Heart of the World (6 page)

After she left, I took the place apart. I know how many eggs she kept in the fridge, how many pairs of earrings in her jewelry box, how much dust under the beds. I found nothing remarkable till I came across three crisp one-hundred-dollar bills tucked into a cracked sugar bowl on top of the refrigerator. Where had it come from? The new boyfriend? What was it for? Mad money? An emergency stash? If Paolina had planned to run away, if she'd known about the bills, wouldn't she have taken them?

I bit my lip. I could ask Marta, but she certainly wouldn't believe I'd been searching for a passport in her sugar bowl. I wished I knew, say, whether there'd been other large bills, whether a few were missing. But I probably didn't need to ask; Marta would have complained long and loud if Paolina had taken money.

I found two passports in a stack of yellowing travel folders on the third shelf of a linen closet used as a catchall cupboard. Marta's photo smiled and flirted from under a fringe of dark lashes. I checked her birthdate and discovered she was barely thirty. She'd given birth to Paolina at fifteen.

Paolina's passport, useless for current identification, expired in two months. She'd been a wide-eyed child when the photo was snapped, a tiny heart-shaped locket around her neck.

I stared at her picture till the image blurred, then replaced it where I'd found it. I left the money in the sugar bowl, returned to the bedroom/laundry room, and removed the little music box from the drawer. I wrapped it in a tiny tank top that smelled of Paolina's favorite cologne, shoved it in my backpack, and took it with me into the frosty afternoon.

I stole it.

CHAPTER 4

Gregor Maltic
. I ran the name over my
tongue as though nationality were some pungent spice I could identify by taste. Could be Russian, like Marta said; New England has a growing Russian immigrant community. Could be Serbian or Bosnian, could be all-American-anything, and what had the man actually done besides have the balls to date Marta? Driving down Huntington Avenue, careening between potholes and icy raised trolley tracks on the way to Boston Police Headquarters, I decided to ask for a background check on Maltic. Why not, when I was planning to call in all my favors at once?

I found the perfect parking place. Legal, on the street, time on the meter; no need to hang a left into a lot where the public parked erratically at best, people heading to the police station not being generally in the mood to fit their vehicle neatly between the white lines. I try to avoid the lot if I can.

I edged the car into the space and cut the engine. And then I sat, staring out the windshield, hoping I hadn't used up any much-needed luck on the parking space, watching slush drip off bare branches and plop onto frozen stands of leafless bushes. A mother and a small child balanced on the swings in the tiny handkerchief park on the corner of Rug-gles and Tremont. The kid, dressed in a bright red parka and deep blue gloves, looked like he was having a grand time. The mother's smile looked frozen and determined.

I gave a preparatory shiver and opened the car door. Not so bad, I told myself, lying shamelessly. The sleet came down like a silver curtain and I skidded over the slippery sidewalk to the glass front doors.

The BPD building at One Schroeder Plaza dates from 1997. It cost a cool seventy million, and for the big bucks the architects not only planned a modern glass, granite, and steel facility, they tried to transfer some departmental tradition from the Back Bay to the new Crosstown site. Etched in the stone walls are seventy names of officers killed in the line of duty since 1854. The Roll of Honor includes the Schroeder brothers for whom the site is named.

I'd already visited the Cambridge cops and the Watertown cops. There was no urgent need to declare Paolina missing in yet another city, so I wasn't planning to brace Boston's Missing Persons officer. I was going to visit my old friend, Detective Captain Joseph Mooney. Because Mooney knew Paolina, and Mooney was my former boss. Not only did I owe it to him to let him know, he might be in a position to help.

That was the pep talk I gave myself to push my reluctant body through the door, but I hated the idea of telling him. I'd put it off, hoping I wouldn't need to, hoping I'd find her. Then I'd convinced myself he deserved a visit, not a phone call. Then I'd been busy, and the simple truth was I should have told him right off the bat. He's known Paolina for years; he cares about her.

