Frankie Aguirre and Art Jefferson - 03 - Simple Simon Read online

  It scared him. The loud noise scared him.

  He knew what to do.

  With his face stinging and one eye swollen almost shut, Simon pulled his cards from beneath his sweatshirt. He flipped through them to the one titled STORM. IF A LOUD NOYZ SKAIRS YU AND IT GTS LOUDR AND YU KANT FIND MOMMY AND DADDY THN GO TO TH BASMNT

  Simon replaced the cards and put the magazine that lay on his lap under his arm and walked out of his bedroom. His eyes scanned the carpet at his feet. One hurt very bad. He did not cry.

  The ringing in his ears crescendoed. Simon held the banister in his right hand and went down the steps as quickly as he could. He stopped there and searched the living room with one watery eye. He was not crying. “Mommy. Daddy.”

  No answer came. Simon took a step then stopped. There was something at his feet. It was the man who showed him the puzzle. The man who hit him. “Mommy. Daddy.”

  Nothing, and the sound in his head now deepened, gaining bass, thundering in time to the throbbing around his eye. Mommy and Daddy were not answering. He had to get to the basement. The man on the floor was in the way.

  Simon’s feet shuffled in place for a moment. Then he lifted one over the man, and the other. He walked past the kitchen and stopped one last time as the avalanche of noise grew. “Mommy. Daddy.”

  They were not here. If they were here they would come. Simon knew what to do.

  He walked quickly to the door to the basement, opened it, and closed it behind. His footsteps were light on the stairs as he descended.

  Four

  The Friend Card

  The silver Volvo 940 eased into the minor stream rushing down the gutter and stopped curbside in front of the Federal Building. Art opened the door and stepped across the waterway to enter the warm interior of the wedding present he’d given his wife. She accelerated into a break in the traffic and began the trek to the JFK Expressway.

  “Thanks for the lift, babe,” Art said as he opened the front of his overcoat. Hot air washed over him from the vents.

  “It’s no problem,” Anne replied tepidly, her eyes straight ahead, thumb tapping rhythmically on the steering wheel. The stereo was off. Her husband leaned over and kissed her cheek.

  “My car took a crap this afternoon,” Art explained. Six months old and the Bureau Chevy had thrown a rod! “And can you believe there wasn’t one damn spare in pool?” Budget cuts were wonderful things, he was thinking when he realized Anne wasn’t commenting. He turned attention to her and saw her ‘I’m not pleased with myself’ face. Had it been her ‘I’m not pleased with you’ face she’d be looking at him, or at whoever was deserving of it. Instead, she stared blankly at the brake lights ahead, but Art knew she was really looking inside. “Something wrong, babe?”

  Anne straightened and let out part of a breath she felt she’d been holding for almost an hour now. “Have you ever tried your damndest to make something happen, but it just wouldn’t?”

  Every day, Art thought, but he knew that wasn’t what she needed to hear. “Sometimes.”

  “Well, I had one of those sometimes this afternoon.” She frowned and shook her head, and even considered giving the steering wheel a good thump with the heel of her hand, but didn’t.

  “Is this about that kid you told me about?” Art asked. Of course the Bulls had been on in the background when she was telling him in mild shouts from the kitchen of their home in Evanston, about an hour from the city on a good traffic day.

  “Simon,” Anne said, irritation beneath the word. “The autistic young man?”

  “I remember,” Art said.

  Anne relaxed a bit. “Sorry.”

  Art rubbed her leg through the blue skirt. “Forget it. Go on.”

  “His…” She retracted the invective she almost let slip. “…father refuses to—” The ringing of a cell phone interrupted her complaint.

  “Yours,” Art said.

  Anne fished the phone from her purse with one hand and answered it after the third ring. “Hello… Yes, this is her… What?”

  Art watched his wife lean forward to the steering wheel, almost as if she needed the support. “Babe?”

  “When did this…” She pulled the Volvo hurriedly to the curb to a symphony of angry horns, and closed her eyes. “How did you get my number?”

  Art saw her nod a few times, then she clicked off and practically dove toward him across the center console. “Babe, what is it?”

  Anne pulled him very close, as tight as she could, and silently cursed herself for the thoughts she’d almost expressed toward Simon’s parents. “It’s…Simon,” she managed to say between sobs, then pulled back from Art and tried to regain her composure. She put both hands very properly on the steering wheel and said, “I’ve got to get to him.”

  “What is it?” Art almost begged as his wife screeched back into traffic and doubled back toward the Eisenhower Expressway.

  * * *

  The Cadillac limousine was an hour outside of Tokyo when the youngish man facing Keiko finished reading her report on what the American had revealed. He looked to her and set the twelve pages on the seat next to him. “Again, you have done fine work. Mr. Chappell knew even more about the Americans’ position on tariff limits than we anticipated.”

