I Got You, Babe (34 page)

“Gender nonspecific?”

“Sorry. Is my police sensitivity training showing?”

Renee rolled her eyes.

“I’m hoping,” John said, “that somebody’s wandered around down there wearing those clothes and that somebody else remembers.”

Renee frowned. “That’s a long shot, isn’t it? If you’re going to rob a convenience store, would you run around in public in the clothes you did it in?”

“Probably not. But maybe he went out in them sometime before the robbery and somebody will remember.”

“And maybe we’re totally off base here, and it really was a woman, and all this is just a waste of time.”

“Maybe. But right now we haven’t got much else to go on.” Renee stared down at the table. John slipped his hand against her thigh.

“Don’t worry. We’re not beaten yet.”

She wished she could feel that optimistic. Telling her not to worry right now was like telling her not to breathe.

John called Dave, leaving a message for him since he wasn’t in. As he disconnected the call, she started to ask him what was going to happen if a few days passed, or a week, and still they’d found no solid evidence either supporting her innocence or somebody else’s guilt. But in the end, she decided not to ask, because she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer.

She followed him to the back door. He must have read the concern on her face, because he stopped and pulled her into his arms. “Hey, didn’t I tell you not to worry?”

“I can’t help it. If I go to prison, I’ll be losing more than just my freedom.” She melted into his embrace, resting her head on his shoulder. “I’ll be losing you, too.”

He held her tightly, running his hand along the length of her hair in soothing strokes, and she wondered how in the span of only a few days things could have changed so much. The man who had been her captor had become her ally. Her friend. Her lover. And the thought of being taken away from him was more than she could bear.

“You know I’m going to do my best to get you out of this,” he said.

“I know,” she whispered, but she couldn’t help wondering if his best was going to be enough.

Several years had passed since John had worked the streets on the south side, and he found that nothing much had changed, except that the storefronts and sidewalks were a little rougher around the edges. It was a little after seven o’clock when he parked along Colfax Street, the epicenter of Tolosa’s alternative-lifestyle crowd. At least three clubs in the area—Queen’s Court, the Chameleon, and Aunt Charlie’s— catered to people who hopped across gender boundaries like fleas from one dog to another.

He got out of the car, knowing he was going to stand out in these places like a full moon on a clear night just by looking normal. He’d never get any answers by engaging in casual conversation the way he’d done with that old lady at the convenience store. Many of the people down here flirted with the edge of the law, so they could make a cop in a heartbeat. He had no choice but to flash his badge and hope somebody was in a talkative mood.

He entered Aunt Charlie’s and headed toward the bar, and in no time he was approached by a tall man wearing a long black wig and a short black dress, holding a thin brown cigarette between manicured fingers. He looked like Cher on steroids. If not for the Adam’s apple, the five-o’clock shadow, the hairy arms, the knobby knees, and the size-thirteen feet, he might have actually resembled a woman.

“Hello, there,” he said with a guarded smile, eyeing John up and down. “I’m Samantha. The assistant manager. And you are...?”

John flipped out his ID. Samantha gave it a quick, offhand glance, then slid onto a bar stool, resting his arm against the bar. He crossed his legs, then flicked his cigarette into a nearby ashtray and gazed at John warily.

“What can I do for you, Officer?”

John laid a fifty on the bar, and Samantha’s mascara-laden eyes widened with interest.

“I’m looking for a guy who might be one of your customers. Last time he was seen he was wearing a leopard-print shirt, black spandex pants, black gloves, and white shoes.”

Samantha raised a deadpan eyebrow. “White shoes with that ensemble?” He took a drag off his cigarette and blew out a ring of smoke. “Are you sure you’re not the fashion police?”

“And big, dangly earrings that look like rainbows.”

“Oh, dear. Is this everyday wear, or Halloween?” He stabbed the cigarette out in the ashtray. “To tell you the truth, that could be one of two hundred people who come in and out of this place every night.”

“This guy is maybe five-ten, maybe six feet. Probably wearing a long blond wig.”

