“Convicted offenders can’t live near places where children congregate,” I said. “There’s a park down the block on Santo Tomas.”
“The law says a quarter mile of any school,” Moriaga explained. “I ain’t high-risk.”
My heart jumped in my chest. He wasn’t high-risk? If a man with thousands of convictions wasn’t high risk, who the hell was?
“And this is LA,” Moriaga said. “Where ain’t there kids?”
Colin squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Were you around the day Chanita disappeared?”
Moriaga hopped off the couch and bounded over to the aquarium. He opened the canister of fish food that sat on the tank’s top and drizzled flakes into the water. “I was in San Diego hangin’ out with homies I ain’t seen in a while.”
“Where in San Diego?” Colin asked.
“At the sports arena. For this Control Machete reunion concert.”
“And how long were you there?” I asked.
“The weekend.”
“And then what did you do?”
“I came back here.” Moriaga smiled. “I told y’all: I ain’t about that life no more.”
“That’s wonderful to hear,” I said. “But you’re a registered sex offender, and we have your DNA on file. So let’s cut the crap, all right, cuz the machine’s gonna tell me the truth.”
The ex-con shook his head. “I ain’t done nothing like what you saying.”
“Fine,” I said, “but I still want the names of your homies in San Diego as well as the name of your PO.”
Moriaga rattled off names and phone numbers.
I slipped my pen and pad back into my bag. “You working now, Raul?”
Moriaga laughed. “You know how hard it is for a felon to get a job? It’s like the system’s setting me up to fail.” He smiled, then said, “Is the LAPD hiring? I can type, do shorthand, file. Got my AA when I was in. Went to counseling, too. They put me on some brake fluid.”
“What kind?” I asked.
“Paxil and Eulexin. I got me a sexual addiction, and I let it get the better of me. I’m straight now. I ain’t no diaper sniper, a’ight? Them girls just looked older than what they was.”
I stood from the couch, now eager to return to fresh air and the outside’s darkness. “Just know that if you’re lying to us, we’ll be back. If you leave this state anytime soon, if you leave this country, we’re gonna have a problem. You’ve jumped bail a few times, and the marshals had to hunt you down at the border. If you put me through any bullshit like that, you’ll be back in prison, and I’ll see to it that you’re in general population.” Even in hellholes like Pelican Bay, child molesters were persona non grata.
“I ain’t goin’ nowhere,” he said. “I ain’t got nothing to run from.”
“One more thing,” I said. “Can you bring me all of your shoes?”
Moriaga cocked his head, then headed to his bedroom.
Colin followed him.
Both men returned. Moriaga carried three pairs of sneaks in his arms.
I took pictures of the bottoms: whorls, stripes, and chevrons.
On one pair, the Adidas, the tread was thick with red mud.
My heart thudded in my chest. “Mind if I borrow this pair? We’ll process them as soon as possible and get them back to you.” I pulled a large evidence baggie from my satchel and handed it to Colin.
Moriaga darkened as he stared at his confiscated kicks, but he said nothing.
A minute later, he walked us to the front door. “I ain’t killed nobody, Detective Norton. I did my time, even for shit I ain’t done.” His eyes glistened with tears. “I just want a new start.”
21
No one answered at Chanita’s apartment, which meant we couldn’t ask her family about the teen’s whereabouts during the bloom time of deadly nightshade. And so Colin and I tromped back through the courtyard and past those security gates.
Hillcrest Avenue had been abandoned by fake Girl Scouts. North of us, a troop of fat gray storm clouds had wrapped the black Santa Monica Mountains. Trees rustled in the wind, and a few loose palm fronds fell onto the wet sidewalk.
“I wasn’t expectin’ that,” Colin said as we approached our cars. “He was very polite, especially compared to the young ladies who greeted us. In total denial about his crimes, though. But, hell, no one in jail admits to ‘doing it.’”
I cocked an eyebrow. “You obviously didn’t read his jacket.”
