OUR HANDS LOCKED together, we head back into the hotel, up the single flight of stairs to the lobby. We don’t approach the front desk; we throw ourselves at it.
“The hotel detective!” I holler at the portly blond desk manager I spoke with earlier. “Get him. Now!”
In my free hand, I’m holding Chloe’s bathing suit top and her destroyed iPod. He glances at the items, swallows something, and breathes in deeply.
“Can we please keep our voices down?” he asks, with an anxious grin on his face while pulling his belt up over his soft underbelly. “Other hotel customers occupy the lobby.”
My veins are on fire. I feel my biceps squeezing through the tight skin that covers them. I hand Chloe’s things to Penny, clench my fingers and hands into rock-hard fists. I’m tasting the salty blood now that I’ve bitten through the flesh on my lip.
My right hand is raised and reaching across the counter even before the act can register with my brain. I grab hold of his shirt, pull him into me. The entire hotel lobby seems to go mannequin still, while I pull his face into mine.
“My daughter is gone,” I whisper, forcefully. “I don’t give a flying fuck about your damned clientele. Got it?”
“Sidney,” Penny says, voice steady and serious. “Let the man go.”
Suddenly, like waking up from a bad dream, I realize what it is I’m doing. An electric shock wave courses through my nervous system, and I release him.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s the stress. My wife and I, we’re very worried.”
The blonde woman from the office in back emerges from out of the open office door. She steps up to the desk.
“The hotel detective is on her way,” she explains. “Please wait here, Mr. O’Keefe.”
“Her,” I say, like a question.
“Is there a problem?” the manager poses.
How am I going to respond? That I just spent the last ten years surrounded by human-growth-hormone and steroid-injected male New York State corrections officers?
I feel my insides going south fast. My head is spinning. I’m biting down on my lip again. I glance at Penny. Her worried eyes are locked on mine. I must be a sore sight to behold.
It’s then my bowels turn to water.
The public men’s room is located on the opposite side of the lobby, off the long corridor that also accesses the second-floor rooms. I head inside, find that it’s empty, and lock the door behind me. Pushing open the stall, I drop my jeans, and get rid of whatever poison has infected me. My brow is covered in sweat and my gut feels like somebody kicked it with a steel-toed jackboot.
When I’m done, I get dressed, then stand before the bathroom mirror and wash my hands in steaming hot water. Turning the hot water off, I turn on the cold water. I cup my hands together, fill them, splash the water on my face. Again and again. Gazing into the mirror, I watch the water bead and drip off the skin. My face is tight and stressed, the five o’clock shadow having evolved into a salt and pepper scruff.
The equally salt and pepper hair on my head is closely cropped. So close, it looks like I cut it myself with scissors. There’s a pinky finger–sized scar on my scalp, above my right eye. It’s where somebody broke a plastic food tray over my head back when I was employed in the prison kitchen. I nearly drowned him in a fifty-gallon vat of yellow potato salad. I spent three months in the hole for that one. Didn’t matter that it wasn’t my fault. What mattered is that I threw the last punch, so to speak. The COs never see the first punch. That would be too fair.
I close my eyes, breathe deeply.
“Get it together, Sid,” I say aloud. “You don’t get it together, you’re going back. You go back with Rabuffo knowing you testified against him, you’re a dead man. Christ, you just might be a dead man now. You know Rabuffo’s style at this point in the game. Let the father live just long enough to see his family die. Could be Rabuffo is starting with Chloe, then Penny will be next. He’ll do it to make you suffer, to tear your heart and soul apart. Finally, he’ll finish with you. But it won’t be quick. He’ll make it hurt. He’ll have one of his Chinese bosses perform Lingchi on you. Cut bits and pieces off of you, until you’ll resemble one hundred ninety pounds of raw meat. Until your heart finally has had enough and it ceases to beat.”
One more splash of water to the face.
I turn off the faucet. Standing straight and stiff, I pull a fist full of paper towels from the wall-mounted dispenser, dry my face. Tossing them into the receptacle, I can’t help but steal one more glance in the mirror. They’re standing behind me. All four of them. The Chen family. The Chinese father and mother, and their two kids. One a boy, the other a little girl, not much younger than Chloe. They’re staring at me in the mirror, not saying anything. They’re alive but their heads and faces are bleeding.
There’s a hole in the father’s forehead. So wide you can see the whiteness of his brains. His wife’s left eye has been shot through. The entirety of the little boy’s cranial cap is blown away, while the little girl’s left lower jaw is shredded from an exit wound. Yet somehow, they are able to stand there, eyeing me, like they want something from me.
I’m not sure how much time has passed since I first saw them standing there, but my head feels like it’s spinning out of control. Until the father opens his mouth, whispers one word.
“Revenge.”
I close my eyes, whisper, “Go away. Go the hell away. I never touched you. I told them not to kill you. Wemps and Singh, I told them, damn it.”
The loud knocking startles me.
A fist pounding on the wood door. I open my eyes and dread the reflection I’m going to see in the mirror. But the Chinese family is gone. Of course, they were never there in the first place. I dreamt them up.
… Get it the hell together, Sid … Stop living inside your head …
“Sid, are you okay?” Penny inquires through the door. “What’s taking so long?”
“Sorry,” I say, reaching out to unlock the dead bolt. Then, opening the door, looking into her face. “I felt sick. I’m okay now.”
I step out into the corridor.
“You look pale,” she says.
“It’s okay. There’s no time to worry about a stomachache.”
“The detective is here. She’s in the lobby, waiting.”
I start walking.
“Sid,” Penny says, stopping me.
I turn and eye her.
“It’s getting dark, Sid,” she goes on. “It’s getting dark and our daughter is out there somewhere.”
… Rabuffo …
“We’re gonna find her, Pen. If it’s the last thing we do on God’s earth, we’re gonna find her. Tonight.”
Turning, I head back into the lobby, my eyes searching for the hotel detective.