Blues in the Dark

by Raymond Benson

  It was a pretty place, very tranquil. She imagined that back in 1921, when the orphanage was founded, it had been in a more rural setting. Over the decades, the city must have grown around it. The building was white and resembled a church. The property was surrounded by a fence and appeared to be very secure. A playground was next to the structure, but there were no children present at that time.

  Karissa went inside and approached a nun at the front desk. She pulled the old intake form out of her purse.

  “Hello, is there someone I could talk to about this?”

  The nun wrinkled her brow and looked at the form. “Oh my, that’s old. What did you want to know about it?”

  “Anything I can find out.”

  “Well, you know our records are confidential.”

  “I understand that. Please, it’s important. Is there a supervisor or director I can speak with?”

  “Why don’t you have a seat? I’ll see if I can get someone.”

  The reception area was empty. Karissa sat in a chair and focused on the Catholic iconography on the walls. The literature available for reading consisted of brochures about adoption and right-to-life information, magazines published by the Catholic Church, and Bibles. None of this bothered Karissa. She had been raised to respect religious beliefs, and she had attended a Protestant church for most of her childhood with her own adoptive parents.

  Being in the orphanage brought back memories of her childhood. As she had been adopted herself, Karissa admired what any organization did for children who needed homes. She often thanked the Lord for her loving adoptive parents, who’d welcomed a strange two-year-old mixed-race child into their own home without hesitation. She often wished she could remember something—anything—about her real mother and father during those first two years of her life. It was why she had held on to the old rag doll, the one with the name “Julia” stitched into her clothing. The doll was her only link to her birth parents. But recalling any relevant memories was impossible. It didn’t matter much anyway, for she considered the couple who had raised her to be her true father and mother.

  “Ms. Glover?”

  The voice jolted Karissa out of her thoughts. She looked up to see an older nun, perhaps in her sixties, standing in an open doorway. She stood up.

  “Hello, I’m Mother Superior Phyllis Anne. Would you like to come back to my office?”

  “Yes, thank you, Reverend Mother.”

  Karissa followed the woman through the door and into a hallway. She had expected to hear crying infants and laughing children, but it was unusually quiet. They went into a small office near the front. The nun offered Karissa a seat and took her place behind a desk.

  “I don’t hear any children,” Karissa said.

  “They’re in another wing,” the Reverend Mother said. “This is just the administrative area. We do like our silence over here.” She laughed a little. “Now, what can I do for you?”

  Karissa showed her the form. “I’d like to know if there is anything—anything at all—that you can tell me about this child.”

  The woman adjusted her glasses and scanned the page. “Oh, dear. This is before my time. How extraordinary. Is this—is this somehow a part of your family?”

  “No, no, it’s … well, it’s a long story. I’m a filmmaker, and I’m doing research and …” Karissa realized that the tale was so complicated that she couldn’t easily describe why she wanted to know these things. “Let’s just say I’m interested in finding out anything I can about what happened to that child. Was she adopted? And by whom?”

  The nun shook her head. “That kind of information is strictly confidential, Ms. Glover. Besides, for a case this old, those records would be locked up in storage.” She handed the paper back to Karissa. “I’m sorry I can’t help you.”

  Karissa nodded. She opened her purse, took out an envelope that contained the cash she had withdrawn from the bank, and counted out several bills. The Mother Superior’s eyes went wide as she watched the money being counted and placed on the desk.

  “What if I were to make a little donation to your orphanage?” Karissa asked. “Here’s five thousand dollars. Do you think maybe you could find that information and tell me? After all, it was a long time ago.”

  The nun swallowed and said, “We’ve been needing to repair some of our playground equipment and upgrade a couple of computers. What kind of time frame do you have?”

  “I need the information as soon as possible.”

  “Give me your phone number. It might take me a few hours. I’ll call you when I have something. Is that all right?”

  39

  THE MOVIE

  The motion picture’s momentum builds as the audience sits in anticipation. The people in attendance know that they’re in the final act—and that revelations will be forthcoming.

