HEART OF THE WORLD

Mission Hill isn't Boston's finest neighborhood. Split by Huntington Avenue with its battered green trolley cars, stretching south to Jamaica Plain and east to Roxbury, it's at best working-class poor, at worst subsistence housing. It's hard to park in Mission Hill. Too many abandoned wrecks, some immobilized by the infamous Denver boot. After circling the area for twenty minutes, I'd found an iffy slot for my battered Rent-A-Wreck across the street from the housing project and trudged uphill. Whether the car would still be there when I returned was a question best to ignore.

I blew out a breath, raising another cloud of steam, and considered when it might have been, that elusive last time I'd been warm. Two nights ago, in bed, when problems had seemed contained and controllable, the usual work dilemmas, a due diligence for a small insurance firm, a store clerk who might or might not have a hand in the till. I'd been debating what kind of car I could buy with considerable urgency and limited means. And arguing with Sam Gianelli, who's been a source of joy and consternation in my life for years.

I'd been in bed, blissfully warm but not asleep, when he'd entered the room with hardly a squeak of the floorboards. He'd removed his shoes at the front door, a thoughtful act, perhaps. Isn't it odd how you can read any motive into any act when there's hostility as well as attraction? Given the hour, I'd read deceit: Sam didn't want me to realize how late he was coming to bed, didn't want me to wake. If he'd been deliberately noisy, I'm pretty sure I'd have found an unkind reason for that as well.

Face it, the past month or so the only place Sam and I have been comfortable with each other has been in bed. That's always been our strong suit, the meshing of bodies, the pulsing rhythm of stimulation and release. Chemistry. Who knows what sparks that thing between men and women that brings them together in the night?

The phone call had interrupted a long-standing yet oddly silent argument. At least it was a silent argument on my part; maybe Sam never thought about it at all. I mean, how can you tell? It bothered me all the time what he did for a living, if you can call working for the Mob a living. Once he'd talked to me openly about getting out. Once, he'd tried to make a clean break. But when his father got sick, he knuckled under and went back to being Daddy's bright-eyed boy. Maybe that's what he would always be, never my companion, always his father's son, and I didn't think I could live with that. And I wasn't sure I wanted to live without it. So, really what could I say?

If he were a teenager, I'd have said, Where've you been?

If he were a teenager, he'd have said, Out.

Lawyer friends always tell me not to ask the question if I don't want to hear the answer. I guess that's why instead of arguing about the big thing, the great white whale of our on-again, off-again relationship, we wind up arguing so viciously about the small things, and maybe that's what we'd keep doing until the small things drove us apart. Again.

Monday night, the phone interrupted us and I was momentarily grateful for it, despite the lateness of the hour.

I recognized the voice straight off, but it spoke such rapid-fire angry Spanish that I had to tell Marta to slow down twice before I could follow the flow. It's not that she doesn't speak English, it's that she won't. Not to me.

Lemme me talk to her, right now. Her voice was slurred and rough and I thought she'd been drinking again. Sam raised his eyebrows and muttered something under his breath.

¿Sabes qué hora es, Marta?

I don't need you telling me anything, not what time it is, and certainly not how to take care of a daughter. She muttered something under her breath, too, and of course I heard it, and it was distinctly unflattering, something about the red-headed bitch, which is what she often calls me.

Why don't you call back when you sober up? My hand was moving the receiver away from my ear when I heard an increase in volume along with a change of tone.

Por favor, I must talk with her. I need her to — She promised me.

Marta, Paolina isn't here. It's Monday night. Look in her room.

The woman's called me before when she's forgotten where her daughter is. Once she'd scared the hell out of me when Paolina was sleeping over at a girlfriend's and Marta'd forgotten all about it.

She's not here.

Did she leave a note on the refrigerator?

What you think? I'm too drunk to know where my daughter is? Always, always, she says she'll be with you when she isn't here.

The conversation slid downhill from there, down a steep and ugly slope. I'd slept that night convinced that Paolina was visiting Aurelia or Heather or Vanessa or anyone of a number of girls I'd heard about or met, a classmate at the local high school, certain I'd have been informed as usual if my "little sister" had skipped school. Tuesday morning, before seven, I'd made fruitless calls to the girlfriends. Then I'd gone to the high school and found that the man charged with tracking down AWOL students was himself AWOL, and Paolina hadn't turned up for classes Monday at all.

Now it was Wednesday, Wednesday, for chrissake, and I was jumping every time my cell phone rang, nervous as a cat. All my paying jobs had been put on hold, my argument with Sam was simmering, and I was out in the cold at 6:30 A.M., determined to strike before my elusive target could leave for work.

Josefina Parte was the name I was looking for, and I found it, a battered tag, J. Parte, under a mailbox that read 4C and showed the scars of a recent crowbar assault. I rang the bell and waited in a pocket-sized vestibule maybe ten degrees warmer than the frigid outdoors. No response. I rang again.

Through the pebbled half-glass of the interior door, the stairway was narrow and steep. I could see it if I shaded my eyes and slanted my glance sideways. A direct stare brought only my own reflection, a pale oval of a face, wide-apart hazel-green eyes, slightly crooked nose. It was the eyes, I thought, that showed it most, the effect of two sleepless nights. The glass grayed my face, leaching the color from my skin and hair, and I had a sudden vision of myself grown old. A glance at my shoulder told the truth; my hair was still flamboyantly red.

If I lived on Orchard Court Road and someone rang my bell, I might not answer it either. Not if I wasn't expecting a friend or relative to drop by. Good news probably didn't climb to the fourth floor often, and Josefina Parte might have long since stopped expecting it.

Josefina was the aunt or possibly the great-aunt of one Diego Martinez, and it had taken me a while to trace him, because juveniles who aren't registered in the system, who live with people who have different last names than their own, who go to a high school in an area they have no business going to, can be hard to find. I wasn't planning to bust Diego for lying to the Cambridge school system. He wasn't a crook or a bail jumper. I wasn't going to get paid for finding him. He was the current boyfriend of my little sister, Paolina, and she'd been gone for three days, possibly five. Two nights and a day had passed since Marta had needed the girl to babysit for her younger brothers and so noticed that she was inconveniently missing.