“When did this happen?” I said.
She shrugged. “Well, I been out almost ten years now. So longer ago than that.”
I sighed, my hopes for a conviction of Sly for this earlier murder evaporating. More than ten years ago was too long, especially if the only witness was a dead woman. I would have to talk Detective Jarin into bringing Sly in for Violetta’s murder. I hoped the assault on me would carry some weight in convincing the detective that Sly warranted a closer look.
“Do you know Sylvester’s last name?” I said.
“Do snakes have last names? I always figured he just sprung up out the earth. Everybody just calls him Sylvester, or Sly, if he can make them say it.”
After we ate, Jackie had me drive her back to the taco truck, where Baby Richard would provide her with the protection that she paid for. She assured me that she was in no danger, that Sly would never hurt another man’s woman, especially not her. I let her out at the curb, and watched her stroll over to her nephew. Together they glanced back at me and waved. How I had ended up protected by Baby Richard, I could only begin to guess. I think what it came down to was that Jackie’s saying so made it true.
First thing Monday morning, after a fitful couple of nights, I called Robyn and told her about Sylvester.
“I think he murdered Violetta,” I said. “But it’s just a feeling, and I’m worried about trying to convince Detective Jarin to bring him in based on a feeling.”
“It’s more than a feeling,” Robyn said. “The creep attacked you.”
“Yeah, and that’s good, but it’s not enough.”
“That’s good?”
“You know what I mean.” I related the story about the hooker Jackie told me about. “It could be just a rumor,” I said. “Maybe there never was a beating behind the Dunkin’ Donuts, or maybe there was but the woman didn’t die. I don’t know. But if you could do a search of unsolved cases looking for a prostitute beaten to death sometime before 1995, I could just skip Jarin altogether and go directly to Detective Sherman in the cold case unit.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do, and I’ll try to do it fast. Where will you be today, if I can find the information?”
“I just dropped the kids off at school, but I’m heading home now. You can call me there.”
What she did, of course, was call her father. Al didn’t bother to call me. About an hour after I hung up the phone with his daughter, he showed up at my house.
“What’re you doing here?” I said, when I opened the door.
“What am I doing here? That’s how you greet me?” He pushed by me and into the house. I followed him down the hall, through the ballroom and into the kitchen.
“You got coffee?” he said.
“I was just making a pot for Peter. He should be up pretty soon. He takes it pretty strong.”
Al shrugged. I poured him a cup and watched him ladle spoonfuls of sugar into it. His motions were jerky, like he was restraining himself. I’d seen him angry, but never like this.
“What’s up, Al? Is something wrong?”
“Is something wrong?” he repeated.
“Yeah, is something wrong? You seem, I don’t know, wound up.”
He smacked his dirty teaspoon down on the table, sending up a spray of coffee. “You’re damn right there’s something wrong!” he shouted. He was still yelling when Peter stumbled into the kitchen.
“What the hell is going on here?” Peter said. “Is it too much to ask to be able to get some sleep in this house?”
Al, who had paused in mid-holler when Peter staggered in, said, “It’s 10:30 in the morning.”
“You know he works at night, Al,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm and level, as I had since he began his tirade.
“Coffee,” said Peter. “Good.” He poured himself a cup and took a deep gulp. “Now, like I said, what the hell is going on here?”
Al turned to Peter. “Do you have any idea where your wife is spending her nights? Do you know what she’s been up to?”
Peter nodded. “I know she’s spending them driving around godforsaken South Central. Why? I thought you went with her.”
“I went with her once. I did not go with her the other night when she nearly got herself killed by a murdering pimp.”
“Juliet?” Peter said. “What is he talking about?”
It took all morning to calm them down. It’s hard to say who was angrier, my husband or my partner. For the first time since I’d introduced them eight years before, they were in complete agreement about something, and that something was what a fool I was, what unnecessary risks I took, and how furious they were with me. Every time I thought I’d put the fire out, reassured them that I would never again go to Figueroa Street, that I’d never drive by that part of Figueroa Street, one of them would start up again and set the whole cycle of recrimination and abject apology going one more time.
Robyn, whose fault it was that I was in this position to begin with, finally released me from it. She called just as Peter was describing, in the detail only a writer of horror films could, exactly what Sylvester would have done to me if I hadn’t been lucky enough to be rescued by Jackie.
“Hey, Robyn,” I said. “Thanks for getting your dad on my case.”
“Somebody needs to be on your case, Juliet. You think you’re a cop, but you don’t have the most important tool in a cop’s arsenal.”
“What’s that? A .357 Magnum?”
“No, backup.”
That one word, more than all of Al and Peter’s shouting and cursing, took me aback. Because it was true, I went down there all on my own, without backup. Worst of all, once I was there, when things got dicey, I forced someone to act as my backup, and I had no idea what the ramifications of that act would be for her. Jackie had spoken so carelessly about her immunity from Sylvester’s violence, but I had no idea if that was true. For all I knew, for all she knew, she could be in terrible danger. And I had put her there.
I had to get that man off the street.