Another reason my steps were slow: Mooney and I had argued, a doozy of a shouting match not three weeks ago. Not over work; we haven't worked together in years, and when we did we never bickered, not over procedure or respective responsibility or results. We'd argued about my reigniting the flame with Sam Gianelli, about what Mooney refers to as my “continuing involvement” with a mobster. Mooney has long maintained that any man I look at twice is a probable felon, and there's too much truth in the statement for me to find it amusing. The damned argument wasn't funny at all, and we hadn't spoken since.

What the hell gave him the right to pass judgment on my private life? Just because we'd worked on the same team, shared an occasional drink, because I'd confided in him, treated him like a friend—I shoved the double doors and stepped into the overheated foyer, unzipping my parka and stripping off my gloves.

The first floor lobby looked more like a bank than a cop house. It
had customer windows like a bank, with signs directing visitors to Child Care or Public Service. There was a restaurant and a media room. The desk sergeant wouldn't let me go up without phoning first. Used to be, I could just slip up the back stairs. New police commissioner, new building, new procedures. A gate that opened only on command. Elevators that could be stopped and locked down.

It wasn't just that I was reluctant to ask Mooney for help after he'd barged uninvited into my love life. I didn't want to say the damn words out loud: Paolina's disappearance was no longer a matter of her running off with Diego to New York City. Without Diego as accomplice and companion, Paolina's disappearance made no sense, and acknowledging that fact opened my mind to a tabloid fear that swam beneath the surface like a hungry shark. Grainy news photos lurk at the back of every mother's mind, a litany of half-remembered names, skeletons, horrors. There are girls who vanish and never come back, girls whose clean white bones are dug up years later in vacant lots and distant forests.

I jammed the lid on the specters as the elevator doors opened. Second floor. Forensics to the right, Major Cases and Homicide to the left. I turned left and made my way down cool blue-gray carpeting to Mooney's office. He's Head of Homicide, has been for years. Every now and again, the brass threaten to elevate him to Bureau Chief of Investigative Services, but he promptly reminds them how badly he plays the game of inter-departmental politics, and they leave him in peace.

His door was open as usual. He was on the phone, nodding and muttering. Often when I think of him, the image comes with a receiver planted in his ear, a toothpick jutting from the corner of his mouth. Used to be a cigarette, but he keeps trying to reform, and lately it's been a peppermint-flavored toothpick grabbed from one of many eateries scattered around town. I kid him that he chooses his restaurants based on the availability of flavored toothpicks.

His blue broadcloth shirt was tucked into gray pants. The matching jacket hung over the back of the chair in the corner. Made me wonder whether he had a trial date, but no tie, so maybe not, maybe just an afternoon meeting with a bigwig. Mooney doesn't pay attention to clothes; he buys shirts on sale by the half-dozen, and they all look the same.
Not like Sam
.

Why do I always compare the two, even though Moon and I have
never been an item? Why do I still think we might be, someday? He's tall, with a linebacker build, a round Irish face, and sad brown eyes. He's not graceful or elegant or drop-dead sexy like Gianelli, but when we worked together, I had to steel myself against him. Lock the door and toss away the key; no way was I going to sleep with the boss. Maybe what's left is simply curiosity, wondering what I missed.

I don't kid myself. One of the reasons I can walk into Moon's office is that the powers that be assume we sleep together. They wink at it, never thinking that Moon might be giving a PI info she shouldn't have. Don't think I don't use the few advantages a woman has in this system. Unfortunately, most of them involve sex or being seriously underrated. I always think the guys will learn, but they don't.

Mooney never had to be taught. Not by me. I never got along with his mother, but she did something right with her boy. Mooney and I can work together.

Could work together. Used to work together
. I sucked in a breath. He needed to know what was going on, but I was reluctant to offer up yet another aspect of my life for criticism.

His office was as impersonal as ever. If you went by Moon's decor, you'd think there was an injunction from on high: no posters, no photos, no plants. You'd think he had no bossy mom, no self-involved longdistance sisters, no ex-wife. He swiveled his chair abruptly, as though sensing my scrutiny.

“What? No food?” he said, replacing the receiver. No hello, no smile, still annoyed about Sam. “What do you think you're gonna worm out of me, you don't even bring me a doughnut as a peace offering?”

