“Yeah.”
“Anything else?”
“He offered. He said he was a hooker. I didn’t know—”
I backhand him across the face, hard enough to knock out one of his yellow, rotten teeth. He grips his bloody mouth and starts to whimper.
I rub my knuckles, which are now aching and sore. It’s been a long time since I used that move. “Did you see where he went?”
The man shakes his head, near sobbing. “It was dark. I was… He took the drugs and he left. I didn’t see where he went, I swear. I’m sorry. I didn’t know he was yours.”
“You want me to take care of him, Boss?” Carmine asks, tightening his grip on the man’s shoulders.
I stare at the worthless piece of shit, and I’m so tempted, but it’s not his fault my boy went astray. I wish it were.
“Pay him but keep a man on him.” I grab the drug dealer’s chin and squeeze it like a vice. “If my boy dies because of the shit you sold him, I’ll be coming for you. And if he comes back to you, you’d better call me before you take another breath. You got that?”
“Yes, sir.” He nods.
I turn back toward the table where there’s a map of Queens. “One more thing,” I say to him. “Come over here and show me where it happened. Where you met him and where you fucked him.”
He comes over and with a shaking finger, points to two locations on the map, both within a block of each other.
“These buildings,” I say to Carmine. “Start here. Search wherever you’re able, interrogate the supers and have them show you the empty rooms, even if they’re condemned. I don’t care who’s living in them. Search every goddamned room, under the bed, in the closets, under the mattresses on the floor. You understand me?”
“Yes, Boss.”
They leave and I smoke another cigarette. My hands are still shaking.
Giovanni calls me that night.It’s about 9 p.m. and my men have been tearing apart the tenement houses for hours.
“Giovanni,” I say as calmly as I can because I have a strategy in mind. I get no response, only his soft breaths against the phone. I can almost feel the warmth on my cheek. “I miss you, sweetheart.”
“Valentin,” he says slowly. He sounds high—spaced out and groggy—like when he tries to speak during an intense scene. “I wanted to hear your voice.”
“There’s an easier way.” I’ll play this cool, make sure he knows how easy it is for him to come back to me. All is forgiven. “Tell me where you are, and I’ll have Andreas come pick you up.”
“I want you to know that I’m grateful to you. For all you’ve done for me, from the time I was small. You and my grandfather are the only people…” he falls silent, not finishing his sentence.
“Why are you talking like you’ll never see me again, Gio?” I bite my knuckle to maintain control of myself.
“You really tried.”
“I’m still trying, sweetheart. I got the whole Aponte family looking for you right now, even Rico. He’s worried sick over you.”
“Rico,” he says softly.
“I’m worried about you too, sweetheart. Why don’t you come home?”
He sniffs and then he sighs. “You know, when I was taken…” he says brokenly. “When I was in that room, in between… I used to look out the window, except it was boarded up, so I would have to picture things. I’d imagine what the people in the apartments across the street were doing. A mother braiding her daughter’s hair or a man playing the trombone, or a couple fighting and then making up or even going to bed angry. I made up all these little stories about their lives in my mind.”
“What’s our story?” I ask.
“I wanted to be your boy.”
“Youaremy boy.”
“I wanted to be your slave.”
