BON VOYAGE. For several days afterward June tossed about the notion, wondering if such a journey was truly possible for her. But why not? Certainly her affairs were in order: the apartment closing went smoothly, the last of the furniture was delivered to various dealers and to Habi, and the lease on her shop, renewed five years ago, was expiring in a week. The timing was miraculous. For the last month she had been steeling herself for the trip, consciously conserving her energy, and there was no reason it shouldn’t prove to be a good one, kindly to her person, even fulfilling. She had just poured water from the electric kettle for roasted rice tea when there was a knocking at the glasspaneled door of the shop. She had covered the door, as well as the inside of the front window, with white butcher paper, and so she could make out only a large looming shadow against the fading light of the early evening. No doubt it was the investigator-for-hire; no one else would assume there was anyone inside. He had called the shop that morning, saying he had detailed news of her son. For a long moment she sat still in the rickety oak swivel chair, a part of her dreading the creak that would betray her presence: this was her last chance to let it all just be. But then a stouter knock rattled the glass and she rose with what seemed an external propulsion, as if she had been fitted with invisible wings that knew nothing else but to beat. She opened the door to a tall, broad-shouldered man wearing a dark suit and striped tie and gray overcoat and holding a bulky briefcase in one hand. He might have been a typical New York businessman were it not for the terrible roughness of the skin on his cheeks, the likely result of a childhood pox. The scarring was severe and, unfairly or not, it made him appear tensed, stricken.
“Mrs. Singer? I’m Clines.”
She let him into the poorly lit shop. He appeared even taller when he stepped inside, and without being conscious of it she placed herself between him and the door. He had long pale hands and long legs, which ended in narrow, boatlike black shoes. He looked around the rectangular room of the shop, and she wondered if he was calculating the odds of her ability to pay him for his services. So far she’d only sent him a check for five hundred dollars as a retainer, and it was quite clear the sum value of what was left in the near-empty shop wasn’t close to that figure: there was the oak desk chair with its rusty wheels and a chipped glass coffee table topped with prescription bottles that served as a nightstand for the twin-sized mattress and box spring placed on the floor next to it. There was a floor lamp on the other side of the bed and beside that a warped drop-leaf table with an electric hot plate on which the kettle was wheezing ever so softly as the heat of the coils died down. Her clothes were folded and simply stacked in two opened suitcases against the wall, which was unadorned except for the few picture hangers that had been left up and the more numerous holes made by former ones. She could have been a squatter in the store for all he knew, an unstable, destitute woman who had stolen in and invented a dire family scenario.
She offered him the desk chair. June herself sat down on the low bed. “I want you to know, Mr. Clines, that I live here because it’s simplest for me, at this moment. This was my place of business.”
“I’m not worried,” he said, setting down his briefcase. He didn’t remove his light overcoat. “I know you’re more than solvent. I know that you’ve been liquidating your inventory. That you sold your apartment. I have to look into these things.”
“I understand.”
He nodded. “Now to why I’m here.”
“Yes. Please.”
“Before we start, I have to ask you whether you’re set on wanting to find this person.”
“He’s my
son
,” she replied, disliking his use of “this person.”
“But are you sure you want to find him?” he said again. “I have to ask. Sometimes people think they want something when in fact they don’t. We can stop now and all you’ll be responsible to me for is a few hours.”
“That’s all right.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
But June had in fact wondered, when she first contacted Clines, if she was indeed sure. It had been so long. The last time she had seen Nicholas in person was eight years ago, on the day of his high school graduation. He left that very night, for his own self-styled “grand tour.” June was naturally under the impression that he was going to call her regularly from wherever he was. As he stuffed the last clothes and books into his backpack that evening, Nicholas couldn’t tell her his itinerary because he said he didn’t know it himself. He would fly the red-eye to London, as that was the cheapest flight, but then cross the Channel as soon as he could and roam through Europe on his way to Italy, where he would stay, he told her, until his money ran out. What she never imagined was that his tour would be continuous, that it would turn out to be a perpetual series of departures that would never quite lead him back home. For the first year he sent monthly postcards, addressed, oddly, not to the apartment but to the shop, the briefest scrawls about what he was seeing, a job he’d just taken, sometimes the only indication of place being the postmark. He never left an address where she could write him back. The monthlies became bimonthlies, and then seasonal, and by the time they appeared twice a year she had somehow quelled most of the confusion and hurt and rage their arrival brought on in her heart.
