by Herren, Greg
I cursed Rory in my head. A missing person case was often a money pit for the client, and if the house was any indication, this kid didn’t seem to have the cash flow necessary for even a day’s worth of expenses. “Have you talked to the police, filed a missing persons report?”
“Yeah, I talked to those worthless motherfuckers.” He spat the words out. “I haven’t seen her since Wednesday, and ain’t heard anything, either. That ain’t like my ma, you know? I used to talk to her every day. The last time I talked to her was Thursday, you know? I didn’t hear from her on Friday and I figured, you know, she got busy or whatever, and then I went over there, and she wasn’t home, didn’t look like she’d been home, and her car ain’t there, and she ain’t answering her cell phone, either—and that ain’t like Ma, I’m telling you. And she didn’t show up for my fight last night, either, and Ma ain’t never missed one of my fights.” He started rocking back and forth. “I told the cops that yesterday and I called the asshole who took my report about her not showing up to the fight last night, but I don’t think he gives a damn, you know? He tells me she’ll probably just turn up, and it don’t mean nothing.” His face twisted. “What the hell does he know? He don’t know my ma.”
“She ain’t missing,” the pregnant girl yelled from the next room. “She’s off with some man, you just don’t want to admit it, is all. You’re wasting the guy’s time, Jonny. You might as well just get the hell out of here, mister.”
He gave me a look, shaking his head, and shouted back at her, “Heather, you know damned well Ma wouldn’t do that—”
“She’s a woman, ain’t she?” Heather cut him off angrily. “She ain’t so goddamned pure, ya know—just ’cause she’s your ma doesn’t mean she don’t have needs like any other woman. You think you were a virgin birth? Where you think you came from?”
“I never said that! Why don’t you get us some coffee, will ya, honey?” He gave me a forced and embarrassed “everything’s cool” smile.
“Yeah, ’cuz I ain’t got nothing better to do, right?” I heard her shuffling to the back of the house. “I’m just pregnant, you asshole.”
“Sorry about that, Mr. MacLeod.” He held up both hands and gave me a sheepish grin. “It’s her hormones—I never know whether she’s gonna start crying or screaming or both. She’s due next month.”
I nodded, fighting my instinct to get the hell out of the dirty little house.
“My mom wouldn’t do that, Mr. MacLeod,” he added quickly in a low voice. “I mean, I know she’s a woman, and she’s had plenty of boyfriends over the years, ya know, I ain’t stupid no matter what some people think”—he glanced at the doorway—“but she’s never just gone away without telling no one. That ain’t like her. Like I said, she ain’t answering her cell phone. She didn’t come to the casino last night to see my fight.” He shook his head. “That ain’t like Ma. She ain’t never missed one of my fights, Mr. MacLeod, never.” He swallowed. “I’m worried. Something happened to her, I know it. My brother Robby and my sister Lorelle—they haven’t heard from her either.” He frowned. “Well, I haven’t really talked to Robby since Thursday, I can’t get a hold of him, but I talked to his wife yesterday, and she ain’t heard from Ma, either.” He folded his arms.
“Jonny, even if I take the case, I can’t guarantee I’ll find her,” I heard myself saying before I could stop myself. “And it could get expensive—really expensive.”
“I got money,” he replied stubbornly, his lower lip sticking out.
“That money’s supposed to be for the baby!” Heather screamed from the back of the house. I couldn’t believe she heard him—I’d barely been able to hear him and I was only a few feet away.
I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could. “Look, I don’t—”
“I got money,” he insisted. “Not the baby money. Don’t listen to her, man, you gotta find my ma. Please.” He reached into the pocket of his shorts and passed a crumpled hundred-dollar bill over to me.
I held the bill in my hand.
I thought about telling him what my day rate was, and how that didn’t include expenses—and it was usually the expenses that stabbed the client in the bank account. I thought about telling him one hundred dollars wasn’t even close to the retainer I usually asked for.
I thought about explaining to him that when the majority of people disappeared, there were usually only two possibilities.
