Mistletoe Mysteries

by Charlotte MacLeod

  I went to the fence and grasped its cold mesh with my fingers, staring down into the shifting light and shadows, wondering if Mike was among the ragged and hungry ranks. Many of the people were middle-aged to elderly, but there were also families with children and a scattering of young people. There was no way to tell, though, without scaling the fence myself and climbing down there. Eventually I turned away, realizing I had only enough time to get to the gay bar by ten.

  The transvestite’s name was Norma and she—he? I never know which to call them—was coldly beautiful. The two of us sat at a corner table in the bar, sipping champagne because Norma had insisted on it. (“After all, it’s Christmas Eve, darling!”) The bar, in spite of winking colored lights on its tree and flickering bayberry candles on each table, was gloomy and semideserted; Norma’s brave velvet finery and costume jewelry had about it more than a touch of the pathetic. She’d been sitting alone when I’d entered and had greeted me eagerly.

  I’d been put in touch with Norma by Ted Smalley, who is gay and has a wide-ranging acquaintance among all segments of the city’s homosexual community. Norma, he’d said, knew everything there was to know about what went on in Polk Gulch; if anyone could help me, it was she.

  The photo of Mike didn’t look familiar to Norma. “There are so many runaways on the street at this time of year,” she told me. “Kids get their hopes built up at Christmas time. When they find out Santa isn’t the great guy he’s cracked up to be, they take off. Like your nephew.”

  “So what would happen to a kid like him? Where would he go?”

  “Lots of places. There’s a hotel—the Vinton. A lot of runaways end up there at first, until their money runs out. If he’s into drugs, try any flophouse, doorway, or alley. If he’s connected with a pimp, look for him hustling.”

  My fingers tightened involuntarily on the stem of my champagne glass. Norma noticed and shook her elaborately coiffed head in sympathy. “Not a pretty thought, is it? But what do you see around here that’s pretty—except for me?” As she spoke the last words, her smile became self-mocking.

  “He’s been missing five days now,” I said, “and he only had fifty-some dollars on him. That’ll be gone by now, so he probably won’t be at the hotel, or any other. He’s never been into drugs. His father’s a musician, and a lot of his cronies are druggies; the kid actually disapproves of them. The other I don’t even want to think about—although I probably will have to, eventually.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Try the hotel. Go back and talk to the people at that vacant lot. Keep looking at each kid who walks by.”

  Norma stared at the photo of Mike that lay face up on the table between us. “It’s a damned shame, a nice-looking kid like that. He ought to be home with his family, trimming the tree, roasting chestnuts on the fire, or whatever other things families do.”

  “The American Christmas dream, huh?”

  “Yeah.” She smiled bleakly, raised her glass. “Here’s to the American Christmas dream—and to all the people it’s eluded.”

  I touched my glass to hers. “Including you and me.”

  “Including you and me. Let’s just hope it doesn’t elude young Mike forever.”

  The Vinton Hotel was a few blocks away, around the corner on Eddy Street. Its lobby was a flight up, over a closed sandwich shop, and I had to wait and be buzzed in before I could climb carpetless stairs that stank strongly of disinfectant and faintly of urine. Lobby was a misnomer, actually: it was more a narrow hall with a desk to one side, behind which sat a young black man with a tall afro. The air up there was thick with the odor of marijuana; I guessed he’d been spending his Christmas Eve with a joint. His eyes flashed panic when I reached in my bag for my identification. Then he realized it wasn’t a bust and relaxed somewhat.

  I took out another photo of Mike and laid it on the counter. “You seen this kid?”

  He barely glanced at it. “Nope, can’t help you.”

  I shoved it closer. “Take another look.”

  He did, pushed it back toward me. “I said no.”

  There was something about his tone that told me he was lying—would lie out of sheer perversity. I could get tough with him, make noises about talking to the hotel’s owners, mentioning how the place reeked of grass. The city’s fleabags had come under a good bit of media scrutiny recently; the owners wouldn’t want me to cause any trouble that would jeopardize this little goldmine that raked in outrageously high rents from transients, as well as government subsidized payments for welfare recipients. Still, there had to be a better way …

  “You work here every night?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Rough, on Christmas Eve.”

  He shrugged.

  “Christmas night, too?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “I understand what a rotten deal that is. You don’t think I’m running around out here in the cold because I like it, do you?”

  His eyes flickered to me, faintly interested. “You got no choice, either?”

  “Hell, no. The client says find the kid, I go looking. Not that it matters. I don’t have anything better to do.”

  “Know what you mean. Nothing for me at home, either.”

  “Where’s home?”

  “My real home, or where I live?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  “Where I live’s up there.” He gestured at the ceiling. “Room goes with the job. Home’s not there no more. Was in Motown, back before my ma died and things got so bad in the auto industry. I came out here thinking I’d find work.” He smiled ironically. “Well, I found it, didn’t I?”

  “At least it’s not as cold here as in Detroit.”

  “No, but it’s not home, either.” He paused, then reached for Mike’s picture. “Let me see that again.” Another pause. “Okay. He stayed here. Him and this blond chick got to be friends. She’s gone, too.”

  “Do you know the blond girl’s name?”

