Wally shuddered at the visual memory of both women’s deaths, and thought about the handgun stashed in Charlene’s desk drawer.
For this day
, Charlene Rainer had said, as if she had expected that one day Klesko would emerge from the past and come looking for her. Wally could only assume that her own mother lived just such an existence, trying to carry on with her new life but never quite able to feel safe, never free to make contact with her own daughter for fear that she would endanger her.
As Wally reached the empty doorway of the lawyer’s suite, she glanced behind her to find that the workers were focused on hanging the first door and were not looking in her direction. She slipped inside the lawyer’s office and, once inside, noticed that the doorway between that suite and the next—Dr. Rainer’s—had been filled and hung with a brand-new door, but the new lock had not been attached yet. A piece of the yellow crime scene tape was stretched across the doorway, but Wally simply ducked under the tape and pushed through the unlocked door, stepping into Charlene’s inner office space and closing the door behind her. Charlene’s office was a total mess, not just from the battle, but from the army of crime scene techs who had obviously tromped through, dusting every surface for prints and leaving chunks of plaster on the floor from where they had cut away pieces of the wall. Charlene’s laptop computer was gone from its spot on the desk.
The disturbance that caught Wally’s attention most, however, was the open drawers of Charlene’s file cabinet: someone had been going through the files. Wally headed straight for the cabinet and rifled through the alphabetized files, and her heart sank when she discovered that her own file was missing.
Detective Greer must’ve grabbed it
, Wally thought. Wally searched under two other names—Valentina and Yalena Mayakova—just in case, but there were no files under either name. Wally shifted her focus to Charlene’s desk, sifting through all its drawers for anything that might be relevant. As she looked, Wally became aware of footsteps approaching from somewhere out in the hallway. They stopped outside Dr. Rainer’s door—just a few feet from where Wally stood—and there was a metallic scraping sound as the person sat down in the folding chair. The cop was back.
Even more quietly now, Wally looked through Charlene’s desk, but she found nothing, and turned back to the file cabinets. Wally remembered how cautious Charlene was about sharing information that had to do with Yalena Mayakova and thought maybe her file had been intentionally filed under a different name or in an unlabeled file folder. Wally returned her attention to the file cabinets and worked her way through them but found nothing of use except that once she had run through all the file names, to the end of the alphabet—Charlene had a patient named Zahan—there was still another file cabinet left that she had not explored. The doors of this extra cabinet were unlocked, and Wally immediately set to scanning her way through them.
The individual files bore client names, as with the case files in the larger file cabinet, but this second group of files contained only billing documents. Again, Wally found no file with her name on it but kept scanning all the way to the end—Zahan again—only to discover a single unlabeled folder
after
Zahan. Wally pulled the file out and spread it open on Charlene’s desk. The records on this anonymous account matched Wally’s history with the doctor, the last official visit logged being eight years earlier. This anonymous client had never once been billed for his or her visits. Reaching the end of the file, Wally found a standard contact sheet. The first address listed, with no name attached, was Wally and Claire’s home address on 84th Street. The second address was for the Harpswell School. Under the “Emergency Contacts” heading there were four phone numbers: Claire’s home and cell phone, the general number for the Harpswell School, and, unexpectedly, a fourth phone number that had been completely covered over with permanent black marker, with no name given next to it.
Wally held the paper at an angle to the daylight coming in through the window and discovered that the redacted phone number had been written in a hard-tip pen and made an impression in the paper just visible when read from an oblique angle. It turned out not to be a phone number at all, but a PO box address on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn, completely unfamiliar to Wally. She copied down the address and looked at it again, feeling a quick thrill of adrenaline rush through her. A voice inside her told Wally that she finally held in her hand a direct connection to her mother.
Wally secured the address inside her shoulder bag and then scanned the room, looking for a way out. She now noticed that the office’s window—looking out at the fire escape—had been completely removed. Her luck was turning. Wally unlatched the iron security grate from the empty windowsill and stepped out onto the fire escape. She climbed down to the alleyway below, and she was gone.