“I skimmed,” Colin said, placing the bag with Moriaga’s shoes into the Charger’s trunk. “I’ve been sick, remember? Anyway, the guy’s obsessed with his fish. He cares about something. Wonderful, right?”
I went rigid and not because of the cold. “Guessing by your reaction, you did even less than skim Moriaga’s jacket. His fish. His babies. Pet therapy. Touching, huh?”
“Kinda.” Colin pulled out his cell phone. “Other than the fact that they dictate the amount of light that comes into his apartment, it’s not that weird.”
My mouth twisted into a crooked smile. “Colin, Moriaga would drive around LA County, offering young girls a ride home. Some would say no. Some would say yes. The ones who said yes got in his car. But he didn’t drive them home. No, he drove them to his uncle’s garage in El Monte. That’s where he raped them. After a few hours, he’d drive them back. Then, he’d buy a fish, name it, and add it to his sixty-gallon saltwater tank.”
Colin paled.
“He has ten of them in that aquarium,” I continued. “Graciella, Jasmine, Janelle, Bianca, Keisha, Leila, Brianna, Esmeralda, and Selena. Those are the names of the girls he raped, Colin. And the tenth girl? He closed her hand in a vise and chopped off three of her fingers and most of her palm. Because she was black—that’s what he told her. Hence, the fish with the gimpy fin named Raquel. The last kid he took wasn’t a girl, and there ain’t no fish named after Hector. The boy told his sister about what Moriaga had done to him, and the rest is history.”
Colin opened his mouth to respond, but he was too busy having a stroke.
“Not so touching now, is it?” I chuckled, pleased to see his perceptions bashed against the sharp rocks of reality. I glanced at my watch—almost six thirty. Enough time to stop by Mom’s, rush home, shower, and throw pasta into a pot of boiling water. “So, I need to leave.”
“Just like that?” he said, eyes glazed.
“You wanna stand around some more and talk about how sick that poor, polite man is?”
He pushed out a breath, ran a hand through his hair, and plucked his phone from his jacket pocket. “Don’t you have a date tonight?”
“I do.”
“I’ll take Moriaga’s shoes to the lab before I go home.” With a slick smile on his face, he was now texting on his phone. “That girl I met in the aisle at Walgreens? Carly? Wants to be my naughty nurse tonight.”
I pivoted on my heel. “Wonderful. Don’t leave your cocktail unattended this time.”
“Who thinks of shit like puttin’ Visine in drinks?”
“Ladies who steal money from their date’s wallets while he’s busy crapping on the toilet cuz she put Visine in his rum and Coke.”
“Happened to me once, Judge Judy. Geez. Shouldn’t have told you.” He tossed me a salute, then whistled to his car.
By the time I reached my mother’s neighborhood, the rain had come. Puddles abounded, and drivers slowly navigated the slick streets as though the pools of water were made of liquid nitrogen and kittens.
Martin, Mom’s boyfriend, was dragging a green trash can from the side of the house to the street. Even by the way he lined up that green can with the blue and black ones, I could tell that the large man in the wet tracksuit and sopping house shoes had retired from the U.S. Marines. A major, he’d seen action in Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. But he hadn’t yet conquered Georgia Starr.
“Lou!” he boomed now. “How’s it goin’, girl?”
We hugged.
At seventy-two years old, Martin was still solid mu
scle. Tonight, he smelled of wet grass and beer. “I just stopped by to help your mom…” He waved a beefy hand at the trash bins.
Guess we were still pretending that he didn’t live here most of the time, even though I had spotted his slippers—the very ones on his feet now—on the left side of her bed more than once.
He tapped my shoulder. “Thanks for that gift certificate. Nice resort.”
“You get in some golfing?”
“Oh yeah.” He ran his palm over his wet and wavy silver hair. “Not used to being pampered. I’ve been to Palm Springs before, but not that part of Palm Springs. Your mom loved it. Wants to go back.”
I faked a sneer and pointed at him. “And you will take her back.”
He stooped to snatch a wet newspaper from the sidewalk. “Stopping over for dinner?”
