Sideswipe (20 page)

"You want to play some more Monopoly, Daddy? We can play the fast game--"

"No, I want to talk to you."

"I don't want any coffee."

"Sit down, anyway. When's the last time you had your period?"

"Oh, Daddy..." Aileen blushed and looked away.

"When?"

"I haven't started yet."

"That isn't true. Ellita told me once that both of you girls were menstruating. I'd been complaining to her about all the paper products that were coming into the house. She told me then, and I remember."

"I did a few times, but then it stopped. I talked to Ellita about it, and she told me not to worry about it. Every woman's not the same, she said. Some are regular and some aren't, at least at first. Let's play Monopoly, Daddy. It's embarrassing to talk about this grungy stuff."

"I want you to change into a dress and your good shoes."

"What for?"

"Because I said so. And do it now!"

Aileen took a backless sundress into the bathroom to change, and Hoke put her canvas carryall on her bed. She wouldn't need much, but he packed the bag with underclothing, jeans, and T-shirts, taking them out of the cardboard box at the foot of the bed. He then put Aileen's sweater into the bag; she would need the sweater in L.A.

Hoke's jumpsuit was too tight under the arms for his shoulder holster, so he strapped on his stiff ankle holster instead. At least he could get his pants leg over it. He put his.38 Chiefs Special in the holster, his shield and ID case in his right front pocket, and dropped his handcuffs into his rear pocket.

"Let's go," Hoke said, when Aileen, dressed now and wearing a new pair of Mushrooms with her sundress, came out of the bathroom. He picked up her bag.

"What did you put in my bag?"

"Everything you'll need."

They went downstairs. As Hoke unlocked his Le Mans, Dolly Turner emerged from the shadows of the building and clawed at his arm.

"You said I could sleep in your car, Mr. Moseley, and now you're driving away."

The car door was open, and Hoke could see by the dome light that Dolly Turner's left eye was black and blue. It was swollen, and the discoloring did not blend in well with her birthmark.

"We're using the car right now, Dolly. You can sleep in it when I get back."

"There's 'skeeters out here," Dolly whined.

"Okay. Hold onto this bag, and hop into the back seat."

Hoke put Aileen into the passenger's seat in front, got in himself, and locked the doors. There was no release on Aileen's door; Hoke had had it removed to keep suspects from jumping out at red lights when he transported them in his car. Dolly sat in the middle of the narrow back seat, cradling Aileen's canvas bag in her ample lap.

Aileen sulked during the ride to the West Palm Beach International Airport, but after Hoke parked in the visitors' lot, and she realized she was actually being sent back to her mother, she said, "I don't want to go back to Momma, or to Miami either. Grandpa said I should stay with you!"

"I'm your father, not your grandpa. Fathers don't always know best, but they do the best they can. Let's go. You, too, Dolly."

When they got inside the airport, Hoke told them both to sit down. He handcuffed Aileen's right wrist to Dolly's left wrist. "Now you girls sit here while I get the tickets, and I'll be right back."

Hoke went to the Eastern window and used his VISA card to buy two one-way tickets on the red-eye flight to Los Angeles. There was a half-hour stopover in Houston, the clerk said, and the flight left West Palm at two A.M.

"Don't you have a flight that goes straight through?"

"Sure, but not till ten A.M. tomorrow morning. I wouldn't wait for it if I were you. The stop in Houston isn't very long, and if you're asleep you probably won't even be aware of it."

"I have a little problem. The 'D. Turner' isn't me. It's the nurse over there on the bench. She's accompanying a mental patient to L.A., and I don't want her to try and get off the plane in Houston."

The ticket seller, a long-armed young man with a fuzzy brown moustache, looked to where Hoke was pointing. He frowned when he noticed the handcuffs. "Which one's the mental patient?"

"Don't be funny. The young girl's the patient."

"I wasn't trying to be funny, it's just that I've never seen a nurse in a brown mini-skirt with a red apron. I just wanted to be sure which one so I could get word to the captain, that's all. She won't cause any trouble on the plane, will she?"

"Of course not." Hoke showed the clerk his badge and ID case. "This is a family thing, and we want to keep it quiet. The young girl's Curly Peterson's adopted daughter, and he'll meet the plane at LAX."

"The pinch hitter for the Dodgers Curly Peterson?"

"That's the one."

"I didn't know he had a daughter. Somehow, you don't think of a rich ballplayer, with all that dough they make, being dumb enough to get married. But a lot of 'em are married, I guess."

"And they have daughters. Sometimes sons."

"Right. You don't have to worry, Sergeant. I'll see to it that the captain's informed when the plane comes in. It'll be past my shift, but I'll stick around anyway to tell him. You couldn't pick a better airline than Eastern. We really do earn our wings every day."

"I appreciate it."

Hoke returned to the bench, removed Dolly's handcuff, and then locked Aileen's wrist to the bench rail. "Come with me, Dolly. I want to talk to you for a minute."

Hoke led Dolly over to the coin lockers, out of Aileen's earshot. Dolly's black eye looked worse under the bright lights than it had in the car, and there was a smear of blood on her T-shirt he hadn't noticed before. The white of her half-closed eye looked like a piece of red celluloid, and her fat cheek was puffy.

"Mr. Farnsworth really hit you, didn't he?"

She nodded. "But I got him back in a good place."

"Okay. Here's what I want you to do, Dolly. You fly out to L.A. with my daughter, and when you get there her mother'll meet you and keep you on for a few days as a trained nurse--"

"I ain't never had no nurse's training, 'cept for the things I did for my daddy and all."

"My ex-wife doesn't know that. Just tell her you're a trained nurse, and she'll want to pay you off--probably within a day or two--and then you ask her for fifty dollars a day."

"That much?"