The majority of missing persons just walked away from their life. One day, they just woke up and took a long, hard look at their lives and didn’t like what they saw. It could be a long process—with a sense of dissatisfaction and disappointment with life that just kept growing and growing until it finally reached the point where they couldn’t go on anymore. Some people slit their wrists or took pills when they got there. Others said “fuck this” and ran away without a backward glance, just ran and kept running. They changed their names and started over again somewhere else. People who fell into this grouping did not, as a rule, want to be found. Some of them never came back, settling happily into their new lives. Some came back when they realized the change of scenery didn’t solve the problem, or when they started missing and appreciating their old life.
But the ones who do come back don’t until they are good and ready—and do not appreciate being found.
The other possibility was that something had happened to her—something bad. She might have been murdered in some random crime—a mugging or a carjacking or something—and the body just hadn’t been found yet. Or some psychotic grabbed her off the street.
If someone had grabbed her, the odds were she wouldn’t be found alive. She might not ever be found.
The right thing to do would be to say, “If she’s alive, she probably doesn’t want to be found. If she’s dead, we may never find her body. In either case, letting the police handle it is your best option.”
Sitting there, I knew I should be honest, give him his hundred-dollar bill back, and walk out the front door, forget that I’d ever been there.
But looking into his earnest, desperate young face, I just couldn’t bring myself to say the words.
“You say she’s been missing for about three days now?” I asked, getting my notepad out of my pants pocket and uncapping a pen.
The relief on his face embarrassed me, so I looked away. “I went over to her house on Friday morning and she wasn’t there. I always have breakfast with Ma on Friday mornings.” He swallowed. “Her car wasn’t there, so I figured she’d run to the store or something. I sat down and waited, and after about an hour I called her. She didn’t pick up—and Ma always picks up, no matter what, unless she’s at Mass. That’s when I started wondering if something was, you know, wrong. After about another hour, I went looking for her. I didn’t see her nowhere, and I kept calling. Nothing. Heather had a doctor’s appointment that afternoon and Ma didn’t show up for that—and Ma don’t never miss any of Heather’s appointments.”
“That’s ’cuz she thinks I’m gonna harm the baby,” Heather said as she walked into the living room, carrying two steaming mugs of coffee. She gave me what was probably supposed to be a smile. “She’s always after me, like I’m some kind of idiot, you know. Like I don’t know I’m not supposed to smoke or drink coffee when I’m pregnant.” She sneered at me. “Like I’m gonna go out and do tequila shots or shoot up some heroin or something.”
I took a tentative sip of the coffee. It was bad. I set it down on top of a newspaper on the coffee table. “And you checked with her friends? The rest of your family?”
He nodded. “I called my brother Robby right away Friday morning. I left a message for him but he never called me back.” He made a face.
“Robby thinks he’s better’n we are.” Heather sneered. “He don’t never take our calls or call us back.”
“My sister Lorelle hadn’t heard from her, either.” He didn’t acknowledge what Heather had said. “I’m the youngest”—he gave me the sheepish smile again—“the baby of the
family. Robby and Lorelle are a lot older than me. They’re in their thirties. I was what Ma called a change-of-life baby.” He shrugged again.
“That’s why he’s so spoiled.” Heather shoved a pile off the couch and sat down, folding her hands on her belly.
“I’m not spoiled—”
“The sun rises and shines out of your ass for Mona,” she jeered at him, and looked at me. “Mona thinks I’m not good enough for him, you know. She’s always dropping in here and making fun of the way I keep house, my cooking—she’s awful.”
I refrained from mentioning her housekeeping skills left a little to be desired. “So, her name is Mona?”
Jonny didn’t look at Heather. “Mona Catherine Rowland O’Neill, yeah. Rowland’s the maiden name.”
I wrote it down. “Did she work?”
“Not since Katrina.” Jonny frowned. “She used to work as a property manager for an apartment complex on the West Bank before the storm, but the place didn’t reopen right away after Katrina—too much damage, and so Ma just retired.”
