Uncle Red had lately turned himself into a tree.
The lady ahead of her stopped and looked up. During Coco’s travels through the park from nights into days, she had noticed that other visitors never looked up – only this woman. Maybe the stranger had heard a tree crying. Trees did that sometimes. But not this one. Oh, and now the red rain came down here, too, but only a few drops, and they landed on the back of the lady’s dress.
‘You’re spotted,’ said Coco. ‘You’ve got red spots – like mine.’
The woman whirled around, and a rat fell from the tree to land on her head. The lady screamed and batted at it, but the rat was tangled in her long hair, and now it was also screaming. Trembling, Coco rose up on her toes, poised for flight, and then she was off, feet touching lightly to ground as she ran, outrunning sound, chasing it out of her brain. Now there were footfalls behind her – too heavy for rodent steps, even if all the rats in the world stood on one another’s backs. But she never looked over her shoulder to see what was behind her. After a long time, forever and ever, she found herself safe among the lions.
THREE
I’m two grades ahead of my age group. So I have classes with all three of them. In History, Aggy the Biter sits next to me, clicking her teeth. Every now and then, she reaches across the aisle to pinch me. Testing the meat?
—Ernest Nadler
Riding shotgun with his partner would have been more exciting in a real car. Mallory rarely used a siren, preferring to frighten other motorists with close encounters that threatened their paint jobs and taillights. But today she was limited to the top speed of this small park vehicle, a glorified golf cart with a peanut-size engine.
Riker played navigator, consulting a map of narrow roads, meandering trails and the highways of Central Park. As they traveled north, he drew an X over a brand-new city landmark, the spot where the rats had eaten an out-of-towner. They were drawing close to the playground near 68th Street, where Mrs Ortega had seen the missing child. He looked at his watch. Hours had passed since the rat attack in the meadow on the other side of West Drive. ‘We’ll never find her around here. Kids make good time on the run.’ He despaired of locating one little girl in parkland that was miles long, half a mile wide and filled with a million trees to hide her. And yet his partner aimed the cart with confidence and sure direction. ‘So what do you know that I don’t know?’
‘Coco’s not hiding,’ said Mallory. ‘She’s trying to connect with people. She’ll stick to this road.’
His partner had the inside track on lost children. She used to be one – if it could be said that she was ever a real child. She had arrived at the Markowitz household with a full skill set for survival at the age of ten or eleven. Her foster parents, Lou and Helen, had never been certain of her age because the child-size Kathy Mallory had also shown a genius for deception. But stealing was where Riker thought the kid really shined in her puppy days.
Eliciting fear was a talent she had later grown into.
After passing the park exit for 77th Street, Mallory pressed the gas pedal to the floor and jumped the curb to aim the cart at two boys with skateboards in hand. They wore kneepads and wrist guards and helmets, all the cushions that parents could provide to keep their young alive in New York City. True, these youngsters were teenagers, but someone loved them. When the cart braked to a sudden stop, the front wheels were inches from their kneecaps – and the boys laughed. No shock, no awe, for this was a toy car. And then the fun was over. They had locked eyes with Mallory.
Oh, shit.
Words were unnecessary. She only nodded to say, Yes, I’m a cop. Yes, I carry a gun – a big one. She tilted her head to one side and smiled, silently asking if they might have a bit of weed in their pockets that would interest her.
Teenagers were so easy.
Riker held up his badge and waved them over to his side of the cart. He reached into his pocket for the photograph of Mrs Ortega’s fairy figurine. ‘Okay, guys, this is how it works. One smartass remark and my partner shoots you. We’re hunting for a lost kid. The girl looks something like this.’ He showed them the photo and read one boy’s mind when he saw the smirk. ‘Forget you saw the wings.’ He nodded toward Mallory. ‘She will hurt you.’
‘Yeah, we saw the kid,’ said the taller boy. ‘Well, you’re headed in the right direction.’ He pointed back the way he had come with his friend. ‘Take the first path on the right. She was running east.’
‘She went into the Ramble?’ Riker shaded his eyes to look toward that area of dense woods, once notorious as a haven for addicts and muggers with knives and guns, and for bob-and-drop rapists with rocks. In more recent times, the wildwood had been invaded by bird-watchers, joggers and grandmothers. ‘How long ago?’
‘Maybe an hour – half an hour.’
‘Talk to me.’ Mallory zeroed in on the other boy’s guilty face. ‘What else happened?’
This teenager looked down at the grass and then up to the sky. ‘She asked me for a hug.’
‘But she was dirty.’ Mallory stepped out of the cart. ‘Probably a homeless kid.’ Her voice was a monotone. ‘You thought you might catch something – bedbugs or lice.’ She circled around the boy, snatched his skateboard and tossed it under the wheels of the cart. And still, he would not look at her. ‘That little girl had blood on her T-shirt, and she was scared, wasn’t she? But you had plans for the day, places to go – no time to call the cops.’ Mallory held up her open hand and showed the boy his own pricey cell phone. He stared at it in disbelief as he patted the empty back pocket of his jeans.
‘You think I can hit the water from here?’ She glanced at the long finger of lake water bordered with an orange construction fence, and she hefted his phone as if weighing it. ‘Talk to me.’
The teenager turned his worried eyes to Riker, who only shrugged to say I warned you about her.
It was the other boy who spoke first, maybe in fear for his own cell phone. ‘The girl was a little strange . . . I thought she was gonna cry when—’
‘When your friend blew her off?’ With only the prompt of Mallory folding her arms, both of them were talking at once, and now they remembered – suddenly and conveniently – that Coco had run toward another park visitor.
‘We figured he’d call the cops.’
‘Yeah,’ said Riker, ‘sure you did.’ Pissant liar.
The teenager gave him a snarky so-what smile – no respect.
Smug lies to cops should have consequences, but rather than shake the little bastard until his perfect teeth came loose, Riker turned away and climbed into the cart. Behind him, he heard a splash followed by the boy’s ‘Oh, shit! My phone!’ Then Mallory was back in the driver’s seat, and the cart lurched forward with the satisfying crunch of a skateboard under one wheel.
The detectives traveled down a narrow road and into the woods at the reckless top speed of hardly any miles per hour. The Ramble was a sprawl of thirty-eight acres, thick with trees and lush foliage, beautiful and disheartening. On Riker’s map, this area was a daunting maze of winding paths. ‘We’ll never find her in here.’