No More Birthdays (Carol Ann Baker Crime)

by Pelzer,Lissa

  Davis pushed the door open into a full house of drunken stragglers. The noise reflecting off the pitched roof was deafening, but some people managed to sleep through it on tables and benches. Davis pointed to a table near the door, away from it all.

  ‘You ladies just holler when you’re ready,’ the waitress said. ‘I might hear you!’

  Davis smiled back and said, ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ as if the woman were flirting with her and Lilly cringed.

  Davis studied the menu. Her eyebrows pulled together, taking even that really seriously, an important person doing important work, whether it was choosing breakfast or saving children. What exactly did she think she was saving them from, getting money together, and possibly improving their future lives? Davis only ever saw one side. After she grabbed a kid, she just handed them over. She wasn’t the one who drove them home. She’d never been back to Kentucky with her. She’d never seen where they stayed. Did it really count as running away when you went from living in a rented trailer to a house with real walls and a solid door?

  Lilly picked up the other menu and tried not to see the pictures of burgers and pasta and all-day breakfasts.

  She ordered a chef’s salad off the two-dollar page not wanting her to know how hungry she was and when Davis asked if she wanted a Coke Lilly shook her head. The water on the table tasted like the inside of a freezer compartment, but it would do. Davis took a coffee.

  ‘Well, this is a change…kind of casual, kind of friendly.’

  Lilly emptied the colored sugar sachets from the holder and put them in order, white with white, pink with pink, brown with brown. ‘Are you saying you want to be friends now?’

  ‘Friendly. I said. I’m still a public servant, but I don’t see why we can’t be civil to each other, to speak frankly. I do believe it would be in both of our best interests.’

  ‘If you like. So what – do you work out here now?’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’

  Lilly turned her hand palm up. ‘If we’re being frank, I was just wondering what you were doing out this way, just like you were wondering the same about me.’

  ‘I see. Well now, I’m on vacation.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘It is. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but the last time we spoke, well that was just before last summer I think.’

  Lilly smirked at Davis evading the question, playing Lilly like she was too dumb to notice. ‘It could have been. Didn’t you write it down in your pad? Or did you not bring your pad on vacation with you. No, I guess you wouldn’t have.’

  ‘Most likely I did write it down. And no, I didn’t bring it with me on vacation.’

  Lilly scraped her drying hair to the side. But Davis had brought her badge. Lilly was willing to bet she’d brought her handcuffs and her gun too.

  ‘Marlin’s on Ocean Drive,’ Lilly said. ‘You came up to give Cassandra and me a hard time for drinking a couple of virgin Margaritas.’ Lilly remembered it well, Davis springing out of nowhere in her mirrored glasses, with her little cross on a chain and asking after Bobby, She’d snatched a straw out of Cassandra’s hand and taken a dip from both their drinks. She’d had told them they’d better be in those very seats in ten minutes when she came back. Needless to say, they weren’t.

  ‘Was that her name, Cassandra?’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘Cassandra… I thought she went by something else, by another name. Some girls do.’

  ‘She doesn’t.’

  ‘Well, okay. But I wasn’t going to give you a hard time Carol Ann. I sure as hell would have given the waiter something to pout about if those drinks had been loaded.’

  ‘As if they’d be that dumb, right on the beach.’

  ‘You’d be surprised just how stupid folk can be for a pretty face…how often guys think it’s okay to say they didn’t know how old she was.’

  The clock above the kitchen hatch flinched.

  ‘Was that all of two minutes?’ Lilly asked.

  Davis lifted her hands off the table.

  She should have let it go, but sometimes she just couldn’t. ‘Why is it important, if you don’t care, if they don’t care?’

  ‘They don’t – just don’t care – that’s the whole issue here.’

  ‘Yeah, they want to give you a drink just because you’re under twenty-one?’

  ‘Who’s talking about drinking? Who’s talking about being under twenty-one?’

  The waitress came back with their order, all sunshine and rainbows and Lilly leaned back in her seat. Her salad looked how salads look at this time of day and she regretted not getting a burger.

