Thursday's Child

by Teri White

  Beau swallowed hard. “I’m ready, yeah.”

  Robert paid the check and they walked out of the restaurant, stopping on the sidewalk. Robert held out a hand. “You hang tough, Beau.”

  They shook. “I will. You too. Thanks.”

  Robert walked away quickly. Beau was a nice kid. It was only too bad that the street would probably devour him whole before very long. The world could be a shitty place for somebody that dumb. Dumb wasn’t really the right word. Naive, that was it. Now that he thought about it, there was something about Beau that reminded him of Andy as a kid. A sort of goofy sweetness.

  But there wasn’t anything more he could do for him. His business right now was finding Marnie Dowd and then Danny Boyd. And he’d already gone to a lot of trouble for somebody who wasn’t his responsibility at all.

  He turned around for one more quick look, but Beau was no longer standing in front of the restaurant.

  Beau stayed in the shadows until he was pretty sure that Robert wasn’t going to turn around again. Then he stepped back out onto the sidewalk and walked after him.

  What he hoped to accomplish by following Robert wasn’t real clear. But since Robert was the first person in a long time to seem interested in what happened to him, Beau wasn’t going to give up the link just like that. Even Jonathan, a determined pacifist, had always admitted that there might be some things in life worth fighting for. Beau decided that this qualified.

  Ahead of him, Robert walked for several blocks and then went into a bar. Beau crouched across the street in the doorway of a closed record store. Maybe if Robert got a little drunk, like last night, he’d be in a more receptive mood. They could be friends, Beau thought, if only Robert would give it a chance.

  He hadn’t been lonely with Robert and he hadn’t been scared. The black hole in his stomach was gone. Yeah, that was worth fighting for.

  Even if it was Robert himself he had to fight with.

  4

  It was nearly two hours and several bars later before Robert finally spotted Marnie Dowd.

  She wasn’t aging very well. Of course, junkie hookers rarely did. Her long hair was dyed a harsh orange-red color, sort of what Lucy Ricardo’s hair might have looked like if the old shows hadn’t been done in black and white. She was wearing a purple miniskirt and a tight yellow blouse. A heavy mask of makeup didn’t hide the wrinkles on her face. For an instant, Robert almost felt sorry for Danny Boyd, coming out of prison after all that time and finding this worn-out broad waiting for him.

  He stood in a corner of the bar, nursing one beer, until Marnie, apparently deciding that her income prospects weren’t very good in the Diablo Bar, walked out. He went after her, following the woman for almost a block, until she stopped to light a cigarette. Then he walked up to her. “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi, yourself, sweetie,” she said, the Virginia Slim hanging from one corner of her mouth. “You looking for a date?”

  “Maybe.” This close, the evidence of drug use was even clearer on her ravaged face. How desperate would a man have to be to get laid to let her touch him? “How much?” he asked.

  “How much for what?” Marnie probably thought that she was being real cagey, making sure that he wasn’t a vice cop.

  He leaned closer, almost gagging on her perfume. “Blow-job,” he whispered. “How much for a blow-job?”

  “Twenty.”

  “You any good?”

  Impatient and bored, she flicked ashes away. “I’m experienced,” she said. “It doesn’t take a lot of brains to suck a cock and do it right.”

  What a charmer. “Okay,” he said.

  “You don’t have any diseases, do you?”

  “None to speak of. Let’s go to my car.”

  She followed him this time, around the corner and into an alley. After taking several steps into the darkness, she tossed the cigarette away. It made a shower of orange sparks as it fell. “Where the hell are you parked, lover boy?”

  “In here a little further. I don’t especially want an audience, you know.”

  She sighed and followed him again. Thank God for a druggie who needed a fix badly enough to be stupid. Abruptly, he stopped and turned around to face her. “This is far enough, Marnie.”

  “I thought—” She broke off and peered at him in the dim light. “You know my name? Who are you?”

  “I’m just a man with a few questions.”

