by Robert Crais
She shook her head.
“You get Eddie to help you?”
She cocked her head. “How do you know about Eddie?”
“The Blue Fairy told me.”
“You’re strange.”
“You know what the yakuza is?”
Shrug. “I don’t care.”
“Eddie’s in the yakuza. He’s a professional thug. You like him and you think he likes you, but all Eddie wants is the Hagakure.”
She took a nervous drag on the Salem, then pushed it out through the fence and let it drop down the slope. Mid-summer with the brush dry, the whole ridge could burn off.
I said, “I’m trying to figure out what to do, kid, and you’re not helping me. You have supposedly been kidnapped, and the cops and the FBI are involved. They are looking for you and they are looking for the book. They are going to find you, and when they do they are going to take you home. They won’t stand around and wonder what’s best.”
She crossed her arms and chewed at her upper lip. The lip was chapped and split and had been chewed a lot. “I won’t go back.”
I said, “Your parents are assholes, and that’s rough, but it’s not the end of the world. You can survive them, and you don’t need guys like Eddie Tang or Kira Asano to do it. You can work past them to be the person you want to be. A lot of kids do.”
For just a moment the nervousness seemed to pass and Mimi grew still. She looked at me as if I were a silly, offensive man and then she rubbed at her face with her hands. She said, “You don’t know anything.”
“Maybe not. If you don’t want to go home, there are other places.”
“I like it here.”
“Here sucks. You’re going to have to talk to the cops and let them know what’s going on and deal with them. They don’t like it when people steal valuable things and pretend to be kidnapped and cost the taxpayers a lot of time and money.”
She recrossed her arms so that her right hand was beneath her left arm. The right fingers began to pinch her left side. Hard, nervous pinches. “You don’t understand,” she said slowly. “I will kill myself first.”
Great. High drama in Teen Town. “You’ve been found. Sooner or later you are going to have to talk to your parents.”
“No.”
“Now, without the cops involved, is better. There are people that work with kids and their parents who can be there to help. They’ve been known to help bring a family close together again.”
Mimi Warren made the little smile, then looked directly at me. “My father is close enough.”
I took slow deep breaths and felt myself grow cold. She pinched at her side and chewed at her lip, then stared down into the valley at things that were too far away to see. Her eyes took on the jumpy vacant look I’d seen on street kids down on Hollywood Boulevard, kids who’d had it so hard back home in Indianapolis or Kankakee or Bogalusa that they weren’t right any more and never would be. When she said she would kill herself, she had meant it. “Mimi, does your father have sex with you?”
The red eyes leaked and she began to rock. She said, “I hope they changed their minds and didn’t give him that fucking award.” She didn’t say it to me. She just sort of whispered it.
I said, “Does your father sexually molest you?”
The right fingers moved faster, digging into the soft flesh of her side and squeezing. She probably didn’t even know she was doing it. I wanted to reach out and stop her.
“Does your mother know?”
Shrug. The tears dropped down her cheeks and into her mouth. She dug out another cigarette and lit it. Her fingers were wet from wiping away tears and left gray marks on the paper. She made the giggle and it was confused and crazy. She said, “Eddie and I are going to get married. He said we’re going to live in a penthouse apartment on Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood and I’m going to have babies and we’ll go to the beach a lot.” She said it in the to-herself voice.
“You want to stay at my place?”
She shook her head.
“There’s a woman I know named Carol Hillegas. She works with kids who have problems like this. What if I take you there?”
She shook her head again. I’m with people who love me.
I took a deep breath, let it out. “Okay. I’m going to let you stay here. I’m not going to call the cops, and I’m not going to tell your parents. You won’t have to go home and you won’t have to see your father if you don’t want to.” I took out one of my cards and I put it in her hand and she looked at it but probably didn’t see much. “That gets me at home or my office, and if I’m not there a machine picks up. I want you to stay here. I don’t want you to go nightclubbing and I don’t want you to go out with Eddie Tang.”
The giggle.
“Eddie Tang is a bad man, babe.”
The giggle again, and then she made a wet sound. Her slight body shook and heaved and she put her face in her hands and she cried. I put my arms around her and I held her and I glared at Frank. I said, “I can’t tell you things are going to be wonderful. I can’t tell you that things will ever be right. All I know is that things have happened to you that shouldn’t have and you’re going to need help straightening it all out and I will make sure you get that help. Okay?”
She nodded. She was still rocking. She said, “I’m so messed up. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
I held her until she ran out of tears. I said, “I’ll talk to Carol Hillegas and then I’ll give you a call. We can fix this.”
She nodded again.
When I left, Mimi Warren was standing at the edge of the tennis court, staring out at the valley, rocking. Bobby stood in the gate, blocking my way and acting tough. He said, “Have a good time?”
I went very close to him and said, “If anything happens to her, I will kill you.”
Bobby stopped smiling. Frank took a step in, then pulled Bobby back. Bobby licked his lips and didn’t move. Frank looked at me. “Forget him,” he said.
I stared at Bobby hard enough to stop his heart, and then I left.
