Birthday Girl

by Matthew Iden

  He shook his head melodramatically. “Not me. My cow of a wife had a son after she got knocked up by some guy from work. Never had kids. Just whores and hungry mouths living at my house.”

  She hesitated. “I don’t mean to bother you. Maybe I could talk to your wife?”

  “What makes you think I’d keep cows and whores around if I didn’t let that kid stay in the house?”

  “So, Aaron was here?” Elliott said, leaning forward.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Sir, this is the last address we have for Aaron. If you could just see your way to helping us a little . . .”

  “I don’t like whores and I don’t like sons of whores and sure as hell don’t like people coming around asking about either one of them. A man’s got a right to control what goes on in his house, to punish the guilty and throw them out if they don’t play by the rules. Anybody who doesn’t like that can go screw.” The words were quick but stilted, stale with rehearsal.

  As if punctuating the statement, the TV gave a hoarse shout from inside the house as a studio audience laughed at something.

  “Is that Who’s Got Your Number?” Amy asked suddenly. “I loved that show.”

  “What?” Goldstein asked, surprised. He looked behind him as if he’d forgotten it was there. “Yeah. Watch it every night.”

  “The host was so pretty,” Amy continued. She could feel Elliott looking at her, puzzled at the sudden change in direction. Come on, Elliott, work with me. Weren’t you a psychologist once upon a time? “What was her name?”

  “Kathy Higgins,” he said automatically. “Finest set of lungs in prime-time television.”

  “That show must’ve been on for ten years,” Elliott said, catching on. “I don’t think anyone’s seen every episode.”

  “Wrong again, bud. With an upper deck like Kathy’s, I wouldn’t miss a show. Made everyone keep quiet, too, so I could act like I was trying to answer the questions. Though I could’ve just watched it with the sound off.”

  “And miss all the canned jokes?” Elliott said. “That is, when you can hear them. Don’t you hate it when kids talk during the show?”

  “Christ, yes,” Goldstein said, then his face turned ugly as he realized what he’d said. He swore. “Why are you wasting my time?”

  “There are lives on the line, here. Are you Peter Goldstein or not? It’s a simple damn question.”

  “Elliott, let me—” Amy began, but the man, glaring at Elliott, talked over her.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Elliott Nash. I’m with MPD.”

  “Who?”

  “The police. We’re investigating Aaron’s disappearance and any connection it has to several other deaths.”

  “Now why don’t I believe that?” He laughed, an ugly sound. “You don’t even look as good as the bum I have to chase out of my backyard on trash day.”

  “Not all of us have badges and work at a desk, Mr. Goldstein,” Amy said. “You are Peter Goldstein, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe I am, maybe I’m not,” he said with a humorless grin, enjoying himself. “I guess real cops would be able to find out, wouldn’t they?”

  “Look, we need to know more about Aaron’s disappearance and murder. It’s important. If you can answer just a couple of questions, we’ll be out of your hair in ten minutes.”

  “You’d be out of it sooner if I shut the door in your face.”

  “You don’t want to do that,” Elliott said, his voice tight.

  Amy quickly backed away from the door as Goldstein opened the screen and stepped out onto the porch. Her stomach fell and she steeled herself emotionally for more haranguing, for finger pointing and confrontation. She could see it so clearly that it felt as though she’d jumped forward a half minute and watched it develop.

  Instead, the film split in an entirely different direction. She squawked as Goldstein’s hand shot out, catching her in the shoulder, shoving her backward. She clawed at the rail, but the metal was slick with rain and she tumbled down the steps to land on her back in the mud.

  Flat on her back and trying to catch her breath, she watched as Goldstein turned to Elliott just in time to take Elliott’s fist driving into his stomach. Spittle flew out of Goldstein’s mouth and, thin as he was, he folded in half like a sheet of paper. Elliott grabbed him by the neck and drove his knee upward, missing his nose, but with enough force to snap his head back.

