“Solange, I promise you, I will find your papa,” I whispered into the dark braids, knowing full well that in order to find her father, I would have to find a murderer first.
IX
When Jeannie returned, she opened her mouth to speak, but I raised my finger to my lips. I’d just finished tucking the sheet under Solange’s chin, and I was standing there admiring her eyelashes, so long that each one formed a perfect letter C. I motioned Jeannie to go out into the corridor, and it wasn’t until we were both outside the door that I saw what she had been about to tell me. She had a federal escort.
“Nice to see you again, Seychelle,” Rusty said, smiling so broadly that the creases at the corners of his eyes looked like the spokes of a wire wheel.
“Can’t really say the same, Rusty.” He was in civilian clothes today, faded jeans and black T-shirt, sockless, raggedy-looking boat shoes. It was difficult not to notice the way the T-shirt tapered down from those broad shoulders to his trim waist and how those weathered jeans wrapped his hips neatly in denim. It could have been really nice to see him if he wasn’t employed by U.S. Immigration.
“How’s our patient?” he asked, inclining his shaggy head toward the door to Solange’s room.
“Our patient? No, no, no, my friend. You have no claim on her.” I turned to Jeannie. “Were you able to find a doctor?”
“Finally, yes, after walking through miles of hospital corridors and continually getting directions that had me following yellow lines and blue lines all over this friggin’ hospital. But yes, eventually I found this lovely woman doctor, a little bit of a thing. She said the kid is doing great. Much better than should be expected, the doc said, because Solange was malnourished long before this whole boat trip even started. But there’s no need to keep her in the hospital, as long as she is eating and drinking on her own. Doc said she’d be willing to cut her loose this evening.”
“Good,” Rusty said. “We’ll take her into custody. Cases like this we usually send down to Miami to the Girls and Boys Town facility there.”
“No way.” I turned to Jeannie, my mouth open, but she was talking before I could even ask.
“Listen, Elliot, I am both a court-approved guardian ad litem and a registered foster parent. She can stay in my home. Any judge would see that it would be in the best interests of a child who has been through this kind of trauma to be in a single-family home environment instead of some group home.”
Rusty shook his head. “I don’t know about that. The police will want to talk to her.”
“Exactly. They can talk to her at my home if they need to—and she’ll be closer. Don’t block this just to be pissy, Elliot. Think of the child.”
Rusty raised his hands in submission. “Okay, okay, I don’t have a problem with it, as long as she stays where we can see her, and”—he turned and looked straight at me—“you work with me on this. I’m not your enemy, so don’t try anything stupid.”
I tried my hardest to look innocent, to give him a “Who me?” look, but as usual, I felt guilty already. Whenever someone suspected me of something, even if I hadn’t even thought of it yet, I felt guilty.
“Also,” he continued, “I need to interview her officially, and I’d like your cooperation with that. I can’t get her to talk to me.”
Now I knew why I’d felt guilty. “It’s possible I could help you out there.”
“Go on,” Rusty said.
“It’s just possible she has talked a little bit to me.”
Jeannie looked at her watch. “Listen, Sey, I need to take care of some paperwork and buy a few extra things if I’m inheriting a little girl this afternoon. I don’t think she’d be thrilled with Spider-Man jockey shorts. You okay here?”
“Not a problem, Jeannie. You go on. I’ll see you later.” After Jeannie collected her things and left, I turned to go back into the girl’s hospital room.
Rusty touched my arm. “You hungry?”
Fifteen minutes later, Rusty returned with burgers, fries, and Cokes. I had been watching Solange sleep and wondering how I was going to keep this promise to find her father, wondering what my next step would be. I forgot about all of it when the room filled with the odor of french fries.
“Lunch is served,” he announced.
I held my finger to my lips and pointed at the sleeping child, then said in a whisper, “You’re going to drive the rest of the inmates mad with that smell. All they ever get is sugar-free Jell-O and low-fat mystery meat.”
Rusty dropped the paper bags onto the vacant bed close to the door, and he motioned for me to climb onto it. “I’ll take care of that.”
I kicked off my sneakers and snuggled my butt into the covers near the head of the bed as he grabbed the edge of the privacy curtain and drew it closed around us. He smiled and climbed onto the foot of the bed and settled himself, sitting Indian style, not looking nearly as comfortable in that position as B.J. did.
“They’ll never know we’re here,” he whispered as he emptied a mountain of fries onto a paper bag.
I attempted to raise one eyebrow, to give him a look that said “Yeah, right.” With the scent of french fries wafting down the hall? I said, “I can’t quite figure you out, Elliot. One minute you’re ‘the man,’ and the next minute you’re acting like a kid hiding from the nurses.”
From another bag, Rusty poured out some two dozen little pouches of catsup. “I like that. I like being complex.” He started ripping the catsup pouches open with his teeth and emptying them into a puddle on a waxy burger wrapper. “I hope you don’t like catsup. I need every one of these.”
When I ventured to dip a fry in his catsup lake, we ended up in a french fry sword fight.
Too bad he was the enemy. He was kind of fun.
After we’d finished off all but the little burnt stubs of fries, I leaned back against the headboard and laced my fingers behind my head. A feeling of contentment settled into my shoulders, relaxing muscles that had been tense for over twenty-four hours.
“How long you been running that tug?” he whispered.
“Full-time for a little more than two years. As a part-timer, all my life.”
“Must be nice, working on the water.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Looking at you, I’d say fisherman, light tackle, fresh and marine, got about an eighteen-foot Dusky on a trailer you don’t get to take out often enough.”
He smiled. “You’ve sure got me pegged. Only the boat isn’t on a trailer at the moment, and it’s not a Dusky.”
I raised both brows this time. “Go on.”
“She’s in the water at a place I’ve got in Hollywood on the Intracoastal, and she’s a twenty-five-foot Anacapri, built in 1976. Still got the original engines. A classic.”
“That boat’s not a classic,” I said. “It’s just old. What do you tow it with?”
“Another classic: a 1971 Datsun pickup.”
“Geez, how many miles?”
“Over three hundred thousand. ‘Course it’s not the original engine.”
“Now that’s just ancient.” I giggled. “And ugly.”
He didn’t laugh back. He had this deadly serious look on his face. “So what’s the difference? Between old and classic. To you,” he said.
I couldn’t help it. The look on his face. The more I tried to stop, the harder I laughed. Then I began to snort. I hate when that happens.
He was examining the detail in the acoustical ceiling tile. I was about ready to regurgitate french fries through my nose. That was when we heard Solange cry out as though she had been struck.
Rusty was the first one off the bed. He couldn’t find the edge of the curtain at first, and he pulled at the fabric and got tangled in it when it didn’t slide open as he expected. I saw a pair of sneakers run past beneath the hem of the curtain as Rusty struggled. Once he finally drew the curtain aside, we saw Solange, sitting up in bed, her eyes wide open, staring straight ahead.