“Could be,” Zane said. “Or maybe it’s a desperate woman who couldn’t be a mom on her own so she had to steal someone else’s kid to fulfill that particular dream.”
“Dude,” Jack said. “You might be on to something.”
“I’m always on to something,” Zane said.
Randy couldn’t listen anymore. He got in his squad car and headed down Main Street toward the Bottoms, Jack and Zane be damned, going first to the old Udall place because it was sunny and the bugs weren’t too bad. The house, at the corner of Hate Henry Road and Rocky Way, was a squatter’s spooky paradise and Randy made an effort to walk through or at least drive by every few days to satisfy himself that someone hadn’t turned it into a makeshift meth cookery or, worse yet, an underage brothel. It was one of the banes of Randy’s existence, just as it had been for his father. Twenty years ago, a rotating set of Seavers and Tuckers, on the run from their daddy’s whip and ma’s open hand, slept curled up together on the kitchen floor, usually two or three at a time, one blanket and one pillow between them. They had animals for company, mostly rats. And river fish for food. And a space heater shaped like Yoda. They filled the house with farts and bad singing. Also beer cans. They painted one bathroom a hideous bloodred and hung a picture of José Canseco in the hall. After the Seavers and Tuckers came the oversexed and hopped-up teenagers. They turned the house and its immediate environs into one long rave. House music. Ecstasy. Plastic water bottles. Tie-dyed everything.
Then silence. Ten years of it. During which time there was a five-hundred-year flood and a few fish swam through, died in the corners and in the one pink toilet. Carpenter ants took over the attic. An ash tree fell on the front porch and the garage caught fire. Spontaneous combustion. The fire would have burned down the whole Bottoms if Hank Seaver hadn’t run over there with his garden hose, screaming at the top of his lungs at the neighborhood to help him for “Christ’s sake get up get up get up the Redcoats are coming! The Redcoats are coming!” After they put the fire out, everyone roasted hot dogs and marshmallows over the ashes and Hank, armed with a fifth of Jim Beam, led the company in a toast to the Bottoms, Colliersville, and America. Also to the Colts and the Pacers and God, Jesus, and big-breasted women. Amen.
Eventually the city council voted to have the old Udall place torn down, but the demolition bids came in high and everyone just forgot about it the same way they forgot about Nan Udall, who’d had a heart attack while in her closet looking for a camisole and was pulled out the front door one beautiful morning in 1979, feet first, nothing but bones.
The house, which had fallen into disrepair after Nan’s death, seemed to lean ever so slightly to the west. Everything—windows, doorjambs, roof peaks—was just askew enough to make you dizzy if you looked long enough. Peels of pea-green paint lay on the grass like feathers. What wood there still was was rotting, turning to honeycomb. Wasps buzzed greedily through the warped windows. Fun-house mirrors. Randy went inside but was stopped short by a fallen beam. That was new. As were a few signs of recent habitation—a musty blanket, an ashtray full of roach clips and lipstick-stained cigarette butts, a balled-up pair of women’s panties shedding glitter.
“I like what you’ve done with the place,” he said to the empty rooms. The only answer was the José Canseco picture crashing to the hallway floor. Randy ducked under the beam and was hoping to investigate further when his phone rang. It was Cat.
“Hi, hon,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Can you pick up some dish soap on your way home tonight?”
“Sure.”
“And also some TP? The situation’s growing dire.”
“Of course.”
“Good day, sweetie?”
“Just fine,” he said. “Can’t complain.”
He could complain, but what would be the point? Especially of complaining to his wife, who loved him in her way but had long ago stopped listening anytime he talked about work. As far as Randy could tell, Cat was the only inhabitant of Colliersville who couldn’t care less about the disappearance of Daisy Gonzalez. She was much more intrigued by the kidnappings and killings she read about on the Internet than the crimes that scarred her own hometown. When Randy asked her why this was, she acted like the answer was an obvious one. “It’s only interesting if it happens to other people,” she said.
