by Robert Crais
“You want to stay at my place?”
She shook her head.
“There’s a woman I know named Carol Hillegas. She works with kids who have problems like this. What if I take you there?”
She shook her head again. I’m with people who love me.
I took a deep breath, let it out. “Okay. I’m going to let you stay here. I’m not going to call the cops, and I’m not going to tell your parents. You won’t have to go home and you won’t have to see your father if you don’t want to.” I took out one of my cards and I put it in her hand and she looked at it but probably didn’t see much. “That gets me at home or my office, and if I’m not there a machine picks up. I want you to stay here. I don’t want you to go nightclubbing and I don’t want you to go out with Eddie Tang.”
The giggle.
“Eddie Tang is a bad man, babe.”
The giggle again, and then she made a wet sound. Her slight body shook and heaved and she put her face in her hands and she cried. I put my arms around her and I held her and I glared at Frank. I said, “I can’t tell you things are going to be wonderful. I can’t tell you that things will ever be right. All I know is that things have happened to you that shouldn’t have and you’re going to need help straightening it all out and I will make sure you get that help. Okay?”
She nodded. She was still rocking. She said, “I’m so messed up. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
I held her until she ran out of tears. I said, “I’ll talk to Carol Hillegas and then I’ll give you a call. We can fix this.”
She nodded again.
When I left, Mimi Warren was standing at the edge of the tennis court, staring out at the valley, rocking. Bobby stood in the gate, blocking my way and acting tough. He said, “Have a good time?”
I went very close to him and said, “If anything happens to her, I will kill you.”
Bobby stopped smiling. Frank took a step in, then pulled Bobby back. Bobby licked his lips and didn’t move. Frank looked at me. “Forget him,” he said.
I stared at Bobby hard enough to stop his heart, and then I left.
27
I walked out the long drive toward Mulholland. The gate swung open when I got there, and I went through, and then the gate closed. I got into the Corvette and closed the door and took a deep breath and rubbed very hard at my eyes. I pressed my fingers into my cheeks and under the line of my jaw and behind my neck and over my temples. The muscles in my neck and at the base of my skull and the tops of my shoulders were as tight as spinnaker lines and I couldn’t make them loosen.
I drove back along Mulholland to the Stop amp; Go, and called Carol Hillegas. In the past, when I’ve had to find runaways who’d taken to the streets, Carol has always proven a help. She knows kids, and counsels them at her halfway house in Hollywood. I gave her the short version and said I needed her help and asked if I could stop by. She told me she’d make some time around eleven. I hung up, then called Jillian Becker. I said, “I need you to meet me in Hollywood in half an hour.”
She said, “I’m really very busy.”
“It’s about Mimi.”
“Have you found her?” She said it slowly. Scared, maybe.
“Will you meet me?”
She didn’t answer.
I said, “This isn’t a time to worry about business. I know where she is and I’ve spoken with her and now there are some things that have to be discussed. Is Bradley back from Kyoto?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to involve Bradley or Sheila until after we’ve talked.”
“Why not?”
I didn’t say anything.
After a very long while, she said, “All right. Where should I go?”
When I got to the halfway house, Jillian Becker was out front, leaning against her BMW. She was wearing a cream-colored pants suit with a white silk blouse and black Sanford Hutton sunglasses with electric-blue mirrorshade lenses. The halfway house was in what used to be a two-story pre-war apartment building on a ratty street called Carlton Way, one block south of Hollywood Boulevard, off Gower. There was a liquor store on the corner where guys with no place to go sat on the curb, and old Taco Bell cups littered the street, and a stack of empty Texaco oil cans on a plot of dead grass, and a tiny bungalow house with a hand-painted sign hanging from the porch that said PALMISTRY. The halfway house had a neat lawn and a fresh coat of paint and was the best-kept property on the street. I think Jillian Becker was hiding behind the sunglasses.
I said, “One thing about me, I really know how to show a girl a good time.”
She said, “Is Mimi in there?”
“No.”
“Why do you want me here and not Bradley and Sheila? If this has to do with Mimi, Bradley and Sheila should be here.”
“No,” I said, “if Bradley were here I would shoot him.”
Jillian Becker stared at me through her mirrorshades, then looked over at the unshaven men sitting on the curb, then looked back at me. She said, “You really mean that, don’t you?”
“Let’s go inside.”
We went through the little gate and up the walk and into the house. There was a tiny entry with a hardwood floor and an old-fashioned coat rack and a sign that said LEAVE THE BULLSHIT AT THE DOOR. To our left there was a stair that went up to the second floor, and to our right there was a little reception area with a yellow Formica counter and a telephone and a blackboard for group announcements. A blond boy with long straight hair and a little blue cross tattooed on the back of his left hand was sitting behind the counter. He was reading a worn-out, spine-rolled copy of Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. He looked up when we walked in. “Hi,” I said. “We’re here to see Carol.”
The blond kid closed the Heinlein on a finger, said he’d tell Carol, and came around the counter to take the stairs up two at a time.
Jillian Becker took off the mirrorshades and stood stiffly by the Formica counter. “What kind of place is this?”
