Moonbird Boy (8 page)

Taking the long, scenic way on Highway 94 back down toward San Diego, she stopped in the dusty crossroad settlement called Campo and bought a cold Gatorade. Campo's stone store, now also a museum, was rumored to entomb a dead body in its thick, cool walls. The victim of a murder committed in 1868 and never solved. San Diego's back country kept its secrets, Bo realized. But not this time. Because this time a mad Irishwoman with nothing left to lose was going to unearth its secret or die trying. At the moment it really didn't matter which.

There was something the matter with the new boy, something not right. Gussie Quinn watched uneasily as he raced back and forth on the cement patio beyond her kitchen doors. The other short-term foster children, both girls, were in school and so he had no one to play with. But Aunt Gussie Quinn, as children had called her for the three years she'd been fostering, knew boredom was insufficient explanation for a morning she could only regard as disastrous.

She'd gone to pick up the boy named Bird at the receiving home right after breakfast and had forgotten to take off her apron.

"You look like Mrs. Butterworth, the syrup lady," he told her in the lime green waiting room when they were introduced by one of the social workers. "I'll call you Gussie Butter."

In her garage was a brand-new five-hundred-dollar motorized treadmill her husband Hank hadn't wanted to get. She'd spent months talking him into it. Every morning when the kids were off at school she climbed on the thing and walked until the sweat ran down the middle of her back and the little dial said she'd used up two hundred calories, then two-fifty, then three. Every day she tried to burn ten extra calories. It was hard, but already she'd dropped five pounds. At fifty-eight, Gussie Quinn was trying not to look like Mrs. Butterworth. "No, you can call me Aunt Gussie like the others, or you can call me Mrs. Quinn," she told the boy. Always best to let them know the ground rules right away.

"My name's Bird," he answered, distracted by a car pulling into the parking lot outside. "It's for a muffin bird." Then he'd dashed across the small waiting room, grabbed a magazine from an end table and tried to wrap it around his leg. When it wouldn't stay he let it fall to the floor and locked his knee, dragging the leg as if it were in a cast. The social worker's request that he pick up the magazine brought no response.

"We're not sure how he's reacting to the death of his father," she told Gussie quietly. "It only happened yesterday. An investigator's tracking down the family today. You probably won't have him for long."

But it already seemed long. Bird had emptied her car's glove compartment while she was on the freeway and couldn't stop to control him. Then when they got home he'd run into the house and grabbed a picture of Hank in his navy uniform off the mantel, propped it on a stool at the kitchen counter, and dropped to his knees in apparent fascination at a plastic placemat under the dog's water dish. Rising, he bumped the stool and the picture fell, breaking the glass. As Gussie hurried to sweep up the shards, he jerked the sliding screen door off its track as he barreled onto the patio and tripped over the sleeping Labrador her son and daughter-in-law had left while they took a three-day trip to Mexico. In the fall over the dog he scraped an elbow on the cement, but didn't cry like most kids. He just let her clean and bandage the scrape, squirming restlessly under her ministrations. Already the bandage was dangling loose from one remaining strip of adhesive tape as he ran back and forth outside.

Gussie looked at the clock as she made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for his lunch. Only noon. But it felt like the end of a long day. Startled by a ring from the yellow wall phone, she dropped the knife on her foot. It didn't hurt, but left a smear of grape jelly on the white canvas of her brand-new Keds sneaker. Later she'd tell Hank that was when she made the decision. Just then, when she saw that sticky purple stain. The decision that Bird Wagman was just too much to handle.

"Yes, come on by, Ms. Bradley," she told the CPS social worker on the phone. "And, um, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to return Bird to the receiving home. This placement just isn't going to work out."

By two o'clock Bo could feel the sun's glare in the bones of her wrists, her jaw, even her spine. A heavy, bitter whiteness humming and aching. She'd taken Bird back to the receiving home and watched him go straight to the playground where he twisted the swing chains together as she talked with the placement worker.

"Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder?" the woman repeated thoughtfully after Bo suggested a possible reason for Bird's incessant movement and distractibility. "You can ask the court to order a medical evaluation at the detention hearing, but I thought this was just an emergency placement until you find the family, not a real court case. There probably won't be a detention hearing. We won't have him long enough to get a diagnosis, and besides, he's traumatized from his father's death and probably just acting out. We've got some foster parents who're willing to take troubled kids. I'll find a better placement, but the sooner you find the family the better it'll be for everybody."

Bo stood in the air-conditioning for a few minutes, watching Bird through a tinted window. The fine dark hair and blue eyes were Mort's, but the graceful, almost pointed ears and prim mouth must have come from the mother. Bird didn't look much like his father, Bo thought. At least not on the outside. But there might be other similarities invisibly locked in the boy's genetic makeup. Frowning, she tried to remember something she'd read about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as a potential childhood warning for later psychiatric problems. Not in every case, but sometimes. And Mort had schizophrenia. His son's behavior might be a red flag demanding skillful handling as a hedge against what might lie ahead. Bo sighed and made a mental note to discuss schizophrenia with Eva. It would not, she admitted, be a fun chat.

Her office smelled musty when she returned, its overwarm interior striped by shadows from half-open miniblinds she'd forgotten to close before she left. On her desk blotter was a tidy stack of pink phone memos, the top one from Billy Reno.

"Per Reno there's no problem with Wagman estate, but there will be some delays. Phone Wagman atty. Reynolds Cassidy for details," the CPS message operator had written in pencil, giving a Los Angeles number.

There was no comma separating the names, but that might have been an oversight. Bo dialed the number, unsure of whether to ask for Mr. Reynolds or Mr. Cassidy. Somehow getting it right loomed as a marker of her overall competence as a human being. Getting it wrong would constitute public evidence of stupidity and general unworthiness. In seconds she remembered where that strange scenario came from. Depression, again. It was like living in a poorly written play, she thought. A truly awful play with a title like Bleak Raspberries, and a minimalist set involving one uncomfortable black chair and a deep hole. Grinning, she determined to paint the scene, just to get even.

"This is Bo Bradley from Child Protective Services in San Diego," she said when the phone was answered. "I have a message directing me to phone 'Reynolds, Cassidy' in regard to my client, Bird Wagman." Making it sound as if she were reading the name from a message memo removed personal responsibility. Depression was so tedious, Bo thought. And alien. She wished she were manic instead. That state was at least familiar and didn't involve a recurrent need to redeem the world from one's personal blunders through exhaustive manipulation of trivia.

"Mr. Cassidy is in court at the moment. I'm his office manager. Perhaps I can be of help."

Bo drew tiny scales of justice on the margin of her desk calendar while explaining Bird's situation to a young woman whose level of empathic engagement with the narrative suggested a failed career in acting.

"Oh dear," she interjected sweetly. "Oh my... what a shame... how awful." Then when Bo had finished she said, "Mr. Cassidy is not at liberty to discuss any aspect of the case with you until you provide documentation establishing your agency's custody of the child. In the meantime you must provide this office with the current address and all other information pertaining to that child. And please extend to him Mr. Cassidy's sympathy for the tragic accident." She sighed contentedly as if just having read a difficult speech.

"Accident?" Bo snarled as a comforting anger made her ears lie back. "Mort's lawyer thinks his death was an accident? Mort was murdered, lady, and now his little boy is stuck here until I can find any relatives Mort had. That's my job, and if Cassidy's withholding names of the family from me, then he's contributing to the pain and suffering of a helpless child. In California that's called child abuse, and he knows it! Now get that file and tell me if it contains anything I need to know." The speech was impressive, Bo thought, if a total fabrication. Cassidy didn't have to tell her anything, but the breathy office manager might not know that. In a minute the shuffling of paper could be heard over the phone.

"There are no relatives of Mr. Wagman listed except for his son, Bird," the woman whispered, obviously hurt by Bo's failure to appreciate her crisp professionalism. "And Bird is the sole inheritor of Mr. Wagman's estate. Mr. Cassidy began making arrangements for the boy as soon as Mr. Reno called yesterday to tell him of the death. But this is a complicated estate to probate. It'll take months."

