“You know what I mean, missy.” Lyle waggled a finger at me. “And drink your juice before you get started on coffee.”
I poured juice for us from the pitcher on the table and handed a glass to Mike. “Is there a plan?”
“I hope.” Mike sat down. “I told you we took in the boy who was hanging with the victim. Problem is, we can’t get him to talk to anyone. Even Pete had no luck. He’s a scared little rabbit. Who can blame him? He might have seen the killer. I thought, you being a civilian and someone familiar, he might open up to you. Will you go back to L.A. with me this morning?”
“You know I will, Mike,” I said. “All you had to do was call. You really didn’t have to fly all the way up.”
“Stupid, stupid,” Lyle exploded, eviscerating a steamed crab with his cleaver. “Go ahead and slap her, Mike. Or you want me to do it for you? Jesus H., Maggie. Who didn’t have to fly all the way up? Look at the pathetic shell of a man sitting across the table from you. Then go look at your own pathetic self before you say another word.”
“He doesn’t look at all pathetic,” I said, reaching for Mike’s hand.
“Sure. Not now. Not after you spent all night blowing life back into him. Shit.” Dramatically disgusted, Lyle slid sliced papaya in front of us. “Eat your fruit.”
“You’re getting awfully bossy, Lyle,” I said. “You’re even beginning to look like my mother.”
Lyle laughed. “Wish I had her legs. So, anyway, Maggie, your laundry is folded. Eat your breakfast, then go pack your bag. It’ll be nice to have the house all to myself for a couple of days.”
While Mike had a third cup of coffee, I went about the house gathering a few essentials: some cameras, film, extra tapes, two battery packs, a few clothes, and the blue silk nightgown I had bought for Mike’s birthday the year before. All of it fit into a carry-on duffel.
The commuter flight between San Francisco and Los Angeles normally takes barely fifty minutes. But you always have to figure an hour on either end of the flight to shuffle through the airport. So it was early afternoon before we got out to MacLaren Hall in El Monte, where Sly had been taken.
MacLaren Hall is L.A. County’s only juvenile detention facility for nonoffenders. The kids who find their way there have generally been abused or abandoned, or both. It is supposed to be a safe place for youngsters to wait until the courts figure out what should be done with them. From the street, it looks thoroughly institutional, acres of county-beige stucco, high fences, wired windows. Externally, it is not my idea of homey, though inside a good effort is made with limited means to make the surroundings pleasant.
Saturday is visiting day. As it was a lovely, sunny Saturday, the campus grounds were crowded with family groups and children at play on the patchy lawn. Considering the size of the crowd, it was oddly quiet.
Mike and I signed into the reception area and were shown through to a small conference room furnished with a worn sofa and several mismatched easy chairs. The room was Spartan, but a big-hearted, low-budget attempt had been made to brighten the place. There were a few cheap framed pictures on the walls, some kiddie artwork stretched between thumbtacks, a hand-crocheted afghan tossed over the back of the sofa. It wasn’t House Beautiful, but it was a giant improvement on a cardboard box in an alley.
We had to wait a few minutes. The bag of burgers and fries we had brought with us was beginning to leak by the time the door opened. Sly came in, escorted by a professionally cheerful-looking caseworker.
“Wayne Cofeld.” The caseworker thrust out his hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Miss MacGowen. I’ve seen your films. Gripping reality. Intensely moving.”
“Thanks,” I said. Everyone’s a critic, but I don’t mind. At least they’re watching. I got my hand back from Cofeld and turned my attention to Sly.
Sly had been processed into hygienic respectability. He looked scrubbed and cleanly dressed. His hair had been trimmed and slicked to the side from an uneven part. I thought he seemed frightened, though he was trying to cover his feelings behind a sullen scowl. Tight against his chest, he held the leg-of-lamb-shaped package of stuff he had retrieved from hiding the night we took him in. Even the stuff had been spruced up, in fresh brown wrapping paper.
“Que pasa, Sly?” I said, moving toward him.
