Starr Sign

by C. S. O'Cinneide

  I’m not one for traps, either. Even though I realize I may be about to walk right into one.

  CHAPTER 11

  IT TURNS OUT DEEP WAS PARKED around the corner, watching my whole Anya Scarpello encounter go down from behind a dumpster. Dumpsters are rampant in Detroit. Despite the mayor’s call to rebuild, they seem to be tearing everything down. Skids covered in demolition dust are as common as streetlights. Which I understand the city didn’t have enough scratch to turn on for a while.

  After Deep picks me up, I fill them both in on meeting Anya, show them the card I was given. Janet is anxious for details of Angela, but other than what we already know, I don’t have much to tell her. She sulks about it while we eat all-day breakfasts at a diner named after a hot dog or an island in NYC, depending on how you look at it. Denny’s was too far downriver. Deep offers to take her to an art store to pick up supplies, and that seems to cheer her up a bit. Now she’ll have a whole new selection of coloured pencils to draw nasty caricatures of me.

  When we get back to the hotel, I go for an afternoon nap. I’m not used to such early mornings, and I’m now two nights of ugly without much beauty sleep. I surprise myself by not waking up until almost five o’clock. The sky has turned a steely grey outside the motel window — more rain, as well as dusk on its way. We’re almost at the shortest day of the year after all.

  Janet is propped up in her bed, watching Netflix on her iPhone with earbuds in. She doesn’t look up when I stumble into the bathroom and switch on the light, too involved with the latest season of Orange Is the New Black. That show is such a heap of shit. Or maybe I’m just jealous I didn’t think of writing a memoir about my own incarceration for fame and profit. That Piper Kerman is living large now. But then again, she was never a real criminal, not by my exacting standards, at least.

  When I look in the motel bathroom mirror, I find a crease running down the side of my cheek, left there by the seam of the motel bedspread. There are swollen bags almost the size of Deep’s matching luggage under my eyes. This is the problem with beauty sleep, too much of it can sometimes have the reverse effect. I try taming my bedhead hair into a messy bun, heavy on the mess, and splash my face, but I’m going to need more than this to look presentable for my dinner with the Scarpellos. I figure some ice under my eyes will take the sleepy swelling down. I’ve used Preparation H for the purpose in the past. A girl who dehydrates herself with as much alcohol as I do doesn’t get this far without learning a few tricks. Unfortunately, I forgot to pack any, or maybe I just didn’t want Deep to see a tube of ’roid cream in my bag.

  After a quick shower, I come out of the bathroom to find Janet still glued to Netflix, but with a slice of pizza in her hand. They must have ordered in again. She waves at me with her free hand as I walk past. I open the door to Deep’s adjoining room and close it behind me.

  “I hope you didn’t pay that guy for last night,” I say, still towelling off my long hair. Deep turns around in the chair that he’s set up in front of his huge monitor. The guilty look on his face tells me he has.

  “I found a copy of the birth registration,” he says, changing the subject, but also because this is probably more important than take-out. “It only lists a single birth, though.”

  “That would be me, I guess.”

  “Correct.”

  I drop the towel on Deep’s crisply made bed. I know they don’t have maid service here. These hospital corners are his doing. I lean over to pick up the ice bucket from where it sits on the bedside table next to an ancient alarm clock that actually flips over the numbers to tell time. Inside the bucket, there is only water, melted from the night before.

  “So, I guess that’s a dead end.”

  “I thought so, but then I ran the name of the doctor who signed off on it through a few databases,” Deep says, turning back to the computer. “Dr. Stanley Razinski.”

  “And?”

  “Well, it seems a bit dodgy that he was the one to sign off on the birth.”

  “Why?” I ask, coming to stand behind Deep with my bucket. But I can’t garner any info from the screen. It’s not all ones and zeroes, but it’s close enough to be indecipherable to a mere mortal like me.

  “Because he’s an endocrinologist.”

  “That’s glands and stuff, right?”

