The Garden of Betrayal - Lee Vance [5]
I was on a plane to London the night Kyle vanished. As we taxied to the gate at Heathrow, a stewardess bent forward and told me that a customer service manager would be meeting me on the jetway. I was too groggy to suspect anything other than the faux-warm handshake and stilted chitchat that airline management occasionally bestow on frequent business travelers. I recall hoping he’d brought a courtesy cart so I wouldn’t have to make the long walk to Immigration.
The next twelve hours are pretty much a blur. I remember the physical impact of hearing that Kyle was missing, as if I’d had the wind knocked out of me and couldn’t recover. I remember sitting hunched in my seat on the long flight back to New York, feeling as if I were falling and falling, with the ground nowhere in sight. Most of all, I remember the look on Claire’s face when we met at the police station—the grief that persuaded me the nightmare was true, and the guilt that’s never vanished. It wasn’t until later that I began wondering what might have happened differently if I’d been home.
Amy, my assistant, walks in on me occasionally when I’m staring out my office window and makes gentle fun of me for being so entranced. It helps me think, I tell her, feeling bad about the lie. The truth is something I can only just bear to admit to myself. Claire and I never discussed the evening Kyle vanished in any detail, but I read the statement she made to the police and the description she gave of the clothes he was wearing. Despite all the years that have passed, I’m still searching the crowd below for a tall twelve-year-old in an oversized parka and a green knit school hat.
2
I was reading an industry rag at my desk when Amy stopped in to say good morning. She was holding a manila envelope in her hand and smiling.
“Guess what I have?”
“Hmm …” I said, tapping my finger against my chin. Amy’s forty, married, and on the vestry of her church. She was wearing a simple navy dress and had her auburn hair done up in a prim bun. “A ticket to Vegas. You’re leaving me to take a job dealing blackjack at the Bellagio.”
“As if,” she scoffed. “The only job I’d be willing to take in Las Vegas would be at a mission.”
“Like what’s-her-name in Guys and Dolls. The one who ends up with Marlon Brando.”
“Jean Simmons,” she said, reddening slightly. Amy was a big fan of old movies. “I liked her better in Elmer Gantry. And Guys and Dolls was set in New York. None of which has anything to do with anything.” She reached into the envelope and extracted a BlackBerry with a dramatic flourish. “Ta-da!”
“My new phone?” I asked, puzzled by the flourish.
“Better. Your old phone.”
I’d been feeling like a dope all weekend because a bike messenger had half knocked me down outside my office on Friday as I returned from a late-afternoon meeting, and a stranger had caught my arm to steady me. It hadn’t occurred to me to check my pockets until I was riding the elevator upstairs. I figured the stranger had mistaken the bulky device for my wallet and lifted it.
“You’re kidding. Where’d it come from?”
“Lobby guard gave it to me on my way in. Some guy came in off the street Saturday afternoon and turned it in. Said he spotted it under the newspaper machine on the corner and saw your business card taped to the back.”
I took the BlackBerry from her and examined it. It looked fine. I pressed the power button. The screen lit up for a moment, flashed a low-battery warning, and then went dark again.
“Amazing,” I said, snugging the unit into its charging cradle. “Maybe it just fell out of my pocket when I stumbled. Hard to believe someone actually returned it.”
“Not so hard to believe,” Amy chided. “New York is full of nice people.”
“You get the guy’s name?” I asked, thinking I should send him a bottle of scotch.
“Guard said he didn’t leave it.” She leaned forward and dropped her voice to a husky whisper. “This