TWENTY-THREE
It was early evening
—dark outside—when Wally slipped through the back entrance of the old dry cleaner’s and found Tevin asleep—he had dozed off on a rusty cot that had been left behind in a back room of the cleaner’s. She was changing out of her Thanksgiving clothes and into her warmer street threads when he stirred awake.
“Wha—”
“It’s okay, it’s just me,” Wally said.
“Hey. You’re going out again?”
“Yeah. Where are Jake and Ella?”
“Times Square. Figured the holiday crowds would be a good time to get rid of the last phone cards.”
“Why didn’t you go?”
“I was worried … the way we all split up today. I wanted there to be someone here when you came back.”
“You guys said what was on your minds, Tev, and I have no problem with that.”
“But what I wanted to say is that you being happy is the most important thing to me. I’m going to help any way I can until you find what you want.”
“That means a lot,” Wally said, and it was true. “I felt bad about today too, especially after …”
“Yeah,
especially
after
. I know. Is this going to be weird?”
“I don’t know. I mean, not necessarily …”
They looked at each other and cracked up just a little, embarrassed.
“Oh man,” Tevin said. “Maybe if we just ignore it for a while, see how it sits?”
“I vote for that too,” Wally agreed, and Tevin seemed relieved.
“Where are you headed now?”
“A place near the Brooklyn Navy Yard,” she said, and recounted the lead she had found in Dr. Rainer’s files.
“You’re taking a cab?”
“Nah, there may be someone waiting. I rented a car.”
Tevin beamed at this news. “Seriously?”
Wally shrugged. “The new ID is good, and I used Claire’s AmEx again. I mean, at this point why not?”
“Wait … can you even drive?”
“Really badly. I barely made it out of their parking lot.”
Excited, Tevin rose off the cot and began lacing his shoes. “I’m killer behind the wheel. Leave a note for the others so they don’t stress, okay?”
Wally was about to object, but she could see that Tevin would not be denied this adventure.
Tevin was beyond psyched
to find that Wally had rented a Lincoln Town Car; he’d expected something boring and beige—an anonymous Toyota sedan—and instead found himself behind the wheel of a classic American whip, cruising the streets of Manhattan.
“It was the only car they had left,” Wally said.
“Now I am truly happy,” Tevin said, unable to stop smiling. “This is better than the—”
“Better than the
what
?” Wally cautioned him. “If I were you, I would choose my next words very carefully.”
“Better than the turkey. Duh.”
“Whatev,”
she said. They both smiled.
Tevin drove downtown and onto the Williamsburg Bridge, crossing the East River to Brooklyn and exiting at Broadway.
“Broadway south and down around Flushing Avenue,” Wally said, and Tevin followed her instructions. This route led them south of Williamsburg toward the Brooklyn Navy Yard, but they turned off Flushing before then, heading toward the intersection of Myrtle Avenue and Carlton in Fort Greene.
“
Mail boxes
,” Tevin read out loud, pointing to a sign over a small storefront on Myrtle.
“That’s the address,” Wally said. “Park back there …” She pointed to a spot on Carlton where they could park with a good view of the PO box store but remain out of sight. Tevin did a U-ey and grabbed the parking spot, then shut off the engine.
It was just after noon by then, and the neighborhood shoppers were out on Myrtle, many of them seniors pulling their little rolling shopping carts and ducking into the bodegas that lined the street. The PO box store had an all-glass front, with several hundred mailboxes covering the walls of the main room and a service desk to the side with one clerk sitting by, a smallish freckled woman with short-cropped red hair and a tat creeping up from under her shirt collar—a club chick daylighting as a store clerk.
“Stay with the car, okay?” Wally said to Tevin. “I’m going to check the box.” She climbed out of the car, buttoned her coat against the cold air, and crossed Myrtle, walking straight into the shop as if it was a part of her daily routine. She headed directly to Box 310. Wally had to bend down a bit to get a look and was disappointed to find that there was no small window on the box to reveal whether or not there was mail waiting inside. The space behind the boxes was lit, however, and in the light squeaking through the side of the box door, Wally thought she could make out the shadow of at least one letter inside.
