“Me, too,” Sly chirped.
“Fine. I’ll put you both to work.”
Mike tucked in his shirt, straightened his tie. He said, “Sly, we brought you another picture. Want to see it?”
Sly’s entire being lit up, given another chance to nail the girl’s killer. I pulled a manila envelope out of my bag and handed it to Michael. There was a single eight-by-ten glossy inside that Guido had managed to get for us from the files of Central Casting. Elizabeth had told Mike that Ricco Zambotti was an actor.
Ricco had looks, big pale eyes with long Mel Gibson lashes, curly blond hair, big white teeth. The statistics printed under the face claimed he was six-three, 190 pounds, thirty-four-inch waist, forty-eight-inch chest. Martha had said Elizabeth’s daytime sneak-in friend was beefy. Ricco qualified as beefy. Prime, maybe, but still beefy.
Ricco’s coloring was a problem. When Sly first described the man he saw slit Pisces’ throat, he had said the man had dark hair.
Michael sat back down on the grass, Sly tucked in beside him. Together they looked at Ricco for a long time.
Mike wandered over behind them. “What do you think, Sly?” Sly squinted up his little fox face. “Dunno.”
I fished some felt-tip pens out of the bottom of my bag and sat down beside Sly.
I offered him the pens. “One time, Hilly colored in the hair of a picture of a little blond girl to see if that would make her look more like Hilly.”
“She told me.” Sly took a black pen from my hand and took off the cap. “Only it wasn’t her who done it. It was her mother. She told Hilly she was kidnapped and all these people were looking for her to get her.”
Mike frowned. “Get her how?”
“Like, do her,” Sly said. “Just like they done.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this sooner?” Mike asked.
Sly shrugged. “Guess I didn’t think of it. Guess it just came to me now.”
“Did she say who these people were?”
“No. Except that the only person in the world who knew and could save her from them was her father. And she didn’t know where he was.”
Sly bent over the picture and started to color in the hair. He had made only a couple of strokes before he looked up at Michael with anxiety. “I messed up. I can’t color good. I can’t do it.”
“Tell you what, squirt.” Michael took the pen from the tense little fingers. “You tell me what you want, and I’ll do it with you. Okay?”
Relieved, Sly slumped against Michael’s shoulder and gave him instructions: make the hair longer, fix the eyebrows, make him look mean.
“That’s him,” Sly triumphed as Michael filled in the blond hair with dark ink. “I swear it, that’s the asshole I seen.”
It was my turn to ruffle his spiky hair. “You’re sure?”
“I said I swear, didn’t I? That’s him. That’s the guy I seen. He was following us around for a couple of days, you know, cruising in that hot ‘vette.”
I said, “I’m surprised Hilly would go with a man who had been following her around if she thought someone was out to get her.”
“We were gonna get him first, like I told you before,” Sly said, his voice catching. “We had it all worked out. This guy kept tellin’us he had something to tell Hilly, like some message from her mom and dad. People would say that all the time to us to make us go over to them. Normally, we’d just keep walkin’. Hilly wanted to talk to that one guy’cuz of his car. She wouldn’t tell me why the car freaked her. She was gonna make him show her his ID or she wouldn’t talk to him. The deal was, when he got out his wallet to show her, I was gonna grab it and get the hell out of there. Then she’d know who he was.”
“If Hilly had told you her father had a car just like that Corvette,” I said, “would you have believed her?”
“Shit, no. No one has a car like that.”
“Maybe that’s why she didn’t tell you.”
“Sly, my man,” Mike said, “what you just told us is important. I think there may be other things you haven’t gotten around to sharing yet. When they come to you, have your social worker call me, will ya? We need your help to fry this man.”
Sly dropped the picture, like a contaminated thing, onto the grass in front of Michael. Mike picked it up and put it back into its envelope.
Michael got to his feet, lifted Sly like a bundle of sticks, and stood him on the asphalt. “Homework time, kid.”
The sun had disappeared below the line of buildings across the street, leaving the play yard lashed with long blue shadows. Most of the games had dispersed, and the children were moving inside, in clumps of two and three, taking their shadows with them. We four linked arms, I with Mike, Mike with Michael, Michael with Sly, in an irregular sort of conga line, shadows water-dancing behind us.
At the dorms, Mike turned to his son. “How late will you be?”
“Maybe an hour. Mom wants her car by eight-thirty.” Mike squeezed Michael’s shoulder. “Take care.”
“Dad?”
“What?”
“I got my letter from Cornell today.”
“And?”
“I’m accepted.”
Mike grabbed him in a bear hug. “I’m proud of you.” Michael smiled as if he had a sudden pain. Mike saw it and drew back.
“It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” Mike asked.
“I thought so.” Michael looked over at Sly, who was swinging from the step railing. “There’s a lot to think about.”
“Take your time,” Mike said. “You’ll figure out what’s right.”
“I hate it when you say that, Dad. Just once I want you to tell me what I should do.”
“I always tell you what you should do,” Mike said.
“Yeah. You say I should do what’s right.”
“Exactly.”
“Michael!” Sly called, hanging upside down from the railing. “Kiss the faggot and come on. We don’t have all night.”
“You’d better go,” Mike chuckled. “Your destiny may be calling.”
“Later,” Michael said, giving Mike a quick hug. “Nice to meet you, Maggie.”
“Bye,” I said. I watched him jog off toward the lighted doorway, recognizing a lot of Mike in him. It gave me an odd sensation, as if I were peering through a window into the past and seeing a distorted image of young Mike.
As we walked out toward the car, I took Mike’s hand. “He’s a great kid, Mike. You’ve done a good job.”
“His mother gets a lot of the credit.”
I reached up then and kissed his five-o’clock shadow. “I just plain old love you, Mike. But I still don’t know what to do about you.”
“Take your time,” Mike said, smiling down at me. “You’ll figure out what’s right.”
CHAPTER 21
The telephone rang in the middle of night. We both bolted upright, the reflex reactions of a cop on call and a mother. Mike picked up the receiver.
“Flint,” he said in a clear voice, rubbing sleep-filled eyes with his fist. When I was sure the call had nothing to do with Casey, I fell back onto the pillows, still sizzling with adrenaline rush. I eavesdropped on a lot of uh huhs and Jesus Christs before Mike hung up.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Bad stuff. George Metrano was booked on a single charge of murder and processed into the city jail at eight.” He reached through the dark for my hand. “An hour ago in his cell he made a noose out of his denims and hanged himself.”
“Jesus,” I moaned. I curled myself around Mike and held on. “He’s dead?”
“Yes, dammit.”
“Does Leslie know?”
“Yes. They’re bringing her in. Throw on some clothes. We should hurry. Leslie won’t feel much like waiting around for us.
“Back up,” I said. “I must have missed something. Why would Leslie wait around for us? What does it have to do with us?”
“George left two letters on his bunk. One for Leslie. And one for you.”
“For me?” I sat up again and snapped on the bedside light. “Why would he leave a letter for me?”