“Different book, same author,” she says. “It’s about a woman who gets eaten alive by her own skin cream.”
“Was it eye cream?” I ask, remembering Malone and her lack of wrinkles. I’ve got to get into this anti-aging stuff. I’ve managed to hide a lot behind the tanned olive tone of my skin, still passing for twenty-something, but I can’t stave off fucking Father Time forever.
Janet ignores my question, keeps shading the woman’s disintegrating skin with a salmon-coloured pencil. “What was your dad like?” she asks me.
“He was a good dad, too,” I say, draining the last half of my beer. “But not the most conventional guy. He spent time with me when he could. We used to go camping together sometimes.” I remember sitting at the campfire with my dad and Uncle Rod, my first time out of the city. Listening to the loons. Thinking it was crack addicts howling for a fix.
“Mom said he killed people for a living, too,” Janet says, still sketching.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He did of course, but it sounds like trash talk coming from her after the whole Dad-and-the-fairy-tale play-acting story.
“He did,” she says, turning to look up at me from the mattress. “My dad told me. He said that’s why you ended up doing the same thing. It wasn’t your fault. You had a bad example.”
I don’t dignify this comment with a response. Instead, I get up from the table and pop open another Bud. I like to think I came by who I am through my own designs. But these days I find myself getting soft, no longer thrilling to the killer instinct, wondering almost how I ever did. Maybe Janet’s right. Maybe being a killer was something I was assigned rather than my true nature. Regardless, my half-sister’s comment irks me. People possibly being right can do that to you.
“At least my dad stuck around. Unlike my mother,” I say.
“Our mother,” she says.
“Whatever.”
Janet slams the sketchbook shut and sits up on the bed.
“You could find her, Candace. You could find Mom. I know you know people.”
I do, in fact, know people. People who would chew this kid with the glasses up and spit her out again.
“I’m not going looking for Angela, Janet. The cops are doing that. Plus, your Aunt Stacey is going to show up. She wouldn’t just leave you here.”
“The cops don’t know anything,” Janet complains. “And I don’t think Aunt Stacey is coming back. She was really freaked out about my mom.”
“But it wasn’t her in the morgue,” I say. Damn, is this kid ever ruining my Bud buzz.
“It doesn’t matter,” Janet says. “When Mom dropped me off at Stacey’s, she said she’d only be gone a week at the most. It’s been a month now. And I told you about the slalom thing.”
“She’ll come back,” I say. “After all, you’re the daughter she stuck around for.”
“That’s why you won’t help me find her, isn’t it?” Janet’s voice goes up an octave, her glasses starting to fog up with the heat of her tween fury. “You’re still mad because she left you. But it wasn’t her fault. She was sick.”
“Seems she got better,” I say. “Set up a cozy little home in Canada with your dad and you, and chocolate beavers singing on the ski slopes and whatnot.” I’m raising my own voice now. “But she never came back.”
This is, even by my standards, a fucking insensitive thing to say. Since the implication is that her mother won’t come back for her, either. But I’m thinking it’s been going on thirty years since Angela left me at a bus stop with no change, or whatever the circumstances, so maybe this kid better get used to the waiting. I’m afraid she might cry, but instead she opens up her sketchbook again and starts drawing on a blank page.
“Listen,” I say, trying to think of something to smooth things over, “maybe we can find your dad’s people. I’ve got a friend who is good at that sort of thing.” I’m thinking of Deep and his hacker abilities. How hard can it be to find a few Norwegians in a country with less people in it than California.
“You’re trying to get rid of me,” she says, scribbling so hard I think she’s going to break the tip off her pencil.
“No, I’m not,” I say. But I am. I don’t know whether I’m cut out for this big sister caper. I get up, leaving my latest beer on the table.
“I’m going out for a bit,” I say, grabbing the jacket I’d hung on a nail at the front door. “You’ll be okay, right?”
“Are you going to help find my mom?” she asks, looking up at me.
“No, Janet. I’m not.”
