47

JACK SAT AT a gray institutional desk, a cold coffee cup in his hand. Oscar leaned against the wall next to him, humming a song over and over.

“What the fuck are you singing?” Jack said.

“One of the great songs of my Mexican heritage,” Oscar said.

“Which is?” Jack said.

“This Old Man.” Oscar began to sing, “This old man, he plays three. He plays knickknack on my knee, with a knick knack paddy whack . . .”

“Jesus!” Jack said. “If you sing that fucking song one more time, I’m gonna slam my head into the wall.”

“Promise?” Oscar teased.

Suddenly the phone rang and Jack’s head jerked back. He let it ring once more, then picked it up.

“Harper,” he said.

“Jackie,” Charlie Breen said. “You did such fine work. Really, you ought to be commended. Jimmy tells me it was a walk in the park.”

“That’s right, Charlie. Billy Chase is dead and gone. Now tell me where I can find Kevin.”

Charlie gave an odd little laugh on the other line.

“Why, right where you left him, Jack. In the old gym at Brent- wood Park.”

“Brentwood Park?” Jack tried to imagine the old gym. In his mind, the park ended beyond the right-field wall. But no, now he saw it: the battered old brick gym. A place that was there but invisible because no one ever used it anymore. How could he have not seen it?

“Look in the boys’ locker room,” Charlie said.

“He better be all right,” Jack said.

“Oh, he’s fine,” Charlie said, as he ate a brisket sandwich he’d just bought from Carter’s.

“Yeah, he’s ready for a nice day on the field. I really am gonna miss coaching him, Jack. Going to miss all the kids. Maybe you can take over the reins, Jackie. I think you have a real talent for coaching.”

Charlie wiped some of the barbecue sauce off his lip, and hung up.

Jack looked over at Oscar, who listened in on the second phone.

“They’re already on it,” he said.

“Fucking Brentwood!” Jack said. “Oh, man . . .”

He slumped on the desk, sweat pouring down his neck.

Within a half hour after the phone call from Portland, an LAPD SWAT team arrived at Brentwood Park, in three black, unmarked vans. They quickly broke into two columns, surrounding the gym from both the north and south exits.

One column of men kicked in the back door to the boys’ locker room and, using their flash-lit rifles, headed inside.

The columns hurried down the aisles of old rusted lockers, kicking aside the old stools, which were still there.

The secondary group looked through the hallways and the basketball court.

Finally they searched through the girls’ locker room, and five men went into the bowels of the old gym. They went into the furnace room, the janitor’s bedroom, every nook and cranny in the gym basement.

All they found were about fifty rats scrambling through the hallways and a pile of old Hustler magazines.

Other than that, nothing.

No sign of Kevin Harper.

Jack and Oscar got the call five minutes after the search was completed.

Jack’s face had become reddened and he felt a pressure in his temples, as if there was a hand inside his head, desperate fingers thrusting out.

His heart felt the same way and, as he sat at his desk with his head hanging, he suddenly understood the term “broken heart” for the first time.

He had always thought it was some kind of metaphor, but now he knew otherwise. He could feel his heart breaking. Cracking inside his chest like an ice floe breaking up.

Soon, he thought, it would crack open, but instead of water rushing out, it would be his own blood.

And yet, in the unbearable pain he felt without his son, there was some consolation in that. For if anything had happened to Kevin, he wouldn’t want to go on living, anyway.

Now he felt a rough push on his back. He ignored it, not even sure if it was real or some phantom pain, commensurate with his agony. But there it was again, a kind of poking, which enraged him. He looked up, snarling.

“What the fuck is going on?”

He looked at Oscar’s broad, strong face, his brown eyes wide open, determined.

“C’mon, man. This game ain’t over yet. Get up off that chair.”

“I can’t,” Jack said. “I can’t . . .”

He wanted to say exactly what it was he couldn’t do or think . . . but there was nothing else.

“You got to,” Oscar said. “We’re going to get Kevin back.”

Jack gritted his teeth and imagined choking Charlie Breen to death, slowly, until his eyes popped out.

Oscar reached down. Jack took his large, powerful hand, and his partner pulled him to his feet.