by Julie Smith
He could have crawled under the carpet when Talba mouthed off at the client. On the other hand, the woman’s idea of motherhood appeared to be letting the kid’s little friends baby-sit while Aziza fucked her boyfriend. Sure the kid wanted to have sex— she probably even wanted a baby. Anything to get away from a woman who declared herself in charge, probably nagged a hundred and fifty percent of the time, and didn’t enforce rule one around the house. Eddie didn’t have to see it to know what Scott’s mothering style was like. He could hear it now:
“Cassandra, you ready for church?”
“I’m not going.”
“What’s wrong, baby? Aren’t you feeling well?”
“I’m not going, that’s all.”
“Baby, church is very important for your spiritual well-being.”
(Eye-rolling at this point.) “Now go get your good clothes on.”
“Mama! You can’t— there isn’t time. You just can’t make me do it. It’s too mean.”
Whereupon Aziza would look at her watch, her boyfriend would arrive in a suit and tie, and she’d dash out the door, leaving Cassandra to watch cartoons on television.
Of course, the kid felt superior to her mom— she probably won every argument with her. What the hell, Eddie wondered, ever happened to “because I said so”? The kid was a mess— even Talba, a kid herself, could see that and could see why. Eddie frankly thought Aziza should be prosecuted for neglect, but there weren’t any laws to handle it, and, furthermore, she was the client. He wasn’t about to mention her maternal shortcomings.
So he’d let Talba do it for him. Do it and get away with it. He wondered if he could work up the resolve to reprimand her for it.
Then there was the way she took over the interview at the school. Totally out of line. But the girl’s instincts were good. When he tried to get around that one, he couldn’t.
It was also sharp of her to pick up the bad-cop role at Scott’s house. Or had she realized she was doing it? He had his doubts.
She was a handful. But other things were bothering him.
Cassandra was. He hated seeing a kid that miserable. He wanted to get the bastard who’d exploited her, but in truth he was as angry at the mother as he was at the rapist.
Most of all, there was this Rhonda thing. The coincidence of her death was a bit too much to buy. Eddie had been a cop for a long time, and his cop’s belly told him one thing: Toes.
Maybe the kids weren’t lying about his identity— maybe they really didn’t know who he was. And maybe Cassandra told her friend Pamela that her mother was pulling out all the stops to find him, and Rhonda told Toes, who realized she was the only one who knew who he was, and he killed her. It was amazing how little regard some people had for human life. A guy who’d lure three fourteen-year-olds to his house and have sex with them was a monster by definition.
But taking it further— this was what bothered him the most— taking it further, maybe the others did know his identity. Maybe Rhonda was only the first.
This was why he was in no mood. He needed to figure out what the hell to do.
Okay. First call Scott and tell her to call all the other parents. That was obvious. But damn, he hated the idea of that call. Maybe Talba could make it.
Also, there was the question of telling the police the whole story. It was going to be a few hours before he could find out if anyone saw the hit-and-run. Maybe if a white woman were driving… nah, that was no good. No matter who was driving, Toes could be behind it. No question he had to warn Scott. Damn. He had to talk to her himself.
When they got back to the office, he said, “You take Rhonda. I’ll take the cops and Aziza,” and closed the door behind him.
His head pounded. At this rate, he thought, I’m not gonna make sixty-five. His birthday was two weeks away.
Chapter 6
Talba thought, Okay, fine, if you want to be that way, and closed her own door. That would mean he’d have to come to her and knock— or at least send Eileen. Anyway, she had some stuff to do she didn’t want him to know about.
But first the case. She hoped to hell Rhonda hadn’t been married— the hardest thing about the Internet was tracing people whose last names you didn’t know.
Well, there was a Rhonda Bergeron at the address they’d gone to to find Pamela— evidently she’d lived with her parents. She was eighteen. Damn. So far, Talba had been too puzzled and hurt by Eddie’s refusal to talk to feel much for Rhonda. But eighteen! She was starting to feel plenty, including an urgent need to get going on this. Come up with something. Goddammit, protect her somehow, though it was too late.