Which might explain why she’d stopped sleeping with him several years before. Randy gazed sadly down at the discarded panties, felt a faint memory of desire stir within him, but he’d buried his sex drive so deep under layers of loyalty and long-term commitment that it wasn’t difficult to dismiss the feeling as a fleeting animal urge that had nothing to do with real life and everything to do with the sort of erotic fantasy Cat found so repugnantly male. All those lingerie fetishes, that fixation on breasts and asses and the lace that held them in place. Sex was, by nature, sexist, she often said, born of men’s compulsion to a) dominate women and b) transform them into glorified vessels for their seed. Cat had gone to college, Randy, too. That’s where they met. But Cat stuck it out for all four years, graduating with a degree in liberal studies, whereas Randy left after two to join his father on the police force. He wondered if this was why he and Cat couldn’t talk to each other—a basic education mismatch. And because they didn’t talk, they didn’t touch, either.
Before he’d completely given up, Randy used to argue with her. Can’t sex be fun, too? he’d say. And then there was the whole intimacy thing. Doesn’t sex bring people closer together?
No, she said. I don’t think so.
Once, over too many beers at Sharkey’s, Randy had made the fatal mistake of confiding in Jack and Zane that he and Cat had stopped making love. “Like stopped?” Jack asked, confused. “You mean you bang like once a week? Or once a month? You don’t mean stopped as in stopped for real.”
“You do do it on y’all’s anniversary, right?” Zane said. “Everyone gets laid on their anniversary.”
Randy shook his head. “Never,” he said. “She said it hurts and she’s just not into it and if I love her I’ll understand and respect her wishes.”
“She said that?” Zane asked. “Respect her wishes?”
“Yeah,” Randy said.
“Sounds like feminazi bullshit to me,” Zane said.
Jack agreed, sucking suds off his mustache. “Two words,” he said. “Lesbian.”
Randy was convinced Cat’s sex strike had more to do with her cousin Frannie than feminism. Frannie had given birth to a son, Kenny, now serving a tour of duty in Iraq, when she was only fifteen. Cat swore Kenny was a child of rape, that Frannie’s pregnancy was the result of a sexual assault by a much older man—a man Cat absolutely refused to name because naming him would acknowledge he was human and he was much more on the level of pond scum—and that that was why Frannie didn’t stick around to raise her own son. “Just couldn’t face Kenny’s face,” Cat said. Cat seemed pathologically afraid of motherhood, and so Randy suggested, as gently as he could manage, that she get on the pill. But Cat refused to ride that particular physical and emotional rollercoaster. The hormones, she said. Killers. Why don’t you try pumping your body full of them and see how you like it.
Cat made an impatient noise that sounded like static in Randy’s ear. “You there?”
“Yeah, sorry, hon,” Randy said. “But I gotta go. Another call coming in.”
“Okay,” she said. “See you tonight.”
“See you tonight.”
The other call was Em, his receptionist, phoning from the station.
“Randy,” Em said. “We’ve got a situation.”
Randy massaged his forehead. “This about Daisy?”
“Afraid not, but on the plus side, this one’s got ‘fun’ written all over it.”
“Fun? Yeah, right.”
“I mean it. Dispute at Miss Kitty’s. Catfight.”
Cat hated the word catfight. With a passion and not just because of her name. She said it deprived women of their personhood. Perso
nhood? What was that exactly? Then Randy made a mental note—toilet paper, dish soap.
“You’re joking,” he said to Em.
“I’m not,” Em said. “And word is, it’s getting serious. Someone could lose an eyelash.”
“Be there as soon as I can.” He was about to hang up.
“Oh, hey, one more thing,” Em said. “Yuhl Butz came by earlier.”
“He did, did he?” Yuhl was one of the many men in town determined to find Daisy before Randy did. Perhaps that was unfair. All the search teams had the same stated goal—to find Daisy alive and well and reunite her with her father—but Randy couldn’t help seeing them as walking, walkie-talkie-ing reminders of his own incompetence.
“He found a girl’s hair tie on the side of Route 20,” Em said. “Actually, I think it was a bloodhound that sniffed it out. Could be absolutely nothing, but—”
“Could be something,” Randy said.
“Should I send it to the lab?”