“What did you find?” I said.
“I found two possibles. A Sheila Jones who was killed in 1991, cause of death was internal injuries from a beating. And a Jane Doe, 1990, also beaten. Both those cases are unsolved.”
A sudden horrible thought crossed my mind. “Do you think this could be another serial killer? That either Sylvester or someone else killed them and then killed Violetta?”
“These two cases look really different from one another. The Jane Doe was a horrifically violent sexual assault, and the Jones case looks like a robbery. Her purse and jewelry were gone. Someone tore a gold necklace off her neck, breaking the clasp and leaving a few links. I suppose that could have happened after she died; bodies get robbed sometimes, but the fact that there’s no sexual assault in this case makes me think they’re different killers.”
Neither of them sounded much like Violetta’s murder, either. I jotted down the details anyway. When I hung up I found Peter and Al commiserating over the Dodgers draft picks. Clearly their shared rage had been a bonding experience for them. I’d never seen them quite so friendly before. Usually the most they could muster for one another was polite disinterest.
I called Detective Sherman, finding him at his desk. His reaction to my antics of the night before was not much more positive than my husband’s and Al’s had been. He modulated his volume, but the hectoring tone was the same.
“Jesus!” I said finally. “Okay, I get it. I was an idiot for going down there, and I’ll never do it again. Now will you please let me tell you about Sylvester?”
“Hm,” he said when I was done.
“Yeah, I know. It’s not much. But if you have some physical evidence from those two cases, maybe you can check it out.”
“This isn’t enough to bring him in, Juliet,” the detective said. “Not for the old cases. I can’t make an arrest based on unsubstantiated rumor. No judge will issue the warrant.”
“I figured as much,” I said.
/>
“I like him better for your client’s murder,” he said. “He’s her pimp, he’s got a reputation for violence. It’s enough to justify a conversation. You know what, I’ll give that detective a call. What was his name? Gordon?”
“Jarin.”
“Yeah, Jarin. I remember him from before I moved out of the 77th Division. I could never remember his name back then, either.”
Relieved I wouldn’t have to speak to the man myself, I said, “You can tell him to call me if he wants.”
“I’ll do that. Now, will you promise me one thing? Will you promise me that you’ll just leave it alone now, let us do our jobs?”
“I promise I won’t go questioning dangerous men on Figueroa Street anymore, how about that?”
“Good enough,” the detective said.
Twenty-six
PETER and I picked the kids up from school together that afternoon, much to their delight. I didn’t tell them that the only reason Daddy was along for the ride was because he no longer trusted Mama not to put their lives and her own on the line. I punished him, though. He had forgotten, if he’d ever known, that Monday was Tae Kwon Do.
“Do you just sit here?” he said, after we’d wrapped the kids in their belts and sent them into their classes. Ruby was a green belt, and Isaac was struggling to work his way out of Mighty Mites.
“Yup.”
“You can’t go for coffee or something?”
“Nope. There’s nothing close.”
“How is that possible? This must the only corner in the city of Los Angeles without a Starbucks on it.”
“Don’t worry, honey,” I said sweetly. “We’ll pass the time by chatting with the other mommies.”
Peter groaned. Two women joined us on the bench. I knew them by sight, but not by name. A third, Karyan, whose son Jirair was in Isaac’s class, came over, too. She greeted me warmly, and I introduced her to Peter.
“You’re the screenwriter,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“We don’t believe in cinema.”
“Excuse me?” he asked.
I suppressed my smile.
Karyan continued, “My husband and I don’t believe in cinema. We think it’s a destructive force. In fact, we think that most of society’s ills can be blamed directly on the mass media. No offense.”
“None taken,” he said.
“So what’s new, Karyan?” I asked. “How are you doing? Did you find a nanny yet?”
“I thought I had,” she said. “We hired a Brazilian woman; she seemed fine in the interview, and came with wonderful references.” She shuddered. “It just shows how meaningless those are.”
“What happened?” one of other women asked.
“I caught her on her first day alone with the children doing the most awful things.”
“What?” the woman whispered, breathless. Her fascination was downright prurient. Like she was listening to nanny porn.
“First, she used our CD player, which my husband expressly told her not to touch. It’s a very fine and sophisticated system, and not meant to be played with.”
“That is appalling,” Peter said. I stomped delicately on his toe.
“She put on this Brazilian music, I don’t know, samba or something.” Karyan shuddered again. “The whole time she was cleaning the house this music was blaring. I can’t even imagine what the neighbors thought. Then, when the baby got up, she microwaved his bottle! When I hired her I told her a half dozen times, never microwave the bottles. If you don’t have time to use the stove, you can microwave the milk in a glass measuring cup, stir it thoroughly, and pour it into the bottle.”
“Why can’t you microwave the bottles?” Peter said.
I said, “Because plastic leaches dioxins that cause cancer.”
Karyan nodded. “And also the microwave heats unevenly and tiny bubbles of boiling milk can sear through the top of the baby’s mouth and into her brain.”
“What?” Peter asked. “That’s ridiculous. That’s the most—”
This time I stomped less delicately.
