Crying Wolf Page 30

  “Yes.” She reached out for the picture. Nat handed it to her. She gazed at it, composed herself a little. “I used to love this town.”

  Silence. It went on until Nat said, “But?”

  She shook her head. Nat went to the sink, full of smashed things, found an unbroken glass with the stub of a joint in it. He washed the glass, poured water, brought it to Freedy’s mom, helped her to her feet. She took the glass in both hands-still it shook-and drank a mouthful. Not drank, exactly; but filled her mouth, went to the sink, and spat it all out, with force. Then she swallowed the rest of the water. Izzie glanced at her watch.

  “Thank you,” said Freedy’s mother. She must have felt the cup handle in her hair at that moment. She plucked it out, regarded it uncomprehendingly.

  “You used to love the town,” Nat prompted her.

  “A long time ago,” she said. “Back when the Glass Onion was still open.”

  “The boarded-up place at the bottom of the Hill?”

  “Everyone met there-townies, college kids, even some professors. It was a very positive space. Positive things happened to me there. I thought they were positive.”

  “Like what?”

  “Personal growth experiences.”

  “This is getting us nowhere,” Izzie said. “What about Freedy?”

  “He should never have come back from California,” Freedy’s mother said.

  “Why not?”

  “Why not? Look what’s happening. But I suppose there was no choice. Something bad happened out there, too.”

  “What?” Nat said.

  “I don’t know what. No one actually died. And the truth is it’s not the whole reason he came back. I see that now.”

  “What’s the rest of it?”

  “Do we have time for this?” Izzie said.

  Freedy’s mother looked at Izzie. “I’m still not sure who you people are, or what you want.”

  “We told you already,” Izzie said, her voice rising. “My-”

  Nat cut her off. “If your son is a kidnapper-”

  “He couldn’t be.”

  “You’re wrong,” Nat said. “Shouldn’t you help us stop it now, before anyone else gets hurt? Before the police are involved?”

  “I guess so,” said Freedy’s mother; her eyes, still open much too wide, looked confused. “But I’ve never heard of any kidnapping.”

  “Just tell us where he is,” said Izzie.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re lying,” Izzie said. “You’ll end up in jail with him.”

  “Could that happen?” Freedy’s mother’s voice had gone soft and high-pitched, like a little girl’s. “I’m a good person. Freedy’s basically a good person, too. He went out to California to make something of himself.”

  “And did he?”

  “I think so.”

  “In what way?”

  “He’s ambitious now.”

  “What does he do?”

  She thought. “Did he tell me the details?”

  “We’re getting nowhere,” Izzie said.

  “What did he do when he was here?”

  “Went to the high school. Played on the football team. I didn’t watch-too violent.”

  “What else did he do?”

  “Hung out, I guess. Like a teenager.”

  “Did he have a job?”

  “Oh, yes.” She brightened. “He was always very hardworking. He worked for the college every summer.”

  “Doing what?”

  “In the maintenance department.”

  Nat glanced at Izzie. She was quiet now, watching him.

  “And the other reason he came home, the reason you see now?” Nat said.

  “That would be a private thing,” said Freedy’s mother. “More of a personal quest.”

  “Look around you,” Nat said. Freedy’s mother obeyed. “This has gone beyond a private thing.”

  She nodded. He took her glass, refilled it, handed it back. “He got interested in his father,” she said; water trembled in the glass. “Why did I think that wouldn’t happen?”

  “Who’s his father?” Nat said.

  “That’s just the point,” said Freedy’s mother. “It was only a one-night… experience. I shouldn’t say only, because it had its own validity. But it was part of another world that had nothing to do with Freedy. That explanation used to satisfy him.”

  “But not anymore.”

  “No.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  “No. But he might have found out anyway, I don’t know how.”

  “Who is he?” Nat said.

  “I can’t tell you,” said Freedy’s mother. “It’s a private-” She stopped herself. “I’m sworn to secrecy.”

