But before he could get back to sleep he remembered his step-grandmother. Ed’s mother. When she died, there had been no obituary, because the newspaper had wanted too much money to run one.
Still, there was nothing he could do about any of it. So he put it out of his head as best he could and tried to get some sleep.
Chapter Four
* * *
The Luis Project
“Where did he live?” Raymond asked on his next visit to Mildred and the cat.
“Who? Luis?”
“Yeah. Luis.”
His plan was to quietly work her for information. Little bits of it that might narrow down the list. Make his job easier. But he wouldn’t tell her straight out about the project. Because he might fail. He didn’t want to get her hopes up for nothing.
He watched her brow knit down. She began to wring her hands the way she did whenever she spoke of Luis’s disappearance.
“I don’t know, Raymond. That is one of the worst parts of the thing. I don’t know. He used to live within easy walking distance. Four blocks, he said. But I didn’t know four blocks in which direction, because he always came here. Then he moved. Farther away. I kept asking him, ‘Where do you live now?’ Because I was worried he was coming too far to help me. And he knew I was worried about that. So he never would say. Instead he would dismiss my worries by saying, ‘It’s just a subway ride, Millie. A simple little subway ride.’ He never said how long of one. I wish I knew more. He was such a good friend. But we were not the kind of friends where maybe I would go to his house sometimes. No, it was not like that. He always came here.”
“What about a middle name?”
“I never asked,” she said, stroking Louise’s ears. “Do you know this cat slept on my pillow all night long? Purring. Every time I woke up to roll over I could hear her purring. It was just lovely. Now tell me why you are asking so many questions about Luis.”
“No reason,” he said. “Just curious.”
If she didn’t believe him—and she probably didn’t—she never said.
Raymond stood in his own apartment, in front of the kitchen phone, with his list, staring at the horrible floral wallpaper. It was faded, worn down by children’s hands. Almost everything in the apartment was a leftover from the days when Ed’s grandmother had lived here. Which meant it was all old-fashioned and just plain old.
He’d made a list of twenty-one men named Luis Velez in the greater New York City area. Addresses and phone numbers both.
Looking at the page, he knew the first question he should have asked the old woman was how to spell Velez. It might have had an a in the first syllable, not an e. Or how to spell Luis. Maybe he spelled it the English way, Louis. And maybe Mildred Gutermann just used a Spanish pronunciation because Luis had.
He’d started to ask her. At least three times. But it wouldn’t have worked. It would have given him away. Nobody asked the spelling of somebody’s name out of sheer idle curiosity. No, if Raymond had asked that question, especially on top of asking his middle name, she would have known he was looking for Luis. And he currently had very little confidence in his ability to find the man, so he was giving no clues away for now. Or at least no more than necessary.
Raymond’s knees quivered slightly as he picked up the receiver and tapped in the first phone number. Maybe it was just the tension of beginning such a huge task, especially one so important yet so likely to fail. Maybe he was afraid of what he would learn. Or maybe it was simply scary to call a total stranger on the phone.
“Hola,” a voice said on the other end of the line. An older woman with a high, vulnerable-sounding voice. Maybe more tentative than Raymond, even.
“Um,” he said. “Hello. Is Luis Velez there, please?”
“No, él no está aquí ahora.”
“Um. I’m sorry. What?”
Raymond had gotten the bare gist of it, actually. Everybody understands the word “no.”
“Lo siento, no hablo inglés.”
“Oh. I see. Well . . . I don’t speak Spanish. Sorry.”
But it struck him hard that he had better learn some, and quickly. The basics, at least.
“Okay,” he said, breaking a long silence on the line. “Thanks. I mean . . . gracias.”
He looked up to see his stepfather staring at him over the kitchen island.
“That better be a local call,” Ed said. Without even giving Raymond a chance to finish his conversation.
“De nada,” the woman said, and hung up the phone.