“What kinds of things did he say?”
He flushed more deeply and looked away. “Just some stupid shit about… I don’t know.”
I could guess about what, and I let it go. “Do you get a vote in the custody thing?”
“You mean about who to live with?” he said. I nodded. Billy shook a few cups of salt on his fries and glued them down with a quart of ketchup. He plucked some fries off the heap and ate them. “I guess so,” he answered.
“So, what is it?”
“My vote? I don’t know. I guess it might be okay to stay with my dad for a while, or at least it would be different, but… my mom and Nes would be all bent out of shape. They’d miss me and shit.”
He ate more fries and looked up.
“My dad was talking about boarding school, and I thought that might be cool… to go someplace else… to get away.” Billy shrugged. “I don’t know. Mostly I just wish they’d stop the fucking fights. Or leave me out of it, anyway.”
I nodded, and we sat in silence for a few minutes.
“That phone call- that was the last time you heard from him?”
Billy nodded. “Yeah. Besides the messages, that was it.”
I managed not to spit my coffee out. “What messages?”
Billy answered with a mouthful of pancake. “The messages he left on the machine- phone messages.”
“How many messages were there?”
“Just two.”
“Do you know when he left them?”
“The first one was like a week after he left town, and the second was a couple of days after that.”
“What did he say?”
“Not much. Just calling to say hi, or something like that.”
“But you didn’t actually speak to him?” Billy looked at me like I was stupid and shook his head. “Do you remember what time of day he called?”
“While I was at school, I guess. I played them when I came home.”
Billy carved his way through the pancakes and I was quiet, thinking about the messages.
“Did you tell your mom he called?”
Billy hesitated. “I… I guess not. He didn’t say anything really, and… sometimes it’s better if I don’t talk to her about him.”
The waitress came by and held up a coffeepot and raised an eyebrow. I shook my head and she walked away. I watched her go and looked at the back of her T-shirt, at the picture of a pit bull demolishing a wedding cake that was emblazoned there. A little plastic groom in a little plastic tux teetered precariously atop the cake, and it made me think of something. I looked at Billy.
“You remember that picture you showed me at dinner last week, of your dad and the bass player and that older guy, all of them in tuxedos?” Billy nodded. “You know who the old guy is?”
He nodded some more. “I don’t remember his name- Joe something, maybe. He’s a friend of my dad’s. He lives in the same building.”
“He a music fan like your dad?”
“I guess. I know they go hear stuff together.” That was all Billy could recall about the man, and I had no more questions. No more that Billy could answer, anyway. He finished his pancakes and the last of the fries and wiped his mouth on a napkin. He didn’t look like he was about to explode, which was baffling to me.
“I’ve got to get you home,” I said.
Billy winced. “I can go myself. I-”
“Don’t waste your breath,” I said. “I’m taking you.” He didn’t argue.
There was no answer at the Sachs apartment, but Billy gave me the gallery number and Ines Icasa was there. Her voice was taut with worry and she let out a long breath when I told her that I was bringing Billy home.
“Dios mAo,” she said softly. “Thank you, detective, I will be here.” She hung up and I pocketed my phone. I looked across at Billy.
“You want anything else?” I asked. He shook his head. “You ready to go?”
He rubbed the back of his neck and stared at me. His blue eyes were large in his narrow face. “Will you look for him anyway?” he asked.
“I’ll look for him,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.
It wasn’t quite noon when Billy and I walked into the I-2 Gallery. The shades were up on the windows and the place was flooded with light and empty except for Ines. There was a half-filled glass of red wine on the long counter and a scattering of papers. A cigarette smoldered in a metal ashtray. Ines’s pink shirt was clean and starched, and her hair was combed and shiny, but her coloring was still off and there were shadows under her eyes. Billy started to say something but she cut him off.
“Upstairs, Guillermo,” she said. Billy opened his mouth again, but Ines pointed at him before he could speak. “Now.” He glanced at me and shrugged and went. Ines sat on a stool behind the counter and sighed deeply. She reached for her cigarette and took a long drag. It smelled like a brush fire. Her elegant fingers slid aimlessly along the countertop.
“The school telephoned this morning,” she said, “to ask if he was ill. He has done this before- several times. But it is always very… worrying. He came to see you?” I nodded. “Why?”
“To ask me why I’d stopped looking for his father.” Ines stepped back, as if balance had deserted her. “I told him he’d have to talk to Nina about that. Or to you.” She puffed on her cigarette and shook her head.
“I am sorry,” she said softly. “Nina should not have… It was a mistake to say that to Guillermo.”
“Maybe you should tell her.”
Ines stabbed her cigarette into the ashtray and picked up her glass and drank half of what was in it. Her laugh was short and unpleasant. “Perhaps you have noticed that Nina is a difficult person to tell things.”
“If not you, then who?”
She shook her head. “It is complicated.”
“Apparently.”
Ines looked at me sharply. “I can do some things for Guillermo, but I am not his parent. I could teach him to use the toilet and to throw a ball. I could show him how to ride a bicycle. I can be sure I am here when he arrives from school, so he does not come to an empty apartment. I can know when he is late… or when he is truant. Those things I can do, detective, but I am not his mother, and I cannot tell his mother what is best for him. On some topics, my opinions are irrelevant.” Her lovely oval face sagged and she drank from her wineglass again. “Do you have children?”
“No.”
“Then you cannot know the complications,” she said, and smiled bitterly. “Perhaps neither one of us can.”
The wineglass was empty and Ines’s eyes were clouded. She leaned heavily on the counter and rested her head on her arms. I saw the razor-straight part in her black hair and I saw her shoulders quiver. There was no traffic in the street beyond the big windows, and it was very quiet in the gallery. There was a new exhibit hanging- massive canvases with large, vaguely floral shapes in deep purples and reds and pinks- and I stood and looked at them while I waited for Ines to raise her head. After a couple of minutes she did.
“I must check on him now,” she said. She took her heavy key ring from the counter, and I followed her to the street. She locked the glass doors and looked at me. “You should not be here when Nina gets home.”
Peter Spiegelman
JM02 – Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home
22
I spent the rest of the afternoon at home, waiting for word from Neary and thinking about Billy. I thought about the tension in his narrow frame as he looked down from the steps of my building, and of the hurt and confusion etched around his eyes. I remembered what he’d said about his mother, and how, when he knew he’d said too much, he’d made excuses for her and looked to me for agreement. I recalled Ines’s advice to him- to simply fade away- and I clenched my fists. I thought about parents and children, and about how kids survive and at what price. I thought and I waited, but no answers came to me and Neary never called.
Jane appeared late Monday night, bleary-eyed and subdued, and bearing Indian food. She hung her suit jacket on a chair and kicked off her shoes, and we ate mostly in silence. When she did speak it was in angry fragments about her deal, which had hit an eleventh-hour snag over her participation in the company after its sale. The buyers wanted her to run things for two more years, but Jane wasn’t interested. They were insistent and threatening to make it a deal-breaker; Jane was getting mad.