Surrender, New York

  After Sunday night’s work, we grew only more reassured as to the validity of that theory’s two key elements: first, that the deaths—which we continued to believe were suicides staged to look like murders—of the throwaway children were not the work of the two or three people necessary for the mere staging of the bodies, but at their root were somehow tied to an organization; and second, that this organization was headed by people capable of pulling strings long enough to reach even into such remote areas as Burgoyne County. That the power base for these people was the now-supreme bastion of the international economic elite, New York City, we had already demonstrated with hard evidence. The main question now turned upon how the second theory related to the first: just who were the initiators in the city who were using locals to steal away children for whom New York State, along with their families, had made no provision—had “thrown away”—and to what purposes were they bending these children that they had driven at least four of them to suicide?

  I would be lying if I did not say that there was a personal edge to all this formulation, during those first days after we survived our ordeal on the mountaintop; for I began to believe (and I sincerely thought that Mike did, too) that we now had a chance for one last slap in the face of the metropolitan leviathan that had puked us out five years ago. Now, at last, we had enough dead (or in Gracie’s case, nearly dead) bodies, and a strong enough indication of who had put them in that condition, to rip the lid off a huge drum of moral toxic waste and send it spewing through the streets of the city, something I had longed for since our involuntary exile had begun. As for Mike, the mere thought of Gracie lying comatose in a hospital bed was enough to work him into an intensely active rage, a kind of anger that I was certain indicated that he had gotten fully on board with my plans for swooping down like a righteous scythe on our hometown. My partner and I had always fancied ourselves two servants of justice; with the throwaways case, the always exquisite and rare opportunity to combine justice with revenge had opened up before us. Oh, yes: in my fantasy, we were going to make the big city pay for the kind of moral outrages we had observed, the kind of callous and degenerate crimes that generally accompany wealth unregulated by ethical or physical restraints; and we were, at the same time, going to punish it for having used us so badly…

  I don’t mean to say that this attitude compromised either my partner or myself on the operational level: our work thus far had been solid, and it would continue to be. During the time spared us by our teaching obligations between Sunday night and Tuesday afternoon, we began to construct a more detailed picture of the people by whom these dead children might have been taken in: and they were, we found, a group that was unusually discriminating, if such is not too vile a word to use in this context. For, again, the throwaway victims were not simply good-looking kids plucked at random from off the streets or along the highways: they were sharp, ambitious, even brave young souls who had had the most basic elements of childhood stolen from them, and yet were still trying to realize their various goals. The kind of kids anybody would want: that phrase suddenly took on an entirely new and terrible connotation, for somewhere there existed a group of people who had wanted them, were hunting for them, though in precisely what way, and for precisely what purposes, we had yet to accurately define. Yet wanted them they had, and wanted them in the worst possible way: another seemingly benign term that now assumed sinister dimensions. Mike was always made visibly uncomfortable when I started using such mundane expressions in this manner when constructing profiles; yet during our years of working together he’d learned that adults who target children, for whatever reasons, hide behind just such socially acceptable masks. And so, while he may have groaned occasionally, he never openly objected.

  The general notion that we were dealing with children who had been selected for more than merely their looks (although they had all been attractive, of course, each in his or her own way) was momentarily challenged when we finally received personal details concerning the boy Donnie, victim of a seeming heroin overdose in Fraser. Pete Steinbrecher brought us the report himself, after he had clocked out at the sheriff’s office on Monday evening. I had been teaching my Theory of Context course for over an hour already, while Mike had been busy dragging out the symbol of his ultimate commitment to any case or line of investigation: his White Monster, the largest dry-erase board he possessed, a four-by-seven-foot beast that had to be set up on a stand that Mike himself had long ago built out of two-by-fours. Fortunately, on this particular occasion, the noise of his so positioning it had been covered by a particularly lively and—I was happy to find—informed discussion of the pages of Laszlo Kreizler’s final journal that I had distributed to my class. But when Pete entered the JU-52 (he was the only law enforcement officer that we allowed to do so, and always on his oath that he would reveal nothing that he saw inside), the heavy tromp of his boots on the deck of the plane came cutting through the debate, followed by his voice loudly announcing:

  “Uh-oh—the White Monster’s out!”

  This drew some fast shushing from Mike, but not before my ever-troublesome student from Manhattan, Andrew—who had been engaged in something approximating an online brawl with the far wiser Californian Vicky over the meaning of Dr. Kreizler’s pages—had once again detected sounds emanating from behind what was apparently, to him, the endlessly fascinating black fabric backdrop of our virtual classroom, and demanded to know who had made them. Assured by the ever-steady student from the Bronx, Linda, that it was once more his imagination at work, as well as by the petite, no-bullshit Tennessean Amy that it was none of his damned business anyway, Andrew finally stilled his inquiries. It had been a close call, however, especially as some sort of truncated account of the doings in Fraser on Friday night had apparently made its way to local television news and the inside pages of the tabloids in New York, where Andrew had seen it; and it would have been just like the kid to pursue the issue and try to find out if my supposedly “heroic actions” in Fraser actually meant that I was actively involved in some sort of a murder investigation upstate. At length, however, the class ended without further incident. The big screens all went black, and I banged the laptop on the instructor’s desk closed as I raced around to find out what news Pete had brought us.