  Amy yelled at Elliott to stop, but she could only watch as he grabbed Goldstein by the belt and ran him off the porch. The man landed next to her, belly first, with an explosive grunt. Elliott clattered down the steps, then put a hand on the back of Goldstein’s neck and leaned his weight forward, grinding the man’s face into the mud.

  Amy leaned over, grabbed his arm. “Dammit, Elliott.”

  He shook her hand away but took his hand off the man’s neck. “Roll over.”

  Goldstein obeyed, looking scared, holding his hands palm up. Elliott knelt on his chest, put one hand on the man’s throat, and cocked a fist. “Yes or no. Did Aaron live here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he run away?”

  Goldstein glanced to the side. His eyes were white in the gloom. “Yeah.”

  Elliott tightened his grip. The muscles in the man’s neck stood out like cables.

  “Okay. No. I threw him and his mother out when I found out she was sleeping around.”

  “Did you smack them? Try to teach them a lesson?”

  Goldstein glared at him. “I was angry. What am I supposed to do? I didn’t even know if he was my kid.” His voice was petulant, demanding. “Some other guy’s kid in my house, I’m supposed to keep him around? Feed him, pay for him?”

  “You raise this kid for years, then you wonder if he’s not yours?”

  “How do I know how long she cheated on me?”

  “Where is she now? Why wasn’t Aaron with her?”

  He shook his head. “She shacked up with the other guy, but he didn’t want him either.”

  Amy looked down at him. “You just . . . threw him away?”

  His face rippled with a half dozen emotions. “Not my goddamned fault. CPS showed up, took him away. Not my kid, not my problem.”

  Elliott looked down, his expression blank. “What did you say?”

  “About what, man?”

  “Who came for him?”

  “CPS. Why? What’s it to you?”

  Amy looked at him. “Elliott?”

  For a moment, Elliott looked as if he were going to throw a final punch, but then his hand opened and Goldstein sagged. Dazed, he said, “Let’s go.” He stood and stepped over Goldstein’s body, then walked to the car without looking back. Goldstein coughed, then propped himself up on an elbow and called after them. “Hey, man. Hey, man!”

  Lost in thought, Elliott waited while Amy crawled into the driver’s seat and started the Celica. He slid in after her, then put the seat back so he could lay his arm across his forehead.

  Amy glanced over at him as she piloted the car down the street. “Elliott? What happened back there?”

  He was quiet for so long, Amy was wondering if he was going to answer. Finally, he said, “I’m putting together some things that piece of garbage said with the few clues we’ve got.”

  “Sharing is caring,” she quipped, but his silence was heavy and the small smile faded quickly. “Where are we going now?”

  Elliott looked out the window, got his bearings. “Keep going on Florida Avenue. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

  They rode in silence. Amy continued to glance over from time to time, but Elliott simply lay reclined in the seat, staring out the window. The lights and life of the city at night passed in a mosaic of color and sound, unseen and unregistered.

  Elliott shot out his hand, pointing to a curb. “Here.”

  Startled, Amy looked at the corner. A throng of people crowded the sidewalk, heads bowed over their phones, nodding to the music coming from a pair of headphones, or talk
ing to one another as they walked. “What?”

  “Pull over here.”

  Amy whipped the Celica over, earning a honk from the car behind her. “I don’t think I can park here.”

  “I don’t want you to park,” Elliott said, yanking on the handle and popping the door open. He grabbed his knapsack and stepped onto the sidewalk. “I’ve got some thinking to do.”

  “You’ve got . . . hey! What am I supposed—” Amy began, but Elliott closed the door in her face. She threw the car in park and scrambled across the seat to open the door again. “Elliott, wait!”

  But by the time she managed to get out to the sidewalk, Elliott was gone, the last view his back slipping into the crowd on the sidewalk, lost in the press.

  25

  Elliott

  Elliott shoved through the crowd on the sidewalk. A few made an effort to step to the side; others, however, he bulled out of his way. The physical contact felt good, but a voice of caution shouted at the back of his head as he saw the alarm growing on the faces in front of him. Crazy homeless guy . . . angry . . . dangerous. If he didn’t calm down, someone would call the cops and from there, it was a short trip to a night in lockup or a tasing or a bullet. He veered into a thin alley, dim and wet, off the main artery. The sense of relief from the walkers on the sidewalk was palpable.

