Gold Hill (33 page)

“
Tanesha’s
mom?”

Thinking, Seth fell silent.
He nodded to himself, and then looked up at her.

“
Yvonne is a tremendous
human being,” Seth said. “Gorgeous, more beautiful than any model
or actress, any I’ve seen, at least. She is also kind and has a
type of smarts – not book smarts, a type of people smarts. I’ve
never met anyone who didn’t like her.”

Seth smiled at his
memory.

“
Mitch loved her
completely,” he continued. “Not a sexual kind of love, but a kind
of Mother Mary love. He thought she was an angel. Yvonne was
married to Rodney and absolutely crazy about him. She could have
been anything she wanted to be. Anything. All Yvonne wanted to be
was Rodney’s wife and the mother of his children.”

“
And my
father?”

“
Your father loves
Yvonne,” Seth said. “I believe that’s true. I don’t know if it was
love at first sight or . . . He worships her. He
wasn’t married at the time. He told me once that he begged her to
leave Rodney, but she just laughed. She thought he was joking. She
couldn’t imagine what he was saying was true and
he . . . wanted her.

“
Around the time Rodney
was charged, she tried to kill herself.”

“
Yvonne?”

“
She couldn’t imagine
living without Rodney; she didn’t want to,” Seth said. “She cut a
tendon in her hand and . . . couldn’t be secretary
anymore. After Rodney was in prison, she and Tanesha lived with her
mom, but that didn’t work out. Her mom kicked her out and your
father was there.”

Seth fell silent for such a
long time that Ava was about to ask him something when he
sighed.

“
I think your father
thought that with Rodney out of the picture, she would marry him,”
Seth said. “But . . . Yvonne loves Rodney. She would
cross every day off the calendar to count down until Rodney was
home. That’s hard on a man, especially an important man, who
wants . . . to be her world.”

“
Now, I’m not covering
anything up here,” Seth said. “The truth is that I don’t know what
happened. Something happened and Mitch and I were called out to one
of those crappy motels on Colfax in the middle of the night.
Tanesha was under the table, hysterical, and
Yvonne . . . Anyway, they went to Denver Health –
Yvonne and Tanesha. The next morning Yvonne was gone and Tanesha
was still there. Bumpy talked Yvonne’s mother into raising
Tanesha.”

“
The next time I saw
Yvonne, vice had picked her up for solicitation,” Seth said. “She
was strung out, cocaine I think, and working somewhere
downtown.”

Seth stopped to look at
Ava. She nodded.

“
Why does that make sense
to you?”

“
Because my father put her
on a pedestal and she wouldn’t have him,” Ava said. “He’d have to
knock her down to truly dominate her, to own her.”

Not sure what to say, Seth
gave a slight nod.

“
If my father loved her so
much, why did you think he’d kill her?” Ava asked.

“
He’s fixated on Yvonne,”
Seth said. “He’s told everyone that if anyone gets in the way of
this . . . situation he will kill her. He will kill
her rather than let her go. We – me, Bumpy, Mitch – we just tried
to make things easier for Yvonne; that’s the best we could do. It
feels horrible, awful, I tried to buy her once
but . . . your father won’t let her go.”

Seth sighed.

“
Westword says that he saw
her every Saturday at eight in the morning,” Ava said.

Seth nodded.

“
He told us he was playing
golf.” Ava snorted. “But . . . But why not set her
up as his mistress? He owns all those apartments. He could see her
when he wants and . . . ”

Her voice tapered
off.

“
Yvonne doesn’t love him,”
Seth said. “She never will. Yvonne loves Rodney. Until her light is
extinguished from this world, she will only love Rodney. She has
sex with men for money because your father told her that she was
helping Rodney get better treatment in prison. She’s trying to make
sure Rodney is well cared for.”

“
But . . . ”

“
She doesn’t know that
Rodney’s out,” Seth said. “And of course, he’d never be out if your
father had anything to do with it. He needed Rodney in jail to keep
Yvonne doing his bidding. You know he blocked every petition to
have the DNA in the case run.”

“
How did it finally
happen?” Ava asked.

“
Rodney is an amazing
philosopher. He started a dialog with a music artist about five
years into his sentence,” Seth said. “They raised money for him and
got the Innocence Project to take his case. An anonymous donor paid
for the DNA testing.”

“
But Yvonne doesn’t know
Rodney is out,” Ava said.

“
When whatever happened,
Yvonne damaged her brain,” Seth said. “She can only remember what
she writes down. So he may have told her, then kept her preoccupied
for an hour and a half. She’d never remember.”

“
Why haven’t Denver
Police . . . ?”

“
I’m going to tell you
something that you already know,” Seth said. “All over the world,
at every level of society, there are men with . . .
appetites. These men find each other. It’s just a fact. They form
alliances in order to develop communities to help each other fill
their appetites. Each member is obsessed with some perversion so
every interaction is a transaction, a give-and-take designed to
ensure that every man gets what he craves. Some crave money. Some
crave sex with girls or boys or animals or whatever else you can
imagine. Most men crave power.

“
Yvonne is the total focus
of your father’s obsession. And his circle is willing to help him
satisfy his obsession because that’s the very currency they trade
in, because he’s done the same for them day in and day out for
decades.”

“
Who are these people?”
Ava asked. “They sound so . . . creepy.”

“
Money men, not just
business men, but investors, CEOs, bank owners, men who control or
can reach out to control almost all the jobs in this city; that’s
not to mention the cops, and prosecutors and defense attorneys and
judges who can reach out with all the force of the law and change
lives.”

Ava’s face looked like she
was digesting a bitter pill. She shook her head.

“
What do
you . . . do about it?” she asked.

