Wendy Hornsby - Bad Intent

“I know her my whole damn life. We grow up in the same neighborhood.”

I caught Guido’s eye and motioned for him to come over. When he was ready with his camera, I said, “You grew up with Hanna Rhodes?”

Gloria nodded. “Know her my whole life. She was my play sister. Our kids is friends, too.”

“Tell me about her children.”

“She have just one little girl. Yoandra. She’s about ten now. Live with her grandmother.”

“How old was Hanna?”

“Twenty-five, about. Same as me. We used to go to that school over across the street. But they never used to lock the gate all the way, you know. They let us go in and play. Guess Hanna didn’t know they was locking things up these days so she couldn’t get through.”

“What a shame,” I said. Hector’s touch was warm through my sleeve. “I was wondering, Gloria,” I said. “This date you had, he must have seen the shooting.”

“He didn’t see nothin’,” she said, adamant. She lit a new cigarette from the glowing stub between her fingers.

“I’d still like to talk to him. Men notice cars better than we do.”

She took a long drag. “I don’t know nothin’ about him. He just a date, you know?”

“A regular date?” Hector asked. “You’re very pretty, Miss Griffin. You must have regulars.”

She smiled in spite of herself, flipped her hair up off her neck, flirting with him. “Maybe I do.”

“Was he a regular?” I asked. “Do you know where I might find him?”

“Maybe.” She gave the three of us a keen appraisal. Then she looked down, dropped her cigarette, and stubbed it out with her toe. She took so long doing this, I thought she had forgotten about us. Finally, she said, “What I know will cost you two dead presidents.”

The only dead presidents in my pocket were some George Washington. I looked up at Hector. “Two dead presidents, is that two hundred dollars?”

“That’s what I say,” she said. “Two of ‘em.”

Hector had glanced away, seemed to be smiling at something. Mike tells me a lot of war stories about things that go down on the job. I remembered one he had told me about Hector and dead presidents. I took hold of Hector’s sleeve and said, “Hey, Gloria, you ever play Monopoly?”

“Maybe I did,” she said, wary, as if she was afraid I was making fun of her.

“In Monopoly they have something called a get-out-of-jail-free card. In the game, the card’s worth two hundred dollars,” I said. Hector, on cue, took out one of his business cards with its big silver detective shield and his office phone number on it, and handed it to me. I passed it to Gloria. “Here’s your getout-of-jail-free card. Next time you get picked up on the street, you give this card to the officer, tell him to call Detective Melendez. It’s a whole lot better than dead presidents.”

She studied the card before she tucked it into the front of her halter top. Then she looked up and said, “His name’s Tiny and he hangs up at the Bayou Barbeque. I see him there all the time.”

“Thanks, Gloria,” I said. The androgynous officers were walking toward us. “Thank you very much. If we want to talk to you again, where can we reach you?”

She smiled, coming on to Hector again. “You know where my office is. Up on that corner. You want to talk to me, just call my pager number.”

She walked off to meet her escorts, swaying her narrow hips for Hector’s benefit.

When Guido took the camera off his shoulder, he was laughing. “You two should go on the road with that card routine.”

“It’s already been on the road,” I said. “Part of the Mike Flint repertoire, right Hector?”

“What other stories he tell you?” Hector asked. He was blushing furiously.

“Tons of them. When he told me about the get-out-of-jail-free card stunt, he said, ‘Got us what we needed and no one laid a hand on the whore. That’s called good police work, my friend. Good police work.’ “

“That’s called bullshit,” Guido countered.

Hector laughed. “Same thing. With Flint, it’s an art form.”

Guido, who lives most of his professional life within the confines of university-directed tenets of political correctitude, visibly winced when I said “whore.” He was suddenly not very amused.

“Can we go home now?” Guido asked me. “I’ve got the crime scene, the victim, the cops, the witness.”

“Get the bystanders,” I said. “And the cars on the street.”

“Except the Blazer?” he said, sarcastic.

I reached into my pocket and switched off the tape recorder. “Everything except the Blazer. You have a problem with that?”

“No,” he said, jutting out his chin like a defiant kid. “I don’t have any problems. I’m having more fun than I’ve had since we camped out in the jungles of Salvador. At least here there aren’t any biting bugs and at the moment no one’s shooting at us. Just perfectly dandy. Doing this arty, interpretive shit is so much easier than working hard news: we don’t even have to pretend we’re looking for the facts as long as we get some hot footage. I always think patterns of light and shadow are more important than story content.”

I ignored the insult, put it down to an unguarded flash of jealousy. Best friends often feel pushed out when a lover comes on the scene, comes between them. I had been noticing ever since I moved down that Guido seemed to bristle every time Mike’s name came up. I walked away from him to give him space to cool off, but he followed.

“Hanna grew up in this general neighborhood,” I said, moving past the tantrum. He had stung me deeply, and he knew it. Why belabor the issue? “She went to that elementary school across the street, little girl with pigtails, maybe. I like the way this is all coming together. With some luck and persistence, we may be able to hook up with Hanna’s mother, or maybe the school administration, and find some old pictures of her. Little kid with gaps in her front teeth, cut to the body on the porch. That would be beautiful, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know if beautiful is the right word, but it would be powerful.” Guido, chagrined suddenly, dropped his gaze, did an unnecessary battery check. “Very powerful.”

“I love you, Guido,” I said.

“I know.” He looked at me through his long lashes. “I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

Gloria was driven away. She waved to us from the backseat of the patrol car as she went past. I knew she faced an all-nighter, what was left of the night, under questioning at Southeast Division. I hoped they would at least buy her breakfast when it was over because she looked as if she hadn’t eaten for a long time.

The forensics people would probably be around the crime scene most of the day with their tape measures, chalk, and little plastic bags. I overheard them discussing whether a gouge on a metal fence post was a bullet impact or some other sort of collision, maybe a hard encounter with a bicycle handlebar. None of it seemed essential to our needs. Once Hanna had been taken away in the coroner’s van, there was no reason for us to stay.

Guido, still chastened, walked me back to the Blazer, where Hector was waiting. I had the envelope Hector had given me tucked under my arm.

“Hector,” I said, “did you know Wyatt Johnson?”

He shook his head. “I think he worked out of Hollywood or maybe Hollenbeck. I don’t know what he was doing down here.”

“Maybe there’s something in his file.”

“Could be,” he said.

“What they’re saying Mike did,” I said, but Hector held up his hands, stopped me from saying anything more.

“Mike Flint’s the best,” he said. “Don’t believe anyone who says otherwise.”

“Thanks for coming out,” I said. I offered him my hand, but he gave me a long hug.