“Yes.”
“How?”
“If I tell you things, will it help Millicent?”
“It might,” I said. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t lie, do you?” Billie said.
“Actually I do,” I said. “But this didn’t seem the time.”
“He’s been to the house,” Billie said. “It’s not a name you forget.”
“Has he been alone?”
“Sometimes alone. Once with another man.”
“What was the other man’s name?”
“I don’t remember; he only came once.”
“What did he look like?”
“He was so out of place. French cuffs, spread collar, silk tie, alligator shoes—the shoes had lifts in them, you could tell. His nails were manicured.”
“Old, young, middle-aged?”
“Middle-aged. And the other funny thing, he was the boss.”
“How do you know?”
“The way he was. The way the other man was, the Kragan man.”
“Did they come to see Mr. or Mrs.?” I said.
“Both. I brought them into the study, where I brought you, and Mr. and Mrs. Patton were both in there.”
“Did they say anything?”
“No.”
“When Kragan came to visit alone did he always call on them both?”
“Usually. Except once, he just wanted to see Mrs. Patton.”
“Which was the day Millicent ran away.”
“I guess so.”
“Did they love their daughter?” I said.
“I don’t . . . how can I say?”
“You’re not testifying in court, Billie,” I said. “What do you think? Do you think they loved her?”
She sat with her coffee cup in her hands and looked at me. I waited. The small movement in the coffee shop seemed far away. She began to shake her head, and as she shook it, her eyes dampened.
“No,” she said.
“Did they ever?”
“Maybe her momma did once.”
“Did they love each other?”
“Oh God, no.”
“Did they ever?”
“I haven’t been there forever.”
“But not since you’ve been there?”
“No.”
“Did they fool around?”
“You mean sexually, with other people?”
“Yes.”
“Miss Randall, I can’t . . .”
“Sure you can. You care enough about the kid to tear up over the fact that her parents don’t love her. And, damn it, call me Sunny.”
Again the long pause. My coffee, still half a cup, was cold. I waited.
“They both brought people home,” she said. “If one of them was away the other would bring in a guest.”
“How about Millicent?”
“They didn’t seem to care if she knew.”
“Did they know?”
“About each other?”
“Um hmm.”
“I don’t know. They weren’t very careful. They didn’t seem to care if John or I knew.”
“Know any of the people that they brought home?”
“No.”
“Were they people who came often or did they go for variety?”
“Variety, I’m afraid.”
“Both of them?”
“Yes.”
“Kragan or the other man didn’t happen to leave a business card?”
“No.”
“You notice the kind of car they drove? Or the license number?”
“No. John might have noticed the car. I’m sure he wouldn’t have noticed the license number.”
“How about the various one-night stands?” I said. “How did they come?”
“I don’t know. John might.”
“Will you ask John these things?” I said. “And have him call me?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Because I don’t know. It’s sort of like panning for gold. You get a bunch of dirt and then you sort through it, see if there’s a nugget.”
“If Mrs. Patton finds out I spoke with you, John and I will be fired.”
“How about Mr. Patton?”
“I don’t know. Mrs. Patton runs the house.”
“Neither will ever hear it from me,” I said.
Billie nodded. I put my hand out and patted her hands where they lay folded in front of her on the table.
“We’re going to save this kid, Billie.”
Billie stared at the cold coffee in the bottom of her cup and said nothing.
CHAPTER 35
Millicent and I were getting stir-crazy, so we went to the gym with Spike. I put my .38 along with his .45 in his gym bag. Spike kept the gym bag unzipped and nearby as we went through the workouts.
Millicent wore a pair of shorts that belonged to me, and one of her new tee shirts. She was very slim. Her small body looked very white, and somehow incomplete in the workout clothes. The club was nearly empty in the middle of the day. Millicent stared around her at the exercise equipment.
“Girls don’t go to gyms,” Millicent said.
“Why not?”
“I mean, who wants to lift weights and shit?”
“Great way to meet guys, though,” Spike said.
He was barefoot, in full karate whites, with his black belt tied around his waist to keep the jacket closed.
Millicent stared at him. She hadn’t figured Spike out yet. She wasn’t alone in that.
“Besides, I don’t know how to do it,” Millicent said.
“Nobody does until they’ve learned,” I said. “We’ll show you.”
“You lift weights?”
“Not very heavy ones,” I said.
Spike dropped down onto the chest press machine and began to do repetitions with 225 pounds.
“Come on,” I said. “First we’ll do some push-ups like I showed you.”
She got down onto the floor awkwardly and did some half push-ups with me. No one paid any attention to us. When we got through Spike was still doing repetitions on the chest press machine.
“How many of those are you doing, Spike?”
He held the weight at arm’s length for a moment.
“I’m up to twenty-eight,” he said. “Some pro football player did forty-five, so I’m eventually going to do forty-six.” He grinned and lowered the bar. “But not today.”
