Milk and Honey (5 page)

His eyes became pensive and moist. “I don’t know what happened, Pete. All I know is, when I went to sleep, the girl was whole.”

“Is it possible that you had a blackout, did something to her, and woke up without any memory of it?”

Abel swallowed hard.

“I swear to God I didn’t rape or beat her.”

“Okay,” Decker said. “I believe you.” He finished his sandwich and orange juice. “You didn’t beat her up. But someone did. The report said there was no break-in or forced entry, but Myra often slept with the windows open.
She could have known the assailant—a john who got rough or her pimp—tried to cover for him, and you were a convenient scapegoat.”

“I don’t know how they can pinpoint my semen in her,” Abel said. “The broad was a hooker. She must have been swimming in a sea of cum.”

“She claims you were the only john who sodomized her last night. That’s how the lab made the positive ID.”

Abel looked down.

“I didn’t rape her,” he said tensely. “I paid for everything I took. And I didn’t get rough with the lady, Pete. Goddammit, you know me! I don’t do things like that. And it was
never
for lack of opportunity.”

Decker knew that was true. They’d both seen their share of grunts on the rampage. An M-16 strapped to your back, you never had to pay for it—just went into the hooches and took whatever you wanted. Women, girls, even boys, it didn’t matter. Screw them in front of Papa-san, it’s only a gook. Came back to the squad a double vet—fucked ’em and wasted ’em. Abel had never signed up for that club.

Decker, more than anyone, had known him as a gentle and compassionate human being. Always the one sneaking orphans onto the base, only to have them kicked out by some shitfaced captain who said it was against the rules. Honest Abe Atwater, putting on puppet shows with empty IV bottles wearing grease-pencil smiles. Stealing rations to feed the homeless left in the gutted villages ripped apart by cross fire. Always trying to make nice. His downfall: He lost his leg because of his heart. Everything they’d been warned against. A friendly that had been VC. A fluke Decker had found him. Even flukier that Abel had lived.

“You’ll get me out of this mess, won’t you, Doc?”

“I’ll do what I can. But it may take a while. You need a good lawyer who can buy you time.”

“I don’t have a hell of a lot of loot.” Abel shrugged. “Matter of fact, I’m busted.”

Decker frowned.

“Don’t worry about it, Pete. I’ll figure out something. And I intend to pay you back the bail money. Just as soon as I get my disability check.”

“Forget it,” Decker said. He glanced at the wall clock. “I’ve got to get home. But first I have to say grace after meals, so be quiet for about five minutes.”

Decker prayed, then rose and slipped Abel a twenty. “This should get you back home by taxi. I’ll call as soon as I have something to tell you.”

Abel looked at him, a hound-dog expression on his face. “I’m really sorry about this, Pete. Seems I only call you when I’m fucked.”

Decker said, “What else are friends for?”

Marge picked up
the printout and frowned. Sally’s description and footprints hadn’t matched anything stored in the mainframe’s data banks. Though it wasn’t unusual for the computer to turn up a blank, because the kid was so young, she’d hoped for a break.

She looked up Barry Delferno’s number. The first time she’d met the bounty hunter, she’d expected someone fat and swarthy with a bucket’s worth of grease plastered on his hair. Instead, she found a tall, sandy-haired muscle man with dancing eyes. He’d asked her out and she’d accepted, only to find out a week later that he was married.

Bounty hunters. No matter what they looked like, they were all sleazeballs.

She punched Delferno’s number into the phone, and a moment later a deep voice resonated inside the earpiece.

“It’s Marge Dunn, Barry,” she said.

“Detective Dunn,” Delferno crooned. “How’s the LAPD’s finest?”

“Not bad.”

“You know, I was gonna call you.”

“Were you now?”

“No shit. I’m divorced, Margie. For real this time. Free and clear. You can check it out, if you don’t believe me.”

“I called for professional reasons, Barry. Got your current caseload in front of you?”

“Margie, Margie, Margie. What
is
the rush?”

“I don’t chat when I’m on duty.”

“So how ’bout if we chat over drinks?”

Marge ignored him. “We picked up a little girl—around two, curly blond hair, brown eyes, height thirty-two inches, weight twenty-six pounds. I’ve got Polaroids and footprints I’d like to fax over to you. See if we come up with a match.”

“As long as the match is a
love
match between you and me, my Greek goddess.”

“Knock it off.”

Delferno said, “I love a woman who talks tough. It turns me on. Gets my blood boiling and my—”

“You’re wasting your breath.”

“All right. Be surly. I’ll get you anyway. In the meantime, send me the pics and the prints.”

Marge placed the information into the machine. She said, “Call me back when you’ve got them.”

“How about dinner? Tonight, even. Wait, tonight’s not good. How about tomor—”

“I’m hanging up now, Barry.”

“It’s not nice to alienate the hired help.”

Marge laughed and placed the receiver in its cradle. She poured herself a cup of coffee and waited for Delferno to call back. A few minutes later, her phone rang.

“Dunn,” she answered.

“Nothing,” Delferno said.

“Sure?”

“Positive. Never seen the little tyke. Was she abused?”

“Nope. She seemed to be very well cared for.”

