He got out of the Cobra and walked over to her window, just as she was rolling it down.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Gunner, but this is really a very bad time,” she said.
“Trouble?”
“It’s Agnes Felker. Have you spoken to her yet?”
“I saw her for a few moments yesterday, yeah. Why? What happened?”
Her voice slightly breaking, Singer said, “She’s in the hospital. I was just going out to see her now.”
Gunner started to ask why, then realized he already knew the answer. Instead, he said, “You mind if I come along?”
Singer shrugged and waited for him to park his car.
Her doctors did not expect Agnes Felker to live. She was fifty-seven years old, and had suffered enough serious injuries to kill a woman half her age. One of her attending physicians told Singer she had suffered a fractured skull, a dislocated shoulder, four broken ribs, and a bruised kidney. She had also lost four teeth. Asleep in her bed in the emergency ward at County-USC hospital, she looked like a mummified corpse awaiting burial, connected to a panoply of machines by more wires and hoses than either Gunner or Singer cared to count.
The ambulance that had brought her in had actually been called for her boyfriend Otha, who was dead. He was dead because Felker had shot a hole in his chest big enough to put a man’s leg through, after he had laid his hands on her for the last and final time. The way it was explained to Singer, the couple’s neighbors had first heard the sound of a shotgun blast, then found Otha out in the hallway outside the couple’s apartment, bleeding all over the carpet like a stuck pig. The neighbors called 911, but by the time the paramedics arrived, the wounded man was beyond their help. They found Felker in her living room before she could expire, the shotgun she had finally found the nerve to use beside her mangled body. No one in charge of her care would even pretend that they liked her chances of pulling through.
Felker’s daughter, Betty, had been the one who called Singer down, knowing the shelter director from her mother’s time as a resident out at Sisterhood House. As big as her mother was tiny, Betty had no patience for Agnes’s submissive role as an abuse victim; in fact, she was downright cold about it. As soon as Singer and Gunner had arrived, she’d left them to visit the cafeteria downstairs, showing more signs of annoyance than grief, though she did seem to be finding some satisfaction in Otha’s death, which she said had been long overdue.
Singer was far more emotionally distraught. When the doctors would only allow her a look at Felker through the emergency room window, she tried to argue her way through the doors, but her heart just wasn’t in it. She was like a grieving mother: too drained and tired to do much more than raise her voice. Gunner watched her suffer and could not help but be impressed; her compassion for Felker was real and deeply felt.
After about an hour, Singer grew tired of waiting for something bad to happen and told Gunner she was ready to leave.
Downstairs in the car, she finally broke down.
It was a long, bitter cry, the end result of something that had been building up inside her for some time. Gunner tried to reach for her, but she waved him off, acting like his touch was something to be avoided at all costs.
“No. Don’t,” she said.
Gunner sat back and waited.
Eventually, she wiped her eyes with a handkerchief he’d given her, staring straight out the windshield to avoid his gaze, and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t intend for you to see that.”
“It’s okay,” Gunner said.
“No. It’s not. I should have developed a much thicker skin by now. It’s ridiculous, a person in my line of work not being able to handle this sort of thing better.”
“It’s not ridiculous.”
She finally turned to face him, blue eyes blazing, and said, “You didn’t have anything to do with it, did you? When you went out to see her yesterday, I mean? Because if you did—”
“Me? What could I have done to cause this?”
“I don’t know. I only know Otha was a very jealous man, and something must have triggered his attack. I just thought, if you had words with him yesterday, if you gave him any reason at all to believe you and Agnes were seeing each other …”
Gunner shook his head, said, “I never said a word to the man. In fact, I never even met him. I saw somebody outside their apartment building who I thought might be him, yeah, but that was about it.”
She studied his face for a moment, then nodded, believing him. “Of course. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Forget it,” Gunner said, smiling so she’d know he was being sincere.
He hadn’t thought the gesture would earn him a smile in return, but it did—and he knew right then it was time to reevaluate his opinion of her.
She wanted to go back to Sisterhood House immediately, but he talked her into sharing a late breakfast with him instead. She looked different to him somehow, now that he’d caught a glimpse of the woman behind the mother figure, and he was curious to find out what it would be like to spend some time with her outside of her work environment.
They went downtown to the Pantry Cafe and sat at a booth in the back. The early-morning rush was over, but the famous establishment was still busy, filled with wonderful sounds and aromas, the air thick with a hundred conversations going on at once. They both had coffee, Gunner with patty sausages, eggs, and pancakes, Singer with oatmeal and raisin toast, no butter.
“I need to ask you a question,” Singer said at one point.
Gunner said, “Sure.”
“Not that I think you’re an expert, or anything, but … you might have some insight on the matter.”
Gunner watched her stir sugar into her coffee and waited.
“Why do black men do it? Hate their women, I mean. What’s the reason for it, exactly?”
“I didn’t realize we all had that problem,” Gunner said.
“I’m sorry. I phrased that badly, didn’t I?”