“She always said she was too old to be looking for a new job, so she decided to stay home,” Heather said. She made a face. “She had a nice little nest egg she was sitting on.”
“My dad was killed when I was little,” Jonny explained. “Mom got a big settlement from the insurance and the company he worked for—he was killed on the job. She didn’t need to work, she just didn’t like sitting around doing nothing—that’s why she got the job in the first place, after I started school.”
“So, how did she fill her days after the flood?” I asked.
“She did a lot of volunteer work—you know, helping people rebuild their houses and stuff—I mean, she didn’t do construction work, but for a long time she drove around passing out supplies to people working on houses in the Ninth Ward,” Jonny went on. “She also spent a lot of time volunteering at St. Anselm’s, and you know, she got really involved in trying to save it.”
That got my attention. “She was one of the protesters at St. Anselm’s?”
St. Anselm’s had been in the local news for months. One of the side effects from the depopulation of the city after Katrina and the levee failure was a corresponding drop in attendance—and donations—to the Catholic Church. As revenues fell, the archdiocese decided it needed to tighten its belt, and part of that tightening included the closing of two churches in the city. Archbishop Pugh was stunned when the parishioners flatly refused to let their churches be closed, and St. Anselm’s had become the focal point of the battle—because of its location in Uptown New Orleans. St. Anselm’s was technically in the Irish Channel, but it was only a few blocks on the river side of the Garden District on Louisiana Avenue. Our Lady of Prompt Succor on the West Bank wasn’t as beautiful or historic, so the news coverage had focused primarily on the war over St. Anselm’s. The parishioners were fighting the archbishop with everything they could muster. Archbishop Pugh was not from New Orleans originally—which was pointed out fairly regularly by the rebellious parishioners. He also didn’t appreciate the disobedience of loyal Catholics, and imperiously refused to budge or compromise. As the struggle dragged on, it was becoming increasingly acrimonious.
The St. Anselm’s parishioners had taken to holding twenty-four-hour-a-day candlelight vigils inside the church, and the archbishop had demanded the police evict them earlier the previous week. Every news program in the city had camera crews there that day, it seemed, and public opinion had not taken kindly to the sight of good Catholics being dragged out of their church in handcuffs by the police. An ambitious local politician denounced the police raid as a violation of the separation of church and state. The switchboard at the archdiocese—and at City Hall—had lit up.
Archbishop Pugh quickly dropped the charges, but the damage was already done.
Jonny nodded. “Yeah, she was doing vigils over there all the time—”
“She was there all night every night—she was one of the ringleaders,” Heather chimed in. “She wasn’t happy she wasn’t one of the ones that got hauled off to jail, let me tell you what. She tried getting me—me—over there.” She sniffed. “Tells me because I’m pregnant, the police wouldn’t dare do anything to me.” She shifted in her seat. “I’m not risking my baby for your stupid church, I told her. Can you imagine the nerve?” She narrowed her eyes, and in a snotty voice, added, “She says she was spending the night there praying.” She snorted. “No telling what she got up to in the church all night with strange men.” She pushed herself up to her feet and padded off into the back of the house.
“Don’t pay her no mind,” Jonny said, his face sad. “Her and Ma don’t get along too well, as you probably figured out already.”
“Was your mother doing a vigil the night before she disappeared?”
“I don’t know.” He looked sheepish again. “I mean, that’s what I thought—she was pretty much there every night, but I don’t know none of those people…I haven’t been to church in years.” He hung his head. “Ma was good about it—I mean, I know she was disappointed I didn’t go anymore, but she never pushed me on it. Ever since I dropped out of de la Salle, I just didn’t see no point in going to church anymore, you know? I mean, it just don’t make no sense to me, never did. And I figured the cops would talk to them anyway, so I didn’t have to, you know? You know how those people are. Why don’t you come to church no more, Jonny?” He shuddered. “I mean, why deal with that if I don’t have to?”
I nodded. “Why don’t your mother and Heather get along?”
