“Three and a half weeks ago. She came on a Tuesday afternoon, for a shower and to do some laundry. I fed her lunch and we spoke for a while. She left after three hours or so.”
She counts time, thought Atley. Days and weeks, even hours—waiting for her daughter to return.
Shit
.
“What did the two of you talk about?”
“These days, there are very few topics that don’t result in arguments between us,” she answered. “We keep the discussion light, or we stay quiet with each other.”
“And as far as you know, her living arrangements are … what?”
“I hate to imagine. I’ve offered many alternatives to her, none of which she will accept. She will never take more than a few dollars from me, however much I insist. She’s on her own.”
“At sixteen.”
“If you’re suggesting that I have failed her, Detective, you’re right.”
“You have no thoughts about where she’s been staying or who she’s been with?”
“No, but she hasn’t been alone, thankfully. Apparently she has a few friends in … in her same situation.” Claire paused for a moment. “I used to look for her. After she ran away. For the first few months, I would go out walking the streets to look for her and I saw her once, near here. She hadn’t run very far, it turns out. She was with others. Two boys and two other girls, I think. I wanted to call out to her, but when I tried, no sound came out. Isn’t that strange?”
Greer and the woman stood in silence for a moment, she wrestling with regret, he dreading the next phase of the interview.
“What has Wally done now?” Claire Stoneman repeated her question from earlier.
Atley could see that her demeanor had changed; the woman was even more anxious now, as if sensing from Atley’s behavior that this notification would be different from the others. More serious—perhaps more final.
A woman slightly younger than Mrs. Stoneman now appeared in the doorway to the kitchen—domestic help, from the look of it, with cropped hard hair and dressed in something like a maid’s outfit, pale green with an apron. She did not speak, but held her ground at the threshold as if waiting for instructions from Claire.
“Mrs. Stoneman,” Atley said, “this is a personal family matter, so perhaps …”
Claire gleaned his meaning.
“No,” she said, and looked to the woman, imploring. “Johanna, please stay.”
Johanna dutifully stepped over and stood by Claire as if this was not the first time she had been asked to fulfill this role. How sad, Atley thought—tragic even—for Claire Stoneman to be so completely alone in the world that she had to rely on her cleaning lady for emotional support.
“Okay,” Greer said, and took a breath. “Mrs. Stoneman, this morning a body was discovered on the southern end of Riverside Park—”
“Oh God …” Claire Stoneman reached out toward Johanna, clutching the woman’s arm as Atley continued.
“The body was of a young girl, around your daughter’s age, fitting her description and carrying your daughter’s identification on her person.”
“No …”
Claire’s agony was quiet, turned inward upon itself. She made a choking, gasping sound, which she fiercely struggled to repress. She let go of Johanna and clenched her hands into white, bloodless fists, pressing them hard into her abdomen as if punishing herself. Johanna, visibly moved by Claire Stoneman’s anguish, wrapped the grieving woman in her arms and held tight.
Greer reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. From the menu he selected the “photo gallery” command and the young girl’s death mask appeared there immediately, battered and swollen and bloody. Greer realized then that he did not have it in him to present this sickening image to Claire Stoneman.
“I want to see her,” Claire finally said.
“It’s really not necessary, Mrs. Stoneman,” said Greer. “Your daughter has a file. It’s acceptable to use fingerprints to identify a victim.”
“Victim?” She looked up at Greer, searching him, imagining for the first time the specific cause of her daughter’s death.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Stoneman. I’m a homicide detective.”
The mother turned away from Greer, hung her head, and wept.
Atley drove Claire Stoneman
to the Kings County Hospital morgue in Brooklyn and escorted her to an observation room, where she could view her daughter’s remains on a closed circuit video monitor. Once Clare grasped the situation, however, she insisted on seeing the body in person.
“Fine,” the coroner’s assistant agreed with an indifferent shrug.
Greer led the mother to the gurney, gave her a moment to gather herself, then pulled the blue sheet back to reveal the dead girl. She paused, her own features in a rigor of grief, then leaned in for a closer look at the girl’s battered face, wiped clean of blood and debris. The mother paused there, inches from the body, for a long moment. Mrs. Stoneman reached out and gently stroked the girl’s hair, sobbing silently.
