She ground her teeth and I think she would have punched me if she hadn’t been so distracted. “Don’t hold your breath,” she said.
“It’s easy,” I said again. “We’re going to write out a few short paragraphs, and all you have to do is read them out loud. Just like giving a book report in sixth grade.”
“I flunked book reports,” she growled.
“You didn’t have me to help,” I said, with a great deal more confidence than I felt. “Now come on; let’s sit down and write this thing.”
She ground her teeth and squeezed her hands together some more for a few seconds, and she seemed to think about jumping out the window. But it was only the second floor, and the windows were sealed shut, so finally Debs turned away and slumped back into her chair. “All right,” she said through clenched teeth. “Let’s do it.”
There are only a very few cop clichés that are necessary for saying almost anything to the press. That is one reason, of course, that a talking suit like Captain Matthews could become good enough at it to rise up to his lofty rank based solely on his ability to memorize them all and then put them in the right order when standing in front of a camera. It was really not even a skill, since it took a great deal less ability than the simplest card trick.
Still, it was a talent Deborah did not have, not even a little, and trying to explain it to her was like describing plaid to a blind person. Altogether it was a nasty and unpleasant interlude, and by the time we headed down to the press conference I was nearly as sweaty and frazzled as my sister. Neither of us felt any better when we saw the standing-room-only crowd of salivating predators waiting for us. For a moment Deborah froze in place, one foot raised in the air. But then, as if somebody had flipped a switch, the reporters turned on her and began their routine of shouting questions and taking pictures, and as I saw Deborah clamp her jaw and frown, I took a deep breath. She’s going to be all right, I thought, and I watched her climb to the podium with something like pride in my creation.
Of course, that lasted only until she opened her mouth, and after that began one of the most miserable fifteen-minute spells I can remember. Deborah trying to speak to a roomful of cops was profoundly uncomfortable. Deborah trying to make a statement at a press conference was torture so intensely painful that I am quite sure that the men in black hoods who worked for the Inquisition would have shuddered and refused to participate. Deborah stammered, stuttered, stumbled, sweated, and lurched from phrase to carefully polished phrase in a tangled sweat so thorough she looked like she was confessing to child rape, and when she finally finished the prepared statement I had worked on so hard there was stunned silence in the room for several seconds. And then, alas, the reporters smelled blood in the water and leaped on Deborah with a savage frenzy. All that had come before was cupcakes and kitties by comparison, and I watched as Deborah slowly and carefully tied the rope around her own neck and hoisted herself into the air, where she twisted in the wind with agonizing completeness until finally, mercifully, Captain Matthews had suffered enough and stepped forward to say, “No more questions.” He did not quite shove Deborah off the podium, but it was clear that he had to think about it.
The captain glared forcefully at the assembled lynch mob, as if he could beat them into submission with his manly stare, and they did actually quiet down just a bit. “All right,” he said after a moment. “The, uh, family members.” He put a fist to his mouth and cleared his throat and I wondered if Deborah was contagious. “Mr. and Mrs. Um Aldovar. Would like to make a brief statement.” He nodded and then held out an arm in a half embrace.
A stunned-looking Mr. Aldovar led his wife up to the microphones. She looked exhausted and several years older, but as they stood there in front of the crowd she visibly gathered herself, pushed away from her husband, and fumbled out a sheet of
paper. And the reporters, bizarrely enough, actually went silent for a moment.
“To the person or persons who took our little girl,” she began, and then she had to stop for a moment and, just for consistency, clear her throat. “Our Samantha,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of money, but whatever we have or can get, it’s yours. Just please don’t hurt our little girl.… Just …” And that was as far as she could get. She covered her face with her hands and the paper fluttered to the ground. Mr. Aldovar stepped forward and took her into his arms and glared at the crowd as if they knew where Samantha was and refused to tell.
“She’s a good kid,” he said angrily. “There’s no reason in the world to, to—Please,” he said with a softer tone. “Please just let her go. Whatever it is you want, just please let her go.…” And then his face crumpled and he just turned away. Captain Matthews stepped forward and glared out at the room again.
