Authors: Wendy Corsi Staub
“You and everyone else,” he replies, and she instantly recognizes the distinct grind of a voice from the past.
“Shakey?”
She doesn’t know his real name, or where he got his nickname, though there are various theories among the guards. Some said Shakey was short for Shakespeare—bestowed not because he was particularly eloquent, but because he was not. Others said it was because he dabbled in his share of drugs back in the day, and Shakey referred to the DTs—delirium tremens. All anyone knows for sure is that the aging Dead Head has been a beloved fixture here at the beach for many decades.
He narrows his eyes at her, then widens them. “Gabriela! That’s you! Hey, I heard you people were back here today! Gimme a hug.”
She does, but his comment gives her pause. “You people?” she asks, pulling back again.
Shakey groans. “After all these years, you gonna get on me for the way I tawk?”
“No, I just meant . . . ‘you people’ as in who?”
“You and Bennie. How you been?”
“We’re . . . fine,” she tells Shakey. If he hasn’t heard otherwise, she’s not going to be the one to break the divorce news. “How about you?”
“Same. Some things never change, you know? So . . . how’d you manage to lose Ben?”
“What?”
“You know . . . Lost ’n’ Found. Thought maybe you lost—” Seeing her expression, he stops grinning. “Hey, everything okay?”
“Sure.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Hey, where’s Ben?”
“Oh, he’s out there somewhere. Listen, what I’m actually looking for is a brown cardboard box about this big.” She gestures with her hands.
“What’s it look like?”
Oh, Shakey.
Lifeguard lore always did proclaim that his brain was usually as fried as his fair-skinned face.
She repeats, “Brown. Cardboard. This big.”
He gives a cursory glance at the array of swim goggles, clothing, towels, and various beach gear that line the shelf behind him. “Not here. What’s in the box?”
“Just . . .”
A lifetime’s worth of memories.
“Just a bunch of . . . old . . . stuff.”
“Why you lugging a box of old stuff around at the beach?”
Good question. “Never mind. It’s—It doesn’t matter. I guess it’s gone.”
“So where’s Ben?” Shakey asks again.
“I don’t know, exactly. We kind of . . . lost each other.”
“Did you try calling his cell?”
“He doesn’t have it on him.”
“Oh. Well, Stella saw him down by the chairs a little while ago. She said he’d be up here to see me.”
Before Gaby can respond, a disgruntled-looking woman and a whiny adolescent girl come up behind her, arguing.
“I told you not to leave it on the blanket when you went in the water.”
“I was only gone for like two minutes.”
“Well if it’s not in the Lost and Found, then that means someone stole it. And I’m not buying you another one.”
Gaby steps aside.
“Hey, don’t go nowhere,” Shakey tells her. “I’m not done catching up with you.”
“Don’t worry,” she says, leaning against a low brick wall to keep an eye out for Ben. “I’ll hang around for a while.”
“So your nephew wanted to settle down, then?” Stockton is asking José Morales, in the thick of questioning him as Sully continues to take notes. “Trying to meet someone new?”
“Definitely.”
“What kind of women did he want to meet?”
“
Nice
women.”
“Yeah, well, not a whole lotta men out there who are looking for mean bitches,” Stockton says with a grin, adding, “but some of us manage to find ’em anyway.”
Sully shoots him a pointed look.
He shoots one back, and she can read his mind:
Just trying to keep it light here.
“Did Bobby talk about the qualities he wanted in a woman?” she asks Morales. “Besides nice, I mean?”
“Sure. Someone with old-fashioned values.”
“Old fashioned—how?”
“You know—someone who wants to get married and have a family. Bobby loves kids. That’s the most important thing. He never had a dad—other than me, anyway—and he wants to be a good one. Like me, he always says.” José Morales chokes up and turns away to compose himself again.
Stockton quickly wraps up the questioning, telling him they’ll be in touch if they find anything, and asks if Morales has any questions.
“
Sí
. What happened to the other detectives who were on the case?”
“McClure and Needham?”
“Did they get fired for not trying hard enough?”
“Fired? No, they’re still on it.”
“They’re trying, Mr. Morales,” Sully puts in. “They really are.”
