by Lois Greiman
“I won’t be goin’ to the pen, Doc. I seen what it’s—”
“Yeah, he’s probably not worth your trouble. Just a skinny black kid with ears that stick out.” We’d discussed the boy’s ears at some length in our sessions. But Micky wasn’t talking now. The phone had gone quiet except for the sobbing in the background. “His mother was a druggie, wasn’t she?” I asked.
“I know what you’re doing,” he said. His tone had gone tight and edgy.
“That’s because you’re smart, too, Micky,” I said. “But it didn’t save you, did it?”
I could almost hear him wince. “You owe me,” he said.
I gripped the receiver tighter, because it was true. He’d done me a favor when my own life had been in danger, but I wasn’t about to pay up without gaining something. “Promise me you won’t use the gun and I’ll come get him.”
“I can’t—”
“So you’re going to screw him, too? Like you did his mother?”
“Fuck you,” he said, but his voice had gone scratchy and he didn’t hang up. A niggle of hope nudged me.
“Promise me and I’ll make sure he’s safe until you can take care of him yourself.”
“I can’t take care of no one.” His voice cracked.
“Not if you’re dead.”
He swore, then the line went quiet, almost silent, except for the humming keen in the background. “Promise,” I said.
“Okay.”
“Say it.”
“Damn you!” His breath hissed into the receiver for a moment, then he said, “I promise,” and after rattling off the address, hung up.
3
Maybe skinny’s okay for them runway models and little girls who ain’t yet got their monthlies. But real women oughtta have them some heft.
—Ella Brady, Chrissy’s
favorite grandmother
My hands were shaking like castanets as I hung up the phone. Harlequin canted his head at me. “Micky Goldenstone,” I said.
He blinked. I turned in a haze, searching for something. What was it? Shoes. I would need shoes. A pair of sneakers caught my eye. At least I thought they were a pair, but it hardly mattered. Crime scene victims rarely put a lot of stock in couture. I slipped into the tennies and remembered a half-dozen other victims I had seen in the past few years. Gooseflesh skittered across my arms. Scooping a denim jacket from the chair beside my bed, I dragged it on and searched for my purse. There. My keys. Beside it.
Checking for my cell, I said good-bye to Harley and stepped into the night. It seemed unreasonably dark on Opus Street. Popping down the Saturn’s noisy locks, I started the engine, flipped open my phone, and dialed Rivera. Still busy.
I called 911 next and was promptly put on hold, but I had already punched the address into my GPS and was turning onto Foothill Boulevard. Too late to turn back now.
The song with those lyrics popped erratically into my head. I tried to pop it back out, but it had a foothold. I mouthed a few words, feeling sick to my stomach. Traffic was light. Murphy’s Law. The only time I didn’t really want to go anywhere …
“It’s too late …” My voice sounded hollow in the dark interior of the car. The lights from the dash made my knuckles look as sharp and fragile as bare bones.
“… to turn back now.”
“Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”
“Yes!” My voice sounded spastic. I’d forgotten I had been put on hold. “I’d like to report a …” What? “Crime.”
“What’s your name?”
I gave it, then marched out all the information I could. It wasn’t much. “I think someone may have already reported it,” I said.
“Very well. Are you in a safe location?”
“Yes.” The song was still humming through my mind when I hung up and wheeled onto Greenbriar. Something streaked across the road in the darkness ahead of me. I gasped. My foot jerked over the brake, but whatever it was had already disappeared.
By the time I pulled up to Jackson’s curb my heart was pounding like Judge Judy’s gavel. Lights were blazing in the two-story house. It was Spanish Colonial in design, old-world elegant with a railed second-floor balcony and tall, narrow windows. No ambulance loomed in the broad street out front. There wasn’t a police car in sight.
“I believe, I believe, I believe …” I held my Mace in one wobbly hand and stepped from the dubious safety of the Saturn. My knees felt unsteady, but managed to carry me up the curving, red-tiled walkway. The world felt surreal and oddly skewed.
It was then that the screen door squeaked open. I jerked at the sound.
“That you, Doc?”
