The Greeks knew that there was no act so foul that only a male could perform it. Beginning with Nyx, they gave the female principle full honors in the world’s vile curriculum. Still, personally, I thought, three at the same time was a bit much.
I turned the scrap of paper over and read Hannah Sanders and Danny Wynn, so I had names for two of the three kids who’d been dragged into McDonald’s. I brought Ronnie’s pictures up on my phone. Hannah Sanders, whom the Bride of Plastic Man had called Dorothy, was a gamine with a smile that might suggest trouble in the future, and the name Danny Wynn seemed to fit one of the boys better than the other, a kind of puggish, thick-featured kid, probably, I thought, a juvenile character actor who, if he worked at all, probably specialized in “hero’s funny-looking friend” roles, with a character name like “Butch” or “Slugger.”
I went to the Web and entered Danny’s name. There were a dozen guys named Danny Wynn, but there he was, the kid I’d pegged as a Danny. If the photos were representative of the quality of Ms. Beckwell-Stoddard’s work, the photographer was lucky to be paid at all. In one, Danny had his baseball cap on sideways, implying, I suppose, comic skills; and in another he had a black eye that had obviously been drawn on by an unskilled and shaky thumb. There were others, but I couldn’t force myself to look at them.
“Just wave for more,” someone said, and I looked up to see Glinda sliding a cup of coffee across the table. Her forearm was decorated with a furious man with a pair of ram’s horns emerging from an aggressive snarl of hair. He looked like no one had consulted him. “Black, no sugar, right?”
I said, “Right.”
“We witches can tell,” she said. “Pie on the way.”
I thanked her, but she was already in retreat, and I was surprised to see that several of the tables had filled up and that the windows had gone the charmless gray of an aircraft carrier. The coffee wasn’t very good, but it was strong.
Hannah Sanders had her own website, and she photographed much better than poor Danny had, even posing for someone with no talent at all. She was more conventional as child actors go, a modestly pretty and obviously energetic little girl with a really exceptional smile. Even in Ms. Beckwell-Stoddard’s miserable photographs you could sense a forceful character, and I suddenly remembered her bargaining unshakably for Fashion Barbie. A kid who gets her way, I thought. On the scanty evidence available, she seemed to have a brighter future than Danny.
Okay, time to take a look at the dragon.
The Beckwell-Stoddard Agency proclaimed itself “Hollywood’s Finest Nursery of Young Talent,” the words surrounded by pictures of kids from, say, five to fourteen. The sample skewed moderately female and heavily Caucasian, with a few Hispanics and Asians mixed in, perhaps to slow the eye as it hurried across the wretched photography. Only one African American child, a handsome pre-teen of eleven or so who seemed to be daring the camera to do him justice. I spent some time going through the talent but couldn’t find the other boy I’d seen in McDonald’s.
Althea Beckwell-Stoddard had been photographed—by someone who knew what he was doing—sitting on the corner of a big white desk, an apparent pillar of rectitude if you skipped the almost accidentally displayed legs. She wore expensive, up-tilted wireless glasses, her hair was under martial law, and her mouth was pursed like someone who’s trying to master French vowels. Late thirties, I guessed. In a movie of a certain vintage she would have been called “Miss Peabody” or something similarly stultifying until the lead actor pulled off her glasses, messed up her hair, and said, “Why, Miss Peabody—you’re beautiful.”
“That’s a mean-looking woman,” Glinda said, coffee pot in hand. “Whoops. Hope you’re not engaged to her.”
“No,” I said as she poured. “I’ve never met her. But I think you’re right, I think she’s probably a wretched piece of work.”
“Most guys,” she said, “you could know them for years and they’d never use the word wretched. What do you do?”
“I’m in property reallocation.”
The hand went to the hip again. “Yeah? You’re working at this hour?”
“You never know when a really prime opportunity for reallocation will arise. What about you?”
“Well, this, obviously.” She used the hand with the coffeepot in it to create a semicircle that took in most of the restaurant, and then she put the pot on the table. “But when I’m off, I work on my sorcery.”
“How’s it coming?”
“The transubstantiation of matter,” she said, “is a bitch. Whoops, forgot your pie.”
“I thought transubstantiation was a religious ritual.”
“Where do you think magic came from?” One of the cops pounded the table and held up a fan of money, and Glinda said, “Striking it rich here,” and went to the table.
I figured I had some time before she’d be back with the pie, and I used it to research child labor laws in California. When I had what I needed, I called Louie. It wasn’t quite seven and Louie often said he didn’t even turn over in bed before eight, but I knew his voicemail would pick up around the clock. When it did, I said, “It’s me. I need a few business cards that have to look right, so get Benny, okay? I’m Dwight Sykes again, and this time I work for the State Department of Industrial Relations, the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement. The seal is online, and you can use the picture of me from the Sykes driver’s license. In fact have Benny make another copy of the license, too. Mine is in a storage unit halfway to Pasadena. By noon today, will that be a problem? Say hi to Alice.”