Sly shrugged.
“Miss MacGowen asked how you are, Ronald,” Cofeld said, patronizing.
“I heard her,” the boy snapped.
“Ronald?” I said. “Is that you, Sly?”
“Fuck that.” He turned his head away.
“Ronald Allen Miller,” Mike said. He offered his hand to Sly. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Mike.”
Sly stepped back. “You’re a cop.”
“He’s okay, Sly,” I said. “He’s a friend of mine. He wants to find out who did that to Pisces. So do I. Please help us.”
“I ain’t talkin’ to no cop.”
“Will you talk to me?” I asked. He didn’t answer. That meant he hadn’t said no.
I looked up at Mike. “Mike, will you excuse us?”
He hesitated.
Cofeld opened the door and held it. “Detective, if you don’t mind. I’d like a word with you in my office.”
“Sure,” Mike said, accepting the graceful out. He touched my sleeve. “Holler if you need anything.”
“We’re just down the hall.” Cofeld flashed his dry smile and led Mike away. They had left the door open behind them.
I sat down on the sofa. “So, who are you, Sly or Ronald?”
“Don’t matter.”
“Sure it matters. It’s your name. What do you want to be called?”
“Like I give a fuck?” he sneered. But he sat down at the opposite end of the sofa, with his stuff tucked in beside him.
“You look like you’re okay,” I said. “Are you?”
He shrugged, avoiding eye contact. He had no expression at all on his face, not even dumb shock.
“Getting enough to eat?”
Again a shrug.
I passed him the bag of burgers. “Thought you might be hungry.”
He fished out a drippy cheeseburger and, staring blankly at a point in front of him, wolfed it down in four huge bites. “Sorry the food got cold,” I said.
“Doesn’t matter.” There were two more burgers, a jumbo order of fries, and a chocolate shake still inside the bag. He rolled the top of the bag closed and set it on the floor between his feet.
I took a deep breath. “Can you talk about her, Sly?”
He said nothing, but a single tear finally rolled down his cheek. I moved closer to him and put my arm behind him, not touching him. When he didn’t shy away, I let my hand rest on his shoulder.
“Did you see it happen?”
He nodded.
“Tell me about it.”
“Why should I?”
“Because I want to nail his balls to a tree. Don’t you?”
Sly’s chin quivered, but he held on to his composure. He also pulled himself out of his stupor to speak to me. “She picked up this guy.”
“What did he look like?”
“Just a guy.”
“Short, tall, fat, skinny, old fart? What?”
“Tall, I guess. Big fucker. Not real old like that Mike dude.”
“Would you know him if you saw him again?”
“Yeah. Like, I seen him around before. Just cruisin’.”
“He had a car?”
“Real sweet car.” He perked at the mention of the car. “Red ‘vette. Someday I’m gonna get me a car like that. So sweet.”
I also perked at the mention of the car. If it was the same one, I had it on videotape.
“So,” I said, “he picked her up. Then what?”
Sly squirmed around uncomfortably.
“You know, Sly, you can tell me anything and all that will happen to you is you’ll get a pat on the back and maybe some more burgers. Whatever went down, it’s not your fault. You’re a kid. You’re not going to jail, no ma
tter what you think you’ve done. Do you understand that?”
He thought about it. Then he turned in his seat to face me. “No shit?”
“No shit.”
“Okay. Here’s the deal,” he said. “Like, Pisces wasn’t really no hooker. She’d pick up some guy and talk like she was going to do him. They’d go someplace and she would get his pants down, get him all hard talking to him. Then I’d come out, make like I took their picture, and tell the guy how old she was and he better pay us or we’d give the picture to the cops.”
I smiled. “You’re a little blackmailer.”
He had a self-satisfied smirk on his pinched little face. “It worked real good. You shoulda seen those guys. Scared the shit out of ‘em.”
“It was a very dangerous game, Sly.”
