Dead Silence Page 9

  Aside from a couple of cruel scam artists, though, no one had ever come forward to claim the reward. Good thing, because a year later, the money had been swallowed by the worst global economic downturn since the Great Depression.

  In the kitchen, she hears the clatter of lumber and whirring of a power tool. The workmen are here, embarking on their day of disruption.

  She looks away from the advertisement, back at Aaron.

  “The ring is mentioned there, Amelia.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  He shrugs, taking the phone back from her, swiping away the screen, and putting it back into his pocket. “Okay, then. I have to get to the office.”

  “No, wait. You think Lily Tucker is a liar, is that it? You think she came across the ad from . . . what, eight years ago? And she had a ring made up based on my description? Well, guess what? I left a detail out of that description. The ad doesn’t specify which initial was engraved on it. So, if the ring is a fake, Lily Tucker had a one in twenty-six chance of getting it right. Maybe she played the odds. Or maybe she’s the real deal.”

  “If you believe it, then I believe it.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “You’re right. I don’t. Maybe if I met her . . .”

  “You want to meet her?”

  “Do I want to? No. Will I?” He shrugs. “I think I should. I deal with liars every day of my life. It’s part of my job.”

  Lying is part of your job, too.

  But she doesn’t dare say it. Early in his career—in their marriage—a discussion about legal ethics had morphed into one of the worst arguments they’d ever had. Now the topic is off-limits.

  “She has another appointment next week,” Amelia tells him. “You can come and meet her.”

  “I’ll be in California. Just be careful. I don’t like the sound of this.” He picks up his briefcase and heads for the door. “Oh, I’ll be home late. That dinner meeting I told you was last night—it’s tonight.”

  A crazy impulse flies into her head. “I won’t be home tonight, anyway. Girls’ weekend in Ithaca,” she says as if she’d already told him about it, and he’d forgotten.

  “Oh, right. Is that today?”

  “Yes. I’m . . . taking a bus up after work. So I guess I’ll see you Sunday.”

  “I leave for the airport at five that night. I’m in LA all next week. When are you coming home?”

  “Not before five.”

  “I’ll miss you.” Aaron covers the distance between them and puts his arms around her. “Have fun with Jessie.”

  “I always do. Have a good trip.”

  “I always do.”

  The alarm bleats again as the door closes behind him.

  Man, how things can change in eight years, she thinks, turning it off and taking a suitcase from her closet. And in eight minutes.

  A jackhammer blasts Barnes from sleep, and he’s home in Washington Heights—until he opens his eyes to blinding sunlight and pastel décor.

  Ah. This is Santa Maria del Mar, and that isn’t construction noise. It’s Rob, knocking at the door of his hotel room. “Barnes! You in there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Alone?”

  He turns his throbbing head to make sure the adjacent pillow is empty. “Yeah.”

  “You going to let me in?”

  “Yeah.”

  He staggers over to open the door.

  Rob is dressed in white linen and dark glasses, clutching three grease-splotched brown paper sacks. “Breakfast to go. We leave for the airstrip in ten minutes.”

  “How about fifteen?” He swallows too much saliva. “Or tomorrow?”

  “What the hell happened after we left the nightclub? I thought you were right behind me.”

  “I was, but . . .”

  He slogs through the memory. Right, while Rob had been climbing the stairs to his ocean view room, Barnes had gone in search of a vending machine for bottled water. There, he’d run into a local beauty who’d invited him to share a beachfront nightcap. One thing led to another. He remembers lying with her in his arms as the sun came up, watching seabirds dip low to pluck fish from the sea, and then spotting a couple of fins in the curl of a wave. Sharks, feeding too close to shore for his comfort.

  He’d staggered back to his room, scrubbed sand from his privates in a hot shower, and dropped into bed . . . what? Less than an hour ago, according to his watch . . . and if raising his wrist to check the time is making him this queasy, he can guess what’s going to happen when he boards a small plane.

  “Who was she? Juanita?”

  “No.”

  “Elena?”

  Barnes shakes his pounding head.

  “Both? You dog.”