“It’s not fair,” she whispered to the dead girl.
“Mrs. Stoneman—”
Claire turned away from the body and faced Atley, not bothering to wipe away the tears streaking down her face. “This is not my daughter,” she said unequivocally. “This is not Wally.”
TWO
Wally Stoneman lay on her back
, waking up slowly. Morning light spilled into the huge room, illuminating the colorful mosaic on the domed ceiling fifteen feet above her: a battle scene from the Trojan War. The room was surprisingly warm, even though the heat vents had been locked shut and the night outside had been cold; the single wool blanket of Wally’s bedroll had been enough. She guessed that the building’s boiler room must be located in the basement level just one floor below what had once been the lobby of a mercantile bank; the marble floors of the room were always a little warm to the touch.
For her private sleeping spot, Wally had chosen the catwalk along the north wall that overlooked the bank floor. The high ground gave her privacy, plus a ringside seat for the battle scene depicted on the ceiling mosaic: there were plumed helmets and tooled breastplates, charging stallions, and, of course, heroes atop their horses, poised to fight.
Someone climbed the stairs behind her and approached along the catwalk. She could tell it was Tevin by the squeaking of his sneakers; he was less physically mature than other seventeen-year-old boys she knew, just five foot eleven, but with ungovernable size-thirteen feet that constantly scraped the ground as he walked. He wore loose army-surplus cargo pants—always—and a heavy fleece hoodie in gray.
Tevin sat down beside Wally, and she sat up in her blanket. They leaned together against the stone wall of the walkway, gazing sleepily down through the railing to the ground floor below, devoid of any furniture now except for the row of empty teller’s windows along the south wall.
“Morning.” Tevin yawned, his sleepy eyes still a little droopy on his handsome face. The hair on Tevin’s head was shaved close on the side, with the longer top fashioned into a frohawk that—along with the smooth, cappuccino-hued skin tone of his mixed-race parentage—gave him an exotic, otherworldly look. He had long, beautiful eyelashes, almost girlish in a way that Tevin definitely was not, and the detail was something that always gave Wally some pleasure to notice.
“Hey,” said Wally, smiling to herself. Having Tevin next to her was always a good start to the day.
He looked up and studied the mural on the ceiling.
“Have you figured out yet what those guys on horses have to do with banking, or New York in general?”
“I have not,” Wally said. “But I like it.”
“Yeah. Not everything needs a reason.”
Wally gave him a look. “That is
so
wise, Tev. Thank you.”
“Eat me,” he answered through another yawn.
The two of them sat quietly as some busy sounds echoed up from what used to be the bank’s employee break room.
“Ella found some hot chocolate in one of the cabinets,” Tevin explained. “You only need water to make it. You just put it in the microwave. It’s pretty grody inside but still works.”
“Good.”
Now more sounds rose up from downstairs: Ella giggling, cooing. Jake laughing in response, quietly—then nothing. It was often like this in the morning between Jake and Ella—if they could steal a few moments alone—and frequently at night, of course. The two of them were in some version of love, breathless and grasping. Wally didn’t mind; it was their business, and it seemed to make them happy. But the closeness of the couple sometimes left Wally and Tevin feeling awkward with each other, on the outside looking in, confused about the lingering tension between the two of them and what to do about it. Wally and Tevin were … what? Friends and family. But … something more, maybe. Something yet to be explored.
“What are we doing today?” Tevin asked.
“Taking in the machines,” said Wally.
“To the smoke shop?”
“Yep.”
Tevin was not enthusiastic. His childhood years in Harlem, some of them spent within a block or two of the 131st Street Smoke Shop, had consisted of one domestic nightmare after another, some perpetrated by his own family and some by the city’s Department of Social Services. Harlem was bad memories for him and nothing else.
“You don’t need to come,” said Wally. “I’m fine with Jake and Ella.”
“No, I’m going.” But Tevin seemed distracted.
“What?” Wally asked.
“We should try to find Sophie,” he finally said.
Wally sighed, impatient. “No.”
“It’s already two weeks now,” said Tevin.
“We can’t trust her,” said Wally. “We can hope she gets her shit together, Tev, but she can’t come back with us.”
“What if it was me?” He forced the issue. “What if I was the one in trouble?”
