Gone, Baby, Gone (Kenzie & Gennaro 4)

By the time she’d reached her fourth bite, my meal was gone. Angie took this as an indication that dinner was over and pushed her plate into the center of the table.

“You can never know people,” she said, her eyes on the table. “Can you? Understand them. It’s not possible. You can’t…fathom what makes them do the things they do, think the way they do. If it’s not the way you think, it never makes sense. Does it?” She looked up at me and her eyes were red and wet.

“You talking about Helene?”

“Helene”—she cleared her throat—”Helene, and Big Dave, and those guys in the bar, and whoever took Amanda. They don’t make sense. They don’t…” A tear fell to her cheek and she wiped at it with the back of her hand. “Shit.”

I took her hand and she chewed the inside of her mouth, and looked up at the ceiling fan above her.

“Ange,” I said, “those guys in the Filmore were human waste. They’re not worth a single moment’s thought.”

“Uh-huh.” She took a deep breath through her mouth, and I could hear it rattle its way through the liquid clogging her throat. “Yeah.”

“Hey,” I said. I stroked her forearm with my palm. “I’m serious. They’re nothing. They’re—”

“They would have raped me, Patrick. I’m sure of it.” She looked at me, and her mouth jerked erratically until it froze for a moment in a smile, one of the strangest smiles I’ve ever seen. She patted my hand and the flesh around her mouth crumbled, and then her whole face crumbled with it. The tears poured from her eyes, and she kept trying to hold that smile and pat my hand.

I’ve known this woman all my life, and I can count on one hand how many times she’s wept in my presence. I didn’t understand completely at the moment what had brought this on—I’d seen Angie face far more dire situations than the one we faced in the bar today and shrug them off—but whatever the cause, the pain was real, and seeing it in her face and body killed me.

I came out from my side of the booth, and she waved me away, but I slid in beside her, and she caved into me. She gripped my shirt and wept silently into my shoulder. I smoothed her hair, kissed her head, and held her. I could feel the blood coursing through her body as she shook in my arms.

“I feel like such a goof,” Angie said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said.

We’d left the Ashmont Grille and Angie asked me to stop at Columbia Park in South Boston. A horseshoe of bleachers set in granite surrounded the dusty track at the tip of the park, and we bought a six-pack and took it down there with us, dusted some splinters off a bleacher plank before sitting down.

Columbia Park is Angie’s sacred place. Her father, Jimmy, disappeared in a mob hit over two decades ago, and the park is where her mother chose to tell Angie and her sister that their father was dead, corpse or no corpse. Angie returns to the park sometimes during her dark nights, when she can’t sleep, when the ghosts crawl around in her head.

The ocean was fifty yards to our right, and the breeze coming off it was cool enough for us to wrap up in each other to keep from shivering.

She leaned forward, staring out at the track and the wide swath of green park beyond. “You know what it is?”

“Tell me.”

“I don’t understand people who choose to hurt other people.” She turned on the bleacher until she was facing me. “I’m not talking about people who respond to violence with violence. I mean, we’re as guilty of that as anyone. I’m talking about people who hurt other people without provocation. Who enjoy ugliness. Who get off on dragging everyone down into the muck with them.”

“The guys in the bar.”

“Yeah. They would have raped me. Raped. Me.” Her mouth remained open for a moment, as if the full implication of that were truly hitting her for the first time. “And then they would have gone home and celebrated. No, no, wait.” She raised her arm in front of her face. “No, that’s not it. They wouldn’t have celebrated. That’s not the worst thing. The worst thing is, they wouldn’t have given it much thought at all. They would have opened up my body, violated me in every sick way they could think of, and then after they were done, they’d remember it the way you’d remember a cup of coffee. Not as something to celebrate, just as one more thing that got you through your day.”

I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say. I held her eyes and waited for her to go on.

“And Helene,” she said. “She’s almost as bad as those guys, Patrick.”

“With all due respect, that’s pushing it, Ange.”

She shook her head, her eyes wide. “No, it’s not. Rape is instant violation. It burns your insides out and reduces you to nothing in the time it takes some asshole to shove his dick in you. But what Helene does to her child…” She glanced at the dusty track below, took a slug from her beer. “You heard the stories from those mothers. You saw how she’s dealing with her little girl’s disappearance. I bet she violates Amanda every day, not with rape or violence but with apathy. She was burning that child’s insides out in tiny doses, like arsenic. That’s Helene. She’s arsenic.” She nodded to herself and repeated in a whisper, “She’s arsenic.”

I took her hands in mine. “I can make a phone call from the car and drop this case. Now.”

“No.” She shook her head. “No way. These people, these selfish, fucking people—these Big Daves and Helenes—they pollute the world. And I know they’ll reap what they sow. And good. But I’m not going anywhere until we find that child. Beatrice was right. She’s alone. And nobody speaks for her.”

“Except us.”

“Except us.” She nodded. “I’m going to find that girl, Patrick.”

There was an obsessive light in her eyes I’d never seen shine so brightly before.

“Okay, Ange,” I said. “Okay.”

“Okay.” She tapped my beer can with her own.

“What if she’s dead already?” I said.

“She isn’t,” Angie said. “I can feel it.”

“But if she is?”

“She isn’t.” She drained her beer, tossed the can into the bag at my feet. “She just isn’t.” She looked at me. “Understand?”

“Sure,” I said.