Only Child

the siding, plain except for two overlapping glass bricks at the top right—made me think of a pair of dice.

The button for the doorbell was set into the frame on the left. I pressed it. Heard the faint sound of a gong inside, vaguely Oriental. I could see from the way the door was framed that it opened in, but I stepped back anyway, so she wouldn’t feel as if I were looming over her when she answered.

Nothing. I checked my watch. A minute shy of noon. The gong sound had been very muted. Maybe she was around back...?

I was mentally tossing a coin on whether to ring again, or walk around the back, when the door opened. The interior was too dim for me to make out anything more than that it was a woman.

“Yes?”

“My name is Burke, ma’am. We had an appointment....”

“Appointment,” she said, as if confirming.

“Yes, ma’am. For noon. Could I...?”

She stepped back, not saying a word. I crossed the threshold, deliberately leaving the door open. She moved behind me, closed it herself. And stayed where she was.

To my right, I could see the kitchen. The appliances all seemed to be the same bronze color. To my left, the living room, where the skylight bent the sun into a rectangular patch on a beige carpet. I didn’t move.

I heard a deep intake of breath, as if she were getting ready to lift a heavy weight. She moved from behind me over to the left. “Please come in,” she said.

I followed her to the living room. She sat herself on the white twill couch, nodded her head toward a matching wingback chair. Said “Please” again. I sat down.

“I’ll try to make this as easy as possible,” I began.

“Easy.”

“I apologize. A poor choice of words. I understand this could never be easy. My intent was to—”

“Understand.”

“Mrs. Greene...”

“Ms.”

“Ms. Greene, you know why I’m here. You agreed to see me. You know what I’m doing, what I was hired to do. I’m trying my best not to offend you, but I don’t seem to be very good at it.”

“Offend me?”

“Perhaps that was overstated,” I said, trying for mild, not oily. “When I speak with you, I seem to always use the wrong word for what I mean to convey.”

I waited patiently for her to say “Convey,” but she stayed silent, not bothering to conceal that she was studying my face.

So that’s what I did, too. All I knew from Giovanni was her color, and even that had been misleading—I’d seen blondes with deep tans who were darker than her skin shade. She had a narrow nose, high cheekbones, and thin lips. Her hair would have made a Filipina proud. I can’t do genetics-by-sight the way Mama does, but it didn’t take a DNA specialist to see there was a heavy dose of cream in her coffee.

A beautiful, slender woman in a plain blue dress. Still in shock, as if they’d just told her last night.

“You work for Giovanni?” she finally asked.

“I’m doing this job for him,” I said, treading carefully.

“You’re not in his...organization?”

“No. I’m not in any organization.”

“You’re not a criminal?”

“No, ma’am, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are,” she said, in a sterilized voice. “Some kind of a criminal. Everyone in Gio’s world is a criminal of some kind.”

I didn’t say anything.

“What did he hire you to do?” she asked.

“To find who...murdered your daughter. And why they did.”

“The police say they know.”

“What!? They know who—”

“Not who,” she said, emotionless. “Why.”

“Those are guesses, Ms. Greene. Theories. The only sure way to find the person who actually—”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, theories are generalizations. They’re based on—”

“No. Not that. ‘Person,’ you said. The police said it was a man.”

“I can understand why they might think that, ma’am. And I’m not arguing with it. Just trying not to exclude anyone until I know more.”

“More?”

“More than I know now,” I said, trying to catch her waves so I could surf. “Some of it, I hope you’ll tell me. The rest, I have to find on my own.”

“And Giovanni hired you to do that?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Will you do it yourself?”

“Mostly. It depends on what it turns out is needed. I might bring others into it, if I have to.”

“Needed?”

“To find the person.”

“So Giovanni can kill him,” she said, with no-affect certainty.

“I don’t know anything about—”

“Oh, Gio will kill him,” she said, mournfully confident. “Honor is so very important to him.”

“Honor?” I asked, switching roles.

She smiled faintly, without warmth. “You’re right, of course. I said ‘honor,’ but I meant ‘image.’ What the kids call ‘face.’ That is Giovanni, right there. That sums him up.”

“I don’t know him,” I slip-slided.

“You said it might not be a man.”

“Giovanni, I mean. I don’t know...the child’s father. I’m doing a job of work for him, that’s all.”

“Father?”

“Ma’am, I am truly sorry if I keep stumbling around. I can’t seem to find the right words. I don’t know Giovanni. And I’ll never know your daughter. But if you’ll help me know about her, maybe I can find who killed her.”

“What then?”

“When I find whoever did it...if I can?”

“Yes. What then? Will you tell the police?”

“That’s not my job.”

“Will you tell me?”

“Yes,” I spooled out the lie like a bolt of silk, “of course I will. You have the right to know.”

“Please wait here,” she said. At a nod from me, she stood up and walked out of the room.

I didn’t move from where I was seated, contenting myself with a visual sweep of the room. It was neat and clean, but without that demented gleam you get under a No People, No Pets, No Playing regime. The room was clearly for company, but not the kind that kicked back with a few beers and watched a football game with their feet on the coffee table.

I’d been in homes where people had lost their child to violence before. I expected at least one photo of the girl—a shrine wouldn’t have surprised me.

Nothing.

When the mother came back, she was carrying a large gray plastic box by the handle. When she opened the top, I could see it was filled front-to-back with file folders. She knelt, placed it on the floor in front of my chair, said, “I have three more,” and walked off again.

I didn’t think about offering to help her any more than I did about looking through the files outside her