  “Or is it that you’re being paid?” Nat said.

  She stared at him. “Who are you, again?”

  “Who’s paying her?” said Izzie.

  “The father,” Nat said, watching Freedy’s mother. “Someone she met a long time ago, down at the Glass Onion.”

  Freedy’s mother didn’t deny it; her lips parted slightly, gripped by the narrative, as though hearing her life turned into a story by someone who knew how.

  “So he’s hiding her at his father’s,” said Izzie. “Is that what you think?”

  “Yes,” said Nat.

  “Then we have to know who he is, and that’s that,” said Izzie. Freedy’s mother backed up against the counter. “Who’s the father?”

  She looked up at Izzie, started crying again. Was there something false in her crying now? Nat thought it was possible.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” said Izzie.

  “We already know.”

  They left Freedy’s mother like that, crying in her blood-spotted Moroccan robe. There was no time to do anything about her; and not much desire, either.

  The nurse answered the Uzigs’ door. “The professor’s not in,” she told them.

  “Where is he?”

  “You’ll have to speak to Mrs. Uzig about that. Right now she’s sleeping.”

  “We have to talk to her,” Nat said.

  “I’m sorry,” the nurse said, closing the door; but they were already inside.

  Helen Uzig wasn’t sleeping; she was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, watching the snow fall. She smiled at them.

  “Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” she said. “Welcome.”

  “Where’s Leo?” said Izzie.

  “You missed him, I’m afraid. He was called to a sudden conference. Some Nietzschean emergency-perhaps they’ve discovered a long-lost retraction of the whole thing.”

  “Where is the conference?” Nat said.

  Helen noticed the nurse. “Stop hovering.” The nurse left the room. “Milan, I believe. Leo is probably on the connecting flight out of Albany at this moment, unless the airport is closed.”

  “Did he go alone?”

  “Alone? What is the implication of that, floozy-wise?”

  “Was he with a big, ponytailed man?”

  “Do you mean Freedy?”

  “Yes.”

  “How interesting you should know him. No, he wasn’t with Freedy. Why would he be?”

  “Is Freedy here now?”

  “Here?”

  “In the house.”

  “Of course not. I don’t expect him till spring.”

  “Why?”

  “He can’t very well do his excavating in frozen ground, can he?”

  “Excavating?” Nat, in his winter clothes, felt cold.

  “For the new pool. Malibu, Mediterranean, and the other one escapes me. An enterprising man-just think of that crow-although I wouldn’t describe him as bushy-tailed.” She lowered her voice. “And between you and me, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a serious drug problem.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “His perceptions get a bit wobbly. At one point he thought I was his grandmother. Although it could have been because I fixe
d him a slap-up breakfast, just like the nicest granny in the world. You young people aren’t hungry too, by any chance?”

  “We have to search your house,” Nat said.

  “How exciting,” said Helen. “But you won’t find Leo.”

  “We’re looking for Freedy,” Nat said.

  “You won’t find him either.”

  “What about Grace?”

  “Grace?”

  “My sister,” said Izzie.

  “Ah,” said Helen, turning to her, “the beautiful twins. How Leo does go on and on. Which beautiful twin are you?”

  “Izzie,” said Izzie.

  “So many z ’s in my life. Well, Izzie, your beautiful twin isn’t here either, except in the sense that you are.”

  “I don’t follow you,” Izzie said.

  “What’s so hard? Being identical, of course, you’re always in both places. But no one’s here today, not even the birds.”

  Nat and Izzie searched the house. No sign of Grace, no sign of Freedy, no sign of Leo, except three plastic wrappers on his bed, the kind dry cleaners use for shirts.

  They tried the garage last. It contained gardening supplies and an old Mercedes convertible under a drop cloth. The keys were in the ignition.

  “We may need this,” Izzie said, getting behind the wheel. Nat opened the garage door. She drove out. Nat closed the door, hopped in the rolling car. Helen Uzig watched them from a front window.

