"Disappeared?" he repeated.
"Yes."
Ray opened his mouth, closed it again. Behind him Ventura's Greenhouse, a popular restaurant and what they called "beer garden," was in full swing. People were watching them. Megan took his hand and walked to the far side of Lucy, near the old gift shop, where they'd be out of sight.
"So," Ray said, something odd in his voice, "after seventeen years, you come back and now another man is, I don't know, gone."
Megan turned to him. "No, I came down after."
"Why?"
"To help."
"Help with what?"
"To help figure out what happened. I tried to run away from it, but now he's back."
Ray shook his head, looking even more confused. "Who's back?"
"Stewart Green."
His voice had a snap in it now. "How can you say that?"
"Someone saw him."
"Who?"
She shook her head. "It doesn't matter."
Ray looked dazed. "I don't understand any of this."
"Yes, Ray, you do."
"What are you talking about?"
"I saw the photograph you sent the cops."
Again he opened his mouth. Again nothing came out. Megan turned toward the fence that surrounded Lucy. She put one foot on the wall of the gift shop and hoisted herself up and over it. She took out the old key and showed it to him. "Come on."
"You think that still works?"
"Doubt it."
Ray didn't hesitate. He hopped the fence too. They moved under Lucy's belly, the one that housed the structure's largest room, toward her rear leg. As she put the key in the lock, Ray came up close to her. She could feel the heat from him.
He tried to keep the pain from his voice, but he couldn't do it. "Why did you run away that night?"
"You know why, Ray."
"Did you kill him?"
That made her stop. "What?"
"Did you kill Stewart Green?"
"No," she said. She moved closer to him, looked into his eyes again. "I never told you how abusive he was. How he hurt me."
He frowned. "You think I didn't know?"
"I guess you did."
The key didn't work.
"Just tell me why you ran," Ray said. "Tell me what happened that night."
"I took that path up to the ruins. I heard a noise and ran over to that big rock on the right. You know the one."
He didn't need to nod.
"I saw Stewart lying there in a pool of blood." She stopped.
"So you ran?"
"Yes."
"Because you thought the police would blame you?"
A tear ran down her cheek. "In part."
Megan waited, hoping that she wouldn't have to say the other part, that he would see it. It took a second or two, but his eyes began to widen.
"Oh my God," Ray said. "You thought it was me."
She said nothing.
"You ran," he said slowly, "because you thought I killed Stewart Green."
"Yes."
"Were you scared of me? Or were you trying to protect me?"
She thought about it. "I could never be afraid of you, Ray. You always made me feel safe."
Ray shook his head. "It explains so much. Why you never came back. Why you never reached out."
"They'd either think I did it. Or you. There was no other way."
Ray took the key from her hand and tried the lock again. It didn't open. He looked lost, devastated.
"I must have arrived right after you ran," he said.
"Was Stewart still lying there?"
Ray nodded. "He was bleeding. I figured that he was dead." He closed his eyes and turned away. "I ran down the hill. I went to your place, afraid, I don't know. I just didn't know. But you were gone. I came here, to Lucy. I thought maybe you'd be hiding inside or something. I waited. But you never showed, of course. I searched for you. For years. I didn't know if you were dead or alive. I saw your face on every street, in every bar." He stopped then, blinked it away, found her eyes again. "Eventually I moved across the country. To Los Angeles, as far away from this place as I could get."
"But you returned."
"Yes."
"Why?"
Ray shrugged. "You know I hate all that mystical crap, right?"
Megan nodded.
"But something drew me back here. I don't know what. I couldn't help it."
She swallowed. The realization was reaching her, sinking in even as she spoke. "And when you returned to Atlantic City, you went back to that spot in the park."
He nodded. "Every February eighteenth."
"You took pictures," she went on. "Because that's what you do, Ray. You see the world through that lens. You process things that way. And you took that picture--the one of Carlton Flynn the night he vanished."
"How did you know it was me?"
"Come on, Ray. I still know your work."
"So what did you think when you saw it?" Ray asked, a slight edge in his tone. "That I did it, right? I killed Stewart and seventeen years later, on the anniversary of that horrible night, I, what, killed this Flynn guy?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because you sent that picture to the police," she said. "You didn't have to take that risk. You're doing the same thing I am. You're trying to help them. You're trying to figure out what really happened that night."
When Ray looked away now, her heart broke anew. Tears came to her eyes. "I was wrong," she said. "All this time I thought... I'm so sorry, Ray."
He couldn't look at her.
"Ray, please?"
"Please what?"
"Talk to me."
He took a few deep breaths, putting himself together a piece at a time. "I still go to the ruins on the anniversary. I sit there, and I think about you. I think about all we lost that night."
She moved closer to him. "And you take pictures?"
"Yes. It helps. It doesn't help. You know what I mean."
