One Hot Mess Page 4

  Rivera glanced back at me. “You two buddies now, are you?”

  I stepped out beside him, cleared my throat, and resisted checking myself to make certain my garments were firmly in their allotted positions. “Hello, Senator.”

  “Good evening, Christina.” He gave me a stately nod. “I am sorry to disturb you. As I said, I worried that your door was unsecured and thought I had best check on your well-being.”

  “Oh.” I wondered a little dimly if it was possible for a face to burn right off its head. “That was very thoughtful of you, Senator.”

  He made a dismissive motion with his hand. “It was nothing. I was in the neighborhood, after all.”

  “Really? Well, it’s so nice of you to worry on my account, but as you can see, your son was kind enough to—”

  “Cut the crap!” Rivera snarled. “What the hell’s going on here?”

  I shifted my eyes from one to the other, a million thoughts cruising drunkenly through my hormone-washed head. I didn’t want to cause more problems between them by blurting out the senators earlier proposition to me. Neither did I want to break a trust with the older Rivera, and I wasn’t all that crazy about the idea of admitting that I had agreed to horn in on a situation that some might consider the business of the police department. “Nothing’s going on,” I said. “Your dad just stopped by to—”

  “You sniffing after her, too?” Rivera asked, turning to his father. “That what this is about?”

  The senator’s back stiffened. “I’ll not have you using that profane—”

  “Wasn’t Rachel enough? How ‘bout Salina? Hell, you got her killed. I would think that would just about—”

  “You blame me for her death?” The senator’s voice was deadly low.

  Rivera laughed. The sound was coarse and nasty. “She sure as hell wasn’t my fiancée anymore, was she?”

  “Still looking for others to blame, aren’t you, Gerald? It is so like you to be unable—”

  But suddenly Rivera launched forward, grabbed his father by the lapels of his blazer, and thrust him up against the wall. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  They glared at each other, eyes spitting, lips snarling.

  “My whereabouts are none of your concern,” rasped the senator.

  “They are if you’re in this damn house.”

  “I believe Christina can decide which of us—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” I said, stepping forward and grabbing Rivera’s fist. He had a death grip on his father’s coat, but adrenaline or just plain pissiness made it possible for me to pull his hand away. “He just came by to ask me for a favor.”

  “Christina!” hissed the senator, but I ignored him.

  “Yeah?” Riveras mouth jerked. “Is this the kind of favor where clothing is optional?”

  “What are you?” I asked. “Twelve? He wants to talk.”

  A muscle jumped in his cheek. “About what?”

  I faltered.

  “We have a mutual friend,” said the senator, and smoothed his jacket into place. “I but came to inform Christina of her condition.”

  “Really.” Rivera didn’t turn toward his father but kept his whiskey-burn gaze on me. “What friend is that?”

  My lips moved. My mind was absolutely immobile.

  “I do not think that is any concern of—” the senator began, but Rivera interrupted again.

  “What’s her name?”

  The image of a dismembered corpse flashed through my mind. “Kathleen,” I said.

  “Kathleen what?”

  “Cahill,” lied the senator.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Rivera asked.

  “I have sworn to keep her condition quiet so that she is not bothered by those—”

  “What’s wrong with her?” Rivera asked again, and turned his glare on his father.

  The elder man lifted his chin with arrogant defiance. “If you must know… the young lady is with child.”

  “Yeah?” Rivera smirked. “You gonna be a daddy again, Senator?”

  “She is the daughter of a dear friend who has—”

  “So was Salina. It didn’t stop you then.”

  Silence plowed into the room, then: “Still bitter that you cannot keep a woman for yourself, Gerald?”

  “You goddamn bastard,” snarled Rivera.

  “Stop it,” I said, and grabbed his arm, but maybe I was trying to restrain the wrong Rivera.

  “Are you so weak that you cannot accept a little competition?” asked the senator.