Micky stood in the doorway, dark skin shiny from the ambient light. A muscular Don Cheadle.
“Yes.” Hallelujah and praise the Lord, my voice sounded as if I were not about to pee in my pants. “Are you okay?” I asked, and ascended the tiled steps. The interior of the house smelled odd. Like college with something added. Blood maybe. The idea made my guts twist.
A black man in his forties was propped upright against the wall in the foyer, his legs splayed and stretched out in front of him. A dark pool had seeped from the bullet hole and accumulated on the rosewood flooring.
His eyes were open, his teeth gritted. Even in pain, he was Hollywood handsome. A woman with a smooth, Michelle Obama hairstyle was kneeling beside him, holding a bloody towel to his side. She turned toward me. Her movements were jerky, her eyes very dark. “Who’s that?” Her brow puckered.
Micky ignored her. “I’ll get Jamel.”
“What you talking about?” The woman rose to her feet. She was approximately my height, but lacked some of my admirable “heft.” Barefoot, she wore blue sweatpants and a white tank top. Still, her ensemble beat the hell out of mine. My bare legs felt cold and stubbly under the shabby shorts, my arms scratchy beneath the denim jacket.
“I’m Christina McMullen … Ph.D.,” I said. Maybe I was trying to defuse the situation. Maybe I was nuts. She, on the other hand, looked higher than a Pasadena mortgage. “I’m a friend of …” For one fractured second I considered telling the truth, but I’d made that mistake before. “Jamel’s,” I said.
She cocked her head. “You’re a liar is what you are.”
Ahh, hostility. I kept my tone level. “Is he all right?”
“’Course he’s all right.” Her tone was offended and a little slurred. “You think I’d hurt my own sister’s kid?”
“There will be retribution,” Jackson said, and smiled. They were the first words he’d spoken since my arrival. His voice was singsong smooth, like one in a trance.
“You should keep pressure on the wound,” Micky told Lavonn. The ghetto had died from his voice.
“You’re the asshole that shot him.” Lavonn sounded near hysterics. I could feel myself slipping in that direction. “Made him bleed …” She paused to breathe. “Bleed all over my pretty rosewood.”
“The girl loves her rosewood,” Jackson said. His voice sounded dreamy. “Floor matches the hearth. You see that?”
“An ambulance should be here soon,” Micky said. There was worry in his tone, but Lavonn snorted a laugh.
“You ain’t lived in the hood for a while, have you, Michael?”
“This isn’t the hood,” he said.
She scowled, seeming to remember where she was, but Micky was already speaking.
“I have to get Jamel out of here.”
“Just like that.” She pursed her lips, eyes angry.
“I’m his father, Lavonn. Blood tests proved that.”
It was a long story. But Micky had just discovered a few months ago that the boy was, in fact, his son.
“I don’t care about no blood tests,” Lavonn said.
“Your sister would have wanted—”
“I don’t care about no blood tests!” she yelled, and jerked up her hands. There was a gun in them. It was pointed at Micky.
“No!” I rasped the word, and she swung the weapon toward me like a la
ser.
Terror squeezed my throat shut. I stumbled back a step.
“How’d you say you know Jamel?” she asked.
For a moment my voice failed me entirely. “I just …” It squeaked. “I’m his teacher.”
“You’re a liar!” She spat the words and took a step toward me, arms shaking as she snapped her head toward Micky. “You his ho, ain’t you?”
I didn’t dare glance away.
“Ain’t you!”
“Listen …” The situation was spinning out of control. And I had been using my shrink voice. I was keeping my “dear God, don’t let me die” voice in reserve.
“No!” She shook her head. “I ain’t gonna listen. I been listening to him.” She turned the gun toward Micky. “Says he’s Jamel’s poppa. Says Kaneasha woulda wanted him to have ’im. But why didn’t she never tell me about the two of ’em?”
Micky was shaking his head.
“’Cuz he’s a liar, too. That’s why,” she said, and squeezed the trigger.
The bullet whined through the house like a banshee seeking souls. I screamed. Micky swore. Then someone spoke, her voice as firm and solid as the floor beneath our feet.