  “Come on, Rob.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time, my friend.”

  “It would in this century.” Barnes retrieves his wallet and passport from the nightstand drawer where he’d left them for safekeeping.

  “Then who was it?”

  “Ana Benita.”

  “The bartender? Hope you got her recipe for that papaya coconut rum drink.”

  “Do not”—Barnes pauses to swallow, eyes closed—“mention rum. Please.”

  “You told me yesterday that it’s all you need from now on.”

  “I don’t remember saying that. And you shouldn’t say that, by the way.”

  “Say what?”

  “Papaya. Ana Benita said Cubans call it fruita bomba, because papaya translates into a nasty word.”

  “Which one?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me. It’s not like we did a whole lot of talking.”

  “Really? Because you also mentioned yesterday that you’re through with women.”

  “What I said is that women are nothing but trouble. That, I remember.”

  “You also said Sully is nothing but trouble.”

  Barnes ignores that, forcing his legs to start moving toward the bathroom. “I need to, uh, shave.”

  “Yesterday you told me you were going to grow your mustache again.”

  “What are you, my personal historian?” Barnes closes the bathroom door and throws up into the toilet.

  “Doesn’t sound like shaving to me,” Rob calls from the other side of the door.

  Barnes washes his face and brushes his teeth, careful not to swallow any water, having been warned about dysentery and even cholera. He smooths white foam over his stubbly jaw, remembering how Ana Benita had stroked it with shellacked red fingernails, and how devastated she’d been when he’d told her he was checking out in the morning. She’d reacted as though they were longtime lovers in some Turner Classic movie, clinging to him as though he were going off to war.

  “Stay here with me,” she’d begged in Spanish, “and I’ll show you my country.”

  “Wish I could”—not entirely the truth—“but I’m traveling with my friend, and he’s made the arrangements.”

  “Why Baracoa? No one goes there unless they want to get lost. You really want to get lost?”

  Not like he has much choice in the matter.

  The Roots and Branches Project genealogists had discovered that Rob is descended from the Taíno Indians, an indigenous pre-Columbian tribe that had populated Baracoa centuries ago. He’s already visited, and now wants Kurtis and Barnes to see it.

  Forty minutes later, Barnes is on the tarmac eyeing the plane Rob had chartered—not, he’d said, an easy feat even in this new era. He’d predicted it would be “vintage.”

  Decrepit is a more apt description.

  “You sure this thing can fly?” Barnes asks him.

  “Guess we’ll find out.”

  Kurtis glares. “Not funny, Dad.”

  Barnes eyes the laid-back pilots, who could pass for singers in a boy band and greeted them with a casual “Que vola?”—the Cuban version of “What’s up?”

  “Rob, seriously, are you sure they’re old enough for a pilot’s license?”

  “They’re not old enough for a driver’s l
icense,” Kurtis says. “And I heard that there’s a hurricane coming. Some of the airlines are canceling flights.”

  “Not a hurricane, just a tropical storm, and it’s headed for South America. That’s way south of here.”

  “Not as ‘way south’ as it is from home. This is crazy. We should get out while we can.”

  Rob pats his son’s arm. “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.”

  “I’m not worried. I’m pissed off.”

  “There’s not a cloud in the sky, and I want you to see where you come from, son.”

  “I come from New Jersey.” At his father’s look, he says, “What? That’s home.”

  “You can’t compare Saddle River to Baracoa. You’re going to feel something when you get there, I guarantee it.”

  “You mean something other than pissed off? Because I—”

  “Pride, son. You’re going to grasp your roots, and you’re going to understand who you are.”

  “I know who I am.”

  “I don’t think you do. I’m talking about who you are in here”—Rob taps his chest—“and in your blood. Our ancestors were in Baracoa when Christopher Columbus showed up over five hundred years ago. And for centuries before that. It’s the oldest town in Cuba.”

  “Does that mean they don’t have Wi-Fi?”

  “They do, in spots. But the place where we’re staying doesn’t. Trust me, you won’t miss it.”

  Kurtis mutters something.

