When the Bough Breaks (19 page)

“You were right, Olivia,” I admitted.

“I thought he went to the Himalayas, or something,” she laughed, continuing to address Robin. “To get frozen so he could come back and appreciate California. Have more, both of you.”

“I’m stuffed.” Robin touched her flat tummy.

“You’re probably right—keep the figure, if you have it. Me, I started out like a barrel, nothing to maintain. Tell me darling, do you love him?”

Robin looked at me. She put her arm around my neck.

“I do.”

“Fine, I pronounce you husband and wife. Who cares what he says?”

She got up and went to the oven, peering through the glass window.

“Still a few more minutes. I think the figs take longer to bake.”

“Olivia, about La Casa de los Niños?”

She sighed and her bosom sighed along with her. “Okay. You’re obviously serious about playing policeman.” She sat down. “After you called I went into my old files and pulled out what I could find. You want coffee?”

“Please,” said Robin.

“I’ll have some too.”

She came back with three steaming mugs, cream and sugar on a porcelain tray upon which had been silkscreened a panorama of Yellowstone Park.

“This is delicious, Olivia,” Robin said, sipping.

“Kona. From Hawaii. This dress is from there, too. My younger son, Gabriel, he’s there. He’s in import-export. Does very well.”

“Olivia—”

“Yes, yes, okay. La Casa de los Niños. The Children’s Home. Started in 1974 by the Reverend Augustus McCaffrey, as a place of refuge for children with no home. That’s right off the brochure.”

“Do you have the brochure with you?”

“No, it’s at the office. You want me to mail you a copy?”

“Don’t bother. What kind of kids stay there?”

“Abused and neglected children, orphans, some status offenders—you know runaways. They used to put them in jail or the CYA but those places got too crowded with fourteen-year-old murderers and rapists and robbers, so now they try to find foster placement for them or a place like La Casa. In general these institutions get the kids nobody wants, the ones they can’t find foster placement or adoptive homes for. Lots of them have physical and psychological problems—spastic, blind, deaf, retarded. Or they’re too old to be attractive adoptees. There are also the children of women in prison—mostly junkies and alcoholics. We tried to place them with individual families, but often nobody wanted them. To sum up, dear: chronic wards of the Dependency Court.”

“How’s a place like that funded?”

“Alex, the way the state and federal systems are set up, an operator can pull in over a thousand dollars a month per child if he knows how to bill it right. Kids with disabilities bring in more—you get paid for all the special services. On top of that I hear McCaffrey’s terrific at bringing in private donations. He’s got connections—the land the place is on is an example. Twenty acres in Malibu, used to belong to the government. They interned the Japanese there during World War II. Then it was used as a labor camp for first offenders—embezzlers, politicians, that type. He got the county to give it to him on long-term lease. Ninety-nine years with token rent.”

“He must be a good talker.”

“He is. A good old boy. Used to be a missionary down in Mexico. I hear he ran a similar place there.”

“Why’d he move back up?”

“Who knows? Maybe he got tired of not drinking the water? Maybe he longed for Kentucky Fried Chicken—although I hear they’ve got it down there now.”

“What about the place? Is it a good one?”

“None of those places is utopia, Alex. The ideal would be a little house in suburbia with a picket fence around it, gingham curtains and a green lawn, Mommy and Daddy and Rover the Dog. The reality is that there are over seventeen thousand kids on the Dependency Court docket in L.A. county alone. Seventeen thousand unwanted children! And they’re piling into the system faster than they can be—here’s a terrible word—processed.”

“That’s unbelievable,” said Robin. She had a troubled look on her face.

“We’ve turned into a society of child-haters, darling. More and more abuse and neglect. People have kids and then change their minds. Parents don’t want to take responsibility for them so they shunt them over to the government—how’s that from an old Socialist, Alex? And abortion—I hope this doesn’t offend you, because I’m for liberation as much if not more than the next woman. I was screaming for equal pay before Gloria Steinem went through puberty. But let’s face it, this wholesale abortion we’ve got is just another form of birth control, another way out for people to avoid their responsibility. And it’s killing kids, at least in some sense, isn’t it? Maybe it’s better than having them and then trying to get rid of them—I don’t know.” She wiped the sweat from her forehead and dabbed at her upper lip with a paper napkin. “Excuse me, that was a tedious polemic.”