  They couldn’t figure out how to put the top up. Snow had been falling when Grace and Izzie drove Nat to New York for Christmas in the Rolls-Royce and the top had been down then, too. But it hadn’t been snowing hard like this, and the feeling he’d had then, of being inside a protective bubble, was gone.

  There were two banks on campus. They identified the one where Grace and Izzie had their account, entered just before closing, withdrew all the money in cash-$13,362. More money than Nat had ever had in his hands, ever seen, but still almost useless. They went back to Grace and Izzie’s room to find some clever way of making it look like a million; their only idea. The message light was blinking. Izzie hit the button.

  An intake of breath; Nat knew who it had to be before the voice spoke. “Little change of… can’t think of it, starts with v. Call it a change of plan. What with the snow and all. Know the Glass Onion? Bring the package to the back door. Six o’clock. Sharp. Any questions?”

  “Thank God,” Izzie said.

  “What do you mean?” said Nat. It was 4:45.

  “Because this will change everything, of course.” She was already calling her father to play him the message. Nat watched her face, said nothing.

  An operator at some Zorn number said he would call back. Izzie tried again, every fifteen minutes, every ten, every five, using expressions like life and death. She tried her stepmother, Andy Ling, Albert, even Anton. She reached none of them. No one called back. The bone structure of her face grew more and more apparent.

  At 5:50, Nat got to his feet. His heart started racing, lightly at first, then harder and harder but just as fast. Izzie raised her eyebrow, her left eyebrow. “Is it going to be all right?” she said. Or something like that; Nat was aware of little more than his heartbeat. She took his hand as they went out the door. Hers felt like ice.

  Peter Abrahams

  Crying Wolf

  31

  Identify: “When you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.”

  — Two-point bonus question, final exam, Philosophy 322

  Freedy felt pretty good. He kind of liked the way things were going down. Sure, the arm wasn’t tip-top, his right arm, almost like another person, ready to go to war for him at the drop of a hat. And he was all out of andro, all out of crystal meth. But funny: he didn’t even need them anymore. Had he ever felt stronger? No, not even close. He could knock down brick walls, lift cars right off the ground, smash things to smithereens, whatever smithereens were. Had to be momentum. Momentum was on his side at last. Everything was easy now. Take just walking down College Hill in the darkness, right in the middle of the deserted street, snow swirling around him and he didn’t even feel it. Didn’t feel the cold. Momentum: all he had to do was let it take him.

  Soon, very soon, he would be a millionaire. A millionaire! Was that the most beautiful word in the language or what? A millionaire, and out of this goddamn town forever. Tomorrow-a matter of hours-he would be in Florida. The beach. The biggest cigar in the world. One of those drinks with an umbrella. Cool shades, the very best, like Revos, not ripped off somebody’s towel, but store-bought, legitimate. He pictured it all, saw it as clear as life, or clearer. A picture in his mind tonight; tomorrow: reality. He was an entrepreneur, a risk-taker, one of the daring few, who, as they said on all the infomercials, made things happen. The kid from the flats makes good. At that moment, reaching the bottom of College Hill and trudging through knee-deep snow in the alley that led to the back of the Glass Onion, Freedy felt not just pretty good, but better than he’d ever felt in his life.

  Only one problem. Not a problem, really, just something he hadn’t made up his mind about. The girl. Would he ever find another girl like that, a girl so right for him? She was something: a girl who’d given him more trouble than Saul and his big boys. Remembering what had happened to Saul’s nose, he smiled to himself in the darkness. He’d taken Saul down a peg or two, but good. I got you last-a game he’d played at recess as a kid. Freedy always won, had now won again. Florida tomorrow. He’d finished with Saul Medeiros forever, would never even think of him again, had got him last.

  Much more fun to think about the girl. An amazing girl. She’d actually helped him- if you’re with the hostage, that makes you a hostage too. She’d even suggested this place, in a way; a vacant lot, she’d said, or an empty building. The Glass Onion was perfect. Freedy saw just how perfect when he moved behind it.