  “Well, I won’t miss it.” Barnes pulls his phone from his pocket and turns it off as they board the plane. It’s sweltering inside, somewhat battle scarred, and so grungy that the New York City subway is pristine by comparison. A few of the seats are broken and all are worn, the seatbelts so dated it takes some maneuvering to figure out how to fasten them. There are no safety instructions—not in English, anyway. Nor in Spanish. Barnes is fluent, but he has no idea what the pilots are saying as they chain-smoke their way into the cockpit.

  “Isn’t it illegal for the flight crew to smoke on a plane?” Kurtis asks Rob, who shrugs.

  “Things are different in Cuba. More relaxed.”

  “More dangerous. I say we cancel this stupid trip.”

  “Come on, Kurtis, relax. It’s going to be fine. You’ve never been a nervous flier, and—”

  “I’m not nervous!”

  “You seem like you are. Look at Uncle Stockton. He’s cool as a cucumber.”

  Yeah. Sure he is.

  “Dad, this is stupid. I just want to go back to the resort. This isn’t fair! I want—”

  “And I want you to stop acting like a five-year-old. Time to grow up, kid.”

  “Yo, I’m not a kid. I’m almost thirty.”

  “Yo, it’s time to man up, man.”

  Barnes cringes, and not just because it’s the wrong thing for Rob to have said in this moment.

  “This is about the election again, isn’t it?” Kurtis asks Rob.

  “Of course it isn’t about the election.”

  Kurtis rolls his eyes. “Okay. Sure. Whatever you say.”

  Barnes looks from one to the other. “The presidential election? What about it?”

  “Yeah, we don’t see eye to eye on a couple of matters,” Rob says.

  Barnes has a feeling that he and Rob don’t see eye to eye on a couple of election-related matters, either, and he isn’t interested in debating it. He’s tripped and fallen into one too many political arguments at the pub and precinct lately. He’ll be glad when the divisive election is over, and life can get back to normal.

  “You voting, Barnes?”

  “I always vote.”

  “So do I. But Kurtis here was all about Bernie Sanders, and since he’s not running . . .”

  “You’re not voting, Kurtis?”

  “For Hillary Clinton? No way.”

  Barnes, who is, doesn’t ask him why not.

  “She’s not running unopposed,” Rob points out.

  “Yeah, I’m not voting for your golf buddy, either.”

  “You and Donald Trump are golf buddies?”

  “Not buddies,” Rob tells Barnes. “We golfed together—back when he was doing The Apprentice, he wanted one of my artists to be on the show.”

  Kurtis slouches in his seat, arms folded, sunglasses masking his glower, untouched breakfast bag on his lap. He, too, appears hungover this morning, though when his father had asked about his evening on the way to the airport, he’d said only that he’d gone “out.”

  The butter-grilled Cuban bread, guava jam, and sliced papaya—er, fruita bomba—Barnes had gobbled on the way to the airport had settled his stomach, but takeoff rivals any Coney Island thrill ride he’s ever experienced. A fresh wave of nausea hits as the plane makes an arching curve above the cobalt sea.

  “You okay, there?” Rob asks as Barnes gags and clasps a palm to his mouth. So much for cool as a cucumber. “Look, it’ll be better when we level off and the cabin cools off.”

  Neither of those things happen.

  He fans himself with a mid-twentieth-century travel brochure he’d grabbed yesterday in Havana: palm trees, sugary sand, and busty bathing beauties holding coconut drinks.

  Rum.

  Flies—actual flies—buzz around Kurtis’s breakfast bag, and he tosses it onto the floor.

  Forcing back bile-tinged saliva, Barnes shouts above the rattling engine roar, “How long is the flight?”

  “Couple of hours.” Rob pats his arm. “Why don’t you take a nap? Looks like you can use it.”

  Barnes leans back, closes his eyes, and falls into a queasy, uneasy sleep. Ana Benita shows up in his dream—nice—but she soon morphs into a tiny redheaded spitfire. Sully? Dammit.

  They’re back in New York, on a case, trying to find a lost child. A little girl.