“Nope,” I said, walking to the front door. “Just bringing the queen some entertainment.” I held up a gift bag filled with puzzle books. “Is everything okay?”
He gave me a strange look, then rubbed his neck. “Oh, you know.”
A very real sneer found its way to my face, and white-hot rage swept over me.
Victor Starr.
Since his return, that son of a bitch was upending everything, including this long-awaited, loving relationship Mom had found after denying herself happiness for so long.
The television in the living room was on and turned to the Arizona State–Texas game. Mom sat in the sunroom, pink-framed glasses perched on her nose, short gray hair wrapped in a silk scarf. A small lamp on a tiny table burned brightly and illuminated the tomato and basil plants, as well as the crossword puzzle she was now working.
“What’s an eight-letter word for ‘neighborhood’?” she asked without looking up.
I brushed dried tomato leaves from the other chair and sat. “Vicinity.”
She narrowed her eyes, then shook her head. “Another word.”
“Umm … Environs.”
She wrote the word, then smiled at me. “Hello, dear daughter.”
I held out the gift bag of books. “Pour toi.”
She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Just in time.”
“You’ve run out?”
“Umhmm.” She pointed to the curled-page puzzle books near the succulent garden.
“Guess where I was today?”
She opened a new book. “Standing in a dark alley, blood everywhere?”
“Close.” I plopped into a chair. “Back in the Jungle, at our old apartment building. Miss Alberta’s unit, to be exact.”
Mom sucked her teeth. “She still there?”
“Yep. She says hi.”
“One of the sons finally turn up dead?”
“No, but her granddaughter did. Nothing like you’d expect. In the gifted program at Madison. A talented photographer…”
“That’s too bad.” Mom leveled a gaze at me. “Maybe now Alberta knows how it feels. If she had a husband, maybe I’d go over and try and sleep with him.”
“Whoa,” I said, holding up a hand. “What the hell, Mom?”
Her eyes went hot. “That woman was always chasing after your father. I wouldn’t be surprised if…” She shook her head, then stared out at the dark, wet yard.
“Hello?”
She sighed. “Will you call that man, please? You being stubborn is drawing this out, making it longer and more torturous than it has to be.”
I stared at her coolly, not threatened, not at all.
“He calls me like we’re still married.” She closed the crossword book and tossed it on the footstool. “Twice a day, morning and evening.”
“Does he know you’re divorced?”
She frowned. “Are you seriously asking me that, Elouise?”
“I just don’t remember you two going down to the divorce court and having it out over who’s the rightful owner of our grocery-store set of encyclopedias.”
Mom stood from her chair and stomped out of the sunroom. “Let me show you.”
I followed her through the living room and hallway, past walls of framed pictures of Tori and me in childhood, of me in a cadet’s uniform, of Mom and her sister Savannah.
We reached her bedroom, a mecca for Laura Ashley fanatics—blue and yellow flowers everywhere. The only nonfloral objects were the bed’s headboard, the dresser, and the desk set.
Arms crossed, I leaned against the bureau and spotted Martin’s reading glasses and US Veterans magazine on the nightstand.
Mom pulled out a desk drawer stuffed with folders and grabbed a thick accordion file. She removed the bungee cord, browsed through the papers, and then pulled out a section of yellowed newspaper, which she thrust at me. “I didn’t need his permission to get divorced.”
State of California District Court … in RE the marriage of: Victor Starr … Your spouse has filed a lawsuit against you for dissolution of your marriage … must serve your answer upon petitioner within thirty (30) days of the date you were served with this summons …
The date: March 26, 1990. I had just started high school.
“I remember…” The paper shook in my hands. “You wouldn’t let me read the paper on my own. You’d hand me the comics or the Metro section.”
“Because I didn’t want you to read that,” she said, pointing to the clip.
Serve by publication. Place a legal notice in the paper where your spouse had lived last. The notice ran once a week for four weeks. After that, your spouse (in this case, Victor Starr) was considered served.
“Did he see it?” I asked.