  “Yes,” Deep says. “And the hormones they produce.” He brings up a photo on the monitor of a serious-looking man with a grey beard surrounded by beaming middle-aged women in caftans. “He’s mostly retired now, but I found a retreat facility that he heads up for menopausal women with mood issues. It’s some sort of in-patient clinic. He has a whole foundation for it.”

  I remember when Charlotte was going through the change. Mood issues is the polite term for when a woman starts crying over the washing machine because the Tide ran out.

  “Where’s the retreat?” I ask. I put the bucket down on the floor and lean over, squinting at the screen. I’m thinking it might be a good idea to pay this doctor a visit. Ask him why my twin brother didn’t make the cut for birth registration sign off. As I bend down, some of my wet hair falls over into Deep’s lap. It’s either that or the closeness of my freshly washed skin that makes him antsy. He gets up out of the chair and grabs a piece of pizza from the box on the windowsill.

  “That’s the problem,” he says, taking a napkin to go with his slice. “I can’t seem to locate the clinic. They have a website, but they’re cagey about the location. A bid to protect the privacy of their clients, I reckon. I’ve looked everywhere I can think of — tax records, land registrations. I can’t find it. But I did find some interesting information in his foundation finances. Guess who his biggest contributor is?”

  “Who?”

  “Anya Scarpello.”

  That is interesting. Although, Anya is the same age as Charlotte was when she started crying over laundry detergent. Maybe the doctor helped her out.

  “I still don’t get what a guy who specializes in jacking women up on estrogen cocktails would be doing delivering babies.”

  “I wondered that myself. But it seems back in the eighties when you were born that wasn’t his specialty.”

  “What was it?” I ask.

  “Fertility.”

  “Jesus, Deep, Angela was eighteen when she got pregnant. That’s not an age when most women need a petri dish to procreate.”

  “Maybe, but those kinds of interventions often result in multiple births.”

  “I really don’t think she had any problem with getting knocked up, Deep.”

  “Anya Scarpello had problems,” Deep says, polishing off his slice. “I ran across that in my research for Murder Ink. Maybe your mother and her used the same doctor to achieve both their pregnancies.”

  “I don’t know, Deep. It still seems strange.”

  “Maybe. But even if Angela didn’t need help getting pregnant, it wouldn’t be so unusual that Dr. Razinski delivered her baby. The Scarpellos, like most crime families, tend to keep a select group of physicians on the payroll.”

  “But Angela wasn’t even talking to her family when I was born.”

  “Do you know that for sure?”

  Angela had been tossed out on her ear when my dad got her pregnant. I’d been told the Scarpellos made it clear that if anyone associated with the family contacted her, they’d suffer the consequences. It was a full-on Italian shunning, at least until recently. But you never know — maybe the doc took pity on her.

  “I guess it’s possible,” I admit. I’m not great at admitting things. On the rare occasions I took part in childhood party games, I usually chose the dare. The one time I picked truth it made me break out in hives.

  Deep nods while munching on the pizza. “Oh shit,” he says. “I’m sorry, did you want some?”

  He gets up and holds the grease-stained box out to me. I see Janet has forced us to get fucking pineapple again.

  “I have dinner plans,” I say to him. “Remember?”

  “About that Candace.
Maybe —”

  “We’ve already discussed this, Deep. We’re not discussing it again.”

  Deep isn’t too keen on me going behind enemy lines at the Scarpellos’. I’d pointed out to him that they’re not the enemy, they’re my relatives. But I suppose those two can sometimes be the same thing.

  Deep sits back at his makeshift desk. He knows I’m not going to budge on my decision.

  “I’ll keep looking for the location of that retreat,” he says. When he clicks on the mouse, he smears a little red tomato sauce on it, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

  I pick the bucket up off the floor. Those eye bags aren’t going to get rid of themselves.

  “I’m going to get some ice from the lobby.”