  ‘So,’ Davis said. ‘Is it just a coincidence that you’re not Bobby’s favorite girl anymore since you turned seventeen?’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Sure, I don’t. That’s why I’m asking you.’ Davis pulled herself up and leaned over the table. ‘What happened between you and him?’

  ‘Nothing happened!’

  ‘Something happened. You used to be always two minutes behind him into any club. Eating lunch for free all over town.’

  ‘So we haven’t been hanging out as much lately…’

  ‘Since you turned seventeen.’

  Lilly had to look away. She would have liked to point out exactly how little Davis knew about her, about what was going on with Bobby. She didn’t know the first thing, not even her real age.

  ‘Have you seen him in the last year?’

  ‘Well, you’d be the person to know.’

  ‘I mean before today when you followed him and Cassandra to The Colorado Palace.’

  She wanted to talk about pedos following kids around. She should do a little self-analysis.

  ‘Come on Carol Ann, look at the facts. You turned seventeen when, last July? And when did you last see him? Her eyebrows flickered. ‘July?’

  It was July. She’d gone around two days after her birthday, after they’d been to see The Judge in Sea Island, but Davis wouldn’t know anything about that. It would have been nothing but an out-of-state news story to her down in Miami. All she thought about was sex and birthdays in her little corner of the world.

  ‘If that’s the case, why would he not want to see me before I even turned eighteen?’

  ‘I’m not sure. You’ve got me there…’ Davis sipped her coffee. ‘With guys like Bobby, old men who used to get girls back in the sixties and seventies…sixteen is usually their idea of young, that’s usually their the cut-off. But you’re a very young seventeen, aren’t you…you’ve got a real baby face. I mean it as a compliment.’

  ‘Whatever.’ Lilly twisted her fork around. She couldn’t quite manage to get the salad in her mouth. ‘Age has got nothing to do with it. Not with Bobby. Look, he’s with Cassandra right now, you saw that, right. She’s nineteen. So you don’t know what you’re talking about. None of you cops do.’

  Davis nodded. ‘So tell me what piece to this puzzle I’m missing. Tell me why Cassandra is with him and you’re not.’

  ‘God,’ she said. ‘It’s late and you’re not making any sense.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t tired.’

  ‘Really, I wasn’t, but you’re just boring me, being bored makes me tired.’

  ‘Carol Ann, all I’m asking is that you think about it. Think about what he asked you to do, why any man would do that. Think about what you’ve received in return. It can’t feel good to know that he used you in that way and when you’re ready to talk–’

  ‘No one’s been using anyone.’

  ‘I don’t know. If I was in your shoes, I’d want to put things right…I’d want to tell someone who could do something about it. Especially now, that you’ve got nothing to do with him, he’s not giving you anything and you’re still a child.’

  ‘I’m eighteen!’

  ‘You will be on Sunday!’ Davis snapped. A vein on her forehead appeared and disappeared just as quick. ‘For God’s sake, this is serious… I could cal
l the locals right now and they would come down and pick you up.’

  Lilly ran her tongue over her teeth to stop herself laughing. She half wished Davis would try to take her in, just so she could find out she was of age already, but it would eat up time that she didn’t have.

  ‘Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen,’ Lilly said. ‘Why does it matter so much to you people? A person doesn’t change with every birthday you know. You don’t go from being a caterpillar one day to being a moth the next.’

  ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but it the eyes of the law, you do. We don’t have a rolling points system in the law courts. But for you that’s advantageous.’

  ‘I can’t listen to this right now.’ Lilly shook her head. It was too much. What the hell would Bobby think if he drove past and saw her sitting here talking to Davis? It could happen. Sometimes old people can’t sleep and he wouldn’t buy it that she’d brought her here just to keep her out of his lobby. ‘I don’t want to be rude, but…’

  Somewhere on the other side of the partition, someone dropped a plate and a cheer went up and the whole section stayed loud. The waitress was trying to shush them down, but it wasn’t working. It would have been impossible to talk even if they wanted to and Lilly stabbed at the rest of her salad to get it done.

  Davis said, ‘I get the message.’

  Lilly chewed.

