Spiral

give us. Then, when David arrived and Nina... died, I foreshortened those dreams considerably. Did what I could for David in terms of treatment, especially after Spiro ran out on us. Watched from a distance as my older son became more and more successful with his music. And all the while, I tried to keep my younger son out of the very institutions every well-meaning friend told me I should relegate him to. A few years later, after Spiro frittered away his success and crashed his life to boot, I kept him afloat financially. With Mitch Eisen’s complicity, of course.”
    ”I don’t understand, sir.”
    Now an actual smile, small but genuine. ”I asked Eisen to approach music halls, give Spiro a place to play.”
    I turned that over. ”With you footing the bill.”
    ”The only way. Eisen told Spiro that because of Spiral’s former status, the smaller clubs were willing to pay a premium. Despite apparently poor performances and sparse audiences.”
    ”Colonel, did your son ever find out?”
    ”That I was paying his... salary, so to speak?”
    ”Yes.”
    ”Eisen assured me not. But, who really knows?” Another slow exhalation. ”Nina and I had such... expectations for our sons. The first had the ability, but circumstances—what I’ve told you plus my being away at the wrong times and the unpopularity of our war—pretty well scuttled Spiro’s turning out as I had dreamed. And David... Well, some life in this home is better than any life in a home, don’t you think?” ‘Yes.” I hesitated, then, ”And you told Ms. Dujong about all these feelings?”
    ”I did. Over three or four sessions. Sorry, that would be Henry’s phrase for them. Malinda spoke of them more as ‘interludes.’”
    Jeanette Held had used the same phrase. ”What would Ms. Dujong do?”
    ”Work me through my grieving. Give me a chance to meditate on what had happened before, what dreams had already not come true.”
    ”The flying pan over the fire.”
    ”Basically.” Some more scotch. ”And she did help. In fact, I suggested she work with David, too.”
    ”David?”
    ”Oh, without telling Henry, of course. And without supplanting him, either. I can’t imagine what my son would be like without those mood-leveling drugs. No, Malinda would be more a supplement to what Henry could provide David, an additional window into his situation.”
    As the Skipper drank again, I said, ”Did Ms. Dujong ever speak with your son?”
    ”I don’t think so.” A cough that at first I thought came from some scotch going down the wrong pipe, but what I then realized was the verge of a laugh. ”At least, she never sent me a bill for it.”

    After Colonel Helides went off to bed, I stayed in the den and on his telephone, confirming through a supervisor at the answering service that Justo Vega had not checked for his messages. I tried the house in Miami again, but got nothing. Not a person, not a machine.
    I pressed the plunger and dialed Sergeant Lourdes Pintana’s cell-phone number. On the third ring, I heard a forwarding pickup and ”This is Detective Kyle Cascadden.” Give it a shot anyway. ”Sergeant Pintana, please.”
    ”Out of the office.” Then about enough time for the light to dawn before, ”Beantown, that you?”
    ”Yes. I need to speak with her.”
    ”Well, boy,” the sneer coming across the wire. ”I guess you’re gonna have to settle for me.”
    ”This is serious, Cascadden.”
    ”So am I. Talk, or I’ll go back to my dinner here.”
    Not much choice. ”You know Malinda Dujong is missing?”
    ”Who?”
    I counted to three. ”The woman who was counseling Jeanette Held.”
    ”Oh, right, right. That Chinese girl.”
    ”Filipina.”
    ”Same difference.”
    I let it pass. ”Justo Vega seems to have joined her.”
    ”Justo...? That lawyer from down Miami with the stick up his ass?”
    I counted to five. ”Cascadden, he’s a friend of mine, a good friend from the service, and I’m worried.”
    ”He’s probably just stuffing himself with some of that cubano roast pork and beaned arroz. Y’all have that rice plate up in Beantown, Beantown?”
    ”His security man and family and answering service haven’t heard from him.”
    ”So he’s swilling some vino along with his meal. That’s the way they get, you know?”
    I counted to seven.
    ”Beantown, you still with me?”
    I said, ”Cascadden, you have any idea of what it would cost the city, you could have saved Justo Vega and instead just threw me ethnic