“If I hadn’t kept you so late…Oh God,
I feel awful. Really awful. I keep thinking if only…” But he couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Even if I had left the office earlier,” she said, “Danny would have been gone already. Anyway, it was my decision to stay.” Molly knew where the blame lay: she had been just too absorbed with her job, doing it, keeping it, to think of much else. “Look,” she said struggling,“would you like maybe a cup of coffee or something?”

“What about
you?
Have you eaten anything?” he hunched over to bring his face close to hers. She shrugged.“I figured as much. Let me get you some food, okay?”

“I think I’ve got stuff in the fridge.”

“I’ll get you something to eat. But maybe you need to be here by the phone? Should I bring some takeout?” It was obvious he both wanted and needed to do something.

“When I sit here,” she said glumly,“nothing happens anyhow. I just sit and see Danny. Maybe I’m almost better off outside for a while.”

“Come on then,” he said.“That's decided.”

Tripoli found Rosie Green working a checkout line at the P&C off Judd Falls Road.

“I’d like to talk to you for a moment,” he said, leaning over the counter.

“About what?” she asked, hardly looking up as she continued zipping items across the scanner. She plopped a bunch of grapes on the scale, then a few pounds of bananas, her fingers nimbly keying in the digits. He noticed that her jaw was clenched; her mascara was slightly smeared and her eyes were rimmed in red. A compact, busty woman with sleek dark hair tied at the back, her skin was a flawless shade of olive, and her eyes seemed dark and serious.

“Do you think maybe we could step aside somewhere?”

Rosie stopped, looked up—a jar of mayonnaise suspended in her
hand.“Who are you?” she asked.

The people waiting in the long line were impatiently watching the exchange.

Tripoli didn’t want to pull his badge.“I’m Lou Tripoli. I’m with the Ithaca—”

“Oh…” she uttered, finally making the connection. “It's you! I didn’t recognize…”

Tripoli nodded in acknowledgment.

“Miss!” said the middle-aged woman motioning towards her groceries.“Could you please…?”

“Sorry.” Rosie looked distractedly at the woman.“Hang on,” she said turning to Tripoli and got the belt moving again. Amidst customer groans, she popped the CLOSED sign behind the woman's groceries.

Tripoli watched Rosie as she hurried through the remains of the purchase and started bagging it. Though she had changed a lot in the intervening years, he could still connect her with the skinny girl who used to play on Titus Avenue. Rosie Lopez. When they had tried to arrest her older brother on a possession charge, the whole family had turned out to raise a ruckus. Rosie, a teenager, had gotten so angry and protective that she ended up jumping on Richie Pellegrino's back. Well, that was a small town for you, Tripoli thought. It's what kept him bumping into his ex-wife and her latest boyfriend more often than he cared to recall.

In less than a minute, Rosie had completed the transaction and together they walked over to the privacy of the dairy case.

“So what's going on? Have you got any leads?”

“We’re working on it,” said Tripoli.

“So what are you doing here then?” she asked, hands on her hips.

“I need to ask you some questions. About Molly.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You’re her friend. And you knew the boy.”

“That right. I know Danny.”

“When did you last see him?”

“On the weekend. Last weekend.”

“And Molly?”

“Same time.”

“So you didn’t pick up the boy?”

“Of course not!”

“Or your husband?”

“No!”

“Do you know anyone who might have?”

“You can’t just march into daycare and pick up somebody else's kid—you should know that!”

“What was Molly's relationship with the boy?”

“
Relationship?
”

“You know…” He waved his hands.

“You must be joking. And asking a question like that! Obviously you don’t have the slightest fucking idea what that girl has gone through to raise that boy, do you?”

“Well, maybe because of that. You know, sometimes people—”

Rosie's complexion turned an ominous shade darker. “If you think for one second…” she brought her face so close that Tripoli could feel her breath. It smelled of mint.

He didn’t flinch. “I’m not thinking anything. I’m just trying to get some—”

“You’re thinking it was like that woman in Lansing who buried her baby and then claimed she was kidnapped.”

Tripoli fixed her with his eyes and leveled a finger. “Now I didn’t say anything like that.”

“Well let me tell you, every single day of Molly's life's been a fight for her. She keeps getting kicked in the teeth, but she just shakes it off, picks herself up, and gets going again. And why?
Because of Danny. Hurt a hair on his head? She worships that boy. She’d fucking die for him!”

Tripoli let Rosie go on, watching her anger play itself out.

“That girl pulled herself up…hey, you know where she came from?”

Tripoli nodded.

“The gutter is where. A little girl and she was already taking care of her fucked-up mother. Cooking. Cleaning the house. You know when Danny was born, her life was all messed up, but she kept her head together. Got a job. Went back to school. Stayed up half the night studying her books—taught herself
everything.
Had some-body’d just given her a running start, she could have been president of the whole United States!”

Tripoli, touched by Rosie's passion, couldn’t help but smile.

“That boy is all she lives for. And now this. After all she's been through! Why
her?
”

Tripoli just stood there by the yogurts and sour cream listening.

Rosie bent down to pick up a pack of unsalted butter that someone had knocked to the floor. She placed the butter back in the cooler, straightening the pile.

“Okay,” she said taking a deep breath and turning back. “What else did you want to ask me?”

“I think you may already have answered my questions,” said Tripoli quietly.

The Gables was once a stately old Victorian home. Now it was a restaurant tucked close to the busy highway that led out from the line of strip malls. All red velvet and polished brass, plush carpeting and Tiffany lamps, it was an attempt to harken back to quieter, more solid times.