Macy paused. Rolly waited. DNA.
‘He said she went to be with her friends,’ Macy said. ‘That her friends had all gone away, so she felt lonely and sad. He said she took a walk in the stars.’
Rolly nodded again. ‘Is it OK if I ask another question now?’ he said.
‘Yeah. I guess. If you can make anything out of all that.’
‘Do you know who your birth mother was?’
‘I knew you were going to ask me that. Seems like the obvious thing, doesn’t it?’
‘That Aunt Betty’s your mother?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You think this baseball player might be your father?’
‘That makes as much sense as you being my father. Less, even.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Look at me. I’ve got lighter skin than either of them, and freckles. This blonde, kinky hair? There’s no coloring. It’s my natural hair. I mean, it wouldn’t make sense, heredity-wise, if they were both my parents, right?’
‘Yeah. I guess. I don’t really know how that stuff works.’
‘I did some reading. I’m a mutt, not a purebreed.’
‘We’re all mutts, in one way or the other.’
‘What’s your background?’
‘Norwegian on my mom’s side. My dad’s more Scotch Irish.’
‘Yeah, well, some of us are more mutty than others,’ said Macy. She lifted her eyelids and stared at Rolly again. ‘You ever seen anybody with eyes like these?’
‘No,’ said Rolly. ‘I can’t say I have.’
‘Wolf Girl,’ she said. ‘That’s what the kids on the rez used to call me. Because of my eyes. That and because I ran around in the hills by myself all the time.’
Rolly considered several things he could say about Macy’s eyes but none of them seemed appropriate; nothing a portly, fortyish man could say to a woman her age without sounding desperate or foolish. He resisted the temptation. The reservation kids had it right, though. There was something like wolf light in Macy’s eyes, a fierceness in her that stirred something inside him. He needed to stop it from stirring. He needed to keep his professional pants on.
‘When was the last time you saw Daddy Joe?’
‘Five years ago.’
‘Have you talked to him?’
‘Not since I left. There were some issues. We weren’t really on speaking terms when I left.’
‘What happened?’
‘Just the usual teenager stuff. I had to get out of that place. DNA.’
‘OK. You’re sure it was him, though, that brought the diddley bow tonight?’
‘I’m just going on what Vera said. A big guy. Older. Looked Indian. Daddy Joe’s big, enough that you notice it. He used to be chief of tribal police.’
‘Your Daddy Joe was a cop?’
‘I wouldn’t call the tribals real cops.’
‘You don’t get along with them, either?’
‘DNA,’ said Macy. ‘Anyway, it must be something important, this diddley bow thing. I don’t see Daddy Joe driving all the way down from the rez to give it to me otherwise.’
‘Maybe you should call him tomorrow.’
‘Can’t go there. Too complicated. How is it with your dad?’
‘My dad?’
‘Yeah. How well do you get along with your dad?’
Rolly smiled. ‘DNA,’ he said.
Macy laughed. ‘That bad, huh, Waters?’
Rolly nodded.
‘Yeah, I get it,’ said Macy. ‘Thing is, I can’t figure out how Daddy Joe found me here. He’s retired. He just sits up there on the rez all the time, in his house, going over his old files.’
‘Maybe he saw your name in the paper or something.’
Macy reached in her back pocket, pulled out a postcard-sized piece of paper and passed it to Rolly. ‘That’s my flyer,’ she said. ‘I post those around town.’
‘DJ Crazy Macy?’ said Rolly, reading the flyer. It had a photo of Macy, her dirty-blonde dreadlocks spread around her head, backlit into a luminescent corona.
‘That’s my stage name,’ she said. ‘One of ’em. Dubstep Blonde, Dizzy Gold Negra. It depends on what kind of mixes I’m playing. This weekend I’m Crazy Macy.’
Rolly resisted the impulse to make a smart remark. Macy looked like she expected one.
‘You want to know about my necklace?’ she said.
‘Hmm?’
‘You didn’t notice it, did you?’
‘Sure I noticed. It’s gold, right?’
‘Uh, yeah. And?’
