Twenty minutes later, Ollie stood at the corner of Charter and Henchman streets, wondering how soon was too soon to give up on his plan.
Henchman looked mostly deserted. Nearly identical rows of five-story apartment buildings lined both sides of the road, their fire escapes crawling in zig-zags down the brick walls. No trees, no balconies, no bike racks. Just a sidewalk, a single streetlamp, and a peekaboo view to Commercial Street down below. The lone signs of life: two boys throwing pebbles at a “no parking” sign while a bundled-up woman, probably their mother, stood by.
Ollie cracked the knuckles on both hands, feeling foolish. Then he pulled his coat zipper all the way up to his chin. A passing delivery truck sent a spray of dirty snow onto the sidewalk.
With a sigh, he began to walk down the small hill, peering at the mismatched doors, looking for an office. A salon. Something. Nothing stood out. Every step was a fight against the late-winter wind, which was whipping over the water and straight up the hill like an angry child.
He was almost to the bottom of the street when he saw it: A tiny sign, about the size of an envelope, affixed at eye-level near one of the sunken doorways. “Women’s Resource Center,” it read. “Open 24 Hours.” The words were accompanied by a logo that weaved the acronym “WRC” into a shield-shaped design.
The building was brick, indistinguishable from all the others. In the windows above, he could see signs of apartment life: kitchen curtains, houseplants, protruding air conditioners. But the stairs to the Women’s Resource Center, whatever that was, went down to the basement level. Two cameras flanked the doorway. Both pointed directly at the spot where he was standing.
He stared at the camera on the left and it stared back, blinking its red light.
The morning’s omelet began to gurgle in his intestines. What was this place? He felt like he was breaking some kind of a rule just by being here. It was a Women’s Resource Center, after all, not a Nosy Young Men’s Center.
Ollie was debating whether or not he should leave when he heard two short clicks, like latches being turned. A moment later, a woman peered out of the WRC door at the bottom of the dark staircase. She had dirty blonde hair and fair skin. Her smile reminded Ollie of a wild dog: bared teeth, with very little warmth.
“Hello,” the woman said. “Can I help you?” Her tone indicated that she could not, in fact, help him at all. Or, more precisely, that she didn’t want to.
“Hi,” Ollie said. Taking a few hesitant steps forward, he reached the top stair. “I’m wondering… I was just…” He stopped.
The woman lifted her eyebrows but stayed silent.
Ollie pressed his hands together, cleared his throat, and started again. “Sorry. I’m looking for my friend. She’s been missing. For a few days now. I think she came here, recently. She told me she had an appointment on this street, and I don’t see anywhere else…” His sentence faded as he jerked his thumb to indicate the residential block behind him.
The blonde woman continued to stare.
“Her name is Antonella. Nell. I was wondering… Have you seen her? Can you help me?” He hunched, trying to shrink his tall and rotund body into the most innocuous form possible. He often tried this. It never worked.
“Your friend is missing?” the woman asked. Politely. Carefully.
He nodded. “Brown hair, kind of this long? I’m trying to find her. I mean, I don’t know if she’s missing, exactly, but I haven’t seen her. I was getting worried. You know, just starting to wonder.”
“Uh huh,” the young woman nodded.
Ollie removed his baseball hat and held it in front of his chest like he was about to say the Pledge of Allegiance. “If you don’t mind my asking, what is this place?”
“This is the Women’s Resource Center.”
“Yes, but…what do you do?”
She flashed a businesslike smile and launched into what sounded like a rehearsed speech: “The Women’s Resource Center is a nonprofit organization that provides the women of Boston with information and access to important resources in the city, including health care, housing, childcare, nutritional services, and transportation.”
Ollie nodded. “Can you check to see if my friend was here? And what resources she was looking for?”
“I’m afraid I can’t. All WRC client services are confidential.”
“Sure, sure. I get that. But if I could find out why she came here, then I might be able to find her. I think… I think something might be wrong. I think she might even be in danger.”
“What makes you say that?”
The question came from inside the doorway.
The blonde turned, then stepped out of the way to make room for a petite brunette with a snugly fitting, button-down shirt. Though she couldn’t have been more than five-foot-two, the woman radiated an air of firm command. Her arms were folded. If she was intimidated by his size, or affected by the frigid temperature, she didn’t show it.
“Hi,” he said, taking a few steps down and holding out his hand. “I’m Ollie Delgato. I live around the corner.”
