Wendy Hornsby - Midnight Baby

I followed Elizabeth as far as the door.

“Nice meeting you,” I said to her back.

She turned and glared at me. “Fuck you, too.”

Mike laughed.

“Be careful, Flint,” I said when we were alone. “I may beef you with the ACLU. I am sure that interrogation was not within guidelines.”

“Fuck the ACLU,” he said, shrugging.

“I pay dues to the ACLU.”

He smiled his wry smile. “Figures.”

“She’s quite a babe, isn’t she?” I said as we walked out toward the elevators. “You have to admit, she’s strong on determination.”

“Cold bitch. The woman knows what she wants and she’s going to get it, no matter what the cost is to her or anyone else. Feels no guilt – complete sociopath. A lot of career criminals are like that. And politicians.”

“Will she ever talk?” I asked.

“She just did,” he exploded. “She told us she’s going to let Ricco take the fall for killing Hillary. For the rest, did she deny anything? You saw her. Was any of this new information to her? No way. She told us plenty.”

We stepped into the elevator.

“Where did you find the Nixon mask?” I asked.

“Did I say we’d found the mask?”

“Pictures of her hands?”

He just grinned.

In retaliation, I took a handful of his rear end just as the doors opened onto the lobby full of police. “You’re such a good liar.”

“When I need to be,” he said, grabbing my hand away. “The important thing is to keep her off guard for a while. As soon as her attorney shows up, she’s going to find out what we do and don’t have, mainly, Ricco and George. Tell you what, though – I’d sure like to be there when she finds out she’s going to take the dive all by herself. Our shark swims alone this time.”

“Herman Melville,” I laughed. “Give me a break. Where did that come from?”

“From you,” he said. “You said you like Melville.”

We walked outside into the hazy sunshine. I squinted against the glare as I looked out across the patchy brown lawn in front of Parker Center. Little family groups, some with picnics and toys to occupy the legions of tiny children, clustered here and there wearing the same solemn faces you see in hospital waiting rooms. A young Latino was passing out bright blue fliers for the bail bondsman down the street. I saw the edges of the fliers sticking out of several of the picnic bags and a couple of shirt pockets.

I took Mike’s arm. “What you laid out for Elizabeth – except for the obvious bullshit – is the way it happened, isn’t it?”

“Pretty much.”

“I’m glad they self-destructed, but I still can’t comprehend the terror they must have put Hillary through. And I don’t mean the month Elizabeth had her alone. From the time George gave her up, I think she was doomed. I try to imagine what it must have been like for her. As you said, Mike, she was four and a half when they took her away from her mother. She would remember her family. In the beginning, she would have cried for them. Remember what Mrs. Sinclair said? George came and settled Amy down after she was supposed to be Hillary because she was so upset. What could he have told her? ‘Mom and I don’t want you anymore’? ‘Mom is dead’? What?”

“Unless Mrs. Sinclair has more to tell us, we’ll never know,”

Mike sighed. The bright sunlight was unkind to his fatigued face.

I turned away from the sun and started walking. “The big crime was forcing the child to abandon not only her family, but herself. They gave her new parents, changed her hair, her name, gave her a dimple. Even changed her birthday. Can a child survive that sort of uprooting intact?”

“Maybe.” Mike turned up his palms. “Depends on the kid, I guess. And how they treated her. After a while, she probably settled in okay.”

“Everyone said she was the kind of kid who was always trying to please. So maybe she seemed settled in, but she had nightmares. Or else she thought her memories of Amy were bad dreams. Whatever, she was afraid of those pictures in her mind, the pictures of George.” We stopped at the corner, at the edge of a crowd waiting for the pedestrian light to change. “She could never feel really safe. How could she ever be sure that someone wouldn’t snatch her away again, make her start all over as someone new? And the household itself was hardly settled. Hanna died and left her. After Hanna, there were two stepmothers, both disasters. Old Randy was a constant, but from what I hear, he was never very tightly wrapped. In the end, even he disappeared.”

The light changed and walkers surged around us to get into the crosswalk. The light had turned red again before I thought to move. I pushed the walk button again.

“When Randy was gone,” I said, “Hillary set off on an odyssey to find the truth. When what she found was her nightmares personified, she did for herself what Randy, Hanna, and George had done before. She re-created herself. Pisces, child of the streets. A kid with no history at all.”

“You really liked her, didn’t you?” he asked.

“I would have, if I’d had time to get to know her.”

The light was green again. As I stepped off the curb, Mike reached for my arm and pulled me back.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Across the street.”

“Why?”

I had no answer. I had simply followed the flow of the crowd. I looked at the opposite side of the street, at the columns of gray-suited city workers trekking down into the mall for lunch. I put my hand against Mike’s tie and looked up into his face.

“Make me an offer,” I said. “Where shall we go?”

“Time to take your bearings, Maggie,” he said, covering my hand, pressing it against his chest. “Time to figure out where it is you really want to go.”

“I’ve had that figured out for quite a while, Mike,” I said. “I just don’t know how to get there.”

“Where is that?”

“I want to go home with you.”

Saturday morning dawned hot and bright, with a strong Santa Ana wind gusting through the canyons. We filed down the grassy slope from the chapel at the top of the hill, small groups in funeral clothes, following the pallbearers along a crooked path among the headstones. My heels dug into the soft ground, so I walked on tiptoes, awkwardly, to keep from falling or losing my shoes.

The child in the coffin had been dead nine days now. Only determined prodding by Mike and the influence of the right judge had effected her release from the county coroner.

In the chapel we had sat divided as wedding partisans would, Hillary’s friends on one side of the aisle, the friends of Amy Elizabeth on the other. Outside, the groups blended with those who came to remember Pisces – Sly, Sister Agnes Peter, Guido, me – and by their sharing in some small way rejoined the dismembered parts of the young girl’s life. At least, that’s how it seemed to me.

Sly was a proud pallbearer, using both hands on his assigned handle, the middle position on the left side of the narrow gray coffin between Mike and Michael. He wore long pants and a new shirt, buttoned at the neck like Michael’s. His little fox face was a study in concentration. He watched Mike ahead of him for clues, stepping when Mike stepped, stopping when Mike stopped. For assurance that he was doing his task properly, he kept looking back at Michael. He still broke my heart.

I walked arm in arm with Casey and Guido and Sister Agnes Peter. Halfway down to the gravesite the slope grew very steep and the footing was treacherous for the pallbearers. Even though the young deceased had been very small and her coffin was not full-sized, I saw them all struggle, Mike, Sly, and Michael on their side, and opposite them John Smith, Leslie Metrano’s son-in-law, and the stalwart Sergeant Mahakian. The grave had been dug under the branches of an old chestnut tree, and a bier erected at its side, among the exposed roots. The coffin was set atop the bier and the pallbearers fell back into the growing circle of mourners who had come to say goodbye to the lost child.