  Deep nods but doesn’t look away from the monitor, sucked in by his latest search. He doesn’t even seem to notice the cold air that blows into the room when I leave. Between him and Janet, I’ve got two zombies stuck to their screens now. I bet I could set up a cardboard cutout of myself by the mini bar, and nobody would notice the difference.

  As I cross the parking lot, I feel my wet hair start to go crunchy with the freezing effects of the falling temperature. It’s still pretty warm during the day when the sun is out, but once that bright-yellow ball starts to go down for the night, you remember it’s almost officially winter. By the time I reach the motel reception, I’m wishing I’d put on my leather jacket for this little trip. I close the door to the outside and look around the small lobby. The Korean lady must have gone in the back room to eat her dinner because she’s not at her post. I can hear the sound of the evening news on the television, and the smell of freshly steamed rice with veggies wafts up and over the reception desk from her quarters out back. I’m almost finished filling my white plastic bucket with ice when I feel a vibration in the front pocket of my jeans. I put the bucket down on the linoleum and take my phone out, briefly snagging it on the gun wedged under my pants. I forgot my jacket but remembered to pack my trusty Ruger. A girl has her priorities.

  “I got your message,” Charlotte says when I answer. “Is everything okay? Is it something to do with the call from that detective? I’ve been so worried.”

  “Nothing to worry about, Charlotte,” I say. “I’ve got everything under control.”

  The little South Korean lady peeks her head around the corner when she hears my voice. I give her a nod with the phone at my ear and raise the ice bucket to show her my intentions. She goes back to the news and her dinner.

  “But what did Detective Malone want, Candace?” She’s really worked up. She hasn’t even asked me about her Christmas package yet.

  I tell Charlotte about the corpse in the morgue. How they thought the dead body was Angela, but it wasn’t. I don’t tell her about my new sister and supposed twin brother. Or about me being in Detroit looking for Angela among the Scarpellos. If she’d been worried before, that news would send her right off the charts on the stress meter.

  “That must have been hard,” Charlotte says. “Thinking it was your mom.”

  “We weren’t close, Charlotte. You know that.”

  “I know,” she says. “But she’s still the only family you have.”

  I think about how untrue that is, given the events of the past few days, but of course, Charlotte doesn’t know about any of that. Or maybe she does.

  “Did Uncle Rod ever say anything to you about how I was born?”

  “I think you know full well how that happens, Candace.”

  That’s my Aunt Charlotte, a real card.

  “I don’t mean that. I’m talking about my actual birth. Did Rod or my dad ever say anything about it?”

  “Why are you asking about this?”

  “Just humour me, okay?”

  “Well, you know men don’t talk about these things much. Especially men like your father and Rod.”

  It’s true. The two of them had no trouble cutting a body up into pieces for easy disposal, but any discussion of my period and they’d collectively start looking for the exits.

  “Your father was away for months on a job. He wasn’t there for your mother’s labour or most of the pregnancy. Angela wasn’t very good at taking care of herself while he was away, I heard. I don’t think she had the best prenatal care. It was a difficult birth. It was a good thing it took place in a private clinic.”

  “How did she afford a private clinic?”

  “Oh, she didn’t pay for it. I remember that. Your father had been angry about that.”

  “Who paid for it?”

  “Her people.”

  “The Scarpellos?”

  “Yes, that’s why your dad was so mad. He didn’t want her to have anything to do with them. But she was close with one of them. An aunt, I think.”

  “Anya Scarpello?” I ask. Anya had said she and Angela were tight back in the day, not just family, but friends.

  “Rod never told me her name,” Charlotte says. But she arranged for everything. Really, honey, why all these questions now. Is there something —”

  I disconnect the call with Charlotte in mid-sentence, drop the ice bucket to the linoleum floor. I’m not usually rude for no reason. At least not to Charlotte. But out the window of the motel I’ve just noticed a car pull into the back alleyway. It’s the Chrysler with the tatty car bra. I drop down behind the motel check-in desk and crawl my way into the Korean lady’s living room. She’s sitting with a tray balanced on her lap, eating her dinner.

