“Did you ever search Bobby Goralnick’s apartment?” she asked.
“I would need a warrant to do that. To get a warrant you need a crime.”
“Attempted murder is not a crime?”
“If the perpetrator is dead, that doesn’t leave much incentive to prosecute.”
“Not Bobby,” she answered impatiently. “The person who put the sugar in the tank.”
“Oh.” Carone leaned back in the booth. “I shouldn’t have told you about that.”
“But you did.”
“I told you, it probably had nothing to do with the accident. The sugar falls to the bottom of the tank and makes sludge. The fuel filter takes care of the rest.”
“What if it didn’t?” Sophia pressed.
Carone was looking at Harry again. “I almost didn’t recognize him. The hair looks so different. And he’s shorter in person. But I guess everybody says that.”
“We went to Bobby’s house.” She placed the sugar on the table. “I found this in the kitchen.”
Carone looked in the bag. “Sugar,” he observed.
“It doesn’t make sense that someone like Bobby Goralnick would have a five-pound bag of sugar in his kitchen. He wasn’t the type to bake cookies. You said it was probably a woman. If you dust this for prints, I think we’ll know who did it.”
“Any prints would have been completely erased by the abrasion of this plastic bag.”
Sophia stared at him in disbelief.
The waitress arrived with the decaffeinated coffee Carone had ordered. “Here you go.” She smiled at Sophia. Having arrived at the restaurant with a celebrity, some fairy dust seemed to have landed on her own shoulders. “Anything else?” the waitress asked.
“No, thanks.” Sophia couldn’t imagine anyone mistaking the ghastly expression on her face for a smile, but the waitress seemed satisfied and left them alone.
The detective shook his head. “It’s TV. Everybody thinks they’re a detective.” He took his spoon and held it over the bag. “May I?” he asked.
“Is that supposed to be a joke?” Sophia moved the bag from the table to her lap, where its weight pressed reassuringly against her thighs.
Carone shrugged and took a packet of sugar from a container on the table. “Even if we found prints, it wouldn’t prove anything. It’s not against the law to use sugar. Not yet. And if the person who did it hasn’t committed a prior felony, they won’t be in the system anyway. And as I told you, the kind of person who does this is generally not a hard-core criminal.”
“I’d feel better knowing.”
“Maybe you would. Maybe you wouldn’t.” Carone emptied two full packets of sugar into his coffee. “My first job was patrolling South Central in a black-and-white. At the end of the month, when welfare checks arrived, there’d be a dozen muggings in one day. We’d have to drive every victim around the neighborhood, slowing down whenever we saw someone who matched the mugger’s description—which didn’t win us fans among the young men in the neighborhood. Then we’d take the victims back to the precinct house, where they’d spend an hour going through mug shots. In all that time, we never made a single collar based on the information we got. One day I asked my captain why we were wasting our time. Know what he said?”
Sophia didn’t answer.
“He said, ‘You have something better to do than make a citizen feel like you give a shit about her misfortune?’”
Carone took a sip of his coffee. Sophia turned her head to watch Harry and Zach, who seemed to be doing most of the talking. Harry merely bobbed his head in agreement.
“You’re divorced?” she asked.
“Separated. How did you know?” Carone twisted the gold wedding ring on his finger.
“Just a feeling.”
Carone looked at Zach, then back at Sophia. “Let this thing with the sugar go,” he said. “Whatever Bobby was thinking that day, he took it with him.”
Sophia moved her hand to the bag in her lap. She guessed it weighed just under five pounds. When Helen was born, she had weighed 4.9 pounds. The doctors were worried enough to consider an incubator, but Sophia had refused. She knew she needed to keep her close, naked against her chest, where she could coax her into feeding and whisper the truth that only she knew. You’re going to be fine, she’d told Helen. A mother knows.
24
anton was eating dinner—black beans, rice, and contempt from the taco stand around the corner (“You don’t want no chicken?”)—when the doorbell rang. Of course he wanted chicken but it cost an extra four dollars he didn’t have, so he lied and said he’d become a vegetarian, which made the boy behind the counter, who had made many a chicken taco for him over the last year, snicker. Which made Anton furious enough to consider forgoing his order altogether. But there was his empty stomach to consider.
“Who is it?” he asked through the door. If it was Scudder, he wasn’t opening it. Scudder was working on a big-budget disaster movie at Universal and couldn’t stop going on and on about the star’s tits, the amazing pyrotechnics, the free craft-service lunch, the checks for overtime. Blah blah blah.
“Anton McDonald?” a female voice came through the door. “It’s Emily.”
Anton hesitated. He didn’t know anyone named Emily.
“Misty. Misty Moon. From this morning.”
Anton opened the door. “You’re here,” he said because he could think of nothing else.
“Yes.” She half smiled, then burst into tears.
Anton stood awkwardly in the doorway. Should he hug her? Pat her arm or something? The tears had caused her mascara to run and her face was unevenly blotched pink, red, and white, like a half-healed bruise. Even her kind of magnificent body seemed stooped and sad, like an osteoporotic old woman. “What happened?” he asked.
“Can I come in?”
Anton moved out of her way.
