On the screen, a small window came to life in the lower left corner. As it faded and the colors became sharper, they both had a perfect digital image of Maggie Caruso hunched over the low table in the center of the living room, as if about to throw up on it. Her clenched fists rubbed against the wooden surface. Her legs gave out and she fell to her knees on the ground.
-What happen? Rooster asked. Is she sick?
"Just a moment..." DeSanctis dialed a final number and the
Mrs. Caruso's voice blared from the built-in speakers.
"... thank you... thank you, my God!" He exclaimed as tears slipped down his cheeks. She shook her head and gave a painful but unmistakable smile. Take care of them... please take care of them...
"What the hell is going on?" rooster yelled.
DeSanctis opened his mouth.
"She's been called!" said Gallo. Those bastards just called her!
Fiddling furiously with the keyboard, DeSanctis opened another window on the laptop. Caruso, Margaret
- Platform: telephony.»
-That's impossible! DeSanctis said, reading the screen. nothing has come out.
-Fax? Email?
"Not for the seamstress. She doesn't even have a computer.
"Maybe the brothers called a neighbor's house.
DeSanctis pointed to the video image on the screen. In the background, behind Mrs. Caruso, the apartment door was clearly visible.
"The techs have been watching since we got here. Even considering the two minutes it took to set this up, we would have seen someone walking in and out...
"Then how the hell did they get through to her?"
"I have no idea... maybe..."
"I don't want any maybes!" This is no time for guessing! rooster yelled. It is clear that this woman has something that allows her to talk to her children; I don't care if a neighbor is transmitting Morse code through the radiator, I want to know what it is!
«It is clear that this woman has something that allows her to talk to her children; I don't care if a neighbor is transmitting Morse code through the radiator, I want to know what it is!" Looking up the street toward Gallo and DeSanctis's car, Joey leaned back in the seat and turned down the volume on his portable receiver. Even if it was just a single microphone installed in an overhead light, he had done an excellent job.
She lifted the lid of the laptop on her lap and opened the office photos she had downloaded from her digital camera. Oliver, Charlie, Shep, Lapidus, Quincy and Mary's offices. Six in total, plus the common areas. She studied the rooms one by one, examining every detail. The cheap reproduction banker's lamp on Oliver's desk... the Kermit the Frog poster in Charlie's cubicle... the pictures on Shep's wall... even the absence of personal belongings on the desk of Lapidus.
"Sounds like you were right," Noreen's voice cut in through the earpiece. They called mom.
-I suppose.
Noreen knew perfectly well that tone in his boss.
-What happen?
"Nothing," Joey said as he flipped through the photos he had on his computer. It's just...if Gallo and DeSanctis are running this thing like a real manhunt, why are they the only two people doing surveillance?
-What do you mean?
"It's a matter of protocol, Noreen. The FBI may screw up, but when it comes to surveillance, the Secret Service is the best. When they guard a house, they send at least four people. Why are there just two guys sitting in a car all of a sudden?
-Who knows? Maybe they're shorthanded... or over budget... maybe the rest will arrive tomorrow...
"Or maybe they don't want anyone else," Joey said.
"Come on now, do you really think so?"
Joey stopped thinking. He could hear Gallo and DeSanctis arguing through the receiver.
"When Shep was killed, they lost an ex-agent," Noreen pointed out. Ten bucks for that's why they consider it a personal matter.
"I hope you're right," Joey said, turning off the receiver. But if I were Charlie and Oliver, I'd be praying that we'd be the ones to find them first.
Lying on my stomach and hiding from the morning sun, I hug the pillow like it's my best friend and refuse to open my eyes. The bedspread is as comfortable as a sack of doorknobs, but not as bad as the garbage truck across the street, which scratches my eardrums like ground glass.
-Cleansed! one of the garbage men yells as the truck lurches up the street.
I turn over in bed. My left arm is completely asleep. And as I blink in the daylight... for a split second... I have no idea where I am. That's when I open my eyes.
