A Wild and Lonely Place (7 page)

Ted, who had recently taken a volunteer counseling position at a Noe Valley gay/lesbian crisis center, kept trying to convince
Rae that such behavior was unhealthy, but she either barricaded herself in her office or used the TV’s remote control to turn
up the sound and drown him out. Last week he’d asked me to reason with her, but I declined. I’d advised and consoled her during
too many emotional disasters; my few words of wisdom had begun to sound like platitudes, even to me. Besides, Rae was an adult;
if she felt she needed help, she’d ask for it.

Mick interrupted my thoughts. “That call on the other line, it was Adah Joslyn again. Makes ten altogether today.”

“How does she sound?”

“Burned out and seriously mean. She said, ‘Where the fuck is McCone and why the fuck hasn’t she returned my calls?’”

I sighed. “What did you tell her?”

“That you were still out of the office and hadn’t called in. I didn’t think you’d want to deal with her.”

“I don’t. If she calls again, you can tell her I’ve left for the weekend. In fact, I’m going home right now to pack the stuff
I’m taking along. And then, you know what? I think I’ll relax for a few hours.”

“I’ll believe that when. Are Maggie and I still supposed to look after the cats while you’re gone?”

“Yes, but don’t coddle them. One of them assaulted W.C. yesterday, and the other’s refusing to turn state’s evidence.”

At a few minutes before nine I parked down the block from the consulate and walked up Laguna Street through the gathering
shadows. RKI’s van sat inconspicuously under an olive tree at the northwest corner of the hilly park called Lafayette Square.
As I approached, Renshaw stepped away from it.

“Electronic surveillance on the consulate?” I motioned at the van.

“We’ve tightened security. So far, everything’s quiet. Hamid left on time, ordered the car to pick her up again at midnight.
All the same, you’d better be quick about this. We’ll go in by the service entrance, and I’ll take you upstairs. You’ve got
half an hour.”

As we started downhill I asked, “Does Mavis Hamid know I’m coming?”

“I dropped in on her earlier and asked if she’d like a visitor. The idea seemed to please her. As far as she’s concerned,
you’re one of our operatives, making sure she’s comfortable with the security arrangements.”

Renshaw led me through an automobile gate and down the consulate’s driveway; a door opened onto a graveled parking area in
front of the three-car garage. He knocked, spoke softly to the guard on duty there, and we went inside, past a laundry room
and a pantry to a steep uncarpeted stairway. The big house was silent; our footfalls seemed to thunder. The noise faded to
a whisper on the Oriental rugs in the upstairs hallway. Renshaw went to a door, tapped lightly, and said, “You’re on your
own now.”

A woman’s voice called out something unintelligible. I took it as an invitation to enter and opened the door. The room beyond
was lit only by the flames from a gas fireplace. Dark draperies masked the high windows, and it felt overly warm. There was
a stale odor trapped within its walls—the kind you find in houses that have been closed up for a long time but shouldn’t exist
in an inhabited place. I could make out very little except for the figure seated Indian-style on the floor in front of the
marble hearth.

Mavis Hamid was not beautiful, as Kahlil Lateef had claimed. She had dingy brown hair that cascaded over her shoulders and
back; it looked thin and uncared for. She wore a black bathrobe with white piping, and her feet were bare. As she turned my
way in the fire’s light I saw a pale oval face, its features puffy, its skin blotchy. In her hand she held a deck of cards,
and a game of solitaire was spread out in front of her. I didn’t see a bottle or a glass, but as I got closer I could smell
the alcohol; she wore its scent like perfume.

“Mrs. Hamid?”

“Call me Mavis. I don’t like that name; it’s my mother-in-law’s, not mine. Mr. Renshaw said you want to talk to me about something?”

“Yes. We want to make sure you’re okay with the security arrangements. They’ve been tightened since the bombing attempt.”

“Security’s fine,” she said vaguely and waved toward a love seat arranged at an angle to the fireplace. “Sit, please. Do you
want a drink?”

I didn’t, but she obviously did, so I said, “Yes, thanks.”