Em loved sending things to the lab. It made her feel like she was on CSI. Or Bones. She was crazy about police procedurals, the bloodier the better, and, inspired by an episode of Major Crimes, she’d even drawn up what she called a Daisy Gonzalez “suspect map,” which she’d constructed in the break room with butcher paper, thumbtacks, and red yarn. Hanging between the window and the refrigerator, it linked the pictures of possible perps to their motives and their relationship to Daisy. Randy was often in awe of Em, and not a little bit frightened of her. She should have been the cop, he thought. Not me. She’d be a lot happier out in the field, investigating kidnappings and breaking up stripper fights, than she was in the office, where she divided her time between answering the phones, filing, and watering the plants she insisted they keep around because they gave the mostly spartan station a “homey feel.” If they switched roles, Randy could be the receptionist, flirting with Lance the lab tech and making sure the African violet got enough sun and the spider plant not too much. Of course, Lance wasn’t really his type.…
“Randy? Did I lose you?”
“Nah, I’m here,” he said. “Sure, send it off. Can’t hurt.”
“That’s what I thought. Can’t hurt.”
Randy hung up then. He would have to scout out the Udall place later. On the front porch he found a few rolling papers and what looked to be a bra strap. Should he have Em send them to the lab? Across the street, Juan Cardoza was shooting baskets. He stood at free-throw distance, his aim perfect. Nothing but net every time. An older woman in a trucker hat sat on a nearby picnic table, watching and working her way through a box of chocolate doughnuts. When Juan saw Randy he grabbed his basketball and ran inside. The woman stayed where she was, chewing slowly. Her weary stare told Randy she knew his type and wasn’t impressed. You’re not fooling anyone, that stare said. You might have a shiny gun and a shiny badge and a shiny black-and-white car with flashing lights and a dash cam, but you don’t scare me. You don’t scare me at all.
* * *
Randy didn’t have the heart to face a bunch of combative strippers just then, so instead of driving straight to Miss Kitty’s, he took a detour at the Spencerville Fun Spot and parked next to the defunct ticket booth, watching butterflies flit in and out of the rusty window bars. He put his head back and let himself dream about his high school girlfriend, Kimberly, who had long ago moved to California and was rumored to be dating a filthy-rich restaurateur famous for transforming Midwestern staples like tuna-fish casserole and ambrosia salad into haute cuisine. Randy knew that Kimberly was as old as he was, forty-five if she was a day, but when he thought of her—and lately he could lose whole hours thinking of her—he imagined her as she was when he met her, young, gap-toothed pretty, and tanned. Small breasts and long legs. Dark brown hair that caught the sun better than any blonde. Two perfect ass cheeks (male repugnant fixation). A way of saying his name that made him feel like royalty. Not as conventionally pretty as her older cousin Rita, maybe, but smart and sexy and with that deep, raspy voice that went right to your spine.
More and more, Randy caught himself zoning out on the job. He liked to park his car in some remote location where he was confident he wouldn’t be seen or harassed and then relive the one perfect day more than twenty years ago when he and Kimberly ditched school to come here to the Fun Spot, where they rode the Ferris wheel for hours, making out and laughing at the carny operator, Pa Tucker, a Kentucky transplant with a ruined face and a habit of picking his nose and wiping it on kids as they ran by. They talked about getting married after graduation and maybe having a couple of kids of their own, buying a house in the tree streets. Kimberly, whose parents owned a double-wide in Maple Leaf Mobile Home Park, dreamed of sturdy walls, hardwood floors, a fireplace that, “you know, burns real actual wood. Not one of those electric things.” Randy had grown up in one of the better houses in the Bottoms, so he wouldn’t mind, he said, “trading up.” On that beautiful, flawless day, Kimberly eventually grew tired of the Ferris wheel with its view of cornfields and Pa Tucker’s scabby head, so she skipped away from him in search of an elephant ear and a lemon shake-up. As lovely as her retreating figure was, Randy did not enjoy the feeling that came with watching her get farther and farther away. Every once in a while she would turn and laugh and call for him to follow, a string of silver bells tinkling against her ankle, but she was growing smaller, less distinct, with every step, and that bright sound—her laugh and the bells—so pretty at first, morphed into something harsh and jarring.
