lost boy lost girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

start at the beginning. What can I tell you now, and what do you think I did to you?”
    “What
did
he tell you, exactly? How bad is it? Did I beat the crap out of him every night? Was I psychologically abusive?”
    “Are you talking about Mark?”
    “Gee, do you think? Why would I be asking you about Mark, I wonder? If my son happens to be there with you, Tim, I’m asking you to let me talk to him. No, I’m not asking. I’m begging.”
    “Jesus, Philip, Mark left home? What happened?”
    “What happened? My son hasn’t been here for three days, that’s what. So if he’s staying in that fucked-up circus of yours on Grand Street, goddamn you, I’m on my knees here. Put him on. Do whatever you have to, all right?”
    It took a while, but I did manage to convince Philip that his son was not hiding in my loft, and that I’d had nothing to do with his disappearance. I felt silenced, stunned, baffled.
    “Why didn’t you call me before this?”
    “Because it didn’t occur to me that he might be in New York until about an hour ago.”
    Seen one way, Philip and I are alone in the world. We have no other siblings, no cousins or second cousins, no grandparents, no aunts or uncles, no living parents.
    I asked him if there was anything I could do for him.
    “Isn’t one of your best friends Tom Pasmore? I want you to talk to him—get him to help me.”
    Tom Pasmore, I add for posterity’s sake, is an old Millhaven friend of mine who solves crimes for a living, not that he needs the money. He’s like Sherlock Holmes or Nero Wolfe, except that he is a real person, not a fictional one. His (biological) father was the same way. He solved crimes in city after city, chiefly by going over all the records and documents in sight and making connections everyone else missed, connections you more or less have to be a genius to see. Tom inherited his methods along with his talents and his wardrobe. As far as I’m concerned, Tom Pasmore is the best private investigator in the world, but he only works on cases he chooses by himself. Back in ’94 he helped me work out a terrible puzzle that my collaborator and I later turned into a novel.
    I told Philip I would get to Millhaven as quickly as possible and added that I’d do my best to get Tom Pasmore to think about the boy’s disappearance.
    “Think about it? That’s all?”
    “In most cases, that’s what Tom does. Think about things.”
    “Okay, talk to the guy for me, will you?”
    “As soon as I can,” I said. I didn’t want to explain Tom Pasmore’s schedule to my brother, who has the old-time schoolmaster’s suspicion of anyone who does not arise at 7:00 and hit the hay before midnight. Tom Pasmore usually turns off his reading light around 4:00 A.M . and seldom gets up before 2:00 P.M . He likes single-malt whiskey, another matter best unmentioned to Philip, who had responded to Pop’s alcohol intake by becoming a moralistic, narrow-minded teetotaler.
    After I arranged for my tickets, I waited another hour and called Tom. He picked up as soon as he heard my voice on his answering machine. I described what had happened, and Tom asked me if I wanted him to check around, look at the records, see what he might be able to turn up. “Looking at the records” was most of his method, for he seldom left the house and performed his miracles by sifting through newspapers, public records on-line and off, and all kinds of databases. Over the past decade he had become dangerously expert at using his computers to get into places where ordinary citizens were not allowed.
    Tom said that you never knew what you could learn from a couple of hours’ work, but that if the boy didn’t turn up in the next day or two, he and I might be able to accomplish something together. In the meantime, he would “scout around.” But—he wanted me to know—in all likelihood, as much as he hated to say it, my nephew had fallen victim to the monster who earlier probably had abducted and murdered