“Foul play with the parents?”

“Could be,” Marge said. “We found blood on her pajamas. Ask around for me, Barry.”

“What do I get in return?”

“What do you want?”

“How about a weekend in Cabo San Lucas? We’ll four-wheel it down to Baja, dip our toes in the gentle warm
oceano
, and fish for yellowtail.”

“I don’t fish.”

“Then we can sunbathe on the white-sand beaches…no tan lines, Margie.”

“I’m involved with someone else, Barry,” Marge said.

Delferno paused. “I heard you broke up with Carroll.”

“Well, you heard wrong,” Marge lied. “You remember Carroll—six-six, two-sixty, hands as big as catchers’ mitts.”

“For chrissakes, why didn’t you tell me in the first place, Margie?”

“It slipped my mind. Kinda like your wife slipped yours a while back.”

Delferno paused, then said, “Was this whole thing a setup for revenge?”

Marge smiled. “Well, let me put it this way. If I’m ever interested, I’ll give you a call. Until then, give me and the kid a break and pass on the photo to your buddies. Maybe they’ve seen her.”

“If it means another chance at your body, Detective Dunn, I will do that. I like my women like my tales—long and tall.”

“I like my men like my good-byes—short.” She laughed and hung up the phone. Decker walked into the squad room.

“What’s so amusing?” he asked. “I could use a few giggles.”

“Delferno,” she said. “Same old lech.”

“Any luck with Sally?” inquired Decker.

“Zip. I told Barry to pass the picture along to his colleagues. I also tried the Missing Children Hotline. No one matching Sally’s description has been reported recently.”

Decker sighed. “Poor little kid. This has turned into a rotten day.”

“Worse than most?”

“Yeah, when it involves a two-year-old, it’s worse than most.”

Marge turned and faced him. “Lunch with your rape-o friend didn’t go so good?”

“Par for the course.”

“Did he do it?”

“He says no.”

“And you believe him?”

Decker paused, then nodded yes.

Marge said, “The friend in you says innocent, but the cop decrees guilty.”

“No,” Decker said. “I really don’t believe he did it.”

“Jesus,” Marge said. “What’s between you and that scumbag that’s turning your brain to mush?
Did
he save your life?”

“I told you no.”

“Then how do you owe him?”

“I’m not paying off a debt, Marge. I happen to think he’s innocent—”

“Oh, give me a break, Pete,” Marge said. “Fess up. Was he your illicit lover or something when all you men were dogged out in the combat zone?”

Decker laughed. “No.”

“What are you going to do for him? Bribe the judge? Burn the files?”

Decker sat down at his desk and peeled another cigarette. “I’m going to find the man who raped and cut up the hooker.”

“You already bailed the guilty party out of jail, my friend.”

“Well, I don’t think so.”

Marge leaned back in her chair, shook her head. “A seasoned guy like yourself, falling for his shit…Let
me
look into it. At least I’m objective.”

“Nope,” Decker said. “I’ve got my eyes wide open, Marge. I can handle it.”

“Sure you can.”

Decker rubbed his eyes and said, “We can keep bickering like this, honey, or I can do something productive like go home and get some sleep.”

“Pete!” Marge said. “You called me
honey
!”

“That’s ’cause you’re acting like a broad, Margie.”

Marge grinned. “No, Decker, you’re acting like a civilian.”

Decker said, “I’m going home. Beep me if something comes up with Sally. I’m going down to Hollywood Division tonight and review the case files. Try to get a handle on this hooker. You can call me there if anything comes up.”

Marge leaned back in her chair. “Colonel Dunn says that the attachments he made with his war buddies ran deeper than blood. That true with you?”

“Nope.”

“Yeah, Colonel Dunn has been known to spout a lot of shit.”

Decker smiled.

“You didn’t get together with any of your buddies when you came back to civilian life?” Marge asked.

“Only once,” Decker said. “Somewhere between the second and third hour, after we rehashed all the old nightmares, I discovered I didn’t have a thing in common with any of them.”

“And that was it?”

“That was it. You know, Margie, I worked
damn
hard at putting it all behind me. And it’s especially hard because America has had a sudden change of heart and decided we weren’t all baby-killers. Nam vets have become the darlings of Hollywood. Indochina has great box-office appeal—all those shirtless sweaty bodies crawling through the jungle. Leeches! Gooks! Grunts going nuts! Makes for exotic drama. And the producers? They’re former hippies who now drive Mercedes instead of VW bugs. They want to
talk to us, make nice. Except I remember how they treated me when I came back to the world. It don’t wash, babe.”

“Colonel Dunn was once asked to be a consultant on a Nam film.”

“What did your dad do?”

Marge blushed.

Decker said, “That bad?”

“Let’s put it this way. The screenplay was long, and Mom didn’t have to buy toilet paper for a month.”

Decker burst into laughter.

Marge asked, “So who’s this guy who you’re going the distance for?”

“Abel Atwater,” Decker said. “A hillbilly boy from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Kentucky.” Decker’s voice had taken on a nasal twang. “One of eleven chillun. His father could barely read and write, his mother was completely illiterate. Abel learned to read by sifting through mail-order catalogs. He used to entertain us by reciting Sears, Roebuck copy. Bright guy. The war messed him up.”