  “I don’t like this,” Marnie Dowd said. “You can get somebody else to suck you off, buddy, ’cause I’m outta here.”

  She started away, but he grabbed her by one arm and pushed her up against the side of the building. “Not yet, sweetheart. I said there were some questions.”

  She glared at him.

  “I’m looking for Danny Boyd. Where is he?”

  She blinked. “Who?”

  “Danny Boyd,” he repeated tightly. “And don’t bother with the dumb act. I know you used to shack up with him.”

  “That was a long time ago. Before he got sent up.”

  “Well, he’s out now and I’ll bet you’ve seen him lately. Maybe you’re even playing house again.”

  She glanced around, as if looking for help, but there was none to be found. “What if we are? Why is that your fucking business anyway?”

  “It’s my business, okay? Did your boyfriend ever mention somebody named Andy Turchek? From when he was inside?”

  She shook her head. “No, he never mentioned nobody.”

  But Robert knew that she was lying. “He tell you that he killed Turchek?”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Where’s Boyd now?”

  “Go away,” she said, her voice beginning to rise with hysteria. “Just leave me alone.”

  “Not until you tell me where he is.”

  Suddenly, she got very calm. There was a certain pathetic dignity in her face. “Boyd ain’t yours. I waited a long time for him to get out. You ain’t gonna spoil it all now.”

  “Oh yes,” Robert said with a smile, “I’m going to spoil it. I’m going to find that bastard and kill him.”

  She tried to get away again and he shoved her back. She stared at his face, long and hard, as if trying to catalogue what was there. “I know you now,” she said smugly. “Anything happens to my Danny, I’ll go straight to the cops. What you have to say about that?”

  Robert shook his head. “I say you’re a stupid bitch, Marnie. Real stupid. I’m sorry, but you don’t leave me any choice, do you?”

  He knew that she would never tell him where Boyd was. Even on the threat of death. It wasn’t loyalty or even love that would keep her quiet. It was desperation; Boyd was her last hope. And if he took that away, she would do just what she threatened: go straight to the cops.

  Now it was he who was pushed to the wall.

  There wasn’t any choice.

  He took the gun out of his pocket, pressed it to her head, and pulled the trigger.

  The noise seemed loud, but he knew that it wouldn’t be heard above the traffic sounds just beyond the alley. And even if it was, who the hell would pay attention in this neighborhood?

  He wiped the gun clean and dropped it next to the body. Then he turned around to go back to his car.

  Beau Epstein was standing there.

  They just stared at one another for maybe a year or so. It was Beau who finally broke the terrible silence. “You killed her,” he whispered hoarsely. “How come you did that?”

  Robert got over the immediate shock of seeing the boy standing there. “What the hell are you doing?” His voice was also a whisper. “Why are you here?”

  Beau, who was now shaking violently, didn’t say anything.

  Robert could hear the sound of a siren in the distance. Probably it didn’t have anything at all to do with this, but he couldn’t take that chance. Almost without his thinking about it, one hand moved toward the Magnum under his arm.

  Beau flinched away. “Robert?” he said.

  “Damn.” He grabbed Beau by on
e arm and moved, dragging the unresisting boy after him.

  They went all the way back to the car like that. Once there, he unlocked the passenger door and shoved Beau into the seat. “Don’t move,” he said. He ran around the car and got in behind the wheel, just as a squad car, lights and siren on, raced by and kept going. He waited until the car was out of sight and his breathing had slowed. “Beau, what the fuck are you up to?” he said then.

  Beau was huddled against the door, as if he were trying to get warm. “I was following you,” he said in a low voice.

  “Why?”

  “Just because. I wanted to, that’s all.”

  Robert pounded the steering wheel in frustration. “You wanted to? Great. Well, you’re in deep shit now. I hope you fucking know that.”

  “Are you going to kill me, too?”

  “I ought to. God, what an idiot you are.”

  “I’m sorry,” Beau said.

  Robert started the car. What the hell was he going to do now? The kid could burn him; the kid could burn him real good.