“No, no. You just made a sweeping generalization. Maybe you should try it again. Ask me something like, why do so many black men seem to hate their women?”
“All right. Why do they?”
“I don’t know. You said yourself, I’m no expert on the subject. You, on the other hand, have experience in the field. You should be telling me how it works.”
“I know. I should. But I’m curious to hear your perspective on it. Being a black man yourself—”
“We don’t all think alike, Ms. Singer. No more than we all look alike. Men like Otha are, as foreign to me as they are to you—I don’t know what makes them tick.”
“But you can guess.”
“My guess would be that brothers like Otha have a self-esteem problem, number one. And number two, they can’t handle the pressure they feel black women put on them to be perfect. Perfect lovers, fathers, providers—the works.”
“Would you care to elaborate on that a little?”
“Elaborate? No. What’s to elaborate?”
“Well, when you say these men have a self-esteem problem—”
“I mean that they feel worthless. Like they’re society’s most expendable objects. They consider themselves powerless, incapable of controlling the direction of their own lives, so—”
“So they seek control elsewhere.”
“Yes.”
“And the pressure to be perfect? What did you mean by that?”
“I meant that the standard some black women hold a man up to is unreasonably high. And that failing to meet that standard can sometimes do as much to cut a man down at the knees as anything another man could ever do to him. Possibly even more.”
“You’re saying the black woman’s expectations are too great.”
“I’m saying generations of abuse have made skeptics out of a great number of black women today, and skeptics are the hardest people in the world to satisfy. Never mind love and respect.”
“And this is why black men feel entitled to hate them. To call them bitches,
and hos, and all that.”
Gunner glared at her. “You asked me where the hostility comes from, and I told you what I think. I wasn’t attempting to justify anything.”
“Do you think you could?”
“I wouldn’t try. Look, I told you Tuesday, I don’t beat women, and I don’t care for the jerks who do. You don’t want to take my word for that, fine, but please stop asking me to defend myself every fifteen minutes. All right?”
Singer started to say something, but chose to remain silent instead.
“What is it? Do I remind you of somebody, or something? Some guy you used to know who treated women badly? Is that it?”
“No,” Singer said. “It isn’t you. It’s me. Generations of abuse have made skeptics out of all of us, Mr. Gunner. Black women, white women—all of us. Only some of us are better at working around it than others.”
She’d said it like it was a deep, dark secret, her eyes darting here and there, head turned away from him, the fingers of both hands drumming silently on the sides of her coffee cup. And suddenly Gunner saw something in her he had never seen before: a victim. A woman who knew how to survive abuse, because she had survived it herself.
“Who was it?” Gunner asked her.
Singer opened her mouth to say something, stopped, and then said, “Let the cat out of the bag, did I?” Trying to smile.
“You don’t want to talk about it, we don’t have to,” Gunner said. “It’s none of my business, really.”
“He was my second husband. Tony,” Singer said, jumping right into the story before she could lose the nerve to tell it. “I was twenty-six, he was thirty-one. We met at a going-away party for a mutual friend. He was a print ad salesman, very successful, very handsome. Tall, dark, and all that. I fell in love with him immediately. He never said a cross word to me until the third day of our honeymoon. He’d brought some work along with him to do while we were at the hotel, and I was trying to get him to put it away … so he slapped me. Just once, with the back of his hand. He knocked me to the floor, and never said a word.
“Two years later, he was still doing it. Two, sometimes three times a week. Anytime he was upset, he felt like he needed to let off a little steam, he’d slap me around some. Always with the back of one hand, always to the face. That was his routine. He’d have been a puncher, somebody who likes to use his fists on the body as well as the face, he would’ve killed me eventually, I’m sure of it. But he wasn’t. I was lucky. I didn’t feel lucky at the time, but I was.”
“How long ago was this?” Gunner asked.
“A little over eight years ago.”
“And where is Tony now?”
Singer shook her head. “I don’t know. Last I heard, he was up in Sacramento. I haven’t spoken to him in years.”
“You’re divorced, I assume?”
“Yes.”
“He didn’t have a problem with that?”
“You mean, did he fight it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he wasn’t happy about it, but he didn’t contest it. I guess that was another way in which I was lucky. Aside from a bitter argument or two, he let me leave rather quietly. Most abusers won’t do that. They hang on for dear life, no matter what you do to get free of them.
“So yes, my work at Sisterhood was born of personal experience. But surely, you always suspected that.”
“Actually, I never gave it much thought. I suppose if I had, though, I’d have presumed you were an abuse victim yourself, yeah. Thing is … you really don’t look the type to me, you want to know the truth about it.”
“I don’t?”
“No. Not at all. You always struck me as someone too self-assured and confident to ever tolerate that sort of thing. From anyone.”
Singer smiled. “You’d be surprised. By all the different ‘types’ there are, I mean. Because anyone who’s ever needed to be loved by another human being is vulnerable to abuse, Mr. Gunner. Anyone. I don’t care how ‘confident’ and ‘self-assured’ they seem to be.”