Misty looked around the small living room: the brown plaid couch he’d bought from the Salvation Army; the black-and-gold torchiere lamp in the corner; the oversized television, which took up more room than it should; the steamer trunk used as a coffee table; and the vintage movie posters tacked to the wall. “Very bohemian,” she said, and sniffled.
He knew her so little, he wasn’t sure if she was being serious or sarcastic. “Thanks, I guess.”
Misty sat in the middle of the couch, lowered her head as if in prayer, and began to sob once again. Anton went to the kitchen to get her a glass of water. Not that he really believed water would be of any solace, but he didn’t know what else to do.
Back in the living room, her sobs had subsided into something resembling a mewling cat. Anton put the water in front of her. “Thanks.” She took the glass, held it up to the light and frowned. “Do you have anything sparkling?”
Anton shook his head, relieved. How upset could she be if she could bust his chops over sparkling water?
“Okay,” she said, putting it back on the table.
“What happened?” he asked, sitting across from her in the remarkably uncomfortable vinyl club chair left by a previous tenant.
Misty pushed her lips out, like a blowfish, then brought them back in. “Have you ever had a day where every thing that happened seemed designed to push you over the edge?”
“You didn’t get cast?” he asked hopefully.
“Oh, no.” Misty rolled her eyes. “Today was my big break.” She shuddered, picked up the water, and drank.
Anton wanted to hear the details but he also didn’t. “I guess it’s good you got it out of your system.”
“You got that right.” Misty leaned back on his couch and crossed her arms over her chest. Her tears seemed to be replaced by a simmery anger. “You know they all take Viagra?”
Anton didn’t know that.
“It’s like, long after a normal man would have, you know, finished, they just keep on going and going and going. And you’ve got to act like you’re happy about it. ‘Try not to look like you’re in pain,’ they kept saying to me b
ut, I mean, hello? People say porno actresses can’t act, but I think they all deserve a fucking Oscar.” She paused. “A Fucking Oscar, that’s a good idea.”
“I think they have those, actually.”
“Well, they should.”
“I’m really sorry. It sounds terrible.”
Misty snorted. “I wasn’t crying because of the shoot.”
Anton didn’t say anything.
“Do you want to know why I was crying?”
“Only if you want to tell me.”
Misty crossed her arms and leaned forward as if she were suddenly cold. “I haven’t told anyone.”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“You promise not to tell anybody?”
“Maybe you shouldn’t tell me.”
“I think I killed someone.” She covered her face with her hands after she said it and made a low, moaning sound.
Anton was pretty certain Misty Moon, née Emily whatever, had not killed anybody. That seemed like the kind of thing you would know if it happened. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“I mean, he’s definitely dead. I just don’t know if it’s my fault.”
“Go on.”
“It was my ex-boyfriend. I was mad at him for dumping me, so I put some sugar in the tank of his motorcycle, because he loved that motorcycle. A few days later, he had an accident on the highway and died.”
“Shit,” Anton said.
“I know.” Misty nodded solemnly. “And there was a girl with him. She’s in the hospital.”
Anton kind of wished that she hadn’t told him. Was he now morally obliged to turn her in or something?
“You know how I told you I’ve been sleeping in my car? I only did that once. Lately, I’ve been staying at his house. It’s going to be torn down soon, so the owners didn’t bother to rent it out. But tonight, when I got there, some people were inside. After they left, I went in and the sugar was gone.” She shook her head. “I think it may have been the police looking for me. I’m scared.” She started to cry again.
Anton sat next to her on the couch and awkwardly put his arm around her shoulder. She leaned gratefully into his body. “I don’t want to go to prison,” she said, sobbing.
“Maybe if you turn yourself in, they’ll go easier on you.”
“That’s what I was thinking, too.” She pulled away from him. “But I don’t have money for a lawyer or anything.”
“If you’re poor, they give you one free.”
“Do you think that I’d be, like, on television or something?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, I mean maybe it could be, like, the O.J. trial or something. I could write a book or play myself in the movie. Or something.”
Anton could tell by the “or something” that even she didn’t believe that was going to happen. “I think you have to be famous first,” he said as gently as he could. “Otherwise, you just end up on some cheese-ball true-crime show.”
“Yeah, I know. I got the order all wrong. The whole thing was so stupid. I didn’t even like him that much. He was a real boozer. As I was pouring the sugar, it was like watching my feelings disappear. If I could have gotten it out somehow, I would have. And I never thought it would cause an accident. I swear.” She stared glumly at the floor. “What’s that smell?”
“What do you mean?” Anton glanced nervously at his bare feet. Did they smell bad?
“It smells like food.” Misty put her hand on her stomach and started rubbing.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
“Ravenous. I haven’t eaten all day. I didn’t want, you know, my stomach sticking out. But I don’t know why I bothered, you should have seen the cellulite on some of those cows.”
Anton brought his rice and beans from the kitchen.
“Thanks!” She used the fork like a shovel. “No chicken?”
“I was thinking of becoming a vegetarian.”
Misty chased the last grains of rice with the white plastic fork, then licked it. “I’m still hungry. You want to get something to eat?”
Anton shook his head. “No, thanks.”
