“Mom, what’re we gonna do?” Joe asked.
His mother lit a cigarette and sighed. She turned off the headlights, which placed them in terrible darkness for a moment, then clicked on the yellowing dome light in the car. “I’ll have to go looking for gas.” She turned around to Robbie. “You need to stay here with Joe, okay?”
“What? Mom, no way! It’s dark as all hell.”
“H-e-double toothpicks,” Joe said.
“Shut up.”
“Robbie, please,” Lois said. To Joe her eyes looked red rimmed and pleading. “Please, I need you now.”
“C-can we leave the light on?” he asked.
“No, honey,” she said. “The battery will go dead; you know that.” She dug through her purse and produced a Bic lighter. “Here. Use it if you need it, but be careful with it. Anyway, your eyes will adjust.”
“Mom, please,” Joe whined. “Take us with you.”
“I can’t, baby. Everything we own is in this car. We can’t leave it. Just give me a few minutes. I’ll find help and get us a can of gas. Once we get to the ferry, it’ll all be fine. I’ll call Uncle Mike and have him meet us in Saint George.”
“Where will you find gas?”
“I’ll check at the marina,” she said. “Or I’ll walk up Seventy-Ninth to Broadway. There will be people out. Someone will help. I’ll be back in fifteen or twenty minutes. We’ve got plenty of time. The last ferry leaves at eleven thirty.” With that, she clicked off the dome light and opened the car door. When she closed it, the darkness was all-encompassing.
“Mom, no!” Joe cried.
“Joey, shush,” she said. Robbie clicked the lighter on, and for a last moment Joe saw her through the flicker of the little flame. “Be brave, both of you. Robbie, turn that off now. You’ll get burned. Just let your eyes adjust.”
“Wait,” Robbie said. “Just for a second. Till our eyes adjust.”
She stood outside the car for a moment, leaning down into the passenger window. Joe felt like a shadow, fidgeting in his seat. Robbie sat still as a stone, which was not at all like him. It occurred to Joe years later that it was as if Robbie was trying to avoid being seen or sensed by something. Around them, the city at the river’s edge seemed strangely quiet. The air, heavy and hot, lay on them all like a thick blanket.
“See? It’s okay,” their mother said. “You’ll be fine here. Just stay in the car, and I’ll be right back.” She looked at them both one more time, from one to the other. Robbie was fingering the lighter. “Robbie, don’t use that unless you have to. And don’t turn on the dome light either. If the battery is dead when I get back, what will we do then?”
“Okay,” he said, sounding dejected. “Please hurry.”
“What if somebody comes?” Joe asked.
“I’ll be right back. No one is coming to the park in this . . . whatever it is. You’ll be fine.” She paused and gave them a smile. “I love you both.” Then she turned and was gone.
CHAPTER 9
Saturday, July 15, 2017
Bay Thirty-Fourth Street
Bath Beach, Brooklyn
11:57 a.m.
When Joe’s ex-lover knocked on his heavy, ornate front door, he was sitting in a T-shirt and underwear on his bed upstairs, staring at Zochi’s card. “Detective Xochitl Hernandez, 60th PCT,” it read under a blue NYPD banner with the department’s patch logo on one side and a detective shield on the other.
He had no idea how he had gotten it.
“Joey, open up!” she called. The voice was muffled but unmistakable, even after months of not hearing from her. She was known to everyone except her parents as Holly, but Joe loved her real name, Hallelujah. “Come on, it’s almost noon!”
“Hang on!” The morning had started off weird, and now it was getting weirder. He set the card back on the nightstand and pulled on an old pair of slacks. He hurried down the wide hardwood stairs, running a hand through his hair in a vain effort to straighten it. Joe’s house was mostly empty and in desperate need of a woman’s touch, but it was a masterpiece. Tucked into a vibrant, mostly working-class neighborhood, it was redbrick, sturdy, and nearly a century old. To Joe its best feature was that it was within walking distance of a fishing boat he kept in a tiny private marina just underneath the Belt Parkway.
“Are you okay?” he asked, motioning her in. With her came her smell—perfumed, fresh, feminine—and Joe felt his heart skip. He glanced out the window. It was a hot, bright Saturday morning along his short block and the longer Cropsey Avenue. He had woken thinking about taking the boat out, just before the appearance of the mysterious detective’s card next to his watch and wallet. And now here was Halle Rossi knocking on his door after all this time.