you following?”
“Someone.”
“Someone like who?”
“Freddy,” Cunningham interrupted, taking his already deep baritone down a notch. “Perhaps we should stay focused on your situation.”
“Of course, of course. It’s just that the wanderings of Junior Lew Archer here always fascinate me.”
“I’m sure they do, but—”
“First off,” I said, “I see myself more the Continental Op type. Secondly, I was following a man who’s having an affair with one of the blackjack dealers. I needed a picture of them together when she took a break. Satisfied?”
Cohen looked as if I’d punched him in the nose. The fact we both knew he’d been more or less asking for it didn’t make me feel any less bad.
“Did you get it?” he snapped.
“Get what?”
“The picture?”
“Yes.” It was one of my better efforts, in fact, the two of them holding hands over sodas at the bar like middle school kids at the roller rink.
“Good to hear,” Cohen said.
“Freddy—”
“Don’t,” he said, putting up a hand.
Cunningham cleared his throat again, but this time he meant it. “You were saying the family wants Andy to look for the boy.”
Cohen made a face as if he’d just sniffed sour milk. “To find him, were their exact words. They’re determined it has to be Andy. They said you kept helping the lady even after one of them jumped you. They said you were the only person to intervene.”
“I was the first. There’s a difference.”
“They don’t see it that way. They said”—he frowned and paused to cough, as if suddenly tasting bile—“they said you’re a great man. That’s why they want to hire you.”
5
ABDI’S PARENTS LIVED IN CAPITAL PARK Village, a complex of putty-colored two-story apartment buildings off Agler Road on the north side. A pair of little girls in bright orange dresses playing in what passed for a front yard eyed me curiously as I found a space in the half-filled lot near the Mohameds’ unit at four o’clock that afternoon. I glanced over at Cohen, who’d pulled in right ahead of me. He refused to make eye contact, staring instead at the pants and shirts and multicolored scarves drying on the fence surrounding the apartments. Fortunately for both of us, our host arrived a minute later.
“See tahay? How are you? I am Abukar Abdulkadir,” he said, introducing himself with a string of precisely clipped syllables. “You are the wonderful Andy Hayes. I recognize you from the TV. You’re a very brave man.”
“I did what anybody else would.” We shook hands. He was thickset, with short-cropped hair starting to gray, a slightly rounded head, and an engaging smile, wearing a suit and tie that made me feel hot just looking at him.
“That’s where you are assuredly wrong. Kaltun said you were the only person to help her. She’s very grateful.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Much better, thanks be to God.” Kaltun Hirsi had turned out to be a married mother of six—two other kids were at home with her husband at the time—studying to be a social worker. She’d been at the store picking up a few things for dinner when Tweedledum and Tweedledee approached and started taunting her.
“Have the police found those men?”
A cloud crossed Abdulkadir’s face. “Not yet.”
Cohen got out of his car and joined us, moving even more slowly than at Cunningham’s office that morning. It was hard to tell whether he shook Abdulkadir’s hand to greet him or to keep his balance.
“How are you doing today, Mr. Freddy?”
“I’ve been better. Let’s get this over with.”
The woman who met us at the door introduced herself as Farah, Abdi’s older sister. The schoolteacher, I deduced. She was dressed in tan slacks, a white blouse, and purple sandals that matched her headscarf. She showed us inside. Her parents were seated on a couch in the living room. A soccer match played out on an enormous TV on the other side of the room. An aroma of simmering meat filled the air.
Abdi’s father was thin, wearing a long-sleeve white shirt and gray slacks. Abdi’s mother was a heavy woman, enveloped in a black scarf and dress. They both smiled and nodded but didn’t speak. As Abdulkadir and I sat down, a girl, high school age, introduced as a cousin, appeared with cups of Somali tea. I had come to appreciate the sweet, cardamom-flavored drink the few times I’d had it. Cohen took his as if he’d been handed a witches’ brew and sat down carefully on a folding chair beside me.
Abdulkadir said something in Somali to the parents. They nodded and replied. He turned to me.
“The family appreciates your help finding their son. Are there any questions you’d like to ask?”
I took a sip of tea and considered my approach. I made eye contact with Farah briefly before she lowered her gaze. “I’ll start with the obvious one, I guess. Do they have any idea at all where he could be or where he went?”
They conferred for a moment. I waited for Abdulkadir to translate. But it was Farah who spoke next.
“None at all. He just vanished.”
“No one saw anything?”
She shook her head.
“His friends?”
“They saw him at school that day. They don’t know anything.”
“Which school?”
“Maple Ridge. It was the second-to-last day of classes. It makes no sense.”
I’d heard of the city school on the northeast side but didn’t know much about it. “He worked at Kroger. Is that right?”
Farah nodded. “He had a shift that afternoon. He never showed up.”
I took a moment to frame my next question. “The Facebook posts. Those were out of character?”
“Completely,” Farah said. “Most of the time he put up pictures of himself or his friends. Or stuff about the Crew. He was soccer crazy. The Crew and Juventus FC. It was almost like it was someone else posting.”
“Could his account have been hacked?”
“I have no idea.” She paused. “Hassan posted similar things, right before he left. But for him, it made more sense. He was very angry. And of course—”
When she didn’t finish, I said, “Hassan changed, if I’m not