“But why did they bring in you two?”
Neither she nor Stockton answers immediately.
Morales looks from one to the other. “I’ve been here all my life. I know the NYPD detectives don’t sit around twiddling their thumbs because there’s nothing to do. I been trying to get the other detectives to work harder to find Bobby, but half the time they’re too busy to even take my calls. Same thing with the press. I try to get them to, you know, pay attention to what happened to Bobby, but they’re not putting him on the front page the way they would if he were some young rich white girl who disappeared. You know what I mean?”
They know. They nod.
“So why,” he repeats, “are you two working on my nephew’s case now, too? What happened?”
“There have been a couple of similar disappearances since Bobby went missing,” Sully admits. “We’re not sure they’re related.”
“You mean they just vanished, like my nephew?”
“Pretty much.”
“Why do you think they’re connected?”
“They had a lot in common with your nephew.”
“Like what?”
“They were all Hispanic men, mid-thirties, using online dating Web sites,” Stockton tells him. “That’s why we were asking you about Bobby’s Internet habits.”
Sully shoots him a warning look. Better not to say too much at this stage.
“So you’re talking about . . . what? Some kind of serial . . .”
Morales can’t bring himself to say the word
killer
. Nor is it accurate. Not yet, anyway.
“We’re looking at a number of different scenarios, Mr. Morales,” Sully tells him.
“And . . . you haven’t found them, have you? These other guys? Alive, or . . .”
“No,” Stockton says. “We haven’t found them.”
“Good. I mean, not good, but . . . you know.”
They nod. They know.
“Anything you can do to find Bobby, I want you to do,” Morales tells them as they edge their way past the furniture crowding the entryway to open the door. “That kid is my world, you know?”
Yet again they nod. Yet again they know.
They start down the hall to the stairs.
“Hey wait a second—Detectives?”
They turn back to see José Morales beckoning from the doorway. “As a token of my appreciation, I’ll be happy to give you my TV.”
“Somehow, I don’t think he’s talking about the flat screen,” Stockton mutters. Aloud, he tells the man, “You don’t have to do that. This is our job.”
“I know, but it’s the least I can do.”
“That’d be great. I can use a new TV,” Sully tells him. “Come on, Stockton—you’re a big, strapping guy. This will be a cakewalk for you.”
Five minutes later, stopping for a rest on the third-floor landing, sweat streaming into his eyes after lugging the heavy television down the first flight, Stockton glares at her, panting.
“Why are we doing this?”
“Because he wanted to give it to me.”
“You just bought yourself a flat-screen plasma TV,” he hisses.
“Yeah, and that man has a kid he’s most likely never going to see again. You know it and I know it. The least we can do is move this thing out of there so he doesn’t have to pay someone to do it for him.”
Stockton tilts his head, and a smile slowly replaces his frown. “You’ve got a good heart. You know that, Gingersnap?”
“So did Bobby Springer.”
It isn’t until they’re moving down the next flight that she realizes she used past tense.
Any second now Ben knows he’s going to pass out, or vomit. That he might do both, maybe even simultaneously, is not out of the realm of possibility.
All he wants right now is to go home, crawl into bed, and stay there until tomorrow. If only he could snap his fingers and beam himself there, instead of dealing with this woman. Alex.
It may be because he’s battling the mother of all hangovers, but there’s something a little . . .
off
about her. She seems a little too into him. Not in an insecure, desperate way, like some women he’s met. More in a proprietary way, almost as if they’ve been seeing each other for a while.
Maybe it’s not entirely her fault, given his drunken over-enthusiasm when they were messaging back and forth last night.
That’s what you get for being irresponsible,
he tells himself now as they rinse the sand off their feet on the boardwalk beneath a cement-colored sky.
That’s what you get for letting yourself fall in love with Gaby all over again.
If he hadn’t originally been planning to come here today with her, would he be having a better time now?
Probably not. Even if he didn’t feel like crap from all the Bourbon, and even if the weather were picture-perfect, he still wouldn’t be interested in this woman.