“Lavonn Amelia Blount!”
We jerked in unison toward the woman standing in the doorway. She was a hundred years old if she was a day. Her skin was black and wrinkled, her eyes as sharp as switchblades, her voice gravelly. “What in the good Lord’s name do you think you’re doing?”
“Grams!” Micky rasped.
Lavonn’s face twitched. “What are you doing here?”
“I keep tabs on folks from the old neighborhood,” she said. “What’s going on?”
Lavonn’s hands were wobbling, placing her aim somewhere between Micky’s knee and his clavicle. “Your boy shot Jackson.”
The old woman stared at her for a long eternity, then turned creakily toward Micky, completely ignoring the figure propped limp and motionless against the pristine wall. “Is that the gospel truth, Michael?”
“He—”
She stomped her cane against the rosewood flooring. “I asked if that was so!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
All oxygen seemed to have left the building.
“How come?”
No one spoke. The old woman’s brows lowered, and in that moment she looked far more dangerous than the crazy gal with the gun.
“I thought he’d hurt Jamel,” Micky said.
My eyes darted from one to the other.
“Who?” Grams asked, but in that moment a boy stepped into view. He was half-shadowed by the hallway but still you could make out his wide eyes, his protruding ears.
The room fell into silence as Grams turned to the child. A muscle jerked in her pemmican face, but then she straightened painfully to her full garden gnome stature. Her expression became flinty as the facts clicked together in her head. “Least my girl had sense enough to tape down your daddy’s ears before he was old as you,” she said.
The boy scowled. She watched him, eyes as bright as flares before she pulled in a hard breath and pursed her lips. “You’ll be coming home with me, boy.”
He shook his head. “I don’t wanna—”
The cane slammed to the floor again. “You want more of this?” She skimmed her eyes disdainfully about the elegant room: Jackson, Lavonn, the bloodstained floor, the tattered lives.
The boy looked, too, then shook his head, slowly, as if he wasn’t sure, or at least wasn’t sure he should admit it.
Grams nodded once, sharp and succinct. “Come,” she said, and he did, following her slow movements out the door and into the night with barely a backward glance.
The rest of us remained as we were, like marionettes without direction. Micky and I were frozen. Lavonn’s arms were still trembling, but she didn’t lower the gun.
“Put it down, Lavonn,” Micky said.
“How come my sister didn’t never tell me about you and her?” she asked again.
Micky’s mouth was tense, his body stiff. “She was young.” He winced and I prayed to God he would lie. There may be a time for absolute honesty, but so far I hadn’t found it. “Maybe she was embarrassed.”
“Embarrassed.” She snorted. The pistol jumped. “She was always talkin’ about how cute you was. How hot you was. How she was gonna rock your world. Then she does and she don’t tell me?”
He glanced out the window. Self-loathing shone in his eyes. I was breathlessly grateful he wasn’t the one holding the gun because he was unlikely to miss if he aimed for himself. “Where are those fuckin’ paramedics?” he asked.
“Why didn’t she tell me?” Lavonn asked again. Her voice was becoming strident and Micky was weakening. I could see the truth trembling on the tip of his conscience.
“Because I r—” he began, and in that moment I launched myself at her. I may have yelled at the same time. I may have raved like a lunatic. Or I may still have been singing “It’s Too Late.” My shoulder hit her square in the chest. We went down together. Me on top. The gun exploded in my ear. I jerked, but if I was hurt I was too revved up to feel it, and in a moment Micky was there. He wrestled the pistol from her fingers. Still, she didn’t give up. She squirmed beneath me like a wild animal, knees, elbows, hands, fingernails. Hitting, scraping, kicking.
But finally she went limp. She was crying by the time I wedged myself to my feet.
Micky was standing there, pistol hanging loose by his thigh. “I don’t think I pay you enough,” he said, but I was beyond humor. In fact, I was a little pissed. Go figure.
“That Jackson’s gun?” I asked.
He raised it the slightest degree. “Yeah.”
“Maybe I should have been more specific about where to put it when I told you to put it down.”
“I didn’t want Jamel to get his hands on it.”
