Authors: Keith Gilman
“This stuff Carol Ann Blackwell’s?”
“If it is, she’s been working pretty hard for her money.”
“I’m sorry, Lou.”
“What’s there to be sorry about? If we assume she was here, that means I’m one step closer to finding her.”
“Good way to look at it. I’m sorry, anyway.”
“Maybe she’ll come back. Can you spare a man? Sit on the place for a while.”
“I’ll have the district car keep an eye out. That’s the best I can do.”
They left the place much as they found it. Nobody waved to them from the bar on their way out. Lou was back in his car, maneuvering onto Broad Street past Temple University and west onto Diamond. He floated through stop signs and traffic lights until he reached Parkside Drive. He stopped in a Convenient Market on the corner of Parkside and Wynnefield. A cardboard sign in the window advertised lottery tickets and sandwiches made daily. The Nigerian behind the counter was gesturing wildly, yelling into a cell phone in a language Lou didn’t understand. He paid five bucks for a pack of Winstons and stood waiting for the change. When the Nigerian turned his back to him, he realized none was coming and walked out.
He circled Fairmont Park and pulled onto Lincoln Drive, he drove into a gravel lot facing the river and turned off the engine. It was dark and cold but there were still people walking along the narrow blacktop path. Lou left the radio on and listened to the host talk about the mall shootings in California, as though it could have been prevented if more people had guns. He turned it off and lit a cigarette. He sucked the smoke deep into his lungs and stared dreamily at the lights on the boat houses across the river and the endless stream of headlights on the expressway above. The river had swelled with the recent snow and
the freezing rain. All that water, Lou thought, the way it moved, its depth—it was uncontrollable. A few more feet and it would overflow its banks, crawl out to roam freely over the land. And when it returned, it will have taken people with it.
His cell phone rang again. This time he looked at the number before he answered. It was Maggie calling from the house.
“You coming home?”
“Yeah, pretty soon.”
“You got a call. I took a message, told them you’d call back.”
“Who was it?”
“The girl you talked to at the mall, the missing girl’s friend, Lisa Barrett. She didn’t sound so hot.”
“She say anything?”
“Not really. She wanted to talk to you, seemed in a hurry and worried. You want her number?”
Lisa Barrett picked up after six or seven rings. Lou had been just about ready to hang up and redial, thinking he might have hit the wrong number. Maggie was right. The girl sounded worried. She was deliberately quiet as if she was afraid of someone overhearing the conversation, someone in the next room. The television was going in the background. He heard Dr. Phil’s voice.
“Mr. Klein, there’s something I’ve got to tell you, something I should’ve told you the first time we talked. But I was afraid. I didn’t know what to do.”
“It’s okay, Lisa. Relax. What is it?”
“Um, are you still looking for Carol Ann?”
“Yes, I am.”
“You were friends with Carol Ann’s father. Isn’t that right? Isn’t that why you’re helping her?”
“We were friends, yes. I was asked to help, and for his sake I’ll do everything in my power to help his daughter.”
“So, you’re not giving up?”
“I never said I was. What was it you wanted to tell me?”
“If Carol Ann wasn’t missing no more, Mr. Klein, and everything was sort of, back to normal, I don’t suppose there’d be any reason for me to start talking now. Is there, Mr. Klein?”
“Do you know where she is, Lisa?”
“No. I just mean, if she showed up.”
“Is she there with you?”
“No. Why do you keep asking that?”
“Lisa, if you didn’t think it was important, you wouldn’t have called. I know we spoke just once, but I think you’re the kind of person that wants to do the right thing. If you don’t, it eats away at you. Isn’t that right?”
“I guess so.”
“If I can help, Carol Ann or you, Lisa, in any way, I will. The only thing I ask is that you be honest with me.”
“It’s been a few months now, since it happened. Carol Ann and I had sort of drifted apart. You know, like we weren’t as close, but she still came to me if she was in trouble.”
“She trusted you.”
