Vanishing Girls (20 page)

The kids gathered around the guitar while the adults moved to the kitchen to talk in relative silence. It was a short interview, if you could call it that. Mac evidently felt as intuitively comfortable with Mary as I did and asked her only the most perfunctory questions about her professional background. She was one of those people who had followed many paths before having a child and never really settled into any particular career: a jack of all trades, master of none, but competent at many. Along with having learned Tai Chi, karate, and aikido with enough proficiency to teach beginners, she had also studied social work (before dropping out), been a waitress, and done administrative work in all kinds of offices, including a six-month stint as a secretary at the downtown Manhattan bureau of the FBI.

“So you went through the security check,” Mac asked her.

“Oh yeah, the whole rigmarole. It was actually kind of fun—I’d never been fingerprinted before. I don’t know if Karin mentioned it”—she looked at Mac—“but I’m kind of a junkie for that kind of stuff.”

“You have a reference over there at the bureau?”

“Sure.” She pulled out an old-version iPhone. A moment later, she had sent him the contact information. She then tapped in a text message to her reference. Half a minute later, her phone buzzed with a response.

“Gary says go ahead and call him anytime you want,” Mary said. “You can even call right now if you want to.”

Mac’s eyebrows shot up. I knew that one of his frustrations (among many) with Star had been her lack of efficiency. “Why not?”

While he called, Mary joined the kids in the living room. I shut the door for privacy and stayed in the kitchen with Mac, listening to his end of the conversation. He asked the usual questions and each time nodded at the answer. By his positive tone, I already knew the outcome before he signed off with “Thanks for doing this at such short notice. She sounds pretty amazing.” After hanging up, he told me: “He said he wanted to hire her, but her son was young and she didn’t want to work full-time.”

I smiled at him. “So let’s do it?”

“Let’s do it.”

We went to the living room, where Mac gave Mary a thumbs-up. “According to Gary, you’re the one who got away.”

“Aw, shucks.” But there was nothing shy about her; she seemed to know she’d been a good worker. “I can give you another reference or two if you want.”

“Not necessary,” he said. “If you want the jobs, both of them, you’re hired.”

Mary beamed at us. “I think this was meant to be; I really feel great about this. So, when do you want me to start?”

“How about right this minute?” I blurted out, seeing how comfortable the kids were with her and Fremont.

“I
could
, actually. We have a few hours before Free’s gig. You guys can grab a quick date and it’ll give me and the kids a trial run together before you have to commit to anything.”

Without wasting a minute, we put on our jackets and boots and headed out into the purple twilight.

“It’s early for dinner.” Mac pulled on his leather gloves after locking the front door behind him. He jogged down the steps to join me on the sidewalk.

“Are you hungry?”

“Not really. You?”

“Not at all.”

“Do we have time for a movie?” he asked, walking beside me toward Smith Street.

“I don’t know. But here’s what I’m thinking: Let’s see if Edward Walczak’s home. Maybe he’ll want to come out and play.”

Mac laughed, filling the space between us with a cold fog. “You really don’t give up, do you?”

“Why should I?” There was an edge to my tone, which he met with a snap of aggravation.

“Karin—if you want to be a cop again that badly, then get back on the force. If not, then back off. Really.”

I stopped walking and waited for him to turn and face me. I wasn’t hurt by his tone, just resolved. I had held it back too long. The way he looked at me, I could tell he understood that something was about to shift.

“I know why you think I’ve been overdoing it, but there’s a reason I’ve been poking around on my own.” And then it just spilled out: My visit to the Seven-two that day to return George Vargas’s ring. Finding Ladasha there. Seeing Billy’s name on their POI list. Arguing them out of it but not knowing if I really had. My urge to protect Billy.

“Un-
fucking
-believable.”

“So now you get it.”

We started walking again, our pace picking up.

“Yeah, I get it. You know where that Walczak guy lives?”

Chapter 18

E
ddie Walczak, Jr.
read a crooked, hand-scrawled label beside the buzzer on a plain door that shared an address with a local hardware store. The door led to the apartments upstairs. I pushed the button. After a wait, I rang again.