“Then fuck you,” she hisses, returning to the pad. She adds a backhanded finger gesture in my direction to punctuate her point.
“Right,” I say, opening the door. I turn to her before I leave. “Don’t touch anything and don’t go anywhere. I’ll just be across the street.”
She doesn’t answer, just scribbles angrily on the pad. The smell of samosas drifts up into the hallway from the E-Zee Market below, along with the insistent whir of power tools.
“I wouldn’t want to touch any of your gross stuff, anyway,” Janet says, as a parting shot. I’ve never let anyone get away with talking to me the way this kid does, but I don’t take the bait. She wants me to stay and continue the argument. But I’m smarter than that. I walk out the door, slamming it behind me. Marching down the stairs, I ignore Majd and his niece, who must have overheard us shouting. They’re busy fixing a piece of plastic mistletoe onto the drop ceiling.
Hands shoved into my pockets, I cross the dark street to The Goon, thinking I was right earlier.
I don’t have the fucking patience for teenagers.
When I get inside The Goon, Lovely Linda is behind the bar adjusting one of her fake eyelashes in a dingy Jack Daniel’s mirror. She turns around when I sit down on a stool, one eyelash still curled up like a furry centipede at the corner.
“Are you flush or flat broke?” she asks, knowing the drill.
“Flush,” I say, feeling bills from the Murder Ink gig burning a hole in my pocket.
“Hendrick’s it is,” Linda says, pulling the top-drawer gin from a hidden shelf under the bar. She pours a generous amount into a glass tumbler, splashes a bit of tonic on top. I pull the drink toward me and take an angry swallow. It burns on the way down my throat, like a velvet flame.
Linda sits on her own stool. She’s getting older and can’t handle standing all day behind the bar like when she was a fresh young thing. She’s worked here for as long as anyone can remember. Which is not that long given the memory of dive bar drinkers. She’s known for turning a quick trick or two in the gents when things get slow. But I don’t judge her for that, and neither should you. Linda’s good people.
“I hear you got your sister at your place?” she says.
“News travels fast.”
“I was in the E-Zee Market earlier getting some fancy cocktail napkins.”
This is definitely bullshit. The Goon doesn’t serve fancy cocktails and it doesn’t have napkins.
“Or maybe you saw me walk in with her and got curious,” I say, taking another hard pull on the gin and imperceptible tonic.
Linda throws up her hands. She’s got fake nails to go with the fake eyelashes. They’re painted blue and have little white snowmen at the tips. I wonder if she got it done at the Vietnamese place around the corner. I go there myself when I’ve got the cash, for the pedi rather than the mani. I may not be in the business anymore, but I’m not above taking a job to rough someone up who needs it. I rely too much on my hands in that line of work to worry about ruining a French tip.
“You got me,” she says. “Guilty as charged.” She winks the eye with the wonky lash.
“Did Majd tell you?” I ask, surprised. Like I said, he’s not usually a squealer.
“No, the kid did,” Linda says. “The one holding the power drill. You’d think they’d find her more age-appropriate toys.”
I am not sure what age-appropriate toys are. When I was six, my dad taught me h
ow to use a wire splicer so I could crawl on the roof and steal cable from our neighbours. I don’t even know if it was appropriate to leave Janet alone. But I’m keeping my eye out the front window, watching the door of the E-Zee Market across the street. I’ll see if she tries to do a runner.
“Yeah, well, she didn’t lie. She’s my sister. Or half-sister, I guess.”
“Your dad’s?” Linda asks. My dad was known to be a lady’s man back in the day. Lovely Linda and him might have even had a hook-up in the restroom for all I know.
“No,” I say. “My mom’s.”
Linda purses her strawberry-glossed lips and lets out a whistle. “Well, that’s fraught with thorny possibilities.” Linda has a way with words. I hear she actually went to college. But I don’t think she finished. Much like myself. I’d been on a different career trajectory then, but life tends to abhor straight lines, much like nature does with vacuums.
“I’m just taking care of her,” I say. “Until Angela comes back.”
“You saw your mother?” Linda asks.
