Moonlight Mile Part 17

"She deserved you," Angie said.

Elaine wept silently into her shoulder and Angie held the back of her head and rocked her a bit the way she so often does with our daughter.

"She deserved you."

Chapter Thirteen.

We met Andre Stiles out front of the DCF offices on Farnsworth Street and the three of us walked down along the Seaport in a light flurry to a tavern on Sleeper Street.

Once we were settled in our seats and the waitress had taken our orders, I said, "Thanks again for seeing us on such short notice, Mr. Stiles."

"Please," he said, "don't call me 'Mister.' Just call me Dre."

"Dre it is."

He was about thirty-seven or thirty-eight, brown hair cut short, the gray just finding its way along the temples and along the edges of his goatee. Well-dressed for a social worker-black cotton crewneck and dark blue jeans far nicer than anything you'd find at The Gap, black cashmere overcoat with red lining.

"So," he said, "Sophie."

"Sophie."

"You met her father."

"Yup," Angie said.

"What'd you think?"

The waitress brought our drinks. He plucked the lemon wedge out of his vodka tonic, stirred the drink, and then placed the stirrer beside the lemon wedge. His fingers moved with the confident delicacy of a pianist.

"The father," I said. "Piece of work, isn't he?"

"If by piece of work you mean douche bag, yeah, he's that."

Angie laughed and drank some wine.

"Don't sugarcoat it, Dre."

"Please, don't," Angie said.

He took a sip of his drink, chewed a chip of ice. "So many of the kids I deal with, the problem's not the kid. It's that the kid drew an a.s.shole in the parental lottery. Or two a.s.sholes. I could sit here and be all PC about it, but I do that enough at work all day."

"Last thing we want is PC," I said. "Anything you can tell us would be greatly appreciated."

"How long you two been private investigators?"

"I've been on a five-year sabbatical," Angie said.

"Until when?"

"This morning," she said.

"You missed it?"

"I thought I did," she said. "Not so sure anymore, though."

"You?" he asked me. "How long have you been at it?"

"Too long." It unsettled me how true those words felt. "Since I was twenty-three."

"You ever think of doing anything else?"

"More and more every day. You?"

He shook his head. "This is is my second career." my second career."

"What was your first?"

He finished his drink and caught the waitress's eye. I still had half my scotch and Angie still had two-thirds of her wine, so he pointed at his own drink and showed her one finger.

"My first career," he said. "I was a doctor, believe it or not."

Suddenly the delicate grace of his fingers made sense.

"You think it's going to be about saving lives but you find out quick it's about turnover, just like any other business. How many services can you deliver at a premium price with the lowest expenditure on supplies and labor? Treat 'em, street 'em, and upsell 'em when the opportunity presents itself."

Angie said, "And you weren't any more PC then, I take it?"

He chuckled as the waitress brought his drink. "I was fired from four hospitals in a five-square-mile area for insubordination. It's a record of some kind, I'm pretty sure. I suddenly found myself unhireable in the city. I mean, I could have moved to, I don't know, New Bedford or something. But I like the city. And I woke up one day and realized I hated my life. I hated what I was doing with it. I'd lost my faith." He shrugged. "A couple days later I saw an ad for a human services position with the DCF, and here I am."

"You miss it?"

"Sometimes. More often than not, though? Not so much. It's like any dysfunctional relationship-sure there were good things about it or else how would you get into it in the first place? But for the most part, it was killing me. Now I have regular hours, I do work I'm proud of, and I sleep like a baby at night."

"And the work you did with Sophie Corliss?"

"Confidential mostly. She came to me for help, and I tried to help. She's a pretty lost kid."

"And the reason she dropped out of school?"

He gave me an apologetic grimace. "Confidential, I'm afraid."

"I can't really get a clear picture of her," I said.

