Page 82 of The Furies

“But if we’re not lucky,” I continued, “and these guys manage to keep their heads down, we’ll have to go along with whatever they tell you to do, and make sure we get our hands on at least one of them before they melt away. Then we propose a different exchange: they hand back the money and the items they stole from you, and in return we don’t involve the police or resort to more violence than necessary. But first, as I told you, we have to establish the extent of the Office’s involvement.”

There was nothing more to discuss for now. We agreed to a fee for the job, which Sarah Abelli offered to pay in advance. She opened her purse to display an envelope of bills. I told her I’d take half now, half when we were done. I knew that the Fulcis were hurting for money, and paying them cash for their efforts would be best. She counted out the bills, all twenties, some fresh and others looking like they’d been retrieved from under sofa cushions, which still didn’t mean that some of them hadn’t been skimmed from the Office. I gave her the Fulcis’ numbers and made sure she entered them correctly in her phone, because I didn’t want communication problems if anything went wrong. I waited with her until Tony returned the keys and departed, and Paulie confirmed that he was waiting outside the Bear. We gave Tony time to get to Freeport, and then she left. Even the way she walked reminded me of Susan, and I had to force myself to keep a grip on the present. The weight of my past was heavy enough already without adding to it further.

Dave drifted over as the door closed behind her.

“Should I ask?” he said.

“Someone stole her dead daughter’s possessions,” I said. “Pictures, mementos from her infancy. They’re holding them for ransom.”

It took Dave a few seconds to find his voice again. When he did, a fraction of his faith in the world had been excised forever.

“What type of person would do that?” he said. “I mean, who would even think that way?”

Maybe, I was tempted to say, the type of person who would also threaten to dig up the same child’s remains and feed them to hogs, but Dave didn’t need to hear that.

At that moment, my phone rang. I glanced at the display, and saw an incoming call to Sarah Abelli from a concealed number. FlexiSPY was justifying its subscription.

“It seems like we’re going to find out,” I said.

CHAPTER XI

Phil Hardiman wasn’t an early riser, and in any case had never struck Bobby Wadlin as a morning guy—or an afternoon guy, an evening guy, or much of a night guy, professional dealings apart. He negotiated life as though the good stuff were surrounded by an electric fence, and it was his destiny to fling himself futilely against it until death eventually arrived to relieve him of the burden of even trying. Narcotics dulled the pain, but he’d fallen into the cycle of selling so he could keep using, only to find that his personal appetites meant he was barely breaking even. By the nature of junkies, this meant he would soon find himself in the red, requiring him to indulge in various iterations of larceny in order to make the cut. His stay at the Braycott Arms was serving only to postpone the inevitable return to even less welcoming state-funded accommodation.

Now here he was, bleary-eyed, bad-tempered, and hovering before Bobby’s desk, complaining again about the kid who had disturbed his night’s rest, and looking for a refund or discount on some or all of his remaining stay at the Braycott.

“I’m telling you for the last time,” said Bobby, “there is no kid here.”

To be fair, Bobby wasn’t absolutely certain of this because housekeeping hadn’t finished checking all the rooms, but he was close to certain, and Hardiman was no one’s idea of a reliable witness. If it were Christmas, he would probably have claimed to have heard Santa Claus. Bobby wasn’t sure what the man’s drug of choice might be, but regardless of the specific weakness, he knew enough about hopheads to attest that their mental faculties tended to take a hammering as the years went by.

“And I’m telling you I heard one,” said Hardiman, except Bobby could see that he was wearing Hardiman down, causing him to doubt himself, whatever his bluster might suggest. Spotting this, Bobby made a move to seal the deal.

“Look, here’s what I’ll do,” he said. “If housekeeping finds evidence that someone has sneaked a kid into the hotel, I’ll refund you half a night’s rent to make up for the sleep you lost. But only—only—if housekeeping comes up with the goods. The owners will raise hell with me for it, but I’ll take the heat because fair is fair. Is that enough for you?”

It obviously wasn’t, but Hardiman accepted that it was the best he was going to get. He knew, too, that the stuff about the owners was just so much bullshit, and a portion of his rent was going straight into Bobby Wadlin’s pocket. In fact, Hardiman didn’t trust Wadlin to tell him about the kid even if housekeeping did find them. He wouldn’t have put it past Wadlin to smuggle the kid out with the dirty laundry just to save himself having to open his wallet.

“I got things to do,” said Hardiman. “I’m already late because of this.”

“Don’t let me keep you,” said Bobby, leaving unspoken the admonition that the junk wasn’t going to buy and sell itself. He was all set to put Hardiman out of his mind and return to 40 Guns to Apache Pass when Esther Vogt popped up. Esther was one of the Braycott’s oldest residents, and also the longest-standing. She’d rented a room at the hotel back in the late 1990s, following a fire in the old duplex in which she’d been living for thirty years with her husband, a German-born builder named Adolf. (“Jewish lightning,” she always alleged. “They blamed him for the Holocaust.”) Adolf died soon afterward of emphysema, Esther banked the insurance money, and a temporary stay at the Braycott gradually became a permanent one, Esther discovering she didn’t need as much space as before now that her husband was no longer around to clutter the place with his junk—or, indeed, to incite further retribution from the Chosen People. Also, following many sheltered years spent in the company of a man who had spoken only to agree with her, she enjoyed the experience of sharing accommodation with more expansive characters, and now functioned as a den mother to the Braycott’s inhabitants. She was eternally cheerful and helpful, and the years did not appear to be dimming her light one iota. Bobby Wadlin couldn’t stand more than three minutes of her company, and what she said next permanently deducted at least two from that limit, not least because it brought Phil Hardiman scurrying back to the desk.

“Mr. Wadlin,” she said, “I believe someone may have brought a child into your establishment.”

CHAPTER XII

As instructed, Sarah Abelli gave me enough time to find somewhere quiet to listen in on the call. The voice on the other end of the line was male, and didn’t sound young. The accent wasn’t out of Massachusetts, and contained a trace of the South, but with a strangeness to it, as though he might have been the child of immigrants.

“Mrs. Sawyer,” said the man, “I hope you’re keeping well.”

“I told you already, I don’t go by that name anymore.”

“Just like I told you that I don’t care. You know, you really ought to modify your attitude, or else I’ll wipe my ass with those pictures of your little girl.”

“You’re a poor excuse for a man,” said Sarah.

I realized that I should have stayed close to her for the call. I’d heard and seen this happen before. Sometimes, when a person in trouble managed to convince the police to become involved, or engaged a private investigator, their courage took a boost. Antagonizing the men with whom she was being forced to deal would not serve Sarah Abelli well, but she appeared to recognize this herself, because when she spoke again the fire in her had been dampened.

“Then you won’t get your money,” she said, “and we’ll all have come out of this with nothing.”

“Except that there’s always more money somewhere,” he said, “but what we have of yours is strictly one-of-a-kind, and I don’t see you squeezing out another child anytime soon. What are you, forty, forty-one? Hard to find a man who’d waste the jizz on you.”

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