The Drifter (Peter Ash #1)(57)

“Ma’am?” said Peter. “Where did you suggest Jimmy start looking for your grandson?”

—

Mrs. Castellano gave Peter a short list of Felix’s friends and their phone numbers. She’d given Jimmy the same list.

Felix didn’t go to taverns, she said. He belonged to the YMCA on Forty-sixth Street, he took care of himself. She had convinced the staff to post fliers and review their records. Felix hadn’t been to the Y since before he left her home.

Peter felt the static rise higher even before he asked his next question. The pricking of sweat on the back of his neck. He knew it would be bad.

“May I see his room?”

The stairwell was steep and narrow and tucked tightly under the eaves, and Peter had to hunch over and turn sideways to get up the stairs as the static crackled behind his ears and the steel band tightened around his chest. The bedroom wasn’t much bigger than the stairwell. Peter kept breathing, in and out, in and out. He was sweating freely now. He would last only so long. He’d better make the best of it.

The narrow bed was neatly made, waiting for Felix to come home. But the closet and a leaning particleboard dresser were nearly empty. The bulletin board over the dresser was bare. Pinholes and uneven fading showed where papers had been tacked up.

“He took all his medals with him,” she said. There was no space for two in the bedroom, so she stood in the doorway, looking in. “His discharge papers. His dress uniform. What would he need his dress uniform for?”

Peter felt it in his stomach. Something bad.

He thought of Jimmy’s little apartment, the rent three months in advance, the fridge cleaned out for a long absence.

“Ma’am, I’d like to search the room. Is that all right? I’ll put everything back the way I found it.”

Mrs. Castellano nodded.

There wasn’t much there. He would work fast.

He shoved the narrow bed away from the wall, pulled off the cheap linens, lifted the mattress from the box spring, then the box spring from the floor. Nothing.

He took the drawers from the dresser. A few torn T-shirts and worn-out socks, some old car magazines. He flipped through the magazines and saw only cars. Nothing taped on the undersides of the drawers.

He went through the closet, item by item. It didn’t take long. Two faded dress shirts, a plastic belt with a broken buckle. A thrift-shop suit with tickets to the North Division High School prom in the breast pocket and a dried boutonniere on the lapel. The flower, once a white rose, had thinned to pale parchment as fine as ash.

Mrs. Castellano stood in the doorway, watching him make a mess of her grandson’s room. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll put it all back now.”

“No, no,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I should have done this myself when he left. But I just couldn’t.”

Peter remade the bed, put the clothes on their hangers, and picked up the drawers and went to return them to the dresser. On the floor in the open bottom of the dresser, maybe where it had fallen from the bulletin board, lay a business card.

A cream-colored card. With green lettering.

The Riverside Veterans’ Center.

Peter picked up the card and turned it over. On the back was the same spidery black handwriting and the same phone number as the card that Jimmy had hidden in his money belt.

Peter took out his own wallet. Not much in there.

He removed the cream-colored card with the green lettering that Lipsky had given him.

The same card.

He turned it over.

The same phone number.

—

Standing outside on her stoop, Peter thanked Mrs. Castellano very much for her time. He told her that he would call her to let her know what he found out. He reminded her of the number for his cell phone.

“I’m so glad you called now,” she said. “I’ll have a new number this time next week. You never would have found me.” She pulled out a pen and wrote it down for him.

Peter looked at her.

She smiled brightly. “I’m moving into my sister’s house,” she said. “I worked at a bank for forty years, but when the FDIC took them over, my pension lost most of its value. My retirement savings dropped with the market. I haven’t been able to find a new job. I refinanced my house five years ago when my sister needed surgery, and now the bank is calling in the note.” She shrugged gracefully. “They’re taking the house.”

“I’m so sorry.”

She waved a hand. “Oh, it’s been a year coming,” she said. “I’ve come to terms with it. Although it certainly made Felix quite furious when he came home. That horrible bank putting his nana out of her house.”

“Is there something else you can do?”

“No.” She put her hand on his arm. “At least I have a place to go,” she said. “And I can get Social Security. Think of all those people without jobs, without savings, without any place to call home.” She shook her head. “My husband would roll over in his grave with all these bank bailouts, these executives getting their bonuses, while hardworking people lose their homes and children go hungry.”

“Do you need help moving?” Peter asked.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I have family for that.” Her grip was fierce. “You just find my Felix.”