Add a stop at a Dunkin' Donuts to the twenty other things I should have done and didn't. I sank into his spindly guest chair and closed my eyes for an instant, hoping that when I opened them again they'd focus clearly.

Mooney's voice broke through the fog. “What's wrong?”

Just blurt it out, I ordered myself. “Paolina. She's gone, and I don't know where else to—”

“Whoa, whoa— Gone? Her and Marta? The whole family?”

“Just her. Went to school Friday, went to a party Friday night, and nobody's seen her since.” There. The words were out; harsh, bald, and ugly.
Nobody's seen her
.

He put his pen down carefully on the desk, as gently as if both desk and pen were made of glass. “Carlotta, it's Wednesday.” Which meant: Why didn't you tell me sooner?

“I'm sorry, Moon. I didn't find out till Monday night. Marta assumed Paolina was with me; I don't know why. I wasn't supposed to see her last weekend. Then I thought—I
assumed
she was with Diego, her boyfriend. Took me till this morning to track him down. He doesn't know where she is.” It cost me, using “assumed” to describe what I'd done; assuming anything is a cardinal sin in an investigation.

“Is he telling the truth?”

Not, “Do you think he's telling the truth?” Moon still trusted my judgment in matters unrelated to romance. I pictured the kid's lumpy broken nose, the hurt in his eyes.

“He didn't know she was gone.” I wondered briefly whether
I
still trusted my judgment. “They broke up Friday night.”

“Give me his name.”

I spelled it out, gave his aunt's name and address as well, told Moon everything that had gone down at Josefina Parte's apartment. He made notes.

“So the kid might already be in the system,” he said. “Name of the guy who hit him?”

“I didn't get it.”

“You didn't think he was a player.”

I shook my head. “A two-bit bully.”

He said, “Okay, what lines are you following?”

“I've done a Missing Persons in Cambridge and Watertown. Gloria's got the cabbie-network looking. Roz is interviewing high-school kids. Kinko's is running off copies of a photo. I've called at least fifty shelters. I'm planning to visit the locals this afternoon, but—”

“What are you trying to say, Carlotta?”

“Her favorite jeans are in the closet at my place. Her best boots. Her toothbrush is in the bathroom.”

“A toothbrush is easy to replace.”

“Yeah, but Mooney—all those things, what do they add up to? If I hadn't known about Diego, fastened on Diego—”

His eyes flickered. “You're thinking she didn't run. That she was taken?”

I nodded, grateful he hadn't made me say the words.

“Okay, Carlotta, let's get this straight. You're saying that if this were a client, if Marta came to you with this, and you didn't know Marta, that's what you'd think?”

“Shit, Mooney, I
do
know Marta. Matter of fact, that's something you can do. Marta's got a new man, a guy named Gregor Maltic. Can you run the name, see if he's got a record?” I was avoiding his question. I knew it; he knew it, but he just passed me a sheet of paper and asked me to print the name.

I didn't know the answer to the question because it was Paolina, because it was Marta, because I wasn't objective about any of this. I was flat-out scared.

He said, “Okay, how else can I help? Let's do a full-court press on this. You check the buses, the trains, the airlines?”

The word “help” shifted the knot in my throat and suddenly I could talk more freely. “I did buses, Roz did trains, Lemon hit the ticket counters with a photo. Gloria phoned the airlines. Lemon handled Logan, too. Paolina wasn't holding a reservation.”

“I'll get somebody to check passenger lists.”

She was smart enough to use an alias. Mooney knew that as well as I did. I knew without asking that he'd extend the search to similar names, to Paula Fords and Patsy Fines.

He pressed his lips together and stared at the phone. “School locker?”

“I'm on my way to check it now.”

“She have a credit card? Cash?”

“No card. I don't have any idea how much cash, but she can't get into our joint account without me, and Marta's not missing any money.”

“You tracing calls?”

I nodded. “Number ID on my phone and Marta's.”

“Good, that's good.”

“But if she calls my cell…”

“Yeah,” he said, “damn cells. She calls you there you gotta find a way to talk her in.”