“Anyway, fat and dumb.”
I glance out into the parking lot, my gaze alert to black SUVs. There aren’t any.
“What’s her name again?” Destiny asks.
I turn to her. “Who?”
“The writer.”
“Julie. Julie Cooper.”
“Is she, like, old?”
“About my age, I guess. Early forties. If you think that’s old, then yes, she’s old.”
To keep the conversation going, I ask, “When you meet her, do you want me to hang around, or would you rather I leave?”
Destiny ponders the question as if it’s philosophical.
When she makes up her mind, she shrugs.
“You can stay,” she says. “It doesn’t matter.”
Nothing really matters to Destiny. There is a lack of will that makes me wonder if she is in fact a fit subject for Julie’s article. She was more or less plucked off the street and deposited in a center for homeless young women. Social workers found her a job and a place to live. She has done little but follow the rules they laid down. I detect no interest in taking the wheel of her own life. I fear that the slightest nudge in the wrong direction will send her over the cliff.
I turn back toward the parking lot. I am still peering out the window when Julie pulls up.
“She’s here,” I tell Destiny.
Destiny straightens. “Shit.”
Suddenly she’s jumpy.
“What’s wrong?” I ask her.
“I don’t know,” Destiny answers. “A reporter. It makes me nervous.”
“There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Unless it’s a cover. Her being a reporter, I mean.”
“A cover for what?”
“Maybe she’s a cop.”
This is ludicrous. I wave my hand dismissively. “Relax, Destiny.”
Outside, Julie is walking toward the restaurant. Her stride is confident, almost bold. She is the opposite of me. At home in the open space, in the sunlight. I can’t imagine her world, how unburdened it must be.
“We all made it here,” she says brightly when she comes up to our booth. “Hi, Claire.”
“Hi.”
She looks at Destiny and smiles cheerfully.
“Happy to meet you,” she says.
Destiny is unprepared for such an upbeat greeting.
“Thanks,” she says cautiously.
Julie is dressed in a pantsuit. Her blouse is white with a broad collar. She gives off a stylish professionalism.
“Well, thanks for seeing me,” she says as she takes a chair opposite Destiny. “I appreciate it.”
To break the ice, I say, “Destiny thought you might be an undercover cop.”
Julie laughs. “Not me. No way. But my dad was a cop. Back in the day, he would take me to the station, introduce me as ‘the crop.’ By that, he meant that I was his only child. And my God, that station house. The atmosphere inside it was so male. Decades of testosterone embedded in the walls. It covered them like paint. You could almost smell it.”
She laughs again.
“Now there are a lot of women cops. But back then? All those old, sweaty guys? It completely put me off following in my dad’s footsteps.”
She sits back and crosses her arms casually. “Destiny, I hear you have a job and a place to live.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s awesome.”
“I guess.”
“Don’t guess,” Julie says forcefully.
She whips out her phone, taps an icon, and turns the phone toward Destiny and me.
The picture is of a dead young woman sprawled in an alley.
As Destiny watches, Julie flips through an assortment of dead-girl pictures. They lie beneath bridges, in ditches, stuffed into storm drains. Most of them are either naked or half-naked. Only one is fully clothed. They have been shot, stabbed, bludgeoned, strangled.
Destiny looks at each girl in turn, but nothing seems to register in her mind. These dead girls might as well be bits of scattered rubbish.
Julie flips to the final photograph in her collection.
“This is the latest one,” she tells Destiny. “I snapped it from the online LA Times this morning. The police don’t know who she is, so they’re asking the public for information.”
I stare at the photo on Julie’s phone.
It is the face of a girl in her teens. One eye closed, the other half open, filmy. Perhaps it had once been blue. Her lips are slightly parted, enough to reveal her teeth. The shape of her mouth reminds me of Camille Monet, painted on her deathbed, in a swirl of blankets that are strangely mobile, flowing around her like water.
“They found this girl floating near Santa Monica Pier,” Julie says.
She looks at Destiny significantly. “Do you know why I wanted to show you these pictures?”
Destiny shakes her head.
“Because any one of these girls could have been you,” Julie says.
I take this to be a journalistic shock tactic, something to light a fire in Destiny. Julie is giving her a powerful representation of what her future might have been if she had remained on the street.
It appears to work.
Destiny’s eyes widen as she stares at the last of the photographs.
At first she seems riveted by the image, but as she continues to look at the photograph, a different reaction emerges. I can tell that she is in the midst of some sort of calculation, a balancing of possibilities. She is like someone at a fork in the road, deciding which one to take.
This argument lasts only a couple of seconds. Then she blinks all this away, one of the roads at last chosen.
“I’ve seen this girl,” she says. “She was always hanging around the beach. Painting pictures. She had a little wooden easel she dragged around with her. And a little stool—the kind that folds up—to sit on.”
I am astonished to hear this. “What did she paint?” I ask.
“Whatever was in front of her. The beach. Palm trees. She did it early in the morning. To keep from getting caught. But it wasn’t graffiti she was painting. Gang names, space creatures, that kind of shit. It was more a real picture.”