  Riveras lips twisted into a grin, brows lowered over deadly eyes. “You want competition, old man, let’s—”

  But at that moment I pulled a plate from the sink and slammed it against the counter. It crashed into a hundred satisfying shards.

  The jerks jerked toward me in unison.

  “What the hell is wrong with you two?” I gritted, and slammed my gaze from one to the other.

  “He—”

  “He—”

  “Shut up!” I ordered, stabbing a finger somewhere between them.

  The senator recovered first. “I apologize for my son,” he began. “I see he has not yet learned—”

  “We don’t have a mutual friend,” I said, and turned my gaze from the older to the younger Rivera. Usually, runaway honesty isn’t a problem with me, but the blatant lies of father to son had frayed my nerves. “The senator has asked me to investigate a death.”

  Rivera’s brows jerked into his hairline. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Just informally, of course. He thought the police department might be too—”

  “What death?”

  “That’s not the point here,” I said, tone calculated to soothe the wild beast. “It simply—”

  “What fucking death?” Rivera growled.

  I straightened my back. “Kathleen Baltimore’s. But I believe her death took place well out of your jurisdiction.”

  He stared at me a second, then threw back his head and laughed. “Jesus, McMullen, who do you think you are? Columbo?”

  “No.” I may have mentioned before that I hate to be laughed at. But being laughed at by a braying clod like Rivera makes my blood hurt. “I realize—”

  “You’re lucky to still be breathing after that last fiasco.”

  “Well…” I could feel my temper rising toward the boiling point, but I diluted it with common sense. Two irate idiots were enough in one kitchen. “Thank you for your profound—”

  “You damn well better thank me. I’ve saved your ass more times than a fucking firefighter.”

  “I don’t think it proper that you speak to a lady in that tone,” said the senator.

  “And you!” Rivera rounded on his dad with a sharp snort. “What the hell are you thinking? You got some hot deal cooking? Maybe one of your asshole friends offed another of your asshole friends and you want to know what’s what? Decided McMullen here is expendable?”

  “A woman has died,” the senator said, tone stiff and holier than hell. “I did not know her, but I feel in my heart that it was not—”

  “Heart!” Rivera laughed again. The sound was about as pleasant as the rumble of a road grader. “You don’t have a fucking heart.”

  “Rivera,” I said, but he turned toward me, spewing vitriol.

  “So you were willing to lie for him, too, huh?”

  Emotion was splashed across his face like acid—anger and hate, but there was more. There was hurt, injured hope.

  “I didn’t lie,” I said, voice quiet.

  “So you had no idea why he might be stopping by.”

  It had been such a small lie. The littlest fabrication, engineered to keep him calm. I opened my mouth, perhaps to say something to that effect, but maybe my lips knew better than to spout something so asinine.

  He stared at me for an eternity, then he turned away.

  “Rivera,” I said, but he just kept walking, through my foyer and out of my life.

  4

&n
bsp; You’re gonna sit down. You’re gonna shut up. And by the grace of God Almighty, I ain’t gonna kill you.

  —Esse Goldenstone,

  upon discovering a pack of

  Camels in her grandson’s

  backpack

  ICKY GOLDENSTONE took a seat on my therapy couch at 8 a.m., and settled his right ankle over his left knee. He was lean and black with a smile that could light up the universe and a glare that could stop your heart. I suspected both were employed with some regularity on the fifth-graders he taught at Plainview in Tujunga.

  “Hey Doc, how goes the rat race?” he asked, and watched me as he settled back against the cushion. He’d been a client for just under a year, but we’d covered some pretty rocky ground in that time.

  “Pretty well,” I said.

  “Yeah?” His teeth were aligned like little white soldiers. “You winning, then?”

  I crossed one leg over the other and smiled. I liked Micky, had since the moment I met him. “Pretty even odds, actually,” I said.

  He shook his head a little. “Then you’re ahead of the game.”

  “Trouble at work?” I asked.