She did. "So that picture you sent to the police..."
"It was stolen. Or at least, someone tried to steal it."
"What?"
"I worked this stupid job for Fester--paparazzi at some over-the-top bar mitzvah. Someone jumped me on the street and stole my camera. At first I figured that it was a routine robbery. But then I saw Carlton Flynn on television and I remembered the photograph I took. I had a copy on my computer too."
She said, "So you think whoever jumped you--"
"Killed Stewart Green and Carlton Flynn. Yes."
"You say 'killed.' But we don't know that. They're missing."
"We both saw Stewart Green that night. You think he survived?"
"I think it's possible. You don't?"
Ray said nothing. He looked down and shook his head. She moved closer to him. She reached up and pushed the hair off his forehead. He was still so damn handsome. She moved her hand to his cheek. Her touch made his eyes close.
"All these years," Ray said, his eyes finding hers, "I still look for your face. Every day. I've imagined this moment a thousand times."
"Was it like this?" she asked softly.
He pointed to the hand resting on his cheek. "You weren't wearing a wedding ring."
She took her hand away slowly. "Why are you still in this town, Ray, working for Fester? Why aren't you doing what you love?"
"It's not your problem, Cassie."
"I can still care."
"Do you have kids now?" he asked.
"Two."
"Boys, girls?"
"One girl, one boy."
"Nice." Ray chuckled to himself and shook his head. "You thought I killed Stewart?"
"Yes."
"That helped, I bet."
"What do you mean?"
"To move on. Thinking your boyfriend was a murderer."
She wondered whether that was true.
Ray studied her wedding ring. "Do you love him?" he asked.
"Yes."
"But you still feel so
mething for me."
"Of course."
Ray nodded. "This isn't a line you want to cross."
"Not now, no."
"So the fact that you still feel for me," he said. "That will have to be enough."
"It's a lot."
"It is." Ray took her face in his hands. He had big hands, wonderful hands, and again she felt her knees start to give way. He tried a rakish grin. "If you ever do want to cross that line--"
"I'll call you."
His hand slipped away then. Ray took a step back. She did too. She turned, hopped the fence, and walked back to her car.
She started to drive. For a little while she could still see Lucy in her rearview mirror, but that didn't last. She took the expressway to the Garden State Parkway and drove all the way home--all the way back to her family--without stopping.
20
DEL FLYNN'S MANSION DIDN'T HAVE a sign reading "Tacky" on it because, really, it would have been redundant. The theme was white. Blindingly white. Interior and exterior. There were faux marble columns of white, nude statues in white, white brick, a white swimming pool, white couches against white carpets and white walls. The only splash of color was the orange in Del's shirt.
"Del, honey, you coming to bed?"
His wife, Darya--Mrs. Del Flynn Number Three--was twenty years his junior. She wore tourniquet-tight white and had the biggest chest, ass, and lips money could buy. Yes, she didn't look real, but that was how Del liked his women now--like curvy cartoons with exaggerated features and figures. To some it was freakish. To Del it was sexy as all get-out.
"Not yet."
"You sure?"
Darya was wearing a white silk robe, and nothing else. His favorite. Del wished that the old stirring--his constant life companion, his curse, if you will, that had cost him his beloved Maria, Carlton's mother, the only woman he ever loved--would return without the aid of a certain blue pill. But for the first time in his life, there was no need or desire.
"Go to bed, Darya."
She disappeared--probably, he figured, relieved that she could just watch TV and pass out from whatever combo of wine and pills got her through the night. In the end all women were the same. Except for his Maria. Del sat back in the white leather chair. The white decor was Darya's doing. She said it signified purity or harmony or a young aura--some New Age bullshit like that. When they first met, Darya had been wearing a white bikini and all he wanted to do was defile that, but he was really growing tired of the white. He missed color. He missed leaving his shoes on when he walked in the house. He missed the old dark green couch in the corner. An all-white house is impossible to maintain. An all-white house sets you up for failure.
Del stared out the window. He was not much of a drinker. His father, a first-generation Irish immigrant, had owned a small pub in Ventnor Heights. Del was practically raised in that place. When you see it up close every day, the destruction booze can cause, you got no taste for it.
But right now he sat with a bottle of his favorite, Macallan Single Malt, because he needed to be numb. Del had made a lot of money. He learned the restaurant business, the ins and outs, and realized that it was a pretty lousy way of making a dollar. So he went into restaurant supply--linens, plates, silverware, glasses, you name it. He had started small, but eventually he was the biggest supplier in southern New Jersey. He took that money and bought up property, mostly those private storage units on the outskirts of town, and made a mint.
It all meant nothing.
