“Sure, doll, sure.” He was touchingly ecstatic.
I went into my bedroom and dressed in jeans and put on a couple of loose knit tops under my navy peacoat. I got my gun out of the wall safe. I wasn’t expecting a battle with Billy, if, in fact, he and Josie had run off together. But drive-by shootings were a dreary commonplace in the old ’hood, and I didn’t want to end up lying on the floor of an abandoned warehouse with some punk’s stray bullet in my back, just because I hadn’t come prepared. That was the real reason we were taking Mitch, too—not too many gangbangers dis a big dog.
Before we left Lakeview, I called Billy’s mother. Her phone was answered by a man who was some kind of butler or secretary—anyway, a call screener. He was very reluctant to disturb Mrs. William, and when I finally pushed him into bringing her to the phone it was clear why: Annie Lisa was high on something other than life. Whether it was modern and respectable, like Xanax, or old-fashioned and reliable, like Old Overholt, she had a delay, like a satellite echo, in answering anything I said.
I spoke slowly and patiently, as if to a child, reminding her that I was the detective who was looking for Billy. “When did you last hear from him, Ms. Bysen?”
“Hear from him?” she echoed.
“Did Billy call you today?”
“Billy? Billy isn’t here. William, William is angry.”
“And why is William angry, ma’am?”
“I don’t know.” She was puzzled and talked about it at some length. “Billy went to work, he went to the warehouse, that’s what a good boy does, he works hard for a living, it’s what Daddy Bysen always told us, so why does that make William angry? Unless it’s because Billy is doing what Daddy Bysen says, William always hates for Billy to follow Daddy Bysen’s orders, but William also likes children who work hard. Children who lie around using drugs and getting pregnant, they get sent away, so he should be happy that Billy went to the warehouse again.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’m sure deep down he’s ecstatic, just hiding it from you.”
Irony was a mistake: she thought I was saying William was hiding Billy from her. I cut her questions off and asked for Billy’s sister’s phone number.
“Candace is in Korea. She’s doing mission work, and we’re proud that she’s turning her life around.” Annie Lisa spoke the sentences like an inexpert news reader looking at a teleprompter.
“That’s nice. But in case Billy called his sister to talk over his plans, can you give me her phone number?”
“He wouldn’t do that; he knows William would be very angry.”
“How about her e-mail address?”
She didn’t know it, or wouldn’t give it. I pressed her as hard as I could without alienating her, but she wouldn’t budge: Candace was off-limits until she’d finished serving her sentence.
“Would Billy have turned to any of his aunts or uncles?” I pictured him confiding in Aunt Jacqui while she smirked and preened.
“No one understands Billy the way I do. He’s very sensitive, like me—he isn’t like the Bysens. None of them has ever really understood him.”
That seemed to be the limit, both of what I could get and what I could take from her. Mr. Contreras, who’d gone to his own place for a parka and a pipe wrench, was waiting at the bottom of the stairs with Mitch. As we left, we could hear Peppy’s forlorn whine from behind his front door.
The Dorrados’ building was alive in the way urban apartments always seem to be. As we walked up the three flights of stairs, we heard babies squalling, stereos cranked up high enough to send vibrations down the banisters, people shouting in a variety of languages, and even a couple locked in ecstasy. Mitch’s hackles were on end; Mr. Contreras kept a tight hold on his leash.
I felt a little foolish arriving with an old man, a dog, and a gun, although the gun at least was neatly tucked inside my down vest. The dog and the man were pretty much just out there where anyone could see them. They certainly knocked Rose off balance.
“A dog? Not a dog, he’ll eat the baby. Who is this? Your father? What are they doing here?”
Behind her I could hear María Inés howling. “I’ll leave the dog tied up in the hall here. We thought he might help track Josie, if we got enough of a clue on where she’s gone to track her.”