  He removed his Stetson with one hand and waved a folder in the warm air with the other slowly. “Got the file on that kid in Fraser—the one who supposedly OD’d. I made you a copy. And the BCI picked up the Patrick couple in Heinsdale, right on schedule.”

  “Right on schedule,” I murmured, as I leaned back on the closest of Mike’s desks, which he had shifted (somewhat irritatingly) to make room for his board, and began leafing through the file, while glancing up at our guest. “I would offer you a seat, Deputy, but as you can see…”

  “No problem,” Pete said. “I been through the Monster before, I know the drill.”

  “I appreciate that,” I answered, studying the rather complex combination of conviviality and nervousness that filled the deputy’s face at that moment. “The thing is annoying as hell, but I’m afraid it does get results. How about the Patricks? They lawyered up?” I kept my gaze on the increasingly uneasy Pete as he shook his head.

  “Too dumb. They buy the old line about only guilty people getting lawyers, don’t seem to know that cops made up that argument.”

  “We’ll have to attend to that, then,” I answered, looking over to Mike, who was also studying Pete’s manner.

  “Deputy?” Mike asked. “You got something on your mind besides this file and the Patricks?”

  “Well, yeah-ah,” Pete droned, giving his head a wipe with his kerchief. “Although the file’s a puzzle, for sure, on its own. I don’t mean to go above my pay grade, here—”

  “But you think maybe it contradicts some of the things we’ve explained to you,” I said, scanning the file’s pages, which were mostly composed of clerical paperwork.

  The deputy offered no immediate answer, prompting Mike to say, “Is th
at so, Pete?” My partner was now standing before the White Monster and sketching out ideas, indicating how he meant to incorporate all elements of not only our own theories, but the victims’ backgrounds, the locations of their bodies, anything that was pertinent to the case into the great, complex flow chart that would eventually fill the board. “Have you lost faith in our reasoning?”

  “Well, there’s a couple things I noticed, to be honest,” Pete said, clearly hoping that whatever he had to say wasn’t going to get shot down immediately. “First off, seems that, although the pathologist confirmed that he was hanged, too, the kid did have heroin in his system—recently injected. I don’t know if that helps your theory of how the rest of them died or not, since you still haven’t told me exactly what your theory is.”

  “Can’t do that, Pete,” I answered grimly, now studying the file. “Not until we’re sure.” I glanced at the pathology report. “But that heroin is a particularly cunning touch…”

  “Hunh,” Pete noised, dissatisfied. “Well, then, second: when we were in Fraser, you talked about how these kids were interested in better lives, and the things that come with better lives.”

  “We did,” Mike said, still madly writing, now with a lit cigarette hanging from his mouth.

  “Well, the file’s pretty straightforward,” Pete said, cautiously now. “He was an orphan—”

  “Or so we are led to believe,” I said, checking the beginning of the file. “The deaths of the parents were never certified, before or after the infant turned up at Van Ruyter Hall, the oldest and only home for such children—and yes, that is a criticism—in Burgoyne County. From there—”

  “From there,” Pete said, anxious to offer a contribution, “he went through the foster home system, but didn’t luck out until the third try, where it seems like he was happy enough. Mr. and Mrs. Archibald Butler, of North Briarwood. Spent—what was it, seven years with them?”

  “Correct,” I said, eyes still on the file. “Until he was fourteen.” I began to nod in a by-now familiar but no less mournful way when I caught sight of one infuriatingly small form that reported the next important event: “And then Archie and Mrs. Butler disappeared on him…”

  “Yeah,” Pete said. “About a year and a half ago. He tried to stay in South Briarwood Combined, where I guess he was kind of a star basketball player. Made varsity at fourteen.”

  “So Latrell told me,” I murmured, flipping report pages. “Point guard, if memory serves.” Which, of course, it did; and all too vividly.

  “Yeah,” Pete agreed, still more uncomfortably. “Anyway, you have to have a valid home and address to keep attending public school, which he didn’t, anymore; and I guess none of his teammates’ families were willing to take him in—”

  “Are you shocked, Pete?” I asked, holding up a copy of a team photo that had been placed in the report. “Here are the South Briarwood Bobcats, in all their regional championship glory.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Mike said without turning. “ ‘One of these things is not like the others—’ ”

  “ ‘One of these things does not belong,’ ” I said, slowly enunciating the end of the old Sesame Street verse. “An all-white team with one black player. Even if he was liked by his teammates—”

  “Which he was,” Pete said. “The guys were fine with him—I been down there, and it seems like he was a likable kid, generally. But the coach and the parents…”

  “The younger generation is more tolerant, my dear Pete,” I sighed, pulling my watch from the light cotton vest I’d donned before my class. “But they do not yet determine who lives where. And we’ll see how many of them are still tolerant when they grow up and things get tougher—”

  “Anyway,” Mike said, impatient with my observations and wanting to hear the rest of Donnie Butler’s tale.

