Eden (12 page)

I
got home about three in the afternoon and was walking up the stairs to my apartment when I got a whiff of some perfume ahead of me, something light and expensive and European. When I looked up the shrink was standing there with her arms folded, leaning against my door. I stopped walking and dropped my hand, let the keys jangle against my hip.

“What have I done now?” I said. “Go away.”

“You’re such a charmer, Detective Bennett.”

She was all baby blue today, a T-shirt that crumpled up toward her hips and curved nicely around her taut biceps, tiny blue studs shaped like flowers in her ears. Gray skinny jeans that she could pull off without looking sag-bottomed. Cashmere boots with round toes. I got up close to unlock the door and was struck by how small and freckly she was, like a little hairless leopard.

“I don’t have to play doctors with you anymore, Stone.”

“I’m not here to play doctors with you,” she said, slapping a bunch of files against my chest. “I’ve been trying to call you so that you can take these back. They’re originals. I’d have paid to have them sent but it’s not my responsibility.”

“Oh and you were just in the neighborhood, so you thought, you know,” I shrugged, gave a flourish.

“I really was just in the neighborhood. My mother lives two streets back.”

“I’m a cop. I can tell when people are lying. Especially women.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Confess, Stone. You’ve been up all night outside my windows watching me shower. Taking photos. Sticking them in a scrapbook.”

“You’re so weird.”

I took the papers, held open the door for her. The cat trotted toward us, meowing like a needy wife interrogating me about where I’d been and who I’d been with.

“I didn’t know you were a cat man, Frank.”

“I’m not a cat man.” I gestured at the animal. “It’s a man cat. Coffee? Tea?”

“Coffee.” She dumped her handbag beside the door like she lived here. I frowned and began herding beer bottles off the sink. Wondered if I had any milk. If it was any good. I opened the fridge and exhaled.

“How are you?”

“I’m fine,” I told the fridge.

“Busy?”

“Yep.”

“I’ve been following the missing girls in the papers,” she said, perching on the arm of my gray Ikea couch. “Not much movement there.”

“Oh, there’s movement,” I said. “You just can’t see it.”

We talked about the case for a little bit. Kept it vague. How the families must feel. Similar cases. I forgot to switch the kettle on, remembered. She laughed at me. I glanced around and felt a little less embarrassed about my single-man hovel now that Eden had taken care of it for me.

The cat was whining, looking at me, pawing at my trousers.

“So, all this work, Frank,” Stone said.

“Yeah?”

“I was hoping it’d keep you all squared away. But it’s not, though, is it? If we’re really honest with ourselves.”

I looked over. She was examining an empty packet of Oxy she seemed to have plucked from between the couch cushions. I went and took it from her and slipped it into the bin.

“Did you manage to take a look at this place before you started psychoanalyzing my color scheme?” I asked. I motioned to the room. “Noticed how fucking immaculate it is? It’s like a showroom in here. It must be exhausting to be so critical all the time.”

“Your cat’s starving.”

“It’s not starving.” I snatched the box of cat food from the top of the fridge, tried not to trip over the animal as it wove between my feet. “I fed it yesterday.”

Dr. Stone was watching me as I fed the cat, rinsed its water out, patted it a little as it crunched the kibble. My face felt hot.

“Do you feel like I’m attacking you?”

“I feel like you’re trying to decide what social disorder I have from how I tie my shoelaces,” I said. “What is it? Bipolar?”

“Are you trying to undercut my credibility in order to defend yourself?” she smiled.

“I’m not defending myself in my own house.” I scratched the cat’s rump. Its back leg twitched in pleasure.

“What’s the cat’s name, Frank?” she asked. I looked at her.

“Gray cat.”

“Is it a boy or a girl?”

I straightened. Tried to glance down.

“Don’t look at it. Tell me. Is it a boy or a girl?”

I licked my teeth. Dr. Stone cocked her head.

“What’s your point?” I asked.

“That’s not your cat, is it?”

“It’s mine now.”

“Is that Martina’s cat?”

“No. It’s mine.”