No newspaper clips. Hmmm.
Talba’s fingers flew like a flock of finches. Not much on the father, Lloyd Bergeron, except that he was married to a woman named Marilyn. Decent credit, good driving record. Nothing on Marilyn.
Johnson, as in Shaneel, wasn’t even worth trying.
Just for good measure, she put together a dossier on Aziza Scott and printed it out for Eddie, along with the tidbits on Rhonda. No surprises there either.
She needed to talk to people, to go back to Shaneel— the most likely whistle-blower— and threaten to wring her little neck if she didn’t talk. But Eddie’d wring her little neck if she did.
She went to lunch and lingered until she was bored. When she got back, she was faced with the same old empty in-box. She felt tense and frustrated.
And so she did what she always did to clear her head— started noodling on the net. Which reminded her— she was really going to have to set up a website for Eddie, and soon too. Her pride wouldn’t permit working in a place that didn’t have one. Besides, if she was going to be a rainmaker, it was probably the best thing she could do to bring in business.
She was on Eddie’s time, why not do it for him now? She needed to register a URL. EddieValentino.com had a ring to it.
No, wait a minute. The name of the agency was Anthony Valentino. Anthony! He’d named the agency after his son.
She forgot about the website and started fooling around with “Anthony Valentino.” She could always do a people search, starting in Louisiana, then more or less guessing, but that was way too boring. Newspaper articles were a lot more fun. She hit a few more keys.
And there they were— news stories. About a dozen of them, modest-sized articles in modest-sized papers all over the country. Interviews. There were schedules too, and reviews. Anthony Valentino no longer went by that name (though he mentioned it in every single interview).
Anthony Valentino, formerly of New Orleans, had metamorphosed into bluesman Tony Tino. Now he probably did have a website.
Yes, indeed. There it was. Even a picture of him, looking more like Angie than either of his parents. He had on a narrow-brimmed hat like an old black man might wear, someone playing in a joint like Ernie K-Doe’s Mother-In-Law Club. You couldn’t see his hair, but she was betting on thick and curly. The face looked fine. It was an Italian face, big-nosed and bold, with a hint of the balefulness so striking in his father. In a young man, lugubriousness contrived to be sexy, and no one knew it better than Talba. It was hard to say from a head shot, but Talba’s impression was of leanness, a build more like his mother’s than his father’s. His expression was cocky, in the manner of musicians posing for photographs, but the tiny bit of sadness and something else, something about the set of the features, suggested a vulnerability, a sensitivity, the kind of thing women went mad for. Oh, hell, including me, she thought. Eddie’s kid’s a hunk. Wonder what he plays?
Whoa. Harmonica. A blues harmonica player. He even had a CD out. Pretty accomplished guy.
She rifled through the interviews, which he had attached to his home page— not only that, he sounded literate and charming. Actually, not charming. Anyone could be charming. The man sounded nice.
He was… look at that… living in Austin. Practically a stone’s throw. There was no mention of a wife or kids, which she supposed befitted a blues musician. A bachelor would have more time to
brood.
Now why in hell didn’t Eddie know where he lived? Wait a minute here— she consulted the schedules and interviews. Tony Tino had played New Orleans, but hadn’t been interviewed there. Oh, well, never a prophet, she thought— or perhaps it was Tony’s choice. Maybe he didn’t want to fling his long-lost self in his parents’ face.
Parents. Maybe it wasn’t both of them. Maybe it was Eddie only.
Still, why didn’t Eddie know where his only son lived? He might hate the Internet, but he was on it every day of his life. Why the hell wouldn’t he type in his son’s name and see what came up?
Maybe he had. Maybe he’d lied about not knowing.
Her doorknob rattled. “Ms. Wallis, what’s this closed door stunt? What ya doin’ in here?” She barely had time to get out of Tony’s website before the elder Valentino came crashing into her office.