“Of what?”
“A house. But it looked weird. Like it was about to fall down.”
There is another pause before she adds, “She painted it on a cement wall. On Venice Beach. Over by McDuffy’s.”
“Did she sign it?” I ask.
Julie looks at me quizzically.
“In the news, it says she hasn’t been identified,” I explain. “But if she signed her painting, then the cops would at least have her name.”
Julie smiles. “You should have been a cop, Claire.”
Without further prompting Destiny launches in to a full report on the girl in the water.
She didn’t know her well, she tells Julie, but she saw her quite often, always on Venice Beach. She has no idea of the girl’s identity or where she came from. She remembers that the girl seemed friendly, though she never spoke. She was always painting. She never did street portraits and never painted for money. In fact, she’d given her paintings to anyone who wanted them. She’d even given a few of them to Destiny.
Julie looks at Destiny intently.
“You know, those girls on the beach can fall in with some pretty bad people,” she says.
Destiny is abruptly on alert again. Julie’s question has warned her of some subtle change of direction.
“It’s a beach,” she says. “Crowded. Yeah, sure, you get to know people. And yeah, some of them aren’t nice.”
“My contacts in the LAPD tell me that a lot of the street girls around Venice Beach get picked up by a woman named Vicki Page.”
Destiny’s eyes darken, but she says nothing.
“Ever heard of her?” Julie asks.
Destiny says nothing.
“She’s pretty well known in that part of town,” Julie adds. “By the street people, I mean. And the cops, of course. I thought you might have
run across her.”
Destiny shrugs.
“Is that a yes or a no?” Julie asks. “About Vicki?”
“I’ve heard of her, yeah—just the name.”
“Okay, no problem,” Julie says.
She clicks off her phone, and the image of the girl in the water vanishes. “Okay,” she repeats as she takes a pen and notebook from her bag. “Tell me about how you managed to get off the street.”
I can see that Destiny wants to impress Julie with how tough and resourceful she is. She reveals a little more to her than she has to me, but her story remains sketchy. She’s “bounced around” a lot and has had a long list of “crappy” jobs. Cleaning horse stalls. Spinning signs. Dressing monkeys for the circus, which, she says, is the hardest job on earth, “ ’cause those little bastards hate wearing clothes.”
She looks at me with a slight smile.
“I never told you about the monkeys, did I, Claire?” she asks.
From there she relates a tale of whirlwind adventure. Moving from city to city. Harrowing experiences with men and weather. The daily ordeal of finding a place to sleep. A catalogue of makeshift refuges: storm drains, tunnels, large cardboard boxes, sheets of plastic. During her life on the road, she has known them all.
There is a definite bravado in the way Destiny presents herself. She is the heroine of the tale. Always escaping narrowly. She wants Julie to believe that she is clever. That she has always outsmarted everyone else.
Julie listens to her closely, taking in the details, but something in her gaze tells me she’s not buying it. Even so, she remains patient, giving Destiny free rein to unfold the saga of her life in whatever way she chooses.
At last Destiny winds her way closer to the present. To my surprise she credits others with what she calls her “salvation.” Social workers. Counselors.
“And Claire, of course,” she says toward the end of this chronicle. “Claire’s the best.”
Julie’s eyes slide over to me.
“Absolutely,” she says with a quick wink. “The best.”
For the next few minutes, I watch as Destiny continues her story.
As she talks, she grows more relaxed.
It’s obvious that Julie has gained her confidence by keeping the tone light and conversational despite the grim subject matter. Julie never judges Destiny. She does not criticize her.
After a while Destiny is talking about the darkest aspects of her life in a way that seems to lift her spirits. With each revelation she becomes less burdened by her past.
I admire Julie’s technique more and more as the interview continues. She is a wizard at conveying sympathy without indulging Destiny’s tendency toward self-pity. She talks about how self-reliant Destiny is, and credits her with superior street smarts. With each compliment Destiny opens up a little more. They seem almost like older and younger sisters. It’s a connection I have failed to establish with Destiny, and which I can’t help but envy.
Julie glances at her watch. “Well, this has been terrific,” she says enthusiastically. “You’re a great source. I know you must be tired at the end of a working day. I won’t keep you.”
“Yeah, I better get out of my uniform.”
“I hope you’re willing to talk to me again,” Julie adds.
“Sure,” Destiny says. She smiles. “Any time.”
Julie thrusts out her hand and Destiny takes it without hesitation.
“Thanks, Destiny,” Julie says. “I’ll be in touch.”
After Destiny leaves, Julie returns her notebook to her bag, takes a sip from her coffee, looks at me.
“Well, that went well, don’t you think?” she asks.
“Very well.”
She smiles. “How did you meet Destiny?”
“She was more or less assigned to me.”
“How long have you been mentoring her?”
“A year.”
“Do you think she’ll make it?”
“Make it?”
“To a better life.”
“You mean, permanently?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know.”