27
I walked out the long drive toward Mulholland. The gate swung open when I got there, and I went through, and then the gate closed. I got into the Corvette and closed the door and took a deep breath and rubbed very hard at my eyes. I pressed my fingers into my cheeks and under the line of my jaw and behind my neck and over my temples. The muscles in my neck and at the base of my skull and the tops of my shoulders were as tight as spinnaker lines and I couldn’t make them loosen.
I drove back along Mulholland to the Stop & Go, and called Carol Hillegas. In the past, when I’ve had to find runaways who’d taken to the streets, Carol has always proven a help. She knows kids, and counsels them at her halfway house in Hollywood. I gave her the short version and said I needed her help and asked if I could stop by. She told me she’d make some time around eleven. I hung up, then called Jillian Becker. I said, “I need you to meet me in Hollywood in half an hour.”
She said, “I’m really very busy.”
“It’s about Mimi.”
“Have you found her?” She said it slowly. Scared, maybe.
“Will you meet me?”
She didn’t answer.
I said, “This isn’t a time to worry about business. I know where she is and I’ve spoken with her and now there are some things that have to be discussed. Is Bradley back from Kyoto?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to involve Bradley or Sheila until after we’ve talked.”
“Why not?”
I didn’t say anything.
After a very long while, she said, “All right. Where should I go?”
When I got to the halfway house, Jillian Becker was out front, leaning against her BMW. She was wearing a cream-colored pants suit with a white silk blouse and black Sanford Hutton sunglasses with electric-blue mirrorshade lenses. The halfway house was in what used to be a two-story pre-war apartment building on a ratty street called Carlton Way, one
block south of Hollywood Boulevard, off Gower. There was a liquor store on the corner where guys with no place to go sat on the curb, and old Taco Bell cups littered the street, and a stack of empty Texaco oil cans on a plot of dead grass, and a tiny bungalow house with a hand-painted sign hanging from the porch that said PALMISTRY. The halfway house had a neat lawn and a fresh coat of paint and was the best-kept property on the street. I think Jillian Becker was hiding behind the sunglasses.
I said, “One thing about me, I really know how to show a girl a good time.”
She said, “Is Mimi in there?”
“No.”
“Why do you want me here and not Bradley and Sheila? If this has to do with Mimi, Bradley and Sheila should be here.”
“No,” I said, “if Bradley were here I would shoot him.”
Jillian Becker stared at me through her mirrorshades, then looked over at the unshaven men sitting on the curb, then looked back at me. She said, “You really mean that, don’t you?”
“Let’s go inside.”
We went through the little gate and up the walk and into the house. There was a tiny entry with a hardwood floor and an old-fashioned coat rack and a sign that said LEAVE THE BULLSHIT AT THE DOOR. To our left there was a stair that went up to the second floor, and to our right there was a little reception area with a yellow Formica counter and a telephone and a blackboard for group announcements. A blond boy with long straight hair and a little blue cross tattooed on the back of his left hand was sitting behind the counter. He was reading a worn-out, spine-rolled copy of Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. He looked up when we walked in. “Hi,” I said. “We’re here to see Carol.”
The blond kid closed the Heinlein on a finger, said he’d tell Carol, and came around the counter to take the stairs up two at a time.
Jillian Becker took off the mirrorshades and stood stiffly by the Formica counter. “What kind of place is this?”
“Halfway house for kids. Most of the kids here are runaways from middle-class homes and middle-class mommas and daddies. Things got a little out of hand back in Ohio. Sometimes things got a lot out of hand. So they end up here in the Land of Dreams hooking or peddling dope or scamming and they get grabbed by the cops. If they are very lucky, the cops give them over to Carol.”
The blond kid came back down the stairs, said Carol was making coffee, and that we could go on up. We did. There was a narrow landing on the second floor and a long hall that went past four dormitory rooms, two for boys and two for girls. A girl who couldn’t have been more than twelve was on her hands and knees scrubbing the baseboard. She had a bright pink scar running along the length of her left tricep. Knife. Jillian Becker stared at the scar.
Carol Hillegas’s office was at the end of the hall. She appeared in the door, took my hand, gave me a kiss, then introduced herself to Jillian Becker and showed us in. Carol Hillegas was tall and thin and wearing her hair shorter than the last time I’d seen her. There were new streaks of gray in it. She had a long face and thin lips and was wearing a pair of faded Levi’s and a green Hawaiian shirt with flowers and birds on it and open-toed Mexican sandals. She wore the shirt tucked into her pants. The office had a new coat of paint, but the secondhand desk was the same and so were the wooden chairs and the textbooks and file cabinets and diplomas on the wall. There was an aluminum-frame sliding window in the north wall. If you looked out, you could see the big red X of the Pussycat Theatre up on Hollywood Boulevard. “Very nice, Carol,” I said. “Upgrading.”
“It’s all this government subsidy. I’m thinking about putting in a Jacuzzi.”
When we were seated and had coffee, Carol looked at Jillian and smiled. “What’s your position in this case, Ms. Becker?”
“I work for the girl’s father. I’m not related to her.”