“Hello, Ollie Delgato,” the woman said, shaking his hand and offering no name in return. He had never seen anyone blink so slowly, as though each bump of her lids was the result of a conscious, carefully considered decision. “What makes you think your friend is in danger?”
He swallowed. “I… I don’t know, exactly. Just a feeling, I guess.” Ollie didn’t like the wary way she was looking at him, like he was a tranquilized lion on the verge of waking up. “She’s gone. Not answering calls, that sort of thing. And she came here, I think... and I…” The sentence fell between them, unfinished.
The short woman nodded. Then she said, “You seem like a good friend, Mr. Delgato. I’m sorry we can’t be of more help. But we have a strict confidentiality policy here at the WRC that prevents us from sharing any information about our clients.” Like her colleague, she, too, sounded like she was reading from a script. Her smile was polite, but firm. Case closed.
Ollie opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again. He could see it was no use. He could ask all day, in a hundred different ways. She wasn’t going to tell him a damn thing.
“Have a great day, Mr. Delgato.”
Force of polite habit made him mutter, “Thanks.” What was he thanking her for, exactly? Not kicking him in the nuts on the way out?
“I wish you the best of luck in finding your friend,” the brunette added. Moments later, the impenetrable door closed, and he was once again alone on the sidewalk.
The cameras whirred and spun, tracking Ollie’s movements as he turned, dejectedly, to leave. He fought the urge to flip two middle fingers: one for each camera. Instead, he trudged in defeat to the top of the small hill. A cracked and peeling historic sign hung above his head, mounted to the side of one of the buildings. The words were barely legible: Henchman Street. Such a strange name. It made him think of thugs, and dimwits, and mindless, mechanical cruelty. Ollie looked over his shoulder, then back up at the sign. His eyes narrowed into a squint.
Was it his imagination, or were the letters…moving? They seemed to be shifting, somehow. Fading in and out. There were no waving tree branches to cast shadows on the wall; not that high up. No scattered clouds, no flashing police lights. Nothing at all to alter the sign’s appearance. And yet, the letters did seem to be changing, all on their own. Disappearing, and reappearing. Almost… shimmering.
Ollie slammed his eyes shut. It was a trick of the light, he told himself. A hundred-year-old sign that needed new paint. Nothing more.
Still, when the shiver ran up his back, he knew it had nothing whatsoever to do with the cold.
* * *
Feeling alternately imbecilic and pissed off, Ollie checked the fitness tracker on his wrist: not even 2,000 steps in yet, and the day was almost half over.
Shit. That meant he was also late for work.
He hustled his way along the sidewalk, doing his best not to make eye contact. In a neighborhood like this, Ollie didn’t have to go far to run into old-timers—most of whom wanted to chat. Just a few blocks down, he heard his name.
“Afternoon, Ollie!”
He looked up to find an old woman peering at him through wire-rimmed glasses. She was sweeping slush from the entryway of a hair salon. “Hey, Mrs. Andolini.”
“You coming to bingo?”
“Probably, yeah.” A few months back, the neighborhood biddies had insisted that Ollie take his mother’s old spot at the table. He pretended to mind but didn’t really.
Ollie waved to Mrs. Andolini and kept moving, stepping around the ubiquitous valet-parking signs that cluttered the sidewalk. He barely registered the familiar sights: Framed photos of Sophia Loren and John F. Kennedy staring out from the shop window, surrounded by a haphazard assortment of Chapstick tubes, aspirin bottles, and various European soccer jerseys. Green-white-and-red flags waving next to displays of model trains, nativity sets, and fussy gilded teacups. The grocer’s teetering pile of oranges, lending much-needed color to the winter gloom.
The North End, as usual, was showing its age. Everything wobbled, from the cobblestones in the street to the wrought-iron balconies hanging above his head. Sometimes Ollie could swear he felt the ghosts of the English Puritans who first settled the place in the 1630s, followed by successive waves of Irish and Jewish arrivals. Finally, around the turn of the last century, immigrants from Naples, Sicily, Genoa, and Milan had clumped together in protective tribes and elbowed the other groups out. By the early 1900s, the district was, essentially, all Italian. The language and culture still permeated everything within the half-circle haven of Commercial Street.
“Oll-ay!”
“Hey, Mr. Costa.”
“Cold one today!”
“Yep. Sure is.”