For the first time Julie’s vivaciousness drops away and I glimpse the serious woman beneath the charm.
“I guess it depends on what better means, doesn’t it?” she asks. She suddenly looks at me very seriously. “Life sometimes takes us by surprise,” she says. “You trust someone. You get betrayed. People you thought you knew turn out to be different. Things happen that you could never have expected or foreseen. Someone you thought was a saint turns out to be monster.”
With this change of tone, Julie seems far more somber and knowing. Beneath her friendliness and vitality there is a troubled undercurrent not unlike my own.
“It shouldn’t be this hard to get it right,” she adds. “But it’s easy for things to get fouled up.”
She smiles, but it’s the sad smile of a woman who has been disappointed.
In others.
In herself.
“And it’s easy to blame yourself for it all. To feel you’ve screwed up. Made a big mess of everything. That it’s all your fault for some crazy choice you made and now can’t change or take back.”
She shrugs.
“In the end, you become your own fall guy,” she adds.
She looks at me as if we’ve both been derailed by some vast conspiracy, equal victims of a crime.
“And who wants to feel helpless?”
Sloan
I SAW A spark in Claire’s eyes when I said the word “helpless.” My “saint turns out to be a monster” line had been an effective turn of phrase, too.
She probably wanted to talk a little longer, but I knew that now wasn’t the right time. It was better to ease off, let things lie. If you push too hard, you risk the danger of exposing yourself. A paranoid is always on alert, always suspicious. I had to pace my approach to Claire perfectly or I’d tip my hand.
I didn’t have forever, of course. If Miller was right, Claire would “do something” before his upcoming marriage. Even without that information, I could see an inner clock ticking in Claire Fontaine. There was an anxiousness beneath her reserve, a ferment. She was closing in on a grave deadline.
I looked at my watch again and pretended to be late for something.
“I’d better get going,” I said.
Claire walked me out into the parking lot and over to my car.
“Thanks again for putting me in touch with Destiny,” I told her.
Claire smiled. “I think she enjoyed the interview. The way you talked to her. She related to you.”
She stood quite still, staring at me in a way that was almost imploring before she said, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Do you ever just . . . know something?”
“What do you mean?”
“That someone did something or is going to do something. Even though you don’t have any proof.”
I knew that for Claire, this wasn’t an idle question. She put weight on it. My answer had to be right.
I thought fast and came up with a story my father had related to me about a woman named Stella Denker.
As I told it, I could almost see him on a dusty porch, a door opening to his knock, a woman facing him, her strained features captured in a slant of light.
A little boy named Charlie Fields had disappeared. My father had still been in uniform at the time, and he’d been given the job of going door to door in the kid’s neighborhood.
He’d knocked several times before Stella had finally come to the door. She was tall and very thin, with dry, cracked skin.
He informed Stella why he was there. She said she’d heard about what she called “the missing kid.” She didn’t know the boy, however. She described herself as a shut-in but gave no indication as to why she never went out.
The door was slightly ajar, and while my father stood on the porch, he could see that it was stone dark inside. No lights burning. A stillness throu
ghout the shadowy interior of the house.
“I ain’t seen nothing,” she told my father.
My father suspected something about Stella. Something . . . off. Unfortunately, with no proof he’d let the feeling slide and gone on to the next house.
Later that same day the body of Charlie Fields was found in the basement of Stella Denker’s house. She’d tried to burn it down, but the firemen had arrived in time to put it out.
As it turned out, Stella had coaxed Charlie into her house because she was sick, weak, needed help. The idea was to use him pretty much as a slave. By the time the insanity of such a notion had dawned on her, Stella had already committed a long list of felonies. Kidnapping, to start with. She had to flee but couldn’t take Charlie or leave him alive. She’d poisoned him with strychnine.
According to the coroner’s report, Charlie had been dead for little more than an hour when the firemen arrived. This meant that he’d been alive when my father knocked on Denker’s door. He may have heard my father’s voice, and his young heart may have leaped with hope that the man would save him. Tragically, my father had ignored his instincts with regard to Stella Denker. As a result, Charlie Fields had died.
“Your father thought he was responsible for that little boy’s death?” Claire asked at the end of my tale.
I nodded. “All his life.”
This was actually true, though I made sure it seemed a darker burden than it had been. The point was to establish a foundation for future intimacy. Once the subject was broached, it could be explored later.
I smiled and offered Claire my hand.
“Call me anytime,” I told her.
It was a ploy that further deepened our connection by letting Claire know that if she needed me, I’d be there for her. More important, it established that if I ever found myself in need, I could call her, too.
Mutual care.
It’s important for a sin eater to realize that human beings like that sort of thing.
Claire
I’M IN NO mood to see Mehdi, but I arrive at six p.m., right on time.
He welcomes me with an excited smile. “So happy,” he says, “always.”
He is dressed in Iranian style, a shirt that falls almost to his knees and trousers that look like puffed-out silk.
“Shirt is called kurta,” he informs me brightly. “Pants called dhoti.” He clearly expects me to appreciate traditional attire.
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