Midnight Baby Read online

  “Yes, thank you.” She looked into her lap when her chin quivered. “Thank you for dinner. It was very good.”

  “Pisces.” I touched her hand, and saw her tense up. “Please let me take you to a shelter?”

  She shook her head. “I’m all right. I have an okay place to sleep.”

  “What does ‘okay’ mean?” Guido challenged. “You have an apartment, a room, what?”

  “This shelter,” she said, raising her face. “They don’t ask a lot of questions?”

  “As long as you’re fourteen, there are no questions,” I assured her.

  “What if you’re nine?” she asked.

  Guido snapped to. “You’re nine?”

  “No. I told you, I’m fourteen. But what happens to a kid who’s only nine?”

  “If she’s that young,” I said, “Child Protective Services has to be called. A kid that young shouldn’t even be crossing the street alone. Not that you should, either.”

  The waitress came back with change and two doggie bags. “Thank you.” She smiled. “Have a nice evening.”

  Pisces wiped her hands on her napkin and sat forward on the seat, ready to go. She seemed resigned.

  “What about the shelter?” I asked.

  She shook her head and frowned. “There’s someone I have to look after.”

  The implications of her soft statement were not lost on Guido. When he looked up at me with dew in his eyes, I knew he also was doomed where this girl was concerned.

  “I just thought of another place you might go,” I said as we slid out of the booth. “A good friend of mine. You’d like her. You wouldn’t have to say anything to her that you didn’t want to.”

  Guido looked more hopeful than Pisces. “Really? Who?”

  “Let me call her first, just to make sure it’s okay.”

  Guido fished out two dimes again. There was a telephone booth in the back by the rest rooms. I walked back alone and placed the call to Sister Agnes Peter, an old friend, a professional easy touch.

  “Pete,” I said. “It’s Maggie MacGowen.”

  “How nice to hear from you.” Her voice was hearty, like a PE teacher’s. “Are you in town?”

  “Yes. I’m working on a film, and I’ve run into a situation with one of my subjects. I need your help.”

  She laughed. “Dare I ask?”

  “Do you have a couple of extra beds for the night?”

  “Certainly. You know the address. The front light is on.”

  “Bless you. We’ll be there within the hour.”

  I walked back to Guido and Pisces, smiled at their expectant faces. “All set.”

  The girl wasn’t ready to accept anything yet. “Your friend said we could come?”

  “Yes. She’s waiting. I told her there will be two of you.” Pisces’ chin began to quiver. I put my arm around her, and this time she did not flinch.

  “Did you tell her who I am?” she asked.

  “I don’t know who you are,” I said.

  She pulled at her tight skirt self-consciously, and sniffled a couple of times. “I mean, what I do.”

  “You can tell her anything you want her to know. Or tell her nothing. She’ll like you, don’t worry. That’s what her job is.

  Pisces was working on the possibilities when I explained, “She’s a nun.”

  “What about this other kid?” Guido asked. “Where is she?”

  “He,” Pisces corrected. She turned toward the glass front door and pointed outside. “He’s right there.”

  I followed where she was pointing, but I didn’t see anything except the straggly shrubbery lining the sidewalk. He must have been crouching there behind the low planter. When we opened the door, he stood and revealed himself. When he turned toward us, the light from the full moon hit his small face the way high beams catch roadkill.

  CHAPTER 2

  The boy was a foul-mouthed, evil-smelling little wretch. Pisces said he was nine, she called him Sly. He looked old, not like a wizened old man, more like a small animal. Something feral.

  Pisces handed him the bags of leftover sandwiches. He ate quickly, standing hunched over the food protectively while he tucked it in. I was trying to visualize a few frames of his dirty freckled face edited among some spick-and-span Little Leaguers I had in my film files when he looked up and caught me staring.

  “What the fuck you watching?” he demanded through a mouthful, spewing crumbs. “Get outta my face.”

  Pisces snapped, “Shut your mouth when you chew.”

  “Fuck that. Fuck them,” he sneered. “What they hangin’ here for?”

  “They’re all right,” Pisces assured him. “They have a place for us to sleep tonight.”

  “We already have a place,” Sly snapped.

  “I want a shower,” she said. “And you need one.”

  “Do not.”

  “Do too.”

  Guido put a hand between them before they came to blows. “You two related?”

  “Related to this whore?” Sly sneered. “Fuck that.”

  “Wipe your face,” Pisces admonished the boy. “You eat like a pig.”

  Sly obeyed her by wiping his face. I was having some difficulty sorting out this relationship. In the restaurant Pisces had said there was someone she looked after. After meeting the boy, I had to wonder who actually looked after whom. She seemed to be trying to mother him, but on matters of street survival, I suspected that he was the pro. He had doubtless scripted her hooker routine. All by herself, the little girl I’d had dinner with would not have been able to come up with the line of garbage she had fed me.

  “So?” Guido said, gathering up the boy’s sandwich litter from the sidewalk. “Are you coming, or what?”