I said, “Jillian’s here because I’m going to need help with the parents. The more she knows, the more help she’ll be.”
“So far,” Jillian said coolly, “I don’t know anything. He hasn’t told me what’s going on.”
Carol gave Jillian a warm smile. “He’s like that. Secrets give him a sense of power.”
“Bitch,” I said.
Carol laughed, then leaned back in her chair and said, “Tell me about this little girl.”
I told Carol Hillegas all of it. When I got to the part about the cigarettes, Jillian Becker sat forward and brought one hand to her mouth and stayed like that. I told them about Eddie Tang and following him to the Pago Pago Club and finding Mimi, and then following her to Kira Asano’s. When I mentioned Asano, Jillian moved her hand from her mouth and said, “Bradley opened a hotel in Laguna Beach last summer. Asano had a showing in the hotel gallery.”
I said, “Would Mimi have gone to the opening?”
“Yes. She probably went down with Sheila.”
I told them about my talk with Mimi, and about her refusal to return home. Then I told them why. “She said she couldn’t go home because her father sexually molests her.”
Jillian Becker drew in a breath as sharp as a rifle’s crack. She said, “My God.” Then she stood up and went to the window.
Carol said, “You left her at Asano’s?”
“Yes.”
Jillian Becker shook her head and said, “This can’t be. I’ve known these people for years.” She shook her head twice.
Carol Hillegas got up and poured herself another cup of coffee. I’d once seen Carol Hillegas drink fourteen large cups of 7-Eleven coffee in a single Saturday morning. She said, “Leaving her at Asano’s was probably all right. Mimi’s there because she feels secure, and that’s probably the most important thing right now. In an environment where there is an incestuous relationship, the child loses all sense of security because there is never a safe, nurturing time. The person whom the child should be able to trust most is the source of fear and anxiety.”
Jillian Becker turned away from the window, came back, and sat on the edge of her seat. “I can’t believe Sheila could even suspect this and keep quiet.” She looked at me. “You’ve seen how she is.”
Carol drank more coffee and leaned back in her chair. She looked at Jillian and her face took on a more female quality, as if what she were about to say was somehow more female than male. “The mother might not know. She might only suspect, and there is a high likelihood that she would reject that suspicion out of hand. Somewhere along the line whatever the mother had with the father stopped, and he turned to their daughter. A way to look at it is that the daughter has usurped the mother’s power and position in the household. The daughter has proven herself more desirable and more satisfying to the male. More womanly. That’s not an easy thing to accept.”
“Sheila has a tough household position,” I said. “Wow.”
Carol looked at me and the female thing in her face was cool. “Understand that incest is a family problem with a tremendously complex dynamic. It is also one of the most socially shameful things a person can confront. No one wants to admit it, everyone feels guilty about it, and everyone is afraid of it.”
I said, “Great.”
“Something like this cannot be handled privately. By law, any licensed therapist or counselor has to report a suspected or admitted case of incest to the Department of Public Social Services Child Abuse Unit. The Department dispatches a field investigator who works with the private therapist, if there is one, or the district attorney’s office and police, if those two agencies are required. Incest is a violation of the criminal code and charges can be filed, but they usually aren’t if the offending parent and family agree to participate in therapy.”
Jillian said, “What if the parent refuses?”
“As I said, charges could be filed, but if the child won’t testify, and most of them won’t, there’s really nothing that can be done. The child would have to go into single therapy, but unless the parent and child work together, it is very difficult to get past the scars this kind of thing leaves.”
I said, “What about Mimi?�
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“There’s no way I can make a diagnosis based on hearsay. You have to work with the client, and it can take many, many hours over many, many weeks. But clearly this girl is demonstrating severe aberrational behavior. She repeatedly inflicts pain upon herself, and she went to bizarre lengths to escape her environment. Most kids want to run, they just run. They don’t need to stage a phony kidnapping. The anger this child must be feeling is enormous, and most of it is directed at herself. That’s why the masochistic behavior. Another reason is that, subjectively, Mimi is looking for someone who will love her. When a person hurts herself the way Mimi has, they’re doing it because they want someone to make them stop.”
Jillian was nodding. “And the person who makes them stop is the person who loves them.”
Carol Hillegas said, “Essentially, yes. Sexual abuse isn’t love. It’s abuse.” She looked at me. “Mimi is like everyone else. She just wants to feel loved.”
“Should I call the cops?”
Carol shrugged. “The cops won’t kill her. They’ll take her in and when this comes out they’ll refer it to the DA and to Social Services and they’ll get her a counselor. Your instinct was to avoid the trauma of the arrest and the questioning, and in an ideal world that would be the best way to go. Mimi’s had enough trauma.”
I said, “If I can get Mimi and her parents to agree to come in, will you help?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the most trauma-free way to do it?”
“The girl should be in a stabilized environment, and should have established some trust with the therapist. If that’s me, I’d like to spend some time with her and some time with the parents before we try to bring them together. After we’re used to each other, we can begin the group work on neutral ground and see where it leads us.”
Jillian Becker said softly, “Bradley will never agree.”
I looked at her and leaned forward in my chair. “Yes, he will.”