"That's right, including today. You've already earned fifty bucks, and you aren't even in L.A. yet. Then, after she pays you off, go to the Welfare Department in downtown L.A. and apply for emergency relief. You can't get on regular welfare till you've lived there a year, but in California all new arrivals qualify for emergency relief. They'll fix you up with a room, food stamps, or a meal ticket, and then you can look for a job out there. It's easy to get a job in a kitchen in California, and you'll have a better future there than in Riviera Beach."

"Don't I need permission or something to leave the state?"

"No. Who told you that?"

"I don't know. I was born here, up in Yeehaw Junction, and I thought I had to get permission."

"Hell, no, Dolly. You can go anywhere you like. This is practically a free country. And if you don't like California, you can always ask them at the welfare office to send you back. But I know you'll like it out there. The important thing is to not let the girl get off the plane when it stops in Houston. My ex-wife, Mrs. Peterson, will be waiting for you at the L.A. airport. Okay?"

"Do they feed us on the plane?"

"Sure, you get two breakfasts on the red-eye. One between here and Houston, and another breakfast somewhere around the Grand Canyon. Meanwhile, I'll get you something out of the machine. Here's the key to the cuffs. Go back and cuff yourself to Aileen again."

"And a diet orange crush, if they have it."

"There's an orange juice machine, I'm sure."

"If they don't have an orange crush, I'd rather have a Classic Coke."

Hoke got some change from the change machine and bought two ham-and-cheese sandwiches, two bags of Doritos, and two half-pints of orange juice from the machines. He brought them back to the bench. He handed one sandwich to Aileen, and gave the rest to Dolly.

"If it was Sue Ellen instead of me," Aileen said, "you wouldn't send -her- out to Los Angeles. You've always loved Sue Ellen better than me. But someday you're going to be sorry you did this, just wait and see! I won't forget it, neither, handcuffing me like a criminal!"

"Eat your sandwich."

"I'm not hungry."

"You should be, after throwing up your dinner."

"Who told you that?"

"Never mind. I love both you girls the same, and if Sue Ellen had the same problem you have I'd send her to L.A. too."

"You always wanted a boy instead of me!"

"Is that what you think?"

"I heard you tell Ellita once you wished you had a son."

"That was in addition to you two girls, not instead of, for Christ's sake. Is that why you're trying to stay thin? Are you trying to look like a boy instead of a girl?"

"You don't know or care anything about me!" Aileen's brown eyes filled with tears, and she shook her head to clear them away. "Nothing!"

"Don't cry, honey," Dolly said, offering the opened bag. "Have some Doritos."

Hoke went to the bank of pay telephones and used his Sprint card to call Patsy in Glendale. The phone rang ten times before Patsy picked it up. Hoke sighed when she answered.

"Patsy, this is me, Hoke."

"You caught me as I was going out the door, so make it short. I've got to pick up Curly at the studio. He's doing a commercial for the new California Chili-Size people. You know how much he gets for a thirty-second spot?"

"No, and I don't give a shit. This is an emergency, Patsy, or I wouldn't've called. Aileen came down with bulimia, and I'm sending hen out to you with a trained nurse on the Eastern red-eye, Flight 341. I want you to meet the plane with a doctor and get her into a hospital right away."

"What's she got?"

"Bulimia. It's a wasting-away disease, and if she isn't treated by an expert she can die from it."

"Can't she be treated there in Florida?"

"No, it's a California-type disease. They know more about it there than they do here. Jane Fonda had it, and Karen Carpenter died from it. Aileen needs a specialist. Your doctor'll know who to call in for a consultation. So you'd better bring him along when you meet the plane. I don't know if you'll need an ambulance or not. Probably not, but you'd better ask him about that, too."

"How long's she had it?"

"I don't know. I just found out today myself. But she's a very sick girl. She only weighs about eighty pounds."

"She weighed ninety-five six months ago!"

"See what I mean? You got a pencil and paper?"

"Just a sec--"

Hoke repeated the flight number and gave her the time of arrival at LAX. "Please call me at Dad's house when she gets there, and let me know what the doctor says."

"Are you up at Grandpa's?"

"I'll wait for your call at his house. I'm staying at the El Pelicano, here on Singer Island, and I haven't got a phone."

"What are you doing up there?"

"I quit the force, and I'm managing the El Pelicano for Frank."

"What about my alimony? You owe me three checks already."

"Jesus Christ, Patsy, your husband makes three hundred and twenty-five thousand bucks a year!"

"More than that, counting commercials, but what's that got to do with our final agreement?"

"Let's talk about money later, okay? Right now you've got to get ahold of a doctor, so he can have Aileen admitted to a hospital when she gets there."

"When the girls lived with me, they were never sick for a single day."

Remembering the pediatrician's bills Patsy had sent him in the ten years the girls had lived with her, Hoke almost said something about it, but he restrained himself.

"In that case," he said, "you shouldn't have sent 'em back to me." He racked the phone before she could reply. Perhaps he had overstated Aileen's illness, but with Patsy he always had to exaggerate to get her attention. He only hoped now that he had elaborated Aileen's condition sufficiently so that Patsy would get the girl some help.

The wait for the two A.M. departure seemed interminable. Aileen stared at Hoke with loathing and tightened lips, but gradually her mood changed for the better. Hoke got the key from Dolly Turner and took off the handcuffs when Dolly said they had to go to the bathroom.

"Okay, Dolly, but don't let her throw up in there."

When they returned, Hoke didn't cuff them again. He returned the handcuffs to his hip pocket. When the flight was called, Hoke walked them to the gate. Aileen seemed resigned to the trip to L.A. She gave him a weak smile and took his hand.

"I love you, Daddy."

"I love you, too, honey. And just as soon as you're well again, I want you back. I hope you know that."