Vulgar light brown rug. Rancid insecticide odor. Vinyl flooring in the filthy little kitchen. Shit. The mere sight of the place revives the whole story. Shep... the money... Duckworth. I hoped it had all been a nightmare. It is not. It's our life.
Next to me, Charlie is still sleeping, curled up next to his pillow and happy in his puddle of drool. I pull the tattered blanket up to her chin, get up, and head to the shower.
Ten minutes later it's Charlie's turn.
"Charlie!" Above! I yell from the bathroom.
There's no answer.
"Come on, Charlie!" Get up!
He shrugs and finally turns away. He rubs his eyes and he doesn't remember where he is either. Then he takes a look around him and realizes that we are both in the same nightmare.
"Shit," he mutters.
"There's no hot water," I tell him, drying my Johnny Cash hair with a handful of paper towels.
"I'll be sure to leave a note in the landlord's suggestion box.
In New York they call it a studio. Here is a one room apartment with a small kitchen. For me it is a mousetrap. But last night, when we were searching the entire neighborhood at two in the morning, it was exactly what we needed: located on a side street, a For Lease sign out front, and a light on in the apartment that said "Foreman." . Anywhere else they would have suspected us and immediately called the police. But on the outskirts of Miami's not-so-fancy South Beach, we're business as usual. Between drug dealers and illegal immigrants, they're used to customers showing up at two in the morning.
"Come on, let's get going," I say, pulling on a clean pair of boxers. I want to arrive early.
Charlie sits up on the bed and rolls her eyes.
"Any other news?"
I return to the main room and finish dressing. Outside the sun is shining, but we can barely see it through the papers that cover the windows. Last night, in the dark, Charlie thought they were broken vertical blinds. Today we see the harsh reality. Pages torn from a free Budweiser calendar with bikini-clad girls taped to each window. Whoever was here before us didn't want to be seen. Us neither. The calendar stays where it is.
"Come on, Charlie…it's time," I say, heading back to the bathroom. I turn on the shower. That's what Mom used to do to get us going.
"Those tricks don't work anymore," I said warns.
Ten minutes later, he, too, dries himself off with the paper towels and puts on a clean pair of boxers.
-All ready? -I ask.
"Almost..." She picks up the gym bag and reaches for something inside it.
-What are you looking for? I ask, even though I know the answer. The metallic box that keeps Gallo's weapon.
"Nothing," Charlie says, digging her hand deeper into the bag. Unable to find it, he begins to remove the clothes from the bag. In a few seconds, the bag is empty. He ollie...the box...it's not here...
"Relax," I say. He looks over his shoulder, and I lift up the hem of the untucked shirt. I have the gun tucked into the waist of my pants.
"Since when did you...?"
"Can we go now?" He interrupted him.
Charlie raises her head at my tone of voice.
"Let me guess," he says. There's a new sheriff in town.
I don't bother answering. I turn and leave the room. Charlie follows a few steps behind me. Ready or not, Duckworth... here we come.
-What are you doing? Charlie asks, chasing me as I make a sharp right onto Sixth Street and pick up my pace. Directly ahead of us, early-rising vacationers and late-comer locals cross paths on Washington Avenue. Here, in the side streets, we are safe. Half a block up we'll be exposed. Not even Charlie is willing to take that risk, which is why he grabs me by the back of my shirt and forces me to brake. You are crazy? He asks-. I thought we were going to see Duckwor...?
"Don't say it," he interrupted, studying the street. Trust me, this is equally important to us.
Breaking free of his arm, I walk to the corner, where there is a long line of newspaper vending machines. Miami Herald, USA Today... and the one I'm looking for, the New York Times. I put four coins in the slot, under the door and take one of the copies from the middle of the pile.
"Why don't you ever take the one on top?" Charlie asks.
Ignoring the little brother's question, I grab my newspaper out of the way.
"No, you're absolutely right," he continues. The first one has lice.
As the machine door closes again, Charlie shakes his head.
"Come on," I say, and quickly walk down Sixth Street in the opposite direction. As we walk, I open the newspaper and scan the front section.
