The Crime Writer (15 page)

“S
o you got interrupted?” I asked. “By what kind of car?”

“Quit pushin’ me, homes. I got court. I always get nervous when I got court.”

“How often do you have court?” That got the look it deserved. “What for this time?”

“Sprayin’, what else?” Junior fiddled with the radio, started bopping to a beat that made the windows rattle. “What’s
your
story, homes?” he shouted. “You stared down a murder one?”

I adjusted the volume and told him, asking myself the whole time what the hell I was thinking recounting all this to a bored juvenile delinquent. The repetition, like rewriting, helped me clarify the holes and weaknesses, the detours requiring further investigation.

When I finished, Junior surprised me. “Thass fucked up, homes. You know what you need? You need you a
dog.
”

“A talking dog who solves crimes?”

“Someone broke into your house, cut you up and shit. A dog would protect you, homes, watch your back. I had a Doberman-rotty mix. You had a dog like that, you wouldn’t need to worry ’ bout
shit.
Not in your castle.”

I conceded that it wasn’t a bad point. We pulled up to the Eastlake Juvenile Courthouse. I glanced at the graffiti patterns on the back of Junior’s jean jacket as he climbed out. “Given the grounds for your appearance, you think you might want to leave your jacket in the car?”

“No way, homes. I gots to repre
sent.
” He kicked out a leg, showing off a white PRO-Ked. “This and my kicks, this my old-school tagger gear.”

My watch put us forty-five minutes past the court-appointed time. “We’re late.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Junior said, skipping along. “Judge Celemin
love
me.”

Judge Celemin glowered at us, black robes gathered high on his shoulders like a vulture’s wings. “So pleased you could join us, Mr. Delgado. I trust you weren’t too put out trying to make it here?”

Junior beamed. “Not at all, Your Honor.”

The judge shifted his predacious attention to me. Given our tardiness, the public defender had moved on to another case across the corridor, but Judge Celemin had demanded that “Mr. Delgado and whoever was responsible for his transportation” appear regardless. “This is the second time Mr. Delgado, at the tender age of fourteen, has violated his probation by being apprehended in possession of spray-paint cans. You’re his Big Brother?”

I found myself sweating. “Guilty as charged, Your Honor.”

“You might want to think about the quality of the moral instruction you’re imparting.”

“I have in fact been giving that a fair amount of consideration lately, Your Honor.”

“Surely your own recent experiences have taught you what the Sixth Amendment affords, Mr. Danner?”

I drew a complete blank. I used to have a great fear that I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was. And it had been a great relief to discover that I was correct. Still, no professed grown-up wants to come up short on a topic taught in sixth-grade social studies. You get a certain distance from your schooling and you realize to your chagrin that you are that illiterate asshole who can’t find Maryland on a map or name the planets in order. “I assume it’s not the right to arrive late to court.”

“Your guess is correct, Mr. Danner. Now, Mr. Delgado was down to his last shot here and elected to show up late, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to—”

“It was my fault,” I said resignedly. “I got caught up with…an appointment and picked him up late.”

An appointment? Light on your feet, Chandler.

And I’d thought that Judge Celemin’s expression could not have evidenced more revulsion. “Well. You will return tomorrow at the same time with Mr. Delgado’s attorney, and we will settle this matter definitively.”

“Tomorrow’s a bit hard for me, but I’m sure someone else can—”

“What in the sentence I just said implied to you that I was inviting a discussion?”

“Nothing, Your Honor.”

“I need an adult’s guarantee that this minor will be here tomorrow.”

“Me?”

“You are an adult?”

“Some might take issue with that, Your Honor.”

“I among them. But in the flawed justice system, Mr. Danner, we must work with what we have. As for your busy day tomorrow? I hate to inconvenience you. I’m an hour behind on my docket, so I know how difficult it can be when one’s schedule is compromised.”

Junior chuckled the whole way out to the parking lot.

“Spit it out.”

“How ’ bout we go to the movies, Big Brother?”

I screeched the car over and said, “I’m done playing this game. You’re gonna tell me about the car you saw or I’m dumping your ass out here.”

He glanced around. “Nice neighborhood.” Still, he looked uneasy. “Okay. I was tagging the bridge when I saw some headlights. I hauled ass.”

“But you saw the car?”

