David Silva - The Disappeared

“Aaron!”

He glanced over his shoulder, hoping it hadn’t been his name he had heard. But no such luck. Walt was crossing the commons, hurrying to catch up with him. Aaron tried to wave him off. “Hey, man, not now. I’ve only got half a lunch hour.”

“Mind if I walk with you?”

“Are you gonna talk?”

“I was thinking about it.”

“Then try to keep it to a minimum, will you? This is supposed to be my down time. I just want to get a bite to eat and maybe pick up a newspaper.”

“Things that bad in the dungeon?”

“Hey, to you, it’s Criminal Identification.”

Walt grinned. They crossed the street at the light, cut around an elderly woman who was walking hand-in-hand with a little girl of maybe five or six, and followed the sidewalk up Reed Street. They were heading to the French Deli, another two blocks up. It was always Aaron’s first choice when he was pressed for time.

“So?” Walt said.

“So what ?”

“So you come up with anything yet?”

“Your guy’s name is Mitchell Wolfe. He’s a freelancer, mostly for the CIA. I don’t know where he came from. I don’t know what kind of background he’s got. But I’ll bet you a pastrami sandwich that he’s got himself a horde of phony I.D.’s, including a couple of passports under different names. You’re tangling with a pro, Walt. You damn well better be careful.”

“What the hell’s he doing out here?”

“That’s your job, man. I’ve done mine.”

They crossed with another light. On the other side of the street, set back into the corner of the Bank of America Building, was a small newspaper stand run by an elderly man by the name of Ronnie Tortelli. He had lost a leg in the Second World War and had only recently managed to finagle a new artificial limb out of the V.A. He swept a local newspaper off the top of the stack and held it out to Aaron.

“Running late today,” Tortelli said.

Aaron took the paper and slipped him a dollar bill. The daily was fifty cents, but Aaron had been paying Ronnie a dollar a paper for as long as he could remember. There weren’t too many good, honest people left in this world. Tortelli was one of them.

“How’s the new leg?” Aaron asked.

Tortelli knocked on it twice. “Still holding me up.”

“Catch you tomorrow.”

“I’ll be here. Same time, same station.”

Aaron glanced at the headlines, which seemed to cover everything from the President’s decision to reopen migration talks with Cuba to the county’s reluctant admission that its 1.2 billion dollar computer acquisition of three years ago had been a huge mistake. He folded the newspaper in half and slapped it against his thigh as he was walking. “I don’t know why the hell I read this crap. It’s always the same stuff.”

Walt wasn’t interested. “Look, have you got an address on this guy?”

“I told you; he’s a freelancer. I’d stay away from him if I were you.”

“How about a city or a state?”

“You’re gonna get yourself killed, man.”

“Come on, Aaron. You gotta have something you can give me. We’re talking about a little boy who’s been kidnapped. How about a photograph?”

“I’ll put it in the mail for you.”

“Great. What else?”

“You could try calling up the CIA and asking why they’ve got one of their men running around out here in the middle of Smalltown, America.”

“Yeah, and we both know what they’d say, don’t we?”

“Yeah. They’d tell you that they’ve never heard of Mitchell Wolfe.”

“So why waste the time?”

“It was just a suggestion.”

The two men weaved their way through a sudden crowd of pedestrians moving in the opposite direction, and when they came out on the other side, they had to backtrack past a jewelry store and a five and dime to get to the deli. This week’s special, painted in bright red letters across the front picture windows, read: Italian Meatball Sandwich, Only $2.95.

“Here’s where I get off,” Aaron said.

“Why don’t we make it my treat?”

“I’m not sure if I feel comfortable taking money from a dead man.”

“Hey, I’m not dead yet.”

“No, not yet,” Aaron said. He held the door open and Walt passed through. “But you’re gonna be if you keep after this Mitchell character.”

Teri drove across town on automatic, her mind a thousand miles and twenty-years in tow. She would have preferred to have put those years aside, out of mind, for now. Especially the sound of Peggy’s voice recalling how she had always been made to feel like an outsider. But the voice haunted her as she turned onto Highway 44 and made her way back into town.

By the time she had reached the McDonald’s on Cypress, the voice had softened a bit, though she knew it would be a long time before she would be able to reconcile the woman she was today with the woman she had been twenty years ago. It would be even longer, she supposed, before she would be able to reconcile Childs. Walt had been right. All those years, and she had never really known Childs at all.

On any other day, she would have bought a salad and milk, but she ordered absently and when she sat down at the table, she realized she had a fish fillet, fries, and a soft drink on her tray. Teri ate them without thought, wondering instead about Childs… who he was, what part he might have played in Gabe’s disappearance, how this was all supposed to tie together and make some sort of sense. But no matter how she tried, she couldn’t seem to make any sense of it at all.

After lunch, she gave thought to calling Walt, realized she had no way of reaching him, and decided instead to visit the next name on her list. She pulled out of the parking lot, onto Cypress and turned right.

Across the street, one block back and unnoticed, Mitch turned the key in the ignition, checked over his left shoulder for traffic, then pulled onto Cypress to follow her.

Not far behind him, and equally unnoticed, Richard Boyle started up his own car.

Michael got up, crossed the room, and turned the volume down on the television set. The television was on in the background. It was tuned to a daytime soap opera called The Days of Our Lives , but there was a Vagisil commercial on now. Since he was between calls anyway, it was as good a time as any to check the parking lot again.

He pulled back the corner of the curtains and peered across the motel lot at the dark blue Ford parked next to the dumpster. It had been parked there for the past day-and-a-half, since shortly after he had checked into the motel, and with each passing hour, Michael was feeling more and more like a caged animal.

The curtains dropped back into place.

Michael went back to the bed, sat down, and took up the pad of paper and pen he had been using. Late last night, while watching Letterman mug his way through a Top Ten List, it had occurred to him that maybe the best thing to do at this point in time was to make a list of his own. He had started with all the people who had been their friends or acquaintances at the time that Gabe had disappeared.

It turned out to be a longer list than he had ever imagined, and he was embarrassed to find that while his mind was able to bring forth an extended line-up of faces, it hadn’t done nearly as well with the names that went with them. Even so, the list had eventually filled out two pages.

This morning, he had begun looking them up in the telephone book, one by one, putting aside those names without a listing, calling those who were still living in the area, scratching off those whose numbers had been disconnected.

He had quickly learned two things. Ten years was a long time. People he had once considered close friends were strangers now. While he had been away, their lives had marched merrily onward through divorce and re-marriage, through step-children and graduations, through promotions and layoffs. The world did not stand still. Not for a moment. Not for anyone.