M
yron sat in his dad’s chair
in the TV room.
Dad asked, “Are you going to wait up for Mickey?”
When Myron was a teenager, his father would sit in this chair at night and wait for his children to come home. He never gave Myron a curfew—“I trust you”—and he never told Myron that he waited up for him. When Myron would come through the door, Dad would either pretend to be asleep or have already sneaked upstairs.
“I will.” Then with a smile on his face, Myron said, “You think I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?”
“That you stayed awake until I came home.”
“I couldn’t sleep until I knew you were safe.” Dad shrugged. “But I knew you knew.”
“How?”
“I never gave you a curfew, remember? I said I trusted you.”
“Right.”
“But when you realized I stayed awake, you started coming home earlier. So I wouldn’t have to stay up and worry.” Dad arched an eyebrow at him. “Ergo, you actually came home earlier than if I gave you a curfew.”
“Diabolical,” Myron said.
“I just took advantage of what I knew.”
“Which was?”
“You were a good boy,” Dad said.
Silence. Silence that was broken when Mom shouted from the kitchen: “This is a very touching father-and-son moment. Can we go to bed now?”
Dad chuckled. “On my way. Are we going to Mickey’s game tomorrow? It’s home.”
“I’ll pick you up in the morning,” Myron said.
His mother leaned her head in from the kitchen. “Good night, Myron.”
“How come you never stayed awake until I came home?” Myron asked her.
“A woman needs her beauty sleep. What, you think I stay this hot by accident?”
“It’s a good lesson on marriage,” Dad said.
“What is?”
“Balance. I stayed awake at night. Mom slept like a baby. It doesn’t mean she didn’t care. But our strengths and weaknesses
complement each other. We’re a couple. See? That was my contribution. I took night watch.”
“But you were also first up in the morning,” Myron said.
“Well, yes, that’s true.”
“So what was Mom good at?”
Mom from the kitchen: “You don’t want to know.”
“Ellen!” Dad shouted.
“Oh, relax, Al. You’re such a prude.”
Myron already had his fingers in his ears. He started saying, “La, la, la, I can’t hear you,” as his father trudged toward the kitchen. He took his fingers out when they had both gone upstairs. He sat back and looked out the window. Funny. The chair was perfectly set up so you could watch both the television and any car approaching from the street.
Diabolical indeed.
It was almost one
A.M.
when Myron spotted Mickey’s car. He wondered whether he too should feign being asleep, but Mickey wouldn’t buy it. Myron had waited up for three reasons. One: General concern. Two: So his father wouldn’t have to. And three—most obvious: To find out what had happened after Myron left Mickey and Ema at the Moore house.
Myron sat in the dark and waited. Five minutes passed. Myron looked out. The car was still there. No lights. No movement. Myron frowned. He picked up his mobile and sent Mickey a text:
All ok?
No reply. Another minute went by. Nothing. Myron checked his phone for a reply.
Nada.
A feeling of unease began to descend upon him. He called Mickey’s phone. It went straight to voicemail.
What the hell?
He got out of Dad’s chair and started for the front door. No, that would be too direct. He headed into the kitchen and out the back. The yard was pitch dark, so Myron used the flashlight on his mobile phone. He circled toward the driveway where the streetlights provided enough illumination.
Still nothing.
Myron ducked low and crept toward the back of the car. Dad had watered the lawn recently. Myron’s slippers were quickly waterlogged. Terrific. He was twenty yards from the trunk of the vehicle. Then ten. Then he was ducking behind the back bumper.
He did a mental check, sifting through his brain in search of probable explanations for why no one would have come out of the car yet. Then just as Myron made the leap and grabbed the door handle and pulled open the driver’s door, the answer came to him . . .
. . . a second too late.
Ema screamed.
Mickey shouted, “What the hell, Myron?”
Two teenagers. In a car. Late at night.
Myron flashed back to a time when his own father had walked in on him and Jessica, his old love, during a most indelicate moment. His father had just stood there, unmoving, frozen, and at the time, Myron didn’t get it, why his father didn’t quickly apologize and close the door.
He got it now.
“Oh,” Myron said. Then: “Oh.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Mickey snapped.
“Oh,” Myron said again.
They were both, Myron was glad to see, dressed. Clothes, hair, makeup, showed some degree of distress. But they were dressed.
Myron pointed with his thumb behind him. “Maybe I should wait in the house.”
“Ya think?”
“Right. Okay, then.”
“Go!” Mickey shouted.
Myron turned and slouched his way back toward the house. Before he got to the door, Mickey and Ema were out of the car, doing slight wardrobe adjustments and following him. When Myron opened the door and they all stepped inside, Dad was standing there in the Homer Simpson pajamas Myron had bought him last Father’s Day.
Dad looked at Myron. Then he looked at Mickey and Ema.
“You went outside?” he asked Myron.