“He ain’t there.” A young man with short, grizzled hair stood just outside the store, beside shovels and stacked bags of calcium chloride, watching us. His eyes were older than his face, which gave him a spooky look I didn’t like. Mac answered him first.

“Do you know when he’ll be home?”

“After work, probably.” He plucked a piece of something off his tongue and flicked it onto the sidewalk.

“What time is that, usually?” I asked.

“Seven.”

“Like clockwork?” Mac smiled.

“He works real close by.”

“Where’s that?”

“Hardware store.” The man now grinned. And I knew.

“Are you Eddie?” I asked.

He nodded, holding the weird smile. “Who wants to know?”

“Mac MacLeary”—he offered a gloved hand—“and this is my wife, Karin Schaeffer. We’re private investigators, working on a case.” You could have said that was a lie, but to me it signaled something else: Mac was angry; he believed in Billy as much as I did and was unwilling to sit back while he was demonized for his suffering. You could almost feel the heat of his outrage. The detail that we weren’t officially working the case was unimportant.

“I don’t know nothin’.”

Mac stepped closer. “Listen, it’s about Father X. You know, the thing from five years ago.”

“Yeah?” Defensively. But he didn’t leave.

“Can we talk somewhere, do you think?” Mac asked.

Eddie glanced behind him into the shop. Then he called: “Yo, Tony, back in a few minutes. I’m taking my break.”

Without his jacket he led us across the street and over a couple blocks to the Dunkin’ Donuts on the corner of Smith and Bergen. We passed from the cold gray outside into the bright warmth of the orange and pink plastic interior, and parked ourselves at a table for four.

“Coffee?” Mac peeled off his jacket and draped it over mine on the spare seat.

“Milk, no sugar.”

I sat down beside him.

“How long you been a cop?”

“We’re not cops. We used to be, but no more. Now we’re in business for ourselves.”

“Who you working for?”

“We’re helping the detective working a murder case,” I told him, and watched for his reaction. He held his poker face.

Mac returned with a tray and distributed paper cups of coffee and sugar crullers. Eddie picked one up and used it to stir milk into his coffee. When he lifted it out, the end had disintegrated.

“Which one?”

“Both. Nevins, and also the couple.”

“Yeah, I’ve been following it all in the papers. When I was a kid this wasn’t such a safe neighborhood. Then it was. Now, I don’t know.”

“Did anything strike you about the couple, the Dekkers, who lived on Bergen Street?”

Eddie hesitated, then shrugged his shoulders. “Like what?”

“Well, like they were active members at St. Paul’s. Their pastor was Father Dandolos.”

Eddie smirked and dunked the rest of his cruller so fast the entire thing immersed in coffee. His short-bitten fingertips emerged dripping wet.

“You know him,” I said.

“Father X, you mean?”

“That’s right.”

“Sure. So what?” But there was little conviction in his defensive response. We had found him, of all people. He had to know essentially why we were there. After a quiet moment, he asked us: “Father X have something to do with that?”

“We don’t know,” I answered.

“You were a witness,” Mac tried, “in a sealed case.”

Eddie looked at us with a new, somber expression; the sheen of defiance had drained off. “It was about a kid, so they sealed it. But they wouldn’t listen to me, so he’s still out there, doing his thing.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“I’ve been clean and sober a year now. It took a while, but I cleaned up for good.”

I nodded. Mac bit his cruller, not taking his eyes off Eddie as he spoke.

“I was an altar boy for six years, since I was ten. My mother was really into it, and yeah, I liked it at first. I felt proud, you know? After a while, I dunno, it got boring, but I was sticking with it ’cause of my mom. A lot of us kids over at the church were doing shit, you know what I mean—drugs and shit. And holdups—nothing serious, just local shit. No one ever got hurt; that wasn’t the point.”

“What
was
the point?” Mac asked, before a shiver of what looked like regret passed over his eyes.

Eddie’s expression stiffened. “There was no point. Okay?”

“You were a kid then,” Mac backpedaled. “Now you’re an adult. Working. A law-abiding citizen.”

“In
every
way,” Eddie said.