Passing vehicles created a constant, low rumble in Ollie’s ears as he continued on. At his feet, a line of red bricks marked the path of the Freedom Trail, which guided history buffs to famous local sites like the Paul Revere House and the Old North Church. Ollie often found himself walking on the narrow brick trail like a gymnast on a balance beam, placing one foot in front of the other. He was doing exactly that when a voice called out from a nearby step.
“Ciao, Ollie.”
He pulled his bare hand from his pocket for a quick wave. “Hi, Mrs. Toscano.”
Back in the day, Mrs. Toscano would have said something like, “Tell your mom I have her chafing dish,” or “Tell your mom it’s seven tomorrow, not eight.” Now, though, she just gave Ollie that same, sad smile. Every time.
He swallowed hard as St. Leonard’s came into view. For so many years, it had been just a church. Sunday mass, shuffling feet, hours of little-boy boredom. A familiar place for a familiar routine. Then, quite suddenly, it had become something else: the site of his mother’s funeral. Ollie had helped to carry the coffin down the aisle, hung his head in the front pew, and said goodbye. That was more than a year ago. And he hadn’t been back since.
Francie Delgato had died of breast cancer. By the time they found the tumors, it was too late. Shortly before her death, Ollie had overheard her telling Mrs. Andolini that the cancer was “her penance,” though he couldn’t imagine what she meant. His mother had been a saint, right up there with ol’ Leonard himself. Warm, patient, empathetic, funny, smart—hell, the woman practically had butterflies landing on her fingertips when she walked down the street. If moms were bingo games, he had won the whole pot: Across, down, and diagonal.
At the funeral, Mr. Mazza had squeezed Ollie’s shoulder and suggested, in a roundabout way, that his mother had died not of cancer, but of a broken heart. When Ollie realized the daft old man was talking about his father—or, more accurately, his lack of a father—he had stifled an incredulous laugh. Ollie had only vague memories of the man, but they were enough. Matteo Delgato had been, by all accounts, a terrible father and husband. His disappearance was the proverbial “go out to the store for cigarettes and never come back,” though in Matteo’s case the “store” was a Saturday-night booze-cruise and the “cigarettes” were open taps of Michelob Ultra. To this day, no one was quite sure if Matteo had fallen off the deck into the frigid waters of the harbor, or if he’d just decided he’d had enough of family life and took off for sunnier cruises on the Florida shore. Either way, Ollie and his mom had never heard from the guy again, and they were better off for it.
His mother had been enough. More than enough.
But now Francie was gone. The money was gone, too, poured into expensive treatments and hospital bills that had done nothing but delay the inevitable. Ollie had just turned 18 when she died, making him not an orphan, exactly, but something that felt awfully close.
He turned the corner, grateful to leave St. Leonard’s behind. He passed a tempting gelato display window and did the mental calculation: large pistachio, 12 credits. Plus a cone, three credits. Jimmies, maybe one or two. If he shrunk it to a small, that would be six credits, plus the cone, plus the jimmies, so…10 credits total. That wasn’t so bad, was it? His feet slowed. On the Lighter Tomorrows plan, he was allotted 36 credits per day. He’d already had a ham-and-cheese omelet for breakfast, so that was, what? Seven credits? Lunch would be twice that.
Ollie scrunched his brow and picked up his pace. No. No gelato. He had to stay on the program. Lose the weight. Get a friggin’ life, already. If not now, when? He had a scholarship to start Bunker Hill Community College in the fall—a full-ride scholarship, including tuition and fees. It was the break he’d been waiting for. That meant he had less than seven months to shrink himself down to a manageable size, merge seamlessly into the student body, and become the kind of person that guys wanted to hang out with and girls wanted to date. Seven months to achieve normalcy. Surely even he could manage that.
Ollie was winded by the time he reached the sloping asphalt entrance to Bonfiglio’s Caffe and pushed open the heavy door.
The smells hit him in a wonderful wave: freshly ground beans; buttery dough; almond paste; cinnamon and sugar. Pastry display cases and a counter stood on the right, while a cluster of tiny round tables filled the space to the left. The silver, curlicued chairs called to mind an old-fashioned malt shop. Black-and-white tiles lined the floor. And on the back wall, shelves of antique coffee contraptions adorned with levers, pipes, gauges, and knobs had the look of a mad scientist’s lab.