“She did, Mr. Klein, and as soon as I saw her, I knew there was something wrong. I just knew it. She was pregnant, Mr. Klein. She tried to hide it under a baggy sweatshirt. She was always so thin. I was kind of surprised when she told me nobody else knew. Maybe I didn’t believe her about that, but she asked me to stay with her. Then she admitted that her mother knew and she wasn’t happy about it. She was scared, Mr. Klein, and so was I.”
“What did she want you to do?”
“Mr. Klein, can I ask you something? I mean, you were a cop, you know about the law, right. What if someone knows about something that happened, something bad, and didn’t say anything about it, didn’t tell anyone. Are they guilty of a crime? I mean, if they were there but didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Or didn’t do anything at all, because they were scared or wanted to protect someone?”
“For whatever reason.”
“Well, according to the law, that person can be considered an accomplice.”
“What if they realized they made a mistake and tried to do something about it? You know, tried do the right thing.”
“Sometimes it’s too late.”
There was a long silence on the phone. He could hear Lisa Barrett’s heavy breathing on the other end. Lou rolled down the window a few more inches. The wind was cold and howled over the water and through the trees. He thought he heard her crying.
“She had the baby, Mr. Klein, that night, a little boy.”
“Tell me what happened, Lisa.”
“We took a bottle of bourbon from Sarah’s cabinet and went to the river, where we used to go to party. It felt like old times. We’d get drunk down there and throw rocks into the water, listen to them hit in the darkness. Then, the pains started. She knew that baby was coming out. I didn’t realize how big she was until she lifted her shirt up and I saw her stomach. I wanted to go for help but she wouldn’t let me. I couldn’t leave her there alone. She was in terrible pain. But she never screamed, Mr. Klein. She just lay there on her back in the high grass and pushed that baby out. I don’t know how long we were there. She had that baby right there by the river, Mr. Klein, a beautiful little boy with a full head of brown hair and a pudgy little belly. But she wouldn’t even look at it, wouldn’t touch it either, at first. Then she caught her breath, scooped up the boy, and dropped it into the water. Into that cold, black water, Mr. Klein, and it went right under. It was so dark and the water was so deep. It was just gone.”
Lisa was crying. Lou listened to her loud sobs. He held the phone away from his ear while she caught her breath. He didn’t want to listen to her cries any more than he wanted to hear the
story of death by that cursed river. He should have been surprised but he wasn’t. Nothing surprised him these days. And then he thought that it was probably harder for Lisa to tell it than it was for him to hear it. She’d shared her burden with him. And now it was his as much as hers.
“You never told anyone about this?”
“I couldn’t. I promised. I couldn’t bring that boy back, Mr. Klein.”
“Don’t say anything more about it, Lisa. And try not to worry. It wasn’t your fault.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. But you have to promise me one thing. If she shows up there or you hear from her, you must call me. Is it a deal?”
“It’s a deal, Mr. Klein.”
He drove with the
window open and lit another cigarette with the burning tip of the first. It was getting a little late for house calls. He let the cigarette fall from his fingers into the rushing stream of wind and watched the red embers die in the mirror behind him.
The lights were still on at Sarah Blackwell’s house, a two-story brick house, in one of those turn-of-the-century neighborhoods in South Philly, where a hundred years ago, the stone sparkled and the gaslights burned all night long. This one was trying real hard to hang on to its former glory but the signs of age couldn’t be completely covered. The wood had been marred with numerous sandings but still held a fresh coat of white paint. The stone hadn’t quite lost its edge. The slate on the roof was original, beginning to buckle and stain. It didn’t have many more years left in it.
The gutters and the drainpipes hung straight and rigid with the newness of fresh aluminum. The front porch was a reminder of the grandeur that once graced these homes. A rocker
hung perilously from metal chains at one end. Wind chimes sung lightly in the breeze.
Many of these homes had been converted into duplexes and apartment houses. Their original owners had moved into new suburban developments or retirement communities, or they were dead and the children who inherited the properties carved them up into neat little investments. Absentee landlords who came by once a month to collect a check that would help pay for their kid’s piano lessons, maybe another trip to Disneyland. The city no longer bothered to pave these streets, and even though most of the houses had garages in the back, parked cars lined both sides of the street. He found a space and shut off the engine.