“Can I try how heavy that is?” Millicent said.
Spike showed her how to get under the bar.
“Okay,” he said. “Breathe in, then while you exhale, push up.”
Millicent did as he told her with no result.
“I can’t,” she said. “How come you can?”
“Fag power,” Spike said.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to call gay people fags,” Millicent said.
“Sticks and stones,” Spike said.
Millicent relinquished her spot to him.
“You are gay, aren’t you?”
“Gayer than laughter,” Spike said.
He began to do another set of chest presses. Millicent watched him.
“You seem like kind of a tough guy,” she said.
“Hard to figure, isn’t it?” Spike said.
I began to do some curls with ten-pound weights.
“Well, I mean, I never think of gay guys as tough.”
Spike let the bar down and sat up on the bench to let his breathing normalize.
“It’s sort of hard to generalize about gay guys,” Spike said. “Some fit the stereotype, some don’t. I prefer to have sex with men, and other than
that I just kind of plow along and do what I do and don’t think too much about it.”
Millicent looked at me.
“Are those weights heavy?”
“For me,” I said. “You want to try?”
She didn’t say anything but she took the dumbbells when I handed them to her.
“Palms out,” I said. “Hold them straight down in front of your thighs. Now using your bicep curl them slowly up toward your shoulders.”
She did it.
“Good, now let them down slowly and do it again. Don’t heave. If you have to sway, it’s too heavy. Concentrate on just the biceps.”
She did another one.
“See how many you can do before you start to cheat.”
“Cheat?”
“You know, arch your back, sway your shoulders. The body is very clever about shifting the load.”
She did three more.
“Good,” I said.
“Okay, I can do that, so what?”
“In a while if you keep doing it you’ll get stronger, and your arms will firm up.”
“I don’t want to get big muscles.”
“You won’t. You don’t have the right hormones.”
“So what’s the point?”
“Be stronger, look better, feel good.”
Millicent shrugged. “Women don’t have to be strong.”
“Better than being weak,” I said.
I went to the Gravitron and set it for my weight and did some dips and some pull-ups.
“Want to try this?”
“Okay.”
I set the Gravitron higher so that she’d feel very light. She did the same things I had done. I didn’t tell her that her setting was lighter. We did some triceps exercises and some flys and some leg work and then we sat side by side on a couple of exercise bikes and rode for twenty minutes. When we got through she was winded. We drank some water, and watched Spike do karate work on the heavy bag.
“You do this every day?”
“Many days,” I said. “Sometimes I can’t get the time, then I don’t.”
“You do it because you’re a detective,” Millicent said.
“I’d do it anyway. I like to be in shape as much as I can be.”
“Why?”
“It’s healthy. It makes me feel good. And . . .” I paused, trying to think about it.
“What?”
“And . . . I’m not just my body. But it’s part of what I am. I want it to be a good body. I want my mind to be a good mind. I want my emotions to be good emotions. I’m all there is of me, if you see what I’m saying, I want to make the most of me.”
“I don’t think about stuff like that, Sunny. I don’t even know anybody who thinks about stuff like that.”
I grinned at her.
“It’s because they haven’t had you around asking them questions.”
“Do we have to take a shower here?” Millicent said.
“No,” I said. “We can take one at Spike’s.”
“I don’t like getting undressed in front of people.”
“A possible handicap in your former profession,” I said.
“I didn’t like it,” she said. “I didn’t think about it. I never think about stuff.”
Spike moved around the heavy bag, striking it with those odd precise movements that karate people use. Then he moved to the light one and made it rattle.
“Good for hand speed,” he said to us.
He finished with a flourish, making the bag syncopate.
“Well, it’s time you started thinking about stuff,” I said. “Want to try the bag?”
“The one Spike was just hitting? The big one?”
“Sure.”
“Can I just hit it, any way I want?”
“Sure. Just like at Marguerite’s office.”
Millicent looked at me as if she wanted to ask what Marguerite had said. But she didn’t. Spike took off the speed gloves he was using and handed them to her.
“They’re sweaty,” she said.
“Yeah, but you hit that thing without them and you’ll skin your knuckles.”
She shrugged and put on the gloves and began to flail at the bag. She lasted about twenty seconds. Spike looked at me.
“There’s a way to hit the bag,” I said.
“You said I could hit it any way I want.”
“You can. But now you can’t decide. You hit it that way because you have to. If you learn another way, then you can choose.”
“Jesus, you never get off it, do you,” Millicent said.
“Choice is good,” Spike said.
I took the gloves from Millicent and began to hit the bag.
“Shorter punches,” Spike said to Millicent. “See? Keep the arms in kind of close, so you get mostly body into it instead of all arm. Loop one, Sunny.”
I looped a punch the way Millicent had.
“See, all arm,” Spike said. “You swing wide like that and you get the weight of your arm. Maybe five pounds? Show her a good one, Sunny.”