“Thought you were going to call me Talba,” she said, and then was sorry she hadn’t been more respectful. Eddie looked like hell, his face pinched with pain. “Eddie, what’s the matter?”
“Ah, it’s nothin’, I just got one of my headaches.”
“Headaches,” she said. “Have you had that checked out?”
He swatted the air in front of his face, indicating his disdain for the question. “The driver was a black male.”
“Damn! Do you think we should tell Aziza?”
“Oh, yeah. Hell, yeah, I think we should tell Aziza. But she left this morning on a business trip, and her office won’t say where she went.”
“What about Cassandra?”
“She didn’t go to school today, and nobody’s answering the phone at home. For all I know she was in the car with the hit-and-run artist.”
“Is there any description on him?”
“Uh-uh. Just black, average build, probably in his twenties. Two of them in one car, which was a medium-sized beige job.” He paused and rubbed his head. “Cassandra might be staying with one of her little girlfriends— maybe we could get their numbers from her school. Ya want to call ‘em for me?”
Talba looked at her watch. “School’s already out.”
Eddie shrugged, but she thought she saw a tiny tightening in the lines between his eye. “Oh, well. Maybe her mama’ll call me.”
“Are you going to tell the police about Cassandra?”
“I don’t think yet. It’s a long way from havin’ sex with a teenager to killin’ somebody. Think about it— you ever have sex when you were fourteen?” He looked horrified at what he’d said. “I mean, uh, excuse me, I was thinkin’ out loud.”
Talba had to laugh. “Sixteen. With a boy who was nineteen. My mama found out about it, and there was hell to pay. And then, what do you know, the same thing happened all over again, with another boy.”
“Anybody go to jail or get killed?”
“Uh-uh. It was more like a tempest in a teapot.”
“Yeah. So I think maybe we’ll leave the police option up to Ms. Scott, if we ever find her. Ya get anything on Rhonda?”
“Just a DUI. I printed out the stuff on her and everybody else I could think of.” She handed him the package.
He nodded briefly, letting her know he’d heard and wasn’t much interested. “I need ya to do something for me.” He looked like he was about to fall over.
“Sure, Eddie. Look, you think you should go home or something?”
“I’m goin.’ Oh, yeah, I’m goin’. Headache like this can last two days.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I need ya to go to the funeral. And the visitation if there is one.”
“Me? Without my license?”
“Ehhh, maybe it’ll come tomorrow. I probably crossed the line already lettin’ you make that appointment with Ms. Terrell. But it’s the same thing again— you’d fit in, I’d stick out.”
She couldn’t resist interrupting him. “How on earth did you get along without me?”
He didn’t dignify that with a response, not even a tilt of an eyebrow. “You won’t be workin’, if you catch my drift.” He held out a pair of palms-up, innocent hands. “Anybody can go to a funeral.”
He didn’t come in the next day. A great day, she thought, to work on his website— she’d surprise him when he came back. Not that that’s all there was— Eileen popped in about ten with an armful of files. “Mostly employment checks,” she said. “He said to have you work on them. Oh, and Angie called for your address— I said I’d call her back. Okay if I give it to her?”
Talba was puzzled. “Sure, but why would she need it?”
“She wants to send you an invitation to Eddie’s sixty-fifth birthday party. Are you free Saturday after next? March twentieth, I think it is. Angie’s throwin’ it, so you know it’s gonna be nice.”
“I’m flattered. I hardly know him.”
“Angie likes you. And also, uh… it’s going to be, like, a roast. She thought you could maybe… um… I know she wouldn’t come out and say it, but I think she’s kind of thinkin’, you know…”
Talba finally got it. “She wants me to write a poem? Well, now I’m really flattered.”
Eileen smiled.
“Let’s see, I think it’s going to be about the bags under his eyes.”
Eileen left, tittering politely.
