Mary Clark - Loves Music, Loves To Dance

Now as she entered Nona’s office and was introduced to Agent D’Ambrosio, Darcy realized she was experiencing exactly the same reaction. The same relief that somebody was in charge, the same guilt that she had urged Erin to answer the ads with her.

“Nona only asked if we wanted to try them. I was the one who pushed Erin to do it,” she told D’Ambrosio. He took notes as she talked about the phone call on Tuesday, about Erin ’s saying she was meeting someone named Charles North in a pub near Washington Square. She noticed the change in D’Ambrosio’s manner when she spoke about opening the safe, about giving the Bertolini necklace to Jay Stratton, about Stratton’s claim that there were diamonds missing. He asked her about Erin ’s family.

Darcy stared at her hands.

Remember arriving at Mount Holyoke first day of freshman year? Erin already there, her suitcases piled neatly in the corner. They’d sized each other up, both liked what they saw. Erin ’s eyes widening as she recognized Mother and Dad but not losing her composure.

“When Darcy wrote to me this summer introducing herself, I didn’t realize that her parents were Barbara Thorne and Robert Scott,” she’d said. “I don’t think I ever missed one of your films.” Then she added, “Darcy, I didn’t want to settle in until you were here. I thought you might have a preference about which closet or bed you wanted.”

Remember the look Mother and Dad exchanged. They were thinking, what a nice girl Erin is. They asked her to join us for dinner.

Erin had come to college alone. Her father was an invalid, she explained. We wondered why she never even mentioned her mother. Later she told me that when she was six, her father developed multiple sclerosis and needed a wheelchair. Her mother took off when she was seven. “I didn’t bargain for this,” she’d said. “ Erin, you can come with me if you want.”

“I can’t leave Daddy all alone. He needs me.”

Over the years, Erin completely lost touch with her mother. “The last I heard she was living with some guy who owned a charter sailboat in the Caribbean.” She was at Mount Holyoke on a scholarship. “As Daddy says, being immobilized gives you plenty of time to help your kid with her homework. If you can’t pay for college, at least you can help her get a free ride.” Oh Erin, where are you? What’s happened to you?

Darcy realized that D’Ambrosio was waiting for her to answer his question. “Her father’s been in a nursing home in Massachusetts for the last few years,” she said. “He’s not aware of much anymore. I guess I’m the closest thing Erin has to a relative besides him.”

Vince saw the pain in Darcy’s eyes. “In my business I’ve observed that having one good friend can beat having a passel of relatives.” Darcy managed a smile. “ Erin ’s favorite quote is from Aristotle. ‘What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.’”

Nona got up, stood beside Darcy’s chair, and put her hands reassuringly on her shoulders. She looked squarely at D’Ambrosio. “What can we do to help find Erin?”

Along time ago, Petey Potters had been a construction worker. “Big jobs,” as he liked to boast to anyone whose ear he could get. “ World Trade Center. I usta be out on one of them girders. Tell ye, the wind wuz whippin’ so ye wondered if ye were gonna stay up there.” He’d laugh, a wheezy chortle. “Some view, lemme tell ye, some view.”

But at night the thought of going back up on the girder began to get to Petey. A coupla shots of rye, a coupla beer chasers, and the warmth would flow into the pit of his stomach and spread through his body.

“You’re just like your father,” his wife began to scream at him. “A no-good drunk.”

Petey never got insulted. He understood. He’d start to laugh when his wife ranted about Pop. Pop had been some card. He’d disappear for weeks at a time, dry out in a flophouse on the Bowery, and then come back home. “When I’m hungry, it’s no problem,” he’d confided to eight-year-old Petey. I go to the Salvation Army shelter, take a dive, get a meal, a bath, a bed. Never fails.” “What’s ‘take a dive’ mean?” Petey had asked.

“When you go to the shelter, they tell you about God and forgiveness and we’re all brothers and we want to be saved. Then they ask anyone who believes in the good book to come forward and acknowledge his Maker. So you get religion. You run up, fall on your knees, and shout something about being saved. That’s taking a dive.”

Nearly forty years later the memory still tickled the homeless derelict Petey Potters. He’d created his own shelter, a combination of wood and tin and old rags that he’d piled together into a tentlike structure against the sagging, shuttered terminal on the abandoned West Fifty-sixth Street pier. Petey’s needs were simple. Wine. Butts. A little food. Litter baskets were a constant supply of cans and bottles that could be redeemed for the deposits. When he was ambitious, Petey took a squeegee and a bottle of water and stood at the Fifty-sixth Street exit of the West Side Highway. No drivers wanted their car windows smeared by his efforts, but most people were afraid to wave him away. Only last week he’d heard an old bat explode to the driver of a Mercedes, “Jane, why do you allow yourself to be held up like this?” Petey had loved the answer. “Because, Mother, I don’t want to have the side of this car scratched if I refuse.”

Petey didn’t scratch anything when he was rejected. He just went on to the next car, armed with his squirt bottle, a coaxing smile on his face. Yesterday had been one of the good days. Just enough snow so that the highway became messy and windshields got sprayed with dirty slush from the tires of cars ahead of them. Few people had refused Petey’s ministrations at the exit ramp. He’d made eighteen bucks, enough for a hero sandwich, butts, and three bottles of dago red.

Last night he’d settled inside his tent, wrapped in the old army blanket the Armenian church on Second Avenue had given him, a ski cap keeping his head warm, a tattered greatcoat, its moth-eaten fur collar cozy around his neck. He’d finished the hero with the first bottle of wine, then settled down to puffing and sipping, content and warm in an inebriated haze. Pop taking a dive. Mom coming back to the apartment on Tremont Avenue, worn out from scrubbing other people’s houses. Birdie, his wife. Harpie, not Birdie. That’s what they shoulda called her.

Petey shook with mirth at the play on words. Wonder where she was now. How about the kid? Nice kid.

Petey wasn’t sure when he heard the car pull up. He tried to force himself to wakefulness, instinctively wanting to protect his territory. It better not be cops trying to knock over his place. Nah. Cops didn’t bother with this kind of shack in the middle of the night.

Maybe it was a druggie. Petey gripped the neck of an empty wine bottle. Better not try to come in here. But nobody came. After a few minutes he heard the car start up again; he peered out cautiously. Taillights were disappearing onto the deserted West Side High-way. Maybe somebody had to take a leak, Petey decided as he reached for the last bottle.

It was late afternoon when Petey opened his eyes again. His head had that empty, throbbing feeling. His gut burned. His mouth felt like the bottom of a birdcage. He pulled himself up. The three empty bottles offered no consolation. He found twenty cents in the pockets of the greatcoat. I’m hungry, he whined silently. Poking his head from behind the piece of tin sheeting that served as door for his shelter, he decided that it must be late afternoon. There were long shadows on the dock. His eyes moved to focus on something that was clearly not a shadow. Petey squinted, muttered a profanity under his breath, and dragged himself to his feet.