“Halfway house for kids. Most of the kids here are runaways from middle-class homes and middle-class mommas and daddies. Things got a little out of hand back in Ohio. Sometimes things got a lot out of hand. So they end up here in the Land of Dreams hooking or peddling dope or scamming and they get grabbed by the cops. If they are very lucky, the cops give them over to Carol.”
The blond kid came back down the stairs, said Carol was making coffee, and that we could go on up. We did. There was a narrow landing on the second floor and a long hall that went past four dormitory rooms, two for boys and two for girls. A girl who couldn’t have been more than twelve was on her hands and knees scrubbing the baseboard. She had a bright pink scar running along the length of her left tricep. Knife. Jillian Becker stared at the scar.
Carol Hillegas’s office was at the end of the hall. She appeared in the door, took my hand, gave me a kiss, then introduced herself to Jillian Becker and showed us in. Carol Hillegas was tall and thin and wearing her hair shorter than the last time I’d seen her. There were new streaks of gray in it. She had a long face and thin lips and was wearing a pair of faded Levi’s and a green Hawaiian shirt with flowers and birds on it and open-toed Mexican sandals. She wore the shirt tucked into her pants. The office had a new coat of paint, but the secondhand desk was the same and so were the wooden chairs and the textbooks and file cabinets and diplomas on the wall. There was an aluminum-frame sliding window in the north wall. If you looked out, you could see the big red X of the Pussycat Theatre up on Hollywood Boulevard. “Very nice, Carol,” I said. “Upgrading.”
“It’s all this government subsidy. I’m thinking about putting in a Jacuzzi.”
When we were seated and had coffee, Carol looked at Jillian and smiled. “What’s your position in this case, Ms. Becker?”
“I work for the girl’s father. I’m not related to her.”
I said, “Jillian’s here because I’m going to need help with the parents. The more she knows, the more help she
’ll be.”
“So far,” Jillian said coolly, “I don’t know anything. He hasn’t told me what’s going on.”
Carol gave Jillian a warm smile. “He’s like that. Secrets give him a sense of power.”
“Bitch,” I said.
Carol laughed, then leaned back in her chair and said, “Tell me about this little girl.”
I told Carol Hillegas all of it. When I got to the part about the cigarettes, Jillian Becker sat forward and brought one hand to her mouth and stayed like that. I told them about Eddie Tang and following him to the Pago Pago Club and finding Mimi, and then following her to Kira Asano’s. When I mentioned Asano, Jillian moved her hand from her mouth and said, “Bradley opened a hotel in Laguna Beach last summer. Asano had a showing in the hotel gallery.”
I said, “Would Mimi have gone to the opening?”
“Yes. She probably went down with Sheila.”
I told them about my talk with Mimi, and about her refusal to return home. Then I told them why. “She said she couldn’t go home because her father sexually molests her.”
Jillian Becker drew in a breath as sharp as a rifle’s crack. She said, “My God.” Then she stood up and went to the window.
Carol said, “You left her at Asano’s?”
“Yes.”
Jillian Becker shook her head and said, “This can’t be. I’ve known these people for years.” She shook her head twice.
Carol Hillegas got up and poured herself another cup of coffee. I’d once seen Carol Hillegas drink fourteen large cups of 7-Eleven coffee in a single Saturday morning. She said, “Leaving her at Asano’s was probably all right. Mimi’s there because she feels secure, and that’s probably the most important thing right now. In an environment where there is an incestuous relationship, the child loses all sense of security because there is never a safe, nurturing time. The person whom the child should be able to trust most is the source of fear and anxiety.”
Jillian Becker turned away from the window, came back, and sat on the edge of her seat. “I can’t believe Sheila could even suspect this and keep quiet.” She looked at me. “You’ve seen how she is.”
Carol drank more coffee and leaned back in her chair. She looked at Jillian and her face took on a more female quality, as if what she were about to say was somehow more female than male. “The mother might not know. She might only suspect, and there is a high likelihood that she would reject that suspicion out of hand. Somewhere along the line whatever the mother had with the father stopped, and he turned to their daughter. A way to look at it is that the daughter has usurped the mother’s power and position in the household. The daughter has proven herself more desirable and more satisfying to the male. More womanly. That’s not an easy thing to accept.”
“Sheila has a tough household position,” I said. “Wow.”
Carol looked at me and the female thing in her face was cool. “Understand that incest is a family problem with a tremendously complex dynamic. It is also one of the most socially shameful things a person can confront. No one wants to admit it, everyone feels guilty about it, and everyone is afraid of it.”
I said, “Great.”
“Something like this cannot be handled privately. By law, any licensed therapist or counselor has to report a suspected or admitted case of incest to the Department of Public Social Services Child Abuse Unit. The Department dispatches a field investigator who works with the private therapist, if there is one, or the district attorney’s office and police, if those two agencies are required. Incest is a violation of the criminal code and charges can be filed, but they usually aren’t if the offending parent and family agree to participate in therapy.”
Jillian said, “What if the parent refuses?”
“As I said, charges could be filed, but if the child won’t testify, and most of them won’t, there’s really nothing that can be done. The child would have to go into single therapy, but unless the parent and child work together, it is very difficult to get past the scars this kind of thing leaves.”