“It must have really irked you reading about what happened to the Dekkers,” I said. “In your own neighborhood. Active members of Father X’s church. It must have brought back some bad memories.”

Eddie nodded. “Maybe if it happened now, they’d listen to me.”

“Maybe they would,” I said.

“If
what
happened, Eddie?” Mac leaned forward slightly.

“Here’s the thing,” he began, “and maybe they were right: I was basically a smartass thieving junkie and it wasn’t like I actually saw his face. I was what you’d call a crap witness. Well, that wasn’t how they put it.”

“Unreliable witness,” Mac said. “But now things are different; you
are
reliable. What did you see?”

“Well . . .” He picked up a white sugar packet and carefully folded over one edge, creasing it again and again. “Okay, it was like this: I’m in high school, right? And half the time we got football practice in the afternoon. So it’s already dark out when I come out of the subway, and I remember
shit
I was supposed to drop off some flyers my mom made right after school so the church lady could makes copies. So I remember this, and I head straight over to the church office to drop it off. And I do it: I drop it off in this box on the desk. But I hear a noise in the storage closet and I’m wondering about it, and also, you know, that’s where they keep stuff and sometimes I’d like take a look just to see if there was anything worth— Well, anyway, so I open the door. It’s dark, and I never turned on a light when I walked in so all youse got is moonlight coming in the windows, and in the dark closet I see a couple people. A man and a kid: this girlie-looking boy, Joanne. Real name’s Joey but Joanne’s what we called him because of his looks. Skinny. These baby-blue eyes. Pretty blond hair. I swear, he looked like a girl.”

“Who was with him?” I tried to get him back to the main point.

“The father.” He stared at us.

“What was happening in the closet?” Mac asked.

“What do you mean, what was happening? What do you think happens in a closet with a priest and a half-naked girlie boy?”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Shut the door. Went home. Told my mother I dropped off the papers. Ate dinner.”

The air in the donut shop got heavy. Eddie turned the sugar packet over and creased a short end in the opposite direction.

“What happened to Joey?” I asked quietly.

Eddie shrugged, his eyes fixed on his busy fingers, the now-mangled packet beginning to leak sugar onto the orange Formica tabletop. “Nothing. Saw him the next day on Court Street with his mother, holding her hand. Kid was such a wimp.”

“How old was he, do you remember?” I asked.

“I dunno. Ten, maybe eleven. Something like that.”

“Did the same thing happen to you,” Mac asked, “as happened to Joey?”

Eddie’s gaze snapped up. His eyes were clear, angry. “No way. I never woulda let him do that to me.”

“Do you know if he ever did that again to Joey? Or to any other kids?”

“I only know what I saw that one time.”

“And you’re sure it was Father X?” Mac sipped his coffee without taking his eyes off Eddie’s face.

“Who else would it be? He was the only priest in the church, and he was wearing his robes, the creep.”

“But you didn’t see his face?”

“No.” Eddie’s eyes watered and I thought he was going to cry, but instead he sneezed. “Someone got a dog in here?” He turned around to see if someone had snuck one into the shop, but no one had. “You got dog hair on your clothes or something? I’m real allergic.”

“No dogs in our house,” I said.

“Must be someone else. Anyway, I know what I saw, and it was him.”

“Listen, Eddie, can I ask you something?” Mac said.

“What?”

“Were you high that afternoon?”

“I told you, I just came from football practice. You showed up stoned for football practice and you were off the team—
gone
. Trust me: Much as my mom loves the church, my dad loves football. No way was I gonna risk that kind of beating.”

“But even though you were straight that day, no one believed you.”

“Some people believed me, some people didn’t.”

“When did you tell what you saw?”

“The next night. It was eating at me, you know? I told my mom, and she screamed at me, told me to shut the fuck up basically, Father X wouldn’t do something like that. But when my dad got wind of it, he listened. He’s the one called the cops. And then it went from there.”

“So what happened to Joey?”

“I dunno. I stopped going to church; I was sixteen, my mother couldn’t make me anymore, and my dad, what did he care? Me and Joey, we didn’t travel in the same circles. I saw him around now and then, but that’s about it.”

