The headshake came again.
“Remember anything else about them?”
The third headshake began and then, an afterthought, Billy said, “There was a ring.…” He extended his left hand, isolating the index finger. “Here, like a big bird. It was black and had its wings out. Rick said he might give it to me one day.”
“What about the man you gave the stuff to? He have a name?
“Boxer,” said Billy, not hesitant anymore, actually smiling in recollection. “Had a nose all squashy, like a boxer’s. He was different from the others. He was funny. Said that’s what he was doing when he was late sometimes, playing hide-and-seek.”
He probably would have been, literally, O’Farrell decided, watching from some vantage point to ensure Billy wasn’t under observation and that it was safe to make the pickup. “He have a car?”
“A bike!” Billy said enthusiastically. “A racing bike with lots of gears and drop handlebars. Blue. He let me touch it once.”
O’Farrell recalled that a lot of the houses in Evanston were unfeiuxu; a bicycie, capable of cutting through backyards from house to house and street to street, was a better vehicle than a car in many pursuits. “You never called him anything else but Boxer?”
“Nope.”
“What sort of person was he? He have any rings or stuff like that?” O’Farrell felt exhausted; damp from perspiration and aching in his shoulders and legs.
“He wasn’t American,” Billy said flatly. “Neither was Felipe. It wasn’t the same as us when they talked. And Boxer had a picture on his hand.”
“Whereabouts?” O’Farrell pressed.
Billy offered his left hand, the middle finger outstretched. He pointed near the knuckle and said, “A flower, just there. Red.”
It was enough. O’Farrell decided; it had to be enough. If he were exhausted, how must Billy be feeling? He said, “You’ve been very good.”
“You pleased?” The child smiled uncertainly, eager for die praise.
“Very pleased,” O’Farrell said.
“Can we go home now? I don’t want to stay here anymore. I don’t like it here anymore.”
“I’ll see,” O’Farrell said.
McMasters and the girl were waiting directly outside the door. O’Farrell closed it carefully and started, “Okay, the suppliers …” but McMasters raised his hand, stopping him. “I watched it live, in the control room. You did damned well.”
O’Farrell was impatient with the praise but didn’t show it. He said, “He wants to go home.”
“I heard that, too.”
“So what about it?”
“It can’t end just like this.”
“But can he go home, now!”
“I think he needs to,” McMasters agreed. “And whatever happens, I think he’s going to want help from a child psychiatrist. He’s one scared kid.”
“What about the descriptions? Enough for any identifications?”
McMasters studied him curiously and then said, “Not yet; there’s a lot of work to be done.”
O’Farrell was caught by the tone of McMasters’s voice, just as the other man had recognized the meaning in his. O’Farrell said, “And if you had an identification, you wouldn’t tell me?”
“Personal vengeance and vigilante stuff are for the movies, Mr. O’Farrell.”
It’s as good a description as any for what I do, for Christ’s sake! O’Farrell thought. He said, “I didn’t mean anything like that.”
“My mistake,” McMasters said, clearly not believing it was.
O’Farrell collected Billy, and then Jill and Ellen, and they rode home strangely embarrassed, no one able to find any conversation. O’Farrell tried baseball talk, but Billy didn’t respond. In the apartment there were the sleeping arrangements to make, moving the bedding, which gave them some activity, and at dinner O’Farrell decided to get the clouds out of the way. He did so entirely to and for Billy’s benefit, openly talking about drugs and the child’s part in what had happened but making it sound as if Billy had knowingly acted like some undercover agent, exaggerating McMasters’s reaction to the information the boy had finally provided. Ellen and Jill caught on to what O’Farrell was doing and openly praised the boy, and Billy started to relax, even smiling occasionally. O’Farrell was intent on everything the boy said, for any scrap of additional information, but there was nothing.
O’Farrell was ready for the going-to-bed request, agreeing at once that he should be the one to take Billy, and Ellen behaved like it was the expected thing. The story was predictably about some galactic exploration but Billy clearly wasn’t interested.
“They won’t come, Rick and Felipe, during the night!”
“No.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I’m just sure.”
“How long are you staying?”
“A few days.”
“Who’s going to look after us when you’ve gone?”
“I’ll work it out.”
Billy insisted on holding O’Farrell’s hand between both of his and several times opened his eyes, accusingly, when O’Farrell tried gently to withdraw. It was an hour before O’Farrell got away. The dinner things were cleared and Jill and Ellen were sitting side by side on the couch, like hospital visitors waiting for a diagnosis they didn’t want to hear. O’Farrell told them everything, and Ellen began to cry when he got to the reason for Billy saving the money, the threats that the men had made, and McMasters’s thought that Billy might benefit from seeing a psychiatrist.
“Well?” O’Farrell demanded.
Ellen looked uncomprehendingly up at him, red-nosed and wet-faced. “Well what?”
“I want direct, honest answers.”
“About what?”
“About a lot of things. Let’s try drugs first.’”
Her lips quivered afresh but Ellen didn’t break down. “No!” she said. “How many times have I got to say no!”
“Until I’m satisfied,” O’Farrell said.
Ellen opened her mouth to speak but then apparently changed her mind about what she was going to say. She said, very quietly, “No. I don’t do cocaine! No, I don’t do crack! No, I don’t deal. No, I haven’t turned my son into a runner! There! Satisfied?” It was very difficult for her to hold on and Jill reached out to her as she had in McMasterss office, in support.
“What about the day-care center?” O’Farrell persisted relentlessly.
“You knew about that!” Ellen said defensively. “Thousands of single parents use the system. It works. Don’t look at me as if I’ve done something wrong!”
“How long has he been there by the time you collect him?”
“Usual time.”
“What’s usual time?”
“I told you about the extra work, when we had the first scare at the school,” Ellen said. “Billy was always okay at the center until I collected him.”
Jill pulled away from their daughter. “It took them long enough to realize he was arriving late.”
“But they did realize it,” Ellen said. “And as soon as they did, they told me.”
“How about another direct, honest answer?” O’Farrell challenged. “Tell me, directly and honestly, how much Patrick’s caught up with the payment arrears. And how promptly the regular amounts have come in?”
Ellen gave a helpless shrug. “He promised,” she said.
“He hasn’t paid up a goddamned cent, has he!” O’Farrell said.
Ellen shook her head, not looking up at her father.
“For God’s sake!” Jill said, finding something at last to be angry instead of sad about. “What’s wrong with you! You’re working full-time and extra when you can—and you let him get away with this?”
“That’s going to stop, right here and now!” O’Farrell said. “I’m going to sort everything out with Billy and I’m going to sort everything out with that bastard ex-husband of yours.…” He stopped, caught by a sudden thought and remembering Billy’s bedroom pleas. He said, “You called Patrick, about the drugs business?”