Chương 2
Sophie considered this. “No.”
Tony returned with a plate of buttered pasta, a glass of water, and a wrapped packet of crackers. He put everything down without speaking.
Sophie took the crackers.
“Eat the pasta too,” he said.
She tore the plastic wrapper carefully along the seam. “You’re not my dad.”
Tony pulled out a chair. “That is the first good thing that’s happened to me tonight.”
Sophie looked at him for half a second. She almost smiled, then appeared ashamed of it.
Vincent leaned forward. “Where were you while they spoke to your mother?”
“Under my bed.”
“You stayed there?”
“Until the snake man found me.”
Tony’s humor disappeared.
“What did he do?” Vincent asked.
“He pulled me out by my shirt.” She touched the torn sleeve. “My mom hit him with a lamp. The other man hit her. I scratched him. Then I punched him.”
She placed her hands beneath the table.
“The bruises,” Vincent said.
“He laughed.”
“Did they take you out of the apartment?”
“No. They put me in the bathroom. They pushed the dresser in front of the door.”
“For three nights?”
“They left crackers and bottles of water.”
Tony looked away.
Vincent kept his voice level. “How did you get out?”
“There’s a little window. It goes to the fire escape. I couldn’t open it because it was painted shut. I used the metal thing from the toilet.”
“The handle?”
“The chain.”
“You broke the window?”
“I worked the paint loose.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. It was dark two times.”
Her thumbnail was split. Vincent imagined it pressed beneath a swollen window frame, scraping until skin tore.
“You went to the police?”
“The first morning after I got out.”
“What happened?”
“They asked where my aunt was.”
“Do you have an aunt?”
“My mom tells people I do because they ask who takes care of me when she works. Her name is Aunt Rosa, but she isn’t real.”
Tony shifted in his chair.
Sophie continued. “A man in regular clothes came. He said he was a detective. He knew my address. He took me back and told me my mom went away by herself.”
“His name?”
“He said Harlan. Detective Harlan.”
Vincent knew that name too.
Peter Harlan worked out of the Fifteenth Precinct. He was not a brave man or a frightened one. He was a purchasable man, which was often more dangerous. Sal had used him for small things—license plates, patrol schedules, reports that needed to become misplaced. Vincent had tolerated the arrangement because crooked policemen were part of the furniture in his world. You did not admire the furniture. You used it until it broke.
“Did he enter the apartment?”
“Yes.”
“What did he do?”
“He looked in my mom’s bedroom. Then he used his phone. He told someone, ‘The kid doesn’t have it.’”
Vincent’s jaw tightened.
“Then what?”
“He said a lady from child services would come. I waited until he left and came here.”
“Why here?”
“My mother works here sometimes.”
Vincent looked toward Marco.
“She’s on the weekend cleaning crew,” Marco said. “Martinez. Elena.”
Vincent could picture a woman with dark hair tied beneath a bandanna, though he could not be certain the memory belonged to Elena Martinez rather than one of the other women who cleaned the restaurant after private events. That uncertainty bothered him more than he expected.
Sophie broke a cracker into exact halves.
“My mom said you own the building,” she said. “She said everybody listens when you talk.”
“Not everybody.”
“She said bad men do.”
Tony rubbed one hand over his mouth.
Vincent asked, “Did your mother ever mention Dario? Gus? Salvatore Rinaldi?”
Sophie’s hand stopped above the plate.
It was a small pause. A fraction too long.
Vincent said nothing.
She placed one half of the cracker in her mouth and chewed until it had become impossible to delay swallowing.
“One of them called somebody Mr. Sal,” she said.
Marco lowered his gaze.
“Which one?” Vincent asked.
“Gold Teeth. On the phone.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Mr. Sal, she says the copy isn’t here.’ Then he listened. Then he told the snake man they were taking her.”
The restaurant’s rear door creaked as one of the cooks carried garbage outside. The sound reached the private room softly, followed by the bump of trash bags against brick.
Vincent folded the five-dollar bill once.
“Marco, go to the apartment.”
Marco did not ask for the address. Sophie gave it to him, including the floor and the fact that the front buzzer had not worked since Christmas.
“Don’t touch anything you don’t have to,” Vincent said. “Photograph everything. Find out whether Harlan left anyone watching.”
Marco nodded.
“Take Leon.”
“Leon talks too much.”
“He also sees everything.”
Marco accepted that and left.
Vincent turned to Tony. “Call Teresa.”
Tony’s eyebrows rose. “At this hour?”
“She’ll be awake.”
“She’ll be angry.”
“She’s always angry.”
“That doesn’t mean we should give her reasons.”
“Call her.”
Tony went into the hall.
Sophie ate another cracker.
“Who’s Teresa?”
“A woman with a secure house.”
“Is she nice?”
“No.”
The near-smile came again, faint and involuntary.
Vincent pushed the plate of pasta toward her. She wound three strands around the fork and ate them without appetite. Butter shone on her lower lip. She wiped it with the back of her bruised hand.
He found a paper napkin and slid it across the table.
“Did your mother take anything from Bella Vista?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did she talk about trouble at work?”
“She said one of the invoices was stupid.”
“What invoice?”
“For tomatoes.”
Tony returned while Vincent was asking the question.
“Teresa says no,” Tony announced.
“She said more than that.”
“She questioned your intelligence, your judgment, your ancestry, and my role in encouraging you.”
“Did she say no at the end?”
“She said to use the side gate because the front camera is broken.”
Vincent nodded.
May you like
Tony stared at him. “You knew she’d say yes.”
“I knew she’d complain.”