“All right,” the captain said. “You all have a picture of the girl. Samantha. We’re asking that you help us get it out there, and, uh—if people see her, you know, citizens. You can call that special task force hotline, which—you have that number, too, in the media. And if we can, uh, circulate the number, and the picture, let’s get this girl back. Alive.” He gave the room his money shot, a determined and virile glare straight into the cameras, and held it for a beat before he said, “Thank you for your help.” And he stood there for a moment longer with his manly jaw clenched, to give the photographers one last good shot of his commanding facial features, and then he said, “All right, that’s it,” and turned away.
Predictably enough, the room erupted into enormously loud chaos, but Matthews just waved an arm and turned away to say comforting things to the Aldovars, and that really was it. I pushed forward to get to Deborah, collecting and distributing several hard elbows to the ribs along the way. I found my sister standing off to the side, opening and closing her fists. A little bit of color had returned to her cheeks and she looked oddly rumpled, as if somebody had just woken her from a bad dream.
“If I ever have to do that again,” she said through her teeth, “I’ll turn in my goddamn badge.”
“If you ever try to do it again,” I said, “Captain Matthews will take it from you himself.”
“Jesus fuck,” she said. “Was it as bad as it felt?”
“Oh, no,” I said. “Much worse.”
I suppose my sour mood prevented me from seeing it coming, but Debs whacked me with an arm punch. On the one hand, it was nice to see her recovering from her ordeal. But on the other hand, it really hurt.
“Thanks for the support,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.” She turned and began pushing angrily through the crowd, and I followed, rubbing my arm.
Reporters are odd creatures. They have to think very highly of themselves in order to do their job at all, and clearly some of them who had seen Deborah’s pitiful performance must have been very good at that kind of self-delusion, because they apparently believed that if they only shoved a microphone at Debs and shouted a question, she would cave in under the pressure of their perfect hair and teeth and blurt out an answer. Unfortunately for their professional self-esteem, however, Deborah just kept moving forward, batting away anything they put in front of her, and pushing hard at anyone foolish enough to stand in her way. And even the reporters standing back toward the exit, who saw quite clearly what happened to their colleagues, thought so highly of themselves that they tried the exact same thing—and seemed surprised when they got the same result.
Because I was following Deborah, several of them eyed me speculatively, but after many years of diligent maintenance, my disguise was too good for them, and they all decided that I was exactly what I wanted to appear—an absolute nonentity with no answers to anything. And so, relatively unmolested, battered only on the upper arm from Deborah’s arm punch, I made it out of the press conference and, with my sister, back to the task force command center on the second floor.
Somewhere along the way, Deke joined us, trickling in behind to lean against the wall. Somebody had set up a coffee machine and Deborah poured some into a Styrofoam cup. She sipped it and made a face. “This is worse than the coffee service stuff,” she said.
“We could go for breakfast,” I said hopefully.
Debs put down the cup and sat down. “We got too much to do,” she said. “What time is it?”
“Eight forty-five,” Deke said, and Deborah looked at him sourly, as if he had chosen an unpleasant time. “What,” he said. “It is.”
The door swung open and Detective Hood came in. “I am so fucking good I scare myself,” he said as he swaggered over and slumped into a seat in front of Deborah.
“Scare me, too, Richard,” Deborah said. “What have you got?”
Hood pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it. “In record time,” he said. “Tyler Spanos’s 2009 blue convertible Porsche.” He flicked a finger at the paper, making a popping sound. “Guy runs a chop shop, he owed me a favor; I cut him a break last year.” He shrugged. “It woulda been his third fall, so he called me with this.” He flicked the paper again. “It’s in a repaint place up at Opa-Locka,” he said. “I got a squad car there now, holding the guys were painting it, a couple of Haitians.” He tossed the paper on the desk in front of Deborah. “Who’s your daddy?” he said.