Their waiter came by to refill their coffee cups, then disappeared again, but they held on to the silence he’d brought to their table for several minutes longer, neither one of them sure what direction they wanted the conversation to take from here.
Finally, Gunner said, “I talked to Trini Serrano yesterday.” Deciding it was time to start treating this meeting more like an interrogation and less like a first date.
“And?”
“And she told me the real reason she’s no longer welcome at Sisterhood House is because you suspected her of luring Nina into a lesbian affair.”
Singer thought that over a minute, looking to be building up to something explosive, but finally all she said was, “So now you know.”
“In other words, it’s true.”
“More or less. Yes.”
“So why didn’t you tell me that Tuesday? Why give me all that crap about her no longer being available to come by?”
“I was trying to spare her some embarrassment. Obviously.”
“She insists it isn’t true. That she and Nina were only good friends.”
“They were. Only she wanted them to be more than that.”
“And if she did? Why was that a problem?”
“Because women come to Sisterhood House to get well again, Mr. Gunner. Not to get laid. They’re hurt, and they’re damaged, and they’re extremely susceptible to all manner of suggestion. So for that reason alone, I have always been very outspoken in my opposition to people becoming romantically involved during their stay with us. All people. Nina was in no condition to be courted by anyone, and Trini knew that. But she was trying to get Nina into bed anyway, and that’s what eventually led Nina to leave us. Weeks before she was ready, I might add.”
“Did Nina tell you that?”
“Yes.”
“She said Trini was pressuring her into a lesbian relationship?”
“In so many words, yes. She did.”
“You ever see any evidence to that effect? Anything tangible, I mean?”
“Anything tangible?”
“Like a bracelet, for instance. Inscribed. Something Trini might have given Nina to demonstrate her affection for her. That sort of thing.”
Singer shook her head. “I never saw anything like that, no. Who—”
“Trini says she gave Nina a bracelet like that just before Nina left the house. She said it was inscribed with some words of friendship that Nina mistook for something else. Something more intimate. You’re sure you never saw it?”
“I’m sure.”
“In that case, I’m confused. If Nina was trying to get you to believe that Trini was interested in her sexually …” Gunner fell silent, thinking.
“What?”
The investigator shook his head, said, “Never mind. Scratch that.”
“Scratch what? What were you going to say?”
“Well … I was going to say she should have shown you the bracelet. What better way to prove to you that what she was saying about Trini was true? But then I remembered that Trini said Nina had lost it. Lost it or chucked it, one or the other, she didn’t know which. Either way, Nina didn’t have it anymore. And that would explain why she didn’t show it to you, of course. If she no longer had it …” He shrugged.
“What else did Trini tell you?” Singer asked.
“About what?”
“About anything. I’m curious to know.”
“You think she might have fed me a pack of lies, is that it?”
“I’m concerned that she might have misled you about some things, yes.”
Gunner didn’t answer for some time, waiting until he was sure how much he did and did not want to say. Finally, he said, “She told me she wasn’t the only woman at Sisterhood pursuing Nina sexually, for one thing.”
“Referring to Shirley Causwell, of course.”
Gunner’s face registered his surprise.
“I told you, Mr. Gunner. It’s my job to know what happens
in my house. Shirley had eyes for Nina too, I saw that right away.”
“Then why—”
“Why did I ask Trini to leave and not Shirley? Because Shirley I had some control over. Trini, I didn’t. Shirley is a resident, Trini wasn’t. When I asked Shirley to back off, she listened to me. Trini wouldn’t.”
“Shirley agreed to leave Nina alone?”
“Reluctantly, yes. I told her she could have any kind of relationship with Nina she wanted to have, once they were both out of the house, but until then, I wanted her to treat Nina as a friend, and nothing more. And that’s what she did. If Trini told you it was Shirley who drove Nina from Sisterhood, she was lying. Trini was the one who wouldn’t stop badgering Nina, not Shirley.”
Again, Gunner fell silent, trying to absorb what she was saying.
“You didn’t think I needed to hear any of this before now?” he asked.
“I told you Nina had friends, but no enemies. And that was true. Why should I have wanted to say any more than that?”
“Because unrequited love is an excellent motive for murder, Ms. Singer. That never occurred to you?”
“Frankly, Mr. Gunner, no. It didn’t. Look, I’ve already told you who murdered Nina. If you choose not to believe me, that’s your business.”
“But if both Trini and Shirley were in love with her—”
Singer shook her head vigorously and said, “It doesn’t matter. They didn’t do it. They didn’t do it any more than Virgie Olivera did.”
“Virgie Olivera?”
“Yes. You don’t remember Virgie? She was the girl you asked me about Tuesday before you left. The one Angela told you had once pulled a gun on Nina out in the field.”
“And you said her boyfriend made her do it. The Mexican Mafia hero.”
“Ricky Salcido. Yes.”
“So what about her?”
“She’s dead. Her and Ricky both. I’d been thinking about calling her ever since you reminded me of her, just to see how she was doing, and yesterday, I did. The number we had for her was at her sister’s place. Rosie. You never called her yourself?”
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