I dug a left hook into the bag, exaggerating the shoulder turn to make the point.
“But, you punch short,” Spike said, “like that, and you get all of you, more than 100 pounds, behind the punch.”
He gave her the gloves back. She began to flail at the bag. Spike shook his head and opened his mouth.
I said, “Let’s get some water.” Spike shrugged and went with me to the water cooler.
“All you can do is show her the right way,” I said. “Once she knows, it’s up to her.”
Spike stared across the room at Millicent, flogging the bag badly.
“She’s just being stubborn,” he said.
“So are you,” I said.
“Yeah, but I’m right,” he said.
“She knows that,” I said. “What the hell do you think she’s being stubborn about?”
Spike grinned at me.
“Shooter, shrink, painter, and sex symbol,” Spike said. “You’re a broad for all seasons, Sunny.”
“Dog handler, too,” I said.
CHAPTER 36
I left Spike and Millicent debating whether Spike should make lobster fricassee for lunch, or if they should go out for a sub sandwich. I took Rosie with me and drove over to my loft. My answering machine wasn’t working and I wanted to check on that, and check my mail, and, in truth, I wanted Rosie and me to walk around in our own space for a little while.
Alone.
I parked in front, put Rosie on her leash, and got out of the car. Rosie was excited. It was her home, too. She squatted a couple of times to reestablish herself, and then she and I went in and up the stairs.
My door was jimmied and ajar.
I switched Rosie’s leash to my left hand and took my gun out, and cocked it, and pushed the door open with my foot. Rosie sniffed in ahead of me, her tail wagging furiously. I stayed close to the wall and slid through behind her. The loft was chaos. There was no sound. I saw no one. Rosie strained on the leash, sniff, sniff, sniffing. I squatted with my gun still cocked, and my back to the wall just inside the door, and unsnapped her leash. She dashed into the loft and raced around sniffing everything. I knew her very well. If there had been anyone there she would have acted differently. I relaxed a little and stood. My front door lock was broken, but there was a slide bolt on the inside which still worked and I used it. With my gun still out, and the hammer still back, I checked behind the counter in the kitchen, and under the bed, and in the bathroom. Rosie was right. There was no one there. I let the hammer down gently and put the gun back in its holster and looked at the mess someone had made of my loft. It was more than someone looking for something. It was vandalism. Every drawer was emptied. My clothes we
re all over the floor. Olive oil and molasses and flour and maybe ketchup and who knew what else had been dumped on them. My answering machine was broken on the floor. My mail had been opened and discarded. All my files were dumped and strewn. Most of the paper had been torn up. The bed had been torn apart, and someone had slashed the mattress open. My makeup had been emptied into the sink. I walked to the studio section. My easel was broken, the painting of Chinatown slashed. The three other canvases I had were torn and slashed. The paint was squeezed from the tubes all over the floor.
In the kitchen my glassware had been broken on the floor. My spice shelf had been emptied. My refrigerator door was open and the half quart of milk I had left there was curdled. Rosie was very excited. She was dashing around happily lapping the oil and molasses that had been poured. I picked her up and held her in my lap and sat on the only chair still upright.
They had come in probably trying to find a clue to where I was with Millicent, and as they had searched and not found a clue, they had gotten excited and vengeful and this was what they’d left me. It was so unfair. It was like junior high school vandalism, simply mean. The vandals got no benefit from destroying my home, and all my things that I had so carefully picked out. All the things I had arranged and rearranged over whole evenings of puttering and reputtering, just me and Rosie, like a kid playing house, after Richie and I had separated. I was alone for the first time in my life, sipping a glass of white wine and standing back and looking, and seeing the way it all fit. The stuff I’d brought back from antique dealers in New Hampshire, the cookware, gleaming and virginal, that I had bought at Williams Sonoma, the things I had used to build a new life, art books, paintings, the nice set of useful tools in a neat metal tool box, that my father had given me when I moved in, all scattered among the broken shards of “good china” that my mother had offered, so I could entertain fashionably in my new place, even the very posed picture of herself that my annoying sister had given me. I had loved all of it. Too much, probably.
Richie had never cared much about stuff. But I did. I cared about the place I had made for myself, where I could be a detective, and be a painter, and be a woman, and be alone and take care of Rosie. The lousy bastards. Momentarily I had a passionate desire to call Richie. He’d fix it. But of course, I couldn’t call Richie. After the momentary madness, I didn’t even want to call Richie. I put my face down against Rosie’s broad little back. She smelled good. I began to cry. She turned her head and lapped my cheeks. I didn’t mind crying. This was where I was allowed to. My home. I could cry or get drunk, or make love, or be by myself, or do anything else I wanted with no one to approve or disapprove. I didn’t need to call anyone. I was enough. I kept my face buried in Rosie’s back, and my arms around her. After a time I didn’t feel like crying any more.
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