  “No.” The answer was straightforward, solid. Our gazes struck and locked. I braced myself. I have clients who come in to chat about their acne or their hangnails or their difficulty paying the mortgage on their million-dollar homes. Micky Goldenstone wasn’t one of them. “I found her old man.”

  I drew a careful breath through my nose and pushed my own suddenly minified troubles behind me. Yes, Rivera had acted like an ass, I had had to force the senator out of my house, and I was still peeing at the office, but I didn’t have burn scars from my father. I didn’t wake up screaming in the middle of the night, and I didn’t have guilt so deep it ate my soul like battery acid.

  “The man Kaneasha was living with,” I said.

  He didn’t bother to nod. He was already immersed in the past. Immersed and sinking deeper. I could tell by his expression, his darkening dialect.

  “Cig,” he said, and sat in silence for a moment, eyes narrowed.

  “Did you speak to him?”

  He remained silent, looking at nothing.

  “Micky,” I said.

  He drew back almost seamlessly. “Yeah. Yeah. I talked to ‘im.”

  “And that’s how you learned—”

  “He’s a—” He stopped himself, gritted his teeth, making a muscle bunch in his jaw. “They ain’t together no more.” He nodded. “She left more’n a year ago. Maybe ‘cuz he beat the crap out of her.” He shrugged. “Maybe not.”

  I had a thousand questions, but so did he. I let him run.

  “He admitted it. I didn’t ask. Hell! I didn’t wanna know. But he was proud. Fuckin’ crackhead can—” He burst to his feet and twisted away raw energy tightly bound. “Can—”

  “Micky” I said, soothing.

  “Can beat the shit out of woman half his—”

  “Micky,” I said, raising my voice.

  “What!” He turned toward me, hands fisted, eyes burning.

  “Sit down please.”

  He did so, but his eyes were still burning, his hands still fisted.

  I watched him, letting him calm. Hoping he’d calm. “Her abuse at the hands of her boyfriend is not your fault. It was—”

  “That’s bullshit!” He watched me, then inhaled deeply, making his nostrils flare. “I was the one that raped her.”

  I kept myself from wincing. “Yes.”

  “She was just a—” He jerked to his feet again. I let him go. “All elbows and knees and—” He stopped, turned abruptly toward the window. “Eyes.” He said the word so softly I could barely hear him.

  “From what you’ve told me, her family life was not particularly stable. Her mother was a cocaine addict, isn’t that correct?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “And her brother—”

  “Gone. Just fuckin” gone. Shi’s dead. Terrence’s in the pen. In prison.” He said it almost wistfully. I pulled the conversation back, making a mental note to consider his tone later.

  “Her father abandoned her. She had no grandparents and—”

  “Yeah.” He turned on me with a snarl. “She had a shitty life. Did that give me the right to fuck her like she was some—”

  “Sit down,” I said.

  “Don’t tell me—” he began, but if I had learned anything as a scantily clad cocktail waitress, it was when to ask and when to demand.

  “Sit your ass down!” I ordered.

  He did so.

  “You raped a girl,” I said, leaning in.

  He stared at me, face blank.

  “A thirteen-year-old child.”

  His cheek twitched, but nothing else showed in his expression.

  “It was a heinous crime. Cruel. Unspeakable. She trusted you and you hurt her.”

  He swallowed, but I didn’t stop.

  “Who’s to blame for that, Micky?”

  “God!” He squeezed his eyes closed, pressed his nails into his palms. “They should have fuckin” killed me.”

  “Who’s to blame?” I repeated.

  He opened his eyes, pursed his lips. “I am.”

  “Yes.” I waited an instant. “Did you make her use drugs?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Did you?”

  “No.”

  “Did you make her live with an abusive man?”

  “I think the rape was enough.” He smiled a little, but the expression was gritty.

  “Did you?” I demanded.

  “No.”

  “Then why do you want to accept blame for more?”

  He waited half a lifetime before he spoke. “Because she’s got a kid.”

  I felt my stomach drop toward the floor, but I’d learned to play poker with three brothers who cheated like Irishmen. Nothing showed. “Is it yours?”