She thinks I’m kidding, Talba thought to herself. A rap, maybe. I’ve never done one.
***
No visitation was announced for Rhonda Bergeron, which struck Talba as strange for a girl as young as she was, as vital as she must have been. But she knew little about such things— perhaps the body had been cremated, and there’d been a private wake (or whatever Methodists called it) at Rhonda’s parents’ house. It occurred to her to bake a cake and take it over there. She could say she’d met Rhonda in some context they wouldn’t know about. But in the end, she thought it too risky, and when she got to the funeral, she thanked her stars she hadn’t done it. She was almost the only black person in the congregation.
Oops, Eddie, the joke’s on you.
Evidently, Rhonda had been white, which must mean Pamela was white as well— a peculiar thing, considering this crowd, to hang with two black girls.
There was another strange thing— though there were only five or six black faces in the pews, the choir was nearly all African-American. She could pick out Cassandra and Shaneel, very solemn in their black robes, Cassandra looking drawn and miserable. Pamela, though, appeared to be sitting with her family, the little redhead with the long straight hair, Talba thought.
Rhonda, by contrast, had lustrous long black hair, clearly visible from her casket at the front of the church. Evidently, she hadn’t been cremated. Talba felt her throat catch as she forced herself to look at the face, pale and thin, set off by a pale blue dress with lace; something vintage, Talba thought. It looked like silk from where she was. Her imagination roved freely, concocting, before Talba could stop it, a vision of the girl as she must have looked, alive, in that dress— tall and very thin, black hair blowing in the wind, granny boots on her feet, skin pale and delicate, body a little too wispy.
Druggie, her mind said, and her eyes overflowed. What the hell? she thought. I didn’t even know the girl.
Someone from the funeral home closed the casket, and she nearly sobbed aloud.
Talba had never been to a funeral before, in fact had never set foot in a Methodist church. She and her mother were Baptists, and plenty of her friends were Catholic, but she didn’t know that many people who weren’t one or the other. (Except for a few Muslims, of course— there were plenty of those around. And the odd Pentecostal.) She didn’t really know what to expect, but the proceedings had an antiseptic quality that surprised her.
The family came in right after the minister. They were brought in in a formal procession, after which there was a prayer and a chance— while everyone’s eyes were closed— to survey the crowd more closely.
The choir was made up mostly of women, though there were a few men, most of them older than the
one she was looking for, and some of them white. There was one who looked to be in his early twenties, a short round kid with a shaved head and such a cherubic expression he looked like an African-American Cupid. Not him, she thought. If the rapist was Rhonda’s friend, it wasn’t somebody from the choir. Anyhow, that kid couldn’t seduce a sheep.
In the congregation, none of the bowed heads appeared to be Aziza’s, though surely she’d come back from her business trip by now. There were a few older black couples, though. Talba guessed they were parents of choir members. She didn’t see a single black male under forty.
Almost as soon as the hymn was over, the choir stood and began to sing, an uplifting hymn, the sort that church people call “joyful,” but by the second bar, Talba was crying.
She was amazed at herself. What the hell was this? Not only was she crying, she was sobbing, in great big embarrassing gulps, as if she’d been Rhonda’s best friend. The woman next to her reached out and put an arm around her shoulders, and the woman’s touch was anathema, poison, felt like fire. Talba didn’t know why. She almost screamed, but stopped herself in time, and jumped away. In the silence, she could hear sniffling from the front of the church.
When the hymn was over, the fit stopped, whatever it was.
The minister came forward to thank “the choir of Gethsemane Baptist Church, which has come to worship with us today and to help us surrender up to God the soul of Rhonda, beloved sister of Pamela Bergeron, a devout and faithful member of the Gethsemane choir.”
Talba was struck by the word “devout.” Somehow, neither of the girls she and Eddie had interviewed seemed all that devout, but how could you know if you didn’t ask? She particularly didn’t see Cassandra as a Jesus freak, but the girl was in a choir. Why? Talba wondered.
