The first week that followed Ryske’s departure was odd.
Harlow had been living alone in her apartment for a couple of months before meeting Ryske, so it shouldn’t be weird to be there by herself. But, for some reason, without him and his crew around taking up space, the place seemed to echo.
During the second and third week, she tried to adjust, telling herself on a regular basis that she had to move on. A month after he’d told her to take it easy and slipped out into the night, she was beginning to feel like herself again.
Though Harlow still found herself thinking of Ryske when she shouldn’t. Every time her mind wandered it ended up landing on him. On his inability to pick up after himself or make a bed. On his love of Szechuan and greasy blue burgers. On his smirk. His scent. His long showers, broad fingers… his strong grip.
Cajoling her mind away from her former houseguest and back to the moment, Harlow glanced around at the family services bullpen she’d been working in for two and a half months.
Seated outside her supervisor’s office, she was waiting for her boss, Gina, to get back, so they could do an urgent review of one of her current cases. The file on her lap contained the details she’d need for the meeting. In the meantime, all she could do was sit there and scan the busy space that was bustling with the colleagues she’d been trying to bond with since she got there.
Harlow sought a friend, but came up short. In ten weeks, she hadn’t met a single person who wanted more than a professional relationship. Considering herself friendly, she didn’t understand why it was so hard to connect with people.
Sometimes she got distracted and blinkered in work. Maybe that made a bad impression on her peers. That focus should make a better impression on Gina. Though it didn’t seem to. Despite being productive and efficient and thorough, Harlow doubted that her boss could pick her out of a line-up.
Gina came around the corner and stormed down the perimeter of the room with a look on her face like she was ready to take on the world. That certainty and determination was enviable. Gina was a hard woman, tough, maybe a little cynical, but she got the job done. Harlow admired how, despite coming from a difficult background, Gina stayed in the trenches to help the kind of people she’d grown up with even though the job was thankless and never ending.
Leaping to her feet when Gina passed, Harlow stayed close and followed the woman into the office, holding her file in one hand.
“Felipe Soto,” Gina said, dropping into her seat and pulling herself in at the desk. “I just got off the phone with the detective in charge. They’ve still got nothing. Our relationship with the police department is currency.”
Putting pressure on the already stretched police department wouldn’t win her team any friends. “I know,” Harlow said, feeling a little like a kid in front of the principal.
“You saw the kid the day he disappeared. His dad goes to jail and then the kid vanishes. The cops thought it was payback. Pablo Soto has enemies; he’s not an easy guy to warm up to.” Felipe’s father was a nasty piece of work. Harlow had never met him, reading the file was enough to bring her to that conclusion. “You said you got a sense of something else.”
Though there was a chair right beside her, she hadn’t been invited to sit, so Harlow just stood there, clutching her file. “I did. I… I told the police. Felipe spoke about his responsibility to his mom. How he wanted to look after her.”
“You know Clyde was working with him for a while, that he helped keep him away from the gangs in that neighborhood.” Gina laid her forearms on the desk and gave Harlow something of a condescending look. “I know you’re not from the city and some of the things you’ve seen have probably shocked your little suburban eyes.”
“I—”
“You’re still in your probationary period and losing a high-risk kid puts you on the watch list, you know?” That didn’t sound like a threat, but Harlow did get the sense that her boss wasn’t confident in her newest employee’s abilities. “We’ve worked with you a lot, everyone in this department has.”
Was that a complaint? Was Gina telling Harlow she was a burden or about to fire her ass?
“I appreciate everything you’ve done, I—”
“It’s Friday night; everyone gets together for a drink on a Friday.” Harlow had never quite made it to one of the weekly gatherings and got a sense she’d been judged for that too. “I want you to spend some time with Clyde. Talk to him. While our relationships with official agencies, like the cops, are important, it’s just as important that we cultivate relationships on the ground, in the neighborhood. Means when things like this happen, we can reach out to our own network. You know how it is, or you should… sometimes folks will say things to people who aren’t cops, people like us.”
“I know.”
As soon as she’d gotten the message that Felipe had been reported missing, Harlow had gone to see his mom, Martina. The cops were already there and after finishing with Martina, they’d taken a statement from Harlow too. Given that she had been working with the boy, she’d been on their list of people to talk to. Doing it at the Soto’s apartment just saved them from tracking her down at the social work office.
Harlow had suggested hitting the street to look for him herself. Both the detective in charge and Gina had told her not to.
Seemed that advice was about to change. “Tomorrow, if there’s been no news, we’re going to go by the neighborhood, see if we can get anyone to talk. You won’t be able to do much, but Clyde and I will introduce you around. It will help you to see how things work on the street. A day or two of following leads will be good for you. Part of our job involves playing detective sometimes. This is not your cushy little suburban office.”
So that was why Gina didn’t like her? Harlow came from an affluent home and a safe neighborhood. She’d expected it would take time to gain respect, but was at a greater disadvantage if no one would give her the chance to do that.
Gina was biased, it didn’t take a genius to see that. In their few encounters, Clyde had always been nice to her. Maybe some of his ease would rub off on the boss if they spent the next couple of days working together. If not, this was going to be the weekend from hell.