  Thirty feet from the crush of the street, the noise was so muted that he could hear water trickle from a gutter into a drain. Trash lay flattened on the ground, slowly becoming one with the asphalt. Bundled newspapers moldered forgotten in a puddle. A rat scurried ahead of him, pausing to hide in a bunch of trash before bolting again as he followed it down the alley.

  Being out of the crowd would give him the chance to slow down, get back to some rational thought, maybe. But it was going to be tough as long as his mind was still in shock from the conclusion he’d made staring down at Peter Goldstein’s battered face. What he needed was a chance to reassess what he knew, formulate a theory, then seek confirmation, someone from the outside to say, “Yeah, looks like you’re onto something.” For that, he needed a place to stop and think.

  He found what he was looking for on the corner of Sixth and P. Dirty windows, a neon beer sign hanging next to an ad for the lottery, the reek of bleach thrown into the street gutter. Country music blared through the open door, filling the space around the building and explaining why the place looked so deserted. Through the window, dull, shadowy forms moved inside, obscuring, then revealing, what appeared to be the single light in the place. A chipped sign over the door said TONY’S.

  A bar? Really? A ripple passed through him. An ancient thirst, one he thought he’d left behind, caught him by the tongue and wrung his mouth dry. No. We’re not here for that. This had to be about business, about getting to the truth.

  The bar looked seedy enough, all right, but he glanced down at himself in the gloom to be sure. As long as it was dark inside and no one got close enough to get a whiff, he should be okay. What he couldn’t do was take his knapsack in with him. Drinkers didn’t carry baggage—at least, not the physical kind. They walked in with twenty bucks and a mission. He took out the little bit of cash he’d hidden in the seam, then stuffed the sack behind a dumpster in the alley. Walking away from it, he felt nude.

  The smells and sounds of the bar hit him as he stepped over the threshold and his mouth instantly felt pasty and dry. Pretending to let his eyes adjust, he paused, then moved toward the bar with as much confidence as he could patch together.

  The place was crowded for as early as it was. A few solo practitioners, sitting square to the taps, held the bar down like nails, while small groups gathered in intimate crescents around the tables and in the corners of the main room.

  Behind the bar was a big guy in a tight blue shirt, broad as a bed, with long black curly hair and a thick beard—a heavy metal roadie who’d quit the tour. Two bars of white ran through the beard from the corners of the guy’s mouth, like the tusks on a walrus. Eyes, small and bright in the big face, looked Elliott over as he approached, then dropped as the guy moved from pulling beers to washing glasses.

  Elliott swallowed, but it was like licking sandpaper. Don’t sit in the corner, don’t avoid looking at him. No one’s ashamed of ordering a beer. He headed for an opening at the bar left of center and climbed a stool.

  The walrus racked the last glass, wiped his hands—front then back, front then back—on a bar towel hanging from his belt, then walked over. He leaned against the bar, hands spread wide, and raised his eyebrows. A blurry tattoo of a whale covered the inside of one arm, and on his shirt was a slap-on HELLO! MY NAME IS tag that read TEDDY in fat block letters.

  “Heineken?” Elliott asked, his voice stumbling over the three syllables.

  Teddy got a sour look and Elliott thought, This is it, I’m out, but he said, “Does this look like a joint that serves Heineken? Bud, Bud Light, PBR, Labatt’s.”

  “I . . . Budweiser.”

  Teddy nodded and reached for one of the recently washed glasses. Elliott suddenly realized he needed to pay and pivoted away from the bar, hoping to hide the fact that his money was wadded up in a ball. Homeless people didn’t carry wallets. But Teddy set the beer down in front of Elliott, then moved off to help someone else without a backward glance.

  Out of habit, he cupped his hand around the glass. It was still warm from the wash. Beer had never been his drink of choice—the bourbon, amber and sweet, whispered to him from the rack behind the bar—but he still refused to take a sip. His stomach was clenched like he was expecting a gut punch. It took a conscious effort to release the tension and simply sit there like any other patron.