  There are shots of different calendars for subsequent years, tearing away quickly—1955, 1958, 1962, 1965 …

  We see a tropical beach, the ocean’s waves gently lapping onto the shoreline. Costa Rican children run about and play. A lone woman sits in a recliner underneath an umbrella. She wears a modest swimsuit and sunglasses. Her hair is dark. She is the Blair Kendrick character, her appearance modified, older.

  “With Ray’s help, I fled to Costa Rica and led a quiet, anonymous life in Puntarenas. I won’t bore you with the details, but I snuck out of the country with a fake passport under the name Penny Miller. Ray’s friend, a Honduran named José Bográn, was a lawyer there. Apparently, José had once lived in Los Angeles and knew Ray from before. José helped me incorporate a private company with funds I continually received by selling off the rare coins, a few at a time over the years. There were fake partners and stocks that made it look like they were the investors, which hid my identity. I named it Azules Oscuros S.A., which meant “Dark Blues”—an in-joke that would mean nothing to anyone but me and Hank. The company managed my house on Harvard Boulevard back in Los Angeles because, only God knows why, I wanted to keep it. Maybe I really was crazy. I thought perhaps someday I could return to it, even though by then Justin Hirsch had taken over his father’s studio. I knew he’d be looking for whoever took those coins. Did he know the truth that I was still alive? I imagine he did.”

  The scene cross-fades to daytime exterior shots of early 1970s Las Vegas, the downtown Golden Nugget casino, the iconic cowboy sign, and other landmarks.

  “My daughter Jane grew up. Ray kept tabs on her and sent updates that I received through José. By 1972, she had become a young woman and had married a nice Negro man—excuse me—by then the use of that word had gone out of fashion. ‘African American’ was now the proper term. He was really of mixed-race heritage, too, like Jane, but there seemed to be a notion in America called the ‘one-drop rule’—if there was one drop of African blood in a person, then that person was not considered white. But there had been some improvements in the United States. The civil rights actions of the sixties changed the landscape for African Americans, although, like Hank had told me—there would always be racism in my native country. Anyway, Jane and her husband Maxwell moved to Las Vegas, where he worked as a waiter in one of the big casino restaurants and she had a job as a cashier.”

  Cut to the interior of a modest ranch house. We see a young mixed-race woman, Jane, setting up house with the help of her husband. She is pregnant.

  “When Ray told me that Jane was going to have a baby, I had to come out of hiding and find a way to come back home.”

  An interior nighttime shot of a casino floor pulls in to reveal Jane behind the barred window, counting out bills to customers as they turn in their chips. The camera pans to the bar, where Blair sits with a drink and a cigarette. She still wears sunglasses.

  “Like before, I watched my daughter from afar, keeping my distance. I knew that Franco’s people were watching her, too, just in case I showed up. It was like walking a tightrope. However, I knew where Franco and his henchmen liked to hang out.”

  Cut to the exterior o
f a small diner in North Las Vegas, an area populated by working class minorities and those on skid row. The Sunshine Diner is an old-fashioned joint with just a few booths by the window, a counter with round “soda fountain”–style stools, short-order cooks, and chain-smoking waitresses.

  The camera focuses on sixty-year-old Buddy Franco, his face now creased from aging and stress. Still bald, the facial hair graying. Seen through the window, he sits in one of the booths. Across from him is a younger, tough-looking man. They are eating breakfast, having coffee, and smoking. We pull away from the diner to a Ford Tempo parked across the street. Blair, in her “Penny Miller” disguise with sunglasses and scarf, watches Franco. She, too, is smoking. With a disgusted look on her face, she flicks a near-finished butt out the window, starts the car, and drives away.

  “Yep, he was still watching Jane, hoping I would turn up. I had to be extra cautious. But I wasn’t going to miss the blessed day, which, in 1973, finally arrived. I became a grandmother.”

