Chapter 39

The Asian boy named Samay led Conley and four speeding police cruisers to a crowded neighborhood that bordered the Boston and Maine railroad tracks. Tenements loomed on both sides of a narrow street, their shadows darkening the cars that hurtled past. Gray pulleys on third-floor window sills held dingy clotheslines that stretched high overhead, sagging with the weight of sheets and blankets that swung and snapped. Shafts of light peeked from small spaces between close buildings and flashed on the speeding convoy like a strobe.

They braked in front of the three-family at the street’s dead end. Conley and Thompson stepped out of the lead car. He looked back. Cruisers blocked the exit to the main street. Neighbors gathered on balconies and porches, pointing. A cool staleness blanketed the dark courtyard, covering it like wet gossamer.

Something was strange about this house. Different. Conley had felt it as soon as they turned the corner and saw the pale blue apartment building blend into the crystalline sky above it. This place had something to tell.

Something we need to know.

Car doors opened and slammed in the quiet courtyard. Stefanos took a step forward and surveyed the house, the peeling paint on asbestos shingles, the dirty windows, the rickety porch. An army of trash barrels stood on a patch of soil. Broken lattice sat near the dark opening that led under the porch.

Mazzarelli climbed the steps and knocked on the plain wood door, dull knocks echoing in the still morning.

Samay stood in back, cops flanking him.

Stefanos turned to the other houses as they waited, and considered every window, every tilting porch.

Mazzarelli knocked again, slower, harder, longer.

An old man with skin the color of milk chocolate opened the door. Wisps of salt-and-pepper hair plastered his scalp. He shuffled outside, sandals scraping the porch. Mazzarelli showed his badge and Channary’s picture as he spoke.

The man listened, nodded hard, and leaned toward the gathered crowd.

“No girl here,” he called. “No girl.” He held his pudgy hand up in a quick salute, pointed fingers down, and waved his backhand at them in a shooing motion. “Sorry. Good-bye.”

Mazzarelli spoke. “This is Mr. Desh, Captain. He owns the building. Says the girl’s not here.”

“No shit, Mazzarelli,” one of the local cops muttered.

“Ask him if we can take a look,” Conley said.

Desh headed back to the house. Mazzarelli blocked his way and started talking again, selling the idea with lively, coaxing hands that carved the air between them. Desh lifted his chin to avoid the flying mitts and adamantly refused. Mazzarelli used a lull in the bickering to give an update.

“He wants a search warrant. Says he knows his rights.”

Suddenly Samay broke away, strode past the trash barrels, and stood at the head of the narrow alley next to the house. He lifted his arm and pointed to a rusted metal bulkhead attached to the house’s foundation like an ugly tumor.

Stefanos walked to the hatch.

Desh ran to them, knees high, sandals flapping. He crossed his arms and stood in front of the bulkhead like a sentry.

“No,” Desh said insistently, head turning back and forth so hard his jowls shook. “You have no rights here,” he said, pounding his chest with the side of a fist. “I’m not scared of Cups.”

Cups.

“You go away now. Right now.”

Sheila put her hand on Conley’s shoulder. Stefanos reached in his jacket and drew his automatic. Desh’s eyes widened and his pleas jumped several octaves. Stefanos held the gun upright and locked eyes with the harried landlord before he spoke.

“Step out of the way, Mr. Desh.”

****

One side of the bulkhead swung upward with a long, aching creak, and locked on its hinges with a twang. Three wooden steps led down—rough, unfinished planks without risers—to a green door. Conley went first, descended the stairs, and pressed the thumb latch on top of the curled handle. He pushed his knee into the door and it protested, swollen wood holding tight at header and jamb. A kick worked. The door scraped open with a loud crack.

The dank cellar was filled with junk. Old, hard suitcases sat in columns on his right, handles and straps hanging from them as if tired from traveling. A gritty path was on the left, a way through the mountains of debris. Light shone through narrow windows milky with grime.

Stefanos and Mazzarelli followed. Mr. Desh started up again outside, beseeching the unanswering cops, his muted, hurried voice drifting through the open bulkhead.

“I tell you no girl, no girl, no girl,” he chanted.

Conley shut him out as they zagged left along the path, past an old steamer trunk with a gouge on the top that showed the brown board it was made of. A discarded, rust-colored washing machine sat to the left, top lid missing, knobs gone too, wires snaking from the naked control panel.

Something round was next, big as a barrel—a sheet metal canister with holes like a giant colander.

They passed a pegboard that held a collection of awls and chisels, old, gray, and dull. The wooden handles were wrapped with frayed electrical tape. The workbench under the board had a dark, round stain in the middle of its battered countertop. Tools hung from nails in the rafters. Conley pushed aside a row of hacksaws and the blades clanged, singing like dull chimes.

They turned a corner, past leaning towers of cardboard boxes lined with white, crusty calcium.

A tattered bamboo screen stood at the end of the aisle, dim light filtering through its tiny slats. A wisp of steam escaped, climbed over the top of the screen like a living thing, and tumbled toward them. Metal clinked, a faint sound.

Stefanos and Mazzarelli stood on either side of Conley as he clutched the screen’s edge—and pulled it aside.

Channary sat on blankets on the floor, a picture book on her lap, a reading light over her shoulder. One of the Aunties squatted next to her on her haunches, a kettle boiling and clattering on a hot plate in front of her.

Channary looked up from the book and smiled.

Conley did something he hadn’t done in a long time, indulged in a luxury he didn’t think he was capable of anymore.

He smiled back.