“Why have you got Martina’s cat, Frank?” I could tell she wanted to squint or frown, to let some of the raw confusion flooding through her mind show in her face. But I was sure they told you not to do that in shrink school. So her face remained still and open and understanding, and in a way that was worse, made me feel like an even bigger loser or psycho or addict or whatever her diagnosis would turn up. So I turned back to the coffee I’d failed to make and tossed the grounds out into the sink, rinsed a mug, and set it on the counter.

“Got any other plans, Stone, or was ruining my afternoon it?”

“No, this was it,” she said.

I looked out the window until she was gone.

 

 

Hades was standing on the steps to his shack as I arrived, leaning on his cane. I’d hoped to be in and out of his place before nightfall but the sun was setting as I clambered up the drive. Some new creature was in the process of being assembled on the knoll in front of the house, a long-snouted thing made from hundreds of birdcages.

We said nothing to each other. When we got inside he handed me a beer from the fridge while I lay my papers out on the table.

“I’ve had one afternoon on this, so don’t expect wonders.”

“I rarely expect wonders,” he said.

 

 

I sat down and shifted a black-and-white photograph over to Hades. A dark-skinned child of one or two sitting on a wooden chair in nothing but a pair of cotton pants, pulling at her feet and looking away. Someone had labeled the photograph in blue ink, identifying it with a serial number.

“Sharon Elizabeth White,” I said, unfolding the file that the photograph belonged to. Printouts of scans from the National Archives. “Removed from the care of Donna Anna White by the Victorian Children’s Protection Society in August 1956. Report cites vagrancy and alcoholism on the part of the mother. Only child at the time but two others would follow. Both would also be removed—Lynda in care until adulthood and Scott deceased at seven, traffic accident. Sharon’s father unknown, father of the other two a steelworker. Mother illiterate, unemployed. Removal wasn’t easy, it seems. Lots of trouble caused in the community. Lots of similar removals. A small riot.” I pushed a folder toward Hades. It was thin. Handwritten, full of medical notes. Hades was looking at the photograph, frowning. His glasses were on the sink.

“Someone pissed off the local constabulary,” I said.

“They would do that,” Hades said. “Go in and clear out whole towns. Night raids. Keep everyone in check with the idea that they might get them back if they kept their noses clean. Sunday never talked about it, but I knew it would have been something like that.”

“Well, she’s in foster homes until five,” I said, flipping the edges of the other folders. “A good kid, but a very slow learner. Basically nonverbal. Then she takes off one morning from school. Gone walkabout. For a while police thought she might have been abducted, but she’s filed officially as ‘Absconded from care’ and that seems to be the end of it. Probably presumed a relative took her and closed the case.”

“A beach.” Hades smirked a little, sipped his beer. I waited. He didn’t continue. He seemed to be dreaming, looking at the photograph.

“What?”

“Bear found her on a beach. On a Sunday morning.”

I lifted more photographs from the files, shuffled through them. Laid one out before him. A group of people standing on the porch of a large house, lots of women smiling and laughing, some shadowy-eyed lowlifes with big dogs on chains. The girl who was found on a Sunday was there at the edge, looking at her fingernails when the photograph was taken. I pointed to the big man at the back, in the shadows by the door, a hairy colossus.

“Michael ‘Bear’ Harwitz?”

“That’s the one.”

I held the photograph up to my nose, squinted. I’d heard things about Bear Harwitz and Alec “Caesar” Steel from the sixties, old academy stories that were probably so removed from truth as to be completely useless to my investigation. Gunfights and towns terrorized and cocaine parties and prostitutes slain in their beds. Hades took the photograph from my hand, having waited long enough. I watched his face. He didn’t seem upset about any of it. I imagined he’d never seen any of these photographs before. He finished his beer and caught my eye, set the photograph down.

“What else?”

“Nothing else at this point. A few drug arrests. Twelve. Fifteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. That’s it. That’s the mark she made on the world.”

“That’s the mark she made on the public record.”

“Who was she to you?”

