Our guests this evening were my friends Stacey and Kat, and their families. These were people in front of whom we were not ashamed to fail, should our attempts at California cuisine be derailed by the reality of life with three children and a very old stove. Stacey is my oldest and closest friend; we’ve known each other since our freshman year of college. For most of our lives we’d engaged in a bare-knuckled competition, but a few years ago I’d had to concede defeat. Stacey is a partner in a major Hollywood talent agency. She makes more money in a month than I do in a year, more even than I did when I was working full-time at the federal defender’s office. She makes so much money, in fact, that she has started engaging in the ultimate of cash-wasting hobbies—she has a contemporary art collection. This is a woman who wrote her freshman art history final paper on the place of Salvatore Ferragamo in the twentieth-century aesthetic. Back then I had doubted her, saying that unless Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse donned Ferragamo slippers in their studios the shoemaker was not likely to have been a particularly significant influence, but she’d gotten an A on the paper. My thoroughly researched and highly original analysis of the works of the surrealist Leonora Carrington earned a B+. Shows what I know.
Now Stacey is amassing one of Los Angeles’s finest private collections of American collagists. Everyone needs a hobby.
Stacey’s son Zachary is a few years older than Ruby and has always been frighteningly precocious. That night, while Peter rushed around the kitchen scraping drippings into gravy boats and chopping vegetables for the salad, Stacey stood in his way, reading aloud from an essay Zachary had written on the long-term repercussions of the national deficit on the capacity of United States to engage in international borrowing.
“I want an unbiased, professional opinion,” she was saying. “Is it crazy to think the Los Angeles Times would publish an op-ed piece by a ten-year-old?”
“I don’t know, Stace,” Peter said. “That’s not really the kind of writing I do.”
“I know it’s not the kind of writing you do, I’m just trying to decide whether the writing is good enough to send off for publication.”
Peter began pulling the drumsticks off the three chickens he’d roasted. Our oven might not cook evenly, but it sure could cook a lot of food.
Kat wrinkled her forehead. “I didn’t understand a word of it, Stacey,” she said. “Which probably means it’s erudite enough for the Times.” Kat and I met in prenatal yoga classes. She had found this house for us after much Sturm and Drang, including the murder of one of the occupants of the first house we’d wanted to buy. Having me as a client was probably one of the reasons that Kat decided to quit the real estate business to stay home with her kids.
Kat’s baby, Azure, was a delicate and fine-featured little thing, slender and graceful even as a six-month-old. She had miniature hands and feet, large round eyes, and a mass of dark curls. Next to her, Sadie looked like a German weight lifter.
“Are you sure I can’t help with something?” Kat said.
“Peter hates when people try to help in the kitchen,” Stacey said. “He doesn’t even like it when Juliet tries to.”
Peter said, “I don’t object to Juliet’s help on principle. It’s just that she’s totally incompetent and more likely to do permanent damage to the kitchen than get the dinner on the table.”
“That’s so unfair,” I said. “I’ll have you know I know how to make mashed potatoes.”
“But I’m not like Juliet, Peter. I’m a good cook,” Kat said.
“Your help I object to on principle,” Peter said as he sliced the chicken.
“Why?” she said.
Stacey rolled her eyes. She’d heard this before.
Peter wiped his hands on his red-and-white checked apron. He said, “Here’s the thing: I don’t want you to help in my kitchen, because when I go to your house, I don’t want to help in yours. I just want to sit around and be waited on.”
“Are you sure you’re not Iranian?” Kat asked.
“Very funny,” her husband, Reza, said. He had just wandered in from a protracted tour of the house led by Ruby and Isaac. “I saw your office, Peter. It’s quite something.”
“It’s definitely something,” I said. “We’re just not sure what.”
Peter accepted assistance in ferrying the meal to the dining room and we all sat down at the heavy oak table. Even with ten chairs and two highchairs, the room didn’t seem crowded. It was long and narrow, running the entire length of the house. Like the other rooms it had wrought-iron sconces, although the ones in here weren’t gargoyles. They were meant to look like candles, complete with dripping wax and flickering flames.
While we were serving ourselves from the heaping platters, Andy, Stacey’s husband, said, “I’m hoping I’ll be able to hit you up for a new public interest project my firm’s pro bono office has gotten involved in.”
“What’s that?” Peter said doubtfully. Andy is a corporate lawyer. It was hard to imagine him prying himself away from a hostile takeover to file 501(c)3 papers for a public interest organization.
“Hoops for Humanity,” he said. “It runs basketball programs in low income neighborhoods. The idea is to give the kids something to do so they’re not out on the street dealing drugs and robbing people.”
“Basketball players rob people?” Isaac asked.
“No,” Ruby said. “That’s the point. Basketball players don’t rob people. Right, Andy?”
“Exactly,” Andy said.
