“I don’t blame you,” I said.
The crying turned to sobbing.
“Don’t you hate parties?” I said to Michael.
He stared at me silently.
“I always did,” I said.
“I can’t do it,” Julie said. “I try so goddamned hard and I can’t do it.”
Michael was no longer crying. He was very silent, standing beside his mother.
“Nobody can,” I said. “It’s not your fault, it’s not Michael’s. It’s the way things work.”
“Other people can have a damn party,” Julie said.
“Not many,” I said. “And you might not want to trade the skills you’ve got for the skills that make good party givers.”
“I just wanted him to have a party like other kids.”
Michael was very silent.
“In your enthusiasm for blaming yourself,” I said, “you want to be careful that you don’t spill some blame onto anyone else.”
Julie raised her eyes and looked at me and then looked at Michael. She hugged him to her and talked and sobbed simultaneously.
“I love you, honey,” she gasped, with the tears bubbling through her voice. “Mommy loves you.”
I could see Michael’s face over her shoulder. He didn’t look as if he entirely believed her.
CHAPTER 13
I found her at 1:15 in the morning on Dalton Street behind the Prudential Center, handy to the big commercial hotels and the Hynes Auditorium. She stood near the curb just up from the motor entrance to the Sheraton, wearing white short shorts and heels and a sequined yellow tank top. Clever outfit. She smiled automatically when I pulled in to the curb. When I got out the smile went away, and she began once again to look up and down the street.
“Millicent Patton?” I said.
She stared at me and didn’t say anything.
“My name is Sunny Randall,” I said. “I’m a detective. Your parents asked me to bring you home.”
Without a word she turned and started running down Dalton Street toward Huntington. Not wearing fuck-me shoes, I caught her in about ten steps. I got in front of her and put my arms around her and pinned her arms and made her stop. She made no sound. But she struggled steadily against me.
“Millicent,” I said. “I will help you.”
She tried to kick me, but I was too tight against her and she didn’t really know anything about fighting.
“We’ll sit in my car,” I said, “and talk.”
“What the fuck is this,” someone said.
I let Millicent go and turned. Behind me was a tall black man wearing a six-button suit and a white shirt buttoned to the neck, no tie. He had a neat goatee and short hair. He was bony and strong-looking.
“Pharaoh Fox, I presume?”
“Who the fuck are you?” he said.
“My name is Randall,” I said. “I’m a detective.”
“Vice?”
“Private.”
“Goddamn,” Fox said, with laughter in his voice, “a private dick?”
I nodded.
“You can’t be no private dick,” Fox said. “Best you can do, be a private pussy.”
He loved his joke, and laughed a lot harder than it deserved. In his presence Millicent Patton was motionless, perfectly docile.
I said, “Millicent’s going with me, pimp boy.”
Fox stopped laughing. His face was thin. The nostrils flared and his skin had a bluish tinge to it above the beard. He looked, in fact, a little like a pharaoh. He put his right hand into his suit coat pocket.
“Get off my street, private pussy,” he said, “right now. Or I will cut you in fucking two.”
One of the advantages of being a woman in this deal is that no one takes you seriously, so they are careless. While his hand was still in his pocket I took my gun out. I thumbed back the hammer as the gun came out, and put the muzzle up under his nose, maybe half an inch from his upper lip.
“Tell Millicent that she should go with me.”
“Like hell,” Fox said.
I bumped the barrel of the gun against his upper lip.
“I’m not a patient woman,” I said. “And I haven’t shot my pimp quota this week. Tell her. Now.”
“You can’t just shoot me on the fucking street,” Pharaoh said.
“I’m a small blond cutie. You’re a big ugly pimp. You’ll be dead. I say you assaulted me. Who’s going to take your side?”
He didn’t move. He kept looking at me. There was nothing human behind his eyes. I didn’t move. I could see the muscles tighten in his shoulders and neck.
“Go for it,” I said. “Grab for the gun. Maybe I haven’t got the balls. Maybe I’ll hesitate.”
I smiled at him.
“Or maybe I won’t,” I said.
Still he held on, the hatred flickering in his eyes like heat lightning. But I knew his grip was slipping.
“Let’s find out, pimp boy.”
He let go.
“You can have her,” he said.
“Tell her,” I said.
“Go with her,” Pharaoh said to Millicent.
“Get in my car,” I said to Millicent. “Pimp boy, you turn around and walk straight down to Huntington.”
He backed away.
“What you say your name was, bitch?”
“Randall,” I said. “Sunny Randall.”
