Of Daughter and Demon (2 page)

“I know that,” I said. “But you know people
and places that I never will, thank Sonny Jesus, and you gotta ask
around.”

“Who was she?”

“Alice. Her name was Alice, and whoever did
it ripped her clean in half.”

“Ah, gawd.”

I looks at Gimpy, and because a that one
expression a horror, even from a twice convicted molester, for the
first time he looks almost human to me. He did some things in his
time that I’ll probably still kill him for someday, but he
volunteered for that chemical castration thing, and even if he is a
junky, he can still help me find who I need to find. What’s that
make me though? Using a monster to find other monsters? What does
it make me, if not another monster?

But I didn’t know about monsters then, not
the real ones, not yet.

Next thing I had to do was find your Ma.
Don’t tell her? Why not, Alice? She has to know. She already knows?
Naw, may be the motherly instinct thing, but she deserves to know,
and she’ll want to see you get a proper burial.

I cruise through the streets and alleys, a
beat up old man in a beat up old car. The streets teem with
hookers, like maggots on something dead, like leeches on a drowning
dog in a swamp. It’s only about midnight and this is prime time for
the Ladies, girls who’ll let you fuck ‘em, burn ‘em, or shit on
‘em, so long as you got the bread. I drive past the crack houses,
meth labs, broken down little gambling shacks, and rings of junkies
and winos standing around barrel fires like Gimpy had been. Past
two guys dropping a body wrapped in plastic into a dumpster, past
some cops beating a guy, past this whole gutter end of the city
where life is worth only the car you drive, the shoes on your feet,
and the change you happen to have in your pocket. Past the urban
wilderness, with its own nine millimeter soundtrack, natural order,
and vultures that hide in the shadows and pick the corpses once the
real predators are gone. I drive from there into the industrial
section of the city where there always seems to be the stink a
steam and diesel fuel in the air, where twenty-four hours a day you
hear the rattle and clank a trains in the yard and the grinding a
gears as the semi trucks take away or drop off their loads, where
there aren’t any houses, just apartment buildings between
warehouses and under the freeway overpasses, that and the motels
with monthly rates where some of the workers stay; a room with a
roof and a bed, maybe a kitchenette, for a couple hundred a month,
I stayed in one myself for a time. But that was years ago.

The warehouses eventually give way to older
apartment buildings, then old apartment buildings that have been
renovated, past the hospital and into the trendy uptown area, west
of downtown and the financial district where the real criminals are
during the day, to where many live during the night.

I drive past houses with garages bigger and
nicer than any place I ever lived, places with pools, walls around
the property, servants, guards, and winding roads that lead me to
the top a the highest hill, to a sprawling Victorian style estate.
I stop at the guard kiosk, the fella inside knows me from the few
other times I been up here but it’s his job to give me shit, so he
does, and after about ten minutes and me showing my license, which
is three years expired, he calls up to the house and has a hushed
conversation with the servants or whoever, and while he’s waiting
for the servants to talk to the lady of the house he bullshits with
me, did you see the game this weekend, or who do you like for the
series this year? Now that he’s earned his nine bucks an hour, he’s
a decent enough guy. Finally, the phone in his little kiosk rings
and he answers it, says a word or two, then presses the button and
tells me to go on in. I drive up the long, winding drive, past the
manicured hedges styled by artists making minimum wage without
benefits and up to the house which is lit up like a Christmas tree,
every window in the place is blazing. I like Christmas trees, the
simple beauty, nothing over the top, just some lights and some
tinsel, maybe a couple handmade ornaments by the kids. But unlike
Christmas trees, the sight a this place, where Angie, Alice’s Ma,
lives, never gives me the warm feeling of home, instead I feel like
I’m looking at a skull painted pretty colors with candles in the
eye sockets.

I park my old Chrysler next to a couple
foreign jobs that look like spacecraft next to mine, and go to the
door. Before I get there, Angie’s butler opens the door and allows
me the honor a standing in the foyer where I can’t steal anything
or track my working man’s filth across the carpet or marble.

“Drink sir?” He asks with a tone of disdain
that indicates he’s better than me.

“Just Angie.”