“Blond. They all want blond. What
is
it with that, anyway?” He brushed his phony waist-length hair over his shoulder with a preening flick of his hand. “There’s no mystery to blond. It’s nothing more than somebody jumping up saying, ‘Me! Me! Look at me!' He rolled his eyes with disgust. “Self-absorbed, self-conscious. That’s what it is. It takes class to go brunette. To stop letting your hair talk for you.”

As if his wasn’t singing, “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves” at the top of its hairy lungs.

“Do you have a photo?” Samantha asked.

“No,” John said. “Just hoping the clothes might ring a bell.”

Samantha eyed the fifty-dollar bill, clearly trying to figure out what he could do to earn it.

“Tell you what.” He reached over the bar and nabbed a pink flyer from beneath it and handed it to John. “Tomorrow night we’re having a talent show. Every cross-dressing, sexually ambiguous gender-bender in town will be here. You can probably find the person you’re looking for.”

John eyed the flyer, noting that the grand prize was one thousand dollars, with the runner-up receiving five hundred. A show like that could draw a considerable crowd.

He folded the flyer up and stuck it in his coat pocket, then grabbed a cocktail napkin. He wrote his phone number on it, then slid it along with the fifty down the bar toward Samantha. “I’m sure you’ll call me if you see anyone before then who fits that description.”

“Well, certainly, Officer. You can bet I’ll be on the phone right away.” Samantha snagged both items and tucked them into his phony cleavage. “And if you find who you’re looking for, try not to bust the place up, okay? The owner will have my ass if you do.”

John left the club and ventured across the street to Queen’s Court. The owner and manager were nowhere to be found, and the bartender zipped his lip so tightly when he saw John’s badge that he knew something illegal had to be going on somewhere in the vicinity. But unless that illegality was being committed by a man wearing a leopard print, right now John wasn’t interested. One look from the bartender, though, and the patrons at the bar clammed up, too, leaving him no chance to get any information at all.

He walked a block and a half south to the Chameleon, where business had started to pick up a little. He hung out there for half an hour, watching people come and go. He talked to several employees and even a patron or two, but nobody remembered the clothes or the earrings.

John went back outside and stood on the street comer, wishing he had better news for Renee. It wasn’t as if he’d expected a guy wearing leopard print and rainbow earrings to walk right up to him and confess, but at least he’d hoped for some kind of recognition on somebody’s part.

Still, the talent show was something he hadn’t anticipated, and it could very well draw the person he was looking for. Right now, it was about the only hope he had.

But what would happen if it turned up nothing?

Don’t think about that now.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and headed back down the block to his car. For the next twenty-four hours, his task was clear: he had to keep the world from finding out Renee was with him until he could get to the talent show tomorrow night. With luck, a certain badly dressed man who robbed convenience stores would be out for a night on the town, never dreaming that there would be a cop in the crowd who was looking just for him.

When John got home, he found Renee curled up on his sofa waiting for him, her legs tucked up next to her and her long blond hair spilling over her shoulders. He’d been coming home alone to an empty house for so long now that he didn’t know what it was like to do anything else, and he felt an unfamiliar stirring of warmth as he looked at her. What would it be like if she were here when he got home every night?

He shut the door, and Renee rose to meet him. “What did you find out?”

“Not much,” he said, tossing his wallet and his car keys on the dining room table. “Nobody I talked to remembered anyone in clothes like the ones I described. But I did come up with this.” He handed her the flyer. “There’s a talent show tomorrow night at a club called Aunt Charlie’s. It should draw a big crowd that’ll be full of just the kind of people we’re looking for. I’m planning on being there.”

“Do you think you’ll find something?”

It was a long shot, but he couldn’t bear the thought of telling her that. “I think there’s a good chance I’ll come up with something.”

Renee eyed the flyer, then looked up at him with a cautious expression. “What are we going to do if you don’t?”

He could tell she desperately needed him to give her an answer, but the truth was that he didn’t have one. Right now he had no other leads to follow. If they turned up nothing tomorrow night, all she would have going for her would be a very shaky eyewitness, an almost-alibi, and an absence of motive. He knew firsthand that juries sometimes made incredibly dumb decisions. Under those circumstances, how could he ever suggest that she should turn herself in? By the same token, how could they carry on the way they’d been with no resolution to the situation at all?