Harlow wasn’t disappointed, but only because she’d been right.
The weekend wasn’t off to a great start. Standing on a cold street corner, she tried shuffling her feet and rubbing her arms to heat herself up. The last thing she wanted was to be accused of complaining, so she tried to be subtle about combatting her discomfort.
Clyde was an interesting man. She’d spoken to him before but had never spent much time in his company. Last night, during their drinks with colleagues, Harlow had little choice except to bond with him. All through the Friday night, Gina had kept steering Harlow back to him, reminding her of Clyde’s experience on the streets.
There hadn’t been any word on Felipe overnight. Given that, Harlow had agreed to meet with Clyde and Gina that Saturday evening, on their own time, to canvass the neighborhood, asking questions about the youngster.
They’d learned that most everyone knew a neighborhood kid had been reported missing to the cops, but that only seemed to make the community more wary about answering questions.
Harlow hadn’t done a lot of talking; she’d done a lot of listening. It turned out that Felipe’s mother, Martina, had called the cops to report him missing, but had then tried to retract the report for some reason. People in the Soto apartment building had nice things to say about Felipe, and fewer nice things to say about some of the other kids who they seemed to think it was necessary to talk about.
As for pinpointing Felipe’s whereabouts, they’d had no luck.
After trying every apartment in the Soto’s building, and managing to speak with someone in maybe two thirds of the residences, they’d moved on to other buildings on the block. Without any leads there, the next thing was to try some of Felipe’s hang outs.
Someone Gina knew had walked past them on the opposite side of the street. Thinking she was more likely to get somewhere on her own, Gina had told Harlow and Clyde to wait while she went across to see if the woman knew anything useful.
Gina had been over there for at least three minutes. Whatever the woman was talking about, she was animated. Maybe rather than having something vital to say, the woman just over-exaggerated her movement to keep warm. Harlow figured she couldn’t be the only one who was cold.
“Would you like my jacket?”
Clyde’s question took her attention away from Gina who was still chatting on the other side of the street. “Your… no, thank you… Then you’ll be cold.”
“I’m trying to be a gentleman over here,” he said and when he smiled, she did too. He nodded toward Gina. “Do you think she’s getting anywhere?
“I hope so,” she said, though wasn’t optimistic given how they’d struck out consistently over the last four hours.
Pushing back the cuff of her jacket, Harlow checked her watch. It was closer to five hours since she’d met Clyde and Gina out here. Five hours of wandering without hope, feigning enthusiasm, asking questions and facing nothing but resistance.
As Harlow was righting her cuff, Gina bid her contact farewell and checked for traffic as she crossed the street. There were no cars in sight. For some reason, Noon popped into her mind. She wondered if people around here kept their cars parked somewhere else just in case he chose to swipe them.
“Anything?” Clyde asked when Gina reached them.
Gina shook her head and started down the street in a stroll. Harlow and Clyde fell into step on either side of her. Harlow had never seen Gina walk so slowly, usually she was in a rush to get from A to B. If her boss was sauntering, Harlow guessed either she was thinking about their next move or coming up short.
“It’s after midnight,” Gina said. “We can’t knock on anymore doors.”
“Probably not a good idea to keep walking the streets either,” Clyde said. “It’s dangerous around here after dark. We’ve been pushing our luck.”
It didn’t seem so scary when they were in lit buildings, talking to people. It didn’t feel so late either. Not until she thought about the young teen who could be out there somewhere scared and alone.
Still, Harlow agreed with Gina’s assessment that it was too late to go knocking on people’s doors. “So is that it?” she asked. “Time to go home?”
“Time to give up,” Gina said with a thread of judgment.
Despite her efforts, Harlow hadn’t won over her boss.
“There’s one place we haven’t tried,” Clyde said, slowing when they reached the corner.
He didn’t elaborate with words, but nodded across the intersection to the diagonal corner of the crossroads.
Gina laughed. Harlow turned to see where he was talking about. Floyd’s. Her reaction was immediate, but somehow, she managed to internalize it. They’d come at it from the opposite side, so she hadn’t recognized where they were.
This was the neighborhood where her department did most of their work. She’d known Floyd’s was close by but had been so preoccupied with her concern for Felipe that she hadn’t grasped they were about to come upon it.
Her heart began to race. Standing there, on that open corner, she was exposed. Any member of Ryske’s crew could come out at any second and see her loitering.
Since Ryske had left her apartment, she hadn’t heard a peep from him or his friends. Still, all of them invaded her thoughts at different, sometimes inconvenient, times. Concern for their welfare made Harlow go so far as to check obits and scan the internet for stories about tragedy in this neighborhood. Each time she didn’t find the name of anyone she knew, she’d been relieved. Though, that didn’t really mean anything. There were no guarantees.
No amount of reading could give her assurances about their safety. Without talking to them, Harlow couldn’t be sure that Ryske, or his crew, was even alive. Anything could have happened on Ryske’s return to Floyd’s. A confrontation with Alleyman could have ensued and maybe one of them had ended up with more than a scar.