“Can I help you with something?” the clerk asked, bored as she looked up from some ink drawings she was scribbling on an art pad. “That’s not your box, right?”
“No,” Wally answered, and turned to the clerk without hesitation. “It used to be a friend’s and I haven’t been able to figure out if she’s still in town. … The thing is, she was with this guy who was hitting her and all of us kept saying she should get a restraining order and she kept saying she would but in the end she would just go back to him and—”
“Christ …”
moaned the clerk, exasperated already, “tell me what box number.”
“310.”
The woman typed into her computer monitor. “What’s your friend’s name?”
“Oh … it’s Yalena, but she was having her mail sent care of a friend so the asshole who was beating her wouldn’t be able to—”
“
Stop
. Do you at least know her friend’s name?”
“Uh … no,” Wally said.
“Then I can’t help you,” said the rocker clerk, and returned to her artwork. “Have a nice day.”
Wally sighed and walked out of the shop, crossing back over Myrtle and sliding into the Town Car again.
“What happened?” Tevin asked, and Wally explained the situation. “So,” said Tevin, “we just figure that it’s still her box and wait her out.”
“And hope she checks her mail more than once a month,” said Wally.
“Friday is a big day for people to get stuff done,” Tevin said confidently. “Before the weekend, you know? Something will happen.”
“Then we need to get closer,” Wally said. “We can’t pick out the individual box numbers, and we need to be sure if someone is using the right box.”
“I don’t think so. If we get closer, we might spook her.”
“Yeah,” Wally agreed.
“You know what they do in the movies?” Tevin said with a mischievous grin. “They send a huge red box to the person at the box number so it’s obvious who picks up the mail.”
Wally smacked her forehead with the palm of her hand. “I can’t
believe
I forgot to bring a huge red box.”
Tevin laughed. “I have an idea,” he said, then reached into the seat well for his backpack, rifling through the various contents until he found a cheap ballpoint pen. He opened his door and climbed out of the car. “What’s the PO box number again?”
“310,” Wally said. “What’re you doing?”
“Workin’ it out.” Tevin shrugged with that mischievous grin again.
Tevin crossed Myrtle and entered the store, walking straight up to the clerk, who looked up from her “artwork” with her standard expression of annoyance. “Yeah?”
“You got a piece of notepaper?” Tevin asked. “I need to leave a message for my friend Sisco.”
“Sisco,”
the woman repeated in a snide tone, annoyed again at the interruption of her work. She pulled out a piece of notepaper and slapped it onto the counter in front of Tevin. He scribbled some words onto the paper and then folded it in half, writing
Box 617
on the outside. He held the note out, and the clerk took it without looking up at him but made no move to actually deliver it to the box. Tevin remained at the counter.
“What?” the clerk said.
“The message is really important.”
“Oh my God.”
The clerk groaned the words, as if being subjected to torture. She slammed down her art pen and rose from her stool. With Tevin’s note in hand, the woman left her post and walked back around behind the wall of PO boxes to place the note in the appropriate box. As soon as she was out of sight, Tevin scrambled across the floor of the shop and headed straight for Box 310. Once there, he jammed the tip of his pen into the box’s keyhole and twisted it hard to the side, breaking the tip off inside the keyhole.
“Thank you!” Tevin called out to the clerk as he turned and left the store.
TWENTY-FOUR
Near the corner
of 94th Street and West End Avenue, a gypsy cab was pulled halfway back into a service alley, its nose poking out far enough to allow the passengers a full view of 94th Street. In the backseat of the cab sat Klesko and Tiger. Behind the wheel of the cab was Ramzan, the Bulgarian from the basement credit card shop in Queens, fidgety and sweating despite the cold of the day. Klesko and Tiger kept their eyes on the abandoned dry cleaner’s on the first floor of an empty building, half a block away.
Within an hour, they spotted three of the four teens arriving—none of them
the
girl—and watched the youths as they snuck in the back entrance of the dry cleaner’s, using their own key.