  ‘I’ll probably finish this cup of coffee and head out.’ She stuck her hand up for a waitress. ‘I’m not going to force you, but if you want somewhere to sleep, you know where there’s a spare bed. I do snore, but not too badly.’

  ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’

  ‘If you get desperate, I’d prefer you knock on my door than Bobby’s. He’s a dangerous man. You must know he was once charged with a contract killing…’

  ‘Charged and proven innocent.’

  ‘Charged and dismissed. Not the same. But okay. I suppose we’ll take it one step at a time.’

  Lilly watched as she pulled a five and few singles out of her wallet, counting the singles between her fingers, like the money mattered, deciding to give one dollar or two.

  ‘Are you staying on? You want me to leave the tab open?’

  ‘No.’ She looked up. ‘Thank you.’

  Davis got up. ‘The offer still stands.’

  The light shone off the glass door as Davis went through. It flashed Lilly with an image of herself, pale and plain, sitting on a burgundy plastic seat. There was a crash as another plate hit the floor behind, and laughter. It was becoming a joke now. The waitress rushed over and Lilly turned around just in time to see the moon-faced girl headed into the bathroom. She turned away, changed her mind, got her bag and followed her in.

  She recognized the sound of air going up a single nostril. Lilly closed the door quietly, leaned against the bathroom sink and waited. Moon Face was waiting too. She was waiting for whoever to go in the stall or to finish their makeup or to just leave. But maybe she had recognized her at the table too and knew she was standing here now.

  ‘So. What happened back there?’ Lilly called out.

  A few seconds clicked by and then a voice came out, small and brittle. ‘I don’t owe you anything!’

  ‘But why leave me hanging. Why not just say no.’

  ‘Maybe I didn’t feel like it!’

  ‘That’s pretty rude…. By the way, I’m not leaving till you come out, just so you know.’

  The latch went and the door opened. She’d changed shoes.

  ‘Give me a break, okay.’

  ‘I’m not here to slap you. I just wanted to let you know – Karma is a bitch.’

  ‘I guess you’d know.’

  That – made her want to slap her, so Lilly went out, went straight out the front door with her bag on her back not thinking that she had nowhere to go until she was already outside.

  The street out here was wide and dark. She looked back the way she’d come with Davis. There was nothing down there for her. But there was nothing anywhere else either. Across the way a street of houses showed faintly under dim streetlights, their windows dark and front yards circled with chain link fences. Back home, if she ran away in the summertime, she’d just lay on someone’s porch in her sleeping bag. But that was different, even if they didn’t know her especially, she knew who they were. They weren’t people who would grab her and throw her in their basement. And here, who knew?

  But she didn’t have any other choice. It was either that or hide in the bathroom all night with he strip light flickering above her head.

  ‘Hey.’

  Lilly turned and saw the moon-faced girl standing there, arms crossed.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I guess you need somewhere to stay, right - I mean you really do?’

  Great, so she’d come to gloat. Lilly let her bag down on the ground. She didn’t want to but just a couple of minutes of lifting it had made her as sore as she’d been before. ‘So what?’ she said. ‘So I came to town and lost my room. It happens.’

  Moon Face was staring at her, then her eyes moved away. ‘You should have just said. I know somewhere you can go. I mean. You can come with me. If you’re not too proud and you just need somewhere to sleep.’

  ‘You’re not really selling it.’

  ‘Okay, just forget it.’

  Lilly reached out her hand and got Moon Face by the arm. ‘Wait.’ She pulled up her bag and they set off back across the parking lot.

  Chapter 6

  ‘So where are we going?’ Lilly asked as they came back under the bridge.

  ‘Just a place I stay, me and some friends.’

  ‘Like a kid’s house?’

  Moon Face said, ‘I didn’t mean to run out on you, but you seemed kind of stuck up. I don’t know, maybe you are.’ She put a hand to her chest. ‘But, I’m not. This is how I live. You come back with me and your eyes will be opened.’

  Lilly doubted it. So the girl was staying in a kid’s house. She was willing to bet she had a nice five bedroom place back in Indiana too, whenever she was ready to go home. ‘I don’t judge,’ she said. ‘Put up or shut up, right?’