He kept the window open and leaned the seat back two clicks. He was beginning to forget how quiet a street could become at night, after the children were put to bed and all the tired old men, old before their time, sat up in front of a television screen watching the late news and fell asleep in their clothes, their grinding snores mimicking the choking throes of slow suffocation.
He heard a creak of a door and footsteps. Across the street, a gray-haired man wearing a red sweater, glasses, and white pajama pants dragged a brown plastic garbage can to the curb. The lid tumbled off about halfway down the driveway. He stooped to pick it up with the adroitness of a rusty weather vane, smoothed down a few stray wisps of gray hair, and dutifully finished his chore. Along both sides of the street, in front of every home, green and brown plastic trash containers and yellow recycling bins stood like sentinels. A black cat darted silently across the street beneath a parked car. It moved quickly, effortlessly, as though it was gliding, appearing and disappearing underneath parked cars in one motionless second. He saw it only as a shadow.
The steps leading to the front door never let out a squeak. The figure of a woman could be seen in silhouette through the window, sitting at the dining room table. She was bent over a pile of papers with her head in her hand. Lou gently tapped the glass and Sarah Blackwell turned and rose as if startled from sleep. She greeted him at the front door with a forlorn smile, her glasses pushed back into her hair and a pencil behind her ear. The angled sharpness in her face was the same as that of her daughter on the picture in his pocket. Her cheekbones were accentuated with a powdery blue makeup, probably to cover the bruises from her fall. The slate blue eyes, however, had managed to keep their charm, an allure that she would always possess, regardless of the eroding passage of time.
“Lou, I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I know it’s late, Sarah. But under the circumstances, I hope you don’t mind.”
She welcomed him in, pointed to a chair, and offered to get him a cup of coffee. She excused herself and retreated through a narrow hallway into the kitchen.
He waited in virtual silence. He sat in a straight-back wooden chair and crossed his legs with some apparent discomfort. He grew impatient and began slowly pacing along the edge of the room. Pictures hung on the wall in clusters, in various frames of brass and wood, some in color and some in black and white. There were many snapshots of Carol Ann, those sparkling blue eyes longing for the camera, reflecting the momentary flash of light. She was young in most of them, going to school, playing pony league baseball, birthday parties. Other photos showed her posing between her mother and father, Sarah and Sam fawning over their only child with presents on Christmas. There was a graduation and prom picture, but nothing after that.
Nothing was out of place but he couldn’t help but think that its neatness was artificial. Behind the thick glass of an oak hutch,
plates, bowls, cups, and saucers lay stacked, antique china, flowered in pink and blue, dusty and unused. Silver trays and serving sets sat idly behind a group of glass figurines: ballerinas, soldiers on horse back, hounds at the hunt, and elephants with curling tusks. The polished silver acted like a mirror, multiplying the number of figures that appeared on the shelf. He could see a reflection of the entire room in the glass. It looked elongated and dark like a tunnel with shadows on either side. She returned with a steaming pot, three cups, a bowl of sugar, and a pint of cream. His host poured the coffee with a handkerchief in her hand and bourbon on her breath.
Lou sipped the hot coffee, placed the cup lightly on the table, and decided on a low cushioned chair with a soft throw pillow on either side. He sank back and looked into Sarah’s eyes.
“I don’t know that I’m the right man for this job, Sarah. I think you might want to leave this to the police.”
“The police didn’t seem to care very much when Carol Ann was just another missing kid. Now that they have a couple dead bodies on their hands, they’re a little more interested. I’d prefer to do business with you, Lou.”
“You’d think the police would bend over backwards to find the daughter of one of their own, the daughter of the wife of Vincent Trafficante.”
“Like they found your mother’s murderer?”
“That was different.”
“How so?”
“The police did everything they could. They collected the evidence, did the investigation, and came up empty. It happens.”
“And now they’re busy with a couple of unsolved murders, and still no closer to finding my daughter. I’m not always sure whose side the police are on.”
“I don’t like it, Sarah. The more I learn, the less I like it, and I didn’t like it much from the start. It’s getting complicated.”