Cool in Tucson (21 page)

 “Well…sure.”  Denny looked from one to the other.

“From the beginning,” Sarah said.

“Where’s that?”  

Mendoza
said, “Your Mom left you in the car, is that right?  In front of the store?”  

“Yeah.” 

“She left the motor running?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe.  She said she’d be quick, but—I fell asleep.”  She told them about waking in the moving car, the unknown man driving.  They asked her what he looked like and she tried to remember.  “Brown skin.  Curly hair.  He smiled a lot.”  She did the best imitation she could manage of Hector’s oily grin, shrugging her shoulders and looking sly.

Mendoza
said, “So he didn’t seem like…a scary guy?”   

“No.  He seemed kind of…silly.  He kept saying he was a friend of Mom’s so—” she shrugged matter-of-factly.  Sarah met Mendoza’s eyes and shrank from the contempt she saw there. 
Are we always
so damn judgmental?
  Things weren’t so black and white when it was your own sister.

“So then I said I was hungry and he got me a cheeseburger.”  She saw the adults look at each other and said, “What?”

“We’re just surprised,” Sarah said.  “Go ahead.”

“Well, then he started to go someplace…” She told them about the phone call, how angry the man got.  “That’s when I heard him say his name.  Hector.”  Mendoza wrote it down.  “He got very mad, but he didn’t get mad at
me
.”  She made a sound close to a sob and managed to turn it into a kind of chuckle.  “He just asked me if I’d like to go to a movie.” 

“A movie?”  Mendoza looked disbelieving.  Sarah realized she probably looked the same way and tried to make her face neutral.  

Denny, looking into Sarah’s eyes, raised one hand.  “Swear to God.” 

“What film did you see?”

“Master and Commander.  Just the first part.  Hector’s phone rang and…I think he made some calls.  Then he left and after a while I decided he probably wasn’t coming back so I left too.”  She blinked.  Her eyes were bright with unshed tears.  “First movie I ever walked out of.”

“Poor Denny.  I’ll take you again, I promise.”  Sarah hugged her again and patted her back.  “You did
very well,
Sweetheart.  Walking up here and calling me, that was really smart.”

“That boy helped me,” Denny said, nodding toward the counter.  He smiled at her and she wrinkled her nose and smiled back.

“One new experience after another, huh?”  Sarah looked at Mendoza.  “Just to be sure, maybe somebody should check that ramp for the car?”

“Osterman already did.  It’s gone.  We find the car, chances are we’ll find the bad guy.”

“Right.”  Her eyes asked him for one more favor as she said, “I know there’s a lot more to clear up, but for now…what do you say?  She’s pretty tired.” 

“We really ought to take her in for a rape check.”

Oh, Christ
.  Sarah turned to Denny and asked, “Honey, did he touch you?  Or—” 

Denny, looking stricken, shook her head emphatically.  “No.  No, no, Aunt Sarah, nothing.  Never.  Honest.”

Sarah said, “She knows the score, Artie.  We’ve talked.”

“Okay, if you feel sure.  Take her home, get some rest.  I’ll file my report.  Tomorrow…I’m on again at three. We might have her look at some mug shots.  Uh…” he nodded toward the sidewalk. 

Sarah said, “Denny, just sit here one more minute, okay?  Then we’ll go home.”

Outside he said, “We’re still looking for the car, no sign of it yet.”

“Okay.”

“And, uh—” he cleared his throat—“We tried to call your sister.” 

“I did too.  Sound asleep I guess.”  She avoided his eyes for a moment, not wanting to talk about Janine.  But he had helped her in every way he could tonight.  She couldn’t stonewall Artie. “Janine has problems, you could see that.  I’m trying to help her, but it isn’t easy.”

“It never is, for family.”

“Do you think—could you just drive by Janine’s house and make sure she’s there?”  She told him about Janine not wanting to go in the house by herself, and about the note on her table.

“Okay, I’ll check on her, sure.  But…I have to tell you, Sarah, they’re riding us pretty hard to report these child neglect cases before something worse happens.”  Mendoza watched the traffic on Grant Road for a few seconds.  “I know we can’t settle anything tonight, but you might as well know that I’ll be putting it all in my report just the way it happened.  How Janine lied to us, left her daughter in the car with the keys in it, and the fact that she was out buying beer and cigarettes for some guy in her house who’s so abusive she’s afraid of him herself.  If I find out she deliberately didn’t answer the phone, after I specifically asked her—” He turned to face her, and his eyes were hard.  “I let it ring ten times.”

“Artie, look, I think she’s just asleep, okay?  Okay, maybe passed out—I’ll settle for that if I can just be sure she’s there.  And I’ll take care of Denny.” 

“I know.  But if you weren’t here, Denny would be on her way to a shelter right now, and then she’d be in the system and you’d all have fewer options tomorrow.  You ought to think about that, Sarah.”  He put his cap on, headed toward his squad, turned back at the edge of the sidewalk and said, “I’m going to ask a social worker to call on Janine, maybe help her get started in a program, if—”

“She just got out of one.  But do what you have to do.  And thanks for your help, Artie.”

“Take care.”   

Watching him get in and boot up his PC, Sarah swallowed a metallic taste of fear.
 