  The alley made an L-shaped turn back of the Glass Onion and ended there. On one side was the loading dock of the old hardware store, also boarded up; at the end of the alley, a Dumpster; before him, the service entrance of the Glass Onion, the door padlocked, the bulkhead buried in snow. He was happy about the snow, another sign of the momentum on his side. Supposing they had been stupid enough to call the cops, didn’t it stand to reason that the cops would already have checked this place out? But they hadn’t: he could see, dark as it was, that there were no footprints except his in the snow. He crouched under the loading dock, giving himself a good view back up the alley, all the way to the street. The alley was dark, but the entrance glowed orange from a street-light; the blowing snow came and went as black streaks. Freedy pulled an old pallet from the shadows under the loading dock, upended it in front of him, waited.

  Out on the street the storm was making noise, but it was quiet in the closed-in space behind the Glass Onion. The Glass Onion had been boarded up for almost as long as Freedy could remember. He had to say almost because the truth was he’d been inside once. Must have been very young, but he had a clear memory of a guitar-playing singer with a long beard up on a stage, a yellow drink with a straw, a dish of noodles or some shit in a sauce the same color-ginger, was that the word? — as the singer’s beard. The beard and the noodles and that yellow drink had got all mixed up in his mind and he’d ended up puking on his mother’s lap. She’d been wearing one of those striped Arab robes. The stripes, the noodles, the beard, the puke-all the same ginger color. She’d never taken him to the Glass Onion again, so it worked out fine.

  Something was bothering him about the girl. Oh, yeah. Even though she was amazing, he was a little pissed off with her. For one thing, there’d been that business with the broken glass. He admired it in a way, but she could have actually hurt him. Worse than that, though, was this tendency she had to maybe not respect him enough, maybe talk down her nose a little. Had she even laughed at him at one point? Of course, with the way things had been left between them, she might be reconsidering her attitude by now. She would come around. Human beings were animals
, after all, not in a bad way, that was simply scientific fact. So what he’d thought before-breaking a horse-was right. If he decided to take her along with him, take her into this golden future-and the decision was his, not hers-she’d end up-what was the word? Infatuated. Like a broken horse. She’d end up infatuated with him. Could he picture her with her hands all over him, staring up at him with big horse eyes, going down on him by request? Yes, he could. He could have both: the money and the girl. But the decision would be his.

  And first, the money. What time had he said? Six. Six sharp. Freedy was wondering what time it was now, the plan kind of depending on it, when he heard, very faint in the storm, the bell tolling up at the chapel on College Hill. That bell was part of his life, one of the bad parts, but this-the last time he’d have to listen to it! — was different. This time it was working for him. He counted: six bells.

  Six o’clock. Sharp. But what if they didn’t come? That would mean they thought he was bluffing. Freedy knew what had to be done in a case like that, no matter how perfect for him this girl was, no matter how infatuated she could become with his body and his mind. In a case like that, when you said if something doesn’t happen then something else is goddamn well going to, in a case like that, you had to follow through. Every infomercial said that; it was like one of their Ten Commandments.

  He’d been getting ahead of himself. There, down at the end of the alley, in that orange light with the black snow swirling around, someone stepped into view. Someone fairly tall, although not as tall as Freedy, but who did look a bit like a certain type of football player, the quarterback type specifically. Freedy had always hated quarterbacks. The wonderful Thanksgiving leg-breaking hit? That had been on a quarterback.

  Whoever it was came closer, and just as he reached the point in the alley where the orange light ended and the shadows took over, he glanced back for some reason. And, in glancing back, revealed his profile. The college kid. Nat. He had a backpack-those college kids all went around with backpacks, like life was a camping trip-but he had it in his hand, not on his back. The college kid: born on top of the Hill. But then Freedy remembered: He works in a mill. His old man’s not around. That made him even angrier.