Chương 2
Damiano crouched. It put his face level with hers.
“I need you to show me the building,” he said. “You can stay inside the car. The doors will not be locked. Enzo will be with you.”
“I don’t know Enzo.”
Enzo stood a few feet away with the black phone in his hand. Rain had flattened his thinning hair.
“That’s fair,” he said.
Elena considered him.
Bruno licked rain from her chin.
“Mommy says not to get in cars with men.”
“Your mother is right,” Damiano said.
“Then why are you asking?”
“Because I don’t have a better way to reach her in eight minutes.”
She looked at him for several seconds. Her expression was not trusting. It was arithmetic.
Finally, she climbed into the car.
La Rosa Cleaners had been closed for six years, but the faded pink sign still hung above the narrow storefront. The building stood between a check-cashing business and a Dominican bakery with metal chairs stacked behind fogged glass. A city redevelopment notice had curled loose from the cleaners’ front window.
Elena pointed from the back seat. “The alley.”
Paolo drove past the building and turned behind the block.
The alley was too narrow for the sedan. Damiano got out with Enzo. Paolo remained behind the wheel. Elena reached for the door handle.
Damiano leaned down to the open window. “Stay here.”
“You said the doors wouldn’t be locked.”
“They aren’t.”
“Then I can come.”
“You can. I’m asking you not to.”
This seemed to confuse her more than an order would have.
He took a white towel from the front seat and handed it through the window. “For Bruno.”
She accepted it without thanking him.
Damiano and Enzo entered through a warped service door that had already been forced. The abandoned laundry smelled of mildew, cold metal, and old detergent. Their shoes cracked bits of plaster on the floor. Rows of commercial washers stood with their round doors open.
“No lights,” Enzo said.
Damiano used the flashlight on his phone. The beam found a second door behind a fallen rack of wire hangers. Its handle was painted red.
He pulled.
Nothing.
“Up,” Elena called faintly from the alley. “You have to pull up.”
Damiano lifted the handle and yanked. The door opened with a scream of rust.
Concrete stairs descended beneath the building. Water ran down one wall in a thin black line. At the bottom, a bare bulb swung above a room containing a metal chair, two plastic zip ties, and a wool scarf Damiano recognized before he bent to pick it up.
Green, with a frayed end.
Maeve had worn it the last night he saw her.
He had teased her because it was May.
“My neck gets cold,” she had said.
“Your neck has weather?”
“Everybody’s neck has weather.”
He closed his fingers around the damp wool.
The black phone vibrated in Enzo’s hand.
A video began without being opened.
Maeve sat against a concrete wall with her wrists bound in front of her. Her red hair was shorter than Damiano remembered, cut just below her jaw. There was a bruise near her temple. She looked tired, furious, and very much alive.
A man outside the frame said, “Tell him.”
Maeve looked directly toward the camera. “Do not bring them anything.”
Someone struck the wall beside her. She did not flinch.
The video ended.
Another message appeared.
SEVEN MINUTES LATE.
Enzo checked the time. “We were here in six.”
“They never meant to wait.”
Damiano walked the perimeter of the room. There were fresh tracks through the dust, two sets of men’s shoes, one pair of women’s sneakers. A disposable coffee cup lay on its side near a drain. The printed order label had been peeled off.
He crouched beside a pale mark on the floor.
“What?”
“They moved the chair.”
Enzo came closer.
Beneath one leg, Maeve had scratched something into the concrete. Not words. Four short lines, then a gap, then seven.
“Four-seven,” Enzo said.
“Or forty-seven.”
“Address?”
“Maybe.”
A car door slammed in the alley.
Damiano and Enzo turned together.
Paolo shouted once.
They ran upstairs.
Elena stood beside the sedan with Bruno in her arms. Paolo had a young man facedown against the hood. The man wore a delivery jacket and had a grocery bag spilled at his feet. Oranges rolled through the rainwater.
“He came around the corner fast,” Paolo said.
“I live there,” the man protested, nodding toward an apartment above the bakery. “I’m carrying food, man. Look at the damn food.”
Elena stared at Paolo with open disgust.
Damiano pulled Paolo away. “Let him go.”
“He could be watching.”
“He could be carrying oranges.”
The young man straightened, swore at all of them, gathered what remained of his groceries, and left one crushed orange in the gutter.
Paolo looked embarrassed. “I was being careful.”
“No,” Damiano said. “You were being afraid where people could see it.”
He opened the rear door for Elena.
“Was she there?” Elena asked.
“She was.”
Her face brightened for half a second.
“They moved her before we arrived.”
The brightness vanished so completely that Damiano wished he had lied, though he knew lies to children were usually loans taken at impossible interest.
“Is she hurt?”
“She has a bruise.”
“Where?”
“Near her hair.”
“Was she crying?”
“No.”
Elena nodded as if this was useful. She climbed back into the car and wrapped Bruno in the white towel.
On the drive to Café Nate, she watched the wet buildings slide past the window. Damiano sat beside her. The space between them was wide enough for a third person.
“Why do I have your eyes?” she asked.
Enzo looked straight ahead.
Damiano watched his own reflection drift across the glass. “I knew your mother a long time ago.”
“How long?”
“Before you were born.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No.”
“Mommy says people do that when the answer is bad.”
Damiano glanced at Enzo.
May you like
Enzo continued studying the headrest.
“Your mother and I were close,” Damiano said.