‘It’s a tube. Looks like there’s an engraving.’
‘You know, Vera told me you were this hot shit detective guy, but I’m starting to wonder if she’s smoked too many jalapeños.’
‘It’s late and I’m tired. I’ll give you my card. We can talk tomorrow.’
‘You still haven’t noticed? Look at the damn picture again.’
Rolly looked at the photo on the back of the diddley bow. He noticed this time. He looked back at Macy. ‘Aunt Betty’s got the same necklace, hasn’t she?’
‘That’s what it looks like to me.’
Macy undid her choker. She passed it to Rolly. ‘Read it,’ she said.
Rolly squinted his eyes. ‘Eight, three …’
‘Eight, three, six, eight, nine, two, nine, five, four,’ said Macy, completing the number for him.
‘What does that mean?’
‘No idea,’ said Macy.
Rolly flipped the gold tube around to look at the other side.
‘The same numbers are on both sides,’ said Macy. ‘That’s all there is.’
‘Maybe it’s a date?’ he said.
‘I thought that at first,’ said Macy. ‘But it doesn’t make any sense as a date.’
Rolly tried several permutations of the number. He had to admit the date idea made no sense at all. It wasn’t a phone number either; it was missing a digit.
‘How long have you had this?’ he asked.
‘A little more than five years,’ Macy said. ‘Daddy Joe said it was mine.’
‘He gave this to you?’
‘He said he was going to. When I was of age.’
‘Does he know what the number means?’
‘I guess he might.’
‘Don’t you think you should ask him?’
‘Like I said, me and Daddy Joe have some issues. He said he was going to give the necklace to me when I turned legal. Eighteen. He would have, I guess.’
‘What’s that mean? You guess?’
‘I left the rez before I turned eighteen. I ran away. I took the necklace.’
‘You mean you stole it?’
‘Yeah, that’s right, Waters. I stole it. I lived in the police chief’s house and I stole his twenty-four-karat gold necklace.’
THREE
The Hospital
Alicia Waters sat in the waiting room at Mercy Hospital wearing a rumpled green sweatsuit. Her blonde wig was askew. Long streaks of black mascara ran from her eyes. Her pretty pink face looked puffy and red. It was the first time Rolly had seen his stepmom looking less than impeccable. She was usually a chubby bundle of smiling enthusiasm and spotless cosmetics, always tidy, bright-eyed and more than presentable for a night out at the officer’s club. But Alicia hadn’t had time to pick out an outfit or touch up her makeup after her husband, Rolly’s father, had collapsed in their driveway, turning blue and clutching his chest.
‘It’s that damn Tioga,’ she said, wiping her eyes.
‘What’s a Tioga?’ said Rolly.
‘He bought a mobile home. I never really liked the idea, but he got so excited about it. He even stopped drinking. Well, he was drinking less – you know, not like he does sometimes.’
‘I’m sure that was nice,’ said Rolly’s real mother, Judith, who sat next to Alicia, providing Kleenex and sympathy. ‘Did you have a trip planned?’
‘Oh, I couldn’t keep up with it. He kept coming up with new places,’ said Alicia. ‘First it
was a week, then a month.’ She shuddered. ‘I mean, can you imagine me spending a whole month cooped up in that hideous thing?’
‘You were leaving soon?’
‘Next week,’ said Alicia, dabbing at her eyes with the tissue Rolly’s mother had provided.
‘I guess that trip’s off,’ said Rolly. His mother glared at him.
‘I went along with it,’ said Alicia. ‘I mean, I thought it would be nice to go somewhere – perhaps a long weekend to try out the whole thing. One of those nice campgrounds where there’s lots of people to meet. I thought that would be enough, that maybe he’d get over it. He kept saying he wanted to see the country, like it used to be. To get out in nature or something.’
Alicia shuddered and blew her nose.
‘Ugh,’ she said, though it was unclear if she was referring to nature in general or the soggy tissue she clutched in her hand. Rolly’s mother handed her another Kleenex.
‘What happened?’ said Rolly.
