“What makes you think I can help him?”
“Don’t be stupid. You know your value to us. You know my father wants nothing to do with the police. The real police anyway. What he has is you, and you are in debt to him.”
I felt like telling him his idea of a cop was as real as Dick Tracy, but he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a photograph, which he handed to me. I tried not to blink. It was a surveillance image of me standing in Sonny’s living room with a gun over his prostrate body. The camera must have been hidden on the crucifix and lurking above our heads the entire time. It wasn’t a very clear image, but I was unhooded, my face recognizable, teeth bared like a dog’s.
Junior took out another cigarette. “We have the entire video. I’m sure you understand all the implications here. Unlawful restraint. Burglary. Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Losing your badge would be the least of your worries.”
He held the unlit cigarette with his thumb and forefinger like the handle of a teacup, his hands as slender and delicate as a woman’s. I felt a sweet, savage urge to shove him into the pond.
I gave him back the photo, but he raised his hand. “That’s yours to keep.”
“You could have hired a private investigator,” I said. “This is Vegas. Plenty of them here, and you have plenty of money. I’m not a detective anymore. I write traffic tickets, man.”
“Mr. Robert. . do you really think we brought you here for your professional talents?”
“What if she refuses? Suzy’s more stubborn than I am. She wouldn’t come back to me, and now you want me to convince her to come back to your father. Maybe it’s better that she stay away from him.” I waited a breath for a reaction. “Why would I let her go back to something she had reasons to leave?”
He leaned back in his chair as if he had anticipated the question. He was still holding the unlit cigarette like a forgotten pen. “She’s been unwell for a year now, especially these past few months. We think this has something to do with her disappearing. It’s impossible to know unless we find her. My father — he’s afraid she might hurt herself.”
I winced and he saw it. He already knew that I was only too familiar with what he was saying.
“Has she?” I asked. “Since she’s been with your father?”
“He does not always tell me those things. What I do know is that she had an episode two months ago. My father called me in the middle of the night. He’s not one to ask for help, but that night he didn’t hide his concern. She had gone out walking again. The front door was left wide open and it was raining outside, and her car was still in the garage. He’d been driving around the neighborhood for an hour. I came over at once and we searched for her together on foot. We shined our flashlights in everybody’s backyard, calling out her name in the rain. My father was not angry like I had expected. When he’s worried, his voice is calm, and he kept calling her with that calm voice.
“Around three in the morning, we found her at the elementary school a few blocks away, sitting on a swing in the playground. She was drenched and barefoot, shivering in her nightgown. It’s possible she was drunk. I never got close enough to be sure. As soon as she saw us, she got up and started walking away and ignored our calls. We ran after her. She struggled when my father caught up to her and screamed out a few times before suddenly falling silent. They didn’t say a single word to each other. He wrapped her in a raincoat and we walked her home in silence. She was sick in bed for almost a week and said hardly anything to anyone.
“After she got better, she started going to the movies every Thursday evening. She told my father that she just wanted to be alone in a dark theater for a few hours, then maybe have dinner somewhere by herself — that the routine helped her. It turns out she’s been visiting this hotel downtown called the Coronado. There’s no telling how long she’s been making these visits. She checks herself into a room on the twelfth floor, always room 1215. It’s reserved every week in her name. She arrives around seven and doesn’t leave or even open the door until midnight, when she comes out and makes her way home. My man is positive that the room is empty before her arrival and that she is alone the entire time. For all we know, she naps for those five hours. My father wanted to confront her immediately, but I convinced him to wait, let a few weeks pass, see if something happens that we can’t ignore. Until then, what is the difference really between a movie theater and a hotel room? Maybe this was something like church for her. Something she can do every week to feel whole or normal or whatever again.”
Junior had been rolling the cigarette between his fingers and now peered at it as though he didn’t know what to do with it. “I was wrong,” he said. “It was three weeks ago that we found out about the hotel. Now she’s gone. It’s partly my fault, I suppose.”
He fell silent for a moment as if reflecting on the accuracy of this confession. I could have believed now that he was sincerely, humbly, asking for my help.
“The truth is, Mr. Robert, she will not run away from you if it comes to that — or do anything foolish. You may find that hard to believe, given your history with her, but you’re the only person who can do this.”
The confidence with which he spoke of my marriage should have annoyed me, except that it was comforting to hear someone acknowledge what I’d only known as a private regret.
“You also want to find her as much as my father does. He needs someone who will care how this all turns out. Think of him what you will, but he wants no harm to come to her. He wants her back because he wants to take care of her, something you, frankly, never did very well. It might displease you to hear this — but my father knows that Miss Hong still loves him. She has always loved him. Long before she ever met you. Perhaps one day that will all be explained to you.”
He crossed his legs, satisfied that he’d said enough to convince me. He finally lit the cigarette, sighing smugly, and switched the fishing rod to his other hand.
“We checked, and she has again reserved her normal room at the Coronado. Something about that room is important to her, so we’re hoping she comes tonight, or sometime today. We booked the room next door under your name and with your credit card. Room 1213. Check-in is at noon, so you should be going shortly. You will wait for her there — until tomorrow, if necessary. If she does come, talk to her. Persuade her to come home. Tell her whatever you need to tell her.
“If you will, consider this a favor. Bring Miss Hong back to my father, and you can go on your way. He’ll forget everything, and we never have to see each other again. I’m offering you another deal. Hopefully this time you will accept for her sake, if not your own.”
He offered me a cigarette, his eyes disarmingly warm, con spiratorial. I shook my head, which seemed to disappoint him. He waved the brothers back.
I was still processing everything he had said. In particular, about me not taking care of Suzy, about her knowing Sonny before me, her still loving him. Every time he called her “Miss Hong,” I felt like clocking him. It didn’t matter if he was lying.
A feeling passed close to me then, distressing in a way I could not yet understand, like some shadow of a painful memory flitting past me while I wasn’t looking.
Junior’s fishing line jerked and his body awoke. He stood and took hold of the rod expertly with both hands, tugged at the line a couple of times with his cigarette clamped between his lips. He started reeling it in as the brothers approached. The kid rushed over to the bank as Junior’s fish burst out of the water, floundering violently, a foot-long trout. As Junior held up the rod, concentration petrifying his face, the kid grabbed the line and then the fish itself. It took him a few seconds, but he took hold of the convulsing trout with both hands, looked over at me, and kissed its belly with an exaggerated smack.