“What?” he asked.
“I didn’t know they sold beer.”
“Sure. You can go back for one.”
“What do they have?”
“A bunch of brands. I always get the Amstel Light. Unfortunately. It’s better than Coors Light, at least.”
“I’ll be back,” she said, utterly unaware of parroting the Schwarzenegger catch phrase from The Terminator flicks.
Alch pulled a face at her vanishing back. Beer with the lieutenant. Well, well.
She returned not only with a beer but with two, neither light. “Dos Equis. You deserve full flavor after this afternoon’s debacle, Morrie. And so do I, God help me.”
He wisely didn’t follow up on that opening. Better to let the food and drink take effect first. He’d learned that from Vicky, even if it had been Pizza Inn and Dr Pepper in her case.
“T h i s i s g r e a t b r C. R… . i s k Carmen e t said, , ” after tseveral h eminutes l of i silent e umutualt e
eating and sipping. - All around them people came and went. The din of sliding trays and clanking silverware and plastic tumblers hitting Formica tabletops echoed, creating a benign, vaguely muffled background, like they were in a movie scene instead of real life. “So who was that masked man?” Morrie finally asked.
She shook her head. “You sure know how to kick off an interrogation, Detective.”
“Don’t think of me as a detective.”
“What should I think of you as?”
“I don’t know. Maybe what you need at the moment.”
“Need. That’s the second time you’ve used that wimpy word.”
“It’s not wimpy. It’s … reality. Look. I know you’re the boss. I know you’re tough. More than that, I know you really care
about how you do the job, how we all do the job. I also know you’re a girl. Hey! Don’t bristle. It’s true. I raised a girl. By myself. I know the territory, even if I’m only a grudgingly tolerated visitor to it.”
“Your daughter makes you feel like that?”
“All kids make you feel like that. You’re a parent. Whoever wants to be ‘a parent’? You always thought you were more
interesting than that.”
She shook her head at him, but it wasn’t denial, it was recognition. “I was an accidental parent.”
“Who would do such a thing deliberately?”
“Lots of people set out to do it.”
“They’re crazy. They have no idea what it involves, do they?”
“No, they don’t.”
“So what’s the problem? You know you’ve got to name it or go crazy. I’ve been almost driven crazy by my daughter. Because of my daughter. Because I love her more than anything and I’m just a way station on her life journey. Because I’m bound to be left behind, but if I can do anything to make her life better, or brighter-”
She interrupted with her hand, clamping hard on his forearm across the table. “Does she appreciate it?”
“Hell, no. Not now. When I’m gone … maybe.”
“Oh, Morrie-”
“Drink your beer. It’s solid stuff. It’s solider than ninety-eight percent of what we do every day. Enjoy every calorie. You look back, and that’s all you got. So what’s the trouble?”
“I don’t do this,” she said.
“Do what?”
“Tell. Tattle. Whine. Admit. Admit guilt, failure, lack of control.”
“Me neither.”
She laughed. “Why do I feel I’d like you for a father?”
“Because you don’t know the hellion I used to be. True.” She didn’t laugh, though he’d meant her to. “This violates every
professional rule I’ve set myself.”
“Maybe you set yourself the wrong rules.”
“Apparently. My daughter is spiraling out of control, asking unanswerable questions. And now, I meet an unanswerable .
fragment from my past.”
“That guy at Maylords.”
“Guy. Don’t I wish. Just some ‘guy.’ Unfortunately, he’s Mariah’s father.”
“Whoa. Holy shit. She know it?” Silence held. “He know it?”
“I know it. That’s all.”
Morrie chugalugged real beer, trying to make Molina’s messy personal life jibe with her impeccable professional trajectory.
None of the messiness really mattered, except to her.
“You’re a single mother,” he said finally. “It’s rude of anyone to speculate. It certainly doesn’t enter into job history, like it used to. Those were the bad old days. I can’t tell you the speculations made then about me and Vicky. A father with one daughter. Wife dead? Wife divorced? Wife run off? Wife murdered? Whatever the scenario, I was considered weird. Father with daughter. Not the norm.”
“That’s why I respect you so much.” It was murmured. Muttered.
“Me?”
“You. It shows in how you partner Su. She’s a handful. She has issues. She respects you. I wish I’d had a partner as good when I was in her position.”
He literally sat back, absorbed this information. He wasn’t here to garner kudos. But he was touched. Maybe it wasn’t just Vicky. Maybe it was Su. And … my God, Molina?
Uh-oh. Morrie Alch, professional father substitute. Not quite what he was willing to settle for. Yet.
“Let’s call it a mutual admiration society,” he said.
“That’s why it’s so hard. But … who else could understand?”
Morrie nodded. He was doomed to “understand.” Not to be understood. All single parents were. Not a voluntary occupation.
“So,” she asked, “who was your daughter’s-Vicky, isn’t it?-mother?”
“You sure don’t dance around questions like this in interrogation. I guess I should be flattered you changed your style for me. What you really want to know is why we split and what happened to her.”
Molina shrugged as she pushed away her empty plate and drew the beer mug closer. “You tell, I tell.”
Alch heard himself chuckling again. “I feel like a snitch. Odd role reversal.” He put his plate with its ruddy smear of sauce onto the brown tray on top of Molina’s.
“Okay. She was a nurse. Emergency room. We figured maybe our odd hours would work out better together than with
some nine-to-fiver or other. And they did. At first.”
“So it wasn’t the hours. Or the overtime. Or being on call?”
“Nope. All the logistics were fine. Little Vicky worked out too. I did my share of diapers, feedings, drop-offs at preschool
later, things most nine-to-five fathers miss out on.”
“Diapers. I always knew you were an unsung hero, Morrie.” They smiled in mutual remembrance of smelly times past.
“Anyway,” he said. “Time went by. Enough time to think about another kid maybe.”
“What happened.”
“Job burnout.”
“Really?” Molina sounded surprised. “You’re the most unburned-out detective on my staff.”
“Hers. I learned my laid-back lifestyle the hard way. Emergency room is crazy, the hours, the stress, the danger, the dying. She started using. I never spotted it until it was a habit as big as the Goliath Hotel. All those rushing, come-and-go hours had ended up in needing a rush.”
“That’s how you got custody. Fathers didn’t often back then.”
“Sure, make me feel good about my age.”
“It’s a good age, Morrie. I just hope I get there with my sanity intact.”
“You will. Maybe it doesn’t look like it now. Adolescence is hell at any age. So what’s your story?” “You breathe a word-”
“Hey, I told you about my junkie ex-wife. Your history is worse?”
“No. I’m sorry. Losing someone to drugs is … the worst. Staying sane, and sober yourself, through it, that’s a major medal, even if you’re the only one who knows you earned it.”
Alch nodded, sipped beer. Was glad he didn’t have to speak.
“Okay. My turn.” She bit her lower lip, which didn’t hurt her makeup. She wore so little, if any, that no lipstick stained the beer mug. “Show and tell. ‘That guy.’ I’ve known he was in town for some time. I hoped, prayed, he’d never know that I was living here. Now it’s public record.”