  Lacking any other bright idea at the moment, he drove home.

  He pulled the car into the garage and turned off the engine. It seemed very quiet. He finally got out of the car and walked around to the passenger door. Beau didn’t say anything as Robert reached in and yanked him out by the arm. Neither did he object to being dragged down the hall to the bathroom, the only room in the house without a window. Robert shoved him into the room so hard that Beau stumbled and almost fell into the bathtub.

  Beau sat on the floor and looked at him.

  After a moment, Robert shut the door. He went into the kitchen and took some rope from the junk drawer. Hopefully, Beau wasn’t taking advantage of this opportunity to escape.

  But he didn’t. The bathroom door was still closed when he got back. He double-knotted the rope around the doorknob, stretched it across the narrow hall and did the same to the other end, using the closed door of Andy’s room.

  When that was done, he stood still for a moment. A drink. God, he needed a drink. He went back to the kitchen and found a bottle of Scotch in the cupboard. He also needed some fresh air.

  He left the house, slamming the door, and headed for the beach a couple of blocks away.

  Robert Turchek didn’t know what the hell he was going to do next. He didn’t like feeling that way. It scared him a little, and he didn’t like that, either.

  Beau heard the door slam and then it was still.

  He got up and went to the bathroom door, testing it almost nonchalantly. Robert would surely not let him leave that easily, he knew, and so the knowledge that he couldn’t open the door didn’t surprise him.

  He sat down again, resting his back against the tub. Maybe Robert would come back and kill him, but Beau didn’t think so. He was pretty sure that Robert liked him. And there had to be some reason why the man who seemed so kind had suddenly erupted into deadly violence. Robert could probably explain it all to him.

  Beau realized that he was still shaking. He closed his body into a tight ball and tried to do some meditation.

  Robert sat on the beach for nearly two hours. When the bottle of Scotch was empty, and he was drunk—although not so drunk that he didn’t know he was—he threw the bottle into the Pacific and headed home.

  Inside the house, he stopped by the bathroom door and pressed his ear against it. There wasn’t a sound from inside.

  He went to bed.

  11

  Sex was a great way to relax after an unproductive, frustrating day.

  At least, Mickey seemed to think so. Or maybe her day hadn’t been as unproductive or frustrating as his. Whatever. Anyway, she relaxed so much that within moments she had rolled over in the massive waterbed and was sound asleep. Gar, unfortunately, wasn’t that lucky.

  Which didn’t mean that the lovemaking hadn’t been great, as it always was with Mickey, or that it didn’t leave him lazily satisfied.

  He just couldn’t sleep.

  After almost thirty minutes of staring at the orange numbers on the face of the digital clock, he gave up the fight and got out of bed—always a lot of fun, given his bad leg, his weight, and the wave action of the mattress.

  He dressed again, without turning on the light, although he knew from experience that it would have taken a lot more than that to wake Mickey once she was out.

  The dog looked up hopefully as Gar passed through the living room, but when his master picked up the car keys and his cane, Spock just settled more deeply into his spot on the couch and sighed.

  This was not the first time that Gar, all keyed up over a case, had left the house when most decent people were tucked away in their beds. As a cop, he’d done the same thing. Like a vampire, he often worked at night by choice. Of course, the streets of Hollywood were the perfect place for Count Dracula to ply his trade. So that was where he headed this night.

  Gar sometimes wondered why he continued to do the job he did. Looking for lost kids was a really shitty way to earn a living, mostly because happy endings were so rare. Most often, the missing child had run away by choice, because life was so bad at home. Maybe the reasons for the leaving were valid and maybe they weren’t; either way, the runaway wasn’t especially thrilled to be brought back.

  An increasing number of cases he handled were the result of custody battles between parents, with the child caught in the middle. In those instances, too, somebody always ended up miserable. Usually the kid.

  Only once in a very great while he discovered the truth that every parent feared the most—that their son or daughter had been snatched away by a terrible stranger. A killer or a sex creep.

