“This Bobby Minton call you?” Angie said.

Poole nodded. “As soon as he heard about Amanda McCready’s disappearance. Mr. Minton, it seems, had consistently taunted Corwin Earle with vivid stories about what the good people of Dorchester do to baby-rapers. How Corwin wouldn’t be able to walk ten yards down Dorchester Avenue without getting his penis chopped off and stuffed in his mouth. Mr. Minton thinks Corwin Earle specifically chose Dorchester in which to pick up his homecoming present for the Tretts because he wanted to spit in Mr. Minton’s face.”

“And where’s Corwin Earle now?” I asked.

“Gone. Vanished. We’ve staked out his parents’ home in Marshfield, but so far, nothing. He left the pen in a taxi, took it to a strip club in Stoughton, and that’s the last anyone’s seen of him.”

“And this Bobby Minton’s phone call or whatever-that’s all you have to tie Earle and the Tretts to Amanda?”

“Pretty thin, huh?” Broussard said. “I told you we don’t have much. Chances are, Earle doesn’t have the balls for a straight kidnapping in an unknown neighborhood. Nothing in his sheet points toward it. The kids he molested were kids at a summer camp where he worked seven years ago. No violence, no forced captivity. He was probably just talking big for his cell mate.”

“What about the Tretts?” Angie said.

“Well, Roberta’s clean. The only felony she’s ever been convicted of was as an accessory-after-the-fact in a liquor store stickup in Lynn back in the late seventies. She did a year, completed her probation, and hasn’t spent so much as a night in county jail since.”

“But Leon?”

“ Leon.” Broussard raised his eyebrows at Poole and whistled. “ Leon ’s bad, bad, bad. Convicted three times, accused twenty. Most cases were dropped when the victims refused to testify. And I don’t know if you know the logic regarding baby-rapers, but it’s the same for rats and roaches: You see one, there’s another hundred nearby. You catch a freak molesting a kid, you can bet there’s another thirty he’s never been bagged for if he’s halfway intelligent. So Leon, by our conservative estimates, has probably raped a good fifty kids. And he was living in Randolph and later in Holbrook when kids disappeared for good, so the feds and local cops have him at the head of their lists of suspects for those kids’ murders. Let you in on another aspect of Leon ’s character-last time he was busted, Kingston P.D. found a shitload of automatic weapons buried near his house.”

“Did he take a fall for them?” Angie asked.

Broussard shook his head. “He was smart enough to bury them on his next-door neighbor’s property. Kingston P.D. knew the shit was his-his house was filled with NRA newsletters, gun manuals, The Turner Diaries, all the usual well-armed paranoid’s paraphernalia-but they couldn’t prove it. Very little sticks to Leon. He’s very careful, and he knows how to drop out of sight.”

“Apparently.” Angie said, with a bitter edge.

Poole put a hand lightly on hers. “Keep the photos. Study them. And have your eyes open for any of the three. I doubt they’re involved-nothing points to it besides a convict’s theory-but they are the most prominent child-rapers in the area these days.”

Angie smiled at Poole ’s hand. “Okay.”

Broussard lifted his silk tie and picked at some lint. “Who was Helene McCready with at the Filmore Sunday night?”

“Dottie Mahew,” Angie said.

“That all?”

Neither Angie nor I spoke for a moment.

“Remember,” Broussard said, “full disclosure.”

“Skinny Ray Likanski,” I said.

Broussard turned to Poole. “Tell me more about this guy, partner.”

“The rascal,” Poole said. “And to think we had His Skinniness in our hands not an hour ago.” He shook his head. “Well, that’s a miss.”

“How so?” I said.

“Skinny Ray’s a professional lowlife. Learned from his daddy. He probably knows we’re looking for him, so he’s gone. Least for a while. Probably the only reason he told us you two were waving weapons around in the Filmore was so we’d leave him be, give him time to get out of Dodge. The Likanskis got relatives in Allegheny, Rem. Maybe you could-”

“I’ll call the P.D. down there,” Broussard said. “Can we skip-trace him?”

Poole shook his head. “He hasn’t taken a fall in five years. No outstandings. No parole officer. He’s clean.” Poole tapped the table with his index. “He’ll surface eventually. Disease always does.”

“We done?” Broussard asked, as the waitress approached.

Poole paid the check, and the four of us walked out into the darkening afternoon.

“If you were betting men,” Angie said, “what would you bet happened to Amanda McCready?”

Broussard took out another stick of gum, popped it in his mouth, and chewed slowly. Poole straightened his tie and studied his reflection in the passenger window of his car.

“I’d say,” Poole said, “that nothing good can come when a four-year-old has been missing for eighty-plus hours.”

“Detective Broussard?” Angie said.

“I’d say she’s dead, Ms. Gennaro.” He walked around the car to the driver’s door and opened it. “It’s a nasty world out there, and it’s never been nice to children.”

6

The Astros were playing the Orioles in a sunset game at Savin Hill Park, and both teams seemed to be having some problems with their mechanics. When a slugger for the Astros hit one down the third-base line, the Orioles’ third baseman failed to field it because he was more interested in tugging at a weed by his feet. So the Astros’ base runner picked up the ball and ran toward home with it. Just before he reached the plate, he threw the ball in the general direction of the pitcher, who picked it up and threw it toward first. The first baseman caught the ball, but instead of tagging a runner, he turned and threw it into the outfield. The centerfielder and the right fielder met at the ball and tackled each other. The left fielder waved to his mom.

The North Dorchester T-ball league for ages four through six met once a week down at Savin Hill Park and played on the smaller of two fields, which was separated from the Southeast Expressway by about fifty yards and a chain-link fence. Savin Hill overlooks the expressway and a small bay known as Malibu Beach, and it’s here that the Dorchester Yacht Club moors its boats. I’ve lived in this neighborhood my entire life and have never seen an actual yacht drop anchor anywhere near here, but maybe I’m always looking on the wrong days.

When I was between four and six, we played baseball because they didn’t have T-ball back then. We had coaches, and parents who screamed and demanded concentration, kids who’d already been taught how to lay down bunts and dive under the second baseman’s tag, fathers who tested us from the mound with fast balls and curves. We had seven-inning games and bitter rivalries with other parishes, and by the time we entered Little League at seven or eight, the teams from St. Bart’s, St. William’s, and St. Anthony’s in North Dorchester were justifiably feared.

As I stood by the bleachers with Angie and watched about thirty small boys and girls run around like spastics and miss balls because they’d pulled their hats over their eyes or were busy staring up at the setting sun, I was pretty certain that the method used when I was their age better prepared a child for the rigors of the actual sport of baseball, but the T-ball kids seemed to be having a lot more fun.

In the first place, there were no outs that I could see. The entire lineup of each team hit through a rotation. Once all fifteen or so kids had hit (and they all hit; there was no such thing as a strikeout), they switched bats for gloves with the other team. Nobody kept score. If one child was actually alert enough to both catch the ball and tag out the runner, both kids were congratulated profusely by the base coach and then the runner stayed on base. A few parents yelled, “Pick up the ball for God’s sake, Andrea,” or “Run, Eddie, run! No, no-that way. That way!” But for the most part, the parents and coaches clapped for every hit that dribbled more than four feet, for every ball fielded and thrown back somewhere in the same zip code as the park, for every successful run from first base to third, even if the kid ran over the pitcher’s mound to get there.