  Blair, wearing a scarf and sunglasses, entered Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital and walked with purpose past the reception desk and to a stairwell that she knew would take her to the basement level. Earlier in the day, she had phoned the hospital to inquire what room Jane was in—but before she could visit, she needed a disguise. Taking a quick look in both directions to make sure she wasn’t being followed, she opened the door and scurried down the steps. Now in her mid-forties, Blair maintained her physique by what she called the “anxiety diet.” It wasn’t the healthiest way to stay slim, but it did curb her appetite. The constant concern over whether Justin Hirsch’s spies or his Las Vegas crime partners would find her or catch her in the act of keeping tabs on her daughter often took its toll. She did tend to drink more than she should, and these days there was more pressure for people to give up smoking. Blair couldn’t do it. She’d tried for one year while living in Costa Rica, but everyone there smoked around her, so it was impossible. She resigned herself to the fact that she would either die of lung cancer, be murdered by Hollywood fixers or Vegas mobsters, caught by the police, or live to be a hundred as a fugitive from society.

  Blair reached the basement and snuck out of the stairwell as if she were a common criminal—which, she often told herself, she was. Blair Kendrick—Femme Fatale. By the sixties, that French term had started being used to describe the “bad girl” characters in the old Hollywood crime movies of the forties and fifties. Critics in France had also coined the expression film noir to describe the pictures of that genre. Back when she was working and making the movies, no one called them that.

  Femme fatale. A badge of honor? Perhaps.

  She quickly found the room she was looking for—LAUNDRY. She stepped inside and addressed a woman wearing all white who was pressing nurse and orderly clothing.

  “Hi, I’m looking for my uniform, I left it here the other day and then forgot to pick it up.”

  The woman nodded her head at the stacks of folded whites on a table. “Just take one in your size.”

  Blair quickly looked through the garments and found one. “Thanks,” she said, and left the room.

  “Nurse Penny” stepped out of the elevator of the maternity ward and headed down the hall before anyone could see that she wasn’t wearing a photo ID clipped to her dress. The uniform alone would have to do to disguise her, but she didn’t plan on staying long. She just wanted to see her granddaughter.

  Halfway down the hall was a large common area, the waiting room for nervous fathers and families who expected to hear good news at any moment. She almost smiled at a couple of men who sat there with newspapers—when she felt a slice of terror rip through her spine. Blair immediately made an about-face and bolted for the nearest ladies’ room.

  Oh my God … oh my God!

  She’d seen Buddy Franco and his cohort.

  Blair caught her breath at the sink. Now that she thought about it, he didn’t look so imposing anymore.

  She opened the bathroom door slightly just to peer out across the hall at the men. The other fellow besides Buddy was the younger man she’d seen at the diner, probably now the muscle behind the team. Blair watched the two men for a minute, debating whether she should simply dart out, run to the elevator, and leave the hospital. She could see her granddaughter another day. Yes, that was the best plan. She took a deep breath, ready to slip out the door, when the other man put down his newspaper and stood. Then Franco put down his own paper, grabbed his cane, and started to stand with some effort. His pal offered to help him, but Franco practically slapped the hand away. Once they were both on their feet, the men left the waiting area and headed for the elevators. For a man with a cane, Franco could walk fast. He didn’t appear to be having too much trouble.

  She stepped into the hall and watched their backs as they turned into the elevator bay. After hearing the “ding” of the car arriving, Blair went the other way to the room where Jane was recuperating.

  The door was open. Blair simply stood there, mouth agape, as the sight took her breath away.

  Jane was in bed, nursing her baby.

  Blair had never even spoken to her daughter.

  She walked into the room. Jane looked up and smiled at her.

  “Hi,” Jane said.

  Blair couldn’t find her voice. She just stared with wonder at the two living beings in front of her. Daughter and granddaughter. Tears came to her eyes.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” Jane asked.

  Blair cleared her throat. “She sure is. How … how are you feeling?”

  “Just fine. A little tired. I was in labor for seven hours.”

  Blair didn’t respond to that. She simply stepped closer and felt her heart melt.

