“Tugging at our heartstrings,” said Baker.
“For what reason?”
“The little gal thinks she can sing. Maybe she’s into acting, too.”
Not much light over the red door. They knocked.
A gonglike chime sounded and Greta Barline’s voiced trilled, “One second.”
When the door swung open, she was standing there with her blond hair all long and combed out, wearing a tiny little lace apron, spike heels and nothing else. Flour whisk in one hand, round-tipped frosting knife in the other.
Few people look better naked than clothed. This girl was the exception. Every visible inch of her was smooth and golden and nubile and voluptuous and all sorts of other good adjectives. She’d come to the door licking her lips and grinning. But that died fast.
Baker said, “Sorry to interrupt the production, Gret.”
The girl’s eyes widened and then, darn if her little pink nipples didn’t get hard and all puckery around the rosellas or whatever you called them.
Lamar said, “Dressed for business?”
He’d never admit it but he’d been distracted by those nipples when she went after him with the frosting knife.
They subdued her, but it took surprising effort. Even cuffed and facedown on a red silk Asian print sofa, she kept up the kicking and screaming- lot of nonsense about rape.
The interior of the house looked like someone had raided every tourist trap in Bangkok. Lamar found Greta Barline’s clothing in the master bedroom- a wide, shag-carpeted space dominated by a huge plaster Buddha spray-painted gold. In a teak dresser, one drawer was reserved for bikinis, thongs, and crotch-less panties. A section of the walk-in closet held negligees, wife-beaters and T-shirts and three pairs of size-4 Diesel jeans. Tons of makeup and other female products in the bathroom. She’d made a real mess of the place, leaving wet towels on the floor, along with crumpled-up National Enquirers.
Living here, on and off, when she wasn’t bedding johns and belting out karaoke.
Lamar selected the most modest clothes he could find- a yellow tee, along with a pair of jeans- and brought them back to the living room. Maybe calling for a female officer would’ve been the smart thing but they didn’t want to wait around with this foulmouthed naked girl screaming rape.
The detectives managed to wrestle her into the duds, but it made them sweat.
Then Lamar remembered: no underwear. Like she’d care.
They sat her up, and had just gotten her something to drink, when a big, florid middle-aged guy wearing a Domino Pizza delivery uniform showed up. The duds were a size too small and downright stupid-looking on a paunchy, gray-haired idiot with steel-rimmed eyeglasses.
Trembling hands clutched a pizza box.
“Dr. McAfee?”
The dentist’s eyes got wild, as if he were contemplating escape.
Baker said, “Bad idea, sit over there.” He took the box and inspected it, finding a packet of ribbed condoms, an aerosol can of whipped cream and some creepy-looking big old plastic beads on a string.
“Talk about nutrition,” said Lamar.
The dentist clutched his chest and when that didn’t work, flashed a nice set of white teeth and looked over at Greta. “Don’t know her, just met her, Officers. She insisted on coming over. It was just going to be some old-fashioned fun in the privacy of my own domicile.”
“Fuck you!” screamed the girl. “You said I was the best!”
McAfee’s look was ripe with pity.
Greta Barline squinted. “I’ll kill you, you bastard. I’ll cut you like I cut him.”
McAfee blanched. “Guess I’d better be more careful who I allow to pick me up.”
Baker and Lamar hauled the girl out of there. When they reached the door, McAfee was still standing there in his ludicrous delivery duds.
“May I change?”
Baker said, “You better.”
15
“He deserved it.”
Same interview room, same chairs, a different kid.
Lamar said, “He deserved it because…”
“He wouldn’t stand up,” said Gret Barline.
“For what?”
“His responsibilities.”
“To who?”
“All that sperm he shot around, like it was drain water.” The cuffs had been removed from the girl’s slender wrists. The heavy theatrical makeup she’d worn for her role-play with the dentist glowed salmon-orange in the bright light.
“A fertile guy,” said Baker.
He and Lamar were proceeding cautiously. The girl had made what could be construed as a spontaneous confession during her tirade against McAfee: if one construed “him” to mean Jack. But who knew what a judge would make of that? They hadn’t Mirandized Greta Barline out of fear that she would lawyer up.
And because they had no grounds, just the certainty that came from years of dealing with the messes that people made of their God-given lives.
Baker sensed the girl was a sociopath. But he wasn’t totally without sympathy. In the end human beings were frail beings.
Now she said, “Fertile turtle,” and laughed at her own wit. Her brown eyes were hot and a little scary, maybe to the point of craziness. When they traced her NCIC records, they found out she was twenty-eight, not the twenty, twenty-one they’d assumed.
Pushing thirty and old beyond even those years.
Ten-year history of bad checks, trespassing, soliciting, forgery, petty larceny. She’d served maybe a total of half a year, all of it in county lockups. There were muscles in those smooth little arms. A butterfly tattoo in the small of her back. Lamar remembered how much effort it had taken for both of them to restrain her. When they booked her, she came in at a hundred and eight, fully clothed.
He said, “So what was he supposed to stand up for?”
“Not what, freak-a-leak, who!” she said. “He was supposed to stand up for me- his flesh and blood.”
“You know for a fact that you’re kin?”
“My mama told me and she don’t lie about things like that.”
“When did she tell you?”
“As long as I can remember. I never had a live-in dad, just foster assholes and assholes who’d come in and out to see Mama.” Another laugh. “Plenty of in-and-out. Mama was always talking about him: Jack this, Jack that.” Wicked smile. “Jack had a nice little beanstalk on him.”
“How’d she meet him?”
“He and Denny and Mark did a concert in San Antone.”
Talking about the other two members of the trio like they were favorite uncles.
“And?” said Baker.
“And she had a friend who was working security and he got her a backstage pass and she got to meet all of them. They all liked her, but Jack liked her the most. She used to be real sexy before she put on a hundred extra pounds.”
Pantomiming a watermelon paunch and sticking her tongue out in disgust.
“So Jack and your mama started hanging out,” said Lamar.
“They fucked all night is what they did,” said Gret. “And the result is moi.” She pointed to her chest.
Nipples poking through the yellow tee, darn, he should’ve thought of a bra. Lamar said, “You’ve known your whole life.”
“I followed his career when I’d see a computer, like in an Internet café, I’d Google him. There wasn’t much happening in the last…ten years, but I still did it. Trying to figure out if I should try.”
“Try what?”
“Try to meet him. Maybe he’d see me and…” Nervous laugh. “People meet me, they like me.”
“I can see that.”
She batted her lashes. Arched her back.
Lamar said, “So you finally decided to…”
“I moved to Nashville about six months ago. For my singing career, you know. So it seemed like fate when I found out he was coming here.”
“Were you living in the Happy Night right from the beginning?”
“A couple other places before that. Happy Night was the best of ’em.”