She stood up and smoothed down her dress.

“Let me check the strudel.”

She came back with a steaming platter. “Blow on it, it’s hot.”

Robin and I looked at each other.

“You look so serious, I ruined your appetite with my polemic, didn’t I?”

“No, Olivia.” I took a slab of strudel and ate a bite. “It’s delicious and I agree with you.”

Robin looked grave. We’d discussed the abortion issue many times, never resolving anything.

“In answer to your question, is it a good place, I can only say that we had no complaints when I was with D.P.S.S. They offer the basics, it looked clean, the area is certainly nice—most of those kids never saw a mountain except on TV. They bus the kids to the public schools when they have special needs. Otherwise they’ve got in-house teaching. I doubt if anyone helps them with their homework—it’s certainly not “Father Knows Best” over there, but McCaffrey keeps the place up, pushes for lots of community involvement. That means public exposure. Why do you want to know so much about it, you think that kid’s death was suspicious?”

“No. There’s no reason to suspect anything.” I thought about her question. “I guess I’m just fishing.”

“Well don’t go fishing for minnows and come up with a shark, darling.”

We nibbled at the strudel. Olivia called into the living room:

“Al, you want some strudel—with the figs?”

There was no answer I could hear, but she put some pastry on a plate nonetheless and brought it into him.

“She’s a nice lady,” said Robin.

“One in a million. And very tough.”

“And smart. You should listen to her when she says to be careful. Alex, please leave the detecting to Milo.”

“I’ll take care of myself, don’t worry.” I took her hand but she pulled away. I was about to say something but Olivia returned to the kitchen.

“The dead man—the salesman, you said he volunteered at La Casa?”

“Yes. He had a certificate in his office.”

“He was probably a member of the Gentleman’s Brigade. It’s something dreamed up by McCaffrey to get the business community involved with the place. He gets corporations to get their executives to volunteer weekend time with the kids. How much of it is voluntary on the part of the ’Gentlemen’ and how much is the result of pressure from the boss I don’t know. McCaffrey gives them blazers and lapel pins and certificates signed by the mayor. They also get brownie points with their bosses. Hopefully the kids get something out of it too.”

I thought of Bruno, the psychopath, working with homeless children.

“Is there any sort of screening?”

“The usual. Interviews, some paper-and-pencil tests. You know, dear boy, what that kind of thing is worth.”

I nodded.

“Still, like I said, we never got any complaints. I’d have to give the place a B-minus, Alex. The major problem is that it’s too big of an operation for the kids to get any personalized attention. A good foster home would definitely be preferable to having four to five hundred kids in one place at the same time—that’s how many he’s got. Aside from that, La Casa is as good as any.”

“That’s good to hear.” But in some perverse way I was disappointed. It would have been nice to find out that the place was a hellhole. Anything to connect it with the three murders. Of course that meant misery for four hundred children. Was I becoming just another member of the child-hating society Olivia had described? Suddenly the strudel tasted like sugar-coated paper and the kitchen seemed oppressively hot.

“So, is there anything else you want to know?”

“No. Thanks.”

“Now, darling.” She turned to Robin. “Tell about yourself and how you met this impetuous fellow …”

We left an hour later. I put my arm around Robin. She let it lay there but was unresponsive. We walked to the car in silence as uncomfortable as a stranger’s shoes.

Inside, I asked her:

“What’s wrong?”

“Why did you bring me here tonight?”

“I just thought it would be nice …”

“Nice talking about murder and child abuse? Alex, that was no social call.”

I had nothing to say so I started the car and pulled away from the curb.

“I’m worried sick about you,” she said. “The things you were describing in there were hideous. What she said about sharks is true. You’re like a little boy adrift on a raft in the middle of the ocean. Oblivious to what’s going on around you.”

“I know what I’m doing.”

“Right.” She looked out the window.