The job was mundane—serving coffee and cake, mopping floors, wiping tables—but came with one major perk: a tiny but low-rent apartment located above the shop. Ollie could never have afforded a North End apartment, even a studio, at regular rates. He had gotten both the job and the apartment courtesy of a lifelong friendship between his mom and Mr. Bonfiglio. And no small amount of pity, he was sure.
“Hey, Mr. B,” Ollie said sheepishly. “Sorry I’m late.”
Mr. Bonfiglio popped his head up from behind the pastry counter. “Ollie!” He waved a short, thick arm and tossed an apron. “No worries, kid. Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
Ollie smiled. Mr. Bonfiglio thought every day was a beautiful day. What sort of day, Ollie sometimes wondered, would make him complain? A terrorist attack, maybe? A blizzard? Another Great Molasses Flood? He got a sudden flash of Mr. B at the window, watching waves of brown goo sweep away people and cars as it poured down the street. “Beautiful day, except for all that darn molasses,” he would say, biting ruefully into his eclair.
“Where do you want me?” Ollie asked him, tying the black apron around his waist.
The older man rubbed his chin. “You get the tables,” he said. “I’ll get the register.” His disheveled eyebrows, which staked an unnaturally large claim to his forehead, matched an equally disheveled demeanor.
“Will do,” Ollie said.
Not long after, a crowd of college students pushed their way in, followed by a few families, tourists, and some of the elderly locals. Armpit sweat began to soak Ollie’s shirt as he hurried to concoct dozens of lattes, macchiatos, and espressos. He scooped gelato from the freezer case, packaged up boxes of biscotti, and carried slices of ricotta pie and Limoncello cake to the tables. By the time his coworker Cara arrived for her shift, the place was a mess of uncleared plates and spilled cream.
“I got this,” Cara told him, taking the order pads from his hand.
“Thanks,” Ollie said, relieved. He took stock of the disarray with a grimace. Then he grabbed a clean rag and began making his way through the tangled cluster of chairs, wiping down the tabletops and stacking dirty dishes into a gray tub.
As he worked, his big stomach bumped against the chair backs. The too-tight apron dug into his chest. A boy with a cookie stared up at him with wide eyes, too young to hide his fascination. Among the dainty chairs and low ceiling of the café, Ollie imagined he must have looked like a curly-blond Godzilla tearing through a tiny Japanese village.
I am the fattest person in the room, he thought to himself, feeling the usual shot of anguish. The very fattest.
The boy was still staring. Ollie tried to ignore it, failed, and finally stuck out his tongue, making the boy laugh. By the time the mother looked up from her phone, Ollie had already turned his attention to the napkin dispensers.
He filled them absentmindedly, crumpling the delicate folds in his large hands. He wasn’t thinking about the boy, or the napkins. He was thinking about Nell.
What now?
His visit to the Women’s Resource Center had been an epic fail. He couldn’t go to the cops: Nell was a legal adult, and he was nothing more than tier-2 friend with a hunch. Besides, he’d seen enough police procedurals to know that if—God forbid—something actually had happened to her, they’d probably consider him a suspect, just for getting involved. And he could only imagine Nell’s reaction, upon coming home safe and sound, to learn that he had stuck his nose far enough into her business to file some kind of report.
Maybe the trouble was all in his imagination. After all, what did he have to say otherwise? Gut instinct? As anyone could see, his gut was too big and too focused on filling itself to offer much in the way of wisdom.
Ollie sighed, making his way to the back room. When he emerged with a new carton of napkins, he stopped short, confused.
A folded piece of white paper sat propped up on a napkin dispenser on one of the empty tables. Two words had been scrawled across the front in black ink: Ollie Delgato.
Ollie’s brow furrowed. That hadn’t been there just a minute before—he was sure of it. He dropped the box onto a chair and reached forward to pick up the note. He handled it cautiously, like it might prick his finger.
His gaze swiveled to inspect the café crowd again. The same singles, old men, and kids were sitting right where they had been moments before, still absorbed in conversations and hot drinks. The boy crunched the same cookie with purposeful bites, his interest in the giant waiter forgotten.
Ollie looked down at his name. Then he unfolded the paper to read the message inside: Still looking for your friend? I know where she is, and how you can help her. Meet me at the west stairs of Quincy Market at six.
His heart began to thud.
Six o’clock…tonight?
I know where she is, and how you can help her.
In that moment, Ollie knew two things for sure. One, he was going to have a toasted blueberry bagel with extra cream cheese (10 credits) for dinner. And two, he was going to have to eat it on the way.