Harlan Coben - Stay close

“Del, honey, you coming to bed?”

His wife, Darya-Mrs. Del Flynn Number Three-was twenty years his junior. She wore tourniquet-tight white and had the biggest chest, ass, and lips money could buy. Yes, she didn’t look real, but that was how Del liked his women now-like curvy cartoons with exaggerated features and figures. To some it was freakish. To Del it was sexy as all get-out.

“Not yet.”

“You sure?”

Darya was wearing a white silk robe, and nothing else. His favorite. Del wished that the old stirring-his constant life companion, his curse, if you will, that had cost him his beloved Maria, Carlton’s mother, the only woman he ever loved-would return without the aid of a certain blue pill. But for the first time in his life, there was no need or desire.

“Go to bed, Darya.”

She disappeared-probably, he figured, relieved that she could just watch TV and pass out from whatever combo of wine and pills got her through the night. In the end all women were the same. Except for his Maria. Del sat back in the white leather chair. The white decor was Darya’s doing. She said it signified purity or harmony or a young aura-some New Age bullshit like that. When they first met, Darya had been wearing a white bikini and all he wanted to do was defile that, but he was really growing tired of the white. He missed color. He missed leaving his shoes on when he walked in the house. He missed the old dark green couch in the corner. An all-white house is impossible to maintain. An all-white house sets you up for failure.

Del stared out the window. He was not much of a drinker. His father, a first-generation Irish immigrant, had owned a small pub in Ventnor Heights. Del was practically raised in that place. When you see it up close every day, the destruction booze can cause, you got no taste for it.

But right now he sat with a bottle of his favorite, Macallan Single Malt, because he needed to be numb. Del had made a lot of money. He learned the restaurant business, the ins and outs, and realized that it was a pretty lousy way of making a dollar. So he went into restaurant supply-linens, plates, silverware, glasses, you name it. He had started small, but eventually he was the biggest supplier in southern New Jersey. He took that money and bought up property, mostly those private storage units on the outskirts of town, and made a mint.

It all meant nothing.

Sure, that was a cliche, but right now, all Del saw was Carlton. His boy. The disappearance sat on Del, consumed him, made it impossible to breathe. He looked out the window. The pool was covered for the winter, but he could see his son out there, swimming with his buddies, swearing too casually, flirting with whatever honey happened to look his way. True, his son-his only son-was soft. He spent too much time primping, too much time in the gym and waxing his body and plucking his eyebrows, as if that crap was manly. But when his son smiled at him, when his son hugged Del and kissed his cheek because that was what Carlton always did when he left for whatever club at night, Del’s chest filled with something so real, so wonderful and life affirming, that he knew, just knew, that he had been put on this planet to feel just that way.

And now, poof, his son, the only thing in his life that truly mattered, that was truly irreplaceable, was gone.

What was Del supposed to do? Sit back and wait? Trust the police to take care of his own offspring? Stick to the rules in a city that never played fair?

What kind of father does that?

You take care of your own. You protect your son, no matter what the cost.

It was midnight. Del fiddled with the gold chain around his neck, the Saint Anthony medal Maria had given him on their tenth wedding anniversary. Saint Anthony, she explained, was the patron saint of lost things. “Don’t ever lose us, okay?” she said, as she put it around his neck. Then she put one around Carlton’s neck too. “Don’t ever lose Carlton and me.”

Prophetic.

From the bedroom he could hear the television. Darya was watching on their new fifty-three-inch, 3-D screen with the surround sound. Here Del was-in this white home, sitting here in the lap of luxury-and he was powerless. He felt helpless and impotent and fat and comfortable while his boy was out in the cold and dark somewhere. Carlton could be alone somewhere. He could be trapped or crying or in tremendous pain. He could be bleeding or calling out to his father to save him.

When Carlton was four, he had been scared to go on the “big boy” slide at the playground. Del got on him about that, even going so far as to call him a baby. Nice, right? Carlton started to cry. That just pissed Del off even more. Finally, merely to please (or shut up) his old man, Carlton started climbing up the ladder. The ladder was too crowded, the kids jostling one another as they made their way up. Carlton, the smallest kid on the ladder, lost his balance. Del could still remember that moment, standing at a distance, his arms crossed as he watched his only son topple backward, knowing, even as he started to run toward him, that there was no way he was going to get there in time, that he, the boy’s father, had not only shamed his son and caused the fall but also that he was powerless to do anything to save him.

Little Carlton landed wrong, his arm snapping back like a bird’s wing. He screamed in pain. Del had never forgotten that moment. He had never forgotten that feeling of powerlessness or that horrible scream. Now that scream was back, haunting his every waking moment, shredding his insides like hot shrapnel.

Del took another sip of the Macallan. Behind him, someone cleared his throat. Normally Del was on the jumpy side, the kind of guy who leapt at the smallest sound. Maria used to comment about that. He was a light sleeper, his nights filled with bad dreams. Maria understood that. She would wrap her arms around him and whisper in his ear and calm him. No one did that now. Darya could sleep through a rock concert. Del just had to deal with his terrors alone now.

God, he had loved Maria.

He’d been so happy back then, living in that dilapidated house on Drexel Avenue, but the demons had called to him and Maria couldn’t understand it. When you stepped back and thought about it, the whole thing made no sense. You could be addicted to booze or drugs or gambling. You could lose your house, your health, your money. You could be belligerent and even abusive-but if the cause was, say, booze or pills or the ponies, the world understood your pain. Your true love stayed with you and got you help. But if your demon was sex, if you needed what Del needed, what every normal friggin’ man in the history of mankind eventually gave in to, if you do something that was built into man’s DNA, something that really harmed nobody in the way drinking or pills did, except through jealousy-then no one understands and you lose everything.

It was her fault, really. Maria’s. Raising that kid with no father figure in the house. Not being able to forgive or to understand what a man was like. He had loved her. How did she not get that?

“Good evening, Mr. Flynn.”

The voice chilled the room. Del Flynn slowly turned around. When Ken and Barbie smiled at him, the temperature dropped another ten degrees.

“Did you find my son?”

“Not yet, Mr. Flynn.”

They both just stood there, looking as though they’d just finished a song on the old Lawrence Welk Show or… what was that dumb holiday show his parents used to watch every year? The King family. What the hell ever happened to them? And why did seeing these two always make him think of the weirdest crap?

“So what do you want?”

“We have a dilemma, Mr. Flynn,” Ken said.

“A moral dilemma,” Barbie added.

Del knew people. You don’t live around here and work with restaurants and trucking and not meet people. One of his best friends growing up was Rolly Lember, who was now head of organized crime in the Camden area. Del had gone to him for help with finding his son. He knew that he was making a deal with the devil. He didn’t much care. Lember had told him that he’d have his people on the lookout, but Del would be better off hiring two expert freelancers-the best in the business. He warned him not to be too shocked by their appearances. Del also reached out to Goldberg, a cop well-known for providing inside information for a fee.