  “Yeah. Jane Smith. Original, huh?”

  “Can you describe her?”

  “Just a little blond, maybe five-two. Long hair. Nothing special about her.”

  “When did they leave?”

  “They were gone when I came on last night. The owner don’t put up with the ones that can’t pay, and the day man, he likes tossing their asses out on the street.”

  “How did the kid seem to you? Was he okay?”

  The man’s eyes met mine, held them for a moment. “Thought this was just a job to you.”

  “… He’s my nephew.”

  “Yeah, I guessed it might be something like that. Well, if you mean was he doing drugs or hustling, I’d say no. Maybe a little booze, that’s all. The girl was the same. Pretty straight kids. Nobody’d gotten to them yet.”

  “Let me ask you this: What would kids like that do after they’d been thrown out of here? Where would they hang out?”

  He considered. “There’s a greasy spoon on Polk, near O’Farrell. Owner’s an old guy, Iranian. He feels sorry for the kids, feeds them when they’re about to starve, tries to get them to go home. He might of seen those two.”

  “Would he be open tonight?”

  “Sure. Like I said, he’s Iranian. It’s not his holiday. Come to think of it, it’s not mine anymore, either.”

  “Why not?”

  Again the ironic smile. “Can’t celebrate peace-on-earth-good-will-to-men when you don’t believe in it anymore, now can you?”

  I reached into my bag and took out a twenty-dollar bill, slid it across the counter to him. “Peace on earth, and thanks.”

  He took it eagerly, then looked at it and shook his head. “You don’t have to.”

  “I want to. That makes a difference.”

  The “greasy spoon” was called The Coffee Break. It was small—just five tables and a lunch counter, old green linoleum floors, Formica and molded plastic furniture. A slender man with thinning gray hair sat behind the counter smoking a cigarette. A
couple of old women were hunched over coffee at a corner table. Next to the window was a dirty-haired blond girl; she was staring through the glass with blank eyes—another of the city’s casualties.

  I showed Mike’s picture to the man behind the counter. He told me Mike looked familiar, thought a minute, then snapped his fingers and said, “Hey, Angie.”

  The girl by the window turned. Full-face, I could see she was red-eyed and tear-streaked. The blankness of her gaze was due to misery, not drugs.

  “Take a look at the picture this lady has. Didn’t I see you with this kid yesterday?”

  She got up and came to the counter, self-consciously smoothing her wrinkled jacket and jeans. “Yeah,” she said after glancing at it, “that’s Michael.”

  “Where’s he now? The lady’s his aunt, wants to help him.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. He was at the Vinton, but he got kicked out the same time I did. We stayed down at the cellar in the vacant lot last night, but it was cold and scary. These drunks kept bothering us. Mr. Ahmeni, how long do you think it’s going to take my dad to get here?”

  “Take it easy. It’s a long drive from Oroville. I only called him an hour ago.” To me, Mr. Ahmeni added, “Angie’s going home for Christmas.”

  I studied her. Under all that grime, a pretty, conventional girl hid. I said, “Would you like a cup of coffee? Something to eat?”

  “I wouldn’t mind a Coke. I’ve been sponging off Mr. Ahmeni for hours.” She smiled faintly. “I guess he’d appreciate it if I sponged off somebody else for a change.”

  I bought us both Cokes and sat down with her. “When did you meet Mike?”

  “Three days ago, I guess. He was at the hotel when I got into town. He kind of looked out for me. I was glad; that place is pretty awful. A lot of addicts stay there. One OD’d in the stairwell the first night. But it’s cheap and they don’t ask questions. A guy I met on the bus coming down here told me about it.”

  “What did Mike do here in the city, do you know?”

  “Wandered around, mostly. One afternoon we went out to Ocean Beach and walked on the dunes.”

  “What about drugs or—”

  “Michael’s not into drugs. We drank some wine, is all. He’s … I don’t know how to describe it, but he’s not like a lot of the kids on the streets.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, he’s kind of … sensitive, deep.”

  “This sensitive soul ran away from home because his parents wouldn’t buy him a moped for Christmas.”

  Angie sighed. “You really don’t know anything about him, do you? You don’t even know he wants to be called Michael, not Mike.”

  That silenced me for a moment. It was true: I really didn’t know my nephew, not as a person. “Tell me about him.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Well, this business with the moped—what was that all about?”

  “It didn’t really have anything to do with the moped. At least, not much. It had to do with the kids at school.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, the way Michael told it, his family used to be kind of poor. At least there were some months when they worried about being able to pay the rent.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And then his father became a singing star and they moved to this awesome house in Pacific Palisades, and all of a sudden Michael was in school with all these rich kids. But he didn’t fit in. The kids, he said, were really into having things and doing drugs and partying. He couldn’t relate to it. He says it’s really hard to get into that kind of stuff when you’ve spent your life worrying about real things.”

  “Like if your parents are going to be able to pay the rent.”

  Angie nodded, her fringe of limp blond hair falling over her eyes. She brushed it back and went on. “I know about that; my folks don’t have much money, and my mom’s sick a lot. The kids, they sense you’re different and they don’t want to have anything to do with you. Michael was lonely at the new school, so he tried to fit in—tried too hard, I guess, by always having the latest stuff, the most expensive clothes. You know.”