  “Right,” Pete hurriedly continued. “Anyway, after that, the kid dropped off the grid and right out of the system. Kind of just—didn’t exist, anymore. Couple of social workers tried to find him—”

  “Not very hard,” I said, scanning still another section of the file. “There’s no mention in their reports of having checked the building in which his body was eventually found, for instance.”

  “I thought you said that Latrell brought his body to that building,” Mike called out, again without turning toward us.

  “I did—but don’t you think it’s a fairly safe bet that the building was known as someplace you could at least crash, if you had nowhere to go? And that, ultimately, his body would have been positioned, like those of the others, in a place he had been known to frequent before he died?”

  Mike nodded judiciously. “True…”

  “True is right.” I checked my watch again. “And shouldn’t you be getting ready for something?”

  That brought my partner around. “What? Aw, L.T., you’re not saying I have to teach? Not with all this shit going on, and the White Monster to fill?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying. I had to. Bring home the bacon, son, it’s what pays our bills.”

  Mike dropped his marker in frustration, then stomped over to a coat hanger that held his short-sleeved white dress shirt and clip-on tie, mumbling obscenities. But as he began to change into his garb, he suddenly caught himself. “Wait a minute: Okay, the kid dropped out of sight, and didn’t turn up again until he was dead. So what makes you think he doesn’t fit with the others, Pete?”

  “Just that,” Pete answered matter-of-factly. “There’s no further information, not in the file, not anywhere, so far as we can tell, that says Donnie Butler—who was a star on the high school team, nobody’s questioning that—ever really thought seriously about going to the big time, or about anything but being a playground junkie. He didn’t have any way that we can find of getting to the kind of people you’re talking about, rich New Yorkers, anywhere on his person. No applications to schools, no college brochures or rejections from high school or college scouts, nothing like that. And, the FIC techs haven’t found any evidence at all that he was dealing along with using the heroin, which might at least’ve been a sign of some ambition. All he owned was a bunch of basketball jerseys stuffed in an old gym bag, along with the clothes on his back. So you guys tell me how he fits.”

  I wanted to tell him that we already had at least one strong indication that Donnie more than likely fit the pattern of the deaths: that Mike had done his homework on the syringe, and found it to be an unusually expensive brand used, in New York State, only in a few hospitals—in New York City. But we needed still more concrete evidence of what we were thinking before we could tell either Pete or Steve our suicide theory in full, on the off chance that they would find it simply too outlandish, and might therefore casually let its details slip to the wrong person: after all, even so much as a receptionist in their office could prove a conduit to the BCI. So, as Mike continued to grouse about his being forced to teach on that evening in particular, I kept at the file, although I didn’t have to go much farther before it began to give up its secrets:

  “Pete,” I said slowly, reading one enticing page that plucked at youthful chords in my own heart—and which, more importantly, sent a tremor of sorts concerning the case up through my cranium. “You’re not much of a basketball fan, are you?”

  “Me?” Pete said, surprised. “Nope. Played some football, when I was a kid. But frankly, even in high school, I knew I wanted to be a cop, and I knew that jocks who got straight D’s or hung out with the wrong crowds—and half the JDs we pick up are football players—stood way less of a chance of getting into law enforcement than the ones who went to at least junior college. So, I—”

  “Yes, yes,” I said, holding a hand up to him with my eyes still on the file. “An admirable policy, and one that I’d encourage you to share with the New York City Police Department. But I ask that seemingly random question because you apparently haven’t realized just what Donnie Butler was carrying around in that old gym bag of his.” I craned my head around as far
as I could without losing sight of the papers before me. “Hey, Mike.”

  “What?” Mike barked back, as he began to do up his shirt and tie.

  “I need you to listen to something: ‘Magic Johnson, Los Angeles Lakers jersey, signed, dated 1985; Larry Bird, Boston Celtics jersey, signed, dated 1986; Michael Jordan, Chicago Bulls jersey, signed, dated 1992; Shaquille O’Neal, Los Angeles Lakers jersey, signed, dated 2002.’ ”

  “Hunh,” Mike grunted. “Nice collection, assuming they’re real. Which I’m not assuming for a minute—well, all right, I’ll give it a minute. Assuming they’re real, what’s Donnie doing with them stuffed in a gym bag?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, slightly irritated by his skepticism. “Doesn’t it further prove your hypothesis that these kids all got hooked up, at some point, with people who had serious money and gave them the kinds of things they’d always dreamt of having?”