When Myron was young, his father played only AM stations when he drove. He would steer with his wrists and whistle. In the morning, Dad would listen to an all-news station as he shaved.
Myron kept waiting for the phone to ring. Before leaving the hospital, he almost had a change of heart. Suppose, Myron had asked his mother, Dad woke up only one more time. Suppose Myron missed his last chance to talk to his father.
Mom had replied matter-of-factly: “What would you say that he doesn’t already know?”
Good point. In the end, it was a question of his father’s wishes. What would Dad rather Myron do-sit in a waiting room and cry or go out and try to find his brother? The answer was pretty simple when you posed it like that.
Myron arrived at the trailer park. He snapped off the engine. Fatigue weighed down his bones. He half stumbled out of the car, rubbing his eyes. Man, he needed a cup of coffee. Something. The adrenaline had begun to ebb. He reached the door. Locked. Had he really forgotten to get the key from Mickey? He shook his head, reached into his wallet, and pulled out the same credit card.
The door unlocked just as it had several hours ago. The laptop was still in the main room, near Mickey’s pullout couch. He flipped it on and while it booted up, he searched the place. Mickey was right. There were very few possessions. The clothes had been packed already. The TV had probably come with the rental. Myron found a drawer of old papers and photographs. He had just dumped them on the couch when the computer dinged that it was all booted up.
Myron sat next to the pile of assorted papers, pulled the laptop toward him, and brought up the Internet history. Facebook was there. Google searches showed that someone had looked up the Three Downing nightclub in Manhattan and the Garden State Plaza Mall. Another Web site had been used to figure out public transportation routes to both. Nothing here. Brad had gone back to Peru three months ago anyway. The history only went back a few days.
His phone rang. It was Win.
“I have set it up. We leave for Adiona Island in two hours out of Teterboro.”
Teterboro was a private airport in northern New Jersey. “Okay, I’ll be there.”
Myron hung up and looked back at the computer. The Internet history hadn’t given up anything clue worthy. So now what?
Try some other applications, he thought. He started bringing them up one at a time. No one used the Calendar or the Address Book programs-both were empty. PowerPoint had a few school presentations by Mickey, most recently one on the history of the Mayans. The slideshow was in Spanish. Impressive but not relevant. He brought up the Word file. Again there were a bunch of what had to be school projects. Myron was about to give up when he spotted an eight-month-old file called “Resignation Letter.” Myron clicked the icon and read:
Abeona Shelter. Kitty had posted “Not His” using the profile name “Abeona S.” Myron quickly Googled “Abeona Shelter.” Nothing. Hmm. He again Googled Abeona and found that it was the name of a somewhat obscure Roman goddess who protected children the first time they left their parents’ care. Myron was not sure what that all meant, if anything. Supposedly, Brad had always worked for nonprofits. Was the Abeona Shelter one of them?
He called Esperanza next. He gave her Juan’s address and the name of the Abeona Shelter. “Reach out to him. See if he knows anything.”
“Okay. Myron?”
“Yes.”
“I really love your dad.”
He smiled. “Yeah, I know.”
Silence.
Esperanza said, “You know the expression that there’s never a good time to give bad news.”
Uh-oh. “What is it?”
“I’m of two minds on something,” she said. “I could wait until things are good before I tell you this. Or I can just throw it on the pile and with everything else going on, you’ll barely notice.”
“Throw it on the pile.”
“Thomas and I are getting a divorce.”
“Oh, damn.” He thought about the pictures in her office, the happy family shots of Esperanza, Thomas, and little Hector. His heart sank anew. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m hoping it will be peaceful,” Esperanza said. “But I don’t think it’s going to be. Thomas is claiming I’m an unfit mother because of my sordid past and the hours I work. He’s going for sole custody of Hector.”
“He’ll never get it,” Myron said.
“Like you have control over that.” She made a noise, might have been a half laugh. “But I love when you make definitive pronouncements like that.”
Myron flashed back to a recent one with Suzze:
Won’t let her mess up. And now she was dead.
Myron Bolitar: Big man with the big, definitive pronouncements.
Before he could take it back, Esperanza said, “I’ll get on this,” and hung up.
He just stared at the phone for a moment. The lack of sleep was starting to get to him. His head pounded to the point where he wondered if Kitty had any Tylenol in the medicine cabinet. He was about to get up and check when something snagged his attention.
It was in the pile of papers and photographs on the end of the couch. On the bottom on the right. Just a corner stuck out. A royal blue corner. Myron’s eyes narrowed. He reached for it and pulled it into view.
It was a passport.
Yesterday he found Kitty’s and Mickey’s passports in Kitty’s purse. Brad had last been seen traveling to Peru, so that’s where his passport would be, according to Kitty. That begged the obvious question: Whose passport was this?
Myron flipped it open to the identification page. There, staring him in the face, was a photograph of his brother. He felt lost again, his pounding head spinning now.
Myron was just wondering about his next move when he heard the whispers.
There were times it paid to have frayed nerves. This was one of them. Instead of waiting or trying to figure out
