“You know who did it?”
“Oh, it has to be one of our gentleman callers. We get cruised pretty regularly by guys chasing our residents. One of them must have seen the cat come out.” She moved a pile of papers off a rickety side chair and gestured for Marlene to sit. “So, I hope you’ve got a cheery story for me, like, you ripped some shithead’s lungs out.”
“I don’t know about cheery, but interesting. It’s about the mystery girl.” Marlene recounted the garbled story she had heard from Lucy.
“It’s amazing,” said Mattie when she was through, “nine months with her lip buttoned, and then she spills it all to your kid.” She seemed almost affronted.
“But what do you make of it? It seems like a … a fantasy, or a bad dream.”
“Lots of those down south,” said Duran. “Nightmares, with real blood. No, I think it sounds like what Isabella remembers, or as much as an American seven-year-old could take in and tell you. Isabella got caught in a raid in Guatemala or El Salvador, her father was killed, and she escaped with her mother and brother. Then something else happened, here in the City, and the family split up.”
“What, you think some Central American regime actually sent agents up here to chase refugees?” asked Marlene, her tone incredulous.
“It’s been known, girl. The Chilean junta killed a dissident in the middle of Washington, D.C., a couple years back. If the family all saw something they shouldn’t have …”
Marlene was at that moment thinking about Ariadne Stupenagel and the possibility that she was barking up the wrong tree looking for her attackers in a New York police station.
“But what about the San Francisco part? You think they chased them across the whole country?”
“That’s where you’re being gringocentric,” said Duran with a tight smile. “I doubt very much that she meant the city in California. There must be a couple hundred places in Latin America called San Francisco something-of-another. I think she was talking about her hometown. I could check.”
“Yeah, and look: if Isabella’s talking to Lucy, maybe we should arrange to give them some more time together. Why don’t I invite Isabella home with me tonight? Hector too.”
After a brief pause Duran shrugged and said, “It’s okay by me. If she’ll go.”
FIFTEEN
Isabella would come, it turned out, nervously and with many a hesitant step, out of the shelter, into the yellow car, and up to the loft. Hector, her perhaps brother, invited himself along. They sat together silently in the backseat while Lucy chattered like a tour guide, pointing out the neighborhood attractions. Hector held the girl’s hand, stroking it gently and whispering in some hissing language that Marlene could not make out from the driver’s seat. It was not Spanish.
Somewhat to Marlene’s surprise, neither of the shelter children were the least bit frightened of the dog, Sweety. Hector pulled its loose skin, and when it licked Isabella’s face, it elicited a ghostly smile and a near giggle, after which banana bread with butter and Ovaltine were served in the kitchen.
“We have big dog. Had,” said Hector, patting Sweety and surreptitiously slipping crumbs into the slobbering maw. “He was nice.”
“Oh? Where was this?” asked Marlene, feigning mere politeness. “Where you used to live?”
“Uh-huh. Our house.”
“Really? Where was your house, Hector?”
Hector turned his face away from her and looked around the loft with interest. “You got color TV?”
“Yes, we do,” said Marlene. “So, Hector-you had a big dog. Do you have a dog where you live now?”
“No, the soldiers shooted it.” The boy leaped from his chair and mimed shooting, with appropriate sound effects. “Is dead. Could we watch your TV now? A-team! A-team!” He leaped about the kitchen, spinning and kicking, playing all the parts in an action drama and humming suitable stirring background music. Before Marlene could stop him, he had snapped a clumsy karate kick at the table, which shook, bringing a glass half full of tan milk crashing to the floor. The dog jumped to its feet, snarled, and flashed teeth, never an amusing sight. Hector froze in a crouch. Isabella ducked under the table, her eyes shut, her hands covering her head. The first one to break the tableau was Lucy, who rose calmly from her chair and, tugging Marlene’s shirt to get her attention, whispered in her ear, “He doesn’t like grownups to ask him questions. It makes him sort of crazy.”
Then Lucy scooted under the table and started to coax Isabella out. After that, and after cleaning the spill, they went to the room designated “gym” and played with Karp’s rowing machine and Marlene’s boxing stuff. Marlene changed into sweats and put on speed gloves and did a punching-bag demo, which impressed Hector no end, and then he tried to bat the bag around, not doing too well. Then Marlene lowered the bag on its well slide to give Lucy a crack at it. Lucy’s expertise did not sit well with the boy, and he began slamming the body bag around, grunting and cursing under his breath. Marlene let him punch until he was sweaty and exhausted. It seemed to do him some good. He smiled and said, jerking his chin at Lucy, “I’m stronger than her.”
Throughout, Isabella watched from a corner, wide-eyed and silent as a carved saint.
Marlene left the children in Lucy’s room and went into her office to pay some bills and check her messages. After some time, she heard laughter, Lucy’s high-pitched giggle, Hector’s semi-manly chortle, and another, lighter laugh, one she hadn’t heard before. She rose from her chair quietly, went next door, and peeked in. They were all on Lucy’s bed, having a tickle and pillow fight with the stuffed animal menagerie. Lucy was making the animals talk, her usual nonsense, but clearly the height of wit to the other two. Isabella was laughing, and was utterly transformed by it, converted by an interlude of safety and nonsense from an icon depicting early death into what she really was-a child robbed of childhood.
Marlene gently closed the door. She was not as a rule sentimental about childhood, rather medieval about it in fact, un-American, which is what tends to happen to you when you run a sex-crimes unit for a while, and which accounted for much of her daughter’s social precosity. Nevertheless, for an instant the horror beat in past the shield of ordinary life, the sure knowledge of what millions of people were doing to millions of children all over the world, not just in benighted nations like the miserable homeland of her two foundlings, but doubtless within a long throw to home plate of where she now stood, millions shrieking in pain, little spirits crushed under brutal heels, the ravaging of innocence, the great unfinished project of the twentieth century. Her eye watered and she had to struggle to suppress a painful sob.
Karp walked in, whistling. She went to greet him at the door, and hung on his neck and kissed him with intensity.
“What? I did something right for a change?” he asked when they came up for air.
“No … just …”
“What? Tell me.”
“Nothing. Just … life.”
An unusually loud gale of laughter floated through the loft.
“Lucy has guests,” Marlene explained. “I think I’ll allow an overnight.”
“On a school night? Who is it? Janice?”
“No. A couple of kids from the shelter. They’re sort of refugees.”
They walked arm in arm back to the bedroom, where Karp began to change out of his court clothes.
“So, nice kids? What’re they, Lucy’s age?”
“No. They’re older. She’s about fourteen, he’s about twelve. As to nice-that’s probably not a good word. She’s practically a zombie most of the time from some kind of traumatic damage. He’s got a lot of anger, probably for a damn good reason. But playing with Lucy seems to help them, and Lucy, needless to say, is in paradise-big kid friends. Janice Chen is not in it.”
A louder gale of laughter. “Lucy is making the animals talk,” said Marlene.