“It’s not really quite the point,” I said. When I was a public defender, Andy was one of the people who always asked me how I could possibly live with myself for defending “that kind of person.” I couldn’t even shut him up by pointing out that, as far as harm to humanity goes, my note-drop bank robbers hurt far fewer people, even if you consider the bank’s investors and depositors, than Andy’s take-over clients. My clients had never brought down entire banking and business conglomerates, causing the unemployment of thousands and the bankrupting of pension programs. That argument never made much headway with Andy. He’s one of those guys who thinks that the Enron management team shouldn’t have been penalized for seeing an opportunity and exploiting it.
I said, “I think the basketball programs are designed to protect kids, to give them a place to go. I think it’s more of a question of providing a mentoring system, opportunities for positive social interactions, that kind of thing.”
“There’s where you’re wrong,” Andy said. “It’s an investment program. Invest a few dollars on balls and courts and keep the criminal element busy. The good kids are already doing their homework in the library every afternoon; they don’t need basketball. This program is great because it targets the really dangerous ones, the ones we want shooting hoops instead of preying on us and our families.”
Every time Andy has an affair with some twenty-two-year-old I cross my fingers and hope that this is the time Stacey will finally cut him loose. They’ve been separated and reconciled more times than I can count. They even filed for divorce once. It never fails; he promises to change, she lets him move back in, and he plays at devoted husband and father for just long enough to ease her suspicions. Then, as inevitably as cockroaches return to a New York apartment after the exterminator’s come and gone, Andy goes back to his old ways. I can’t stand the man. I really can’t.
“Why are they dangerous, Mama?” Isaac said.
“Because they shoot people,” Ashkon, Kat’s older son, said. He’s Isaac’s age, and they share a fascination with things like guns, shooting, and death. “They shoot people with machine guns and pistols.”
“All right, enough is enough,” I said. “They do not shoot people, whoever they are. Andy, I don’t want to get into a long sociological discussion about the prevalence of violence in the inner city, and the struggles of inner-city children faced with a country that views their color as enough reason to cross to the other side of the street and deny them basic rights like a clean place to live. Or about
a government that spends ten times more incarcerating children than it ever bothered to spend educating them.”
“At some point even victims need to take responsibility for their own behavior,” Andy said, sanctimoniously.
The thing is, I agreed with him. I agree that the culture of victimization exploits the victim as much or more than the victimizer, and that individual responsibility is important. I agree that a basketball program is a terrific idea, even if all it’s designed to do is keep kids busy so they have no time to jack cars. But what always amazes me about the people who make these arguments, people like Andy, is that they assume that if the positions were reversed, if they were living not in Brentwood McMansions but in the Thurgood Marshall projects, if they were forced to study in a school with no funds for art programs, Advanced Placement classes, or even textbooks, if their parents were serving twenty-year sentences for nonviolent drug offenses, they would be one of the good kids. They always assume that they would be working in the public library after school, studying for their college entrance exams and avoiding the seduction of the street. They always assume that they would successfully pull themselves up by their bootstraps and excel. Nobody ever imagines that he would be one of the ones who couldn’t hack it, one of the ones who would fall prey to the easy oblivion of the crack pipe, one of the ones who would decide that there are easier ways to pay your mother’s rent and buy your baby’s Pampers than to work at McDonald’s for six bucks an hour.
“It sounds like a great program,” I said, biting my tongue. “We’d love to support it.”
“Great,” Andy said. “I’ll put you guys down for two tickets to the first gala fund-raiser. Unless you want to take a whole table? Depending on where you sit, it’s either ten or twenty thousand dollars for a table.”
“Andy, don’t be ridiculous. They’ll sit at our table,” Stacey said.
“Can we be excused?” Ruby said.
“Sure,” I said, happy enough to get her and the others away from the all-too-adult conversation.
“Can we put on a video?” she asked.
“Try to find something else to do,” Peter said. “You’ve got a whole posse of kids here. Play explorers or something.”
“There’s nothing to explore!” Ruby said. “We know every place. Can’t we please just watch a movie?”
Peter said, “Zachary and Ashkon don’t know all the secret places in the house. I’m sure you guys can figure out something to do. We’ll call you when it’s time for dessert.”
Ruby looked appealingly at me, as if seeking review from the bench. I just shook my head and waved the four children out of the room. “Show them the attic,” I said. “Just be careful with the ladder.”
“Is it very high?” Kat asked. “Are you sure they’ll be all right?”
“It’s fine,” I said. “It’s one of those pull-down things. It’s more like a set of steps than a ladder.”
“Maybe they should pile pillows at the base of it, in case someone stumbles,” Kat said. “Ashkon!” she called after the children. “Ruby! Make sure you pad the floor under the ladder with something.” She turned back to me. “I’m not sure the attic is such a good idea. Ashkon’s a little nervous about heights.”
“I’ll tell them to keep to the main floors,” Peter said, getting up and following the children. When he came back he asked our guests, “Did you guys see the stories in the paper about the serial killer they caught?”
“What a horror,” Stacey said. “I just can’t believe this could be happening a few miles from us, and we heard nothing about it. It’s terrible.”
