There was no steam rising from the bowl.
On the year's coldest day, whatever slop Janice was delivering to her son was as cold as her own shriveled heart.
She disappeared into the shed, and he counted-one one thousand, two one thousand-until she reappeared without the bowl.
Twelve seconds.
Janice had spent twelve seconds with her son before returning to the farmhouse, where smoke puffed from the chimney. There was no smokestack on the shed, no power lines running in.
As a lawyer, there were only two categories of criminals Steve Solomon would not represent. Pedophiles and men who brutalize women. But at that moment if his own sister were within reach, he would have done her grievous harm. At that moment, it didn't matter that Janice was a lost soul herself, who'd gone seemingly overnight from her Bat Mitzvah to Jews for Jesus to pilfering money and drugs.
Steve waited until after midnight, watching the farmhouse, hearing laughter and music, catching sight of figures passing the windows, men urinating off the porch. He drifted into a restless, frozen sleep, awakened to the hooting of an owl in an icy rain. It was just after three A.M. The farmhouse was dark and silent as he made his way down the ridge to the shed, slipping on wet rocks, illuminated by a three-quarter moon. From somewhere in the compound, a dog howled.
The shed door was locked with a simple peg through a latch. The door creaked as Steve went inside, clicking on a flashlight. Pale and malnourished, Bobby lay curled in a metal dog cage, a bucket of urine and the empty soup bowl at his side. He wore only underpants and a sweatshirt. He was barefoot. His feet were filthy and covered with sores.
“Bobby, it's your uncle Steve.”
The boy scuttled to the far corner of the cage, eyes wide with fear.
“Don't be scared.”
Bobby rocked back and forth.
“Do you remember me?”
The rocking grew faster.
A padlock secured the cage, and Steve began working at the hinges with his bare hands, trying to lift the pin. Just then, the door to the shed flew open and a broad-shouldered man with a tangled beard stepped inside. The man could have been thirty or sixty or anywhere in between. He wore a dirty red Mackinaw and a winter hat with fur earflaps, and his face was smudged with black splotches that looked like charcoal dust. He gripped a stick as thick as a man's forearm. Probably carved from an oak tree, the stick was curved at the top like a shepherd's staff.
“I'm the boy's uncle,” Steve said. “He's coming with me.”
“He ain't going nowhere,” the man said.
Bobby continued rocking.
The man closed the distance between them and drew back the curved stick. His voice rumbled, “‘Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils.' Matthew, Chapter Ten, Verse Eight.”
“Get the fuck out of my way. Solomon. Chapter One. You don't want to hear Chapter Two.”
“Be gone!” The man swung the stick, and Steve took the impact on the shoulder and staggered backward. The man swung again and Steve stopped the stick with both hands and shoved back, hard. He slammed the man against the shed wall and pushed the stick to his neck. Steve's face was buried in the collar of the soggy Mackinaw, and a mangy smell like a wet dog made him gag. The man squirmed and gasped for air and tried to knee Steve in the groin. Steve kept up the pressure, jamming the stick hard into the man's Adam's apple. When his attacker's face turned crimson, a gurgle coming from his throat, Steve released him, and the man dropped to the floor.
Still holding the stick, Steve turned to Bobby. “The padlock. Where's the key?”
The boy stopped rocking, but he still hadn't said a word.
“Bobby, do you understand what I'm saying?”
“Uncle Steve, look out!”
Steve pivoted and swung the stick like a baseball bat even before he saw the man coming up from the floor, a hunting knife in his hand. Head down, hips turning, it was a compact but powerful swing.
The stick caught the man squarely above the temple with a crunch of bone: he dropped like a mallard felled by a hunter. Steve stood over him, breathing hard, aware of his own pounding heart. Frozen in place, filled with fear. Had he killed him?
“We better go, Uncle Steve.”
The voice was so close it startled him. Bobby was outside the cage, the back panel removed. “Mom doesn't know I can do this.”
The man on the floor was moaning, trying to get to his feet. Thank God he wasn't dead. Steve grabbed Bobby and swung him into his arms, stunned by how light he was. All elbows and knees, no meat on his bones.
They ducked out of the shed. Dogs barked. Lights flicked on in the farmhouse. Steve could make out a shadowy figure on the porch and the silhouette of what looked like a rifle or a shotgun.
“You! Stop!”
Carrying Bobby, Steve took off. He headed for the tree line, heard shouts from behind, looked back over his shoulder, caught glimpses of men with torches. A shotgun roared. Then another blast, echoing across the valley. He ran through the woods, leaping over fallen trees, slipping on wet rocks, crossing a stream, chugging hard up a hill and down the other side, through a strand of mahogany trees, running hard and not stopping until there were no more torches, no more gunshots, and no more men.
They were in the car headed toward Tallahassee before Steve spoke again. “I didn't think you remembered me.”
“You took me snorkeling,” Bobby said.
“That's right. I did. You must have been about five or six.”
“It was September eleventh. I was five plus eight months and three days. We saw lots of green-and-yellow fish with blue spots that sparkled.”
“Angelfish.”
“Holacanthus ciliaris. I gave one a name.”
“Really?”
“You told me not to touch the coral because it'll break and it takes hundreds of years to grow back. I liked the sea fans best because they wave at you like they're friendly. And the parrotfish. Sparisoma viride. They look like parrots but they don't talk.”
“How do you remember all that? How do you know their Latin names?”
The boy's thin shoulders shrugged.
“Do you want to go to my house?”
“Eleven white stones from the driveway to the front door.”
“I guess there are. Would you like to go there?”
“I named the angelfish ‘Steve,'” Bobby said.
Now, ten months later, Bobby was putting on weight-thanks to the paninis-and becoming more comfortable around people. He said good-bye to his grandfather, hung up the phone, and came over to the counter just as Steve opened the lid of the grill.
“Turn them a hundred eighty degrees,” Bobby said.
“That's what I'm doing.” Steve slid the sandwiches around to cross-hatch the bread with grill marks.
“Not a hundred ninety,” Bobby ordered. “The marks won't be even.”
“Got it.”
The melting cheese sizzled seductively, and an aroma of salty sweetness filled the kitchen. “How come you and Pop always argue?” Bobby asked.
“I guess because we've each done things that disappoint the other.”
Bobby used his tongue to snap a rubber band on his braces. “Do I disappoint you?”
“Never. Not once.”
The boy's smile was all orthodonture. “Don't burn the sandwiches, Uncle Steve.”
“Have I told you today how much I love you, kiddo?”
“You tell me every day, Uncle Steve.”
“Well, today, I'm telling you twice.”
Five
MONEY, SEX, AND MURDER
Inside the Justice Building, Steve was feeling as gray as the weather outside. The morning session ended with a Customs Officer testifying that Amancio Pedrosa was harboring a menagerie of smuggled birds, including a foulmouthed cockatoo.