“Brown Volvo. One-a them wagons. Dent on the front wheel well. I could see ’ cuz the paint was flaked off.”

“Which side?”

He looked at his hands, made an L with his thumbs and forefingers. “Right side.”

“Old Volvo, new Volvo?”

“I just recognized the ugly-ass shape. A Volvo’s a Volvo, homes.”

“Good point. Did you see the license plate?”

“Of course.”

“Of
course
?”

“When you bombing and a car come up on you, you always check the plate. See if it’s the pigs.
E
with a circle around it at the beginning of the numbers stand for ‘exempt.’ That’s how you can tell an unmarked cop car.” He smiled, pleased with himself. “But there wudn’t no
E.
This one started with a seven. That’s all I can tell you, homes. Lucky seven.”

“Did you see the driver?”

“Hayell no. I didn’t stick around. I bolted when he was busy parking.”

“Anyone else around?”

“Yeah, a convent of nuns was coming through. I like to do my tagging with lotsa witnesses around.”

“Where’d the Volvo park?”

He pointed to a spot off the photograph. “Down here.”

I recalled a dirt apron under the ramp on that side. Which could mean tread marks from tires or shoes.

“I want you to show me. How do I get to the ramp from here?”

We listened to music, Junior’s head lolling back against the headrest. “Turn right here. Left. Now right. Okay, stop.”

I was at a curb in front of a row of tiny houses. “Where are we? This isn’t the ramp.”

Junior hopped out and jogged for the nearest front door. “Just come inside a sec.”

I scrambled after him, swearing at him in a manner unbecoming a Big Brother.

I banged through the screen door. Junior was standing in the dim and cramped entryway, whistling around his fingers.

“This my cousin’s,” he said by way of explanation.

From the back of the house strutted a peacock of a man. Black suit, broad-brimmed black hat, black tie, black shoes—one twist of the ethnic dial and he could’ve been a Hasidic diamond merchant. He turned his somber face to Junior, his mouth twitching.

“This is Hector,” Junior said.

Hector said, “Get your fucking dog outta here.”

“Thass why we here, homes.”

“Don’t ‘homes’ my ass, Junior. Knock the ghetto crap. All you
niñitos
forgetting your brown pride.” He headed for the door. “I’m going out. That bitch better be gone by the time I get back, or I’m hauling her ass to the
pound.
” He shot his cuffs and left.

I said, “
Oh,
no.”

Junior opened the back door, and a Doberman-rottweiler mix padded in, rope leash dangling from her bull-like neck. “Get you one of these, no one
ever
gonna fuck with your house again. Look at her. Ain’t she beautiful? Name is Xena. The princess warrior. She a vicious killer, homes.”

“I don’t need a vicious killer.”

“Look, look.” He tugged on the rope. Xena growled.

“I don’t need a Xena. I just want to see the ramp.”

“Want something to eat, homes?”

“We’re going. I want to see the ramp.”

“Ain’t gonna show you the ramp unless you take Xena.”

“I’m not taking Xena.”

“You gonna let a perfectly good guard dog die when you need one?”

“I don’t need one.”

“You said you did.”

“I was being nice!” I yelled.

Junior took a step back, and he rubbed his head. “I can’t let Xena die.” His eyes were wet now.

“Oh, Christ,” I said.

He hugged Xena around her neck and started crying. “They gonna
kill
you, Xena.” He was rocking and holding his dog, who’d accommodatingly slumped over to complete the pietà. “They gonna take you to the pound and inject you with
poison.
”

This went on, with minor variations, for several minutes.

“All right,” I finally said. “I’ll take the goddamned dog.”

He smiled and jumped up and down, and I remembered he was fourteen. Then he held out his hand, palm up. His tears had stopped with a single twist of the spigot.

“What’s this?”

“This a top-notch guard dog you getting here. Fitty dollars.”

“I gotta
pay
to rescue Xena?”

“Hayell yeah.” Junior smiled. “She a princess warrior.”

I gave him my best Big Brother grin. “No. Fucking. Way.”

Xena stood on all fours in the backseat, sticking her head between us. The broken streetlights around Rampart did little to check the evening’s arrival.

Junior asked, “Can we stop and get some spray paint?”

“I fear that would be defaulting on my role-model obligations.”

