He climbed into the bath himself, slowly, seriously, but once in, he was more interested in his old rubber duck than in washing himself. Still a child in some things, Selena thought. She worked up a soapy lather on his flannel and began washing him herself. It was pure pleasure, and it felt as if she was washing off all those months when only his father had had him, seen him grow. She leant over the bath to wash the far side of him, and it was then that she saw it.
The birthmark on his hip.
The oval-shaped birthmark, like a rugby ball, on the left hip. Just as she had seen it described in television interviews, in newspaper articles, by Carol Parker. This wasn’t Malcolm. This was Anton Parker, born Anton Weissner, when his mother was married to his German father. She let the flannel fall, felt faint, and sank back onto the chair by the wall. Anton played on, oblivious, dipping the duck’s head under the water as he had seen ducks do at Briscow.
It was Dick who had snatched Anton. That was six days after he had snatched Malcolm. In that time Malcolm must have died. She felt tears come into her eyes for her lost child, but she suppressed them. She had to think, to be practical. How had he died? Naturally? In a car chase, perhaps? There had been various sightings and police pursuits. Dick had taken this little boy as a substitute, called him Malcolm, taught him to call himself Malcolm. That’s why he would not let him say more than a word or two on the phone, in case she recognised or suspected this was not her boy. She thought of Carol Parker, desperate and dispirited, appealing on British television, convinced that her husband had taken their son to Germany, forever.
Then she remembered her husband’s words: “It’s all up to her now.” Suddenly they had quite a new meaning. From the bath came splashings and chuckles of pleasure. She drew her head up straight and opened her eyes.
“Come along, Malcolm — out of the bath now and let Mummy dry you.”
A Good Day’s Work
by Rick Riordan
Rick Riordan’s Edgar-winning Tres Navarre series debuted in 1997 and won both a Shamus and an Anthony award. Three more books followed, the most recent, The Devil Went Down to Austin, again claiming nominations for the Anthony and the Shamus. The Texas author took a break from Navarre to produce 2003’s stand-alone thriller Cold Springs, a book ALA calls one of the year’s top ten crime novels. Until Navarre’s return in a novel (’04), the author plans to feature him in stories.
“I’d just as soon show you the door,” Dr. Pauerstein told me. “But since my wife insists...”
He tossed a stack of twenties on the kitchen table, right on top of Alva Cruz’s picture.
He was obviously used to dealing with hirelings this way. Cash up front, no muss with taxes, no questions about green cards. Hedge my lawn. Wash my matching BMWs. Find a missing girl. Just don’t bother me.
He wiped under his nose with a gold-ringed finger, then went back to sorting his plastic-surgery photos.
His wife tried not to react when he dropped a new one next to her breakfast plate — a glossy eight-by-ten of a nip-and-tuck, sliced cheeks lifted from the face like pocket flaps. I wondered if Mrs. Pauerstein ate breakfast with these faces every morning. Maybe that’s why she wore a permanent wince.
“Please, Mr. Navarre,” she said. “It’s been two weeks.”
Next to her, the maid Zuli, the mother of the missing girl, sat silent. She hadn’t looked at me since I’d arrived.
I brushed the money off her daughter’s picture.
Alva Cruz was a striking young woman — long black hair, amber eyes, Spanish complexion very different from her mother’s mestizo features. In the photograph, Alva was sitting on the hood of one of the green convertible BMWs I’d seen in the Pauersteins’ driveway. Her smile was a challenge — You gonna make me move? I could see how she might attract the wrong kind of attention in a bar.
The doctor glanced up at me, frowning that I was still in his house. “Well? There’s the money.”
“I haven’t taken the job yet.”
“Then get the hell out,” he growled. “And don’t expect to work again. I’ll make sure everyone in town knows you’re a waste of time.”
Meaning, of course, everyone he knew. Nobody else counted.
But there was a twitch in his eye that I didn’t quite understand, a hint of relief in his voice that I might be leaving. That alone made me want to stay.
“Angelito’s,” I said to Zuli. “That’s the bar on South St. Mary’s?”
“I... I don’t know, sir.”
“What did the police say?”
“They were no help,” Mrs. Pauerstein put in. “They found a witness who saw Alva leave willingly with a short Hispanic man, about five foot four. She got in his yellow pickup truck and they drove away. That’s all the police know. They aren’t concerned. They told us she would turn up eventually.”
I looked down at Alva’s picture — that challenge of a smile. Well, hot shot?
“Mrs. Cruz, you didn’t report her missing for three days. Why?”
Zuli seemed to be turning to stone. “She’s done this before, sir. With men. But not for so long. Something has happened.”
“Please, Mr. Navarre,” Mrs. Pauerstein said again. “You came highly recommended.”
“By some idiot at your day spa,” the doctor grumped. “Don’t beg this man, Beth!”
“Zuli has been with us almost twenty years,” she persisted. “We’ve known Alva since... since she was a child. We want to help.”
“This is absurd,” Dr. Pauerstein said. “I’m sorry, Zuli, but Alva’s a grown woman. We can’t go chasing after her every time she throws a tantrum.”
“A tantrum?” I asked.
No one volunteered an explanation, but I felt the history there, deep as well water.
I was thinking over the bad possibilities, the bad things that could happen to a pretty girl in a West Side bar on Halloween. I didn’t like the description of the guy she’d left with, either — a short man in a conspicuous yellow truck. Not a happy camper. Not a person who would be nice to women.
Then I looked at Dr. Pauerstein, who was silently urging me to refuse. And Zuli, who was hurting, suffering, and had only these people, whose countertops she’d been scrubbing for twenty years, cleaning carefully around Dr. Pauerstein’s pictures of cosmetically mutilated faces.
Or maybe I just thought about my rent, which was due that week.
I said, “I’ll find Alva for you.”
Later that morning I found the police’s witness — Luisa Rodriguez, a girlfriend of Alva’s who’d been with her on Halloween. Luisa couldn’t remember anything she hadn’t already told the cops, but she said it didn’t matter. Alva had been looking for trouble for years. She found it. Screw her. Who cared?
“Her mother,” I answered.
“Chingate,” Luisa spat. “Her mother gave a shit, she would have gotten Alva out of that trap a long time ago.”
“What trap?”
She gave me a hard look. “You were at the asshole’s mansion, you didn’t notice?”
“Dr. Pauerstein and Alva didn’t get along?”
She laughed. “They got along since Alva was fifteen. You think he kept Zuli around because she cleans good, mister?”
I let that sink in, and started wondering how Dr. Pauerstein might look if I gave him some of my own complimentary facial reconstruction.