Bo sighed.

"I really can't tell you anything else," the woman insisted. "I'll have Mr. Cassidy phone you when he's free. Thank you for calling."

"Uh-huh," Bo mumbled into the phone as the connection was severed.

A subsequent phone call to the Tafel School in Pasadena, where Billy Reno said Bird had attended first grade, revealed nothing that Bo didn't already suspect. No, the principal said agreeably, there were no relatives listed on Bird's registration forms. Neither was any name other than Bird given for the boy. Unusual names were not uncommon among the children of entertainment industry parents, he noted. The school had educated children named Cloud, Dalmatian, and even Broccoli. What was uncommon was that Bird had failed first grade and was considered a discipline problem even by the most tolerant among the staff. A school counselor suspected Bird might be suffering from ADHD and had asked the father to authorize psychiatric testing, but the father refused permission.

"Thank you," Bo said, and hung up. So Mort had known, or suspected what lay behind his son's unproductive behavior. But he hadn't been able to face it. The man who believed relatives had put animal brains into his head wanted his son to be "normal." Wanted it desperately enough to stand in the way of its happening.

Bo sighed and took seven pieces of paper from the file drawer in her desk and began filling them out. The legal paperwork that would give San Diego County legal custody of Bird Wagman. The petition would be granted this afternoon, pro forma. There were no relatives, no other option for Bird. Monday morning there would be a detention hearing, also pro forma. There was nobody to protest the seizure of the child by a system.

Over the weekend Bo would dictate a court report by telephone, documenting the facts of the case. She would ask that Bird be excused from attendance at this and subsequent hearings due to the emotional stress inherent in the setting. She would alert the county's Revenue and Recovery Department of Bird's financial resources, and advise the court that expenses connected to Bird were likely to be reimbursed. A probate judge could order that at any time. Then she'd ask the court to recommend psychiatric testing and to authorize ongoing medical supervision and medication if necessary.

And it would probably be necessary, she thought, staring balefully at her purse, inside which were her own medications. If Bird did have ADHD he'd be given Ritalin or some other stimulant, which in the neurochemistry of childhood would have a calming effect. And he might grow out of his restless, impulsive behavior at the end of puberty, or he might not. Bo drew a scale in which one side was loaded with rocks as she phoned Eva Broussard, outlined what she needed to know, and agreed to meet the psychiatrist for dinner. Then she drove the few miles from her Levant Street office to juvenile court, filed Bird's petition, and went home.

Her apartment was palpably empty when she opened the door. Too empty. A queasy wave of grief swept threateningly from her lungs to her stomach, but she stopped it by pounding gently on her belt buckle with both fists. A snapshot of Mildred taken at Dog Beach nearly four years ago when Bo had moved to San Diego rested on an easel in the living room studio. Behind the snapshot was a blank, gessoed canvas.

Inspired, Bo threw her white outfit on the floor and pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt. She could feel the portrait in her hands. The brush strokes needed to make paint look like fur, the precise mix of black and brown for fox terrier spots. The red leather collar Mildred had always worn lay on a Formica card table with the acrylic paints. Bo would take special care to get the collar right in the painting. It had been the last gift her young husband had given her before they parted forever. Now it would be immortalized with the dog who had worn it.

Engrossed in her work, Bo lost track of time until interrupted by the phone ringing at six. Just as well, she realized. The call would give her enough time to change and meet Eva without having to rush.

"Hello," she answered with more cheer than she'd felt in over a month. "Hello?"

But there was nobody on the line. Just some sort of scratchy noise. Thinking nothing of it, Bo hung up and hurried into the bedroom to change. It might have been Andy calling from Germany, she mused. But he'd call back if he got cut off. When the phone rang again she was sure it would be Andrew LaMarche.

"Andy!" she answered the second time, "I'm doing a painting of Mildred, and..."

But the scratchy noise was there again, louder this time. It was a dog barking. A small dog, like a fox terrier. The barking was urgent, frightened.

"Who is this?" Bo whispered, ripples of cold cascading under the skin of her neck. "What the hell is going on?"