“Sunny Randall,” he said.
I was in full shooter’s stance, the gun in both hands holding steady on the middle of his body mass.
“Start walking,” I said.
He turned and began to walk slowly away. I figured he didn’t have a gun. He’d said he would cut me in two. Just the same I backed to the car. He was far enough away now that Wyatt Earp couldn’t have hit him with the two-inch .38. I put it back in its holster, slid into the car and started up. Pharaoh didn’t look back. As I drove past him he didn’t look sideways. Then we turned left at Huntington and I couldn’t see him anymore.
CHAPTER 14
Millicent was sitting as far into the corner of the passenger seat as she could get, trying to be as small as she could get, and as quiet as she could get.
“We’re all right now,” I said.
We drove through Copley Square onto Stuart Street and turned left onto Berkeley. There were a couple of cop cars parked outside the old Police Headquarters. No one was on the street. There was no traffic. The mercury street lamps made everything look a bit surrealistic.
“You want to talk to me?” I said.
“About what?” Millicent’s voice was small and hostile. She didn’t seem to be feeling rescued.
“Why you ran away.”
She shook her head. We drove across Commonwealth Avenue. The Back Bay was still. The street lights here were more self-effacing, filtered through the unleaving trees. A single bum slept in a pile of clothing on one of the benches in the mall. Millicent didn’t speak. She stared straight ahead through the windshield. Her face was narrow, with a kind of incipient sharpness to it. Her eyes were black or seemed black in this light. She might become beautiful. Or she might not. It would depend, probably, on what life did to her, or what she allowed it to do.
“You like Pharaoh Fox better than you like your parents,” I said.
“He cares about me,” Millicent said.
“Like Colgate cares about toothpaste,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“He sells you,” I said.
She shook her head. “He cares about me.”
“He’s a pimp, Millicent. He cares about money.”
“You don’t know him.”
She scrunched up a little tighter in the passenger seat, an emblem of stubbornness, hugging her knees, s
taring straight ahead, her sharp little face closing in on itself. She was like one of those stars that implodes and becomes so dense that no light escapes. Across Beacon Street I went out onto Storrow Drive and headed west, with the river on our right. On the other side, the big commercial buildings in East Cambridge splashed light on the empty black surface of the water. Neither of us said anything as we drove along the river. We were behind B.U. when Millicent spoke.
“You taking me home?”
“I don’t know.”
We drove some more in silence. Past the Western Avenue Bridge she spoke again.
“How come you don’t know?”
“I need to know what you ran away from before I take you back to it.”
“What do you care?”
“Maybe it was worth running away from.”
“How come you don’t just do what they paid you to do and stop pretending?” Millicent said.
“I don’t want to,” I said.
Storrow Drive had become Soldiers Field Road. I never knew quite where that happened. We went past the Harvard Business School and past the Larz Anderson Bridge. I bore left at the light, following the curve of the river, and pulled into the park on the riverside opposite WBZ. I parked near the water, and shut off the headlights. I left the motor running, so I could have the heat on. It was cold at 3 A.M. in late September, and Millicent was wearing only shorts and a tank top. I gave her my jacket. She took it without comment and shrugged it around her shoulders.
“Why we stopping here?” she said.
She was getting positively chatty.
“It will give us a chance to talk,” I said.
“Oh please,” Millicent said.
I was quiet. The river was black and apparently motionless in front of us. It didn’t look like it was moving past us, flowing east darkly, and without surcease.
“Why did you run away?” I said.
“I don’t get along with my parents,” Millicent said.
“Why not?”
“They’re creepy,” she said.
I nodded.
“You don’t miss them.”
“No.”
“How about school?”
“I hate school.”
I nodded again.
“I never much liked it either,” I said. “You miss anybody at school?”
“No.”
“Do you miss anyone at all?”
“No.”
“Does anyone miss you?”
Millicent didn’t answer.
“What do you think?” I said.
“About what?”
“Do you think there’s anyone who misses you?”
“How would I know? My parents hired you to find me.”
“Do you think that means they miss you?”
She was quiet again. But it was different. She was thinking about the question.
“No,” she said. “It just means they worry what the neighbors think.”
“Could be,” I said. “Do you like one of them better than the other?”
“No.”
“Do you dislike one more?”
“No. I hate them both.”
“Why?”
“I told you. They’re creepy.”
“Give me a for instance,” I said.
“My mother fucks everybody,” Millicent said.
She checked me from the corner of her eye to see how I took the news.
“I bet that’s hard to think about,” I said.