  He waited again, as did I.

  “I don’t know,” he said finally.

  I exhaled carefully. “How old is the child?”

  He shrugged. The movement was stiff.

  “The boyfriend didn’t know?”

  “Said the kid didn’t live with them. Only saw him once or twice.”

  I nodded.

  “Once or twice,” he repeated. “In two years.”

  I kept my expression as impassive as his. “What are you going to do now?”

  He stared out the window. “Put a gun in my mouth?”

  I kept my hands relaxed in my lap. “That’ll never work.”

  He glanced at me, brows dropping.

  “You’re never going to suffer enough if you’re dead.”

  He snorted and sat up straight. “You wasn’t raised by your grandma, was you?”

  I stared.

  “Grams was a big believer in hell.”

  From what I had heard, his grandmother had also saved his life. “Are you going to hell, Micky?”

  “I think I might be there already.”

  “Then you might just as well continue to live.”

  He pushed himself backward in his chair and stared at me. The tiniest smile tickled his lips. “Jesus, woman, does the board of shrinks know you dish out this crap?”

  “You can always kill yourself, Micky,” I said. “You might as well wait.”

  “Not if I’m a chicken shit.”

  I shook my head. “You’re not.”

  Our gazes clashed. “Why would I wait?”

  “That’s what Esse would have wanted.”

  He stared at me. “She tied me to the radiator once. Did I tell you that?”

  I shook my head.

  “I says I was goin’ out with my dogs. She says I wasn’t. I says no one owned me and she could go …” He paused, almost smiled. “Next thing I know I was flat on my face with my hands cranked up behind my back and her sitting on top of me. All ninety-two pounds of her. Spent the night listening to her read Scripture. The whole fuckin’ night.” I could hear him inhale, feel him think. “What if the k
id’s mine?”

  I had no idea, but I kind of loved Esse Goldenstone. “Then you’ll have to make some decisions.”

  “Can I off myself then?” Maybe it was a serious question, but there was a light in his eye again.

  I tented my fingers and leaned back in my chair. “It’d look bad on my shrink record,” I said.

  “Jesus.” He brushed one palm across his close-cut scalp. “More fuckin’ guilt,” he said.

  And I laughed for the first time all day.

  5

  If it looks like a cat, walks like a cat, and has whiskers like a cat, it’s probably a damn cat. But if it eats your groceries, messes up your kitchen, and makes you want to rip out your hair by the roots, you either married it or gave birth to it.

  —Shirley Templeton,

  who should know

  EY.”

  I glanced up from where I was supposed to be updating records but was really just staring into space. My temporary secretary Shirley Templeton (don’t laugh, I didn’t name her), was glancing around the edge of the door, mug in hand.

  “You okay, honey?” she asked.

  “Yes.” I straightened with military professionalism. “Certainly,” I said, but I was lying. The day had been a killer. After Micky, there had been a kleptomaniac, a pathological liar, and a man. Not a normal egg in the clutch.

  Shirley came in. She was on a one-day-flu loan from my regular secretary, the Magnificent Mandy In fact, she was the Magnificent Mandy’s aunt. I wondered a little hazily if that made her the Magnificent Shirley then decided it probably didn’t since she was the antithesis of her niece. Where Mandy was small and thin and as scattered as confetti, Shirley was broad and round and solid. She was also as black as a brokers power suit. She waddled a little as she approached my desk, and I noticed she carried a small paper bag in her left hand.

  “Thought you might need a little pick-me-up,” she said, and set the bag on my desk.

  If my olfactory system didn’t fail me, and it rarely did when considering copious amounts of calories, there was something filled with chocolaty goodness in the bag. But following my post-Thanksgiving binge I had finally screwed up my nerve and stepped onto the scale. Subsequently, I had sworn off goodness of all sorts.

  “That’s very kind of you,” I said, “but I should get these records taken care of.”

  “You working on Mr. Goldenstone’s?”