Midnight Baby

by Wendy Hornsby

  Mike followed me a few steps. “Do you want George back out on the streets?”

  “Yes.” I wheeled on him, and expressing the heat and frustration I felt, I said, “If that’s what it takes. I want to know what happened to Hillary. I have had enough goddam standard police procedure. If I have to beat the crap out of George to get it, I want his story. It will be a whole lot easier to get at him on the streets than in here with all you fucking Boy Scouts.”

  “Tsk,” Mike said, embarrassed by my outburst, I think, but keeping up his us-guys-know-it-all facade for Mahakian. “And she went to Berkeley with all the other liberals. We don’t beat the crap out of suspects, Miss MacGowen.”

  I didn’t say anything. I turned and marched down the hall toward the arrow that said rest rooms, looked for the door with the skirt picture on it, and burst through. In a white heat, muttering obscenities, I threw my bag on the counter and reached for a handful of paper towels. That’s when I saw her reflection in the chrome towel holder: Leslie Metrano huddled on the floor with her back against the blue tile wall. Her face was mottled with patches of flaming red and dead white.

  I wetted the towels and dropped down beside her on the cold tile floor.

  “What are you doing in here, Leslie?”

  “I have no place else to go,” she said, raising her cheek from her knee. “The ladies’ room downstairs is full of bag ladies.”

  “You waiting to see George?”

  She shook her head.

  “You can go home.”

  “Never. Thanks to you, I know how George got the money to buy that house.”

  I handed her the cool, wet towels, and she wiped her face with them, making it a uniform flame color. She wore her official Bingo slacks and a white shirt with a hand-knit sweater over it. She looked very young, and very frightened. And there was something else, some emotion that purred below the surface like a tiger stalking prey.

  “Can I do anything for you?” I asked. “Get you some coffee?”

  “No.” She dried her face on the sleeve of her pink sweater, smearing what was left of her blush and mascara. “I’m okay. They asked George if he wanted a public defender, but he told me to go hire him some big hotshot. I called our business lawyer, and he only reminded me we haven’t paid our bill. I thought I would sit in here for a while and think things over.”

  “Do you mind if I’m here?” I asked.

  She shook her head again.

  “I know some attorneys. Maybe I could give one a call.” She looked up at me with clear eyes set in puffy flesh. “You told me you have a daughter.”

  “Yes.”

  “If she was taken from you, would you help the thief?”

  “I would castrate him first.”

  “My sentiments exactly.”

  “How can I help you, Leslie?”

  She leaned her head back against the wall and smiled up toward the ceiling. “Got a knife?”

  This encounter was so surreal, two angry women sitting on the bathroom floor of the police station, with the source of their anger in an interrogation room down the hall. I opened my bag and took out a pack of gum that had been there for God knows how long, and offered it to Leslie.

  “Maybe we can help each other here,” I said. “I’ll tell you what I think I know. If it gets to be too much, you say so. Okay?”

  “One thing first. Did you hit George last night?”

  “In self-defense.”

  “Go ahead, then.”

  “Okay,” I said. “It begins. Ten years ago, you were destitute. Five kids, no prospects. George was unhappy and desperate. Am I close?”

  “Close enough.”

  “After Amy disappeared, things began to look up. Friends helped. The community was generous. You and I know now what happened, but back then didn’t you wonder where all the money came from?”

  “What if I didn’t want to question it too much? I just thought George was skimming the donations that came in. Is that so bad?”

  “I’m not big on moral judgment calls,” I said. “Skip forward, now. After ten good years, you were looking destitution in the eye again. George felt that old desperation again. He went back to his earlier source, Randy Ramsdale. Maybe he asked for a loan.”

  She shook her head. “George tried to blackmail him.”

  “He told you that?”

  “Round about daybreak this morning he did. He came home with blood pouring out of his nose, a big old black eye. Looked like a licked puppy. Tail between his legs, that’s for sure. He needed help and I made him talk to me to get it.”

  “Are you going to tell me what he said?”

  “Every word of it. From one mother to another.” She shifted to get comfortable, then she began.