“Yes.”
“Weren’t you a teenager once?” Dad shook his head, trying to hold in the smile. “I knew I shouldn’t have left the night watch to you. Good night, all.”
Dad left. Myron and Mickey stood and looked at the floor. Ema sighed and said, “Grow up. Both of you.”
The three of them grabbed cold drinks and took their seats around the kitchen table.
“So,” Myron asked, “what’s your impression of Patrick? I mean, if it is Patrick.”
“He’s a normal kid,” Mickey said.
“Too normal,” Ema added.
“What do you mean?”
Ema put her hands on the table. Besides dressing in black and wearing black makeup, Ema had numerous tattoos up and down her arms. She had silver jewelry including two skull rings on her hand. “He knew recent movies,” she said.
“He was up-to-date on the latest video games,” Mickey said.
“He knew about the newest apps.”
“Same with social media sites.”
Myron considered that. “I don’t think he’s been kept in a cage all this time. Especially in recent, I don’t know, years. I mean, he was out on the streets. He lived under an arcade. The guy who was holding him in London is a major gamer. Couldn’t that explain all that?”
“It could,” Mickey said.
“But you don’t buy it?”
Mickey shrugged.
“What?”
“I don’t think he’s who he says he is,” Mickey said.
Myron looked at Ema. Ema nodded.
“His hands,” she said.
“What about them?”
“They’re soft.”
“It wasn’t like he was doing hard labor,” Myron said.
“I know,” Ema said, “but they don’t look like the hands of someone who’s been out on the streets either. And more than that, his teeth. They’re straight; they’re white. He may have incredible genes, but a safer bet would be that he’s had proper dental care and braces.”
“It’s hard to put a finger on it,” Mickey added, “but Patrick doesn’t look or sound, well, street. He doesn’t look abused, except, you know, for the recent stuff. I mean, ugh, he might have been ‘kept’ or taken care of by some . . . whatever . . . but . . .”
“Did you talk about the kidnapping at all?” Myron asked.
“We tried,” Ema said. “But we always got shot down.”
“Francesca was running interference,” Mickey said.
“Interference how?”
“She was protecting him,” Ema said. “Which is understandable, I guess.”
“So whenever we raised what happened—”
“Or even mentioned Rhys’s name.”
“She would interrupt and get all emotional, crying and hugging him,” Mickey said. “I mean, Patrick seemed kind of normal, but the sister was off.”
“I’m not sure I’d use the word ‘off,’” Ema said. “Her brother comes home after ten years. I think it would be weird if Francesca wasn’t all emotional.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Mickey said. But he didn’t say it with much enthusiasm.
“We tried to raise the kidnapping again after she left with Clark.”
“Wait,” Myron said. “Clark Baldwin? Rhys’s brother?”
“Yes.”
“He was there?”
“He came in to pick up Francesca,” Mickey said.
“They go to Columbia together,” Ema said. “He was giving her a ride back to campus.”
Myron said nothing.
“Is that a big deal?” Ema asked.
“I don’t know.” Myron thought about it some more. “It’s odd; that’s all. Maybe, I don’t know, do you think they’re romantically involved?”
Mickey rolled his eyes as only a teenager could. “No.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Old dudes,” Ema said to Mickey with a shake of the head. “No gaydar.”
“Clark is gay?”
“Yes. And what difference would it make if they were romantically involved? Weren’t they, like, ten, when this all went down?”
Something was niggling at the back of Myron’s brain, but he couldn’t figure out what yet. He moved back to the topic at hand.
“So after Francesca left, you tried to broach the subject of the kidnapping again?”
“Yes, but Patrick got real quiet.”
“Completely clammed up.”
“We left not long after that.”
Myron sat back for a moment. “How did he sound?”
“Sound?”
“We found him in London,” Myron said. “We have no idea how long he’s been there. Did you detect anything in his accent?”
“That’s a good question,” Ema said. “His accent was American overall, but . . .” She turned to Mickey. He nodded.
“It did have something else in it,” Mickey said. “I can’t put my finger on it exactly. He didn’t sound like he’d grown up here. But he didn’t sound like he’d grown up in England either.”
Myron tried to process that but came up with nothing. He tried something else. “So what did you do the whole time?”
“We ate pizza,” Ema said.
“We watched a movie,” Mickey added.
“We played video games.”
“We talked.”
“Oh, Patrick said he had a girlfriend,” Ema said. “But not from around here.”
“A girlfriend?” Myron said.
“Yeah, but he backed right off. He said it, I don’t know, like a kid bragging a little.”
“You know,” Mickey said. “Like when the new kid comes to town and says he has a girlfriend in Canada or something.”
“Don’t get us wrong,” Ema said. “He was nice enough. All kids talk about those kinds of things. It was just . . . I don’t know. It felt so normal.”
Mickey nodded.
