"No, I don't."

"You always remembered where I lived when you were too drunk to go home to your wife. Ludmilla was special to you then."

"That was a long time ago."

"I'm not even a memory to you. I'm a thief to you now."

"That's not true."

"What kind of man are you? You forget making love in this apartment, but you remember fake jewelry, when I was just a young girl."

"I'm a man who's looking for his daughter, Ludmilla."

"So now you think I kidnap your daughter. Okay, okay," she said. Her hands shaking, she fumbled with her keys and opened the door. She flung it wide-open. "Go ahead, look," she said. "Look, look, look."

Eddie went in and looked-carefully.

Eddie barely remembered the ride home. He kept the windows down, the radio volume up. One minute he was singing to the joggers along the FDR in Manhattan, the next he was in the Bronx and he could smell anise from cookies baking in the Stella D'Oro plant. When he got out of the car, his legs ached from the stiffness. His right hand was badly swollen.

Grace filled him in on their day while he ate leftover macaroni and cheese casserole Babsie had fixed. They'd signed up for soccer, gone food shopping, picked up a movie, and still had had time to make five o'clock Mass at Sacred Heart.

"Granpop, I taught Babsie how to play chicken foot."

"I wasn't very good," Babsie said.

"Yes you were," Grace said. "For your first time playing dominoes."

The second hand on the electric clock above the sink swept past the three white chickens near the rusted plow.

Eddie tried to calculate the hours since his daughter's disappearance.

"Babsie wants to know why Mommy has that pogo stick in her room," Grace said. "I told her you gave it to her."

"It was hers when she was a kid," Eddie said. "I found it in the garage and gave it to her for her birthday… as a joke."

"Tell her the funny part, Granpop."

Eddie told her the story about Kate. When she was about Grace's age, he'd bought her a spring-driven pogo stick. Kate jumped endlessly in their driveway. Ka-ching, ka-ching for hours and hours. Eddie said he was working late tours and he heard that noise in his sleep all summer. All the neighborhood boys came over and tried to outdo her. They didn't have a prayer. The first week, Kate set her first goal at one hundred jumps without falling, then two hundred, then a thousand. She wore out the pogo stick's rubber tips by the dozen. "Call the Guinness Book" she'd yell up to the house. Ka-ching, ka-ching all day long.

"See, she never gives up," Babsie said.

"My mom never gives up," Grace said.

Later, Eddie fell asleep in the chair as Grace read The Polar Express to him. She laughed because Eddie called her Kate. At nine o'clock, he went to bed while Babsie and Grace watched a movie.

When you've been awake far too long, the first moment of falling asleep is like dropping off a cliff. It's a fall so sudden, so quick and violent, it jolts you awake, your body shivering while drops of sweat bead on your forehead. Eddie didn't know the scientific explanation, but he knew the rest of the night never got much better, as your sleep-deprived brain spliced your fears and dreams and ran them endlessly like a cheap rock video. All you could do was grab on and try to save yourself.

"Eddie, Eddie," he heard Babsie whisper. "You're setting the world's record for nightmares."

She knelt down next to the bed. He knew time had passed, for Babsie was in her nightgown and the house was dark and quiet.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"A little after three."

"I wake everyone up?"

"She's still sleeping, but you were getting loud."

"Sorry."

"Jesus, you're freezing," she said. "Scooch over."

Babsie slid in bed next to him. She rolled on her left side and put her arm across his chest. He could feel her against him, her warmth.

"You have to stop thinking, Eddie. Just for a few minutes."

Babsie buried her head in his shoulder. Her hair smelled clean, but not one of those fruity shampoos. He was sure that Babsie's experiment with red hair in high school was the last time she'd ever colored her hair. Gray, shoulder-length, it suited her. Everything was real about Babsie. She didn't know any other way.

"You want me to leave, just say so," she said.

"No… please."

"I don't know if I should, you know. You stood me up once. After graduation, you called me. You said we'd go to a movie, then to Frank and Joe's to grab a pizza, but you never showed up."

"I stopped in the North End for a beer," he said. "I never got out of the place."

"I'm surprised you remember."

"Kevin said it was the biggest mistake of my life."

She leaned over and kissed him.

"I always wanted to do that," she said.

Her breasts felt plump and firm. He rolled over and faced her. She held him with a strength he'd never known in a woman. Her lips were plush, fuller than Eileen's. She reached down and felt him.

"Don't think about anything," she said as she rose to her knees and pulled the nightgown over her head. Her nipples were erect, her stomach not flat, but firm. She straddled his legs and guided him into her. In the yellowish haze of light filtering through the blinds, he watched her outline, the curves, the square shoulders. Babsie was not a fragile girl. He held her hips as she moved, her body wanting to gallop. "Slowly," he whispered. "Slowly." He wanted to savor each second, each subtle movement of her body. Holding herself up with her hands, she leaned down until her mouth was on his, her breasts grazing his chest. And they moved in rhythm, together, as if they'd been there before.

Chapter 26

Sunday, April 12

8:00 A.M.

Ka-ching, ka-ching. Eddie's eyes snapped open at the sound. It came from the driveway, someone on the pogo stick. Three steps to the window, but he couldn't see anyone. He dug his underwear out of the sheets and ran to the kitchen window. Babsie was dressed and on the phone. She stood at the window watching Grace, her hair still wet from the shower. Bacon sizzled.

"That thing is rusty, Eddie," Babsie said, hanging up the phone while writing notes on a pad.

"What thing?"

"The pogo stick," she said, a wide grin starting. 'The pogo stick needs oil. What the hell did you think I meant?"

Grace bounded across the driveway, tilting left and right. Five jumps and down. But she got back up, holding on to Babsie's car.

"Kids are amazing," Babsie said. "They deal with stuff."

The clothes dryer buzzed; she'd been up long enough to do laundry. Eddie went over and put his arms around her. Maybe it was so easy because they'd known each other all their lives.

"Your husband was a bus driver, wasn't he?" Eddie said.

"Yeah, Philly drove the number seven. He left me for a bus driver groupie from the Hollow."

"There are really bus driver groupies?"

"Strange little women," Babsie said. "But Philly was a magnet for strange. He was a guy who actually believed that they had special erasers that could erase the clothes off women in photographs. I'd always catch him with the center section of the Daily News, trying to rub the bikini off some Australian babe."

In the driveway, Grace climbed back on the pogo stick. Six jumps and down she went again. Eddie regretted the story about how persistent Kate had been. He didn't want Grace to get hurt trying to set a record.

"I'll find something to lubricate that pogo stick," Eddie said.

"Put your pants on first. Then sit down and eat. I have some news about the case."

Babsie had filled a metal serving bowl with scrambled eggs. She put three slices of bacon on a plate, then poured a glass of orange juice for him. Eddie knew she'd brought the bacon with her. Kate wouldn't allow it in the house.