“She was the love of my life,” the old man said. I waited. He folded up the papers before him and put them out of his way. He clasped his hands and looked at my eyes. Concrete and steel and storm clouds in his eyes, the gray of hard times weathered in silence. He reminded me of my father—when that thought came to me I shook it physically out of my head, looked away.

“You kill her, Hades?”

“No.”

“I’ve heard plenty of smack talk about you, old man.”

“Like what?”

“Like you bit some guy’s thumb off in a bar fight.”

He laughed, hung his head back.

“I’ve been in some good scraps, but not that good. The thumb is connected to the hand by about a million complex, intertwining muscles. Its tendons go as far back as the wrist. You can’t just bite it off. It’s not a fucking breadstick.”

“I heard you know a lot about bodies. How they work. How to dispose of them.”

“There’s a shovel out on the porch there, boy, and a flashlight in the cupboard. Go ahead. Go treasure hunting, if that’s your idea of a good evening. Plenty have before. I ought to start charging for it.”

“You’re pretty good with the denials. But you know that I know about Eden.”

“Careful now.”

“I’m a police officer. I look at the facts. I look at the rumors, even if you say they’re not true. You can’t be surprised that you’re my first suspect.”

“I’m not surprised. I’m just waiting for you to get your ass into gear and move on from me. I didn’t kill Sunday. I told you that. I loved her. I’m as keen to know what happened to her as that stupid boy out there on the road.”

“Then why am I sitting here? Why is Adam White so sure he’s got you?”

“Because she was on her way to see me when she disappeared. It looks bad.”

I waited while he cracked another stubby.

“She was supposed to meet me,” Hades said, shifting back on his chair. “At Central Station. Platform Two. Right outside the ticket booths. Nine o’clock, I said, because she never got up early. She spent the night before at a hotel called Jeremy’s. I sent a note, and she got the note. I waited and she didn’t come. Something happened to her. She’d packed her things. She was ready to go. And then she was gone, all the stuff still sitting there.”

“What happened to her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Any guesses?”

“Anything could’ve happened to Sunday. Trouble loved her. She’d always been like that. She was working on and off for a cathouse in Crest Avenue when she disappeared but she hadn’t been there long. Bounced around a lot. Pissed people off.”

“So you don’t know who nabbed her.” I sat back too and hung my elbow over the back of the chair. “No idea?”

“Plenty of people didn’t like me. I’d just shaken everything up. Scorned some people pretty bad. But then, plenty of people didn’t like her.”

“What would be your guess then? Your people or hers?”

“I told you. I don’t know.”

“No clue.”

“If I had a fucking clue I wouldn’t have some idiot on my road watching me take a piss and some smart-ass cop boy sitting interrogating me in my own kitchen.” He flung an arm toward the door, toward me. “I’d have brought White up here the moment he showed interest, sat him down, and described how good it had felt to slowly and carefully carve the wet, beating heart out of the chest of the man who touched her. If I had any fucking clue who killed Sunday you’d have known about it, because it would’ve been in the papers, what I did to the killer.”

I finished my beer. A bunch of clocks were ticking in the other room, part of some collection, going off like the twittering of tiny mechanical birds.

“Caesar?” I asked.

“I looked into it. Over and over. He and his people were accounted for.”

“I thought you were his people.”

“Not always.”

“Who did you account for and how did you account for them?”

“Caesar was . . . incapacitated the night Sunday went missing,” the old man said, raising his eyebrows. “That’s all I’m prepared to say about that.”

It didn’t surprise me how easily Hades slipped from client into defendant mode.

“Who else?”

“His major lieutenants were with him, so I knew where they all were. Tom Savet was at a policeman’s ball at the city all night receiving awards.”

“Tom Savet?”

“He was very close to Caesar at the time.”

“So if you had to guess, you wouldn’t say whatever happened to Sunday was something personal?”

“Look, in my time, you wanted to do something personal, you let everyone know what it was. No point in knocking off someone’s bird without sending them something. A finger. An eye. Leaving her somewhere. Telling the papers and splashing it about town. That was how you did things in those days. None of this drive-by punk shit. None of this, this shoot-’em-up hooligan crap. You set examples back then. You spoke to people’s faces.”