“And?” Carney’s neck got hot.
“He doesn’t show. Wanted to do his civic duty or whatever. He’s a solid citizen, happily married—poof. No sign.” Pierce paused to let the situation sink in. “Washes up in New Jersey three weeks later, throat cut so bad his head is barely hanging on. Like a Pez dispenser. Junked the case, obviously. That’s that. I’m not saying that anything nefarious happened, only saying what happened.” He gestured for a refill. “One thing I’ve learned in my job is that life is cheap, and when things start getting expensive, it gets cheaper still.”
FOUR
It was Linus’s, from the L.M.P.V.W. embossed on the leather. A gift from someone who’d once believed in his prospects. Carney popped the briefcase’s latch with the letter opener his downstairs neighbor had given him as a college graduation gift. Because she saw that he had no one to look out for him and pitied him, or because she believed in his prospects.
Inside the briefcase were some personal papers, miscellany of private importance—a Valentine’s Day card from one Louella Mather, a 1941 Yankees Double Play baseball card featuring Joe DiMaggio and Charley Keller—and the biggest cut emerald Carney had ever seen. The gem was set in a diamond-studded platinum necklace and flanked by six smaller, equally splendid emeralds on either side; held up by either end of the necklace, the center stone was the head of a gorgeous bird of prey, the smaller stones curving up like wings. Carney shut the briefcase and took a step back. When he’d joked that it contained strontium 90 he had not been far off; he had been bathed in ancient radiation.
His phone call from Aunt Millie Tuesday morning forced him to finally open it. He had slept poorly again. When Aunt Millie rang at six a.m., he had drifted off. They let it ring the first time. When Elizabeth answered the second time, Carney heard his aunt squawk from the other side of the bed: Her house had been ransacked. He dressed.
Aunt Millie had been sobbing; he recognized the puffy eyes from Pedro-related squabbles. But she had stopped and progressed on to Angry Millie, the Terror of 129th Street. As she told it, she got off her late shift at four a.m. and returned to shambles. “You know if I hadn’t been at work,” she said, “I’d have kicked that little nigger’s ass. Come in my house. Come in my house and make a mess like this.” Aunt Millie permitted a quick, reassuring hug, which made her flinch, for she did not want to be reassured. She wanted to fight.
Whoever had tossed the place had been thorough. They had slashed the cushions, pulled the dime novels off the living-room shelves, pried up the squeaky floorboard in the hallway to see if it contained secrets. The kitchen was a horror—every container bigger than a Campbell’s Soup can had been emptied and rooted through. Flour, beans, rice, and pickled pig’s feet made a repugnant mound on the old checkerboard kitchen tile. In the bedroom, Carney slid the dresser drawers back into place as Aunt Millie gathered up ungainly armfuls of clothes.
She could have kicked the ass of a druggie or the ne’er-do-well nephew of her upstairs neighbor—her mastery of her weapon of choice, the hairbrush, went unchallenged—but whoever had done this was not some two-bit crook. They had a purpose. They were completists. Looking for something in particular.
A rotten feeling reared up as they toured the mess; she beat it back. Aunt Millie struggled over what they might have taken. “Why would they do this?” She clutched Carney’s arm, whispered, “Do you think Freddie is mixed up in something again?”
“I haven’t seen him,” Carney said. “I haven’t heard anything.” His standard response now to all the interested parties, who increased by the hour, or so it seemed.
“Like father, like son,” Aunt Millie said. “Into the world somewhere.” Pedro was a rover. When Carney was young, Freddie’s father spent maybe a third of the year in New York City and the rest somewhere having his adventures. His own father, Carney gathered, had made a performance of being dependable and legit when he wooed Carney’s mother. Pedro had been a rolling stone when he met Millie and never made a show of being otherwise. Neither Aunt Millie nor his cousin had ever expressed any emotion over Pedro’s “travel,” and Carney had learned at a young age not to inquire about it. It was one of the few times his mother had scolded him. “Other people got their business, you got yours.”
Freddie idolized Pedro. You knew when he was in town because it was all Freddie talked about, and when he was down South, it was as if his father didn’t exist. On and off like a switch. Until Freddie became a teenager, and chasing girls became more important—or following Pedro’s ladies’-man ways became a means of worshipping the man. From Freddie’s dishevelment these days, it seemed women were no longer his foremost priority.