Karyan ignored him. “The final straw was when she put her cup of coffee right on the table next to the baby. He could have pulled it over and scalded himself. He could have ended up in the burn unit! That did it for me. I can’t have someone like that working for me.”
“How do you know all this?” Peter asked. “Were you peeking from behind a door or something?”
“Of course I wasn’t peeking, what do you think I am?” Karyan said. “I saw it all on the nannycam.”
“The nannycam?”
One of the other mothers explained to Peter, “It’s a little motion-activated camera hidden in the house. We’ve got two, one in my daughter’s bedroom and the other in the kitchen. It’s really ingenious; they can hide them anywhere. We have one in a stuffed bear and another that looks like a cookie jar.”
“You people have hidden cameras spying on your children’s babysitters?” Peter said.
Karyan took umbrage at the horror in his voice. “Of course we do. Anyone who loves their children would. How else are you going to know what’s going on when you’re not there?”
Peter sighed and then looked at me. “When does the class end?” he asked.
“Not for a little while. Why don’t you take a walk?” I suggested.
When he was gone I turned to Karyan and shrugged. “What can I say?”
She waved a dismissive hand. “Don’t worry, Juliet. He’s a husband. That’s all you need to say.”
As we drove home, the kids safely buckled into their booster seats, Sadie whimpering with frustration at having to face the rear of the car in her car seat, Peter said, “You don’t seriously think it’s okay to spy on your nanny, do you?”
“Of course not,” I said. “I think it’s nuts, and depressing, but I can totally understand the impulse.”
I explained to Peter my theory of the panic of contemporary child-rearing. In a society saturated by media, we know in exquisite detail all the risks of childhood. We know about the dangers that lurk outside our doors, and those that lurk inside our houses. We are aware of what sometimes happens when an infant swallows an almond or a bite of hot dog. We understand the risk of iron poisoning from eating a parent’s vitamin pill. We have heard of children who have been the victims of improperly installed car seats. We are warned about the risks to our precious children of eating strawberries before age one and of bicycle-riding without a helmet. There are a variety of forces at play in this culture of peril. Our constant access to news of all kinds, television stations that must find something to fill a twenty-four-hour news broadcast and some way to lure viewers. The litigiousness of our society, which demands that all harms be rectified by the assignment of blame and the awarding of cash. All this is exacerbated by the fact that the infant mortality rate for certain children is so low. Where once childhood was considered a perilous journey with no sure guarantee of arrival on the shores of adulthood, now we expect and demand that every child make the voyage safely, even those born so young and so small that they fit in the palm of our hands. Every child, that is, except those born in poverty to people of color.
Add to these factors educated and competent mothers trained for professions they no longer practice, who have turned aside from the futures they once expected for themselves to focus their attention and ambition solely on their children. These children are valuable beyond measure, because we’ve sacrificed ourselves for them and to them. We now understand that we are as able and skilled as men, that we can do the work of the marketplace as well as they can, but we have left that work to raise these children, not because we have to—most of us—but because we want to. These children must be worth our sacrifice, they must be extraordinary, and they must be safe. We cannot risk the possibility of anything happening to the precious focus of our lives.
For those mothers who have not willingly paid the professional price, guilt provides the same motivating force. It ratchets up the va
lue of their children so that harm to them is intolerable, and all too easily imagined.
“So what are you saying?” Peter said as we led the children up the stone steps to our house, his hand resting on the new banister we had installed because the old one had bars just far enough apart to fit a child’s head in between. “Are you saying that our parents and grandparents didn’t value and love their children as much as we value and love ours?”
“No. I’m saying that their love was less complicated by guilt and fear, and by a sense of the price paid for it.”
“I don’t know, Juliet. I think your parents are pretty adept at the guilt thing.”
“They are adept at making me feel guilty. I don’t think they necessarily feel much of it themselves. Or if they do, it’s about larger things.”
“I’m not convinced it’s limited to our generation. When I was in elementary school I knew a kid, Paul Scofield, whose mother was a complete headcase. She used to dress him in sweaters in the middle of the summer because she was afraid he’d get a cold. She used to make him wear a football helmet when he rode his bicycle or even when we played baseball in the park. She walked him to school and picked him up. Every day for lunch he would get these crazy sandwiches all on homemade bread with, like, tofu on them. He always tossed his lunch and begged off the rest of us. After a while my mom started packing me two Fluffernutters just so Paul wouldn’t starve.”
“You’ve proved my point,” I said. “His mother was a headcase, right? She was a nut, totally different from the norm. Well, how many of Ruby’s friends eat only organic food? Their lunch is all natural almond butter on organic bread, spread with jelly made from organic grapes with no sugar added. That’s if they’re even allowed to have nuts at all, because of the danger of developing an allergy. They wear their helmets when they ride their bikes, their backpacks don’t have their names printed on the outside so that a predator won’t be able to trick them by pretending to know them. Not that this is an issue, because they never ever walk to or from school alone.”
Bye-Bye, Black Sheep Page 13
