“Hold on one minute.” Baby Boy took a step toward me. “You say you don’t have money. But those TV people do. A lot of money.”
“How much?” Etta demanded.
“Depends on what you have to say and how badly they want it,” I said. “Anywhere from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands.”
“They gonna ax me about Tyrone, the way you done?”
“Probably not,” I said. “They’ll want to talk about Charles Conklin and the police who sent him to prison. The district attorney is saying the police threatened the witnesses to make them identify Charles. Do you know who those officers were?”
“Yes I do. Officer Flint and Officer Kelsey. I know them for a long time.”
“They must have questioned you and your daughter, maybe some of your neighbors. Did you ever hear anyone say Officer Flint threatened them? Mistreated anyone? Forced them to change their testimony?”
“He’s the police,” she said, shrugging. “You know how they are.”
“No, I don’t know,” I said. “Suppose you tell me.”
“Uh huh.” Etta, who had been very serious and very blase through the entire conversation, finally gave me her beautiful, big, toothy smile. “Now let me ax you a question. Did Officer Flint ever mistreat you?”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“I’m beginnin’ to understand what you doin’ here. He told me you was his lady now. I think I better take your advice and get me a lawyer before I talk to anyone. Includin’ you.”
“You catch on fast,” I said. “Just one more question, and it has nothing to do with the other business. I’ve been looking for a woman named Hanna Rhodes. She grew up in the projects. She would be twenty-four or twenty-five years old now. Do you know her or her family? The last address for her grandmother is on Grape Street.”
“Hanna?” Etta looked up at Baby Boy before she answered. “Go look in Sybil Brand or Frontera. She in the joint more than she out.”
“Thanks,” I said. “What about Wednesday morning? Do you want to come to Juvenile Hall with me?”
“We’ll see,” she said, flirting at Baby Boy. “We’ll see.”
Smooth dismissal gambit: Baby Boy opened the screen door and held it for me. “Thanks for comin’ by.”
“Bye, Etta,” I said, walking out past Baby Boy. “I’ll be in touch.”
No one bothered me on the walk back to my car, not with Baby Boy standing in the doorway watching. I was grateful to him, and grateful that the car was intact. I wasted not a step, not a movement getting to the car and inside with the doors locked behind me. The engine started, the lights came on, reverse worked, so did drive. I sighed; none of my doomsday scenarios had happened.
I had a moment’s pause, however, when I noticed that the boys who had harassed me going in were sitting on the grass eating coconut cake and drinking Dr. Pepper.
Chapter 8
At eleven, when I got back to Encino, the night was still warm and the condo grounds were still deserted. I had expected people to be outside when the air had cooled off, to walk or swim, or get blasted al fresco. If they had come out, they had gone back inside early. The quiet was beautiful. I walked straight to the pool.
Again, no one. For a change, there were no splashing toddlers, no cocktail-hour schmoozers and oglers, no senior watercisers. Simply, no one. Such a rare circumstance left me with no alternative: I stripped to bra and bikini panties, black ones, and dove into the cool still water.
The first lap was heavy going. My arms seemed weighted and I couldn’t find my rhythm. By the third lap, I was moving easily, loose and strong. I didn’t bother to count turns, I just swam like a machine until my thighs were full of fire and my shoulder muscles froze up from fatigue.
At the point where I could not swim another stroke, I stopped in the middle of the pool, rolled onto my back, and looked up into the black and starless night. I floated while I caught my breath, my heaving chest sending ripples around me.
The pool was a delicious luxury. So was the solitude. I thought about the kids at Jordan Downs who had access to neither. I suffered a flash of guilt for the pleasure I was having, a pang akin to the stab I felt when Oscar said “la-di-da” when I told him what my parents do. He had meant it as a put-down.
I wasn’t born poor, nor was I born rich. We were hardworking comfortable, somewhere in that range where children might have ponies but weren’t taken skiing in St. Moritz. I was never coddled or spoiled. I never went hungry. In my heart I knew I had nothing to be ashamed of. But, as Guido had pointed out, my heart still bled for everyone else.
Relaxed to the point of sleepiness, I hauled myself out of the water, slipped into my shirt, gathered my things, and stumbled home.
Michael was asleep on the living room sofa. He had ceded his bedroom to Casey, how willingly I wasn’t sure. I suspect that it had been Mike’s idea, born out of a notion that girls need more privacy than boys, some stubborn remnant of chivalry. Whatever, it was a noble gesture, a big help in the short run. I felt very strongly that we had to find Michael a space of his own, and soon.
We were looking for a bigger house.
From habit, I checked on Casey, saw her sleeping in the usual tangle with Bowser. I yawned, wiped away the water running down my neck, and opened my own bedroom door. The elves had cleaned up Bowser’s mess, refolded the bath towels and stacked them on the floor.
Mike, wearing only boxer shorts, was stretched out on the bed, propped up on pillows and surrounded by street maps, the newspaper classifieds, and a couple of rental guides. He had reading glasses perched low on his nose. When I leaned over to kiss his bare shoulder I dripped water onto his reading matter.
“Is it raining?” he asked.
“I went for a swim.”
“Naked?”
“Almost. You should have been there.”
“If you’d whistled, I would have been.”
“There was no time,” I said, beginning to shiver. “It was an emergency sort of thing.”
“I can understand that,” he said. “Feel better?”
“Much.” I peeled off my soggy shirt and underwear and started for the bathroom.
“Where’ve you been?” he called after me. “Out.”
Mike’s big terry robe was on a hook in the bathroom. I put it on, wrapped a towel around my hair, and went back to the bed. Still shivering, I slipped under the covers and snuggled up against Mike, stealing his body warmth.
When I had quit squirming and had my cold feet wedged under him, he said, “Out?”
“I went to Etta’s.”
“Guido go?”
“No. I went alone.”
I might as well have hit him across the face. “You went to Etta’s alone?” he exploded.
“Etta does it all the time.”
“Jesus Christ, Maggie. Promise me you won’t ever go there alone again.”
“Okay.”
“I used to work that neighborhood. You have no idea what can happen.”
“I said, okay. I won’t go there alone again.”
“Okay.”
He was still breathing hard when he enveloped me in his arms. He muttered, “Jesus,” a couple of times, most unprayerfully. He needn’t have fussed; I would never go back there alone. I had been scared from the moment I got off the freeway until I got back on it. With reason. I could add up at least four incidents that occurred during the space of an hour that might easily have gone deadly wrong. That’s four possibilities before I gave any thought to car problems or drive-bys. Mike was right: Etta’s neighborhood was no place to wander through alone, at night. I should have known better.
All my moving around under the covers scattered his maps and classifieds. I retrieved a section of ads sliding off my hip: houses and apartments to rent, three bedrooms. He had starred a few.