“We’d help.”
“Why me and not her?”
“Because you’ve earned it,” Wally answered. “We didn’t let go of Sophie, Tevin. She let go of us.”
Before heading uptown,
Wally and Ella went through their regular makeup ritual. Standing side by side in front of the bathroom mirror, they began with fingernail polish, layering dark purple gloss without removing the previous layer, creating a chipped and trashy effect that—weirdly—made them feel out of control but in control, all at the same time.
The two girls were almost physical opposites. Wally was fair-skinned with short blond hair and a prominent bone structure that came with her Russian heritage. Ella, in contrast, was petite and delicate-featured, an Amerasian with sleek black hair that cascaded down below her narrow shoulders. Their clothing styles had merged over time, though, to the point where they shared almost identical emo/scene kid mash-up ensembles: multiple torn leggings under tartan skirts or cutoff shorts, plus layered tops in whatever clashing materials and colors they could throw together from the bargain bins at the back of the Salvation Army shop, twenty-five cents per item or free, depending on which manager was working the floor. When the clothes got too dirty, they usually just tossed them and went back to the bins for fresh pieces. It was cheaper than laundry soap.
Once their nails were done, the girls started in on their eyes. They brushed a dense, crusty layer of mascara on their eyelashes, the application complete only when it was so thick that their lashes would hold no more and residue black crumbs flaked down onto the skin just below their eyes. They looked into the mirror, appraising the results—vampy, tragic, morning after. They never got bored of this routine.
“Twins,” declared Ella, satisfied. “Princesses of the dark.”
Jake and Tevin were mostly patient with the girls’ primping process, waiting without complaint until the girls emerged from the bathroom. All four of them pitched in to move two large cardboard boxes out through the back door—the emergency exit—and into the narrow service walkway that stood between their building and the next. They loaded the boxes into a beat-up D’Agostino’s shopping cart that they had hidden in the walkway behind one of the Dumpsters. As with all their exits and entries into the building, this process had to be carried out quickly, and only when they were certain no one was watching. The empty bank had turned out to be a good squat for Wally and her crew, and they didn’t want to spoil it by alerting any meddlesome neighbors to their presence.
“It’s a long way to the smoke shop,” said Tevin as they moved west on 87th Street. “We could take a minivan cab.”
“No problem,” Wally said. “We’re every cabbie’s dream fare.”
“Here’s how we do it,” said Tevin with a sly grin. “The rest of us hide, with the boxes and all, and you stand out there by yourself, flashing your legs and whatnot. That’ll get ’em to stop.”
“You can go ahead and stop thinkin’ about my
whatnot
,” Wally said, and Tevin laughed.
“I say fuck the smoke shop,” Jake said, in a harsher tone than he probably intended.
Wally faced Jake. “What’s your deal?”
“Panama gives me the goddamn creeps.”
“He hustles.” Wally shrugged. “What do you expect?”
“There’s that guy I know in the Bronx—Cedric. I bet he’ll give us more.”
“That’s too far,” Wally said, “and Panama has cell cards to trade.”
Wally’s words seemed to leave no room for debate.
“Cedric is a good guy,” Jake said, pausing to kick a dirty old pizza box off the sidewalk before continuing. “And I already told him we’d sell him the machines.”
Wally shook her head and gave Jake a critical look.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said.
“Well, fuck it. I did.”
“Huh,” Wally said, trying to stay cool and evenhanded, mostly just feeling annoyed. She didn’t want to embarrass Jake. “Then we’ll make it up to him later, whatever next thing we have to trade. But today we’re headed to Panama’s.”
“It’s bullshit that you decide everything, Wally,” Jake answered, pissy. “I’m sick of it.”
Tevin and Ella stood by stoically, silently enduring Jake’s rebellious outburst as a ritual that they had witnessed many times before.
“Okay, Jake. Screw it,” Wally said. “You want to change things up, I could use the vacation. You take a few weeks running things. Figure out where our money is coming from without panhandling all day like every other skel on the street and where we’re gonna crash so we don’t have to go down into the tunnels and how to keep from getting ripped off when we have something to sell. Just make sure you have a good plan, Jake, ’cause if you remember, there was a time when we all followed Nick, and he almost led us off a damn cliff.”