“A lot of rape-os are intelligent.”

“He doesn’t fit the profile. He’s not manipulative, he’s got great impulse control. He’s not the kind of person who goes around beating up hookers.”

Marge didn’t answer him.

Decker said, “All right. If I’d be brutally honest with myself, I’d say there was an off-chance that he freaked and did it. But we were in combat together for a while. I never saw him explode. Abel had a rep for being coolheaded. Type of guy the COs chose for pointman—lead-off guy in foot patrol—because he was careful and didn’t panic when things got hot.”

“Ever see him kill anybody?”

“You saw smoke, you busted some caps. Simple as that. When everything cooled off and you went in for cleanup, you’d see all these fucking bodies. Well, they didn’t drop dead from birdshit. You were shooting to kill, you killed. In
answer to your question, I never saw him waste anyone for the sake of killing, and there was plenty of that going around!”

Decker stopped, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

“Abel could have been something if the war hadn’t left him paralyzed. Matter of fact, he wanted to be a
cop
, but Charlie blew off his leg and ended that dream.”

He snapped a pencil in half.

“I’m his dream, Marge. Maybe I feel guilty because Abel had all the fantasies, and I wound up with his dream.”

The phone was ringing when Decker opened the door. He raced over to the kitchen wall, his Irish setter, Ginger, nipping at his heels, and picked up the receiver.

“Did you just walk in?” Rina asked.

“Yeah,” Decker said. “I didn’t even close the front door. Hang on a sec.”

“Sure.”

He walked through his living room, Ginger following him, barking for attention. The room was comfortable, full of furniture made in his size—an overstuffed sofa, two buckskin chairs, and a leather recliner that sat in front of a picture window. In the heat, the room seemed alive, seemed to sweat. Decker quieted the dog and shut the front door. He drew open the front-window curtains, and a white square of sinking sun fell upon his Navajo rug.

He picked up the receiver and pulled out a kitchen chair with his foot. He sat down and petted Ginger’s head.

“I’ve got all the time in the world for you now. Speak.”

“That’s why I called.” She dropped her voice a notch. “The kids are home. I can’t really talk. We’ve got to leave any moment for my brother-in-law’s birthday party.”

“You sound thrilled.”

“I’m nearly faint with excitement.”

“Don’t go, if you don’t want to.”

“I can’t get out of it. At least not without lying.”

“Then be honest. Just say, ‘I find all this family stuff boring—’”

“Boring is the least of it.”

“Troubles with the family?”

“Something like that.”

“They’re giving you a hard time because they don’t approve of me.”

“Much more than that. Hold on.”

Decker heard her quiet her younger son, Jacob. When she returned on the line, he said, “Boys want to talk to me?”

“Very much,” Rina answered. “Look, can I call you back tonight?”

Decker paused.

“You’re working?” Rina asked.

“Just tying up odds and ends. I’ll put it off.”

“Don’t bother. I bought my ticket this afternoon, so I’ll see you in two days. Want to take down all the flight information?”

“Yeah, let me get a pen.” He rummaged through a junk drawer and came up with a red pen and the back of an old electric bill. He placed the paper on the wall and said, “Go ahead.”

Rina stated all the pertinent data, then gave Jacob the telephone.

“Hi, Yonkel,” Decker said. “How’s it going?”

“Fine.”

“How’s school?”

“Fine.”

“How’s basketball?”

“Fine.”

“How many lay-ups did you do yesterday?”

“Four.”

“Terrific.”

“Thanks.”

“Are you taking good care of your
eema
for me?”

“Yes.”

“Being good to your grandparents?”

“Yes.”

“Great,” Decker said. “I miss you, kiddo.”

“Peter?”

“What, Jakie?”

“When can we come back to your ranch?”

Decker sighed, hesitated. The kid was a sweetie. Decker pictured him talking on the phone, big blue eyes wide with innocence. He said, “Honey, you’re welcome here anytime your
eema
says it’s okay.”

“I miss the horses.”

“They miss you, too.”

“Okay, ’bye. Here’s Shmuli.”

Rina’s elder son came on the line.

“I’m upset,” Sammy said.

“What’s wrong?” Decker asked.

“Why can’t we come to L.A. with
Eema
? It’s not fair!”

“Sammy, I’d love for you guys to come out here—”

“So why can’t we come with
Eema
on Wednesday?”

“Because there’re things that your
eema
and I have to discuss privately.”

“So we’ll wait in the other room while you guys talk.”

“It’s not that simple, honey.”

“
Eema
just doesn’t want us around.”

“No, honey, that’s not true.”

“It is true. You’re just defending her.”

Decker paused a moment. The boy had to be handled carefully.

“Sammy, honey, try to understand this. I haven’t seen your
eema
in six months. We’re kind of like strangers, and it’s going to take us a while to get to know each other again. Now, I want to know your
eema
real well before you and your brother and I get reacquainted. That way I can pay attention to you guys and not have to worry about your mother. Does that make sense to you?”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

“Are you and
Eema
fighting?” Sammy asked.