by Mary McCoy
“Crack wise while you can,” he said, “but this next part is going to sting.”
Once he’d finished cleaning up my bloody face, Cyrus dabbed the gauze under my eye. I flinched, and he quickly pulled his hand away.
“Does it hurt?”
“A little,” I said.
He blew a cool, gentle breath over the cut. Without meaning to, I shivered.
“Sorry,” I said, looking down at the tabletop. “It tickled.”
I could feel my cheeks flush with embarrassment, but if Cyrus noticed, he was polite enough to act like he hadn’t. He applied salve to the raw skin on my wrists and knees and cleaned the cuts I’d gotten in Griffith Park. While I switched the frozen peas from my jaw to my blackening eye, he got me a cup of water and shook two aspirin tablets out of a bottle for me.
As I swallowed them down, I realized how normal it felt to be sitting in my kitchen, drinking out of a juice glass, despite everything that had happened that evening. For the first time since my bacon sandwich in the bathtub, I felt safe.
“Thank you, Cyrus,” I said when he’d finished.
“It’s nothing,” he said. “And please, call me Cy.”
He leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath.
“Alice, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything sooner.”
We’d passed the first aid and small talk portion of the evening. He’d come here to tell me something, and I could see him working up the nerve to do it.
“Was it because Jerry was there?”
He shook his head.
“It didn’t have anything to do with that. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t see what good it would do. I can’t prove anything. I can’t do anything about it.”
In the kitchen at Musso & Frank, I’d known Cy was holding something back. When Jerry asked him if he knew where Gabrielle was, he said he didn’t know. But he also said that he didn’t know who tried to kill my sister, and that was a question Jerry hadn’t asked.
It had to be more than that, though. Back at the restaurant, Cy had told Jerry he was trying to stay out of sight, that he was afraid of ending up like Annie and Irma. He’d acted like he was being hunted.
“You know something about the night Annie was attacked, don’t you?” I asked.
“How much do you already know?” he asked, looking at me warily.
I didn’t have evidence, and like Cy, I couldn’t prove anything, but there was only one direction everything I knew pointed.
“Was it Conrad?”
Cy nodded. “I was working at Marty’s that night. Conrad and a guy named Rex came in, and they offered me some extra money to give them a table in the back and make sure no one bothered them. Nobody would have anyway—all the men who go to Marty’s are sailors and traveling businessmen trying to get laid.”
Cy turned a deep shade of scarlet when he said this.
“I’m sorry. That’s just the most polite term I can think of to describe their intentions.”
“It’s fine, Cy. Go on.”
“So, the usual customers buy a lot of drinks, flirt, try to look like big spenders. But the thing is, all the women in Marty’s work for Marty. I pour them ginger ale all night, they pretend it’s champagne, and they just keep ordering more. Before the guys know it, their wallets are empty and they’re too drunk to argue when we toss them out. That’s Marty’s business model, anyway. No one in that room gives two shits about Conrad Donahue—sorry, Alice. No one cares about—”
“Just say what you want to,” I said.
I couldn’t stand to hear him be careful around me, like I was some sheltered little priss who would pass out cold if I heard bad language.
“I just didn’t want to offend—”
I cut him off before he could finish.
“Like the patrons of Marty’s, I also do not give two shits.”
“So I took the money and let them sit wherever they wanted,” Cy said.
He seemed a little bit more at ease with me now, but I could tell he was still trying to figure me out. I wondered if he’d watched his language around Annie.
“They left Marty’s around midnight, and an hour later they were back. Conrad’s not much of a drinker, but he put away three whiskeys in a row. I heard him say to Rex, ‘The girl wasn’t with her,’ and he was pretty upset about it, but Rex told him not to worry because she wouldn’t get far without her friend.
“I didn’t put together what they were talking about until the next morning, when Jerry came around looking for Annie. Conrad didn’t pay much attention to me when he came to Marty’s, but I don’t think he knows Annie’s my friend, either. That’s why I’ve been lying low.”
Cy sank back in his chair, exhausted.
“So, that’s what happened. That’s what I didn’t tell you before.”
And now I knew.
It wasn’t exactly a shock, but knowing for sure that they’d done it made everything seem more real. I could see what had happened that night in the park like it was a movie playing in my head. Cy told me what he knew, Jerry told me what he knew, and the rest I could fill in for myself.
Annie went to the park that night to meet a police officer, only instead, it was Conrad and Rex waiting for her. They got a surprise, too, because Gabrielle was supposed to be there with her and she wasn’t. They didn’t care about my sister. It was Gabrielle they were after, and when Annie wouldn’t tell them where she was, they tried to beat the answer out of her.
There was still something I didn’t understand, though.
“How did Conrad know she was going to be there?” I asked.
Cy put his elbows on the table and rested his chin in his hand as he thought.
“Annie was nervous about the plan from the beginning—too many people knew about it. That’s probably why she didn’t bring Gabrielle with her,” he said. “My guess is Jerry’s contact at the LAPD let the word slip. Maybe on purpose, maybe not.”