“Thanks, guys. This was really helpful.”
“Oh, we’re not done,” Ema said.
Myron looked at them.
“I put a keylogger on his computer,” Mickey said.
“As in . . . ?”
“As in we can see whatever he types on it. Emails, social media, whatever.”
“Whoa,” Myron said. “Who’s monitoring him?”
“Spoon.”
Spoon was Mickey’s other close friend—if you still counted Ema as only a “friend”—and what they used to call (or heck, maybe still do) a lovable nerd or geek or dork. Spoon was also ridiculously brave.
“How is he doing?”
Mickey smiled. “He’s walking again.”
“And annoying everyone again,” Ema added. “Anyway, he’ll let us know if anything important comes up.”
Myron wasn’t sure what to say here. He didn’t like these teenagers crossing this particular ethical line, but he wasn’t in the mood to lecture them about privacy or, more important, give up a chance of possibly finding out the truth. It was a close call. Patrick might not be Patrick. Patrick might hold the key to finding another missing boy. Then again, was spying on a teenager justified? Was it even legal?
If you were the type of person who knew for sure what to do here, if you could make the call to spy or not spy without qualms or caveats, you’d be the kind of person Myron would find somewhat suspect.
Life ain’t that black-and-white.
“There’s one more thing,” Ema said.
“What?”
Ema glanced uneasily at Mickey.
“What?” Myron said again.
Mickey gestured for Ema to go ahead. Ema sighed and reached into her purse. She pulled out a small clear plastic bag, the kind you used to get your toiletries past TSA. “Here.”
Ema handed the bag to Myron. He held it up in the air. There was a toothbrush and strands of long hair. He put it down and waited a moment. “Are these . . . ?”
Ema nodded. “I got the toothbrush from Patrick’s bathroom,” she said. “Then I sneaked down the hall and grabbed the hair from Francesca’s hairbrush.”
Myron said nothing. He just stared at the contents in the plastic bag.
Mickey stood. Ema followed suit.
“We figured maybe you could run a DNA test on them or something,” Mickey said.
W
e are inside the farmhouse now.
It is just the two of us, Fat Gandhi and
moi.
Zorra now stands guard by the front door. Fat Gandhi’s traveling companions—two of the men Myron had described as the “gamers” from his visit and one male who could possibly be underage—are in the front yard with him.
“Your friend Zorro,” Fat Gandhi begins.
“Zorra.”
“Pardon?”
“His name is Zorra, not Zorro.”
“I mean no offense.”
I just stare at him.
“I’ve made us tea,” Fat Gandhi says.
I don’t touch it. I think instead about the young male, the one who may be underage. In movies, one often hears the bad guys talk about how “this is only business.” I for one rarely believe it. Be you good or bad, you tend to gravitate toward what interests you. Most drug dealers, for example, partake of their wares. The people I’ve encountered who work in the porn industry have a predilection for the same. Those who run protection rackets enforced by violence rarely have an aversion to injuring others or the sight of blood. In fact, for the most part, they relish it.
I look at my own role in this without irony, by the way.
My point? Fat Gandhi may talk about how this is all business and profit to him, but I am not sure that I believe it. I wonder whether there is a personal and unsavory explanation for his chosen line of work.
And I wonder whether I should do something about it.
“I can’t give you your cousin,” Fat Gandhi says, “because I don’t have him.”
“That’s very unfortunate,” I say.
He does not meet my eye. This is good. He fears Zorra. He fears me. As he said before, he does not want to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder. This is why I believe in massive and disproportional retaliation. It makes your next enemy think twice.
“Where is he?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I never had him.”
“Yet you had Patrick Moore.”
“I did, yes. But not like you think.”
He leans forward and grabs his cup of tea.
I ask, “How long was Patrick Moore in your employ?”
“That’s just it,” he says, taking a sip from the cup. “He never was.”
I cross my legs. “Please explain.”
“You killed my men,” he says. “Three of them.”
“Are you still looking for a confession?”
“No, I’m telling the story. I’m starting at the beginning.”
I sit back and beckon him to continue. Fat Gandhi doesn’t use the delicate handle of the teacup. He embraces it gently using both hands, as though protecting an injured bird. “You never asked my men why they approached Patrick Moore, did you?”
“There was no time,” I say.
“Perhaps. Or perhaps you overreacted.”
“Or perhaps they did.”
“Fair enough, mate. Fair enough. But we’re getting off track. I’m going to tell you what happened. You then decide where we go from there, okay?”
I nod.
“So this kid, this Patrick Moore, he shows up on our turf. You understand about that sort of thing, don’t you, Mr. Lockwood? Territorial disputes?”
“Go on.”
“So my men heard about it. You could be right. They may have been too heavy-handed; I don’t know. I wasn’t there. But that was their job. I’ve learned that on the streets, it’s sometimes better to be heavy-handed. To overreact.”