  Keiko stared back at him through dark glasses. She was reclined in the leather seat, facing the direction of travel, and had counted two trains passing the car on the right at a very great speed. She wore tight black jeans and a black blazer over a white tee-shirt. Her hair hung loose. One hand lay across her stomach. The other picked quietly at a seam in the upholstery.

  “Mr. Kimodo will be pleased,” Mitsuo Heiji said, his expression cooling a bit before continuing. “But he is concerned with your…method.”

  Keiko looked right, past the train tracks to the farmland beyond. In the far distance the morning sky was grey and threatening. The rain was going to come. “Are we going to turn back soon?” she asked the window, ignoring the question.

  Heiji did not answer immediately. With her attention on something outside the car he let his eyes wander over her body. She was forty, and those years showed somewhat in her face, but her body could belong to a teenager. He might have chanced a proposition once, but not after seeing what remained of Carlton Kerr, the first American she’d handled some months before. Heiji had laid eyes upon the body before seeing to its disposal at a highway construction site. It was difficult to think of the man that way with his tongue torn out and one knee bent forward at an impossible angle. That this…woman had done that frightened Heiji more than a bit. If only she were tame his thoughts might be of pleasure.

  “Mitsuo, don’t imagine yourself with me,” Keiko said without looking to him. “Imagination is the second most dangerous thing a man has.”

  Heiji snickered a bit, nervously. He had been too obvious in his musings. “The second, is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is the first?”

  “A heartbeat,” she answered while turning back to face him. A bulge rolled down his throat.

  “Again, I must convey that your methods are of concern to Mr. Kimodo.”

  “I got what he wanted,” Keiko said with quiet authority. Twelve pages of drivel that the American had offered quite freely after she’d crushed one of his testicles in her hand; the second she popped between her teeth just prior to gutting him alive, during the course of which he’d had the sense to die. Twelve pages of words. Trade policy decisions. Commerce Department needs. Tasks ahead and information desired by his superiors. Words. To Kimodo the business tycoon they were gold, but Keiko knew she’d felt the American’s true worth spill over her naked body in a spout from his open belly. She had come soon after that.

  “But the remnants of your…success are quite graphic,” Heiji persisted, choosing his words haltingly at times, but with care. “These things are not public, of course, but to anger the Americans with a…distasteful display of one of their own is not wise.” He felt her stare harden, and added quickl
y, “In Mr. Kimodo’s eyes. Perhaps it would be wise to conclude your…sessions as you did with Mr. Hashimoto last year. You succeeded then, and left no…untidiness.”

  There was no need to leave Yoshihiro Hashimoto, the son of one of Kimodo’s business rivals, in any state other than dead and slightly damaged. He was not of the taste Keiko desired in playthings. Those had to be at least Caucasian, and, if the gods were smiling, white Americans. Ever since defiling that American in the Bekaa Valley for her onetime Hezbollah comrades, that kind was all she could think of. All she wanted. “I do my job in the manner I see fit. Please inform Mr. Kimodo of that. Now, when are we turning back?”

  Heiji collected himself and removed an envelope from inside his coat. “In a moment.” He handed it across to Keiko. Her nails were short and painted blue, he noticed when she took it from him. “Mr. Kimodo requires your assistance in a new matter.”

  So soon…. Keiko thought longingly. “Go on.”

  “The particulars are in the envelope, but Mr. Kimodo requires that you travel to America. An individual there may be able to provide some very valuable information. Concerning their top code.”

  “Top code?” Keiko probed. “What is that?”

  “The particulars are in writing.”

  Keiko let her fingers caress the coarse package. Some things were so much better spoken than coldly read. “An individual?”

  Heiji hesitated briefly when a flash of pity ran through him. “A young man. It is in writing, and you will have a contact in America.”

  A young man. That was an enticingly large spectrum. “America, you say.”

  “Our trusted ally,” Heiji commented. He noticed Keiko shift slightly where she sat. It was almost as though she were squirming.

  Keiko heard Kimodo’s lackey speak, but she was looking out the window again, watching the first sheets of grey begin to fall upon the fields in the distance, wanting to think of the crops and the farmers and anything other than the one thought that kept repeating in her head: young man, young man, young man, young man. They would meet soon, she knew, but soon always seemed an eternity.

  Then again, with deprivation her hunger would rise to glorious heights, and it would be all the sweeter a sacrifice that quenched it.

  “A young man, you say?” She just had to hear it one more time.

  Heiji nodded and noticed that Keiko recrossed her legs very, very slowly. “Yes, a young man.”

  The limousine exited and reentered the motorway heading back to Tokyo. Keiko chewed quietly, impatiently at her lower lip the entire way.

  * * *

  Anne parked the Volvo at a hasty angle on Milford just short of the police line that held a neighborhood of gawkers at bay. She ran to the nearest Chicago police officer with Art at her side. Though it wasn’t his territory, he held his Bureau ID and shield out front for the city cop to see.

  “I’m Dr. Jefferson,” Anne said.

  The patrolman saw the authority backing up the lady and let her through. A minute later Anne trotted up the steps of 2564 Vincent for the second time in a few hours. A police lieutenant stopped her and Art there.