Walking back into the coffee shop she saw how Denny must have looked to Mendoza,  skinny and tired in her ratty T-shirt, hair falling out of her braids.  Not like somebody’s cherished daughter, for sure.  Sarah had spent many hours worrying about her sister, but she had never before faced the fact that Janine’s reckless behavior put them all at risk of losing Denny.  To what, state custody, foster care? 
Not while I’m still breathing.
  She walked in and leaned over Denny’s chair.  “Ready to go?”

“Okay.  Is Mom home?”

“I guess.  But since it’s so late, why don’t you stay at my house tonight?”

“Well…okay.”  She almost smiled  “I don’t have a nightgown or anything.” 

“I’ll find you something.  Let’s just thank these people here, okay?”  They stopped by the cash register, where the two clerks were smiling at them, pleased to have played a part in the night’s big news story.  

Denny said, “Thank you for helping me with the phone,” and the young man who had recognized her said, “You’re welcome, Denice.  You take care, now.”  They both looked at Sarah, obviously curious about her relationship to this child.  They could see she wasn’t the weeping woman on TV.  Another time, Sarah would have taken the time to explain, made sure the picture was crystal clear as far as the Department was concerned.  Tonight she wanted to get Denny home, so she just
thanked them for their help and left them to wonder.  

Holding her passenger door open for Denny, she asked, “Are you hungry?”

“No.  Actually that guy bought me a double bacon cheeseburger and fries.”

“He did?”  Sarah laughed out loud and then checked herself, shocked at the sound. 
How can you
laugh when she—
but it was funny.  She checked the seat belt, grinning.  “Boy, Denny, you sure know how to pick your kidnappers.”

Denny said, “Yeah, dinner and a movie, pretty good, huh?” and giggled behind her hand.  But giving way to one emotion somehow jarred a couple of others loose; she hiccupped, gave Sarah one horrified look, and began to cry.

“It’s okay.”  Sarah leaned in and held her, patted, murmured, kissed her hair.  “You’re entitled, Sweetheart, you’ve been brave long enough.”  She freed one hand and found some tissue, pressed it into Denny’s wet face.  When the sobs let up a little she passed fresh tissue and said, “Want to blow your nose?”

While Denny was busy with that she got in and started the car.  “You know, if we go straight home,” she said, moving into the street, “maybe you’d still have strength enough to eat a dish of that chocolate ice cream I’ve got in the freezer, what do you think?” 

Denny sniffled once and said, “That’d be good.”  She wiped her face some more and said, “You don’t think that man in the car…he really wasn’t one of Mom’s boyfriends, huh?”

“I don’t think so.  We can ask her tomorrow.”

“I kind of thought he was lying to me.  He didn’t seem like Mom’s type.”

“Oh?  What type is that?”  As soon as she said it she wanted to take the question back.  
God, I’m
discussing my sister’s sexual preferences with her ten-year-old child
.

Denny yawned hugely and said, “Big and ferocious.  This guy was small and cute.  Or he thought he was cute anyway.”  She yawned again and added thoughtfully, “He just wanted the car, I bet.  He didn’t even know I was there till I started to talk.”  She leaned back in her seat, turned a tear-streaked face toward Sarah and said, “Come to think of it, you know what he smelled like?”

“What?”

“Marijuana.”  She shrugged.  “But I guess most grown-ups do sometimes, huh?”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Okay, Bernie my man,” Hector said, rubbing his hands together, grinning and shrugging. “Let’s do some business, whaddya say?”  Estes was scowling in his doorway, his disapproving face puckered up like a prune. 

Hector was bursting with positive energy now, focused like a laser on closing this deal and getting on down the road.  Bernie had been a real prick on the phone before, but what the hell.  The finish line was in sight here, there were only a few obstacles left between Hector and his new life.  No use holding a grudge.

But Estes was determined to get an apology.  He kept going over and over how Hector had sworn at his wife.  “
Language
,” he called it, like some prissy professor.  Had  his nose in the air like he wasn’t just some small-time pileashit counterfeiter.  “That kind of
language
is just not acceptable in my home.”  Pussy little fake.  Jesus, this guy was counterfeit all the way through.

            “You think I need your stupid job?”  Flouncing around like a goddamn ballerina, blocking the doorway so Hector couldn’t even get in out of the heat.  “I mean, I’ve got people
waiting in line
for my work, people who pay in advance and say please and thank you.  Then you come around here with this cockamamie pay-as-you-go scheme and swear at my wife?  I don’t think so.”

“Bernie,” Hector said, and put on as much of the shit-eating grin as he could force out of his face, “I was out of line, I admit it, okay?  I was in a hurry and I just lost it.  But I’m in an even bigger hurry now so do we really have to stand out here and talk this to death before we do it?  I got places to go.”

But Bernie was having too much fun being the injured party to quit.   He had things to say about
respect
and then he got going on
courtesy,
all this concern for manners while he kept Hector out on the step in the hot night.  Then Mrs. Bernie backed the family minivan out of the garage, right past them down the driveway, the two boys in pajamas, in their little booster seats in the back.   Where the hell was she going with them this time of the night?  Not that he cared.  The boys were both yelling, “Bye, Daddy!”  Bernie started blowing kisses, saying, “Take care, Sweetie Pie,” to his wife and yelling messages for his boys to give to Grammy.