Prodigal Son | Page 3

Tommy." She picked up the shirt and hugged it against her, as if she hadn't yet connected it with the grown boy just across the room.
Buddy walked slowly over the her and held out his hands. "Mother?" he said.
That was all she needed to go over the edge. She jumped up and hugged him, sobbing loudly, the tears spilling onto the back of the boy's T-shirt.
"I'd better be going," I said to Burlenbach.
"What do we owe you?" He seemed abstracted, barely aware of me.
"Half a day's pay," I said, knowing I could have pushed for a lot more. "I'll send you a bill."
He barely heard me. "The boy--Tommy, or Buddy, or whatever--did he say anything to you?"
"Say anything?"
He licked his lips. "About us."
"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about." I looked over at his wife, but she was oblivious.
"Nothing," Burlenbach said. "Forget it. This is all just such a shock...We'd gotten used to the idea that we'd never see Tommy again, and now...well, I hardly know what to say." His brain was spinning like a roulette wheel, and I saw where the ball needed to drop.
"If nothing else," I said, "I imagine this will make for one hell of a newspaper story. Father and son reunited after all these years?"
"Hmmm? Yes, yes, I suppose it does at that." He shook my hand again and for the first time he actually managed a smile.
*
By four o'clock the reporters tracked me to my house and I posed for a round of pictures and told them what I knew. After that I unplugged the phone and let my service take over. I needed the publicity badly enough, but I was starting to feel a little cheap. I'd really liked the kid and it bothered me to make a profit off of something I should have wanted to do for free.
All night long my mind kept coming back to him. I wondered what it would be like for him, coming out of a world of dime stores and bad grammar and moving into that carefully manicured house, no longer even sure he'd done the right thing. What would Georgia Burlenbach think when the kid didn't know which fork to use or when she found him whizzing into the hedges?
I plugged the phone in before I went to bed and it woke me at six the next morning.
"Sloane?" Burlenbach sounded like the phone was cracking in his fist. "You've got thirty seconds to convince me not to call the police."
"Go ahead and call them," I said. "If you want to tell me why you're calling them, that's okay too."
"Don't get cute with me, Sloane. What's the price tag? Let's get that over with first and then we'll take it from there."
I yawned. "It's six in the morning, Senator, and I just woke up, and I don't have the foggiest notion what you're talking about."
"I'm talking about the boy, as you goddamned well know. Buddy, as you call him. He's gone."
I lay back down on the bed. "Oh Jesus."
"I called your goddamn reporters and now you know perfectly goddamn well how stupid this is going to make me look if I don't get him back. So what's it going to cost me?"
I spent five minutes convincing him that I didn't have anything to do with it. Finally I said, "Give it a while. Maybe he just went out for a walk or something. If you don't hear anything by noon, call the cops. They can be discreet when they have to be."
By the time I got him off the phone my sleep was shot to hell so I made a pot of coffee and read the morning Statesman. The kid's picture was all over the front page, and I even had a sidebar to myself on page 8. The longer I thought about it the more likely it seemed that Buddy had simply changed his mind, decided that his new home wasn't cutting it, and gone back to Andy.
I drove to the office, under the huge net banner for the AquaFest, and spent ten minutes finding a place to park. They were rebuilding Congress Avenue with trees and walks instead of a third lane each way, the first case I'd ever heard of a major city narrowing its streets. It had seemed like a good idea once, but we'd all gotten a little tired of the dust and the noise and the parking squeeze.
My service told me that the publicity had already brought in five missing pets, three divorces, and a short list of what might turn out to be real jobs. I was still sorting through them when Burlenbach called again.
"It's a kidnapping," he said.
"What happened?"
"Somebody called. Said his name was Andy, said he had the boy. He wants fifty thousand."
It sounded about