I put the phone down and tapped it to bring Ms. Beckwell-Stoddard’s bright, hard, equivocal face back on the screen. I spent a minute trying out opening lines, looking for the right tone, and mapping out the likely flow of the meeting. Then I spent a couple of minutes trying to figure out which string I should pull when I was through with this one. There were a lot of them, but some would lead nowhere and some others would probably snap. Maybe Louie would have something new by this afternoon.
Glinda had apparently forgotten my pie but she’d compensated by leaving the coffeepot on the table. I poured myself another cup and asked myself whether it was worthwhile to try to get to sleep for an hour, hour and a half before going with Ronnie to the meeting with Francie DuBois. It was probably the lack of sleep, but suddenly the whole errand sounded improbable, even impossible. I felt once again like the boasting boy I used to be before I finally stopped trying to impress my father. I was, it seemed at that moment, just wasting everyone’s time and possibly putting myself into a situation that could break Ronnie’s heart and kill me, all in a very condensed minute or two.
Maybe an hour’s sleep, I thought, and then remembered where I’d be doing it, all those mouse tails on the carpet. A wave of something close to despair swept over me and I had one of those moments when my entire life felt like a turned-out pocket, empty at last, once and for all.
I skipped the pie, put a ten on the table for Glinda, and went out into the chilly-looking dawn.
19
Are There Dogs?
Since the room key had a laminated Mickey Mouse hanging from it, it wasn’t hard to locate it in my pocket. I slipped it into the lock as quietly as possible and eased the door slowly open.
The bed was empty.
For a moment, I was gripped, even shaken, by one of the most complex reactions of my life, a potpourri of the kinds of things you might throw into a mental blender to whip up a schizophrenia smoothie: abandonment, fear that someone had taken her, a sudden sensation that I was being watched, and, least credible of all, a dawning relief about not having to go into that walled mansion in New Jersey.
Then I heard the toilet flush.
I imagined her opening the bathroom door, wrapped in the almost meditative sense of privacy that usually accompanies our interactions with the toilet, and suddenly seeing a man silhouetted in the doorway. I stepped back
and pulled the door closed again. Then I counted to five and knocked, saying “Ronnie?”
“Hark,” she said inside the room, sounding very awake. “’Tis the nightingale.”
“No, Juliet,” I said. “It’s the lark. You keep getting it wrong.” I reached for the door, but she pulled it open and gave me a smile that wiped away most of the grime and residue of the night.
She was all dressed up in a pair of briefs with bluebirds on them and a sleeveless T-shirt. “You’re lucky,” she said in a blast of Pepsodent. “I’m so minty.” She put her arms around me and kissed me, and quite a lot of the emotional sewage I’d been fighting my way through since the coffee shop got swept aside, under furniture and into dark corners, where it would patiently await its next opportunity. “Are you hungry?”
“I can imagine a point at which I might be. A shower would help.”
She mimed hitting her forehead with the palm of her hand, “Oh, that’s right, you’ve been up all night. Tell you what. You clean up and I’ll go get us something with no nutritional value. Croissants, maybe. There’s a nice French bakery a couple of streets away. I ate there on the way to Taylor’s last night and on the way back, too. Sound good?”
I said, “Boy, you really are minty.”
“I smell good without this stuff, too,” she said. “Some do, some don’t.” She went to the room’s tiny closet, the hinge of which squeaked like a mouse, and opened the door. “You want me to pull anything in particular out of the suitcase?”
“I don’t even know what’s in it.”
“You go get wet. It’ll be a surprise.”
I went into the bathroom and started the ritual of rebirth with soap and hot water. My razor was still in the suitcase and I didn’t want to look like I was spying on Ronnie as she assembled my outfit for the day, so I figured I’d go for the one-time cutting-edge bristly look. If she’d packed a pair of slip-ons, I’d wear them without socks. Maybe stop somewhere and buy a pipe. Raise an eyebrow from time to time. Mr. Hip Anachronism.
In the shower I found myself thinking about Anime and Lilli. My daughter, Rina, who was the same age as they, had a friend who had come through an eating disorder, and a couple more who were still struggling. Maybe she’d have something to suggest. I also asked myself whether I should set up some protection for Rina and my ex-wife, Kathy, by having their house baby-sat by either Eaglet or Debbie Halstead, a tee-tiny, button-nosed hitter whose specialty was getting friendly enough with guys to shoot them through the ear. Debbie once saved my life with a single long-range shot and, I’d been told, had briefly gone kind of sweet on me, so maybe Eaglet was a better idea, although either of them could be trusted to spot and repel unfriendly incoming. A woman sitting alone in a car attracts less attention than a man, which just shows you how dangerous an assumption can be. Maybe I’d hire both of them, switching off in twelve-hour slots around the clock. I had no idea how good the Bride of Plastic Man’s research actually was.