  “George told me he went to this Ramsdale guy and asked him to help out, maybe take a second mortgage on our restaurant. But Ramsdale said no, and he was real upset George had come by his house. He was arguing with George, telling him to leave, when she came home from school. When Amy came home, George said it broke his heart to see her, so pretty and grown up.

  “Then he lied to me and told me he couldn’t stand for me to be apart from my little girl anymore. He was going to get her back. I know it was the money he wanted. But he said that he decided right then and there to tell Ramsdale to pay up, or he would go to the police and charge him with kidnapping, and he was taking Amy back. I’m not sure that last part wasn’t a lie, too. According to George, there was a big fight.”

  “Amy was there? She heard them fight?”

  “Part of it. Her daddy, Ramsdale that is, had sent her upstairs. He was trying to hush up George when Amy came back into the room where they were. She was crying this time, real upset. She went up to Ramsdale and asked him who George was, because she recognized him as the man she always saw in her nightmares. The man who chased her and called her Amy. She was real scared.”

  “I bet she was,” I said, fighting back tears. Hillary had also told John Smith about her nightmares. How do you handle it when you’re a kid and your nightmare walks in and picks a fight with your father and you can’t wake up and make him go away? And then your daddy disappears?

  I reached up to the towel dispenser for a dry towel and dabbed at my own face. “When did George kill Randy Ramsdale?”

  “We never got to that,” she said. Then she started to laugh, self-consciously covering her face with her hands.

  “What’s funny?”

  “I have to apologize to you, Maggie.” She peered at me over her fingertips, tears running from her eyes again. “I let him blame you. George was sitting there on the kitchen chair telling me all about seeing my little girl, and I was holding this ice pack on his eye, wiping his bloody nose, taking care of him as usual. Well, I’d stayed up all night waiting for him, keeping busy fixing a few little things he never seemed to get around to. The toolbox was right there on the table beside me. I guess I was pretty mad before he even came home. When he said he made Amy cry, well, I just picked up that great big old hammer…”

  I laughed. I could see what happened next. “It was you! You broke George’s nose.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I did. Just picked up that great big old hammer and let him have it. Mashed his nose flat. He was so scared he didn’t even holler. Then I told him to get in the car, I’d take him to the hospital. But I drove him straight here, instead. His eyes were so swollen up he couldn’t see a thing.” She gave me a sidelong glance. “You going to tell on me?”

  “I’m going to shake your hand.”

  She gave me her hand, and we sat there with our backs against the wall, holding hands and laughing. That’s when Mike burst in.

  “What the hell is going on?” he said, seeming alarmed.

  I wiped my streaming eyes. “You can’t come in here, Detective Flint. Real women only.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Metrano,” he said, sitting down beside me anyway. “We wondered where you had gone.”

  “Where else could I go?” she said. “Except the littl
e girls’ room. How’s George?”

  “I think he’s felt better,” Mike said. “They’ve booked him and now they’re going to transport him over to St. Mary’s Hospital to get his injuries tended to.”

  “What charge did you book him on?” I asked.

  Mike smiled. “Avarice, with intent.”

  “Did he talk?”

  “Not a peep.”

  I smiled at Leslie. “Well, lah dee dah. They should have beat it out of him.”

  Leslie squeezed my hand. Her expression grew serious. “Maggie, I guess I’m ready now. I kept thinking how much it was going to hurt my kids, and my little grandbaby, to have George put in jail. But I know he never gave us one thought when he did all those things. A wife doesn’t have to testify against her husband. I know that. But I have a few things I want to say.”

  “I’m proud of you,” I said.

  “Me, too.” There was still some hesitation. But she took a deep breath and got to her feet, and gave me a hand up.

  Leslie looked down at Mike, who was scrambling to his feet. “Get out your little notebook, Detective Flint. Time to tell all. Just one condition.”

  “Name it,” he said.

  “I want Maggie in there with me.”

  I took her arm and turned to bat my eyes at Mike. “Hear that, detective? She wants me.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Well, lah dee dah.”