“Ready?” Alex is barefoot, sandals dangling from her hand, along with a set of car keys. She’s still wearing her hat and sunglasses, so he hasn’t gotten a good look at the rest of her face, but the network of fine wrinkles around her mouth tells him that she might be at least a decade older than she claimed to be, possibly in her forties. Late forties. Plus—well, her biceps are bigger than his. He’s not crazy about women who are all skin and bones, but he prefers curves to muscle.
It doesn’t matter that she’s not his type, though. He’s never going to see her again. She’s just another in a long line of dates that didn’t work out.
Feeling more light-headed by the second, Ben shoves his wet feet into his flip-flops and reaches for his phone to check the time, but—
dammit, dammit.
That’s right. He lost the phone.
“What’s wrong?” She’s watching him.
“Nothing, I just—I’m going to go wait for the shuttle bus, so I was wondering what time it—”
“Don’t be silly. I’ll drive you. Not all the way home—just to the subway,” she adds when he opens his mouth to protest. “Remember? Just like we said.”
Just like
she
said. He never agreed to that, did he?
“You really do look like you’re not feeling well,” she tells him before he can argue. “Sit there and I’ll go get you a bottle of water.”
She points to a nearby bench, then is gone before he can protest.
Ben sits.
Water would also be a good idea. He’s definitely dehydrated, thanks to the oppressive weather and his hangover.
But he doesn’t want to ride with her, even just to the subway station. That might send the wrong message. He’ll take the bus.
A group of teenage girls are talking shrilly nearby, making his head pound. He put a couple of Advil into his pocket before he left home earlier. When Alex brings water, he’ll swallow them, even at the risk of feeling more nauseated than he does now.
Why is she taking so long?
Nearby, the girls’ conversation—about boys, of course—grows louder and more animated, liberally sprinkled with curse words and slang Ben doesn’t even understand. He rubs his temples, wishing they’d go away.
Or maybe he should go away. He can just get up and leave. When Alex comes back, she’ll see that he’s gone, and yes, she’ll be upset and angry, but she’ll get over it. They’ll never see each other again, so who cares?
Besides, he wouldn’t be the first guy to take off on a woman before their date has drawn to a formal close.
He starts to get up. His legs wobble beneath him.
He sits again.
Deciding she’s lingered long enough at the Lost and Found, Gaby bids farewell to Shakey at last. She leaves her cell phone number with him, though, telling him to call her if someone drops off the box.
“What about Ben?”
“What about him?”
“You want I should call you if he shows up, too?”
“No, I’ll find him sooner or later.”
“Don’t be so sure about that. It’s crazy out there today.”
“It’s crazy out there every day, isn’t it?”
“This time of year? Hell, yeah. But I love it.”
She used to love it, too. But she’s had enough.
She heads back out into the dreary afternoon. It’s time to go back to her life. Tomorrow, she can track down Ben at work and arrange to messenger his phone over to him.
“Gabriela?”
Turning, she recognizes Stella Kaplan, one of the lifeguards she and Ben used to know. She was never Gaby’s favorite person. Mainly because she was always flirting with Ben. To be fair, Stella flirted with all the male guards and was aloof to the female ones. But Gaby knew Ben and Stella had a brief fling before she and Ben ever started dating—good reason to be even less fond of her.
“How are you?” Stella hugs her. “Wow, it’s been a few years, hasn’t it?”
It has, and they’ve certainly been kind ones to Stella. Gaby thought she’d heard that Stella had gotten married and had a baby, but she’s not wearing a wedding ring and her figure is as taut as ever.
“It’s been a while,” Gaby agrees.
“Well, you look as great as Ben does.”
“Oh . . . thanks. So do you.”
“You don’t have to say that. I’m a single mom with a one-year-old. I look like a raccoon.”
“You and me both.” Gaby decides she likes Stella after all.
“Listen, I haven’t had a chance to talk to you since . . . well, since your loss. I heard about it too late to come to the service. I wanted to say how sorry I am. Now that I’m a mom, especially, I just can’t even . . . I’m so sorry.”
Caught off guard, Gaby murmurs something appropriate.
“But I’m really glad you and Ben have stuck together through all of this,” Stella adds. “A lot of couples can’t stay married even without dealing with something so traumatic. Like I told Ben, you two deserve your happily ever after and I hope you’ll be blessed with more children.”