Джеймс Паттерсон - Lost

I just smiled as I removed my hand. I admired the perfect grease handprint on his otherwise pristine cream suit. “You have a nice day, Billy.”

“Same to you, Detective.” He turned and left.

I could see my handprint on the suit even from a block away. I knew we had to find the missing girl before the Russians did.

Chapter 81

MAGDA ANDRUSKIEWICZ OPENED her eyes with a start. It wasn’t until she glanced up and saw the blue sky past the rough metal roof that her body relaxed slightly. The long ride to the United States in the shipping container with the others had been horrifying. Especially when people started dying. Even the girl she’d worked so hard to comfort in Amsterdam had fallen sick and died the day before they’d arrived in Miami.

Magda wasn’t sure if she’d ever be able to sleep indoors again. She’d fled the chaos around the ship where people were shooting and kept running. She’d run and run until she’d realized just how big the city was.

She’d tried to get into a homeless shelter, but it was full for the night. It was warm in Miami, though, and a woman there had told her that she could sleep in the alley behind the shelter. Then the woman had given her two turkey sandwiches. Magda had eaten one immediately and saved the other for the next day.

Now, after a few hours of snatched sleep, Magda had no idea what to do. When she’d waited in Amsterdam, the woman named Hanna had arranged everything. Here, she knew no one. And after the way they had traveled, Magda no longer trusted Hanna.

She had found herself a little nook between some boxes and a dumpster. After the stench in the container, the scent from the dumpster was like a forest in springtime. A metal roof covered her hiding spot and would keep her dry if it rained.

Several others had come and gone during the night, mostly older men. No one bothered her, which was both a surprise and a relief.

Just before she’d fled the ship, Magda had grabbed the red backpack by instinct, and she was now using it as a pillow. It held a change of clothes and a light jacket.

She sat up and began eating her second turkey sandwich. An older black man wearing a red beret leaned against a wall a few meters from her. He seemed to be staring at her. It made her nervous.

The man must have realized he was upsetting her because he said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just that your sandwich looks good. I’m not allowed to go inside no more because they once caught me with alcohol. That’s one of the big rules here. No alcohol and no weapons. I wish I’d paid more attention.”

The man had a friendly quality to his round face. Magda liked his beret. Without thinking, she tore her sandwich in two and offered half to the man.

With a broad smile, he stepped over to her and took it, then held it up as if he were about to give a toast. The words PROPERTY OF THE AMERICAN AIRLINES ARENA were stenciled on his windbreaker.

The older man went to eat his sandwich, and she tucked herself farther into her nook. She was scared and tired. She prayed to the Blessed Virgin to keep her safe and help her find her brother. She was starting to doubt her own judgment. No way she should have traveled across the Atlantic in a nasty shipping container. She worried about the other people who’d been with her. Where had they all fled?

She finished her sandwich, then laid her head on the backpack, hoping to drift off to sleep for a while. She hummed a lullaby her mother used to sing to her and Joseph when they were little. It had been a long time since she’d felt safe and happy. She missed Joseph. They had been separated during the trip from Poland.

A few minutes later, she heard a new voice. It was louder than any of the others she had heard in the alley.

She peeked between the slats of a pallet next to her and saw a middle-aged homeless man with a white film over one eye speaking to a man in a fancy suit.

Chapter 82

MAGDA HAD A bad feeling about the man in the fancy clothes. When she looked more carefully at him, she saw that his goatee was dyed blue, and he had a grease smudge on the shoulder of his cream-colored suit. Just the way he scanned the alley made him seem like a predator. She thought he spoke with an accent, but her English wasn’t good enough for her to identify where he was from.

He was talking to a homeless man who had spent the night in the alley using an empty milk carton as a pillow.

The man was smoking a cigarette and sitting on a pallet that had TROPICAL SHIPPING burned into its side. He rocked back and forth slowly, like he was on a ship.

Magda smelled the smoke from his cigarette. It barely masked the man’s own body odor.

The man in the suit asked him, “Have you seen any young women around here? Not regulars. Some girls who would’ve shown up last night.”

“Heh, heh, we all want young women,” said the homeless man. He was balding, and the little hair he had on the sides of his head shot out in crazy patterns. He laughed. His foggy eye moved in unison with his good eye. The homeless man squinted. “Hey, I know you.”

“I don’t know how. I don’t volunteer in this shithole.”

“You work at the club over on Fourth Street.” The ash on the homeless man’s cigarette slowly grew. A seagull landed near him and pecked at a French fry on the ground.

The man in the suit said, “So what?”

The homeless man said, “You told me to get lost one night. You weren’t very nice about it.” His voice sounded scratchy, like an old record, but he got his point across: he was mad.

“Did you have the thirty-dollar cover charge?”

“I didn’t try to get inside the club. I was just sitting on the sidewalk.”

The man in the suit nodded and said, “Oh, panhandling.”

“Working.”

“Bums scare the customers. We have a certain image.”

“You were nasty to me. Why should I help you now?”

The man in the suit reached into his pocket. “For the reward. You help me find some girls I lost last night and I give you a wad of cash.”

The homeless man shook his head. “Bullshit. I don’t trust you.” He looked around at several of the other men; they were ignoring the whole conversation. “I don’t think you’d ever pay. So now it’s you who has to leave. This is my alley and I don’t want you bothering me.” The man stood on unsteady legs from the stacked pallets. He was much smaller than the other man.

The man in the suit just stared. He cut his eyes around the filthy alley to see if anyone intended to help the cocky homeless man.

Then the homeless man barked, “Go.” He reached up with his left hand and shoved the man. The long ash from his cigarette broke off and floated down onto a crumpled McDonald’s coffee cup.

The man in the suit seemed astonished that someone would speak to him like that, but he recovered quickly.

Magda watched silently as he punched the man with the bad eye. Everyone in the alley looked away. But Magda saw it all. And she knew the man in the suit was searching for her.

The man stayed on his wobbly feet and glared at his attacker. That set the man in the suit off again. He shoved the man onto the stacked pallets, then leaned in and slapped the homeless man hard across the face. “Who the hell do you think you are?” he screamed as he punched the man over and over.

Magda stared, terrified. She looked over and saw the friendly black man in the red beret. She hoped he wouldn’t tell anyone she was there.

The man in the suit punched the poor homeless man six times in the face. Blood poured out of his nose and lips and, finally, one of his ears. It left a wild, dark pattern on the patched asphalt of the alley.

He slid off the pallets and lay on the garbage-covered ground, whimpering. Flies were already swarming around his bloody face. One fly stuck in the thick blood on the man’s cheek.