  CHAPTER 20

  “The cockroaches in the Cabo jail were bigger than the rats?” I said, my third guess.

  “Nope.” Mike fiddled with the handcuffs dangling from his turn signal. We had driven back to downtown L.A. and traded the Blazer for his city car. Now we were exiting the San Bernardino Freeway, stalled behind an endless line of red brake lights. “Three strikes, you’re out. No more guesses.”

  “Good. Because I don’t like this game. Anyway, for delivering George to you, you owe me big-time. Tell me, why did Elizabeth agree to fly home?”

  “Oldest story in the world.” He made the handcuffs spin. “The boyfriend, Ricco Zambotti, bribed his guards to turn their backs, then took off with the boat while Elizabeth was still in custody. Last seen, he was headed due west, straight for the two-hundred-mile limit.”

  “So Elizabeth got mad and spilled her guts, right?”

  “That’s it. According to her, Ricco did it all. When she found Randy’s body, she called Ricco for a little hand-holding. She said it was his idea to sink the corpse, give her a little time to loot the bank accounts. Who could blame her? she said. And it was Ricco who gave Hillary a bad time, telling her that Randy had abandoned her. That Randy wasn’t her real father anyway.

  Elizabeth said she was just awfully upset, and hurt, when Hillary took off. She said she sent Ricco out to find the kid and bring her home. Instead he slit her throat and tried to make it look like the same killer who had sliced Randy, in case Randy ever bobbed up.”

  “She was so upset with Ricco that she took him on a cruise?”

  Mike gave me a sidelong leer. “I’m thinking maybe I should let you and Leslie get the truth out of her. There’s a flashlight in my trunk.”

  “Anytime,” I said. “Anytime.”

  I was thinking a great big old hammer might be helpful, too, when Mike pulled up in front of MacLaren Hall.

  “I need the receipt for the tires,” he said as he got out.

  “I told you I’d take care of it.”

  “No need. I’ll turn it in to the department. The boss said he can find funds to cover it.”

  Couldn’t argue with that. I opened my bag and handed him the receipt. He didn’t even look at it when he put it into his pocket.

  In the last hour of daylight, the MacLaren play yard was full of kids and full of racket. At one end of the asphalt six or eight of the older boys were pitched against some of the teachers in a rowdy game of half-court basketball. A bruising round of dodge ball took up the other end of the pavement, with hopscotchers and jump-ropers filling the space between. The lines between the games slopped over now and then, but no one seemed to be bothered by proximity.

  Sly, my little loner, was off on the grass away from the other children, playing hit-and-run softball with a single adult. The young man with him was tall and slender, with dark shoulder-length hair and a single stud earring that caught the low sun. I pegged him for a volunteer, or maybe a college student collecting clinic hours for class credit.

  The young man pitched a slow, straight ball at Sly’s bat, talking to Sly the whole time, encouraging, joking with him. Sly slugged the ball, a bouncing grounder, and took off on a shambling run toward the single base. The man snagged the ball barehanded and went after the boy, full out, giving him no slack. About halfway to the bag, man caught boy in an easy tackle around the legs and wrestled him to the ground.

  “You’re out,” he said over and over, using the ball to tickle Sly’s midsection.

  Sly was screaming. With delight, I thought. Before I could stop Mike, he lit out toward the dog pile, his marathon-runner legs pumping for all they were worth, suitcoat flapping in the wind.

  “Wait, Mike,” I yelled, sprinting after him. I didn’t want him to interfere. To me it looked like the sort of good-natured roughhousing Sly had doubtless missed out on. But Mike had left the starting blocks first, and he’s just plain old faster than I am.

  To my utter and absolute astonishment, when Mike reached the tussle on the grass, instead of breaking it up, he joined in. Mike pounced and somehow rolled up on his back with his legs locked around the young man’s midsection. Sly squealed with joy.

  “Tickle him, Sly,” Mike urged. “Get him in the ribs. Atta boy. Now the other side.”