She got up, stumbling slightly on the trailing hem of her robe, and hurried to a door that probably led to a bathroom. My
eyes were accustomed to the gloom now, and I looked around. The room was large and overdecorated with gilt-framed wall mirrors
and floral wallpaper that matched the valances over the dark blue draperies. The bed was buried in flounces and crowned by
a canopy; a dressing table with a three-way mirror looked as if it were wearing a hoop skirt. The sitting area here by the
hearth seemed crammed with furnishings: the love seat, a chaise longue, two recliner chairs. Yet Mavis Hamid preferred the
floor.

She returned holding two glasses full to the brim with clear liquid, no ice. I took the one she offered and smelled it. Vodka.
Why do they always think it has no odor?

Mavis said, “Cheers,” toasted with her glass, and took a drink. Then she sank to the floor, set the glass down, and picked
up the deck of cards. “Solitaire. It relaxes me. A couple of years ago I got bored with the regular game, so I taught myself
to play it backwards—kings up first, instead of aces—and made a lot of other new rules. My mother-in-law said I couldn’t do
that. I told the bitch, ‘I can do any damn thing I please, it’s my system, it’s the one time
I
get to make the rules.’”

I’d been noting her speech patterns: she slurred some words, but on the whole she sounded coherent and animated, if a little
erratic. What interested me besides that was her apparent lack of emotional affect—she hadn’t reacted at all to my mention
of the bombing attempt that had nearly taken her child’s life—as well as her undisguised hostility toward Malika Hamid. The
latter could be exploited.

I asked, “What was your mother-in-law’s reaction?”

“She told me I was being childish. I don’t know why she couldn’t understand. I mean, she makes up all the rules around here.
Malika’s got a rule for every occasion, and when they don’t suit her anymore, she just changes them. I told her she ought
to have them printed up daily and posted like a menu so people would know which set we’re following. You can bet she didn’t
like that.” She giggled, holding a card over her mouth—a naughty child.

“Tell me about Malika’s rules.”

Mavis looked pointedly at the glass in my hand. “You’re not drinking.”

I took a small sip, nearly gagging on the warm undiluted liquor. “The rules?” I repeated.

She tossed the cards on the floor, reached for her drink, and leaned back against the chaise longue. “There’s the rule that
I can’t see Habiba—that’s my daughter, do you know her?”

I nodded.

“That I can’t see Habiba for more than an hour a day. Except when Habiba pitches a fit and cries for me, and then I can see
her till she stops. There’s the rule that I can’t drive or go out for a walk, I can only go in the car with Karim—he’s the
driver. Only I don’t have a car of my own, so I wouldn’t drive anyway and, besides, there’s no place I want to go. But that
rule gets changed when I drink too much and take pills and they can’t get Dr. Lee over here to give me a shot.
Then
they make me go out and walk and walk, but always with Karim.” Her lips curled up—slowly, almost dreamily. “There’s no rule
about the booze, of course. I can have all I want, as long as I behave and stay in my room.”

“Behave how?”

“Oh, don’t wander into one of her damn dinner parties and start talking to somebody important. Don’t ask to see Habiba except
during her hour. I’m a bad influence on her, you know.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Oh, yes, I must be.”

“So that’s what you do—stay here in your room most of the time?”

“If I want the booze, I do. And I do—want the booze, I mean.”

“What about Habiba’s father? What does he have to say about all this?”

Her still smiling lips pulled down and her eyes sparked with anger. “Dave-the-magnificent? You see any signs of a man around
here?”

“No.”

“That’s because Dave-the-perfect, Dave-who-Mama-claimed-could-do-no-wrong hasn’t been around for years. Malika didn’t think
to make up any rules about sons not being able to disappear.”

“He disappeared on purpose, then?”

“Of course. Who wouldn’t want to get away from that smothering bitch?”

“But what about you and Habiba? Why did he leave you behind?”

“Dave and I stopped getting along the minute he brought me to live under this roof. He was as glad to get away from me as
from his mother, I’m sure. Habiba…that I don’t understand. He adored her.” Briefly her eyes grew soft with some memory, then
turned hard and angry again. “But if he really adored her, he’d’ve never subjected her to this household, now would he?”

“I don’t know. What was his reason for living here?”