I said, “What about Mimi?”
“There’s no way I can make a diagnosis based on hearsay. You have to work with the client, and it can take many, many hours over many, many weeks. But clearly this girl is demonstrating severe aberrational behavior. She repeatedly inflicts pain upon herself, and she went to bizarre lengths to escape her environment. Most kids want to run, they just run. They don’t need to stage a phony kidnapping. The anger this child must be feeling is enormous, and most of it is directed at herself. That’s why the masochistic behavior. Another reason is that, subjectively, Mimi is looking for someone who will love her. When a person hurts herself the way Mimi has, they’re doing it because they want someone to make them stop.”
Jillian was nodding. “And the person who makes them stop is the person who loves them.”
Carol Hillegas said, “Essentially, yes. Sexual abuse isn’t love. It’s abuse.” She looked at me. “Mimi is like everyone else. She just wants to feel loved.”
“Should I call the cops?”
Carol shrugged. “The cops won’t kill her. They’ll take her in and when this comes out they’ll refer it to the DA and to Social Services and they’ll get her a counselor. Your instinct was to avoid the trauma of the arrest and the questioning, and in an ideal world that would be the best way to go. Mimi’s had enough trauma.”
I said, “If I can get Mimi and her parents to agree to come in, will you help?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the most trauma-free way to do it?”
“The girl should be in a stabilized environment, and should have established some trust with the therapist. If that’s me, I’d like to spend some time with her and some time with the parents before we try to bring them together. After we’re used to each other, we can begin the group work on neutral ground and see where it leads us.”
Jillian Becker said softly, “Bradley will never agree.”
I looked at her and leaned forward in my chair. “Yes, he will.”
She looked at me.
“I’m going to talk to Bradley and Sheila and I’m going to get them to agree to this, but I don’t want to do it at Bradley’s office. I want you to get them together at home. Can you do that?”
Carol Hillegas said, “How are you going to convince them?”
I ignored her. “Can you do that, Jillian?”
“Yes.”
“Will you?”
“Yes.”
I stood up. “Then let’s do it.”
28
I went to my office and Jillian went to hers, and fifty minutes later she called and told me to be at the Warrens’ home at three that afternoon.
When I got there, Jillian’s white BMW was parked behind Bradley’s chocolate-brown Rolls convertible. The Rolls’s top was down and it looked very sporty. Sort of like a tank with the turret blown off. A sky-blue Mercedes 560SL was parked in one of the garages just past the motor court. That would be Sheila.
At three in the afternoon, it was clear and bright and warm in Holmby Hills. Quiet. Mockingbirds chirped and bees floated around the snapdragons and poppies that lined the drive, and high overhead a single light plane buzzed east. Out on the street, somebody’s Salvadoran housekeeper walked toward Sunset Boulevard and her bus stop. She didn’t look at me and she didn’t look up at the plane.
I went to the front door, knocked, and Sheila Warren let me in. She was wearing a white and pink Love tennis outfit and had a short glass containing ice and a dark liquid in her hand. Always after five somewhere in the world. She looked defiant and sullen, a woman who’d had to make too many sacrifices to get where she was. “I certainly hope I was called off the court for a good reason.”
Sacrifices.
She closed the door and we went into the den. Bradley Warren was half sitting on one of the bar stools, thumbs hooked in his vest’s watch pockets, looking sour. The stern affluent businessman as pictured by GQ. Jillian Becker was standing by the other end of the
bar, not looking at him and not looking at Sheila. Bradley said, “Let’s get something straight, Cole, and get it straight now. You are not in my employ, nor have you been since you were terminated, so I don’t intend to pay you a dime. If this is just a ploy to maneuver yourself back onto my payroll, you can forget it.”
Sheila said, “I didn’t leave the court to listen to you. If he knows something about Mimi, for God’s sake, let’s hear him.”
Jillian said, “I’ll wait outside.”
Bradley said, “You stay here. I want a witness in case this fraud claims I agreed to pay him for additional services.”
Jillian’s face was pale. She looked like she had been hoping no one would notice her. “I can’t do that, Bradley.” She started for the door.
Bradley said, “What do you mean, you can’t do that? I want you to stay.”
She kept going. “Not this time.”
Bradley said, “What do you mean, not this time? You made me come here. You’d better remember who you work for.”
Jillian stopped at the door. She looked at me, then Bradley. She looked at him for a very long time. “Bradley,” she said. “Go fuck yourself.” Then she left.
Sheila Warren laughed. Bradley said, “Jillian,” but he said it to a closed door. He looked back at me. “Jesus Christ. I don’t have time for this. Tell me about Mimi. Is Mimi all right?”
“No,” I said. “Mimi is not all right.”
Sheila stopped smiling and put her drink on the bar.
“Mimi has not been in an accident and has not suffered a physical injury and isn’t in a hospital somewhere, but she is not all right.”
Bradley said, “What the hell does that mean?”
Looking at them, I could feel the muscles in my neck and shoulders tighten the way they had tightened when I was with Mimi. I said, “Mimi wasn’t kidnapped. She ran away. I found her and talked with her.”
