“My stepfather lived here,” Jeff’s cabdriver said. “There was a landfill over there, that whole section.”
It had taken about half an hour to travel from midtown to this part of the East Bronx, which was bound by Long Island Sound and the East River. After leaving the expressway, they’d driven through a mixture of warehouses, pawnshops, drugstores, hair salons and pizzerias.
They’d passed an assortment of low-income city apartment projects before coming to neighborhoods of shingle-roofed one- and two-story houses with small yards. On Steeldown Road, parked cars lined both sides of the street. A dog was in the middle of it, his head inside a fast-food take-out bag as he worked on the remains.
For the umpteenth time, Jeff glanced at the information on the printout, then back to the street.
The Dalfini house at 88 Steeldown Road was a frame-and-stucco bungalow with a fenced yard. There was an older, dirty Honda with a dented rear quarter parked on the street out front, but the driveway was empty. The GMC Terrain registered to the address was a late model that would cost some thirty thousand dollars. Jeff didn’t see how it fit with the income level of the neighborhood.
He told the driver to keep going.
The knot in Jeff’s stomach was tightening, making it harder for him to concentrate.
No, he had to do this. Too much was at stake.
“Pull over and let me out,” he said when they were midway into the next block. Jeff paid the fare, tipped the driver, then gave him another twenty.
“Kill your meter and wait. I may need to return to Manhattan fast.”
“Sure, pal. Out here to get some action, huh?” The driver winked at him in the rearview mirror and reached for his copy of the
Walking to the house Jeff’s breathing quickened, the horror rising. He couldn’t believe the past few hours: Sarah and Cole abducted, the NYPD challenging his report, leaving him alone to track the people who took his wife and son to this street.
This was beyond his control.
Suddenly, he was besieged with questions.
He couldn’t live with himself if it turned out that he was this close but did nothing to save them. He’d already faced an unbearable loss. Standing in the street, in front of the house, Jeff had no choice.
He wrote down the Honda’s New York plate and scanned the interior. It had an overflowing ashtray. The passenger seat was covered with flyers and junk-food wrappers. Other than this car out front there was no sign of any vehicles at the house.
The curtains were drawn.
All quiet, except for the jets flying in and out of LaGuardia.
How was he going to do this? Call the phone number he obtained on the search record printout? Or ring the doorbell? A dog’s distant bark underscored that he was losing time. There was a diffusion of light near a window. A shadow passed by a curtain.
Jeff stepped onto the property, walked to the side of the house, bent down and cupped his face to a basement window. His eyes adjusted to a double laundry sink, a washer and dryer, clothes heaped on the floor.
He flinched.
A child’s earsplitting scream shattered the quiet.
Something inside the house vibrated, someone moving around. Jeff started for the backyard but was stopped by a wooden fence and a gate that reached to his shoulders. He tried the handle; the gate was locked. He tried reaching over it for a latch but got nothing.
Gripping the top of the fence, he hefted himself over it, landing on a garden hose that snaked to the back. Jeff followed it past a back door to patio steps, a small deck with lawn chairs and picnic table. It was a typical family backyard.
He stopped at the sight of two children standing in the grass, some fifteen feet away: a boy about Cole’s age and a girl who looked to be four or five, both wearing swimsuits.
The hose meandered to the girl. She used both hands to hold the dripping nozzle, which she pointed at the boy, who was drenched. For a moment, water plunking from the boy to the deck was the only sound.
Then the boy, his blond water-slicked hair darkened, turned to Jeff at the same time as the girl.
The boy was not Cole.
The children’s eyes widened slightly as they stared at Jeff, speechless until the girl said, “Hello.”
At a loss, Jeff scanned the small yard when he noticed the children’s attention shift a fraction to his left.
“I have a gun,” a woman’s voice said from behind him.
Jeff turned.
The woman’s arms were extended; her hands were wrapped around the pistol aimed at him.
“Get on your knees and put your hands behind your head!”
Before Jeff could explain she shouted.
“Do it now, asshole! Or I swear to God I’ll shoot you dead.”
13
Jeff raised his hands and lowered himself to the lawn.
The woman holding the gun ordered her children into the house.
Jeff got on his knees, his mind racing.
The woman kept her gun on him and kept her distance.
A shrub of frizzy red hair haloed her face. She had to be in her late twenties but the lines carved deep around her mouth suggested an embittered life. She had an overbite. She wore jeans and a T-shirt showing a pit bull guarding a motorcycle. Tattoos swirled along her arms.
“Get out your wallet.”
Slowly Jeff pulled it from his pocket and tossed it to her feet. Keeping her gun on him she retrieved it, examined his driver’s license and fire department photo identification.
“Montana? Why the hell are you here, trespassing, threatening my kids?”
His pulse galloping, Jeff thought it odd she hadn’t called the police.
“Answer me, asshole!”
He tried to think.
“My wife and son were abducted a few hours ago near Times Square in an SUV registered to this address.”
“That’s a crock of shit!”
“It’s the truth. Do you know Donald Dalfini? Where is the SUV? Are you his wife?” The woman didn’t answer. As she considered his questions, Jeff kept talking. “Let me show you something?”
She took a moment, then nodded once. Jeff fished out Sarah’s digital camera and Cole’s key ring. He cued up the photos and held the camera to her with the ring.