I hear the echo of my own self-justification. It does not faze me in the least.
“So they braced Patrick Moore. I assume they decided to make an example of him. Then you appeared. You acted in such a way as to protect him. But tell me, Mr. Lockwood, what did Patrick Moore do?”
“He ran away,” I say.
“Exactly, my friend. He ran. Everyone ran. Including Garth.”
“Garth?”
“The young man with the dog collar.”
“Ah,” I say.
“Garth naturally reported what happened. It got back to me. I called him. He told me about this new kid showing up on our turf and then how some effete gentleman disposed of them.”
I arch an eyebrow. “Effete?”
“His word, not mine.”
I smile. I know that’s untrue, but I let it go. “Continue.”
“Well, you can imagine, Mr. Lockwood, what I thought. Three of my men slaughtered over what seemed a small territorial dispute. I don’t know about America, but here that kind of thing doesn’t just happen. I concluded that someone—you, sir—were declaring war on me. I concluded that the boy, Patrick Moore as it turned out, was part of a setup—that he was working with you to test my strength and resolve. Do you understand?”
“I do.”
“And to be candid, I didn’t quite understand it. Those streets aren’t all that profitable. So I put feelers out for the boy who ran away. Patrick. Garth said that he heard him utter a few words and that he sounded American. That confused me even more. Why would Americans be out to get me? But from there, I put out the word.” He puts down the tea. “May I be immodest for a moment?”
“Please.”
“I more or less rule the streets of London. At least, when it comes to this particular market. I know the hotels. I know the brothels. I know the shelters and rail stations and public transport where youngsters hide. I know the parks and alleys and dark corners. There is no one better at finding a missing teen than yours
truly. My employees can scour the city better than any branch of law enforcement.”
He takes another sip of his tea, smacks his lips, sits the cup back down. “So I put out a code red, Mr. Lockwood. It didn’t take long for one of my contacts to find the boy. He was trying to check into a small hotel paying cash. So I sent a few of my more mature employees—you probably noticed them in camouflage pants—to apprehend him. They did so. They brought him back to the arcade.”
He takes another sip of tea.
“Patrick was alone when you found him?” I ask.
“Yes.”
I mull this over. “Did any of your people know him?”
“No.”
“Proceed,” I say.
“Please understand, Mr. Lockwood, that at this time, I believed that this American was working to disrupt and even destroy my business.”
I nod. “So you treated him as a hostile.”
Fat Gandhi’s smile is one of relief. “Yes. You understand, then?”
I give him nothing.
“I, shall we say, interrogated him.”
“He tells you who he is,” I say, putting it together. “That he was kidnapped.”
“Yes.”
“What did you do?”
“What I always do. I conduct research.”
I remember what Myron told me about Fat Gandhi’s Hindu aphorism. “Knowledge is bigger than debate,” I say.
He is unnerved by my knowledge of his quote. “Uh, yes.”
“What did you find?”
“I was able to confirm his story, which put me in something of a quandary. On the one hand, I could turn him over to the authorities. I could even end up a hero for rescuing him.”
I shake my head. “But that would put too much heat on you.”
“Precisely. Heroes put targets on their backs, even with the police.”
“So you decided to look for a payoff.”
“Honestly, I didn’t know what to do. I am not a kidnapper. I also still needed to understand the threat. Three of my men were dead, after all. So I confess to you, Mr. Lockwood, that I wasn’t quite sure what to do.”
I see it now. “And then Myron shows up.”
“Yes. He found Garth in the park. I have Garth bring him to the arcade. I figure that this is my chance. I can make money. I can get rid of Patrick. I can avenge my dead men.”
“The other boy that Myron saw in the cell,” I say. “I assume he was just a plant.”
“Yes, he was just one of the boys around that age.”
“You figured you could collect more money for two than for one.”
Fat Gandhi nods and spreads his hands. “You know the rest.”
I do, but I need to clarify. “You never saw Rhys Baldwin?”
“No.”
“And you have no idea where he is?”
“None. But this is my proposal, if you want to hear it.”
I sit back and cross my legs. I gesture for him to proceed.
“You forget me. I forget you. I go back to my life. Except for
one thing. I have the sources on the street. I have the contacts. I use them now. In the same way I was able to find Patrick Moore, I use them to find Rhys Baldwin, if he can be found.”
I consider this. It sounds like a fair deal. I tell him this. Relief washes over him. We have a deal. For now.
“One more question,” I say.
He waits.
“You said, ‘if he can be found.’”
His face falls a little.
“I assume,” I continue, “that you asked Patrick Moore about Rhys Baldwin’s whereabouts.”
He squirms just enough. “It didn’t really interest me,” he replies.
“But you asked.”
“I did, yes.”
“What did he say?”
Fat Gandhi looks me square in the eye. “He said that Rhys was dead.”