There was no doorman, of course, no lock or buzzers or any of that. The lighting was bad in the corridor, but not bad enough to conceal the paint flaking off like the walls had psoriasis. Most of the mailboxes were doorless. The air felt like a beaded curtain.
She climbed up the cement stairs. The railing was industrial metal. Myron could hear a man coughing as if he were trying to dislodge a lung. A baby cried. Then another joined in. Brenda stopped on the second floor and turned right. Her keys were already in her hand and at the ready. The door too was made of some sort of reinforced steel. There was a peephole and three bolt locks.
Brenda unlocked the three bolts first. They jerked back noisily, like the prison scene in a movie where the warden yells, “Lockdown!” The door swung open. Myron was hit by two thoughts at exactly the same time. One was how nice Horace’s setup was. Whatever was outside this apartment, whatever grime and rot were on the streets or even in his corridor, Horace Slaughter had not allowed to sneak past the steel door. The walls were as white as a hand cream commercial. The floors looked newly buffed. The furniture was a mix of what looked like fixed-up family pieces and newer Ikea acquisitions. It was indeed a comfortable home.
The other thing Myron noticed as soon as the door was open was that someone had trashed the room.
Brenda rushed in. “Dad?”
Myron followed, wishing that he had his gun. This scene called for a gun. He would signal her to be quiet, take it out, have her stand behind him, creep through the apartment with her clutching on to his free arm in fear. He would do that gun swing thing into each room, his body crouched and prepared for the worst. But Myron did not regularly carry a gun. It was not that he disliked guns—when in trouble, in fact, he rather enjoyed their company—but a gun is bulky and chafed like a tweed condom. And let’s face it, for most prospective clients, a sports agent packing heat does not inspire confidence, and for those it does, well, Myron would rather do without them.
Win, on the other hand, always carried a gun—at least two, actually, not to mention a prodigious potpourri of concealed weaponry. The man was like a walking Israel.
The apartment consisted of three rooms and a kitchen. They hurried through them. Nobody. And no body.
“Anything missing?” Myron asked.
She looked at him, annoyed. “How the hell would I know?”
“I mean, anything noticeable. The TV is here. So is the VCR. I want to know if you think it’s a robbery.”
She glanced about the living room. “No,” she said. “It doesn’t look like a robbery.”
“Any thoughts on who did this or why?”
Brenda shook her head, her eyes still taking in the mess.
“Did Horace hide money someplace? A cookie jar or under a floorboard or something?”
“No.”
They started in Horace’s room. Brenda opened up his closet. For a long moment she stood and said nothing.
“Brenda?”
“A lot of his clothes are missing,” she said softly. “His suitcase too.”
“That’s good,” Myron said. “It means he probably ran; it makes it less likely that he met up with foul play.”
She nodded. “But it’s creepy.”
“How so?”
“It’s just like my mother. I can still remember Dad just standing here, staring at the empty hangers.”
They moved back into the living room and then into a small bedroom.
“Your room?” Myron asked.
“I’m not here very much, but yeah, this is my room.”
Brenda’s eyes immediately fell on a spot near her night table. She gave a little gasp and dived to the floor. Her hands began to paw through her effects.
“Brenda?”
Her pawing grew more intense, her eyes aflame. After a few minutes she got up and ran to her father’s room. Then the living room. Myron kept back.
“They’re gone,” she said.
“What?”
Brenda looked at him. “The letters my mother wrote me. Someone took them.”
Myron parked the car in front of Brenda’s dorm room. Except for monosyllabic directions, Brenda had not spoken during the drive. Myron did not push it. He stopped the car and turned toward her. She continued to stare ahead.
Reston University was a place of green grass and big oaks and brick buildings and Frisbees and bandannas. Professors still had long hair and unkempt beards and tweed jackets. There was such a feeling of innocence here, of make-believe, of youth, of startling passion. But that was the beauty of such a university: students debating over life-and-death issues in an environment as insulated as Disney World. Reality had nothing to do with the equation. And that was okay. In fact, that was how it should be.
“She just left,” Brenda said. “I was five years old, and she just left me alone with him.”
Myron let her speak.
“I remember everything about her. The way she looked. The way she smelled. The way she’d come home from her job so tired she could barely put her feet up. I don’t think I’ve talked about her five times in the past twenty years. But I think about her every day. I think about why she gave me up. And I think about why I still miss her.”
She put her hand to her chin then and turned away. The car stayed silent.
“You good at this, Myron?” she asked. “At investigating?”
“I think so,” he said.
Brenda grabbed the door handle and pulled. “Could you find my mother?”
She did not wait for a response. She hurried out of the car and up the steps. Myron watched her disappear into the colonial brick building. Then he started up the car and headed home.
Myron found a spot on Spring Street right outside Jessica’s loft. He still referred to his new dwelling as Jessica’s loft, even though he now lived here and paid half the rent. Weird how that worked.
Myron took the stairs to the third floor. He opened the door and immediately heard Jessica yell out, “Working.”
He did not hear any clacking on the computer keyboard, but that didn’t mean anything. He made his way into the bedroom, closed the door, and checked the answering machine. When Jessica was writing, she never answered the phone.
Myron hit the play button. “Hello, Myron? This is your mother.” Like he wouldn’t recognize the voice. “God, I hate this machine. Why doesn’t she pick up? I know she’s there. Is it so hard for a human being to pick up a phone and say hello and take a message? I’m in my office, my phone rings, I pick it up. Even if I’m working. Or I have my secretary take a message. Not a machine. I don’t like machines, Myron, you know that.” She continued on in a similar vein for some time. Myron longed for the old days when there was a time limit on answering machines. Progress was not always a good thing.