“Better than fuckin’ ‘em for real. Most the time, the guy paid off. If he got real weird or real pissed, we just took off. Fuckin’ fast. Mostly you should see her run. She told me she used to be this like really big swimmer and shit. It could be pretty comical, these assholes runnin’ after two little kids with their pants all fallin’ off and their limp old dicks flappin’ around.”
I had learned two important things about Sly. He liked cars and he liked making adults look like fools. Both pleasures could get him into a lot of trouble.
“Night before last, Sly, something went wrong with the scam. What happened?”
The question unnerved him. He spoke to me staring ahead again, but this time I had the feeling he was seeing beyond the space in front of him, searching deep into his mind’s eye.
“That guy?” he said slowly. “He was different. He’d been cruisin’ us for a coupla days and she was scared of him. She took him into the park, like she does a lot of the time, but she told me to hang real close. The guy didn’t want her to touch him. He wouldn’t let her get his pants down. She has to get his pants down right off, in case we gotta get away. But he pulls her up by her hair and says to her, ‘Give me a little kiss.’ And she yells for me. I get out from where I’m hiding and he’s got her head all the way back. He sees me and he turns her and he goes…” His finger slashed his throat. “I never saw no knife. He just did like that with his hand. And she kind of looked at me scared and fell down and he ran away.”
“She fell down?” I meant to prompt him, to get him to finish the story. Then it hit me that that was the end. I saw the boy standing there in the park, felt time stop because what had happened was so horrible it could not have occurred, had to be something like a scratch in an old record that played its distorted screech over and over until you gave the arm a push. I hugged Sly and gave it a push. “And she was dead?”
He scooted up against me, but he did not cry.
“Oh, Sly.” I hugged him.
“I wasn’t fast enough,” he said.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“I shoulda been faster.”
“I’m sorry you saw it happen.” I was crying, as angry as I was sad. “I wish I could take it all away. But I can’t, any more than you could have changed what happened.”
“Fuck that,” he whispered.
“You going to help us get this asshole?”
He nodded.
“Good. We’ll be a team, okay? You and me and Mike.”
“Yeah.” He gave me a limp five and a grim smile.
“Know anything about her family?” I asked.
“Usual assholes.”
“Do you know where they are? They need to be told.”
“I don’t know where, down by the beach. When her mother was fucking her boyfriend and making a lot of noise, Hilly used to run down and sneak onto some boat till it was over.”
“Who is Hilly?”
“That’s like her real name. You know, like Ronald.”
“Hilly what?”
“Don’t know.”
I took out the little opal ring Mike had found on Pisces. “Was this hers?”
“Yeah. Her old man gave it to her.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Nothing, except he’s not gay.”
“Why do you say that?”
“She always says, ‘My mother fucks at home and my father fucks a broad.’ So I guess he does girls.”
I tried not to laugh. I gave his shoulder a squeeze and stood up.
“You’re a good friend, Sly Ronald. For the next couple of days, while you’re hanging here, try to remember everything that happened that night. And while you’re at it, think about everything Hilly ever told you about herself and her family. Will you do that?”
“I guess.” He got up and gathered his package of stuff in one hand, his leaky bag of burgers in the other.
“You comin’ back?” he asked. “Not that I give a fuck.”
“I’ll try to come by every day. If I can’t come, I’ll call you, okay?”
“I guess.”
“Mike Flint is a good friend of mine, Sly. He’s going to be coming to see you, too. I know you don’t like cops. Just remember that you haven’t done anything you should be worried about. You can talk to him. Finding people like the guy who killed Pisces is what he does. Help him out.”
Sly narrowed his eyes at me. “You fuckin’ him?”
“None of your business.”
He chuckled wisely. “If you’re fuckin’ him, I’ll talk to him.”
“Then talk to him.” I went with him to the door. “Where’s your cage?”
“Cottage three. You don’t have to take me. I know the way. Shit, I’ve been dumped in this place lots of times.”
“Talk to you tomorrow,” I said.
“Yeah.” He started down the corridor, looking very small and vulnerable, clutching his stuff and his food close to his skinny chest. “See ya.”