‘He was working on the damn thing this morning. Early. Changing the oil or something, I don’t know. He had these big wrenches. I went out to bring him some coffee. I knew something was wrong. His face was all purple. I made him sit down. I feel so guilty.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ said Rolly.
‘He was trying to fix it up nice for me so I’d be happy. He knew I didn’t like it, the whole idea. We bought it used, you see. It needed some work. He spent a lot of time out there. It was too much for someone his age. I wish they’d tell us something.’
Rolly’s mother looked over at him. ‘Why don’t you check again, dear,’ she said. ‘See if they’ve got any news.’
Rolly nodded. He turned and walked to the check-in station.
‘Yes, sir,’ said the clerk, without looking up. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I wanted to know if there’s any news on my father. Dean Waters.’
‘A doctor or nurse will come out to see you when he’s ready.’
‘He had a heart attack.’
The clerk nodded. ‘Let me check his status,’ she said. She tapped a few times on the computer then looked up at Rolly.
‘He’s still listed in resuscitation,’ she said.
‘What does that mean?’
‘That’s the most recent entry. He may have been moved by now, but there’s no update.’
‘When will we know something?’
‘I’m sorry. I’m not able tell you that, sir. A doctor or nurse will speak to you when they’re able to provide an update.’
‘Thank you.’ Rolly nodded. He walked back to his mother and Alicia.
‘No news is good news, I guess,’ he said. Alicia began crying again. Rolly’s mother shot him an exasperated glance.
‘Rolly,’ she said, ‘why don’t you see if you can find the cafeteria, maybe bring something back for the rest of us?’
‘I couldn’t eat a thing,’ said Alicia.
‘Maybe some juice,’ said Rolly’s mother. ‘You need to have something.’
Rolly’s mother shot another glance at him. He didn’t argue. He doubted they would know anything soon. An emergency room nurse he had dated told him the secret once. Take any time estimate given by the ER staff and multiply it by four. If someone said you’d be out in thirty minutes, it would be two hours. If they told you an hour, it would probably take four. It was the painstaking sluggishness at the heart of the beast. He’d been in enough emergency rooms to confirm it. He walked back to the check-in station. The clerk gave him directions to the cafeteria.
He went through the swinging doors and out of the ward, spotted an empty chair and slumped into it. His body felt heavy, weighed down with conflicted feelings. He hated his father for having a heart attack. He hated his father for being a drunk, for the way his father had treated his mother, but mostly he hated his father for being an arrogant son-of-a-bitch who was going to die without apologies. His father was an alcoholic bastard who’d never given Rolly anything, beyond a predilection for bottled spirits.
Rolly knew it was stupid to feel this way, like he’d been cheated. He was partly to blame. He’d kept his distance, never speaking his mind, reluctant to face his father straight on. Dean Waters had captained two naval warships, a wife and a son. He’d always been the man who gave orders, until the U.S. Navy demoted him and took away his command, until his wife and son abandoned their home. The old sailor had always worked too hard, too intensely. He’d always drunk too much, too, but he’d never learned to listen to anyone. He never cared what anyone said. Now he’d pressed his second wife into first-mate status for a landlocked cruise she never wanted to take, a low-rent re-enactment of his glory days on the high seas. Except this time they’d be making ports of call in a crummy old Tioga, docking in trailer parks.
Rolly rubbed his chest, confounded by the pain. His own heart would get him someday if he didn’t start eating better. Other vices hadn’t managed to do him in yet. Alcohol. Drugs. Angry husbands of women who didn’t wear wedding rings. Car accidents. All had come close. He stood up and stretched. He wasn’t dead yet. And neither was his father, as far as he knew. He walked down the hall and followed the signs.
The cafeteria was quiet when he arrived. The lunch hour had passed. He picked up an apple and a banana for his mother and a bottle of orange juice for Alicia. He paid the cashier, walked into the dining room and placed the tray with the large blueberry muffin and a cup of coffee he’d bought for himself on a table in the corner. He sat down and tried the muffin. It tasted like lemonized chemicals. The coffee hit his gut like pure acid. He finished both items anyway. He didn’t want to go back to the emergency room.