  The baby had fallen asleep. Jane gently moved her from her breast. “Can you … can you hold her a second while I fix myself?” she asked.

  Blair nearly gasped. Can I hold my granddaughter? Really? “Sure.” She came around to the other side of the bed and carefully took the girl in her arms. Blair had a vivid, lovely flashback of when she had first held Suzanne—now Jane—as a newborn.

  Jane fastened her hospital gown and then reached for her child. “Okay, thanks.”

  Blair laughed. “Nuh-uh. I get to hold her for at least another minute!”

  Jane also giggled. “I know, you can’t help it, can you? She’s so sweet. What time is it? My husband is supposed to be here as soon as he gets off work.”

  “It’s about three o’clock.”

  “Oh, good. He should be here in a half hour.”

  Blair couldn’t take her eyes off the baby’s sleeping face. Her skin was paler than her mother’s.

  “What’s her name?” Blair asked.

  A man’s loud voice interrupted the conversation from outside the room. “Yeah, get me a Coke if you would,” he called to someone down the hall.

  Blair looked up and saw Franco’s partner standing in profile in the corridor.

  She immediately handed the baby back to Jane. “Here you go. I know you will enjoy her.” Blair ducked her head, moved around the bed quickly, and scooted out the door. The man didn’t look twice at her. She was just another nurse.

  Franco stood at the end of the hall, looking toward the elevators. Apparently, the men hadn’t gotten on one earlier. Blair entered the next patient’s room to wait for an all-clear. The mother there was asleep, but a father sat next to the bed with his new baby in his arms. He looked up at Blair with a deer-in-the-headlights expression of utter fright.

  If she hadn’t been so rattled by Franco and the other man, Blair would have laughed aloud. “Don’t worry,” she said to the new father. “It will be great. You’ll see.”

  The man nodded and grinned.

  She turned and stuck her head into the corridor. Franco was gone. The other man was possibly in Jane’s room. What would he say to her? Have you seen a woman that looks like the old movie actress, Blair Kendrick?

  Blair scuttled down the hallway and into a stairwell, avoiding the elevat
or altogether and leaving the hospital without being discovered. She resolved that she had to find a way to see her daughter and granddaughter more often.

  40

  KARISSA

  On the way to Wasco, California, Karissa had the nagging feeling that she was being followed again. The same dark car appeared behind her along state highway 126 as she traveled east from the 101 to connect to I-5. However, she lost track of it once she got on the interstate heading north to Bakersfield.

  The landscape in this part of the state was flat and arid. The desert. Hardly any trees in sight. The sky was 180 degrees of blue that met the scorched earth in all directions.

  Who would want to live here? she wondered.

  The trip took nearly three hours. The town of Wasco was as she had expected—tiny, sparse, and quiet. She used her GPS to find the post office on E Street and pulled in to the parking lot at the side of the small building. Marcello’s Corvette was already there, but he wasn’t in the car. Karissa pulled out her phone and dialed his number.

  “Hey,” he answered. “You here?”

  “I’m at the post office. Where are you?”

  “I walked down to the Pueblo Market to get something to drink. Man, it’s hot here.”

  “Well, come on back. I’m in the parking lot.”

  “Be there in a jiff.”

  He returned after five minutes, bringing her a cold bottle of water. “Where’s yours?” she asked.

  “Done drunk.”

  She took a swig. “Thanks, I was dumb not to bring any water with me. Come on, let’s go.” They headed inside the post office.

  “How do you want to do this?” she whispered to him. “I talked to a Mr. Stevens on the phone, and he wasn’t too forthcoming.”

  There were two tellers working—a Hispanic woman and an African American man, both in their late forties or early fifties. No one was in line. Marcello said, “Let me handle this.” They approached the man, who looked up, nodded, and smiled.

  “Help you, sir?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’m trying to locate Gregory Webster, who has this P.O. box here.” Marcello showed him the envelope Karissa had received. “Do you know Gregory?”