Page 66 of A Week Away
“He was crying a lot last night. But this morning he’s gone silent. He’s upstairs in his bedroom.”
I glanced into the living room. There were three older men sitting on the couches. Joanne’s father and uncles, I assumed. With them was a younger guy in his mid-thirties. He looked completely bereft, his eyes red and swollen. He sniffed and held a hand over his face, trying not to keep crying. The older man next to him slapped the back of his head and said something in Italian.
“I’m going up to see Cass” I said to Aunt Suzie as I went up the stairs. When I got to his bedroom door I didn’t knock, I just opened it. He lay on his bed in a pair of ill-fitting black slacks and a white dress shirt.
I put a finger over my lips and nodded toward the bathroom. I turned and went back into the hallway toward the shared bathroom. Luckily, he followed me. When we were in, I closed the door and turned on the water. Quickly, I glanced out the window. I could see the van sitting in the next block.
“What are you doing?”
“The Feds are following your second cousin Luca. Their van is right out there,” I pointed to it through the window. “I’m guessing they’ve got some kind of parabolic microphone aimed at the house. They might have bugged the place, too. Though I’m not sure he’s been seeing enough of your mother lately that they could get a warrant.”
“What the fuck?” He looked out the window at the van.
“Yeah, what the fuck,” I repeated, hoping that closed the subject. “We have a lot to talk about. I just told your aunt we met in an AOL chatroom about missing family members. I told her I had a daughter who was into drugs, but I found her and got her into rehab. Can you remember that?”
“I guess.”
“What have the police told you?”
“That it was some Black kid trying to steal the Eldorado.”
“That’s not true. I’m pretty sure it was someone who?—”
“No. It was some Black kid. The police said so. You have to find that kid.”
“It’s not logical that we were trying to find out who killed your dad and then your mom gets killed randomly. No. Something we did led to this.”
“No—”
“Think. Think about what makes sense.”
“I can’t! You’re saying I killed my own mom!”
Oh shit. That was a road I didn’t want to go down. “No, that’s not what I mean. You didn’t kill your mom. You had no way of knowing what might happen if we looked for your dad’s killer. Okay? None of this is your fault.”
He stood there, absorbing what I’d said. Then he said, “You have to find out who killed my mom.”
“Yeah, something told me you were going to say that.” I took a deep breath. “The police found something. The killer went back into the building and hid something in the men’s room ceiling. Either the gun or the hoodie or maybe your mom’s purse. They haven’t said anything, have they?”
“No. They came by yesterday and told me she was dead and they think it was a carjacking gone wrong. That’s all I’ve heard.”
“You should call them later on today and ask if they know anything else. Then let me know what they say.” I told him that I’d moved to the corporate flophouse and registered as Charles Henderson. Then I asked, “Did they want to know where you were yesterday at five o’clock?”
“I said I was picking up Chinese food for dinner.”
“And you didn’t mention me?”
“No.”
“What else did they ask?”
“Nothing really.”
“They didn’t ask about your mom’s love life or if she had any enemies?”
“It wasn’t Luca.”
“Why do you say that?”