“It isn’t as bad as Heather makes it out to be, you know.” He lowered his voice. “Yeah, Ma thought Heather got pregnant on purpose, so I’d have to marry her. She didn’t think me marrying her was a good idea—she thought we were too young to get married.” He scratched his head. “The rubber broke, ya know? How did Heather do that on purpose? But Ma wouldn’t listen. She never liked Heather from the first.”
“She wouldn’t like any girl you married,” Heather shouted from the other room. “Nobody was good enough for her baby. I could have been the Queen of fucking Sheba and she wouldn’t have cared.”
“She bought us this house, didn’t she?” Jonny shouted back, his face turning red. “Which is more than your ma ever did for us!”
“My parents never made you feel like white trash!”
“Why you want to say stuff like that?” He got up and gave me an apologetic look. “Give me a minute, okay?” He disappeared through the doorway, and I could hear them murmuring to each other. After about a minute or two, he came walking back in. “Sorry.” He plopped back down on the sofa. “Hormones, like I said. I sure will be glad when the baby comes.”
Yes, because things will be so much easier with a screaming baby in the house, I thought. “Where does your mother live? Close by?” I could feel a headache coming on. I was starting to regret this already.
“Just up the street—the next block over.”
“Do you mind taking me over there so I can take a look around her place?” I stood up and stretched. I also wanted to get out of the house.
“Not at all.” He got up and stretched. “Let me get the keys and I’ll walk you over there.” He wandered back out of the room.
I walked over to the front door and prayed I would never have to set foot in the depressing little shotgun house ever again.
Chapter Two
Once I was out of the claustrophobic atmosphere of the house Jonny shared with his wife, I felt like I could breathe again.
It had gotten hotter while I’d been inside—going back out into it felt like I had stuck my head inside an oven on its highest setting. I started sweating as soon as I stepped out onto the porch. The glare of the midday sun was blinding, so I slipped on my sunglasses. A gray cat that had been cleaning itself on the porch took off like a bolt of lightning, vaulting over the fence into the next yard. I mopped at my forehead as I headed for the front gate, and waited for Jonny on the other side of it.
“It’s
just on the next block—not too far,” Jonny said, fighting with the gate. He freed it from where it had lodged against the walk and slammed it closed behind him. “Damn, it’s hotter than a motherfucker out here.”
He kept up a running patter of talk as we walked down Constance Street, away from the sounds of the cars a block or so away over on Louisiana Avenue. There was no sign of human life anywhere on Constance—the houses were all closed up. It was eerie—if not for the traffic sounds in the distance, we could have been in a post-apocalypse movie. We crossed Harmony Street, and just like in any number of neighborhoods in the city, crossing the street was like stepping into another world. The houses on Jonny’s block were in disrepair, but this block was decidedly more upscale. There were still shotgun houses and Creole cottages, but they were much better kept. The lawns were lush, green, and carefully manicured. Flowerbeds erupted in riotous colors. The scent of sweet olive hung in the air. The houses were pristine, and the cars parked in driveways or alongside the street looked newer and more expensive.
Almost every house had a security company sign planted where it could be plainly seen in the flowerbeds.
Jonny never stopped talking, not even to take a long breath or to give me a chance to respond with anything other than a monosyllabic grunt. He clearly was one of those people not comfortable with silence. But there wasn’t any way I could think of to ask him to be quiet without sounding rude—and I have found it’s never a good idea to be rude to a client.
Even if said client couldn’t afford to pay my standard rate, he was still my client and deserved to be treated with respect.
And there was, of course, the possibility that his nonstop chatter might have simply been a symptom of being worried about his mother, and if rambling on and on made him feel better somehow, who was I to deny him this small comfort?
Oddly enough, he was talking about everything under the sun except his mother.
I found my mind wandering a bit as he went on about his training regimen, his diet, his unbeaten ring record, cage fighting strategies, and how MMA was different from boxing and wrestling even though it was a combination of the two disciplines. His voice rose and fell as he became more excited about his topic, and every once in a while he would demonstrate a striking technique for me. It was a little hard for me to take him seriously, since I was almost a foot taller and almost certainly a hundred pounds heavier.