“Ms.
Angela
will be with you
momentarily.” He scuttles off, but there are cameras everywhere and
I know from experience the minute I move outta the foyer, he or
someone like him will appear again and ask if they can help me,
sir
, with that tone that would have got them a busted jaw if
this was twenty years ago and I wasn’t the old softy I am
today.

I know she’s taking so long because she’s
gettin' dressed, has to make a big show of things does our Angie.
Angela
, I mean. Sorry to be so hard on your Ma, Alice, god
knows all this has been hard enough.

When she finally appears at the top a the
stairs I can see from where I’m standing that she’s outta her head
on something; booze, downers, tranqs, probably all three. Can’t
blame her though, I guess. We all deal with things different ways,
and I can’t say as I’m qualified to judge anyone else, not having
lived the life I have. She’s had it rough, has our Angie. I knew
Angie back when she was just a waitress. Just five years ago you’d
have found her in a little coffee shop ‘round the corner from where
I live now. I didn’t live there back then, though.

God knows how Angie got everything she has
now. Rumor was she hooked up with some old dude who had a load a
money, big banker or something, and she served him what must a been
a billion dollar piece a pie cuz when he kicked over, he left her
all this. Rumor has it, mind you. I guess no one knows but Angie,
and she ain’t talking. God knows I asked her.

She started down the stairs with a cabana boy
on each side to hold her up and then maybe take her back upstairs
later to, ah, hell, Alice, you know I don’t mean to think these
things, but I guess a fella can’t help the kind a mind he was born
with, even if it’s a sick one.

“What do you want?” Angie asks halfway down
the stairs.

My eyes kinda tear up again and I swallow a
rock in my throat cuz I know this won’t be easy. “We found her,
Angie. I, uh, I found her, tonight.”

There’s a long pause, and I think I see her
broken heart trying to bust through the clouds in her eyes.

“Found her?”

I nod.

“Harry, tell me, you found whom?”

My mouth is dry, hard to talk. “Alice, little
Alice...I...found her.”

One of the cabana boys leans over to her ear
and whispers something that sounds a little like, “Your
daughter.”

“Oh. Yes,” Angie says. “She’s dead.”

“That’s right, Angie, I’m sorry, but--”

“Don’t be sorry, Harry, we’ve known for years
she was dead.”

“I know it’s been hard on you, just thought
you’d like to know, for certain like. I guess the service will
probably be on Monday.”

“Service?”

“The funeral. I took her to Joe and--”

“Are you OK, Harrison?”

“I…I don’t know, Ange.”

Angie’s gaze changes, turning to something
else, her eyes narrow in on me for a moment, like from
carpet-bombing to a sniper’s scope.

“Carl!”

The butler reappeared. “Yes, Ms. Angela?”

“Give Harry a check at once, make sure he’s
well taken care of.”

“Yes, Ms. Angela. Of course.”

“Hey, no, Angie, don’t worry ‘bout me, I got
my disability, an’ the bar. I’m set up.”

Finally emotion got through her muddied,
pill-soaked eyes, and that emotion was anger.

“Nonsense, Harrison, you can’t seriously get
along on that ridiculous pension. Carl, a check.”

“Yes Ms. Angela.”

“I don’t want no check, and I won’t take one.
Not for this.”

“Are you refusing me, Harrison?”

“I am. And don’t call me Harrison.”

She stared a minute longer, the cabana boy
squirming beneath her gaze. Even when she was waiting tables she
had this evil, poison stare, but I stood to it before and I stand
to it again.

“Fine,” she says, and turns to Carl. “See him
out, Carl, and if he shows back up here set the dogs on him and
call the police.”

“With pleasure, Ms. Angela.”

Then Carl, no doubt wound up by her majesty’s
fire and brimstone, lays a hand on me, just on the arm, but he
knows I don’t like no one laying hands on me, and as his silk
gloved fingers brush on the fabric of my jacket my left hand
strikes like a snake; I grab his middle and ring fingers, and bend
‘em back with a snap. He starts screaming, over a couple busted
digits is all, and I feel a little sorry cuz his hands are his
livelihood and all, but he knows I don’t like anyone touching me. I
let myself out, get back in my Chrysler and leave. I nod to the
fella in the kiosk on my way out but he must a gotten a call from
the house cuz now he won’t even look at me.