  “And the moped was part of that.”

  “Uh-huh. But when his mom said he couldn’t have it, he realized what he’d been doing. And he also realized that the moped wouldn’t have done the trick anyway. Michael’s smart enough to know that people don’t fall all over you just because you’ve got another new toy. So he decided he’d never fit in, and he split. He says he feels more comfortable on the streets, because life here is real.” She paused, eyes filling, and looked away at the window. “God, is it real.”

  I followed the direction of her gaze: beyond the plate glass a girl of perhaps thirteen stumbled by. Her body was emaciated, her face blank, her eyes dull—the look of a far-gone junkie.

  I said to Angie, “When did you last see Mike … Michael?”

  “Around four this afternoon. Like I said, we spent the night in that cellar in the vacant lot. After that I knew I couldn’t hack it anymore, and I told him I’d decided to go home. He got pissed at me and took off.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do you think? I was abandoning him. I could go home, and he couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Michael’s … God, you don’t know a thing about him! He’s proud. He couldn’t admit to his parents that he couldn’t make it on his own. Any more than he could admit to them about not fitting in at school.”

  What she said surprised me and made me ashamed. Ashamed for Charlene, who had always referred to Mike as stubborn or bullheaded, but never as proud. And ashamed for myself, because I’d never really seen him, except as the leader of a pack jokingly referred to in family circles as “the little Savages.”

  “Angie,” I said, “do you have any idea where he might have gone after he left you?”

  She shook her head. “I wish I did. It would be nice if Michael could have a Christmas. He talked about how much he was going to miss it. He spent the whole time we were walking around on the dunes telling me about the Christmases they used to have, even though they didn’t have much money: the tree trimming, the homemade presents, the candlelit masses on Christmas Eve, the cookie decorating and the turkey dinners. Michael absolutely loves Christmas.”

  I hadn’t known that, either. For years I’d been too busy with my own life to do more than send each of the Savage kids a small check. Properly humbled, I thanked Angie for talking with me, wished her good luck with her parents, and went back out to continue combing the dark, silent streets.

  On my way back down Polk Street toward the Tenderloin, I stopped again at the chain link fence surrounding the vacant lot. I was fairly sure Mike was not among the people down there—not after his and Angie’s experience of the night before—but I was curious to see the place where they had spent that frightening time.

  The campfires still burned deep in the shelter of the cellar. Here and there drunks and addicts lay passed out on the ground; others who had not yet reached that state passed bottles and shared joints and needles; one group raised inebriated voices in a chorus of “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” In a far corner I saw another group—two women, three children, and a man—gathered around a scrawny Christmas tree.

  The tree had no ornaments, wasn’t really a tree at all, but just a top that someone had probably cut off and tossed away after finding that the one he’d bought was too tall for the height of his ceiling. There was no star atop it, no presents under it, no candy canes or popcorn chains, and there was certain to be no turkey dinner tomorrow. The people had nonetheless gathered around it and stood silently, their heads bowed in prayer.

  My throat tightened and I clutched at the fence, fighting back tears. Even though I spend a disproportionate amount of my professional life probing into events and behavior that would make the average person gag, every now and then the indestructible courage of the human spirit absolutely stuns me.

  I watched the scene
for a moment longer, then turned away, glancing at my watch. Its hands told me why the people were praying: Christmas Day was upon us. This was their midnight service.

  And then I realized that those people, who had nothing in the world with which to celebrate Christmas except somebody’s cast-off treetop, may have given me a priceless gift. I thought I knew now where I would find my nephew.

  When I arrived at Mission Dolores, the neoclassical façade of the basilica was bathed in floodlights, the dome and towers gleaming against the post-midnight sky. The street was choked with double-parked vehicles, and from within I heard voices raised in a joyous chorus. Beside the newer early twentieth-century structure, the small adobe church built in the late 1700s seemed dwarfed and enveloped in deep silence. I hurried up the wide steps to the arching wooden doors of the basilica, then took a moment to compose myself before entering.

  Like many of my generation, it had been years since I’d been even nominally a Catholic, but the old habit of reverence had never left me. I couldn’t just blunder in there and creep about, peering into every worshipper’s face, no matter how great my urgency. I waited until I felt relatively calm before pulling open the heavy door and stepping over the threshold.

  The mass was candlelit; the robed figures of the priest and altar boys moved slowly in the flickering, shifting light. The stained glass window behind the altar and those on the side walls gleamed richly. In contrast, the massive pillars reached upward to vaulted arches that were deeply shadowed. As I moved slowly along one of the side aisles, the voices of the choir swelled to a majestic finale.

  The congregants began to go forward to receive Communion. As they did, I was able to move less obtrusively, scanning the faces of the young people in the pews. Each time I spotted a teenaged boy, my heart quickened. Each time I felt a sharp stab of disappointment.

  I passed behind the waiting communicants, then moved unhurriedly up the nave and crossed to the far aisle. The church was darker and sparsely populated toward the rear; momentarily a pillar blocked my view of the altar. I moved around it.