Cherry dropped me off at the gate to Nicole’s community, or “the village,” as she liked to say. “I’ll call you when my dad gets that info,” she said.
“I don’t know how to thank you.”
“I do.” She waved as she left. I wasn’t exactly sure how, but she reminded me of me. In spite of that, I liked her.
The gate guard phoned the Castros, and another guard drove me to the house. Nicole’s neighborhood was too quiet. The house was big and old. Placard out front: “Historical Landmark, Est. 1844.” The doorknocker was this huge Siberian tiger head, something out of Anna Karenina, a book I never read but told everybody I did to sound smart. I felt like I should have been wearing a top hat and cape as I rang the bell.
Mrs. Castro was happy to see me. She said Nicole was out with her dad, but she was supposed to be back soon. “I just made pizza, super-healthy, whole wheat crust, no cheese, just vegetables.”
“Sounds amazing.” Blehk.
She led me through this enormous house toward the kitchen. The rug tassels had been combed. Even the fire burned neatly, three perfect plumes. “That real?”
“Of course not.”
They needed a golden retriever, and they would have nailed the center spread in Better Homes and Gardens. “No dog?”
She made a face and tapped her nose. “Nicole’s allergies.”
She served me this huge slice of vegetable pizza. Alfalfa sprouts on pizza should be a capital crime. “Best I ever had,” I said.
“Do you think you could get your father to sign my copy of his book?”
“No problem.”
She scanned a bookshelf built into the kitchen wall, all art books. She hit the intercom. “Sylvia?”
“What?” Definitely not pleased. Brief snippet of talent show TV in the background, the final round, crowd roaring.
“Did you see my book, the old one, Steven Nazzaro, After Beauty?”
“It’s in your studio, on that small table by the easel.” She huffed, “I’ll get it.”
“No, darling, I’ll get it.”
“I’ll get it, I said.”
Mrs. Castro slumped back in her chair and closed her eyes. “I thought having an only child was the way to do it, you know? Shower her with happiness. But they still get ruined, no matter your watchfulness, your worry, your singular devotion. Ruin. It’s just what comes. People see beauty, and they have to destroy it.” Her blouse was light pink, and tears splattered darkly. She could have been shot twice in the chest. She wiped her eyes and collected herself. “I’m so sorry. Don’t listen to me. Eat your pizza, Jay. Please.” She went to the refrigerator. “They were supposed to be back by now. ‘Just a quick ride,’ he said.” She poured me a glass of milk. “Jay, what are you not telling me?”
I told her about the black Civic and gave her the plate number. I didn’t have to tell her the plates were stolen. Detective Barrone would find that out fast enough.
“They said it wouldn’t happen again, the police,” Mrs. Castro said. “And that godawful Schmidt.” She grabbed the phone. She lit a cigarette while she waited for the call to go through. Her hands shook. “He’s not picking up. They turn their phones off when they’re with each other, because they think they don’t spend enough time together. Now he wants to spend all this time with her.” She was talking to herself. I heard the beep. “Rafael, I need you to bring Nicole home. Immediately.” She clicked the phone off and then on. I watched her key in the numbers, Barrone’s.
Sylvia came in.
“Hi,” I said.
Sylvia nodded Mrs. Castro’s way. “Now you got her all upset. When she’s upset, she’s not happy until she makes me upset.” She dropped my father’s book onto the table. It was a wreck, thumbed and gripped to the point the cover was coming off.
The security company put a car on the Castros’ house. Nicole and I hung out in the kitchen. Her parents were having a low-voices fight upstairs. Sylvia was stabbing a bunch of yarn into something that resembled a sweater in the living room, with a direct line of sight to me. She nailed me with eyes that said if I so much as tried to hold Nicole’s hand, she was going to run a knitting needle through the back of my head. Nicole was eyeing me too. “Are you hacking me?”
“No. No, I’m not, and I won’t.”
“Promise.”
“Promise.”
Her mother was really yelling now. “I want to go up there,” Nicole said. “I want to make them just shut up and look at each other and remember what it was like back when I was little, when they were young, and they were always holding hands. I used to swing from the bridge. You know, the bridge their hands made?”
Her father came downstairs, heavy footsteps. “Nicole, time to change that bandage.”
“Dad-”
“Now, sweetheart. Your mother’s waiting for you.” He eyed me with a frown. “I’ll drive you home.”
“Thanks, but I have my skateboard.”
“That wasn’t a question.” He was about three inches shorter than I was, weighed less too, but I had no doubt he could tune me up. His eyes were just scary. Blue like Nicole’s, but cold.
The interior of Mr. Castro’s BMW was immaculate. He drove right at the speed limit. “I know your father,” he said. “Rather, I met him. But you knew that.”
“Yessir.”
“My wife was never great at keeping secrets. Bit of a hothead, your father, if you don’t mind my saying. How is it for you, living with a critic?”