  ‘Right. Or just fuck off.’

  The cold air from the bridge went right through to her bones and Lilly squeezed one of her arms in her hand. The hairs on her shoulders stood up and the muscles in her back seemed to pull away from the bone.

  ‘There’s just one thing. Before we go back there, you’ll have to meet a couple of the guys. They hang out at this place, a bar. We just have to show your face in there. It’s nothing. A couple of beers and then we’ll go.’

  ‘Okay.’ She probably couldn’t manage a couple of beers, but if it was just a smile and some talk they needed she could do that and that way, hopefully, they’d get out sooner. Anyway, she didn’t want them to like her too much. The last thing she needed was someone coming onto her in the middle of the night, trying his luck.

  They were going down an alley backing onto clapboard houses when Moon Face stopped and opened the side door of a garage. The sweet, acrid smell of powdered sugar and gasoline drifted out in waves and there was no light and no one was talking. She knew what this place was and it made her stomach lurch.

  ‘Hey Girl!’ a voice said. A thin, rough hand came out of the shadows and laid itself on Moon Face’s shoulder. ‘Who you got with you, that your sister?’

  ‘Just a friend.’ Her voice went higher and Lilly stiffened. Moon Face didn’t want to be here any more than she did. She hoped that wasn’t one of the roommates.

  ‘Friend got a name?’

  Lilly could say anything she liked. She said, ‘Carol Ann.’

  ‘Pretty name for a pretty lady.’

  Moon Face pulled her through the room. ‘Here they are. Come on through.’

  Lilly stepped over some legs. Her foot kicked a wooden bar stool and landed on something soft, a bag or a sleeping dog, but nothing complained. In the corner of the bar, an L-shaped couch with a table in front made up something like a living room an
d she could see two shapes collapsed on it.

  ‘Take a seat.’ Moon Face said, pointing to a place next to one of the guys and Lilly put her hand down and felt a dirty, gritty texture on the fabric seat.

  Moon Face stroked the one guy’s shoulder. He stared at the table, but then slowly turned to see her face.

  ‘This is Carol Ann. She’s from out of town.’

  There was no sign he knew what she was saying. Lilly twisted towards the guy she was sitting next to.

  ‘Hi,’ she said.

  He nodded and said to Moon Face, ‘Leif’s had a bit too much. Maybe you should just leave him be until he comes around.’

  ‘What’s he had?’

  ‘Some smacky, pressed pill. I told him to leave off them, but you know…’

  ‘Can’t you wake him up?’

  ‘At this time of night? Seriously. Let him be.’

  ‘Yeah, he looks pretty cooked.’ Lilly leaned forward onto her knees. ‘Maybe we should just leave him to sleep it off.’ It was better for her if they just got out of there and went back to wherever. The dopey guy didn’t seem like he was going to come round too soon, at least not enough to complain about Lilly sleeping on their couch.

  ‘I’m going to get some sleep too.’ the guy next to her said. He closed his eyes and by all reckoning he’d gone to sleep, but Lilly could tell he hadn’t. She could see the vein in his neck pumping, his heart beating heavily, laboriously under his rib cage and his thin, white t-shirt. He might be done with the high, but the drug wasn’t done with him.

  Moon Face dug into her bag and pulled out a key. Thank God. But it was presumptuous. In the other hand, she had a baggie. The room was darkening. Lilly didn’t need this. Why couldn’t they just leave? And the girl leaned over the guy, Leif and put some in his nose, dosed him up like she was a nurse and he was a fucking invalid.

  ‘You want some?’ Moon Face asked.

  ‘It’s late for me.’ She didn’t want to say ‘no’ outright, didn’t want to hurt her feelings. ‘It’s yours. You have it.’

  ‘Come on. I’ve got plenty.’

  Leif opened his eyes and seemed to come around.

  ‘Here, just take some.’ She held the baggie out again. Lilly really didn’t want any, but it was obviously part of the deal. She was just waiting for her to take it. It wasn’t optional.