I thought about how brave Annie was to walk into the park that night knowing the whole thing might be a setup. She’d done it anyway, and she’d done everything in her power to make sure that Gabrielle was safe. I wondered what she thought when she found Conrad and Rex waiting for her there, knowing that the people she’d trusted to help had failed her.
“Are you okay?” Cy asked, and I realized that I wasn’t sure how long I’d been staring at the same spot on the kitchen table and that my hands were shaking.
“I’m—I’m not,” I said. I didn’t recognize my own voice, it sounded so cracked and wrung out.
When I lifted my head, Cy was craning his neck, trying to get a better look at my face. He looked unsure of himself, and a little like he’d rather be somewhere else. Maybe he could patch up a scrape, I thought, but a girl who turned strange, dead-eyed, and quiet for minutes at a time was beyond his skill or patience.
Or maybe I was wrong.
“Come here,” he said, and held out his arms to me.
I’d never liked being touched—it came with too many strings attached. If one of the boys I’d dated had opened his arms to me like that, a minute later, he’d be trying to snake a hand up my shirt. My mother only fussed over me when she was putting on a show for her friends, or when she was feeling drunk and maudlin. And the last time Annie had given me a hug, she left.
But Cy didn’t know me. He didn’t owe me anything, and I didn’t have anything he wanted. Maybe that was why I leaned into his arms.
I rested my head on his shoulder and let him pull me close to his chest and stroke my hair. Every time I thought he was about to let go, he held me tighter, and every time, I felt relieved because I wasn’t ready to let go yet.
No one had ever held me like that before, hard and close and as long as I needed.
I don’t know how long we stayed like that, but when I finally let go, I felt like I could breathe again. I looked at him. He looked at me, and neither one of us said anything until I saw Cy’s eyes flicker up to the clock that hung over the sink. It was four in
the morning.
“Oh, shit,” he said, and this time he didn’t correct himself. “Alice, I’m so sorry, but I have to go to work.”
“You just came from work.”
“I know, and now I have to go to my other job.”
“I’m sorry I kept you up all night,” I said. “How many jobs do you have, anyway?”
Cy thought about this for a minute.
“Is that a hard question?” I asked.
“No, I just realized that I must be an extremely lazy person, because I work one less job than your sister does,” he said. “There’s Marty’s, where I’m going now to clean bathrooms and take out the trash, and Musso and Frank. I work for Jerry when he needs me. And when time allows, I pursue my love of the stage and screen. Not that I ever get paid for that.”
“What about Annie?” I asked, realizing Cy knew things about her life I couldn’t, things I wanted to know.
“Let’s see,” Cy said, counting off the jobs on his fingers. “She works for Jerry, too, but you already knew that. She waits tables at a diner near Olvera Street. She makes deliveries for a bookie, reads movie scripts for an agent. And she works at Marty’s.”
“She’s one of the girls who drinks ginger ale and pretends it’s champagne?” I asked, taken aback.
“She’s pretty dazzling at it,” Cy said. “No businessman’s wallet is safe when she is near.”
“Oh.”
Maybe I was a sheltered little priss after all, but I wasn’t sure how much more I wanted to hear about it. Something in my face must have given away my thoughts, because Cy’s smile stiffened, and I could tell he wanted to take back what he’d said.
That was when the telephone started to ring. I froze in place at the kitchen table, staring down the hall toward it.
After four rings, Cy asked, “Are you going to answer it?”
I let it ring twice more. If it was my mother, I didn’t want to talk to her, not in the shape she’d be in.
The phone rang again.
If it was Conrad Donahue or Rex or the man with the blue polka-dot suspenders, I didn’t want them to know I was here.
If it was my father or Jerry Shaffer, I didn’t know what I’d say to them. And if it was the hospital calling with bad news, I didn’t want to know.
“They’ll hang up,” I said.
Twelve rings. Then fifteen.
“Listen, my car is parked outside,” Cy said. “If it’s Conrad or Rex, we’ll go out the back door, and I’ll have you out of here in less than a minute.”
I shook my head. There wasn’t anybody I wanted to talk to badly enough to take the risk. Or at least that was what I’d thought until Cy asked, “What if it’s Gabrielle?”
I scrambled for the phone, picked up the receiver, and held it to my ear.
“Hello?” I whispered.
In the background, I heard shouting, then a siren.
“Who is this?” I asked.
As soon as she opened her mouth and drew a breath, I knew who was calling. Cassie sounded tired, scared, and at least as shaky as I did, and the first thing she said to me was, “You were telling the truth.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Cassie, what’s going on?”
“I’m at the hospital with Annie and your mother.”
I sat down on the floor in the hallway, my back up against the wall, my legs stretched out in front of me.
“With my mother? What are you doing there? How did she—”
“I stayed up to make sure you came back,” Cassie said. “But I fell asleep, so I didn’t know if you’d made it home or not, and I was worried, so I realized that the only way to find out was to break into your house and see if you were there.”
“You did what?”
“I climbed the palm tree and went in through your bedroom window, but I tripped, and the noise woke up your mom, and she came running in, and I was there and you weren’t, and it was one in the morning.”
“So you told her,” I said.
