I jumped, spun around, hands coming around front—an involuntary modesty instinct. Chantal sat unmoving on the couch in the shadowy recess of the living room. On the table, strewn haphazardly, lay a syringe, rubber tie-off, a spoon, and a couple of balled-up red toy balloons—her outfit along with Mexican brown heroin. Tears rolled down her cheeks. I went over and sat next to her. She wore an eggshell chiffon blouse with Kelly green slacks, her feet naked. The big toe on her right foot sported a slim, gold ring.
I took her hand. “What’s the matter, kid?”
Her eyes large and brown, the kind you could get lost in if you stared too long. This evening they didn’t have the usual spunky bring-it-on look. They were soft and vulnerable. Scared.
She scooted over, put her hip up against me, her hands grabbed mine. “I’m scared, Bruno. I’m scared to death.”
“Of what? What’s the matter?”
The fear in her eyes flamed bright, then extinguished as quickly as she changed her mind about the truth she wouldn’t reveal. She looked away. “I … I found another wrinkle today. Bruno, what am I going to do when I get old?” She pointed to the corner of her left eye. “What’s going to happen to me when I can’t live this life anymore?”
Her hesitation said aging wasn’t the real problem. Something was up. Her outfit on the table lay unused. Her hands were cold and shook with an alcoholic’s palsy. She released my hands, reached up, and put her arms around my neck. She smelled of lilac and Colgate toothpaste. She put her head on my shoulder in an awkward position. I was too tall. I scrunched down and put one hand on the side of her face and gently stroked it. “Tell me, kid, what’s up?”
Her body started to shake as she wept. I turned and took her in my arms. Gooseflesh rippled across her back, coarse enough to be felt through the thin satin material.
“He’s going to dump me. I know he is. Then what’s going to happen? He was the best, the—” She buried her face in my chest and let out a muffled wail.
I felt helpless and sorry for her at the same time as my t-shirt turned wet. “You’ll be all right. You have some money put away, don’t you? You do, don’t you?”
She pulled back, her eyes angry. “Not that kind of money. Not enough to live like this, not forever.”
Right then I saw it. It flashed big as life like a hungry animal in the back of her eyes. “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
Before she could catch herself, her mouth sagged a little. “That’s not fair.” She balled up a little fist and socked me in the chest, not nearly as hard as Marie. “The ex-cop in you lets you interrogate people when they don’t know they’re being interrogated. Yes, for your information, I am very fond of the gentleman. I’m not totally materialistic, you know. I do have emotions.”
“Never said you didn’t. You have a fight with him?”
“No, I just sense things. I’m a woman, but you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
Boy-howdy did I know. She was pure, one hundred percent woman, but I wasn’t going to throw my dog into that fight. I knew women well enough to stay out of it.
“Bruno, will you do me a favor?”
“Anything. Name it.”
“My hands are too shaky. Will you shoot me up?”
“Anything but that. I won’t be a party to something so detrimental to such a beautiful young woman.”
“You really think I’m beautiful?”
“Babe, you are absolutely gorgeous.”
She sat back and primped her hair, carefully wiped her wet cheeks with the backs of her wrists to avoid smearing makeup, most of which had already transferred to my t-shirt. “Then how come you won’t—” She brought her hand down to my thigh. I saw it coming and jumped up. “’Cause I’m a one-horse kinda guy.” I headed for the safety of the hall.
“Those aren’t your boxer shorts.”
Once I was safe out of view, I slipped off the boxer shorts and flung them around the corner at her. She giggled.
I dressed in more of the pear’s clothes and got out of the apartment. I couldn’t stay cooped up, even though I needed the sleep. I missed Marie something fierce. She was like a narcotic. I jonesed for her if I stayed away too long.
Chapter Eighteen
Marie walked up Wilmington Avenue to the bus stop and waited. The urge to see her, to hold her, was all but impossible to suppress. I told myself I wasn’t some kind of obsessing creep and was only checking for surveillance that might be on her tail, trying to get at me through her. I loved her so. I was scared to death something might happen to her.
I sat up against a wall across the street in a wool, full-length green army surplus dress coat with red corporal stripes and a black beanie next to a rogue Mexican palm tree, a volunteer that grew without irrigation in a barren parkway the county chose not to maintain. Off to the right, on a dark-brown telephone pole spotted with acne of a hundred tacks and nails from garage sale and lost dogs and cats signs, I recognized another poster, one of thousands of Wally Kim distributed widely throughout South Central Los Angeles. The image of the missing child was faded, but the fifty-thousand-dollar reward stood out in sharp contrast, a reward that added a lot of pressure to keep our kids out of sight. Folks in the ghetto sold out for a lot less, tens of thousands less. Below the reward was a police sketch artist version of the man who’d walked into the crack house in fruit town and snatched Wally up. The rendering of the suspect didn’t much resemble me. Even so, a Korean kid with a black man for a kidnapper stood out the same as a salt-and-pepper bank robber team.
If you read in between the lines of the numerous L.A. Times stories, Mr. Kim, a South Korean businessman—diplomat of sorts—had hooked up with an escort while visiting the US. Nine months later, said escort contacted him in Korea to extort child support. Mr. Kim, smart in business and the ways of the world, demanded a paternity test. The test was completed and proved positive. The woman had not lied. In between time, during the wait for the test, the mother of his child discovered the evils of rock cocaine. When Mr. Kim went to find her, she’d fled. Mr. Kim used a great deal of money and influence to track her down and find her in the same rock coke crash pad that I took Wally out of a week prior. Who would have known? Bad luck for us. To hand him over now would jeopardize our plan. When we got to where we were going, Marie and I had agreed we would contact Mr. Kim and arrange for Wally to reunite with his father. Of course, we would decline the reward.
In the short time we knew Wally, we fell in love with him. He was a great little kid and it would be very difficult to give him up, but we would.
At the bus stop, Marie wore her raven hair down around her shoulders. I didn’t like it that way. I liked it up, pulled back tight, like the first time I saw her the night the cops brought me in to have the bullet they put in me removed. In all the years as a cop, the nurses and doctors always treated the crooks brought to them with strict professionalism but never meted out the compassion, the TLC reserved for the victims of the same crooks. That night Marie was different. She was gentle and genuinely cared, even though I was a murderer. She saw something in me, Lord only knows what. She followed the court case, wrote to me in the joint. At first I felt like slime, that to correspond with her might in some way corrupt her. She stayed with it until one day she came to visit. I took the visit to tell her to leave me alone and half expected her to be weepy and sad that I hadn’t responded to her long, awe-inspiring letters. Instead, when I came into the visiting area with the thick glass between us, she stood with her arms across her chest, her eyes fierce, angry. She wore a classy red dress and black high heels. I sat down and pointed to the phone. Instead of picking it up, she started to jump around, yelling and screaming, shaking her fists. The guard came in and told her to calm down. She gave him a piece of her mind as well. The guard left and came back with another. They took hold of her arms. She kicked and screamed, her rants muffled by the barrier as they dragged her out.