“Hey, Sly,” I called after him.
He turned.
“What’s in that package, anyway?”
He grinned. “None of your business.”
CHAPTER 5
I talked, Mike listened, all the way downtown to Parker Center, the Los Angeles police administration building. For Sly’s sake, I hoped that something he had told me about Pisces and about the man who had killed her would make a difference. It was too late to do anything for Pisces. But I had a feeling that finding the man who had killed her would help Sly a whole lot more than all the efforts of an entire phalanx of county-hire shrinks.
We pulled into Parker Center’s covered garage. Mike found a space to park his plain-wrap city car among maybe a hundred other similar nondescript, superannuated American-made wrecks.
“If you can get Lyle to locate the videotape that shows the Corvette, I’ll have a courier bring it down.”
“I’ll call Lyle right now,” I said.
We got out and walked away from the plain cars and between rows of black-and-white units, working toward the underground entrance to the building. Mike had long legs and I had to stretch mine to keep up.
I looked over at him. “I’m really afraid that the footage I shot with the Corvette isn’t going to help much. I panned to the right from the girl to include the hood of the car because it was bright and glossy and it boosted the sleaze quality of the scene. I’m not sure I got the driver. When I closed on him, he took off. He gave me good sound for maybe eight seconds, but probably no face.”
“Whatever you got, it’s a hell of a lot better than nothing. The thing is, if we bring the asshole in and Sly IDs him and we tell him we have him on tape, odds are better than even he’ll cop to it.”
“You have to catch him first,” I said.
“I always get my man,” Mike said, nudging me with his shoulder. He held the door for me and we walked through the back passage to the elevators. I had never been in the bowels of headquarters before. From the general scruffiness, I guessed that nothing had been refurbished since Jack Webb retired.
Next to the elevators there were two wide, jagged cracks in the plaster. With a pencil, someone had labeled the cracks “Whittier Narrows Quake”
and “Sierra Madre Quake,” and dated them. When the elevator door opened I was reminded that disasters always come in threes. I stepped inside anyway.
“What are we going to do here?” I asked.
“Get some real coffee.” Mike pushed the button for the third floor.
“And after that?”
“Start working on the girl’s ID.”
Mike was forever telling me that assignment to the Major Crimes Section of the Los Angeles Police Department was the ultimate any detective could hope for: high-profile murders, serial shit, VIP details, all the good stuff. He said the detectives who worked majors were America’s creme de la creme of big-city dicks. He wouldn’t lie to me. Then again, Major Crimes was where Mike worked.
When we walked into his office that late Saturday afternoon, things were fairly quiet. A couple of detectives were cleaning up paperwork from a shooting in the Valley they had rolled on the night before, four members of a Korean family found dead in their home. A second two-man team had tickets for the evening game at Dodgers Stadium and were just hanging out until it was time to go. I don’t know why they didn’t find someplace more comfortable.
The Major Crimes Section has space within the Robbery-Homicide bull pen. The office is a long, narrow room badly in need of paint and housekeeping. There are the requisite ranks of gun-metal filing cabinets lining the walls. Two dozen or so detectives work literally shoulder to shoulder at old library tables and scarred metal desks set in two parallel rows down the length of the room. Each detective’s work territory is marked off by a plastic blotter and some essential clutter: family snapshots, potted plants, trophies, personal computer terminals, telephones, case files.
Densely packed on the floor around the city-surplus chairs, and under the tables, jutting into the narrow aisles, balancing on every flat, nonmoving surface, are cardboard file boxes crammed with case files.
I sipped my coffee and looked up at the wild African boar head mounted on the wall over Mike’s work area.
“Family member?” I asked.
“My first mother-in-law,” he said. “Number two is down in the locker room.”
“Uh huh.” His chair squeaked when I sat in it. “Now what?”
“You’re going to make a list of everything you know, or think you know, about Pisces. There are probably a couple thousand missing juveniles in the state computer system. Anything you can think of that will narrow down the list will help.”
Midnight Baby Page 5