“
All we can do is try to
make things a little better. Sometimes we’re able to step in and
make it right. And sometimes all we can do is ease the suffering
around the edges a little. That’s what everyone tries to do with
Yvonne – ease her suffering on the hopes that one day, she will be
free. But I’ll tell you this Ava, he will kill her before she’s
taken from him. And his friends facilitate the
transaction.”

“
Do you think
he . . . killed . . . ?” Ava’s
eyes filled with despair.

“
His circle includes
some . . . shady elements,” Seth said. “They’ve kept
all this business quiet and clean. I doubt most of the girls knew
they worked for him.”

“
Then
why . . . ?”

“
Yvonne lives in the
four-plex on Fourteenth,” Seth said. “He visits Yvonne there. They
would have known about him.”

“
And these shady
elements?” Ava asked.

“
I don’t know about that,”
Seth shook his head. “I could guess but . . . I
honestly don’t know. Like I said, he is a part of a club that I
know exists but have never been a member.”

Ava’s chest seemed to cave.
Her shoulders folded forward and her head hung down. Assuming she
was grief stricken, Seth reached out to touch her face. When she
looked up at him, she looked furious. Assuming she was mad with
him, he leaned back. She shook her head and looked out the window
at the ocean.

“
When I was hanging
there . . . in that place . . . and
that creature . . . and Bonita . . .
and your song and . . . ” Ava’s voice held her
deep grief. “I was able to shut my eyes, to look away, but
this?”

Ava shook her
head.

“
I’ve stayed awake at
night and wondered why I was able to withstand that creature? Why
was its essence so familiar to me? What’s wrong with me that I
could . . . hold out so easily when most people
died?” She glared at Seth. “And now I know. My father might not be
that creature, he might not have one living inside him like Saint
Jude, but he is of the same ilk.”

She crossed her arms across
her chest.

“
He used his circle to get
me my lab,” Ava said. “Didn’t he?”

Seth nodded.

“
And my sister? Her spot
at the DA?”

Seth nodded.

“
Fuck.”

“
You’ve earned your lab
now,” Seth said. “No one’s going to take it away from you. When you
got there, I think everyone thought you would just be there for a
year or so before you moved up the chain. But you’re still there.
You’re still doing great work. You belong there.”

Ava gave him a partial
smile.

“
You know what I think,”
Seth said.

“
What?”

“
I think we should go for
a swim,” Seth said. “Shake off the parental blues, get dressed go
out, dance until we drop, make love until dawn and do it all over
again tomorrow.”

“
I thought you had to work
tomorrow,” Ava said.

“
You can sleep while I
work,” Seth said.

“
You don’t think I should
fly back and facilitate this parental crisis?”

“
Nah,” Seth said.
“Whatever is going to happen is going to happen. Your father made
his deals and took his chances a long, long time ago; he’s going to
get his own consequences. There’s nothing we can do
now.”

“
And Yvonne?”

“
Say a prayer that Yvonne
makes it through this day,” Seth said. “Because if she survives
today? She’s going to be fine. Rodney’s love for her is as strong
as hers for him. He’ll find her and they will work out whatever
needs to be worked out. If she survives
today . . . ”

Ava closed her
eyes.

“
What are you
doing?”

“
Praying for
Yvonne.”

“
Oh,” Seth closed his eyes
to say a prayer for Yvonne. His phone rang. “Do you mind? It’s
Bumpy.”

Ava shook her head. Seth
answered his phone.

“
O’Malley.”

“
You heard this junk?”
Bumpy asked.

“
Is he blaming the whole
mess on me?” Seth asked.

“
How’d you know?” Bumpy
laughed.

“
Have you seen Yvonne?”
Seth asked.

“
I’ve been out at
Dearfield,” Bumpy said. “We’re just coming into town now. But I
just talked to Dionne. She hasn’t heard boo from
Yvonne.”

“
That’s not good,” Seth
said.

“
How’s Ava?” Bumpy
asked.

“
Like you’d expect,” Seth
said.

“
Poor girl,” Bumpy said.
“How can two selfish stupid people have such a wonderful
daughter?”

“
Yeah, LaTonya’s pretty
great,” Seth said.

Bumpy laughed and hung up
the phone.

“
Any word?” Ava
asked.

Seth shook his
head.

“
You really think it’s
okay to just go on with our day?” Ava asked.

“
I think we should,” Seth
said. “There’s no way to know what’s going to be needed from us in
the future. We need to use the time we have to gather our strength.
People we love are going to need us.”

Before he could say another
word, Ava hopped up, shucked her clothing, and ran out the sliding
door to the beach. Chuckling to himself, he followed
her.

~~~~~~~~

Wednesday afternoon — 6:47
p.m. MT

“
Thanks for helping,
Pete,” Tanesha said. “Sandy, you’re
sure . . . ”

Standing on the sidewalk
outside Sandy’s studio, they were getting ready to start searching
on foot. Unable to be with them, Jill was running the search
operation from her bed. Heather held her phone out so they could
hear her over the speaker phone.

“
I’m sure,” Sandy said.
“Plus, Charlie and his friend Tink think they know of a few places.
I’m going with them. Mike and Pete are going downtown to check the
waterways. They’re on bikes so they should be able to cover a lot
of ground. Blane’s running the parks?”

“
With Mack,” Heather said.
“He’s running City Park and Cheesman. He checked the rest on the
way home today.”

“
Good,” Sandy
said.

“
You called the police?”
Heather had asked Sandy to use her connections to find out what
they knew.

“
I called a friend of my
Dad’s,” Sandy said. “He said they haven’t found Yvonne, but they’re
looking for her and the pimp. Thanks to Heather, they found them on
the store video. They were together just a few minutes before the
building blew up. The weird thing is that she met Delphie there.
The clerk remembers Delphie and Yvonne chatting like old
friends.”