It’s only about one in the morning right now,
but I don’t think there’s anything else I can do. I got her body
outta that house, I put the word on the street through Gimpy, and I
got in touch with her Ma, so I head home.

Funny about how she took it though, but I
chalk that up to all the pills an’ all the booze she takes in order
to deal with what happened. It was nice of her to ask me how I was,
though, after havin’ me lay that on her. Whattaya mean that’s not
what she meant? Aw, come on, Alice.

I just hope she’s happy up there in that big
ole house on the hill, your Ma. Don’t say that, Alice. It’s been
real hard on her. I
do
know what happened, she gave up is
all. You can’t blame her like that, Alice. Four years is a long
time for a little girl to be missing, an’ everybody we talked to
all but said you was already dead. I’m real sorry, I should have
been there to stop what happened to you, you don’t deserve
something like that, no one does. If you have to blame someone,
blame me. I’m tougher than your Ma. I can take it, I can use it,
and it’ll make me stronger.

But I’m home now Alice, so I gotta say
goodnight. Don’t you worry though, I’ll get a good night rest,
maybe my last one ever, and I’ll get up an’ stay up, an’ together
we’re gonna find that bastard that done what they did to you, and
maybe then you can rest easy, too.

Goodnight, Alice.

The phone wakes me up about twelve hours
later. Shouldn’t have slept so long, sometimes I think I’d just go
on sleeping forever if something didn’t always wake me up. The
phone rings again and I feel real good today, no hang over, no sore
muscles, no pounding head. Today I’ll do something right, I know
it.

I pick up the phone, it’s Bobby Johns, my
detective friend. My ol’ pal Bobby. He ain’t so straight a cop as
he used to be, but his heart left a ghost in there when it finally
died and he’s still a good enough fella. He wants to talk to me, he
says, in private-like, so we arrange to meet at the coffee shop
around the corner where Angie once worked, he says he’s already
there but to take my time.

I shower up and find my backup Mack hanging
in the closet, it’s a little stained and has a couple holes in it,
maybe a bit bare on the elbows, but it still keeps me warm, it’s
still a good coat. I’m sure I could get your blood outta that other
one, Alice, but I don’t think I could stand to wear it again.

The afternoon is cloudy and cold, man I wish
I’d gotten up sooner. Need to get me an alarm clock, maybe. I smoke
a cig on the way to the coffee shop and when I get there Bobby
Johns is in the same place he always is, in the corner near the
window, back to the wall. This means I gotta sit with my back to
the people, and Bobby knows this makes me edgy, but he’ll watch my
back, Bobby will. Always has.

“Howya doing, Hare?” Bobby asked when I sat
down.

“You heard about last night?”

Bobby nodded.

“You know how I’m doing then, Bobby. Whatcha
got? Got a lead?”

Bobby shook his head.

“What the hell is it then Bobby? I got stuff
I need to be doing.”

“Just want to talk to you a bit. You know you
shouldn’t have moved the body, Harry.”

“What? I should leave it down there? Nobody’d
ever see it again.”

“Still, it fucks with our forensics.”

“There wouldn’t be no forensics to fuck with
had I left her down there in the dark, Bobby. I’m sorry I moved it,
but I had to.”

Bobby stared at me for a moment over a cup of
Irish Coffee. I could tell by his eyes and his unshaven cheeks he
was having a rougher morning than me.

“I’m real sorry, Hare, about what
happened.”

“Me too, me too. But we’ll find em.”

“I got someone you ought to talk to,” Bobby
said, putting his hand in the pocket of his coat and bringing out a
business card. A name and a title were the only things on it.

“How am I supposed to get in touch with him?
There ain’t no number.”

“I’m in contact with him, don’t worry about
that. I’ll have him get in touch with you.”

“Why do I need to talk to him, anyhow?”

“Well, I think he might know something--”

“About Alice?”

“Yeah, and maybe about what happened to her,
Harry. About who did it. Now, I know your situation here, we all
do, so we’re gonna let you go your own way as long as you stay low,
dig?”

“Yeah, sure, but why do you think he might
know anything?”