Harlan Coben - Long Lost

I looked up at Esperanza. “Terrorists?”

She nodded.

“So that explains why Interpol freaked out when we showed them the picture.”

“Yes.”

“So where’s Terese?”

“No one knows.”

I sat back, tried to process that. “It says government agents killed the terrorists.”

“Yep.”

“Except they didn’t.”

“True. You did.”

“And Win.”

“Right.”

“But they left our names out of it.”

“Yes.”

I thought about the sixteen days, about Terese, about the blood tests, about the blond girl. “What the hell is going on?”

“Don’t know about the details,” she said. “Didn’t really care.”

“Why not?”

Esperanza shook her head. “You can be such a dope sometimes.”

I waited.

“You were shot. Win saw that. And for more than two weeks we had absolutely no idea where you were-if you were alive or dead or anything.”

I couldn’t help it. I grinned.

“Stop grinning like an idiot.”

“You were worried about me.”

“I was worried about my business interest.”

“You like me.”

“You’re a pain in the ass.”

“I still don’t get it,” I said, and the grin slid off my face. “How can I not remember where I was?”

“Just let it go. . ”

My hands started shaking. I looked down at them, tried to make them stop. They wouldn’t. Esperanza was looking too.

“You tell me,” she said. “What do you remember?”

My leg started twitching. I felt something catch in my chest. Panic began to set in.

“You okay?”

“I could use some water,” I said.

She hurried out and came back with a cup. I drank it slowly, almost afraid I would choke. I looked at my hands. The quake. I couldn’t make it stop. What the hell was wrong with me?

“Myron?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “So what now?”

“We have clients who need our help.”

I looked at her.

She sighed. “We thought you might need time.”

“For?”

“To recover.”

“From what? I’m fine.”

“Yeah, you look great. That shake is a terrific addition. And don’t get me started on your new facial tic. Tres sexy.”

“I don’t need time, Esperanza.”

“Yeah, you do.”

“Terese is missing.”

“Or dead.”

“You trying to shock me?”

She shrugged.

“And if she’s dead, I still need to find her daughter.”

“Not in your condition.”

“Yeah, Esperanza, in my condition.”

She said nothing.

“What is it?”

“I don’t think you’re ready.”

“Not your call.”

She thought about that. “I guess not.”

“So?”

“So I have some stuff on the doctor Collins saw about Huntington’s disease and that angel charity.”

“Like?”

“It can wait. If you’re really serious about this, if you’re really ready, you need to call this number on this phone.”

She handed me a cell phone and left the room, closing the door behind her. I stared at the phone number. Unfamiliar, but I wouldn’t have expected anything else. I put in the digits and pressed Send.

Two rings later, I heard a familiar voice say, “Welcome back from the dead, my friend. Let’s meet in person at a secret locale. We have much to discuss, I’m afraid.”

It was Berleand.

Berleand’s “secret locale” was an address in the Bronx.

The street was a pit, the location a dive. I checked the address again, but there was no mistake. It was a strip joint called, according to the sign, UPSCALE PLEASURES, though to my eye the establishment appeared to be neither. A smaller sign written in neon script noted that it was a CLASSY GENTLEMEN’S LOUNGE. The term “classy” here is not so much an oxymoron as an irrelevance. “Classy strip club” is a bit like saying “good toupee.” It might be good, it might be bad-it’s still a toupee.

The room was dark and windowless so that noontime, which was when I arrived, looked the same as midnight.

A large black man with a shaved head asked, “May I help you?”

“I’m looking for a Frenchman in his midfifties.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “That’s Tuesdays,” he said.

“No, I mean-”

“I know what you mean.” He stifled the smile and pointed a beefy arm tattooed with a green D toward the dance floor. I expected Berleand to be in a quiet shadowy corner, but no, there he was by the stage, front and center, eyes up and focused on the, uh, talent.

“Is that your Frenchman over there?”

“It is.”

The bouncer turned back to me. His name tag said ANTHONY. I shrugged. He looked through me.

“Anything else I can do for you?” he asked.

“You can tell me I don’t look like the type of guy who’d come to a place like this, especially during the daytime.”

Anthony grinned. “You know what type of guy doesn’t come to a place like this, especially during the daytime?”

I waited.

“Blind guys.”

He walked away. I made my way toward Berleand and the bar. The soundtrack blasted Beyonce singing to her boyfriend that he must not know about her, that she could have another man in a minute, that he was replaceable. This indignation was kind of silly. You’re Beyonce, for crying out loud. You’re gorgeous, you’re famous, you’re rich, you’re buying your boyfriend expensive cars and clothes. Gee, yeah, it will be impossible for you to land another guy. Girl power.

The topless dancer onstage had moves that I would describe as “languid” if she dialed it up several notches. Her bored expression made me think she was watching C-SPAN 2, the pole not so much a tool of the dance trade as something that kept her upright. I don’t want to sound prudish, but I don’t quite get the appeal of topless places. They simply don’t do it for me. It isn’t that the women are unappealing-some are, some aren’t. I discussed this once with Win, always a mistake when it comes to anything involving the opposite sex, and concluded that I can’t quite buy into the fantasy. It may be a weakness in my character but I need to believe that the lady is really, truly into me. Win could care less, of course. I do get the merely physical, but my ego doesn’t like sexual encounters to be mixed with commerce, resentment, and class warfare.

Label me old-fashioned.

Berleand wore his shiny gray Members Only jacket. He kept pushing his dorky glasses up and smiling up at the bored dancer. I sat next to him. He turned, did his hand-rub-wash thing, and studied me for a moment.

“You look terrible,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, “but you look great. New moisturizer?”

He tossed back a few beer nuts.

“So this is your secret locale?”

He shrugged.

“Why here?” Then, thinking about it: “Wait, I get it. Because it’s so off the radar, right?”

“That,” Berleand agreed, “and I like looking at naked women.”

He turned back to the dancer. I’d already had enough.

“Is Terese alive?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

We sat there. I started chewing a fingernail.

“You warned me,” I said. “You said it was more than I could handle.”

He watched the dancer.

“I should have listened.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered. They would have killed Karen Tower and Mario Contuzzi anyway.”

“But not Terese.”

“You, at least, put a stop to it. It was their screwup, not yours.”

“Whose screwup?”

“Well, mine in part.” Berleand took off the too-big glasses and rubbed his face. “We go by many names. Homeland Security is probably the most well-known. As you may have surmised, I am a French liaison working for what your government termed the war on terror. The British equivalent should have been watching closer.”