“I don’t care,” Mom said, her neck swerving just like ShaQuan’s. “He saw it, he didn’t see it, doesn’t matter to me. Victor and I are legally divorced.”
“Maybe if you showed—”
“Why? Why do I have to do everything? He gets to leave, and now I have to do something? Again?” Her nostrils flared as spit gathered at the corners of her mouth. “I don’t care if his heart is broken and bleeding. He had a choice: his wife and family—or his dick. I don’t need to tell you which he chose.”
My face burned, and I handed her the newspaper.
He had left that Sunday morning for the newspaper and a bag of lima beans for my science project. More than twenty years had passed before he stood on my porch—and without the bag of beans. And now I wanted to ask Mom, “Who did he leave us for?” since she’d tossed sex into the kettle. But the thought of her answering made me light-headed. I wasn’t ready for that truth—part of me still called nipples “nickels” and believed babies lived in heaven with storks wearing postal caps.
“Our last breakfast together,” I said, “did you know…?”
She clutched her neck and stared at the carpet. Then, she shrugged.
That day, Mom had stood at our picture window, tugging her earlobe, then perched on the couch to work on a big book of crossword puzzles.
“That night,” I said, “you were supposed to make lasagna.”
“But I couldn’t—we had to plant your lima bean.” She inhaled and slowly released it. “He’s trying to destroy what I have, Lou.” She shoved the file back into the drawer. “He’s always been a jealous man who hated any attention I received. Insecure bastard. Needed me to kiss his ass every day, all day.
“I’ve told Martin over and over again: I don’t love Victor. That part of me no longer exists. That woman no longer exists. But that bastard is trying to wreck it all.”
And now, I felt so very tired. My injured wrist throbbed, and my knees ached because now I knew my job: serve as a distraction to Victor Starr. Be a rodeo clown for the bull.
“What the hell does he want?” I asked.
“To be in our lives again.”
“As though nothing happened?” I asked. “And if we don’t want him in our lives?”
Mom’s lip curled. “He’ll bully his way in. He’s stubborn like that, Elouise, and he expects me to bend just like I would have bent thirty years ago.” She tried to blink back tears, but one escaped and slid down her che
ek. “I’m this close”—she held up trembling, pinched fingers—“this close to taking a gun and killing that man. I swear I’ll do it, and you’ll end up arresting—”
“Mom,” I said, my voice weak.
“Cuz Martin is threatening to get involved, and I don’t want him getting in trouble. That’s what Vic wants.”
Great. More pressure. “Mom, this is crazy.”
“You don’t understand.”
“What?” I screeched. “I don’t under—?”
“You were a child,” she shouted. “Think about how your heart broke every time Gregory stepped out on you. Now, imagine that happening and you had two children, two girls who were watching you and needing you to be strong. How could Victor leave me, leave us so easily? He told me that he agonized over leaving. Bullshit. Did he send money to help take care of you and Tori? Did he call for birthdays or graduations?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Did he call when Tori disappeared?”
“No.”
“It took me forever to leave that apartment,” Mom said, “not only because I was waiting for Tori to come back home, but because I was waiting for him to come back home, too.”
We had finally left the Jungle at the end of my tenth-grade year, moving into a duplex in Leimert Park with big windows, lots of light, no laundry-room bullies, not haunted by ghosts.
Mom hugged herself as she perched on the bed. “I’m asking you to call him not because I’m scared of him. I’m not scared. I’m asking you because…” She held my gaze. “Because if you don’t, I will go to jail with your father’s blood on my hands. Just call him. Please?”
22
Mom’s plea—Just call him—sounded so easy. Pick up the phone, say hello, and listen. Baking a chocolate soufflé on the moon, blindfolded, was easier. By the time I pulled into Syeeda’s driveway, though, I knew:
I’d be Mom’s rodeo clown.
Next door, Mr. Mendelbaum, dressed in yellow galoshes, a black suit, and yarmulke, was pushing a trash bin to the sidewalk. Mrs. Mendelbaum, a back-lit shadow in the doorway, pointed from the porch and shouted, “Not there! Over there!”
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