“My treat. They paid me something today, though not nearly what they should have for putting up with those pigs.” She reached down to pick up her white bag, took out her wallet, and began counting out neat piles of twenties.
Anton watched with admiration how unsentimentally she handled money.
“I was a bank teller one summer,” she said, as if reading his mind. “It doesn’t take you long to realize it’s only paper.” She put a thick wad of twenties in the zippered lining of her purse. “I’m going home. If the police want me, they can come get me in Amarillo.”
“That’s wise.”
Misty held up three twenty-dollar bills. “My last night in Los Angeles. Where can we get a good meal and music for sixty bucks on a Friday night?”
Anton chewed on his pinky fingernail. He and Maddie always ate at the falafel stand close to school. Whenever he replayed the course of the relationship in his mind, that was one of his regrets. He should have taken her out someplace decent. “How about the airport Hyatt?” he asked. “I know someone who plays the piano there.”
“You have a friend who plays piano at the Hyatt?” She said it like it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard.
“Well,” Anton said hesitatantly, thinking of Cyrus Dumond’s big hands and tolerance for human frailty. “I wouldn’t call him a friend.”
“You know that’s where the whores work, right?”
“Really?” How did she know that?
“My car or yours?” She was already standing.
Anton hesitated.
“You’re out of gas?” she asked.
Anton’s face reddened. “Temporarily.”
“God.” Misty rolled her eyes. “No wonder you don’t have a girlfriend. C’mon, I’ll drive.”
“I had one,” Anton protested.
“That’s your friend?” Misty whispered into Anton’s ear.
Cyrus Dumond was hunched over a grand piano singing “Something,” eyes squeezed shut, his massive upper body swaying back and forth with plea sure. His voice was smooth, regular. Nothing to be ashamed of, Anton noticed with relief.
A waitress came to take their order. Margarita, salt, on the rocks for Misty. For Anton, a Budweiser.
“He looks like a cop,” Misty said.
“How so?” Anton asked.
“Every time I’ve ever been pulled over by policeman, he has been big and black.”
“Isn’t that, like, racist to, you know, make an assumption based on a few random experiences?”
Misty rolled her eyes. “How can it be racist if it’s true? Don’t take this personally? But we would be a terrible couple.”
Anton turned toward the bar. He’d been hoping to see some genuine whores, but the only people drinking were a group of European tourists sharing a bottle of Blue Nun and an older couple nursing brown drinks with red cherries and orange slices.
The waitress arrived with their drinks. “Is this a double?” Misty asked.
“No,” the waitress answered.
“Didn’t I say I wanted a double?”
“No,” the waitress repeated.
“Oh.” Misty frowned and took a sip. “Could you make the next one a double? And how much are they?”
“Eight dollars.”
“Okay.” Misty nodded. “Do you have any, like, chips and dip or anything?”
“I’ll bring you a menu.”
“Cow,” Misty said after the waitress left. “In Amarillo, there’s this bar where they give you free chips and cheese dip all night if you’re drinking. Plus, if they get your order wrong, they give it to you free.” She stuck a straw in her margarita and took a long sip. “Will you drive if I get really drunk?”
“If?”
“It’s my last night in town, I deserve to celebrate.”
The waitress returned with a menu and Misty’s second drink. Cyrus
finished his song and surveyed the sparse crowd. “I got time for one request before I go on a break.”
Misty raised her hand. “‘Piano Man’!” she shouted.
Anton sank low in his seat.
Cyrus twisted his spine to get a better look at Misty. “‘Piano Man’?” he asked. “‘Piano Man’? I hate ‘Piano Man.’” As he spoke, his fingers began picking out the opening chords of the song on the keyboard. “Every day, before I come to work, I say, ‘Please, God, no “Piano Man” tonight.’ It’s not right to bother the Lord with such a small request, so to punish me, what is the first request tonight?” He began to sing: “It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday.…”
“This is so cool,” Misty said happily.
Anton smiled. Even the old couple at the bar seemed to have perked up.
Afterward, Cyrus came and sat at their table.
“You sang that great!” Misty, halfway into her second, stronger drink, leered at him.
Cyrus smiled and twisted a large gold ring on his finger. “Are we on a date?” He looked from Anton to Misty.
“No,” they answered in unison.
Cyrus laughed.
“We met at work,” Misty said.
Cyrus looked at Anton sternly. “You know what the law says. If you have a job, you need to let us know.”
“N-no,” Anton stammered. “I don’t.”
Cyrus laughed. “Oh, shit. I’m pulling your leg. You think I care?”
“How do you two know each other?” Misty asked, looking from one to the other.
“It’s a long story,” Anton answered.
“Why do people always say that when they don’t want to tell you something?” Misty wondered out loud.
“He’s my unemployment counselor,” Anton answered. Why should he feel ashamed? Better men than him had been fired from better jobs than his.
“Really?” Misty looked with renewed interest at the pianist. “Can I get that?”
“Have you worked steadily for the last six months?”
“No.”
“Did your last employer pay unemployment insurance for you?”
“No.”
“Were you fired from your last job?”
“No.”
“Well, then, that’s your answer.”
And Sometimes Why Page 25