“Did he ever say anything to you about it?” I asked.

“Just once. He was coming outta the park with some of his friends—he was always hanging out with girls, jumping rope, shit like that. He saw me and ran up to me and kind of whispered, ‘Thanks anyway, Eddie.’ ”

“Nothing else?”

Eddie shook his head.

“You didn’t say anything back?”

“What was there to say? But it was nice he said something to me, you know? I mean, when he said my name it was kind of sweet, like he meant it. I think I was the only one who really knew.”

“So, later,” I pressed for the rest of the story, “you ended up living at Sons of St. Paul’s? That must have been awkward for you.”

“Shit. Awkward ain’t the word for it. But when I got out of prison—ten months, petty larceny—that was part of the deal. I had to live there for a whole fucking year before I could ‘enter society,’ total bullshit, but that was the deal.”

“We understand you made some friends there,” I said.

“Shit, you
did
do some digging on me, didn’t you?” It seemed to make him feel important. We didn’t deny it. “If you mean the guys—you know, Jose, Marty, and Iggy—I didn’t meet them at Sons. We knew each other since we were kids. They were friends with my older brother and we kind of hooked up. They’re not bad guys, but I don’t really see them anymore.”

I didn’t ask why; obviously they were still using, even if they were using legally through the clinic, and it seemed as if Eddie was trying to distance himself from that crowd and those times. There was no need to shine too bright a spotlight on his association with those losers. Eddie, at least, had a job and an apartment; it was probably a minimum-wage job, and it was probably a lousy apartment, but it was a start.

“They were friends with one of Joey’s older brothers, too, now that I think of it,” he added. “Joey had like four older brothers, no sisters, lucky shit.”

“Any chance,” I asked, “you could tell us where he lives?”

“The Espositos? Over on President Street, between Hoyt and Bond, right across the street from the school. They got the most lights on their house. Put ’em up right after Thanksgiving and leave ’em until Easter. You can’t miss it.” Eddie flipped his wrist to check his watch. “I gotta go.”

We stood to shake Eddie’s hand. Mac opened his wallet and took out a business card. “Call me if you think of anything else. Any chance I can get your number?”

Eddie recited his phone number, which Mac keyed straight into his BlackBerry. “If it’s him, if he did it, I’ll testify on the stand. For whatever it’s worth.”

Mac stood and I sat, both of us watching Eddie Walczak brace his shoulders against the cold as he hurried coatless across the street and out of view.

I
t was deep twilight when we walked up to the Esposito home on President Street. Eddie had been right: You couldn’t miss it. The small brick house blinked like a sales pitch for Times Square in the middle of the quiet block, rhythmically flashing streaks of color into the drab winter evening.

“Here goes nothing.” I headed up the stoop, with Mac right behind me.

The doorbell rang with a recorded choir singing “We wish you a Merry Christmas!” over and over.

“It’s past
New Year’s
,” I mumbled.

“Guess someone here didn’t want to see Christmas end.” Mac glanced at me with a wry smile just as a burly man with a graying comb-over opened the door.

“Are you Mr. Esposito?” I pulled off my glove and thrust out a hand.

“Yeah.” He shoved both his hands into his pants pockets. “How can I help youse?”

We introduced ourselves first as neighbors, then as investigators, watching his expression roller-coaster from almost friendly to borderline hostile.

“Whaddya want wit’ me?”

“We were hoping to speak with your son Joey.” I smiled. “Is he home?”

“Joey didn’t do nuttin’.”

We explained some more, nipping at the edge of the five-year-old scab of Father X and the case that went nowhere, because like hungry scavengers we wanted to see what was underneath.

“We ain’t openin’ that can a worms again.” The door started to close when someone appeared on the stairs behind him.

“Pop?”

“Get upstairs, Joey.”

In the diminishing sliver of open door I saw Joey Esposito. Eddie had been right: He looked like a girl, a very pretty girl, slender with shoulder-length blond hair. It was almost impossible to believe that he and his father were related. Joey was also considerably taller than his father, whose height was average at most.