"Shall we go out?" Charlie asks.
I continue reading, looking for any reference to the events of the previous day. No money, no embezzlement, no murder. To be honest, I'm not surprised. Lapidus keeps the situation under control so that there are no leaks to the press. However, some things happen every day. I stop on the side street and look for another section of the paper: Obituaries.
"Let me take a look," Charlie says, coming up next to me.
Settled under a dry palm tree, I hold the left half of the newspaper, Charlie holds the right half. We both searched alphabetically. Most of the time, I read and he browses. Today he is the other way around.
"Graves, Shepard…37…from Brooklyn…VP of Security…Greene & Greene…wife, Sherry…mother, Bonnie…sister, Claire…funeral service will be announced...
"I didn't know he was married," Charlie says, already lost in Shep's life. But when he keeps reading... Those revisionist bastards," he exclaims. They don't even say he was in the Service.
"Charlie..."
"No Charlie!" You didn't know him, Ollie... that was his life!
"I'm not saying he wasn't, I'm just asking you to pay attention for once in your life!" It is not about the summary that they have made of his life ... but about what is missing in that portrait. I catch myself and lower my voice to almost a whisper. Three hundred million dollars disappears and there's not even a mention in the gossip columns? An agent of the United States secret service dies riddled with bullets and nobody reports that fact? Don't you realize what they're doing? For these guys, a fake obituary is the easy part of the deal. Whatever they say, people will believe it. And what really happened... is erased. And that's what they'll do to us, Charlie. They shake the magic screen and the whole drawing disappears. Then they write what they want. "Suspects Found With Millions...Investigation Points Towards Murder." That's the new reality, Charlie. And by the time they've finished scribbling the news, there's no way we can change it.
I look at Charlie and wait for my words to sink into his brain.
At exactly the same moment, we both started walking toward Tenth Street. Duckworth's house is a few blocks away.
With three hundred million dollars in his account and retirement close at hand, Marty Duckworth could have chosen anything. I imagined an art deco style house. Charlie was leaning towards a Mediterranean bungalow. If it had been a contest, no one could have been more wrong.
"I can't believe it," Charlie says, looking across the street at the dilapidated, one-story, sixties-era building. Weather-beaten and covered in peeling pale pink paint in many places, the house saw much better days.
"It's the right address," he confirms, checking it a third or fourth time.
Charlie nods, but he doesn't say anything. After everything we've been through to get here... this is home.
"Maybe we should come back later," he suggests.
-To come back later? Charlie, this is the guy who has all the answers.
Come on, all we have to do is ring the bell…" I walk away from the curb and cross the street. Seeing that Charlie doesn't follow me, I stop halfway and look over my shoulder. You are well?
"Of course," he says. But he doesn't cross the street.
-Insurance?
This time he takes a little longer to respond. Charlie doesn't like that I'm afraid... and he hates that I am.
"I'm fine," he insists. He rings the bell.
I pass the overgrown shrubbery and a vintage blue Volkswagen parked in front of the house, walk up the driveway, open the damp-rusty screen door, and press the bell with a shaky finger.
There's no answer.
I call again; I lean against the door and try to appear relaxed.
There is no answer either.
I stand on my toes, craning my neck, forcing myself to peer through the diamond-shaped glass at the top of the door.
-What's inside? Charlie asks.
I press my nose against the pollen that covers the glass, trying to get a better view of the inside of the house... and then from inside... the bolts open. The doorknob turns. I jump back. It's too late.
"Can I help you?" a young woman asks me, opening the door. She has curly black hair, thin lips, and a small upturned nose. My eyes immediately drift to the faded jeans and white bikini top.
"I'm sorry," I start to say. I wasn't trying... we're just looking for a friend.
"We're trying to find Marty Duckworth," Charlie adds.
I silently thank her for her help as the woman's body language perceptibly changes. Her frown softens and her shoulders relax. "Are they your friends?"
"Yes," she replied cautiously. Why?
She is silent for a moment, choosing her words carefully.
"Marty Duckworth died six months ago.