Self-Defense (11 page)

“No. I tried him a couple times from here,
no answer.” He looked at his watch. “Maybe I should try again.”

There was a pay phone up the hall. He
called, waited, and came back shaking his head.

“Poor kid,” he said, looking at the door
to Lucy’s room. “Puck said she’d been through some kind of rough jury duty and
was pretty freaked out, but I had no idea she was this... vulnerable.”

He buttoned his jacket. Tight around the
waist. “Too many business dinners,” he said, smiling ruefully. “Not that I
imagine she’s had it easy. Did she tell you who our father is?”

I nodded.

He said, “I don’t know if she’s had any
contact with him, but if she has, I’d be willing to bet that’s at least part of
her stress.”

“Why’s that?”

“The man’s a total and complete
sonofabitch.”

“Have you had contact with him?”

“No way. He lives here—up in Topanga
Canyon, big spread. But that’s a call I’ll never make.” Unbuttoning his jacket.
“When I first started in the business, I used to have fantasies of his going
bankrupt and me buying his land up cheap.” Smile. “I’ve been in counseling
myself—got divorced last year.”

“What happened twenty years ago?”

“Pardon?”

“You said the last time you saw Lucy was
twenty years ago.”

“Oh. Yeah, twenty, twenty-one, something
like that.” He squinted and scratched the side of his nose. “I was nine, so it
was twenty-one. It was the summer my mother decided to go to Europe to take
painting lessons—she was an artist. She drove us—my sister Jo and me—down to
L.A. and dropped us off at Sanctum. That’s the name of his place in Topanga.”

“I’ve heard of it—a writer’s retreat.”

“Yeah. Anyway, here she is, dumping us on
him, no advance notice. He was about as happy as getting a boil lanced, but
what could he do, kick us out?”

“And Lucy was there too?”

“Lucy and Puck. They came up a couple of
weeks after we did. Tiny little kids, we didn’t know who they were; our mother
had never told us they even existed, only that he’d left her for another woman.
As it turned out,
their
mom had died a few years before, and the aunt
who had taken care of them had gotten married and dumped
them.
”

“How old were they?”

“Let’s see, if I was nine, Puck would have
had to be... five. So Lucy was four. We looked at them as babies, had nothing
to do with them. Tell the truth, we resented them—our mother was always
bad-mouthing their mother for stealing him away.”

“Who took care of them?”

“A nanny or some kind of baby-sitter. I
remember that because they got to sleep with her in the main house while Jo and
I had to stay in a little cabin and basically fend for ourselves. But that was
okay. We ran around, did whatever we wanted.”

“Twenty-one years ago,” I said. “That must
have been right after Sanctum opened.”

“It had just opened,” he said. “I remember
they had this big party for the opening, and we were forced to stay in our
cabin. Along with plates of food. Tons more spread out on these long white
banquet tables, leftovers for weeks. I used to sneak into the kitchen and swipe
pastries. I gained ten pounds—that was the beginning of my weight problem.”

People shouting or maybe they’re laughing...
and lights like fireflies.

Another glance at his watch. “Well,” he
said, “good to meet you. If there’s anything I can do—”

He turned to leave.

“How long will you be in L.A.?”

“I was supposed to fly back tonight. Do
you think—is there a chance Lucy would want to meet me?”

“Hard to say, right now. She’s pretty out
of it.”

“Yeah, I understand,” he said sadly. “I
wonder where Puck is, why he didn’t show. Here.”

Pulling out a crocodile billfold, he
removed a business card and gave it to me.

“I’ve got meetings all day, but I probably
can stick around till tomorrow morning. If she does want to meet me, or if you
hear from Puck, I’m staying at the Westwood Marquis.”

“Do you have Puck’s number handy?”

“Right here.” An identical card came out
of the wallet. On the back was a Valley exchange, written in blue ballpoint.

“Let me get some paper and copy it down,”
I said.

“Take it,” he said. “I know it by heart.”

He left and I returned to Lucy’s room. She
was still sleeping, and I gave my name to the ward clerk along with a message
for Dr. Embrey. Then I phoned West L.A. Detectives and got Milo at his desk.

“What’s up, Alex?”

“Lucy tried to kill herself last night.
She’s out of danger, physically, but still pretty knocked out. I’m at
Woodbridge Hospital, out in the Valley. They’ll be keeping her here.”

“Fuck.
What’d
she do, cut her wrists?”

“Stuck her head in the oven.”

“You find her?”

“No, her half brother did. Lucky for her
he stopped by looking for the other brother and saw her through the window, on
her knees in the kitchen. Talk about Providence.”

“Her drapes were open and she’s got her
head in the oven? What was it, a cry for help?”

“Who knows? She never dropped any hints to
me. Still, I’m trying hard not to feel like an idiot.”

“Jesus, Alex, what the hell
happened
?”

“It’s complicated. More than you could
ever imagine.”

“And you can’t tell me.”

“No, in fact, I need to. But not over the
phone. When can we get together?”

“Coming back into the city?”

“Yup.”

“Gino’s in forty-five.”

Gino’s Trattoria is on Pico, not far from
the West L.A. station: checkered tablecloths, hanging Chianti bottles, rough
wines.