“So you gave it to her?”
“Not exactly,” he said, and almost smiled. It’s funny how some people think it’s funny when I’m pissed as hell.
I took a deep breath and tried to see the humor in the situation. Nothing yet.
“Where are Lavonn’s kids?” I asked.
“With their dad.” The amusement was already gone from his face, evaporated from his tone.
Our gazes met.
“They have a dad,” he said.
“Don’t start,” I warned.
“What the hell have I—”
“Micky!” I stepped up to him. Maybe I was past pissed at this point. “Give me the gun.”
A muscle bunched mutinously in his lean jaw, but I had seen him bow to his grandmother, and although I would never be the intimidating little gremlin she was, I was willing to do my dominatrix best.
“Give me the gun or I’ll bitch slap you from here to … Easter,” I said.
“Easter?” One eyebrow cocked up and for a moment a spark of laughter returned to his eyes.
We heard the sirens almost instantaneously.
Our gazes were sucked toward the window. I shifted my attention back to Micky. There was anger in his eyes now. Anger and angst and terror swirling in one toxic blend.
“Please,” I said and after a lifetime of hell, he handed me the gun.
Everything seemed to happen at once then. Someone pounded on the door. Someone announced the arrival of the police. I was the one who answered, saying one man was injured but no one was hostile.
They came in guns drawn, nevertheless. Fast and low. All dressed in black, flak jackets in place. I had my hands above my head, pistol drooping from my fingers.
“Put the gun down.” The officer who gave the order had his face half hidden behind his uplifted arms.
“I …” I began, but he barked at me.
“Put it down!”
I did so, already sullen. Chrissy McMullen, sleep deprived.
Another officer snatched up the gun and jerked his head toward Jackson. “He been shot?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You shoot him?” asked the first cop. I
could see his face now. It was a good one, like a young Errol Flynn.
“I did.” Micky didn’t step forward when he spoke. I noticed that he had his hands up, too, but his expression was haughty, his eyes hard. I prayed for the longevity of martyrs and fools.
“That right?” asked Hot Cop.
I gave Micky a look. “Mr. Goldenstone would prefer to save his comments for later.”
“Would he?”
“Yes.” Chrissy McMullen. Haughty. And maybe a little protective. Micky had already been through purgatory and come out looking pretty good. Why risk hell?
“You his counsel?”
Counsel? “In a manner of speaking,” I said.
“Yeah?”
Behind Cop Two, paramedics were rushing into the room. One felt for a pulse. He nodded. Three others hurried over, carrying equipment I couldn’t readily identify. They squatted by Jackson, pushing Lavonn aside. She moved away, teary-eyed and sullen.
“What manner of counsel?” asked Hot Cop.
I dragged my attention back to him.
I raised my chin. “I’m Mr. Goldenstone’s psychologist.”
Hot Cop’s brows had risen. “His psychologist.”
If he smirked I was pretty sure I could take him down. I didn’t care if he did look like Captain Blood.
“Yes.”
“What’s your name?”
“Christina McMullen … Ph.D.”
Cop Two, shorter and stouter, glanced my way. His gaze swept my bare legs for a nanosecond, but he kept his pistol trained on Micky. “McMullen?”
I pursed my lips and gave him my best scowl. “Christina McMullen.”
The corner of his mouth jacked up the slightest degree. “Rivera’s squeeze?” he asked, and I believe I cursed.
4
Dogs, they may drink from your toilet and pee on your carpet, but they will not cheat on you with your friends. Unless they are from Saltillo, Mexico. Then who can be sure.
—Rosita, the mother of Jack
Rivera and the ex-wife of
Senator Rivera, who was
from Saltillo, Mexico
The phone rang again. In all honesty, I didn’t think it would have the nerve. In even more honesty, I thought I had taken it off the hook. I hadn’t gotten to sleep until nearly two a.m. and every fiber ached where Lavonn had hit me with her knees and fists. I opened one eye to stare at the clock and refrained from swearing even though it was officially morning and I knew who was on the phone. The police station grapevine was a thousand miles long and news traveled at the speed of light. I answered on the fourth ring.