  If people only knew going into parenthood all the ways that having a baby could make them miserable over the years, nobody would ever have the guts to do it.

  He sure as hell wouldn’t have.

  Gar parked not far from a run-down taco stand that was a favorite gathering place for the kids. The dump attracted both those who actually lived on the streets and those Gar liked to call wannabees. They dressed just like the others, affected the same society-be-damned attitudes, and sometimes did drugs with the best of them. The only difference was that, at the end of most nights, anyway, the pretenders went home, which usually meant the suburbs.

  There wasn’t even a name on the place. Just the single word TACOS on a hand-painted sign. Day or night, there were usually a dozen or so kids hanging out on the tiny patio, eating cheap, greasy tacos that they washed down with gallons of watery soda pop.

  Gar’s was such a familiar face by now that several almost-friendly greetings were tossed his way as he stood at the counter to order a couple of chili dogs and a root beer. He carried the midnight snack to a table under a shabby red-and-white-striped umbrella. The sidewalk just beyond where he was sitting was as alive with people as if it were midday, instead of so late at night. Gar always entertained himself, sitting here, by imagining that one night, as he chowed down on the heartburn specials Carlos served up, whatever kid he was looking for at the moment would just walk by. So far, it hadn’t ever happened, and Beau Epstein didn’t set a precedent by showing up just then.

  But sometimes he could pick up a good tip here, frequently from the girl dressed all in black who was approaching his table slowly. She was accompanied by a boy with a half-shaved head and a swastika hanging from one ear. They sat down across from him. “Hi, April,” he said. That was the month they’d met in, not her real name.

  She lifted a weary hand in greeting. “How’s it hanging, Sinclair?” April looked like hell and Gar wondered how many more times she would show up. Eyes once bright with intelligence were now dulled.

  “It’s hanging okay,” Gar said. “Who’s your friend?”

  “Call me Joe,” the boy replied, giving a furtive glance over one shoulder.

  “Pleased to meet you, Joe.” Gar continued to eat his chili dog.

  “Who are you looking for this time?” April asked him after a moment.

  She w
as undoubtedly broke again. Gar tried not to have any illusions that these kids spoke to him out of much genuine fondness. He was simply known as a man who always paid a fair price for the good information he received. He sometimes wondered when being a snitch had become fashionable. It was one more thing he tended to blame on Ronald Reagan.

  He wiped his chili-covered fingers on a napkin and took out Beau’s picture. “Him.”

  April looked at the photo carefully, then shook her head regretfully. “Don’t know him. Sorry.” And no doubt she really was; no info meant no cash.

  Gar finished the last hot dog in one bite. “How about you, Joe?” he said after chewing and swallowing.

  The ear ornament rattled as Joe shook his head. “Nope.” Then he frowned. “Unless …”

  Gar felt a glimmer of hope. This was how it happened, slow step by slow step. “Unless what?”

  Joe thought it over. “Last night,” he finally said. “I was having a sandwich down the street and these two guys came in. One of them was old, maybe thirty or forty, and the other one looked sort of like this. ’Cept that he was all bloody,” he added as an afterthought.

  “Bloody?”

  “Yeah.” Joe made a face. The swastika notwithstanding, he was apparently a boy of delicate sensibilities. “Like, the front of his shirt and all. They hit the can, he cleaned up, and then they ate. They were still there when I left.”

  “And you think this was the kid?”

  “Maybe.” Joe looked at the picture once more, then nodded firmly. “I really think so, yeah.”

  “Anything else? What did the older guy look like?”

  He shrugged. “Just a guy. Nothing special. Baseball cap. Just a guy.”

  Gar kept looking at him.

  “Hey, that’s all I can say, man. But ain’t it worth something?”

  He nodded and gave Joe a couple of bucks. The two kids got up and drifted away as he sat still, finishing the root beer.

  Mickey and Spock were in the kitchen when he got back home. She was eating frozen yogurt and the dog was watching. Gar dropped into the chair opposite hers. “You woke up,” he said.