Even during the day, the place is murky,
lit by table candles in amber globes that are never washed. The one at Milo’s
rear corner table illuminated him from the bottom, accentuating every crater
and lump, giving him the look of a gargoyle with chronic back pain.

He was wearing a dark suit, white shirt,
and dark tie. Even at that distance I could tell his hair was freshly
cut—military clip at the sides, long and shaggy on top, to-the-lobe sideburns
that were hip, now, and against department regulations.

Two beers sat in front of him. He pushed
one over to me. In the dirty glare his green eyes were gray-brown.

“How come all of a sudden you can talk to
me?”

“Because Lucy asked me to. She said
someone was trying to kill her, and she wants you to protect her. I’m sure it’s
some sort of gas-induced delusion—or massive denial because she just can’t face
the fact that she tried to kill herself. But I’m taking it as a formal
instruction.”

“How does she figure someone tried to kill
her with gas? Dragged her to the stove and jammed her
head
in?”

“She’s nowhere near coherent enough to
discuss details.”

“Remember those four calls she put in?
Seems she’s been getting some hang-ups.”

“She told me. Said you didn’t think it was
serious.”

“I didn’t because
she
didn’t. She
told me it might be some technical problem with her phone; the line goes out
all the time. Kind of casual about the whole thing, made me wonder if she just
wanted to talk.”

“I’m sure she did. That’s part of what I
have to tell you. She’s got a major crush on you. Admitted it to me during
yesterday’s session.”

He was silent and still.

“She wanted approval from me, Milo. I
couldn’t tell her you were gay because I didn’t want to violate your privacy.
And I couldn’t warn
you
about the way she felt because of
confidentiality. She got really upset and left. Now this. I feel like I’ve
really screwed up, but I don’t know what I could’ve done differently.”

“You coulda told her about me, Alex. I’m
not your patient.”

“I didn’t think it was appropriate to get
into your personal life. She was the patient; I was trying to keep the focus on
her.”

“Jesus.” His cheeks turned to bellows and
he blew out beery air.

“Has she ever shown any romantic
feelings?”

“I don’t know,” he said furiously. “I
guess looking back... I mean, she hung around, phoned, but I figured it was a
cop-victim thing. Looking for big brother.” Rubbing one eye. “Pretty fucking
dense, huh?
Goddammit!
I’m an asshole to let it get this far. All these
years I’ve been careful not to get personal with victims or their families. So
why her?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I said.
“You gave her support, and when it became clear she needed something more, you
referred her to me.”

“Yeah, but there
was
more. In
my
head. She probably picked up on it.”

“More what?”

“Involvement. I’d find myself thinking
about her. Worrying. Couple of times I called
her,
just to see how she
was doing.”

He slammed a big hand down on the table.
“How else could she take it? What am I, brain dead?”

He shook his head. “For chrissake, she was
only a
juror.
I’ve dealt with thousands of
victims
who had it a
helluva lot worse. I must be losing it.”

“You didn’t put her head in the oven.”

“Neither did you, but you still feel like
shit.”

Both of us drank.

“If I hadn’t tried to help her,” he said,
“I wouldn’t
know
about her head being in the oven, would I? And you and
I would be sitting here talking about something else.”

His glass was empty and he called for a
refill, looking at me.

“No, thanks.”

He said, “Ignorance is bliss, right? All
the talk about insight and self-understanding, but far as I can tell, being a
good
ostrich
is the key to psychological adjustment. Christ, now I have
her sitting on my
shoulder....
So what do I do, tell her, Gee,
honeybunch, if I went for women you’d be at the top of my list? Might as well
shove her head back in the oven.”

“There’s no need to do anything right
now,” I said. “Let’s see how she handles the seventy-two hours. If the
psychiatrist at Woodbridge is good, she’ll know how to deal with it.”

“Seventy-two hours... praise the law.”

“There’s more you need to know about.” I
told him about Lucy’s summer as a prostitute.

“Oh, man, it keeps getting better. Just a
summer fling, huh?”

“So she says. She confessed right after
she told me how she felt about you. Asked me if I thought she wasn’t good
enough for you. As if she was giving me a reason to reject her.”

“Not good enough for me.” He gave a scary
laugh. “Remember I told you she reminded me of a girl in high school who became
a nun? Someone else who convinced herself I was wonderful.”

This time he rubbed his face. Hard.

“Prom night back in Hoosierville. All the
little virgins and would-be virgins from Our Lady on the arms of us pimpled
lads from St. Thomas. I was eighteen and knew I was gay for a couple of years,
no one to tell it to. Her name was Nancy Squires, and when she asked me to be
her date I said yes because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Orchid corsage,
tux, Dad’s car washed and waxed. Doing the Twist in the gym. Mashed Potatoes
and the fucking Hully Gully. Drinking the fucking spiked
punch.
”

He looked into his beer glass.

“She was pretty, if you liked skinny and
pale and tortured. Wrote poetry, collected these little porcelain doohickeys,
didn’t know how to dress, tutored the boys in math. Of course the other girls
treated her like a leper.”

He turned and faced me.

“She was nice to talk to, a little lady.
Then when I drove her home, she put her hands all over me, and when I parked in
front of her house she told me she loved me. It was like being sucker-punched.
Genius that I was, I told her I liked her as a friend but couldn’t love her.
Then I explained why.”