“Well, it’s possible he’s only got a few snakes and he’s freezing the food when he gets home. For later use. But mostly, a big collection, you either buy fresh once a week or you order frozen by mail — saves money if you buy in bulk. There’s other stores that sell food, too. No telling where he’s getting it.”
“I didn’t know a snake would eat frozen things.”
“You thaw them out first.”
We went back to the counter. I picked up three different reptile magazines and a reptile-show newsletter, but Steve wouldn’t let me pay for them. I handed him my card, with my home phone on the back. “If you see him again, call me. If you talk to anybody who mentions him, call me. If you remember anything about him, no matter how small it is or how certain you are, call me. Amanda will be here a little after five.”
He gave me one of his cards. It was made of thick yellow card stock and had an embossed green snake across it We shook hands. His grip was strong and his skin was rough. “How come a collector buys live animals for food, if they can kill his snakes?” I asked.
Steve shrugged. “He probably likes to watch his snakes kill them. Some people enjoy that.”
From my car I called the name Steven Wicks into Frances, who’d run the CID through Sacramento. Ten minutes later she was back on the line: Wicks was thirty-eight years old, residing in Anaheim, California, with a prior 384a.
I asked her what in hell a 384a was.
“Cutting or destroying shrubs. He took some cactus out of Borrego State Park. He was nineteen at the time. Did ten days and paid a $500 fine. Other than that, he’s clean.”
I checked three other reptile stores, but no one remembered any customer who had asked about horridus. They sold too many rabbits, rats and mice to remember the people who bought them. My physical description wasn’t specific enough to be useful yet, but that would change — I hoped — when Steve Wicks met with Amanda Aguilar.
I sat a few minutes with Linda Sharpe late that afternoon in the Juvenile Hall visiting area. It’s a hushed and miserable room, where the detainees and visitors — usually parents — have to conduct the sometimes heartbreaking business of familihood with little privacy. There are always deputies present, but the kids and adults aren’t separated by glass, as in a prison. Instead, there’s a long table and folding chairs, where you can sit face to face and try to keep your conversation away from the people next to you. We got seats at a far end.
She’d been given a pair of loose-fitting jeans, a pair of athletic shoes and a T-shirt. Her pigtails were gone, twisted back into a single ponytail. No makeup, no little girl’s dress, no whore’s costume. Linda Sharpe, age ten, now actually looked like a ten-year-old.
“Hi,” I said.
Her expression was dreamy, surrendered. It’s an expression very common to the sexually exploited young. She didn’t answer.
“Sorry about what happened yesterday,” I said.
“I knew you were a cop.”
I shrugged. “I mean I’m sorry about what Danny did. There was no reason you had to see that.”
“It didn’t really bother me. I didn’t like him.”
“Well, at least you say what’s on your mind.”
“Are we done?”
“Is there anything I can get you?”
She shook her head and looked around the room with wide, gathering eyes.
“Out of here would be nice.”
I studied her. I’d read through her folder and knew she was at a crossroads now — either an institution or a relocation to be with her nearest relatives, who were way up by Spokane. We had, by Welfare and Institution Code, twenty-one days to keep her until she was placed. A lot of what happened depended on whether we charged her or not. If she went to a Youth Authority facility, her life would be one thing. If she went to live with her mother’s sister and husband in Washington, that was another. There’s no way to tell which one is going to work out better, or work out at all. The system can’t see the future, but it never stops trying.
“I hear you have an aunt up in Washington.”
She slouched down low in the chair and glared.
“I hate Washington.”
“Been there?”
She looked at me with the mock exasperation young people think is convincing.
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“Who cares?”
“I do.”
“That’s the first thing everybody tries to make you believe. How much they care. There’s a word for that, and the word is bullshit.”
“I meant it.”
“Look, Mr. Cop—”
“—Terry.”
“—Cop Terry, I don’t have to go to Washington and I don’t have to go to jail. I’m a minor. I’m ten and I got all sorts of rights. I got a lawyer and he’s twice as smart as you’ll ever be. I’m not going to say anything about my mom or my dad. They love me. I do what I want to do and that’s the way it is. So, you want to know what you can get me? Get me out of here, get me my house key back and my clothes and the money that was in my purse at home. I want my CDs and my makeup and my friends and my swimming pool. The rest, you can take and shove up your butt.”
I nodded and waved over the matron.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll shove it. And I’ll talk to you sometime when you’re acting like a human and not a whore. By the way, thanks for the bite. It took six stitches to close it and it hurts like hell. If you test positive, we’re both going to die.”
She looked at me cheerfully. “Good.”
Six
Tonello’s is an expensive Italian restaurant in the metro district of Orange County. It’s a warm and clubby place, with excellent food and service just formal enough to let you know you’re important. It’s close to the Performing Arts Center and the South Coast Repertory Theater, two cultural jewels in the county’s modest crown. It’s a smoky back room without the smoke, given our brutal but sanctimonious times. If you’re powerful or ambitious, you want to be known there.
For years it’s been the watering hole for the politicians and businesspeople who command their fiefdoms within the county — the supervisors and city pols, the judges and the assemblymen, the developers and real estate magnates, the publishers and editors and media executives, the many lobbyists who represent Wall Street brokerage firms and banks, the philanthropists and the social elite. If your status isn’t as high as your ambition, you can still go, so long as you’re dressed well, submissive and don’t expect a table. Jim Wade is a regular there, along with his heir apparent, Jordan Ishmael. Few others in our Sheriff-Coroner Department have much reason to patronize the place. We like cop hangouts. But for the last six months or so I’ve been showing up at Tonello’s myself, an unknown in the smiling, boozy world of the Orange County elite. Jim suggested that I might profit from a proximity to these people, though he’s never said exactly how. Ishmael, of course, detests my presence. Melinda joins me occasionally. With Linda Sharpe’s bitter words still ringing in my ears, I pulled up to the valet line and left my car and a five with Rodrigo. He parked it out of sight, back with the other Fords.
I walked in with a truculent glow, due to my good fortune at Prehistoric Pets. Ishmael was at the bar, and for once I was glad to see him. I delivered to him the line I’d been dying to deliver for the last few hours:
“Where’s Wade? I got a sketch of a Horridus suspect coming through in less than an hour.”
Ishmael looked at me hard, his green eyes openly suspicious. He motioned behind him with a turn of his head. “With your personal publicist from CNB.”