Randy woke to his phone ringing. Em again.
“Um, are you on your way? To Miss Kitty’s? Had another call. Things are getting out of hand.”
“Yes, definitely.” Randy sat up and rubbed his eyes. He checked himself in the rearview. He’d drooled some on his shirt collar. “Got a little sidetracked is all. You know, police work. Never a dull moment.”
“Speak for yourself. I’m bored to tears over here.”
“How’s lab Lance?”
“Still married.”
“Well, you’ll have that,” Randy said. Married men tended to stay that way. Look at me, he thought. I’m the poster child for inertia. Just as the Fun Spot—not so fun anymore—was the perfect example of entropy. The barnlike structure that once held the Matterhorn was falling in on itself in an almost circular pattern, the boards taking on the form of hourglass sand, and the lemon on the lemon shake-up booth had faded to gray, looking more like the shadow of the Death Star than a piece of fruit. While he scanned the ruined buildings, twisted metal, and collapsed roofs of his childhood, something caught his eye—a shiny object directly under the Ferris wheel, reflecting light in fits and starts. A breeze-buffeted candy wrapper, he supposed. That or a part from the ride, jostled loose by time and weather.
He started the car. “This is me, heading to Miss Kitty’s,” he told Em.
“Oh good,” she said. “While you’re there, get a lap dance for me? I hear they’re half off on Tuesdays.”
* * *
Randy had never, in all his years of policing, seen Miss Kitty’s in such an uproar. The last time the sleepy strip club seemed to wake up from its stupor was St. Patrick’s Day 2007, when the owner and Jack’s second cousin, Stan McElroy, splurged and booked that midget porn star who called herself Mabel in Miniature. People came from all over to watch Mabel go through her routine of old-fashioned burlesque followed by naked knife juggling. Even Randy had made it out, using his badge as an excuse. “I’m here to keep the peace,” he’d said, but in truth he was simply curious. Mabel did not disappoint. She was beautiful and perfectly proportioned for her height. It was like looking at a Barbie doll on a slightly larger scale. You wanted to pick her up and change her dress, put her in a Jeep with Ken, and roll them into the sunset.
The commotion that greeted him today was of a different variety. Two dancers in G-strings were onstage, locked together like exhausted boxers. Randy recognized Maria Pinto right away. The other dancer was a dirty-blonde, strong in the shoulders. A small crowd of
mostly male onlookers had taken sides in the scuffle, sloshing beer on themselves and tossing dollar bills on the stage. The women scratched each other, pulled hair, threw kicks that failed to land. Then they slipped in their six-inch heels, growling and gasping for breath. It was like a naked mud-wrestling match, only instead of grime, the women were covered in sweat and money.
Randy pulled out his shiny badge and announced his presence to the room. The effect was immediate. The blonde, who had Maria in a half nelson, let go. Maria snapped to attention, spotted Randy, made a face like, Not you again. The men went silent, a few of them frozen in the act of tossing cash. Randy took advantage of the break in the action to rush the stage. He grabbed both women by the arm and, trying hard not to look at their breasts (male repugnant fixation), led them to the dressing room behind the DJ booth. At one point, the blonde muttered something about tacos and twats and Maria tried to take a swing at her, but Randy was in the way.
“I will arrest you both,” he said. “In a heartbeat.”
The dressing room was a mess of G-strings, wigs, Red Bull cans, and stilettos. Scotch tape and glitter littered the floor. A cell phone was going off somewhere, the ringtone a tinny version of “Like a Virgin,” and there was a brunette mannequin head staring at Randy from a pile of feather boas.
“We need to stop meeting like this,” he said to Maria.
“Tell me about it.”
She and the blonde sat down and crossed their arms over their chests like pouty schoolgirls. Randy took his cue from them and put on his best “disappointed principal” face. “What’s this all about, ladies?”
The blonde spoke first. “She called me a thief.”
Maria rolled her eyes. “You are a thief.”
“Prove it,” the blonde said. She had short legs and a small waist. Pimples peppered her forehead.
“I don’t have to,” Maria said.
“So…” Randy prompted Maria. “She—” He looked at the blonde. “I’m sorry. I don’t know your name.”
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