  “Is there a back way out to the alley from here?” I ask her, still on all fours.

  She blinks a couple of times before pointing in the direction of a hallway, then returns her gaze to the announcer on the TV giving details on the latest fake news. Because fake news is real news these days. She seems to have the same problem with screens as Deep and Janet.

  When I reach the end of the hallway, I open the heavy fire door a crack and peek out into the alleyway, see the blonde head leaning on the headrest of the Chrysler parked to my left. The driver’s window opens halfway, and a hand reaches out and flicks the ash off a cigarette onto the asphalt. There’s no one else in the car. I do a quick scan of the area. There’s no one on foot, either. The building bordering the other side of the alleyway is crumbling to the ground. There won’t be any nosy neighbours to see me and call the cops. I pull out my gun and stay crouched down low until I’m at the open car window, where I stand up and train my Ruger on the temple of the blonde head.

  “Get out of the fucking car.”

  The blonde head complies. A petite woman wearing an ugly Christmas sweater gets out of the car, cringing, her hands in the air. I close the driver’s door and step in front of her. She looks up, takes in the full height of me. Her pale blue eyes are framed with spiky mascara lashes, clumped into multiple triangle points so sharp they could cut glass. I level the gun at her chest, smack between the antlers of the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer sewn on the front.

  “Who are you, and why are you following me?” I ask.

  “I’m a friend of your mother’s,” the pint-sized blonde says. Like that’s going to endear her to me.

  “Name?” I ask.

  “Stacey Bunnaman,” she says. The elusive Aunt Stacey. “I don’t want any trouble. I was just worried about Janet.” Her eyes plead with me through her pointed lashes.

  I walk around to the front of the car, still keeping my gun on her. The licence plate is blue lettering on white, all right, but it says Ontario, not Michigan. I return to stand in front of Stacey, blocking her way out of the alleyway just in case she gets any ideas about legging it.

  “If you were so worried about Janet, why did you take off?” I ask.

  “I was worried about the police,” she says. “I run a grow-op back in Canada. Jesus. Please, please don’t shoot me.”

  “Pot is legal in Canada.” I lower the gun a bit, aiming it at Rudolph’s big red pom-pom nose now. “What do you care about the cops?”

  “I didn’t know what Angela had gotten herself into,” Sta
cey says. “I can’t afford to be associated with anything criminal. They take away your licence to sell cannabis in Canada if you so much as jaywalk.” Her arms start to slacken above her head a bit, like a sail in need of a good breeze.

  “So, my mother left her kid with a drug dealer,” I say, raising the gun again. Stacey’s arms shoot back up to full mast.

  “It’s not drug dealing in Canada,” she says, getting defensive. “It’s like having a vineyard. I was only concerned about Janet, I swear.” Big fat tears are forming at the corner of her eyes. One drops, and the black mascara runs like a dirty stream down her cheek. “Please, can I put my arms down?” she asks. “I’ve got a bum rotator cuff.”

  I nod and lower the gun a little, but I don’t put it away.

  “Pot’s still a drug, even if it’s legal,” I say.

  “It’s better than having it get to young people through thugs and criminals,” she says, wiping at her snotty nose now that her hands are no longer in the air. “Shit, no offence.”

  “None taken,” I say. “But you still supply to addicts.”

  “We’re not like that in Canada,” she says.

  “You have the highest fucking opioid use in the world,” I say. Canadians are an anesthetized lot. That’s probably what makes them so laid back and polite.

  “Well, I’m not like that,” Aunt Stacey says. She’s more relaxed now but still hasn’t taken her spiky lashed eyes off of the gun.

  “Shit, it was you,” I say. “The other night. At the side of the road.”

  “Yes,” Stacey says, biting her lip. “I just wanted to talk to you. Find out what happened with Angela.” She sniffles a little, pulling the snot back up into her nose, then wipes with the back of her hand at the melting mascara. “And you shot at me.”