“Don’t you think that’s creepy?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Why do you think it’s creepy?”
“For crissake, a married woman, her age?”
“How do you know this?”
“I know”
“How?”
“I see her come home sometimes. She’s, like, drunk. Her makeup is all messed up. Her clothes are, you know, like crooked.”
“This is suggestive,” I said. “What’s your father’s reaction.”
Millicent laughed a little ugly humorless laugh.
“He acts like she’s not doing anything.”
“Maybe he’s right.”
Millicent shook her head. She was eager now. Nothing like the chance to share grievances to encourage conversation.
“No,” she said. “I found pictures.”
“Your mother and other men?”
“Yes.”
“Who took the pictures?” I said.
She was silent. I could tell she’d never thought about that.
“I think they maybe took them themselves.”
“Sexual situations.”
“Oh yeah,” Millicent said.
“How’d you find the pictures.”
“I was snooping in her room.”
I nodded.
“Your mother have her own room?” I said.
“Yes. That’s kind of creepy, I think.”
I shrugged.
“Your father know about the pictures?” I said.
“I left them where he’d find them.”
“And?”
“Next time I looked they were gone. But he never said anything.”
“Maybe he said something to your mother.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Millicent gave me a scornful look. The scornful look of a fifteen-year-old girl is as scornful as it gets.
“He’s scared of her.”
“Why?”
“Jesus, you ask a lot of questions.”
“I do, don’t I. Why is he scared of her?”
“I don’t know, he just is.”
“Maybe he loves her and he’s afraid if he makes her mad she won’t love him.”
“You think he doesn’t fool around?” Millicent said.
Her tone suggested that she was trying very hard to speak clearly to an idiot.
“I’d guess he did,” I said. “Does he?”
“Sure.”
“It doesn’t mean he doesn’t love her.”
“How can you love somebody and fuck a bunch of other people?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I know it’s done.”
“You married?”
“Divorced,” I said.
“So who are you to talk?”
I wasn’t talking. She was. I smiled at her.
“Sonya J. Randall,” I said.
“Your first name is Sonya?”
“Yep.”
“Gross,” she said. “What’s the J. for?”
“Joan. What made you run away when you did?”
“I told you, my parents are creepy.”
“But you’ve found them creepy for a long time, Millicent. Why did you run now?”
She looked away from me and shook her head.
“There must be a reason,” I said.
She continued not to look at me.
“I got fed up,” she said. “That was the reason.”
She was lying and I knew it, and she probably knew that I knew it, but there was nowhere to go. I’d already pushed her as hard as I dared. Maybe a little harder.
“If you think of another reason,” I said, “I’d be pleased to know it.”
Millicent didn’t say anything. We looked at the river for a while.
Finally, without looking at me, she said, “I won’t stay at home.”
“You prefer sex with strangers?” I said.
“Being high helps.”
I looked at the river some more. The black water moved effortlessly toward the harbor as it had in 1630. Except in 1630 you could probably drink it.
“Let’s
compromise,” I said. “You don’t have sex with any strangers for a while, and I won’t drag you home.”
She thought about that.
“So where am I supposed to live?” she said.
“With me.”
CHAPTER 15
I was talking on the phone to Julie. It was nearly noon. Rosie was sitting on my feet under the desk. Millicent was asleep on the floor at the other end of the loft on an inflatable mattress I kept for guests.
“She’s staying with you?” Julie said.
“Un huh.”
“Do you have any idea what a crimp that will put in your sex life?”
“How much crimpier can it get?” I said.
“It’s already crimped?”
“Big time,” I said.
“I’m crushed. I spent several minutes every day envying you.”
“Spend the time finding me a nice guy who’s good-looking and straight.”
“You’re after my husband?”
“Besides Michael,” I said.
“Oh. I guess that’s kind of hard. Have you met anyone?”
“A pimp named Pharaoh Fox,” I said.
“Pimps can be fun,” Julie said. “How long is she going to stay with you?”
“At least until I find out why she left.”
“You don’t believe she just got fed up?”
“No. She was lying about that.”
“You’re sure.”
“I’m a licensed investigator,” I said.
“Of course. How are you going to find out?”
“I’m a licensed investigator.”
“You know, some kids leave home to punish the parents.”
“I know.”
“So that the more degrading and shocking their circumstances, the more horrified the parents are. And the more horrified the parents are, the more desirable the circumstances.”
“Sort of like suicides,” I said. “‘See what you’ve made me do.”’
“Do you like her?” Julie said.
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