Wendy Hornsby - Midnight Baby

He pulled off the freeway at the next exit and found a public telephone. I waited in the car.

Clouds had moved in off the ocean until the moon was only a glow above the dense canopy. The air was appreciably colder and damper than the bright day promised. I pulled my blazer close and snuggled down into the corner of my seat. “The Ride of the Valkyries” blasted from the radio.

I watched Mike’s straight back under the blue light from the telephone booth. He shifted from one leg to the other, agitated as he spoke. I felt uneasy. The dark, I guess, and Mike so exposed in the one well-lighted spot on the block of industrial warehouses surrounded by razor wire. He made a good target for anyone so inclined. For no reason perhaps other than habit, his free hand covered the semiautomatic pistol at his belt, fiddled with the release snaps on the holster. Maybe it was just something to hold on to.

I worry about Casey all the time. A sort of free-floating maternal anxiety based on nothing more concrete than a wild imagination and too much experience with the range of possibilities the big world offers.

I don’t know when it happened, but I realized I had started worrying about Mike, too. He’s bigger than I am, and a whole lot tougher. That had nothing to do with how I felt. I wanted him to duck out of the light, make himself less vulnerable. Standing there with his silver hair shining, he reminded me of Pisces under the moonlight. The night before she died.

Mike made a second call, argued with whoever answered at the other end. I unwound my arms and had just stepped out into the chill night air to be with him when he turned and motioned for me to come.

“What is it?” I asked, shivering.

“Some card calling himself John Smith says he needs to talk to you. Says you gave him my number. You want me to shine him on?”

“No.” I jogged over. “Honest to God, that’s his name. He’s the PI I told you Hillary hired.”

Dubious, Mike handed me the receiver.

“Mr. Smith?” I said.

“Is that the cop who’ll use me for target practice?” he asked.

“If you get out of line,” I said. “What’s up?”

“I earned a little of my retainer this evening, did some checking on the fortunes of George Metrano.”

“And?”

“And there is no fortune. He’s one step away from filing Chapter Eleven, bankruptcy.”

“The Bingo Burgers I saw looked like a booming concern,” I said.

“It is. Problem is, he blows it away faster than he rakes it in.”

“Blows as in blows it up his nose?”

“No, worse. His addiction is the craps tables in Vegas. He lost a bundle about four years ago and went into court-ordered reorganization that time, too. There were a couple of check-kiting charges in the mess. The judge gave him probation if he’d hitch his star to Gamblers Anonymous. Seems he’s been AWOL from meetings, though. He’s signed notes on everything he owns again to pay off the casinos. The family home is being foreclosed on.”

“Did you talk to him?” I asked.

“No. The little woman says he’s out. I don’t know if that means he’s out to creditors or he’s gone away.”

“Interesting. Very interesting. Anything else?”

“I’ll let you know.”

“Thank you, Mr. Smith,” I said. “You’re a gem.”

I closed the connection and pulled out my notebook.

“What did he say?” Mike asked as I punched in my credit card numbers and dialed the Metranos.

“George gambles big-time. He’s losing everything he owns,” I said.

“Ah,” he breathed. Mike is a quick study.

Leslie Metrano’s soft voice came on the line, quavering. “Hello?”

“Hi, Leslie. It’s Maggie MacGowen. Did you have a chance to show my pictures to George? I’ve been anxious to get his reaction.”

“He isn’t home, Maggie. He’s away on a fishing trip.”

“He’s fishing now? With all that’s going on?”

“He had to get away.”

Away from what? I wanted to know. But she seemed rather fragile. I settled for: “When do you expect him?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice broke.

“Are you all right?” I felt like a heel, as if I were lying to her. She was a sweet woman. I was thinking she deserved a break.

“It’s just…” She seemed to haul herself together sufficiently to speak. “I expected him back by now. Maybe he had trouble with the boat. I wish he would call me.”

“Where did he go?”

“Off Baja, he said.”

“Alone?”

“I don’t know.” She started to cry.

“When?”

“Saturday night.”

“Is anyone there with you?”

“My daughter and her baby,” she sobbed, so forlorn she sounded like a lost child herself.

“I’m sorry, Leslie,” I said. “I’m really sorry.”

“I have to go now. I have to go collect the night receipts.”

“No.” I reacted hard, nearly shouted. “Don’t go. Get someone else to do it. Or call the police and get an escort.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“I hope so. Is it a lot of money?”

“Yes.”

“Does George need money?”

“George always needs money. What are you saying, that he would steal from me?”

“He’s already stolen your house out from under you. What’s left?”

“He wouldn’t hurt me. I have to go, or I start paying my night manager overtime.”

Mike had been listening to my end of the conversation. I handed him the receiver. “Make her understand.”

“Understand what?”

“George took his boat and went fishing off Baja. She hasn’t heard from him since Saturday. Now she’s on her way to pick up the night receipts from her burger places. It’s a lot of money.”

Mike was persuasive. I hoped Leslie was as bright as she seemed. I heard him do his tough-cop windup to get her attention, then he gentled his pitch. By the time he hung up, he sounded like someone’s dear old dad. Then he immediately dialed the Long Beach police. He should go on the stage. Without more than a breath between roles, he switched from Dad to one of the big guys, using police boy-talk to get a promise of an escort dispatched to the Metrano house, pronto.

When he hung up the second time, he turned and grabbed me by the arm. “John Smith, huh? Met a guy by that name in a motel once.”

“Should we go down to Long Beach?”

“And do what?” He walked me to the car and opened the door for me. “The locals will take good care of her.”

“Elizabeth is in Cabo San Lucas. Cabo is at the southern tip of Baja.”

“Yeah. And that’s a long way from Long Beach.”

“It begins to come together,” I said.

“Let’s go talk to Grandma.”

The address Mike had for Hanna Ramsdale’s mother was almost San Marino, in the rocky foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. We found the house on a narrow, winding street of gracious old mansions set in vast grounds. Mike turned into the drive with Sinclair on the mailbox in shiny brass letters.

The house was old enough to be classic, 1920s I guessed. It had been built to conform to the rugged slope behind it, a spill of white Mission Revival cubes and turrets topped with red tile that rose out of a broad hollow, like a Moorish castle in a pop-up book. Up the bank behind the house, cacti and spidery sage were artfully planted among huge granite boulders, picked out by spotlights; gray-green sentinels in the night.

Mike pulled into the circular drive and stopped beside a massive saguaro.

Mrs. Sinclair – Virginia Sinclair, Mike told me – answered the door herself. I don’t guess ages very well, but I figured she was at least as old as the house. Her body had outlived its hide: the thin, patchy skin was stretched so tight across the strong bones that a big smile would surely break it. But we seemed to be in no danger of that occurring. She reminded me of some of my mother’s friends, stiff academic wives who shudder at slang and dance an even-sided box step at faculty teas without swaying their hips. I know from experience they make good targets for spit wads shot from under refreshment tables. They never react when they get hit.