"That's because there isn't one. Sophie's one of those people-she entered adolescence with no real skills, no ambition, and zero sense of self. She's smart enough to know she has deficiencies but not smart enough to know what they are. And even if she did, what could she do about them? You can't decide decide to be pa.s.sionate about something. You can't manufacture a vocation. Sophie's what I call a floater. She bobs along waiting for someone to come along and tell her where to go." to be pa.s.sionate about something. You can't manufacture a vocation. Sophie's what I call a floater. She bobs along waiting for someone to come along and tell her where to go."

"You ever meet a friend of hers named Amanda?" Angie asked.

"Ah," he said, "Amanda."

"You've met her?"

"If you meet Sophie, you meet Amanda."

"So I've heard," I said.

"You met Amanda?"

"I knew her a long time ago when she was-"

"Ho," he said, pushing his chair back a bit. "You're the guy who found her back in the '90s. Right? Jesus. I knew the name sounded familiar."

"There you go then."

"And now you're looking a second time? A bit ironic." He shook his head at that irony. "Well, I don't know what she was like then, but now? Amanda's a real cool kid. Maybe too cool, you know? I never met anyone of any age so self-possessed. I mean, to be comfortable in your own skin is a rare quality in a sixty-year-old, never mind a sixteen-year-old. Amanda knows exactly who she is."

"And who is that?"

"I don't follow."

"We've heard about Amanda's cool from a lot of people, and you describe her as knowing exactly who she is. My question is-who is she?"

"She's whoever she needs to be. She's adaptability personified."

"And Sophie?"

"Sophie is ... pliable. She'll follow any philosophy if it brings her closer to the group-think of the room. Amanda adapts adapts to whatever the group to whatever the group thinks thinks it wants. And she sheds it as soon as she leaves that room." it wants. And she sheds it as soon as she leaves that room."

"You admire her."

" 'Admire' is a little strong, but I'll admit she's an impressive kid. Nothing affects her. Nothing can change her will. And she's sixteen years old."

"That's impressive," I said. "I wish, though, that just one person I talked to mentioned something about her that was goofy or warm or, I don't know, messy."

"That's not Amanda."

"Apparently not."

"What about a kid named Zippo? You ever hear of him?"

"Sophie's boyfriend. I think his real name is, like, David Lighter. Or Daniel. I can't be positive on that one."

"When's the last time you saw Sophie?"

"Two weeks ago, maybe three."

"Amanda?"

"Around the same time."

"Zippo?"

He drained his drink. "Christ."

"What?"

"It's been three weeks on him, too. They all ..." He looked at us.

"Vanished," Angie said.

Our daughter climbed the jungle gym in the center of the Ryan Playground. It had been snowing since sundown. There was a foot of sand below the jungle gym but I kept my hand nearby anyway.

"So, Detective," Angie said.

"Yes, Junior Detective."

"Oh, I'm Junior Detective, huh? Wow, there really is a gla.s.s ceiling."

"You're Junior Detective for one week. After that I'll give you a promotion."

"Based on what?"

"Solid casework and a certain nocturnal inventiveness after lights-out."

"That's hara.s.sment, you cad."

"Last week that hara.s.sment made you forget your name."

"Mommy, why would you forget your name? Did you hit your head?"

"Nice," Angie said to me. "No, Mommy didn't hit her head. But you're going to fall if you don't pay attention. Watch that bar. There's ice there."

My daughter rolled her eyes at me.

"Listen to the boss," I said.

"So what'd we learn today?" Angie asked me as Gabby went back to climbing.

"We learned that Sophie is probably the girl who talked to the police and said she was Amanda. We learned Amanda is very cool and collected. We learned Sophie is not. We learned five people walked into some room, two died, but four walked out. Whatever that means. We learned that there's a kid in this world named Zippo. We learned it's possible Amanda was abducted, because no one thinks she'd run away with so much to stay in school for." I looked over at Angie. "I'm out. You cold?"

Her teeth chattered. "I never wanted to leave the house. How'd we get Edna the Eskimo for a kid?"