“Money, what else? Dave-the-paragon was kicked out of UCLA; he claimed it was grades, but I know it was cheating. I graduated,
but a degree in English lit and a flair for poetry don’t pay rent or buy food, and it wasn’t in Dave’s scheme of things to
hold down a job. So we came here. For a while Malika pulled the financial strings and Dave was her little puppet. But then
he got into something else.”

“What?”

Mavis shrugged and went to refill her glass. When she came back she flopped on the chaise. “What did you ask me?”

“What did your husband get involved in?”

“Oh, that. I don’t know. By the time I realized he had something going we were living in separate rooms and barely speaking.
I supposed it was another woman—somebody with money, because all of a sudden he had plenty and was taking absolutely no shit
off Malika. But if there was somebody, why didn’t he divorce me and take Habiba? Divorce is no big deal in the Muslim community,
and Malika would’ve made sure he got custody.”

“How?”

“By making me out to be an unfit mother. I was already drinking a lot at the time and I’d…had some affairs.”

“But your husband never mentioned divorce?”

“No. And then all of a sudden, no Dave.”

“When did that happen?”

“February of…ninety. Dave didn’t come home all night. That wasn’t unusual, he stayed away a lot that last year, but he always
came back in the morning to change clothes. After three days and still no Dave, Malika called in private detectives.”

“Not the police?”

“No way.”

“Do you recall the name of the detective agency?”

“…No. I don’t know if I was ever told. Frankly, my memory isn’t all that good.”

“Did the detectives find out anything?”

“Not that anybody ever said.”

“Why do you suppose your mother-in-law didn’t want the police involved?”

“It was too soon after—”

“After what?”

“No. That’s got nothing to do with it.”

“Mavis—”

She sat up straighter and looked sharply at me. “I’m sorry, why did you say you were here?”

“To make sure you’re satisfied with the new security arrangements we instituted after the bombing attempt.”

She frowned. “What bombing attempt?”

My God. Mavis Hamid was so disconnected from the household that she didn’t know her daughter had nearly been killed the previous
afternoon. I didn’t dare enlighten her; there was no telling how the news might affect her, and I’d risk her mother-in-law
finding out about our meeting.

Quickly I said, “At another consulate.”

“Oh.”

“As you were saying about Dave’s disappearance—”

“I don’t want to talk about him anymore.” Then she made another erratic conversational detour and began a monologue about
poetry. I hadn’t read much of it since high school and the few lines I’d once penned for a class assignment made Hallmark
verses look like Shakespeare, but I couldn’t help being intrigued by Mavis’s talk about shaping ideas and emotions into poetic
image. Intrigued, too, by the pleasure and excitement she displayed and how her hand never once strayed toward her glass of
vodka. When I finally told her I had to leave and went to the door, she hurried after me and pressed a slender volume into
my hand.
Laments and Victories,
by Mavis O’Donnell Hamid.

“Thank you for listening,” she said. “I haven’t talked about my work for such a long time.”

Impulsively I hugged her before I stepped into the hallway.

Renshaw was leaning against an armoire by the far wall. As I closed the door he said, “What a touching display of sisterly
affection.”

“Listen, somebody ought to be a sister to that woman. This”—I gestured at Mavis’s room—“is a criminal situation!”

“And not ours to interfere with.”

“Probably not, but it makes me furious!” I clutched Mavis’s book tightly while we left the consulate, as if by protecting
it I could somehow protect its author.

We parted on the sidewalk, Gage heading toward the mobile unit up the hill and I to my nearby car. When I turned the key in
the door lock I realized I’d left it open. Careless, McCone, too damn careless.

As I slid behind the wheel and reached for my seat belt, a voice said, “Take me for a ride…please.”

Even though it was a child’s voice, I briefly froze. Then I turned toward Habiba Hamid. She sat in the passenger’s seat, all
buckled up and ready to go.

“How did you get out?” I asked sternly.

“I know lots of ways.” In the dim light I made out a sly grin that resembled her mother’s. She was a thin little girl—too
thin, really—with shoulder-length black hair that curled under like mine and a slash of bangs across her forehead.

“I’ll bet you do,” I said, “but it’s not too smart, particularly at night. And why are you in my car?”

“I like red sports cars. My father used to have one. And you were nice to me yesterday. So tonight when I saw you drive up
and you came in to see my mom, I snuck out.”