He told his secretary where he'd be in case she needed him, and took a cab back to his apartment. It took him ten minutes to pack a bag. He knew exactly what he needed for a weekend with his family. And by one o'clock he was already on his way to La Guardia. He bought a seat on the commuter flight, arrived at three-ten, and rented a car at the airport. And from there it was a thirty-minute drive to Charlestown.
He checked the information in the file again and made sure he had the correct address, and cringed inwardly as he began driving down the streets of Charlestown. It was one of those areas that had been ugly forty years before, and had not improved with age. There were other sections that had been lucky in recent years, and were being restored by loving hands, but these houses were not among them. And if they had been ugly when Hilary lived there, they were worse now. They were truly awful. Filthy, broken down, with paint peeling everywhere, and many of the houses boarded up and crumbling. There were signs here and there, on houses that had been condemned by the city, and John could almost feel the rats waiting to sneak out at nightfall. It was an awful place, and the house where he stopped was one of the worst among them. He stood for a moment, looking at it from the sidewalk, the weeds were shoulder-high in the yard, and the smell of trash was heavy in the air, and the front door was almost falling off its hinges.
With trepidation, he walked up the front steps, trying to avoid the two broken ones so as not to fall through, and he knocked on the door resoundingly.
The doorbell was hanging by a thread and clearly broken. And although he heard noises within, no one came to the door for a long time, and then finally a toothless old woman answered. She stared at him, confused, and then asked him what he wanted.
“I was looking for Eileen and Jack Jones. They lived here a long time ago. Did you know them?'.” He spoke loudly, in case she was deaf. But she did not seem so much deaf as stupid.
“Never heard of 'em. Why don't you ask Charlie across the street. He been living here since the war. Maybe he knew 'em.”
“Thank you.” A glance into the house told John that it was depressing beyond belief, and he only hoped that it had been more pleasant when Hilary and her sisters lived there. Though it was hard to imagine it ever having been much better. The street had become a slum, but it didn't look as though it had even been pretty. “Thank you very much.” He smiled pleasantly, and she slammed the door in his face, not because she was annoyed, but only because she didn't know there was any other way to do it.
He looked up and down the street, and thought of talking to some of the other residents. But he went first to the house she had pointed to. He wondered if anyone would be home at four o'clock on a Friday afternoon, but the old man she had called “Charlie” was rocking on his front porch, smoking a pipe, and talking to an old mangy dog who lay beside him.
“Hi there.” He looked friendly, and smiled at John as he came up the steps.
“Hello. Are you Charlie?” John smiled pleasantly. He had been good at this, in the days when he actually did the legwork. Now he just determined it from his desk on Fifty-seventh Street, but there was a certain thrill to doing this part of it again. He had tried to explain to Sasha once how much he loved it. But she couldn't understand it. To her, there was only dancing … and Lincoln Center … and rehearsals. Nothing else mattered. Sometimes he even found himself wondering if he did.
“Yes, I'm Charlie.” The old man answered. “Who wants to know?”
John stuck out a hand. “My name is John Chapman. I'm looking for some people who lived here years ago. In that house,” he pointed, “Eileen and Jack Jones. Do you remember them by any chance, sir?” He was always polite, friendly, at ease, the kind of guy everyone wanted to talk to.
“Sure, I do. Got Jack a job once. Didn't keep it long of course. Drank like a son of a bitch, and she did too. I heard it finally kilt her.” John nodded as though it were something he already knew. That was part of the art form. “I used to work in the navy yard. Damn good work too, durin' the war. I was 4-F 'cause I had rheumatic fever as a boy. Spent the whole war right here, close to home, with my wife and my kids. Sounds kinda unpatriotic now, but I was lucky.”
“You had children then, did you?” John looked at him with interest.
“They're all growed now.” He rocked back and forth and a sad look came into his eyes as he gnawed on his pipe. “And my wife's gone. Died fourteen years ago this summer. She was a good woman.” John nodded again, letting the old man ramble on. “My boys come to see me from time to time, when they can. Daughter lives in Chicago. Went to see her last year, Christmas, colder'n a witch's teat. Got six kids too. Her husband's a preacher.” It was an interesting history and John patted the dog as he listened.
“Do you remember three little girls who came to live with the Joneses about thirty years ago … right about this time of year … it was the summer of '58, to be precise. Three little girls. One about nine years old, one five, and the littlest one was a baby. She must've been about a year old.”
“Naw … can't say as I do … they never had any kids, Jack and Eileen. Just as well. They weren't real nice people. Used to have some knock-down drag-out fights those two. Nearly called the cops on 'em one night. I figured he'd kill her.” It sounded like a charming home in which to leave three children.
“They were her brother's children. They were just here for the summer, but one of them stayed on afterward …” He let his voice trail off, hoping to jog Charlie's memory, and suddenly the old man looked up at him with a frown, and pointed the pipe into John's face with a burst of recognition.
“Now that you say all that, I do remember … some terrible thing … he had killed his wife, and the little girls were orphans. I only seen 'em once or twice, but I remember Ruth, that's my wife, tellin' me how cute they were and how terrible Eileen was to 'em, that it was a crime to leave those children with her. Half starved 'em, Ruth said, she took 'em some dinner once or twice, but she was sure Jack and Eileen ate it and never gave it to the children. I never knew what happened to 'em though. They left pretty soon after that. Eileen took sick, and they went somewhere. Arizona, I think … California … someplace warm seems like … but she died anyway. Drank herself to death if you ask me. Don't know what happened to them little girls though. I guess Jack musta kep' 'em.”
“Only one of them. The rest of them left that summer. They just kept the oldest one.”
“I guess Ruth musta known that. I forget.” He leaned back in his chair, as though remembering more than Jack and Eileen, it was all so long ago, and his wife had been alive then … it was bittersweet to remember back that far … he seemed to forget John as he rocked back and forth in his rocking chair, and he had given John what he'd come for. He hadn't learned anything he desperately needed to know, but it was a little piece of the puzzle. It explained some of Arthur's guilt. He must have known how terrible they were, and yet he had left them there … and left Hilary to them … in effect abandoned her to them. He could only begin to imagine what her life had been like in the house across the street, with the kind of people Charlie had described to him. The thought of it made John shudder.