The Garden of Betrayal by Lee Vance

Author:Lee Vance
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307593801
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-11-25T23:00:00+00:00

23

Reggie’s car was parked at a hydrant just outside the main entrance. I opened the door and climbed in, letting my head drop back against the rest as I sat.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

Everything, but I wasn’t ready to get into it with him.

“Smells like puke in here.”

“Gave a runaway a ride home this afternoon. Bought him a thirty-two-ounce orange Slurpee and a foot-long Snickers bar to keep him quiet. Live and learn. But you looked unhappy before you got in.”

“Family trouble,” I said, scrabbling for the window switch.

“With Kate?”

“Maybe,” I replied, thinking of the angry look she’d given me. I lowered the window halfway and turned my face to the opening, inhaling a lungful of cold, fresh air. The car really stank.

“I saw her canoodling with some Asian kid on a bench down the block. They going out?”

“I guess so.” I hadn’t considered her relationship in quite those terms before. It was another subject I didn’t feel ready to pursue. “So, what’s up?”

He struck a match and lit a cigarette. It was the first time I could recall being grateful for the odor.

“I think I found the guy who stole the car.”

I jerked upright, galvanized as if by an electric shock.

“You talk to him?”

“Not yet,” he said, stuffing his crumpled pack of cigarettes and matches into a cup holder. “Tonight.”

“So, what are we waiting for?”

He gave me a baleful glance.

“Who’s ‘we,’ paleface?”

It was the punch line to an old joke, Tonto’s reply to the Lone Ranger when he observed that they were both about to be killed by hostile Indians.

“There’s some kind of problem because I’m the wrong color?” I asked, confused.

Reggie laughed.

“Nah. There’s some kind of problem because you look like you work in an office on Park Avenue. The guy I found will be more talkative if he’s scared.”

“Trust me,” I said forcefully, “I meet the person who might’ve murdered my son, and I’m going to look like what I am—someone who wants to fucking kill him.”

He nodded, perhaps conceding the point.

“Which brings us to the second issue. You’re involved here.”

“And you aren’t?”

The rebuttal popped out before I had time to think about it. Reggie chewed on it for a minute, one thumb drumming on the steering wheel, and I realized it had been exactly the right thing to say. He’d dedicated his life to finding people who were lost or taken, and he was honest enough with himself not to pretend it was just a job. He’d never given up on Kyle, because he cared.

He took a hit from his cigarette, sighed as he exhaled, and then dropped the car into gear. We made an illegal U-turn across four lanes of traffic and headed south on York Avenue. I kept quiet as we passed Rockefeller University, not wanting to accidentally dissuade him from his apparent decision to let me ride along. The sun was already down, and the Rockefeller campus was a floodlit oasis, a grassy fifteen-acre chunk of Harvard or Princeton transported to the Upper East Side.

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