“No,” I tell her. “I didn’t.” I down the rest of the drink, throw some bills on the bar. Linda pours me another without being asked. I tell her about Malone’s phone call and the morgue — about the woman without a face who somehow got Angela’s blood on her. Then the revelation of a sister, the group home threat, and finally my bone-headed decision to take Janet home with me.
“Now she actually wants me to look for that crazy bitch,” I say.
“That crazy bitch being your mother.”
“She may have given birth to me, but she wasn’t much of a mother,” I point out, but Linda already knows. Angela is a bit famous in these parts, even after all these years. One time, she showed up at the bar with a teddy bear instead of me strapped into her BabyBjörn baby carrier. My infant ass had been left behind at the toy store, hidden in a stuffed animal display, just like E.T. “Seems like she managed to take care of my sister, though.”
“Hmm,” Linda says.
“Besides,” I say. “Who knows what weird shit she got herself into with the Scarpellos. I don’t need those kind of complications.”
Linda blinks, maybe in agreement, or maybe because she is trying to set the fake eyelash back into place.
“Your sister’s dad passed away. Isn’t that what you said?” she says, changing the subject. Or so I think.
“Cancer,” I tell her.
“So, Angela’s all she’s got.”
“Yup.” I flip some of my springy hair out of the way. One long twisted strand of it falls forward and drops into my drink.
“Sort of like you and your dad,” Linda says.
I raise one eyebrow across the bar at her.
“Yeah, sort of like that, I guess.” I don’t like where she’s going with this.
“Gotta be pretty scary for a thirteen-year-old girl, being without her only parent,” Linda says. “Even if they’re not perfect.”
I pull the hair strand out of my glass then suck the gin off my fingers.
“It’s not the same, Linda.”
But I suppose it is. My dad hadn’t been perfect, either, but he’d been my whole world. When he died, I felt like a tattered but crucial rug had been pulled out from under me. I’ve been trying to get my footing ever since.
“You’re thinking I should help her find Angela,” I say to Linda.
“I’m saying you know what it’s like to be alone, Candace.”
“I like being alone,” I say, pushing the empty tumbler toward her. But she doesn’t refill it. Another couple of customers have walked in, and she gets up off her stool.
“You keep telling yourself that, Candace.” Then she’s gone to serve two other dive bar lost souls, and I’m left there, staring at my empty glass.
I take a long walk to clear my head before I go back to my room above the E-Zee Market. A few flakes of snow are falling, but it melts the second it hits the gum-splattered pavement. It’s supposed to be seventy degrees tomorrow. Global warming’s a bitch, but at times an enjoyable one.
When I get back to my apartment, Janet is still sketching. The new picture is of a tall woman in a leather jacket with her mouth open in the same huge O as the Scream girl she was working on at Denny’s. Long spirals of honey-brown hair zigzag out of her head like a witch. It’s a pretty good likeness just the same.
I throw a jumbo bag of barbecue-flavoured chips on the table. “I brought you some snacks,” I say, in lieu of an apology. That’s the best she’s going to get from me. I’m not good at saying I’m sorry. I’m going to let Frito-Lay do the talking for me.
She gets up and opens the bag, crams a big handful of chips into her mouth. The red barbecue dust glistens on her lips like Linda’s strawberry lipgloss.
“Want to watch a movie?” she asks, indicating the ancient VCR.
“Okay,” I say.
I pop in a dusty tape of When Harry Met Sally, and we settle down on the mattress to watch it, propped up on pillows and her big puffy jacket. Kids blow hot and cold at this age. Much like the weather. She falls asleep before we even get to the fake orgasm in the diner scene. I get up from the mattress and look out the window.
There’s a car parked across the street. It’s been there since before we started the movie. A cream-coloured Chrysler sedan with a black car bra stretched across the hood, the cracked vinyl mottled with road salt stains. The driver’s window is halfway down, but I can’t see who’s inside. It’s too dark and the streetlight out front of The Goon has been broken since the summer. I watch for a while, not moving a muscle, mindful of the gun I have tucked in my jeans. But whoever’s in the car must have clocked me standing in the lit window, because before I can go down and check things out, they drive quickly away.