He sucked his teeth and slid down in the seat, arms crossed. “You a writer, homes. What would you do if
your
art was illegal? Stop doin’ it?” We pulled under the familiar freeway ramp, and he glanced around. “Is
this
shit legal? Taking a minor to fuck wit’ a crime scene?”

“A minute ago you were a cross between Beelzebub and a Ginsuknife salesman. Now you’re a minor?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. His point was stronger than my retort.

“Look, if you get more spray paint, you’ll violate your probation and wind up in deeper trouble.”

“I don’t care. I like probation. I get to stay at Hope House. Ms. Caroline’s fly. I don’t want to leave. Free food and board, and I can still spray.”

“I think you might be missing the point.”

“‘Point.’” He blew out his breath in disgust at my ignorance.

He skulked over and showed me where the brown Volvo had pulled in. The dirt had been fanned by the wind and trampled by innumerable feet. I was disappointed, but still happy with the lead Junior had given me. A brown Volvo, dent in the right front wheel well, license number starting with seven.

Back in the car, Junior let Xena lick his face while I called Lloyd, getting voice mail for his work and cell and the answering machine at home. I was just getting ready to pull out when there came a hard rap on my window and a flashlight beam in my face.

I rolled down the window and found myself looking down the wrong end of a pistol.

T
he cop kept the pistol trained on Xena, who was obliviously scratching her jowls on Junior’s armrest.

“Can I help you, Officer?”

“Let’s see some ID.”

I handed over my ID. He looked at it warily, then moved his flashlight from my face to Junior’s. “How old are you?”

“Fourteen.”

The flashlight came back to blind me. “Are you aware that this kid is underage?”

“Oh, wait. No, no, no. I’m his Big Brother.”

“Sure you are. And I’d imagine you have some documentation to that end?”

I could picture the expression on Preston’s face.

“No, I don’t. The signed paper is at Hope House, this boy’s placement facility.”

“Phone number, please.”

I looked at Junior, and he rattled off a number. The cop disappeared back into his squad car. Between Xena’s satisfied growls and Junior’s giggling, surprisingly still audible despite his hand clamped over his mouth, I tried to formulate a game plan.

Before I could, the cop reapproached. “There was no answer.” He stood back from the car, gun drawn and pointed at the princess warrior. “Is that your dog, sir?”

“Yeah,” I said wearily. “It’s my dog.”

“Get out and leave her in the vehicle. Both of you.”

I looked back. A large man was aiming a pistol at my head, and Xena was slobbering happily all over my headrest.

“Some guard dog.”

Junior shrugged. “I trained her to respect authority.”

I turned back to the cop. “Look, if you’ll just let me call—”

“I did call, sir. There was no answer. Please step out of the vehicle and put your hands on the roof.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Yeah, I’m in a real jokey mood.”

I got out of the Highlander and complied. Through the window I watched the dog curl up contentedly in the backseat.

“Down, Xena,” I said.

The holding cell at the Rampart Station was surprisingly clean, despite a permanent olfactory overlay of vomit. I was, of course, kept separate from Junior, lest I corrupt him further.

After an eternity Caroline Raine’s face appeared through the bars.

I’d never seen a prettier sight.

“You’re a bad influence,” she said.

I peeled myself off the sticky bench. “You’re just figuring that out?”

We dropped Junior off at Hope House, and then Caroline took me to pick up my Highlander. I let Xena out, and she trotted over to a throw of weeds, squatted, and peed.

Caroline asked, through lips pursed with amusement, “Isn’t that Junior’s dog?”

“She a princess warrior, homes.” I whistled Xena back into the Highlander.

Caroline looked around, shivered in the night breeze. “There was a murder here the other night.”

“Yep. I was framed for it. Elaborately. But I had an alibi this time.”

She nodded slightly, a tough woman to shock. “Which was?”

“I camcorded myself while I was sleeping.”

“You have a lot of strange habits.”

“It’s a longer conversation. Let me buy you dinner.”

She laughed uncomfortably. “Like a date?”

“Like a thank-you.”

She looked immensely relieved. “There are some fine culinary choices in the area.” She pointed up the street. “Pepe’s House of Gastric Distress?”

“Just my speed.”