  “You’re Dr. Jefferson?” Lt. Jerry Miklovich asked. He noted the FBI shield now clipped to the belt of the man with her.

  “Yes, where’s—”

  “And you’re?”

  “Art Jefferson, Assistant Special Agent in Charge.”

  “Right, you just—”

  “Where is Simon!?” Anne demanded loudly.

  Miklovich was quiet for a second. “He’s all right, but he seems to be in shock or some—”

  “He’s autistic,” Anne said.

  Miklovich nodded slowly, knowingly. “Is that like retarded.”

  Anne didn’t have the time to educate the lawman. “Something like that. Where is he?”

  “He’s in the basement. We can’t coax him out. Like I told you on the phone, the father had this business card with your number on the back. We called…uh, German name…”

  “Ohlmeyer,” Anne said. Take me to him. Hurry.

  “Right, and he wasn’t in. His office gave us your name and number and, well, it was on the back of the card, too, so we got in touch with you.” Miklovich spit to the side of the porch. Two of his lab people walked past into the house. “So you’re this kid’s doctor.”

  “One of them. Can I please see him?”

  “If you can get him out of the basement, great. This kid may have seen what happened in there. I didn’t want to mess him up any more than he already looks.”

  Anne bent dumbly forward. “Are you finished?”

  Miklovich looked to Art. “It’s a mess in there.” Then back to Anne. “Lots of blood.”

  “I won’t touch anything,” Anne said.

  “Nah, I just don’t want you to get sick,” Miklovich admitted.

  “She won’t,” Art said, his hand on Anne’s shoulder.

  Miklovich chewed at something in his mouth and spit off the porch again. “All right. Follow right behind me.”

  Art brought up the rear, keeping one hand on his wife’s back. He was old hat at messy crime scenes. She wasn’t. He kept his thumb moving in circles between her shoulder blades, reassuring her as the tactless lieutenant led them through the living room, right at the stairs— one man down, shot in the back, Art noted —left into a den— a body there, on its side, at least one obvious wound, a medium frame Smith on the rug —and toward the kitchen— one female down there, head shot, fully clothed, broken glass on the floor —and right down a hall to an open door. One patrolman guarded it. Darkness descended from the opening.

  Miklovich turned toward the lady. Her face quivered briefly. “You okay?”

  Anne nodded.

  “He’s down there. I’ve got someone down there just keeping an eye on him.”

  Anne nodded again and forced the grisly images she’d just walked past from her thoughts…for now.

  “Do you want me to go down with you?” Art asked.

  Another nod. Art eased her forward with a guiding hand and followed her down the stairs. The dimmest light shined from a yellowed fixture over a collection of boxes. Books poked into view from the top ones.

  The cop at the bottom made way for them, and then retreated upstairs at a wave from the lieutenant.

  In the far corner of the small basement, in shadows that fell from towers of brown, bellied cardboard boxes, Simon Lynch stood silently swaying. His arms were held tight to his body against the chill. Something was tucked under his arm.

  The preceding moments faded away when Anne saw her young patient. He was the most alone being in the universe at the moment, she knew. “Simon. It’s Dr. Anne.”

  The sway leaned into a step forward. Jaundiced light painted one side of his form.

  “It’s Dr. Anne.” She slid out of her coat and eased one stride toward him. “Dr. Anne. Remember?”

  Simon touched his cards through the sweatshirt. “Dr. Anne is my friend.”

  Anne nodded, her eyes wet, a smile beneath them. “Yes, I’m your friend.” You have no one, Simon. No one. No relatives. No one. You’re only sixteen. Social Services might help you. Some court somewhere, maybe. But what kind of help is that?

  Simon took another metronomic step forward before halting. His head rose in a flash, eyes flitting over the man behind Dr. Anne.

  “It’s okay, Simon.” Anne reached back and brought Art next to her. She immediately noticed that the young man didn’t wet himself. So far, so good. Then she saw the rising bruise on the left side of his fair face. It sickened her, but a mark such as that would fade. Would ones less noticeable, she wondered, and knew that that had to be her primary concern.

  “Hello, Simon,” Art said, feeling out of sorts offering a greeting to someone whose parents had just been brutally killed. He felt Anne’s grip on his hand increase. It was her ‘You’re doing fine’ touch. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “It’s nice to meet Simon.” He did not close the scant distance to Dr. Anne.
r />   “Simon, Art is my…very good friend.” Anne waited for a reaction, hoped that he would make the connection himself. A few seconds passed before he pulled his cards out and turned to the one marked FRIENDS. Then he waited, pen in hand.

  “What’s he doing?” Art asked.

  “Tell him your name,” Anne prompted.

  Art hesitated for an awkward few seconds then said, “My name is Art, Simon.”

  “Dr. Anne is my friend.” The pen clicked and hovered over the card. “There was a loud noise.”

  “I know,” Art said. He felt himself drawn to Simon, and took a step closer.