Sure, that was a cliche, but right now, all Del saw was Carlton. His boy. The disappearance sat on Del, consumed him, made it impossible to breathe. He looked out the window. The pool was covered for the winter, but he could see his son out there, swimming with his buddies, swearing too casually, flirting with whatever honey happened to look his way. True, his son--his only son--was soft. He spent too much time primping, too much time in the gym and waxing his body and plucking his eyebrows, as if that crap was manly. But when his son smiled at him, when his son hugged Del and kissed his cheek because that was what Carlton always did when he left for whatever club at night, Del's chest filled with something so real, so wonderful and life affirming, that he knew, just knew, that he had been put on this planet to feel just that way.
And now, poof, his son, the only thing in his life that truly mattered, that was truly irreplaceable, was gone.
What was Del supposed to do? Sit back and wait? Trust the police to take care of his own offspring? Stick to the rules in a city that never played fair?
What kind of father does that?
You take care of your own. You protect your son, no matter what the cost.
It was midnight. Del fiddled with the gold chain around his neck, the Saint Anthony medal Maria had given him on their tenth wedding anniversary. Saint Anthony, she explained, was the patron saint of lost things. "Don't ever lose us, okay?" she said, as she put it around his neck. Then she put one around Carlton's neck too. "Don't ever lose Carlton and me."
Prophetic.
From the bedroom he could hear the television. Darya was watching on their new fifty-three-inch, 3-D screen with the surround sound. Here Del was--in this white home, sitting here in the lap of luxury--and he was powerless. He felt helpless and impotent and fat and comfortable while his boy was out in the cold and dark somewhere. Carlton could be alone somewhere. He could be trapped or crying or in tremendous pain. He could be bleeding or calling out to his father to save him.
When Carlton was four, he had been scared to go on the "big boy" slide at the playground. Del got on him about that, even going so far as to call him a baby. Nice, right? Carlton started to cry. That just pissed Del off even more. Finally, merely to please (or shut up) his old man, Carlton started climbing up the ladder. The ladder was too crowded, the kids jostling one another as they made their way up. Carlton, the smallest kid on the ladder, lost his balance. Del could still remember that moment, standing at a distance, his arms crossed as he watched his only son topple backward, knowing, even as he started to run toward him, that there was no way he was going to get there in time, that he, the boy's father, had not only shamed his son and caused the fall but also that he was powerless to do anything to save him.
Little Carlton landed wrong, his arm snapping back like a bird's wing. He screamed in pain. Del had never forgotten that moment. He had never forgotten that feeling of powerlessness or that horrible scream. Now that scream was back, haunting his every waking moment, shredding his insides like hot shrapnel.
Del took another sip of the Macallan. Behind him, someone cleared his throat. Normally Del was on the jumpy side, the kind of guy who leapt at the smallest sound. Maria used to comment about that. He was a light sleeper, his nights filled with bad dreams. Maria understood that. She would wrap her arms around him and whisper in his ear and calm him. No one did that now. Darya could sleep through a rock concert. Del just had to deal with his terrors alone now.
God, he had loved Maria.
He'd been so happy back then, living in that dilapidated house on Drexel Avenue, but the demons had called to him and Maria couldn't understand it. When you stepped back and thought about it, the whole thing made no sense. You could be addicted to booze or drugs or gambling. You could lose your house, your health, your money. You could be belligerent and even abusive--but if the cause was, say, booze or pills or the ponies, the world understood your pain. Your true love stayed with you and got you help. But if your demon was sex, if you needed what Del needed, what every normal friggin' man in the history of mankind eventually gave in to, if you do something that was built into man's DNA, something that really harmed nobody in the way drinking or pills did, except through jealousy--then no one understands and you lose everything.
It was her fault, really. Maria's. Raising that kid with no father figure in the house. Not being able to forgive or to understand what a man was like. He had loved her. How did she not get that?
"Good evening, Mr. Flynn."
The voice chille
d the room. Del Flynn slowly turned around. When Ken and Barbie smiled at him, the temperature dropped another ten degrees.
"Did you find my son?"
"Not yet, Mr. Flynn."
They both just stood there, looking as though they'd just finished a song on the old Lawrence Welk Show or... what was that dumb holiday show his parents used to watch every year? The King family. What the hell ever happened to them? And why did seeing these two always make him think of the weirdest crap?
"So what do you want?"
"We have a dilemma, Mr. Flynn," Ken said.
"A moral dilemma," Barbie added.
Del knew people. You don't live around here and work with restaurants and trucking and not meet people. One of his best friends growing up was Rolly Lember, who was now head of organized crime in the Camden area. Del had gone to him for help with finding his son. He knew that he was making a deal with the devil. He didn't much care. Lember had told him that he'd have his people on the lookout, but Del would be better off hiring two expert freelancers--the best in the business. He warned him not to be too shocked by their appearances. Del also reached out to Goldberg, a cop well-known for providing inside information for a fee.