“What’s wrong with my wanting to get involved in something other than hot tubs and jogging?”

“Nothing. But why can’t it be something a little less hazardous than playing Sherlock Holmes? Something you know something about?”

“I’m a fast learner.”

She ignored me. We cruised through darkened empty streets. A light drizzle speckled the windshield.

“I don’t enjoy hearing about people getting their faces bashed in.
Or children run down by hit-run drivers,” she said.

“That’s part of what’s out there.” I motioned toward the blackness of the night.

“Well, I don’t want any part of it!”

“What you’re saying is you’ll go along for the ride as long as it’s pretty.”

“Oh, Alex! Stop being so damned melodramatic—that’s right out of a soap opera.”

“It’s true, though, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s not—and don’t try to put me on the defensive. I want the man I first met—someone who was satisfied with himself and not so full of insecurity that he had to run around trying to prove himself. That was what attracted me to you. Now you’re like a—a man possessed. Since you’ve gotten involved in your little intrigues you haven’t been there for me. I talk and your mind is somewhere else. It’s like I told you before—you’re going back to the bad old days.”

There was something to that. The last few mornings had found me waking up early with a taut sense of urgency in my gut, the old obsessive drive to take care of business. Funny thing was, I didn’t want to let go of it.

“I promise you,” I told her, “I’ll be careful.”

She shook her head in frustration, leaned forward and switched on the radio. Loud.

When we got to her door she gave me a chaste peck on the cheek.

“Can I come in?”

She stared at me for a long moment and gave a resigned smile.

“Oh, hell, why not?”

Upstairs in the loft I watched her undress in the meager share of moonbeam admitted by the skylight. She stood on one foot, undoing her sandal, and her breasts swung low. A diagonal stroke of illumination turned her white, then gray as she pivoted, then invisible as she slipped under the covers. I reached out for her, aroused, and pulled her hand down toward me. She touched me for a second, then removed her fingers, moved them upward, let them settle around my neck. I buried myself in the sanctuary between her shoulder and the arching sweetness under her chin.

We fell asleep that way.

In the morning her side of the bed was empty. I heard rumbling and grinding and knew she was downstairs in the shop.

I got dressed, descended the narrow stairs and joined her. She was wearing bib overalls and a man’s work shirt. Her mouth was covered with a bandana, her eyes goggled.

The air was full of wood dust.

“I’ll call you later,” I shouted over the din of the table saw.

She stopped for a moment, waved, then resumed working. I left her surrounded by her tools, her machines, her art.

15

I
CALLED
M
ILO
at the station and gave him a full report of my interview with Raquel Ochoa and the Casa de los Niños connection, including the information given to me by Olivia.

“I’m impressed,” he said. “You missed your calling.”

“So what do you think? Shouldn’t this McCaffrey be looked into?”

“What a minute, friend. The man takes care of four hundred kids and one of them is killed in an accident. That’s not evidence of major mayhem.”

“But that kid happened to be a student of Elena Gutierrez. Which means she probably discussed him with Handler. Not long after his death Bruno began volunteering at the place. A coincidence?”

“Probably not. But you don’t understand the way things work around here. I am in the toilet with this case. So far those bank records are showing nothing—everything in both their accounts looks kosher. I’ve got more work to do on it, but singlehanded it takes time. Every day the captain looks me up and down with that
no-progress, Sturgis
? stare. I feel like a kid who hasn’t done his homework. I expect him to pull me off the case any day and stick me on some garbage detail.”

“If things are so screwed up I’d expect you to jump for joy at the prospect of a new lead.”

“That’s right. A lead. Not conjecture or a string of flimsy associations.”

“They don’t look that damned flimsy to me.”

“Look at it this way—I start snooping around about McCaffrey, who’s got connections from Downtown all the way to Malibu. He places a few strategic phone calls—no one can accuse him of obstructing justice because I’ve got no legitimate reason to be investigating him—and I’m yanked off the case faster than you can spit.”

“All right,” I conceded, “but what about the Mexican thing? The guy was down there for years. Then all of a sudden he leaves, surfaces in L.A., and becomes a hotshot.”