Wendy Hornsby - Bad Intent

Once we were home, I watched Mike’s every move for clues, hoping, I think, that some gesture or turn of phrase would reveal to me something essential about him that I had missed, or reassure me that I had not been wrong. Expose him, redeem him, I didn’t care which. I had to know.

My moodiness seemed to infect the household. Casey had come home hot, muscle-weary, suffering a rare crisis of faith in her own ability; the senior students had been magnificent, a tough standard to follow. Without saying much, and still in her dance clothes, hair hanging in damp strings, she had gone back out into the smoggiest part of the day to take Bowser for a walk.

Sitting close together in the cool gray living room, Mike and I went over the inventory of my stored furniture, discussing without much interest what we might want to ship down once we had decided on a house. Furniture was safe territory. I was afraid to bring up what was really on my mind, afraid of the outcome. Afraid that, if the answers weren’t right, the furniture would never come out of storage. It was a relief when Michael came home and brought a bells-and-whistles distraction with him: Sly.

Sly belonged to all of us, a ten-year-old urchin Mike and I had gathered in off the street the previous spring. While Michael put away his school things, I followed Sly around as he followed Mike around. I eavesdropped on their conversation, dropped in my two cents now and then.

When we first met Sly he was a foul-mouthed, underfed little delinquent with more tricks in his repertoire than most career criminals acquire in a lifetime. After five months in a decent group home in Reseda, with Michael as his Big Brother and mentor, and with Mike running interference with the authorities now and then, Sly’s sharp edges had noticeably softened. He was being transformed from a know-it-all old man into a vulnerable child. But he was still hungry all the time.

“This asswipe Fliegle’s always on my case,” Sly complained, slumped at the kitchen table while Mike made him a couple of predinner peanut butter sandwiches. “It’s harassment, Mike. I’m gonna sue him.”

“Fliegle’s the math teacher?” Mike cut the sandwiches and set them in front of Sly. I poured him a glass of milk as an excuse to be there. “Are you turning in your homework every day?”

“I just don’t get it. How’m I supposed to do those crapwad problems when I don’t get it?” Dejected, Sly picked up his sandwich. “Anyway, don’t matter what I do. Fliegle hates me.” He took a bite.

“Fliegle wants you to learn something. If he didn’t care about you, he wouldn’t be on your case.” Mike sat down beside Sly, listened to his grievances, acknowledged his frustration-school was a whole new world for the boy. Then he sold the teacher to the kid, pushed him even. When I left the room to answer the front door, they were laughing about Fliegle’s weird mustache, agreeing that he was a good teacher.

Watching Mike with the child, I was moved. I was encouraged. Mike Flint would never coerce a kid to do something wrong; the charges were bullshit.

On my way out of the kitchen, I almost collided with Michael.

“I have tickets for the Dodger game,” he said, following me to answer the door. “Can you and Casey come?”

It was Casey at the door, with Bowser. “Forgot my key,” she said. She unhooked Bowser’s leash and followed him inside, both of them panting and hot.

“Michael has tickets for the Dodger game,” I said.

“Can’t,” she said. “Homework.”

I knew it was a lie, but I didn’t make an issue. For nearly four years it had been just her and me. As much as we liked Mike and Michael, it takes a while to get accustomed to living with new people. Casey and I both needed a time-out.

“You men go ahead,” I said to Michael. “Have fun.”

I thought Michael looked as relieved that we weren’t coming along as Casey did. I helped Mike find his binoculars and kissed everyone good-bye.

While Casey showered and dressed to go out to dinner with me, I took advantage of having a few minutes alone to make some calls.

I reached Baron Marovich’s office and asked to speak with George Schwartz, just to see what I could learn. After a round of telephonic leapfrog, and under the guise of a loan rep trying to verify the employment of an applicant-that is, Schwartz-I was put in touch with Marovich’s administrative assistant.

“Mr. Schwartz is on disability leave,” she told me. “Has been for about two months.”

“Paid leave?” I asked, absorbing the implications.

“Yes,” she said. “You should call the county personnel office for verification, though.”

I thanked her and went on to round two. If he was on leave from the D.A., then for whom was George Schwartz following us around?

I already knew from trying to track down LaShonda DeBevis that county personnel wasn’t going to give me anything as useful as an address and a telephone number. Information was of no use: there were too many George Schwartzes in Los Angeles, doubtless many more in the commuter suburbs that fan out from the city for a hundred-mile radius.

Mike’s badge number is 15991. I invoked it when I called the south Pasadena police and asked for booking information on Schwartz, George, white male, arrested for assault on a police officer that very day. Among the information I received, including Schwartz’s booking number, was the address on his driver’s license-he lived in Santa Monica-and a work telephone number. I dialed the number I was given. Intrigued, I dialed the number a second time to make sure I had it right: the phone was answered by campaign headquarters, Marovich for District Attorney.

I didn’t come up for air until about halfway through dinner at a Chinese place in Sherman Oaks when Casey tapped her chopsticks on the edge of my plate to get my attention.

“Earth to Mom,” she said. “What’s your estimated time of arrival?”

“Sorry,” I said, taking her hand.

“What are thinking so hard about?”

“These accusations against Mike. There’s something strange going on.”

“What are you going to do?”

I shrugged, tried to change the subject. “I saw a dance shop on the way. You need some shoes.”

Shaking her head, smiling at me to show she wasn’t buying, she said, “What are you going to do?”

I leaned toward her. “I’m going to visit the campaign headquarters of Baron Marovich. You game?”

“Hold on.” She picked up one of the fortune cookies that came with the check and cracked it open, read the fortune, handed it to me. “Let’s go.”

The fortune said, “Make your own destiny.”

Marovich campaign headquarters was on Victory Boulevard out in Van Nuys. The campaign had taken over a vacant storefront at the end of a block of vacant storefronts; quiet neighbors, but a busy intersection.

I could just make out “Valley Carpets and Floorcoverings,” no more than a gold-leaf shadow on the big front windows to tell who the last tenant had been. Campaign posters covered some of the holes left by long-gone store fixtures. The huge space was unevenly filled with rented desks and mismatched chairs, tangles of telephone wires, a hodgepodge of computer equipment and typewriters. The only luxury to be found was the luscious seafoam-green carpet.

I scanned the dozen or so volunteers working the phones or stuffing envelopes, picking my target. I passed on the retiree with the bald head and bald-toed tennies, passed on the well coiffed matron and the earnest young pair I guessed were there as part of a Poli-Sci 1A assignment.

I settled my attentions, finally, on a young man stationed off to the side, polished Gucci loafers on the desk next to half a take-out order of sushi. His clothes, which he wore easily, were subdued in color but extravagant in tailoring and, I was sure, in cost. Slacks, striped silk tie, custom-fitted white-on-white shirt rolled up to the elbows. In his manner I read good schools, good connections. Going places.