“Let’s take this one step at a time,” he told her. “Let me go to the talent show tomorrow night and see what that nets us. We’ll go from there.”

She looked as if she wanted to say something else, but she didn’t. Finally she just nodded. He knew his answer hadn’t satisfied her. Hell, it hadn’t satisfied him, either.

“It’s nearly eight-thirty,” John said. “Are you hungry?”

“Yeah. A little.”

“How about a pizza? Sausage and black olives?”

“Sounds good.”

Renee sat back down on the sofa again while John ordered the pizza. When he went back to the living room he found her sitting on the sofa, her legs tucked up beside her again, staring off into space. He knew she needed some reassurance, but he just didn’t know what to say. So he simply sat down beside her and slipped his arm around her. Instantly he felt how tense she was.

“Renee? Are you all right?”

She laid her head against his shoulder. “Yeah. I was just thinking about my mother.”

“Your mother?”

“Yes. She still lives here in Tolosa, but I haven’t seen her in almost two years.”

“Why not?”

“Because she hates me.”

“But why? It looks like she’d be proud of you for putting all your teenage problems behind you.”

Renee sighed. “My mother’s an alcoholic. She didn’t want me around when I was a kid because I was too much trouble when all she wanted to do was drink. And she doesn’t want me around now because I remind her that people really can change, and she doesn’t want to believe that, or she’d have to do something about herself.”

John couldn’t imagine what it must be like to grow up with that kind of nonstop negative bombardment. Renee had suffered through it for years, yet still she’d been able to rise above it.

“I got up the nerve to visit her two years ago,” she said. “I thought it might be time to mend some fences. I’d become a rational adult and I thought maybe she had, too.”

“What happened?”

“She greeted me at the door with a drink in her hand. It was nine o’clock in the morning. Things went downhill from there. Within fifteen minutes I was reminded of what a rotten kid I’d been back then and what an ungrateful daughter I was now.”

“Ungrateful daughter?”

“Oh, yeah. She told me that after all she’d done for me, I should be able to give her a few bucks once in a while now that I had a good job at a fancy restaurant. Apparently she was running low on booze, and her welfare check hadn’t shown up yet.”

John heard the catch in Renee’s voice, as if she were on the edge of tears. He took her hand and held it tightly.

“Before I left her house,” Renee said, “I went back into the bedroom that used to be mine. It was as if I’d never left it—the unmade bed, the concert posters I’d stolen from a music store, the broken dresser mirror I’d once slammed my alarm clock into in a fit of rage. I just stood there staring at all that, at the evidence of what my life used to be like, and I told myself that it was the last time—I was never coming back there again.”

“Good. Stay away from your mother. You don’t owe her anything.”

“I know. I just feel cheated sometimes, you know? Other people have these wonderful families, and I’ve got nothing but an alcoholic mother who doesn’t give a damn whether I live or die.” She sighed softly. “To tell you the truth, if I end up in prison, she’ll probably be thrilled, because then what she always said will finally be true.”

“What’s that?”

“That I’d never amount to anything.”

She said the words matter-of-factly, but John knew the magnitude of the pain behind them. If only he had the power to sweep those memories from her mind so she’d never be haunted by them again, he’d do it in a second.

“I tried to do everything right,” she said. “So why is everything turning out so wrong?”

“There’s no answer for that. And if you go looking for it, you’re just going to make yourself crazy.”

“Did you know that, except for Paula, you’re the only person I’ve ever told about my past? I can’t bear the thought of anyone else knowing. I’m always afraid of what they’ll think of me.”

“It’s over. You don’t have to be ashamed of it anymore.”

“I was beginning to believe that. I really was. And now this.”

“It’ll all be over with soon and you can put it behind you.”

There he went again, making more promises. He had no business promising her anything. But just the thought of her pulling herself out of the dark hole of her past only to get shoved over the edge again was more than he could stand, and he’d say anything to take that sad, wounded look off her face.