“Juliet was the one who pointed out that the murders were connected,” Peter said. He told the story of my search for Violetta’s murder.
“That’s amazing,” Kat said. “I’m so impressed with you.”
Stacey said, “You were driving around at night in South Central Los Angeles, by yourself? Are you insane?”
“Al was with me most of the time.”
“Oh, Al, well that makes me feel better,” she said sarcastically. “Is his car bulletproof? Was he providing protective cover with an assault rifle?”
I stood up and started stacking our dirty plates. “It’s not as dangerous as you think.”
“Sweetie, they found a serial killer. And the maniac who killed your client is still out there. Of course it’s dangerous.”
I knew Stacey was just concerned about me. I knew, too, that she was right. But I still resented what she said.
“My client isn’t Violetta. My client is her sister, and by extension the rest of the family. They’ve gotten no help from the police, and they’re living in a special kind of hell knowing that the man who killed Violetta is still at large. They deserve to have someone on their side.”
Stacey caught my wrist in her hand, “Hey, I know they do. And they’re lucky to have someone as tenacious as you, but please be careful, okay? Give me your word that you won’t do anything stupid.”
“You’ll never find the guy who killed her,” Andy said. “It’s probably just another lunatic. The city is lousy with them.”
“Well, I have to try,” I said. As I carried the dishes into the kitchen I wondered if Stacey had noticed that I hadn’t promised anything.
Twenty
I worked from home the next day, which I tried to do at least a couple of days a week. It limited my actual productive time to naps and car trips, but it was sometimes better than driving all the way down to Westminster. It also allowed me to multitask, or as Peter says, do many things badly at the same time, which is what I was doing when Heavenly returned my call. I picked up the phone while I pulled a crumpled silk T-shirt out of the dryer. I flipped over the tag and read, Dry Clean Only.
“I was calling to find out what happened between Ronnie and Violetta at Sunday dinner the week before she was killed,” I said. I had debated calling Ronnie and asking him directly, but I wasn’t sure I’d get a straight answer from him. Heavenly was more likely to tell the truth, I hoped.
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“Heavenly?”
“What are you talking about?” she said.
“Your mother told me that she told Violetta to leave because she got drunk and was acting silly with Ronnie. What does your mother mean by acting silly?”
“She said that? She said Violetta was acting silly with Ronnie?”
“Yes, she did,” I said. I lugged the overflowing laundry basket into the dining room where I had a nice large expanse to fold on.
“Look,” Heavenly said. “You know my sister was not a perfect person. She had a lot of problems that she just could not control. She couldn’t control herself when she drank, and she sure couldn’t control herself when she used drugs.”
“I know, Heavenly, and I’m not trying to condemn her. I’m just trying to get an idea of what was going on with her right before she died. You know, get a fix on her emotional state.”
“How is hearing all this ugly family stuff going to help you find her killer?”
I paused, the phone tucked up under my chin, a half-folded sweatshirt in my hands. Could Heavenly really not imagine the answer to that question?
I had not underestimated her.
She said, “Ronnie had nothing to do with Violetta’s death. The very idea is crazy. I’m not paying you to make up stories about my brother.”
“I’m not saying he did. You’re paying me to turn up what information I can, and the only way I know how to do that is to ask a lot of questions.”
Heavenly remained silent for a few moments. Then she said, “I’m going to tell you what happened, but only because I’m sure it means nothing.”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
“My mother doesn’t keep alcohol in the house, but poor Thomas had been on duty for something like two days straight, and he was exhausted and stressed out. He brought a six-pack, maybe two. Violetta was fine before he and Chantelle came. She was playing with Vashon, she looked at his ho
mework and his report card. She even did Monisha’s hair. When Ronnie came, she was sweet as sugar with him, just like a big sister, asking about his girlfriends and his classes. But when Thomas showed up with that beer, well, Violetta just got to work on it. You could see Mama getting more and more upset; she took it real hard when Violetta was like that. Violetta barely touched her food. Mama made a gumbo and Violetta just picked at it, all the while drinking her beers. After dinner, Ronnie and the children put on a video. Violetta started talking about how there was no room on the couch for her. Then she sat down in Ronnie’s lap. Next thing we know he was jumping up, and she was lying on the floor hollering. Mama came rushing from the kitchen yelling at him that he hurt his sister, and Ronnie said Violetta was touching him.”
“Touching him like . . .”
“Touching him like a sister has no business touching her brother.”
I was holding a pair of Isaac’s pants in one hand, and Ruby’s T-shirt in the other. Now I dropped them on the table. “Had anything like that ever happened before?” I asked.
“With Ronnie? No.” There was a meaningful silence on the other end of the phone.
“With someone else? One of your other brothers?”
“Walter’s been in jail for nearly ten years. Marcel’s only been gone for three, but I can’t imagine he would have stood for that.”
“With who, then?”
She didn’t speak.
“With you?”
Bye-Bye, Black Sheep Page 10