He thought about Macy Starr, the woman he’d met the night before at the cantina. She’d agreed to let him borrow the diddley bow, the one-string guitar, so he could do some research. The diddley bow intrigued him – the quality of the work that had been put into something that was usually a rustic homemade instrument. He wanted to take it by Norwood’s guitar shop if he got a chance, find out if Rob had seen one like it, if he could tell him anything about it.
He hadn’t mentioned it to Macy, but he’d recognized the baseball player in the photograph laminated onto the back. He’d never seen the player in a minor-league uniform before, so he needed to be sure. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, searched through the directory and tapped on a name. There was a picture on the wall, drawn with crayons, of a hospital building with flowers and stick-figure children dancing around it.
‘Hey,’ said Max Gemeinhardt, answering the phone.
‘Hey,’ said Rolly. ‘I’ve got a trivia question for you. Baseball. The hometown team.’
‘Shoot,’ said Max. Max was a baseball encyclopedia. You couldn’t stump him.
‘Eric Ozzie,’ said Rolly. ‘Did he play in the minors?’
‘Of course he did. Wenfield’s the only local guy who skipped the minors. Well, there was Naly and the first Dale Roberts, but neither of them stayed around long. And they both got sent down at some point.’
‘Where’d he play? Ozzie, I mean. Did he ever suit up for a team called the Coconuts?’
‘Sure. Hawaii. That was our Triple-A team back then. They’re gone now. Why’d you want to know?’
‘I’ve got a photo of him, in his Coconuts uniform. I think it’s him, anyway.’
‘Well, if it looks like him it probably is.’
‘He looks pretty young.’
‘Just out of high school, I imagine. He got called up halfway through his second year.’
‘How long ago was that?’
‘Geez, let me think. Not so good with dates anymore. I guess it’d be about twenty years ago, give or take.’
‘The Sneaker.’
‘He hates that nickname, you know.’
‘Yeah. I’m sure that’s why he based his whole business model around it.’
‘The man’s not stupid. The branding was there. So what’s this photo you’ve got?’
‘A client gave it to me. She’s trying
to identify a girl who’s standing next to him. Ozzie’s in his baseball uniform with his arm around the girl. It looks like it’s after a game or something. My client doesn’t know that it’s him.’
‘How old is the girl in the photograph?’
‘I don’t know. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen.’
‘You didn’t tell your client it was Ozzie?’
‘No.’
‘You want to talk to him?’
‘Well, it seems like that might be the easiest way to find out who the girl is.’
‘If he remembers.’
‘Yeah. If he remembers.’
‘That’s a long time ago.’
‘My client says she was adopted.’
‘This isn’t some kind of paternity thing, is it?’
‘My client’s about the right age, but I don’t think so. She seems more interested in the girl who’s with Ozzie. She says it’s her aunt but it might be her mother. That’s what she’s trying to find out.’
‘Sounds a little squeegee to me.’
‘That’s why I didn’t tell her who he was. I wanted to be sure.’
‘You did the right thing. You want me to call him?’
‘Hmm?’
‘I did some legal work for Ozzie a few years back. It was a medical thing. That quack doctor who prescribed the painkillers for him. We settled with the insurance guys, out of court.’
‘So Ozzie owes you one?’
‘Not really. I got my share of the money. It was a pretty good settlement, though. Helped him finance that first restaurant. He’ll take a call from me.’
‘Well,’ said Rolly, ‘if I try to call him I’ll have to go through the front office and leave a dozen messages before he calls me back. You know how that is.’
‘Let me call him. I’ll get back to you.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Glad to do it. How’s your mom?’
‘She’s OK.’
‘Something wrong?’
Rolly looked at the picture on the wall again. Children and flowers – simple shapes drawn in crayon colors.
‘I’m at the hospital. My dad had a heart attack.’
‘Oh, man, sorry to hear that.’
‘We’re all here. At Mercy. Mom and Alicia and me. In the ER.’
Desert City Diva Page 2