“Who says I did anything?”
“Because you get what I’m feeling,” Simon said.
“Doesn’t mean I did anything. I’m not her father.”
“So you just shrugged and went about your day?”
“Could be.”
Simon shook his head. “You wouldn’t just let something like that slide.”
“I didn’t kill him,” Cornelius said.
“If you did,” Simon said, “it would never leave this room.”
Cornelius glanced toward Ingrid. She nodded as if to reassure.
“Please tell us the rest,” Ingrid said.
Cornelius fiddled with the gray-white beard. He took another look around the room, making a face as though he’d just entered the room for the first time and realized the filth.
“Yeah, I came up here.”
“And?”
“And I banged on the door. It was locked. So I took out my key. Just like I did today. I opened the door...”
The music upstairs stopped. The room was completely silent now.
Cornelius looked down to the mattress on the right. “Aaron was right there. Passed out. Stench so bad I could barely breathe. I just wanted to run out of there, forget the whole thing.”
He stopped.
“So what did you do?” Ingrid asked.
“I checked his knuckles.”
“Pardon?”
“The knuckles on Aaron’s right hand, they were scraped up. Fresh scrapes too. So I knew then. No surprise, I guess. It’d been him who beat her. So I stood over him...”
Again he stopped. This time he closed his eyes.
Ingrid stepped toward him. “It’s okay.”
“Like I told you before, I daydreamed about it, Ingrid. Maybe... maybe I would have done more, if I got the chance. I don’t know. If that punk was awake. If he was awake and tried to explain himself. Maybe then I would have just exploded. You know what I’m saying? So I’m standing there and I’m staring down at this piece of garbage. And maybe this time, after what I’d seen, maybe I thought I’d do more than just shake my head and shuffle away.”
Cornelius opened his eyes.
“But I didn’t.”
“You left the room,” Ingrid said.
He nodded. “Enrique and Candy come down the hall, just like today. I closed the door and went back downstairs.”
“And that’s it?”
“That’s it,” Cornelius said.
“You haven’t seen Paige since?”
“Not Paige. Not Aaron either. When you two showed up, I figured maybe I was wrong.”
“Wrong about what?”
“Maybe Paige didn’t go to that empty lot and see Rocco. Maybe she ran home and told her mommy and daddy what happened. Maybe they came out here and... well, they’re her kin. They’re her blood. So maybe they did more than daydream.”
Cornelius studied their faces.
“That’s not what happened,” Simon said.
“Yeah, I get that now.”
“So we need to find her,” Simon said.
“I get that too.”
“We need to follow her steps after she ran out of here.”
Cornelius nodded. “That means you got to go see Rocco.”
Chapter Nine
Cornelius had told them how to find Rocco: “You duck through the opening in the fence. He’ll be in the abandoned building on the other side of the lot.”
Simon wasn’t sure what to expect.
On TV, he’d seen plenty of drug deals amongst urban blight, men with dark stares and guns and do-rags and low-slung jeans, little kids on bikes doing the deals because they were easier to get out of jail or some such thing, probably just TV nonsense. As he stood with Ingrid by the opening in the fence, there was no one visible. No lookout. No armed guard. He could hear faint voices in the distance, probably coming from the abandoned building, but the expected menace was not yet visible.
Which did not mean that this was a safe situation.
“So,” Simon said to Ingrid, “yet again I ask: What’s our plan?”
“Damned if I know.”
They looked at the opening in the fence.
“Let me go in first,” he said, “just in case it isn’t safe.”
“And leave me out here alone? Oh right, that sounds supersafe.”
Ingrid had a point.
“I could tell you to go home,” he said.
“You could,” Ingrid agreed, as she pulled back the chain link and ducked into the abandoned lot.
Simon quickly followed. The weeds were up past his knees. They both walked, lifting their feet as though in deep snow, afraid of tripping over rusted axles and bearings, shredded hoses and worn tire treads, shattered windshields and cracked headlights.
They had been somewhat smart, though some might say stereotyping, before making the trek to this neighborhood. Ingrid had removed all her jewelry, including her wedding band and engagement ring. Simon wore only his wedding band, which wasn’t worth that much money. Between them, they had maybe a hundred dollars in cash. Robbery — and face it, they were walking into some sort of drug den — was a possibility but it wouldn’t be a profitable one.
The steel exterior cellar doors were open. Simon and Ingrid looked down into the darkness. They could see a concrete floor. Nothing else. Sounds came up from the depths, muffled voices, maybe whispers, maybe light laughter. Ingrid took the first step, but Simon wasn’t having any of that. He jumped in front of her and hurried down, reaching the dank concrete before Ingrid reached the second step.
The smell hit him first — that always-awful sulfurous stench of rotten eggs mixed with something more chemical, an ammonia-like taste that stayed on his tongue.
The voices were clearer now. Simon started toward them. He didn’t hide his step or try to be silent. Sneaking up on them would be the wrong move. He didn’t want to startle them into doing something stupid.
Ingrid caught up to him. When they reached the center room of the basement, the voices stopped as if they’d been on a switch. Simon took in the scene, even as the stench started to get to him. He tried to breathe through his mouth. To his right, four people were sprawled as though they had no bones or were old socks someone had casually tossed there. The light was dim. Simon could make out their wide eyes more than anything else. There was a torn futon and what might have been a beanbag chair. Cardboard boxes once used for cases of cheap wine had been turned into makeshift tables. Spoons and lighters and burners and syringes lay atop them.
No one moved. Simon and Ingrid just stood there. The four people on the floor — was it four? might have been more, hard to tell in this light — stayed still, as though maybe they were camouflaged and if they didn’t move, they might not be seen.
A few more seconds passed before someone in the group began to stir. A man. He got to his feet slowly, moment by moment, a huge man, rising off the floor like Godzilla wading out of the water, his entire being expanding and filling the room. When he stood all the way up, the top of his head nearly scraped the ceiling. The big man shuffled toward them like a planet with two feet.
“What can I do for you fine folks?”
The voice was pleasant, affable.
“We’re looking for Rocco,” Simon said.
“That’s me.”
The huge man stuck out a hand that belonged on a balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Simon shook it, his hand disappearing into the folds of flesh. Rocco’s smile split his face in two. He wore a Yankees cap, same as Ingrid’s, though his looked much too small for his head, like one of those mascots with a giant baseball on his shoulders. Rocco was dark-skinned black. He was decked out in a hemp hoodie with kangaroo pockets, denim shorts, and what looked like Birkenstock sandals.
“Is there something I can help you guys with?”
His voice stayed light, folksy, maybe a bit of the stoner. The other people in the room went back to their business, which involved the lighters and the burners and plastic bags with unknown — unknown to Simon, at least — powder or other contents.