“Terrific,” I said.
“You smoke?” Maybe it wasn’t a question. “I smell it on you.”
“I think that was Mrs. Castro.”
“She was smoking in the house? Just what Nicole needs, cancer in the air.” We’d come to a light. “Look, we’re both men here. We know that when women are vulnerable, some men will try to take advantage. Now, I know you’re not one of those types of fellows.”
“No, I’m not.”
“That’s fine. Good. Because I think my little girl has gone through quite enough these past few weeks, ey?”
The light had turned green. The guy behind us honked, but Mr. Castro stayed put. He kept giving me those mean eyes, sharp green now in the reflection of the traffic light.
“Mr. Castro? I’m not out to hurt your daughter. I’m simply trying to be her friend.”
He nodded and drove. “She likes you a lot. She doesn’t know you, but she thinks she does. And isn’t it always that way, for all of us? But you can’t, son. Right?”
“Can’t what?”
“Ever really know anybody. Not even yourself. Do you agree? Don’t be afraid to disagree with me.”
“I’d like to think that’s not true.”
“Indeed. We all want to think that way. But the sooner you confront reality, the sooner you’ll be able to move on. Forward. We must keep moving forward.”
I wanted to get out of that car so bad. “I’m over there, next right onto Valedale. I can get out at the corner.”
He kept driving, right into the lot.
“I can get out here, sir, or just by the mailbox there would be great.”
He drove me all the way up to the lobby. The takeout containers were still there, but the rats had licked them clean. Mr. Castro frowned. “Is he home?”
“My father? Why?”
“Not that I think anybody would be foolish enough to try anything with you, but I promised Nicole and her mother I wouldn’t leave you alone.”
“He’ll be home soon.” Okay, so in this case soon meant two days, but I would have said anything to get out of that car.
He gave me a hard nod and wink. “Thank you.”
“Sir?”
“For the information about that car. For being alert enough to get the license plate. That was well done.”
“No problem.” I tried the door but it was locked with the child-proof safety.
“You were looking out for my daughter. You have my gratitude.” He shook my hand. I thought he was going to break it. “You need a haircut.
“Yessir, I’ll get right on that.”
“Do.” He pulled his hand away quickly and the automatic locks clunked up. I got out, and the BMW zipped out of the lot. On my way in, I picked up the takeout trash and chucked it into the Dumpster.
The Castros had private security, but in my building we didn’t even have security cameras. That woman in the Civic knew where I lived. Now I was the one peeking around corners. I went through the apartment room by room, closet by closet, wondering just what I would do if I found somebody in there. I plugged in my phone for a recharge, and two texts from Angela popped up. The first told me what I already knew, that the license plates on the black Civic backtracked to a red RAV4. The second let me scratch Chrissie Vratos from my suspect list. Angela was able to confirm that Chrissie was at her dentist’s when Nicole was hit. She’d filed a note from her mother with the attendance office, requesting that Chrissie be allowed to leave school early that day for a root canal, but records at the dentist’s office showed Chrissie had come in to get her teeth whitened. All of my female suspects had been crossed off the list, except one: Nicole. I was desperate for any information that would rule her out as somebody somehow involved in the attack.
On the kitchen counter the clunky old landline message machine blinked. I hit PLAY, expecting to hear my father’s voice and an apology for being bombed when he called in the night before. The caller was Detective Jessica Barrone: “This is a message for Steven Nazzaro. Steve, I’ve left word for you twice now. I’d appreciate a call back.”
After my ride with Mr. Castro, I had to face the possibility that my father was somehow involved in this thing-inadvertently, not as the acid thrower, of course, but maybe as an unwitting causal agent. Whatever had gone down between Mr. Castro and him must have been pretty bad to keep Mr. Castro mad so many years later.
I wormed into my father’s email. He’d gotten a warning from E-ZPass about approaching a tollbooth too quickly, seventy miles south of Brandywine, down I-95, at an exit called Marathon. I didn’t know anything about the place, except that it wasn’t near Philadelphia, where he was supposed to be. I clicked up some history on the area, heavily industrial, at least until the economy tanked. Now it was a wasteland of abandoned factories. He’d gotten off the highway at 21:36 last night, and then back on at 23:19. What was he doing down in no-man’s-land for an hour and forty-three minutes?
I burned through New Jersey Traffic’s firewall, back-doored my way into the E-ZPass database and scrolled through his E-ZPass statements. Two months earlier, he’d done the same thing on his way to a show in DC, exiting the highway at Marathon. That time he was MIA for a little less than two hours.
Girlfriend? He’d dated exactly two women after my mother died, maybe five or six dates total, and he’d never tried to hide them from me.
This was not the big break in information I was hoping for.
My bedroom doorknob twisted. The lock was broken, but I’d wedged a chair under the handle. I grabbed my baseball bat.