Eventually, at least during the waking hours, she rarely thought of him, and it was only in her dreams that she encountered him. He would appear to her as gaunt, even skinnier than he always was, wearing the same faded Led Zeppelin concert T-shirt and blue jeans he’d departed in, walking through the anonymous gray terminal of a train station or airport with nothing on his back. He wasn’t hungry or lonely or lost, and for a brief, calming moment before she awoke, June could rest easy in how self-sufficient he appeared, how perfectly needless (if not perfectly contented), which she knew, even inside her dream, was a mirror of her own difficult character.
“Please show me what you have, Mr. Clines.”
He opened his briefcase and removed a thick manila folder and handed it to her. Inside were faxes, copies of bureaucratic-looking documents with official seals on the letterheads, and then other handwritten or typed pages. Clines described what they were as she went through them; most of them were lists made out for local police, each page in a different language: Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian. The only one in English was from a prominent antiquities dealer in London, whose firm was well known to the New York trade; here again was a list of stolen items, a few small oil paintings, silverware, coins, jewelry, various objets d’art.
As he spoke she scanned the pages for mention of her son, but the name Nicholas Han (Han was her family surname) did not appear. The names on the pages rang familiar to her, like people she’d never known but might have read about, or had heard of through others, names varied on themes and notations that she alone could collate and make sense of. There were Stephan Lombardia, Leo Stevens, Leo De Nicole, among others, aliases that clearly came from things she’d once said to him. To know the derivations was almost heartbreaking; Leo had been his pet guinea pig who’d died a week after they brought him home; Stephan was what she’d blurted when Nicholas was old enough to ask about his father, having just noticed the name in the paper that morning. Naturally, he had asked other questions about his father, where he was from, what he had looked like, how he had died, and to all these she’d answer with whatever vague, half-true description or reason she could come up with, careful that they could never lead to an actual man.
“How can you be sure it’s my son who’s been doing this?” she said to Clines anyway, wishing none of it were true. There were no images on the faxes, including the cover from an Interpol office in Madrid, where a case agent, according to Clines, had just a few weeks earlier begun collecting and cross-referencing the materials. It was this file that he had received through a contact in Europe.
“One of the pages there indicates that the box number you gave me in Rome was rented by Stephan DiNicola.”
“Who?”
“Stephan DiNicola. The person you last wired money to.”
“Oh yes,” she said. “I’m sorry. That’s probably right.” She’d been increasingly forgetful of late, at least of the recent past. She had indeed wired money, having received a typed letter from Nicholas, admittedly brief but marked by a renewed warmth, a casual intimacy that seemed to suggest he would soon be coming home. At the end, in a postscript, he asked if she could wire a thousand dollars to an S. DiNicola, a friend who would hold the funds for him until he reached Rome. It was the most he had ever asked for. Yet she had practically run to the nearest Western Union office, sending two thousand instead. She expected a quick reply, or even a phone call, but for a month now there had been nothing. Nothing at all.
“And are you obligated to tell any authorities what you know?”
“I’m working for you, Mrs. Singer.”
“And if at some point you weren’t?”
“I’m always working for someone. And I don’t keep any records after I’m done.”
She nodded. “What do you recommend we do?”
Clines cleared his throat. “I advise that we find him as soon as possible, before anyone else does. I can get a ticket to Rome for next week. So far he’s committed just petty theft, if on a wide, serial scale. He hasn’t stolen anything big yet. He hasn’t physically assaulted anyone. If he did nothing else from this point on it’s unlikely Interpol or anyone else would pursue him.”