In the nights, lying in her bed, where Ryske had slept so many times, she wished she knew more about the man… and where he called home. Without knowing anything about his regular life, his life that didn’t include her, Harlow couldn’t picture him anywhere but in her bed or Bale’s—both places she’d slept with him.
As far as she was aware, he was alive. That was what she told herself anyway. Letting her mind run wild with other possibilities would drive her insane. Coming to terms with the fact that she’d never see him again had been harder than convincing herself that Ryske was still breathing, still out in the world… somewhere.
Having gone out of her way to avoid walking by Floyd’s over the last month, Harlow didn’t expect to be looking at it again that night. Before Ryske, she’d been afraid of the place that her colleagues told her was dangerous. Since meeting the crew who called the bar home, her motivation for avoiding it wasn’t about fear… not for her safety anyway.
“That place is full of adults,” Gina said. “Criminals. The dregs of the neighborhood. Why would they know where a kid was hiding? Why would they care?”
“You know why,” Clyde said. “A lot of gang members graduate up into more organized crime, which means those criminals have links to the kids that run errands for them. Felipe talked about wanting to look out for his mom, to provide for her. Martina Soto said if Felipe’s father ever went to prison again, she’d never take him back. So now Felipe thinks of himself as the man of the house.”
That had pretty much been what Harlow had told the police. The notion of a kid feeling responsible for a family saddened her. Clyde seemed more accepting, but that just left her incredulous.
Resigned and pained in equal measure, Harlow didn’t like Felipe’s vision of the future. “He’s thirteen,” she said.
Both Clyde and Gina gave her looks containing varying degrees of sympathy and pity. They thought of her as naïve. Maybe she was. Their reactions drove Harlow to raise her chin in defiance. Her opinion was that no thirteen year-old should have to shoulder adult responsibilities, not those equivalent to supporting a whole household. Wavering or shrinking wouldn’t win her respect. She had something to prove in this city, not only to her clients, but her colleagues as well.
“Doesn’t matter how old he is,” Gina said. “He’s not been showing up to school, and if he wants to earn money, there are plenty of ways he can do that around here.”
“Illegal ways,” Clyde said. “And if someone wants to earn a quick buck or work a long con, there’s only one place around here for that.”
He and Gina turned their sights to Floyd’s. Harlow couldn’t work out if Clyde was waiting for Gina’s go ahead, or if Gina was even considering going inside. But Harlow was about done standing out here in the cold. Dithering wasn’t making progress. She didn’t want to go home without knowing she’d done everything she could to find Felipe. The kid could be in serious trouble.
All night she’d been sidelined as an observer and hadn’t been allowed to lead conversations or even ask questions. Taking a secondary position, deferring to others, was part of what she’d wanted to get away from both in her personal and professional lives in the suburbs.
In the city, she had promised herself to be proactive. To take control. To pursue her own path.
“I’ll go,” Harlow said and took a step toward the curb.
Gina caught her arm. “Whoa, no. No way. You don’t know what you’re walking into in there.”
Oh, but she did. Much as she’d vowed never to force herself into Ryske’s life, Maze had said he owed her one and this was about a kid’s life. Someone in Floyd’s could have an answer that would help Felipe.
Gina had told her to cultivate relationships in the neighborhood. Harlow would never gain anyone’s respect if she kept being afraid of offending others.
Ryske’s crew might not be like any friends she’d had in the past, but during the two weeks of Ryske’s recuperation, they’d become the closest thing she’d had for a long time.
“Typically only men hang out in Floyd’s,” Clyde said. “Any women are fair game or connected to a man. So, yeah, uh… either you’re a girlfriend or a hooker.”
“I’ll be fine,” Harlow said, peeling Gina’s fingers from her arm. “Beats standing out here in the cold.”
“They’ll tear you apart,” Gina said.
Clyde at least had the decency to look worried as opposed to Gina who just appeared skeptical. “Anything could happen to you in a place like that. It’s not safe.”
Harlow smiled. “It was your idea, Clyde,” she said. Her colleagues weren’t moved. She sighed. “Look, I’ll go in and if I’m not back in a half hour, come and find me.”
Asking the Floyd’s guys about Felipe was meant to help the youngster. Harlow wasn’t prepared to advertise her connection to them for fear her boss would assume she could just go in and ask for favors all the time.
Having connections was one thing, exploiting them was another.
For the sake of the kids who she might need to support in the future, Harlow had to be careful about asking for help and ensure she didn’t do it too often.
Clyde bowed forward in shocked opposition. “A half hour? How about we wait ten minutes?”
“It will take me that long to find the bar,” she said, omitting the fact that she actually knew something about the layout of Floyd’s. “And another ten to fend off whichever drunk hits on me before I get any chance to talk to someone who might be able to help.”
“Twenty minutes,” Gina said, taking a step back. “I think this is a bad idea.”
That didn’t take a rocket scientist. Gina may have been hoping Harlow would chicken out or fall on her face. Didn’t matter, Harlow wasn’t going to lose her determination.