  I stopped at the edge of the fray. They all stopped and looked up at me, all three of them red in the face and sweaty and giggly. To my further astonishment, the young man relaxed his head back against Mike’s chest and Mike kissed him, a wet one, square on the cheek.

  “See?” Sly said to me with mock disgust. “I told you the cop was a faggot.”

  “Maggie,” Mike said, panting, “meet Michael.”

  “Hi,” I said, dumbfounded. Here, at last, was Mike’s seventeen-year-old son. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “Me, too,” he gasped, looking at me through the same gray eyes as his father’s. Very disconcerting.

  Sly, who had collapsed atop Michael, started in tickling again. Mike released Michael and rolled away. The youth bounded to his feet holding the squirming, scrawny boy in a headlock.

  “Save the energy for the arithmetic.” Michael knuckled Sly’s head, sending out a spray of grass clippings. “We have two whole pages of it to do, squirt. We’d better get started, because I have to go home and do my own homework.”

  Reluctantly, Sly settled down, still breathing hard, still grinning so big his face might have split. He looked up at Michael with absolute adoration. I didn’t blame him.

  Mike got up and brushed himself off, managing to shoulder-bump the others a few times as he rose. This was a new side of Mike. I roughhouse with my daughter, I tease with Mike. But it’s pretty tame stuff in comparison.

  They were all looking at me, as if I had come with some message. Or a wet blanket. I said, “We’re going to get dinner, Michael. Will you two join us?”

  “We already ate here,” Michael said.

  “Pig vomit,” Sly confirmed.

  “And bats’ asses,” Michael added. “It was great.”

  I couldn’t laugh yet. Watching Michael gave me such a strange feeling. Here was a younger, probably more handsome, maybe more saintly version of Mike. Whatever, he was Mike’s product. A magnificent product. Like a rush I was hit with how deeply I adored Mike and everything about him. I stood there as if stricken, gasping as if I had been wrestling. I think Mike mistook my quietude for disapproval.

  “Girls,” Mike said, grabbing me in a headlock. “Girls can’t take it.”

  “Can too,” I said, punching his hard backside. “Just not now.”

  He kissed
my cheek then, and let go. “Can’t take it, but they sure can dish it.”

  Michael was watching us. “We saw one of your films in sociology, something about old people who live alone. I told the class my dad’s girlfriend made it and no one believed me.”

  “Want me to write a note to the teacher?” I asked, jangled by the sound of “my dad’s girlfriend.”

  “No big thing.” He shrugged. “Dad says you’re working on a film now. I wouldn’t mind tagging along on a shoot.”

  “Me, too,” Sly chirped.

  “Fine. I’ll put you both to work.”

  Mike tucked in his shirt, straightened his tie. He said, “Sly, we brought you another picture. Want to see it?”

  Sly’s entire being lit up, given another chance to nail the girl’s killer. I pulled a manila envelope out of my bag and handed it to Michael. There was a single eight-by-ten glossy inside that Guido had managed to get for us from the files of Central Casting. Elizabeth had told Mike that Ricco Zambotti was an actor.

  Ricco had looks, big pale eyes with long Mel Gibson lashes, curly blond hair, big white teeth. The statistics printed under the face claimed he was six-three, 190 pounds, thirty-four-inch waist, forty-eight-inch chest. Martha had said Elizabeth’s daytime sneak-in friend was beefy. Ricco qualified as beefy. Prime, maybe, but still beefy.

  Ricco’s coloring was a problem. When Sly first described the man he saw slit Pisces’ throat, he had said the man had dark hair.

  Michael sat back down on the grass, Sly tucked in beside him. Together they looked at Ricco for a long time.

  Mike wandered over behind them. “What do you think, Sly?” Sly squinted up his little fox face. “Dunno.”

  I fished some felt-tip pens out of the bottom of my bag and sat down beside Sly.

  I offered him the pens. “One time, Hilly colored in the hair of a picture of a little blond girl to see if that would make her look more like Hilly.”

  “She told me.” Sly took a black pen from my hand and took off the cap. “Only it wasn’t her who done it. It was her mother. She told Hilly she was kidnapped and all these people were looking for her to get her.”