I’m not sure what Angela has gotten herself into, but the possibility of a tail tells me it cannot be good. Earlier, when the light was better, I’d noticed the plates of the car weren’t local. Blue lettering on white, like they have in Michigan. Like they have in Detroit. I look at the girl asleep on the mattress. Her ponytail’s come undone, and her hair has crumbs of crimson chips caught in the uber-blonde strands.
I’m not about to go off to Detroit looking for Angela, but I can make a few inquiries. Like my sister said, I know people.
I pick my phone up off the kitchen table. There are two text messages from Charlotte. I’d set it to vibrate, silencing the whales.
Did you get my package? the first one says.
What did Detective Malone want? asks the other.
I ignore both questions and tap the new number I find in my Contacts. It takes a couple of rings, but he picks up.
“Good evening, Candace,” he says with that wrong-side-of-London accent. I don’t need his hacking abilities, but I do need someone I can trust. Something tells me the man on the other end of the phone is worthy of that. Call it street smarts, or a sixth sense, or just the lack of another viable fucking option.
“Turns out I need something after all,” I say into the phone.
And without even hearing what it is, Deep says okay.
CHAPTER 5
WHEN DEEP PULLS HIS FLASH CELICA UP in front of the E-Zee Market, Janet is still arguing with me.
“I don’t see why I can’t go,” she whines. But I’m not having it. I’ve spent the whole day playing the big sister, waiting until Deep finished with his day job and could come pick her up. After a late breakfast at a House of Pancakes, Janet and I had gone to the science museum, but not until she agreed to pay for it. My Murder Ink funds are starting to dwindle, mostly from feeding my sister’s three-hundred-pound trucker appetite. She’d eaten a stack of waffles at the restaurant and still needed a “snack” of honey-garlic chicken wings at the museum cafeteria once we were done looking around. Neither of us was too impressed with the place, since it seems like they haven’t received any new funding since the Clinton administration. One of the exhibits was a talking typewriter, for Christ’s sake. The average two-year-old has better tec
hnology than that at their disposal.
“You want me to figure out where Angela is or not?” I say, opening the passenger door of the Celica after Deep has popped the lock.
“I still don’t understand why I can’t come with you,” she says.
“And I don’t understand nuclear fission, but I guess we all have to live with the mystery,” I say. “Now get in the car.”
Janet throws her Oxford bag over the passenger seat and gets in. I lean into the car once Deep’s made sure she has her seatbelt fastened.
“This is Janet,” I say.
“It’s lovely to meet you, Janet,” he says. My sister just sneers. We really do have a lot of things in common besides our mother.
“I’ll be back tonight,” I tell him. “Touch her and I’ll pour sulphuric acid on your balls.”
“It’s nice to see you, too, Candace.” But Deep still smiles. I sense he is enjoying the intrigue of all this. Probably beats crunching code all day long.
I stand on the sidewalk outside the E-Zee Market and watch Deep drive away. Malone would probably string me up for entrusting the care of a minor to a guy I picked up at a Murder Ink meeting, but I can’t have a kid tagging along with me while I make my inquiries. And while the Chrysler that was parked outside last night hasn’t come back, you can’t be too careful. Janet will be safer out in the suburbs with Deep.
I pull the keys for Charlotte’s car out of the pocket of my leather jacket. They’re attached to a big dangling red pom-pom that I hate, but it keeps me from losing them. I go into the E-Zee Market and call out to Majd.
“I’m taking the car out today.”
Majd nods his head. Comes over and locks the front door of the E-Zee Market and puts up the “Back in 5 minutes” sign. We walk through the storage room that doubles as his office and into the alleyway, where Charlotte’s orange hatchback sits, looking like it should be up on blocks. You’d think the colour would hide the rust, but it doesn’t.
“I think I am getting too old for this,” Majd says, rubbing a shoulder.
“Nah,” I say. “You’re not.”
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