Caroline sipped a beer while I nursed a ginger ale. The remains of burgers and chili cheese fries lay on the table before us, weighing down grease-stained paper inside red plastic baskets. A few stragglers at the bar, an empty pool table, the Stones reminding us from the jukebox that we can’t always get what we want. We’d caravanned a few miles to a less downscale section of town. I’d left Xena dozing happily in my backseat, guarding the Guiltmobile with her vicious killer instincts.

Caroline had brought a persistent curiosity to bear over the meal. She maintained direct eye contact, maybe a therapist habit, but it didn’t make me as uncomfortable as I would have thought. I fielded one sharp question after another about my trial, my theories, my ongoing investigation, and how it had wound up with me and Junior in the clink.

“That is one smart kid,” I said.

“Junior was left in an alley as a baby with the umbilical cord still attached. He’s a lifer in the system, and it’s taught him quite a few tricks.” She took another pull of Corona. “He’s very taken with you. Maybe you should see him. After tomorrow’s required court date, I mean.”

I shrugged. “Might be good for me to do something for someone else.”

“I don’t trust anything that doesn’t have selfish motives. Be a Big Brother to him if you want to. For you.”

Her face had hardened. I studied it, trying to decipher the mood shifts, a skill I had honed during my years with Genevieve. I had a tough time not staring at the scars. Their lines were clean, if jagged, leading me to guess they’d been inflicted by a blade, probably the result of an attack. I ran a risk, I realized, of fetishizing Caroline’s face, of finding it fascinating in its own right. Aside from the obvious damage, her skin was smooth, well tended with lotion. I would have bet that she had taken pride in her skin once; maybe she was astute enough to still appreciate its appeal. Her body was lean, but she had curves overlaying the muscles in the right places, a variation between hard and soft that seemed to match her personality. She was a few years older than me, having already closed on forty, but her hands, wrinkled in the palms, were the only part of her that showed her age. They looked soft and forgiving, more fragile than the rest of her.

I glanced around, mostly to stop examining her.

On the sole overhead TV not tuned to ESPN1, 2, or 12, Johnny Ordean appeared, rerun in his usual role, Detective Aiden O’ Shannon. A stage-named Jew from Brooklyn playing an Irish Chicago cop on the backlot at Fox. Welcome to Hollywood.

Johnny and I had one of those 310 friendships—I pretended to flutter around his flame, and he kept me programmed into his cell phone in case I accidentally wrote something else that his agents could package.

Detective O’ Shannon crouched over a mangled corpse, eating a—get this—hot dog and holding up an ejected bullet casing with a bent paper clip. The closed-captioning read, with appropriate humorlessness,
HUSTLE THIS TO FORENSICS THE CASING NOT THE HOT DOG.

Caroline followed my gaze. “Isn’t that the guy who played whatever they turned Derek Chainer into for that crappy film?”

“You’ve read my stuff?” I was thrilled.

“Of course I’ve read you. Why do you think I watched the trial?”

“Perverse curiosity?”

“That’s why I read you, too.” When she smiled, the scars straightened, and the indentations carved through her lips aligned. The damage hardly disappeared, but it grew significantly less pronounced. The wounds had been inflicted when she was scowling, or weeping, or screaming, and somehow a smile simulated those conditions enough to bring back the original lines of the blade. “You never played into the trial. You didn’t turn into a trained seal. I bet it was difficult not to.”

“It was a learning experience all the way around.”

“What’d you take away from it all?”

“I can smell auras.”

“Really?”

“My Spidey-senses are tingling right now, in fact. And your aura smells a little like”—I leaned over the table, sniffed her delightful head—“wet dog.”

“Wet dog?”
She wasn’t smiling.

“Yeah. Pekingese, maybe.”

She backhanded my shoulder.

“I thought you liked me for my sense of humor.”

“I don’t like you. But if I did, it would be for your vast infamy.”

“It’ll fade. Time heals all wounds.”

“No,” she said. “It doesn’t.” She studied the tips of her hair.

“Uh-oh.”

“What?”

“You’re Engaging in Private Grooming Habits. If I’m to believe
Men’s Health,
that means you’ve lost interest in this conversation.”

“Men’s Health?”

“Yeah. Sorry ’ bout that.”

“Despite prevailing scientific wisdom, it doesn’t mean I’ve lost interest. It means I’m uncomfortable.”

“Because…”

“I work now. I don’t go to dinner with men I don’t know.”