“Then we’ll leave next week.”
Clines shifted uncomfortably in the seat. He drew in his rough cheeks, eyeing her gravely. “I don’t generally work
with
my clients, Mrs. Singer. It’s not done.”
“Then this will be different.”
“He may have left Italy by now. He could have gone anywhere. To Eastern Europe, to Asia. I may have to move around very quickly.”
“You’ll move around as quickly as you need. If for some reason I can’t keep up with you, I’ll follow when I can. I don’t want to be more than a half-day behind. It’s not possible any other way. I’m sorry.”
Clines scratched at his face. It was a sight she had seen countless times in the shop from buyers and consigners: the tight set of the mouth, the stare cast askance, and finally the yielding to her position, which was what made her business consistently, if never tremendously, profitable. Her talent, her gift, was an instantly patent resolve, so that both longtime acquaintances and strangers like Clines encountered an equally intransigent edifice, this deep-rooted stone. David had simply gone around, rather than attempt to dislodge her; for example, he was uncomfortable with her closing the shop herself, particularly in wintertime, when it was dark by five, and in the end he had simply hired a man to watch her from across the street to make sure she wasn’t mugged. Had Nicholas done the same? Had he gone around her as well, but to an epic degree? He never appeared to be cowed by her, or demoralized. He always seemed happy enough. Aside from his scholarly ability, his teachers always told her in conferences that he was one of the more popular boys. But perhaps in the face of her, the sheer steep wall, he had receded like any child would, measure by imperceptible measure, until one day he must have seen the distance to be startling, and acceptable.
“Whenever we do catch up with him,” Clines finally said, “you shouldn’t expect he’ll be pleased to see you.”
“I won’t.”
“Or that he’ll even agree to meet you. In fact, your being there might undo everything. There’s a reason you’ve hired a third party like me. It’s not only to find him. Sometimes you need an intermediary to settle someone down. Otherwise, he might just run faster.”
“He’s not running away from me, Mr. Clines.”
Clines nodded severely. “As long as you understand what we’re doing here.”
“I do.”
“Okay,” he said, though clearly he was not satisfied. “Now, about your son.”
She brought out the pictures of him Clines had asked her for, as well as the postcards, so he could have examples of Nicholas’s handwriting. She actually didn’t have very many of either. Over the years she had kept the small handful of postcards but had long ago discarded his old schoolwork, including most of the art projects he had made, the paintings and sketchbooks, for which she felt sharply regretful now. But what was shocking was the pathetically small collection of photographs she had of Nicholas. Most of them were the official yearly school portraits, the others being the few snapshots she’d taken through the years. She was never one to take pictures, and owned only the least expensive pocket camera. As Clines looked through the meager stack, she felt compelled to explain herself, to tell him about all the other things she had been doing instead, but she kept silent. Not taking pictures of Nicholas was neither a conscious nor an unconscious choice; it signified nothing, revealing only the fact that she rarely had much time back then for anything but the most basic parenting. She was a young single mother with a fledging shop during a period in New York when the economy was dismal. She worked all the time, and rarely had the energy or inclination to cook or help him with his homework. She was always behind in doing the laundry and cleaning the apartment, which by his middle school years he did for them. For his efforts he got a very large allowance (for a preteen), which he was thrilled with, but they both knew he had to do it, as the basic chores would not otherwise get done. Toward his studies she took the attitude that since he was attending a good private school, on scholarship, his teachers would give him enough challenge and attention, and that as a single parent whose small business was their only means and lifeline she ought to trust their judgment and goodwill. Nicholas was naturally bright and was self-motivated enough, it seemed to June, that she could let him direct his own education. Little by little, though, he had chosen his own way in just about everything, things a boy probably shouldn’t have to be responsible for, like buying his own clothes and ordering takeout. He had even neatly painted his bedroom one weekend while she was away for an auction in Philadelphia, though he chose a too-dark purple that seemed to suck all the light out of their small apartment, leaving everything gothically dimmed and crepuscular.