I turned off the water, found a towel that was thin enough get a sunburn through, and tried to dry my hair. Then I wrung the towel out over the tub and used it to move around the water on my skin. As I wrung it out a second time, I made a decision: move to the Sheraton at Universal City. As someone who had endured some of the worst motels since Norman Bates closed up shop, I felt an obscure little pang of regret. A growing inability to endure discomfort, I’d always thought, was one of the sure signs of advancing age. Bumming around Europe, carrying your stuff on your back, thumbing rides, and sleeping in cheap fleabags is romantic when you’re young. Doing it when you’re old is just sad.
Making lists in my head, I heard the door close behind Ronnie on her way out, so I dripped my way into the room she had just vacated and looked at the phone. Still early enough to get Rina at home. I dried my hands on the bedspread’s little mice feet and punched up the number.
Kathy answered. “Where in the world have you been? We’ve been so worried about you.” It wasn’t anywhere near as affectionate as it sounded.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I really am. It’s been a difficult time.” I picked up the greasy steak plate and toted it across the room. Staying out of sight behind the door, I put it just outside. Either the staff would get it or the mice would.
Kathy said, “You’ve chosen a difficult life. There, I’ve said that, and I can let up on you. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, so far. There are clouds on the horizon, though.” I wiped the grease on my thighs, figuring I could rub it in later, like lotion.
“Into every life,” she said, “a little rain—”
“I thought you were letting up.”
“Sorry,” she said. “How’s Ronnie?”
Kathy and Ronnie actually liked each other, which was more than I can say about me and any of the men Kathy had seen since we split up. Another thing I didn’t like, to return to the present for a moment, was the shirt Ronnie had picked out, a Christmas gift from Kathy, who had been trying for years to nudge me toward the Junior Executive school of dress. Faced with the possibility of rejecting, on some obscure level, both of the women I loved, I put the shirt on. Ah, romance.
“Ronnie is great,” I said. Kathy didn’t know anything about New Jersey and probably wouldn’t until the issue was resolved. One way or the other. “She’d like to get together sometime soon.”
“When you’re out of mortal danger. It’s not that I don’t worry about you, I’d just like to keep Rina out of the line of fire. I suppose you want to talk to her.”
“I do. I need to ask her something about some kids her age.” Looking down, I saw that I had put a greasy thumbprint on the shirt, which gave me an excuse to wear something else.
“You mean those two? Are they all right? Anime and, and—”
“Lilli. It’s Lilli who’s the problem.” I opened the closet door. “She’s getting kind of weird about eating.”
“Poor baby. We know all about that. Hang on.”
While I hung on, I abandoned the closet and used the wet towel to get the rest of the grease off of my hand. Then I went back to find a different shirt.
“Hey,” Rina said. “The vanishing American.”
“How are you, sweetie? How’s Tyrone?”
“I’m okay,” she said, “and Tyrone is better than I deserve.”
“Not in my opinion. Nobody is better than you—”
“My self-esteem is fine, Dad, and I’ve got to get moving. School plows right ahead without me if I’m not there. And I’ve learned to accept that. I guess you’d call it a kind of maturity. Are you proud of—”
I said, “Thought you were in a hurry.”
“Only when you’re talking. So?”
I gave her the short version, skipping the counseling session with a hit-woman. There was a pause.
“Well,” she began, “Tiffany—”
“Tell me you don’t actually know someone named—”
“Three, actually. You snob. There are whole bouquets of girls named Tiffany now. Anyway, Tiffany—one of my Tiffanys—went through it and she can talk about it. Are you thinking that I should go see them? We, I mean, me and Tiffany?”
I said, “Me and Tiffany? Me and Tiffany should go—”
“I have an English teacher already. Yes or no?”
“Yes. But I think I’d better bounce it off Anime first. Will you see, uhh, Tiffany today?”
“Yes, you elitist. In two classes.” There was a pause, and then she said, not to me but to someone in another room, “Just a minute.”
“Gotta go, huh?”
“Yeah. I’ll talk to Tiff. What then?”
“Tell you after I check in with Anime. Love you.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Me, too.”
She hung up and I stood there, still wet and tired but feeling much better. My daughter always did that to me. Even the shirt looked nicer. I took it into
the bathroom, got one of the microscopic slivers of soap, small enough to have been meant for the mice, and began to scrub at the grease spot.
“Not easy,” Francie DuBois said. It was about quarter after ten. We were in an ugly little ten-by-fourteen room with the blinds drawn over the only window, looking at a big, clunky something-pad containing an image of a compound that couldn’t decide whether it was a house or a fort. About the size of Xanadu in Citizen Kane, but not as warm and welcoming, and surrounded by a stone wall perhaps nine feet tall. The picture was one of a dozen taken from a helicopter that had been hired for just that purpose.
I was beginning to understand why Francie’s services cost as much as they did.
“They’ve cut down all the trees near the wall,” I said.
“I thought you’d notice that,” Francie said. “Aren’t you going to ask if there are dogs?”
“Are there—”
“One of the ways to tell if someone is a burglar,” Francie said to Ronnie, “is to show them, or tell them about, a house. If the first or second question is Are there dogs, odds are pretty good.”
Nighttown Page 18