Gone, Baby, Gone (Kenzie & Gennaro 4)

I shook my head. “Broussard did tell him. I was there. We went to Concord Prison in October and quizzed Cheese about the disappearance. If he were complicitous with Broussard, they both would have had to agree that the blame would fall on Cheese’s men. Now why would Cheese do that, if, as you say, he had Broussard by the balls? Why take the fall for the kidnapping and death of a four-year-old when he didn’t have to?”

He pointed his unlit cigar at me. “So you would believe it, Mr. Kenzie. Haven’t you two ever wondered why you were allowed so deeply into a police investigation? Why you were named to be at the quarry that night? You were witnesses. That was your role. Broussard and Cheese put on a show for you at Concord Prison: Poole and Broussard put on another one at the quarry. Your whole purpose was to see what they wanted you to see and accept it as truth.”

“By the way,” Angie said, “how could Poole have faked a heart attack?”

“Cocaine,” Ryerson said. “Seen it once before. It’s risky as hell because the coke could easily trigger a real coronary. But if you do pull it off, a guy of Poole’s age and occupation? Not many doctors would have thought to look for coke, just would have assumed a heart attack.”

I counted twelve cars pass by on Kneeland Street before any of us spoke again.

“Agent Ryerson, let’s back up again.” Angie’s cigarette had burned to a long curve of white ash in the ashtray, and she pushed the filter off the indented crevice that held it. “We agree Cheese saw Mullen and Gutierrez as threats. What if he felt he had to take them out? And what if what he had on Broussard was so bad, he put him up to it?”

“Put Broussard up to it?”

She nodded.

Ryerson leaned back in the booth, looked out the window at the dark cast-iron buildings on the South Street corner. Over his shoulder, on Kneeland Street, I noticed the familiar urban sight of a boxy, nut-brown UPS truck idling with its hazards on, blocking a lane as the driver opened the back and took out a two-wheeler, pulled several boxes from the truck, and stacked them on the upright cart.

“So,” Ryerson said to Angie, “your operating theory is that while Cheese thought he was putting one over on Mullen and Gutierrez, Broussard was putting one over on all three of them.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe. We have information that Mullen and Gutierrez thought they were picking up drugs at the quarry that night.”

The UPS guy jogged past the window, pushing the two-wheeler in front of him, and I wondered who got deliveries this late at night. Law firms burning the midnight oil on a big case, perhaps? Printers in a rush to make deadline, maybe. A high-tech computer firm doing whatever it was high-tech computer firms did while the rest of the world prepared for sleep.

“But, again,” Ryerson said, “we keep coming back to motive. If what Cheese had on Broussard was that he kidnapped the girl? Fine. But why? What was Broussard thinking when he went to the house that night to grab a child he never met and take her away from her mother? It doesn’t add up.”

The UPS guy was back in a flash, clipboard tucked under his arm, jogging faster now that the two-wheeler was empty.

“And another thing,” Ryerson said. “If we accept that a decorated cop who works for a unit that finds kids would do something as loony and seemingly motiveless as snatching a kid from her home, how’s he to do it? He watches the house on his own time until the woman leaves, knowing somehow that she’d leave her door unlocked? It’s stupid.”

“But yet you think that’s what happened,” Angie said.

“In my gut, yeah. I know Broussard took that girl. I just can’t for the life of me figure out why.”

The UPS guy hopped in the truck and it slipped past the window, cut into the left lane, and disappeared from view.

“Patrick?”

“Huh?”

“You still with us?”

“Not with a criminal record, you can’t.”

Angie touched my arm. “What did you just say?”

I hadn’t realized I’d said it aloud. “You can’t get a job driving for UPS if you have a criminal record.”

Ryerson blinked and gave me a look like he thought he should produce a thermometer, see if I had a fever. “What the hell are you talking about?”

I glanced back at Kneeland Street, then looked at Ryerson, then Angie. “That first day he was in our office, Lionel said he’d taken a bust—a hard bust—once, before he cleaned his act up.”

“So?” Angie said.

“So if there was a bust, there should be a record of it. And if there’s a record of it, how’d he get a job working for UPS?”

Ryerson said, “I don’t see—”

“Ssshh.” Angie held up a hand, looked in my eyes. “You think Lionel…”

I shifted in my seat, pushed my cold coffee away. “Who had access to Helene’s apartment? Who could open the door with a key? Who would Amanda readily leave with, no fuss, no noise?”

“But he came to us.”

“No,” I said. “His wife did. He kept saying, ‘Thanks for listening to us, blah, blah, blah.’ Getting ready to brush us off. It was Beatrice who put the pressure on. What did she say when she was in our office? ‘No one wanted me to come here. Not Helene, not my husband.’ It was Beatrice who kept this thing alive. And Lionel—he loves his sister, okay. But is he blind? He’s not stupid. So how does he not know about Helene’s association with Cheese? How does he not know she has a drug problem? He acted surprised when he heard she did some coke, for Christ’s sake. I talk to my own sister once a week, see her only once a year, but I’d know if she had a drug problem. She’s my sister.”

“What you said about the criminal record,” Ryerson said. “How’s that play into it?”

“Let’s say it was Broussard who busted him, had him on a hook. Lionel owed him. Who knows?”

“But why would Lionel kidnap his own niece?”

I thought about it, closed my eyes until I could see Lionel standing in front of me. That hound-dog face and sad eyes, those shoulders that seemed to have the weight of a metropolis pushing down on them, the pained decency in his voice—the voice of a man who truly didn’t understand why people did all the shitty, neglectful things they did. I heard the volcanic rage in his voice when he’d blown up at Helene in the kitchen that morning we’d confronted her about knowing Cheese, the hint of hatred in that volume. He’d told us he believed that his sister loved her child, was good for her. But what if he’d lied? What if he believed the opposite? What if he thought less of his sister’s parenting skills than his own wife did? But he, the child of alcoholics and bad parents himself, had learned how to mask things, to cover his rage, would have had to in order to build himself into the kind of citizen, the kind of father, he’d become.