  Teddy, he could see, was keeping an eye on him, or maybe that was his imagination; the bartender seemed to be everywhere at once, scooping tips off the bar, snagging empties, taking orders.

  As he cruised by, Elliott leaned forward. “Is there a pay phone around here?”

  Teddy quirked an eyebrow. “This being the twenty-first century, no.” He looked at Elliott for a beat, considering, then leaned over behind the bar, one hand flat on the top for balance. He came up with an old-fashioned dial phone on a long cord. He banged it down in front of Elliott. The bells inside rang faintly.

  “House phone. Local calls only, ten minutes max. It’s an antique, so treat her gently. And no sex calls either.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “Relax, man. It was a joke.” Teddy moved away as three guys sidled up to the opposite end of the bar, laughing and waving to get his attention.

  He stared at the phone, unsure now. But his mind had already analyzed the disparate pieces of information that had been floating through it since Amy had first approached him for help. And it pointed in a direction he didn’t like.

  Elliott picked up the receiver and brought it to his ear, then dialed the number from memory. It rang on and on. It was late, he realized suddenly and wondered if the whole charade—hiding the sack, buying the beer—had been for nothing when there was a clatter on the other end as the phone was answered.

  “Cargill.”

  “Dave.” There was a knot of silence. He hadn’t planned well for this call. “We need to talk.”

  26

  Charlotte

  Charlotte froze. She hadn’t heard the door open, hadn’t heard footsteps on the floor. But suddenly she felt a presence next to her bed, so close that she imagined she could feel breath on her face. The form loomed over her, and she shrank back into the pillow.

  “Are you awake?” The words were barely above a whisper.

  “Tina?”

  The girl nudged her. “Move over.”

  “I don’t know if you can fit.”

  Beside her, Maggie breathed deeply and asked groggily, “Who’s that?”

  “Shh. It’s Tina. Can you make a little room?”

  The two of them scooched over and Tina slid into bed beside them. Charlotte, sandwiched in the middle, didn’t know what to do.

  “What do you want, T
ina?” Maggie was apparently not reluctant to ask questions.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said, then hissed, “Your bed is cold.”

  “It’s because you’re so tall,” Charlotte said. “The sheets are cold at the bottom.”

  “The mattress is lumpy, too.”

  “If you don’t like it, go back to your own room.”

  They were quiet for a second, none of them sure of what to say. Maggie fidgeted and Charlotte was afraid she was going to tumble over the side, but she wrapped her arms around the little girl until she rested her head on Charlotte’s shoulder. Outside, the wind picked up, and leaves swept upward by the breeze rattled against the side of the house like birds’ bones.

  “Tina?” Maggie’s voice was very small.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you ever think about home?”

  Charlotte gave a small squeak. The word “home,” said like Maggie had, glowed and sizzled in their heads. It meant their lives before, and family and friends. It definitely didn’t mean Sister’s house. As the silence stretched on, Charlotte began to shake, certain that Tina was a second away from jumping out of bed and sprinting to Sister’s room with a mouthful of accusations.

  But the girl didn’t move. Quiet, measured breaths stirred Charlotte’s hair. Finally, she broke the silence.

  “I don’t even know what home is,” she said. “I miss my mom, I guess. We did everything together since I didn’t have a dad or brothers and sisters. But she was sick or high a lot. Like, all the time. When that happened, it was like she was asleep or dead, and I wished I was on my own. I mean, she’d wake up and everything would be okay for a while, but then it got bad again. So bad, that some government people came and split us up. I thought it was for just a little while, but then I was sent to a new family . . .”

  Maggie burrowed into Charlotte’s side like a small animal as Tina’s voice trailed off. When she started talking again, her voice was distant, as though the story was being told near her, but not from her.

  “My new family seemed okay at first, but the other kids, the real ones, were scared of the dad. I didn’t understand why. He would drink and smoke and watch TV every night, but that didn’t seem so bad. Every night, though, his kids would sit very still, hoping he would just pass out in the chair.”