Cy met my eyes and mouthed, “Who is it?” I motioned for him to wait, then grabbed a pen and paper from the hall table and started to write while Cassie explained.
“I’m sorry, Alice. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“It’s okay, Cassie. It doesn’t matter.”
I held up what I’d written and showed it to Cy:
Cassie (my friend) at hosp. w/ Annie & Mom
“How is she?”
“Not so good, Alice. I think she’s about to snap.”
I was confused until I realized she wasn’t talking about Annie, and that my sheltered friend with her teetotaling Midwestern parents was in no way prepared to deal with my mother.
“Keep her calm. Go through her purse and hide her pills, her flask, whatever she brought with her. Get her some coffee. See if you can get her to eat something, and I’ll be there as soon as I can. What about Annie? How is she?”
“That’s the other thing,” Cassie said. “Your mom had Annie transferred out of County Hospital. We’re at Cedars of Lebanon now. It’s fancier or something? I don’t know.”
Ordinarily, I would have rolled my eyes at my mother’s snobbishness—god forbid her daughter should lie in a coma at County Hospital alongside the riffraff—but when I heard the news, I felt like cheering. Conrad thought he knew where Annie was, but thanks to my mother, we were still one step ahead of him.
“What happened to you, Alice?” Cassie asked. “Why didn’t you come back?”
“Conrad Donahue kidnapped me at the pay phone, and he and some of his goons took my father and me up to Griffith Park to…”
I trailed off, worried that Cassie would hang up on me if I started talking about movie stars again.
“It’s okay, Alice,” Cassie said. “I believe you.”
I wondered if it was wise to tell Cassie anything else. I didn’t want to worry her or put her in any more danger than I already had, but it wasn’t fair to keep the truth from her, either. Whether she’d meant to be or not, she was in the middle of things now.
“Cassie, it was Conrad. He’s the one who tried to kill Annie. He had my father tied up in the trunk of his car. I thought he was going to kill us.”
I heard a hitch in Cassie’s breath.
“How’d you get away?”
“I ran,” I said. “I think my father got away, too, but I don’t know where he is now.”
“What should I tell your mother?”
“Tell her I’m on my way,” I said. “And Cassie…”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
After I hung up with Cassie, Cy said, “Let me give you a ride to the hospital.”
“Won’t you be late for work?” I asked.
“I don’t care.”
We cleaned up the kitchen first, put away the frozen peas, and gathered up the iodine-soaked cotton and the bloody hand towel to throw out.
“Why were you carrying this around?” Cy asked, holding up the old copy of the Los Angeles Times I’d picked up at the Red Car stop. It was spotted with blood, too.
I took the newspaper from him and folded it under my arm.
“I like to stay informed about the news of the world,” I said with a shrug.
“Even when you’re getting punched in the face?”
“Especially then.”
I followed Cy out the back door, locking up behind us, and we cut through the neighbors’ backyards until we came to the street where his car was parked. As we stepped out onto the sidewalk, I looked up and down the block for the Rolls-Royce, but there was only one car in sight. With its battered fender and flaking paint, I knew there wasn’t a chance it belonged to Conrad Donahue.
As we walked toward it, I thought about my father and wondered where he was right now. Was he still making his way through the brush, down the steep gravel paths to safety—or had Conrad caught up with him?
It was a huge park, I told myself, and my father would be able to go places a car wouldn’t. But it was so da
rk. Even if he got away, if he got lost or hurt, he’d be all alone out there. There was nothing I could do for him, I told myself, so it was better not to think about it. Only it wasn’t that easy.
Cy held the car door open for me, but when I started to get in, he put a hand on my shoulder.
“Wait,” he said.
I felt my body tense up. My thoughts had drifted a long way off from his kindness, off to a place where a hand on your shoulder meant you were about to get tossed into the backseat of a car.
“What?” I asked, jerking away from his touch.
His hand slipped from my shoulder, and he backed away, a hurt look on his face.
“You’re one of those nice girls, Alice. Nice house, nice things,” he said with a sad smile. “Only you’re not nice.”
When I pulled away from him, I hadn’t meant anything by it, and he hadn’t done anything wrong. But then he opened his mouth, and it was just like back at the restaurant. Once again, he stepped just a little too close, assumed just a little more than I liked.
“How would you know?” I asked, getting into the car and slamming the door behind me.
I sat there by myself for quite a while. Cy took his time walking around to the other side of the car, and when he finally got in, he stared straight ahead without saying a word.
I was about to get out of the car and find my own way to the hospital when he turned to me.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He put the car in gear, and we pulled out into the street. He didn’t turn on the headlights until we’d pulled onto Fairfax.
“I didn’t have any business talking to you like that.”
I waited for the explanation, the “but” that would wipe out all the words before it. It never came.
“It’s okay,” I said. I thought about saying more, but decided to follow Cy’s lead and leave it at that.
“What was it you wanted to tell me?” I asked a moment later. “Before we got in the car.”
When we stopped at a red light, he turned to face me and said, “I wanted to tell you that your sister has friends. She borrows cars and goes on road trips. She throws herself birthday parties. She still sings when she feels like it.”