  “Did you get a description, Gingersnap?” his dream self asks, using his cozy old nickname for his partner.

  “She looks just like you,” Sully tells him.

  Just like me . . .

  “How old is she?”

  “Same age as I am, Uncle Stockton.” Kurtis is there, wearing sunglasses and earbuds. “We were born the same day.”

  “What’s her name?” Barnes asks.

  Kurtis shakes his head.

  Barnes turns to Sully. “Gingersnap! What’s her name? Tell me her name!”

  “You know what it is, Barnes. You know. Man up! You need to find her!”

  He wakes with a start.

  The cabin is still warm and thick with the pilots’ tobacco smoke. The sky has gone from clear blue to foreboding, and there are rain spatters on the window. The plane is still flying low, tilting to and fro above a verdant landscape.

  “Rob. Are we almost there?”

  “Almost.”

  “You said that fifteen minutes ago,” Kurtis mutters, and Barnes looks down at his discarded bag of hotel breakfast.

  “You going to eat that?”

  “All yours, Uncle Stockton. But I saw a couple of cockroaches poking around it.”

  Barnes doesn’t doubt it. He grabs the bag with a clammy hand, trying not to think about roaches or the grease stains or food . . . rum . . .

  The plane lurches and a choppy sea looms at a crazy angle beyond the window. Barnes turns away, heart pounding like those whitecaps.

  Man up! Sullivan Leary says in his head, just as she had countless times on the job. Somehow, she’d always been tougher than he was, particularly when a missing child case ended badly. Especially when it involved a little girl.

  The plane drops like a high-speed car into a pothole, and his breakfast lurches in the opposite direction. He dumps the breakfast bag contents onto the floor and uses the paper sack as an airsickness bag.

  “Hanging in there, Barnes?” Rob asks.

  “Oh, yeah. Doing great.” He swallows. “You sure that hurricane’s in South America?”

  “Tropical storm, and I’m positive.”

  “Then are you sure we couldn’t have driven instead?”

  �
��There weren’t even any roads to get here until the sixties.”

  “Yeah, but there are roads now,” Kurtis points out.

  “There’s a road. You think this is bumpy? Do you know how long it would have taken us to—” The plane makes another arc in the gray sky, and Rob points out the window. “There it is! That’s El Yunque!”

  On the wildly diagonal land-and-seascape below, wisps of mist trail like streamers from an anvil-shaped mountain. As they fly on past, the clouds evaporate and the sky is brilliant again, sun twinkling on an aquamarine bay.

  “That’s Baracoa,” Rob says. “See it there, spread out along the water?”

  Barnes presses his forehead to the glass to glimpse a dizzying hodgepodge of vibrant-hued wooden structures and red tile rooftops. At least his stomach is empty, so he’s no longer afraid of losing the contents.

  The plane lurches.

  No, he just has to fear losing his damned life.

  He’s used to that, though, right? He’s NYPD.

  He finds himself thinking of Sully again, wishing he’d told her about this Cuba trip. She’d have been happy for him. She knows how desperately he’s always wanted to travel here, just like she knows just about everything else about him. More than Rob does, and definitely more than Barnes’s ex-wife has ever known. You get close to someone, working cases together year in and year out. But when one of you leaves the job . . .

  It’s over.

  Just like it was over with Frank DeStefano, his first partner who’d promised to keep in touch after he’d retired to a Myrtle Beach condo, but hadn’t, other than sporadic phone calls early on.

  Barnes hadn’t expected that to happen with Sully, though. They’d worked together far longer than he and Stef, with far more in common. For a while there, they’d been a two-member support group, simultaneously muddling through their divorces from fellow cops. He’d even wondered if maybe, eventually, their relationship could have evolved from friends and partners to—

  The plane wobbles to a lower altitude, and the copilot speaks rapid-fire Spanish from the cockpit.

  “Yo, Uncle Stockton, what’d he say?”

  “I, uh . . . I think we’re landing.”

  “Landing where? In the ocean?” Kurtis asks as they dip toward jagged rocks silhouetted beneath the translucent turquoise water.