Laughter over by the pool table drew our attention. At one of the bar tables, a musclehead with twinning ear pierces nuzzled his spectacular girlfriend. Blond hair, blue eyes—she was a recessive-gene showcase. They looked young, likely in on fake IDs.

“What I’d give to have a tape of me in college,” Caroline said. “The past always seems so glamorous, once you pass it. Yet here we are, stuck in the ever-unglamorous present.” She watched the young couple kissing. “Remember that age? Everything you felt, it was the first time anyone had ever felt it. Like you’d discovered emotion.” The longing in her voice was palpable. “You can’t burn that way your whole life or you’ll burn out, but it’s still a loss when it fades away.”

The guy stood up. His T-shirt read
IT AIN’T GONNA SUCK ITSELF.

“Ah, yes,” I said. “Young romance.”

Caroline laughed, and the guy stopped and gave us his best glare.

“Right,” I said, “you wear that shirt and you don’t want people to look at you.”

Scowling, he continued outside, tapping down a pack of smokes. The waitress came over, and I tried to pay, but Caroline insisted, a bit too firmly, on splitting the bill.

After our change arrived, Caroline said, “When I first started at Hope House, we realized we weren’t getting traction with certain kids because we didn’t understand some of their reactions, their hardwiring. So I implemented home visits—for the counselors. To see where these kids came from. It gave us a better understanding of how to deal with them in other contexts.” She paused to finish her beer, leaving me unsure where she was going. “You knew Genevieve, but all you have of Kasey Broach is a body in a photograph. If you want to figure out how to fit her in, you need to see where she lived, meet her family.”

“And say what? ‘I’m a suspect in your daughter’s murder and I’d like to ask a few questions’?”

She shrugged. “You’re creative. Presumably.” Her eyes darted over to the pool table. “Wanna play?”

“You hustling me?”

Again with the beautiful smile. “I’m not very good.”

Two and a half minutes later, I watched as she leaned over to draw a bead on the fifteen, her second-to-last ball on the table. I had six solids remaining and little of my barroom dignity. I’d discovered that Caroline Raine had a whole vocabulary of laughter—the victorious whoop, the confident chuckle, the under-the-breath snicker.

“Is the fifteen feeling skinny? I think it’s feeling skinny.” Off her shot she threaded it, impossibly, through the one and the five and lined up for the nine. “The jeweler is in,” she pronounced before cutting it to the side pocket on a backward vector I’d seen only in Paul Newman movies.

She circled the table, chalking her stick. Witty T-Shirt was still tied up on the pay phone, but his girlfriend’s chair blocked Caroline’s angle.

Caroline asked, “Would you mind letting me take this shot?”

“We were here first,” the girl said. “And I already moved once. I’m not gonna keep dancing around the table.”

“It puts you out that much to scoot four inches to your left?”

The girl flashed a fake smile onto her unreasonably pretty face. “Likes: water sports, long walks on the beach, kittens. Dislikes: pushy chicks with fucked-up faces.”

Caroline colored everywhere except her scars; the contrast was severe. She set down the pool cue and turned to me. “Let’s go.” She took a few steps toward the door, then stopped and looked back at me intolerantly.

I paused next to the girl. On the table beside her Smirnoff Ice were photo proofs of her in various cutesy poses. She or her boyfriend had circled several with a red grease pencil, selecting prospective head shots.

“I know you,” I said quietly. “You lucked into a decent set of genes, and you think that constitutes a contribution to the world. You don’t really want to act—you’re just lazy, and you want to be looked at and get your rent paid doing it. You booked a mouthwash commercial and a print campaign for TJ Maxx, and your agent thinks you’re the next big thing. In a few years, you’ll give up on leading lady and convince yourself you’ll get cast as the wry best friend or the sitcom wife. Another excuse to do more nothing for another decade. In the long meantime, maybe you should reflect on what entitles you to be cruel and smug besides high cheekbones and the word of people paid to flatter you.”

I didn’t see her boyfriend coming until the fist loomed over my right side. I jerked away, and the blow glanced off my jaw, and then I heard a thud and a barstool toppling, and I finished reeling to see Caroline standing over the guy, holding one twisted arm captive, foot at his jawline, applying pressure to drive his face farther into the worn carpet. His girlfriend’s mouth hung open, one hand curled over her perfect teeth. She’d turned white. Maybe she was a good actress after all.