  Sly eyed him. “You cops?”

  “Nope.”

  “If we go to this place, what do we hafts do there?”

  “Take a shower if you want,” I said. “Eat. Go to sleep. That’s all.”

  “Eat?”

  “If you’re still hungry,” I said.

  “Sly’s always hungry,” Pisces said. “Must have worms.”

  “What’ll it be?” I asked.

  “Clean sheets,” she said.

  Sly reached for Pisces’ arm. “Okay. Just for tonight. But we gotta get our stuff first.”

  Pisces let out a long breath. I thought she seemed relieved. “Where’s your stuff?” Guido asked.

  “On the other side of the park,” she said. “We’ll show you.”

  “Fuck that.” Sly pushed her away from Guido. “Don’t show them nothin’. I’ll go get the stuff by myself. Meet me at the liquor store.”

  Sly gave us no time to argue. He ran off toward the park like a rabbit let out of a bag. As soon as he was across the street he somehow merged with the night and disappeared. A good trick, considering how much light there was.

  “Sweet child,” Guido said.

  “He used to be worse.” Pisces shrugged. “Where’s your car? It’s better to drive around the park than walk across it. Too many bizarros hang out in there. The liquor store is on the other side. I’ll show you.”

  Sly surprised me. I have been single long enough to have recognized the I’ll-call-you-tomorrow tone in his voice before he took off. Apparently, however, I had misread him. We found him waiting for us exactly where he’d said he would be. That meant that, A, he was fast, and B, the place where he kept his stuff was close by.

  When Sly climbed into the backseat of Guido’s Jeep beside Pisces, he was clutching a brown grocery bag against him that contained something about the same size and shape as a leg of lamb. Since it didn’t smell or leak, I didn’t ask.

  Sly and Pisces sat quietly in the back. She seemed apprehensive, while he appeared to be somewhat awed. He tried out the windows and fiddled with the seat belts and dome lights.

  “You got a CD player?” Sly asked.

  “No. Sorry,” Guido said.

  “Yeah.” Sly nodded sagely. “It just gets ripped off, don’t it?”r />
  I began to have second thoughts about what I might be delivering to Sister Agnes Peter. Troubled kids, certainly. A nightmare, possibly. From his fidgety silence, I suspected that Guido was having similar misgivings, though he didn’t say anything. Despite the potential for disaster, I could not come up with another alternative.

  What I’d told Pisces was true. Taking people in was part of Agnes Peter’s job description. She had doubtless dealt with tougher cases than these scrawny kids. I just hated being the bearer of grief. But in the end, I knew that if Agnes Peter couldn’t handle them, she would know who could.

  Sister Agnes Peter lived with about a dozen other nuns in a large bungalow on Griffin Avenue in Lincoln Heights. The house belonged to the church. It wasn’t a convent and none of its residents could be bothered wearing a traditional habit. Most of them taught at Sacred Heart High School in the next block. The rest of them were doers of the good work, like Agnes Peter, whose vows of poverty made them wards of the church.

  All things considered, the bungalow was a good place to seek sanctuary. The resident virgins wouldn’t take shit off anybody. Even the local gangs paid their respect: the walls of the house were the only flat surfaces for miles that weren’t tagged and scarred with gang graffiti.

  Agnes Peter was watching for us from the broad front porch, huddled in a wicker rocker under a crocheted afghan. She rose as we got out of the Jeep and came down the front steps to greet us, striding with the athletic assertiveness of a drill sergeant. I could not judge her age, fifty-something judging from the context of various conversations we’d had. There seemed to be a little more gray in her short brown hair than the last time I had seen her, though it could have been a trick of the silver moonlight.

  “Maggie MacGowen!” Agnes Peter beamed, crushing me in a bear hug. She always smelled of Zest soap. “Good to see you.”

  “How have you been, Pete?”

  “Flourishing. Just flourishing.” She stepped back and surveyed the others. “So, you’ve brought me some company?”

  “You remember Guido Patrini?” I asked.

  She offered her hand. “Nice to see you again, Guido.”

  “How are you, Sister?” he said, lowering his eyes, nervous as if she had caught him chewing gum in church.

  “Pete,” I said, “I want you to meet Sly and Pisces.”

  “Pisces, hmm?” Agnes Peter smiled, focusing on the girl. “Astrological sign of the fish. Your birthday’s in the spring, then?”

  Pisces shrugged.

  “It’s freezing out here. Come inside.” Agnes Peter took both kids in hand and moved with them toward the house. “Have you eaten?”

  “Yes,” said Pisces.

  “No,” said Sly.

  “You have too,” Pisces scolded.

  “Have not.”

  “Perhaps not enough,” Agnes Peters said. “I think we can find something to tide you over until breakfast, Sly.”

  Guido and I, ignored by the others, trailed up the steps and into the house.

  I was greeted by warm house smells, of dinner, furniture polish, and fresh flowers. The furnishings were old and the rugs were a bit threadbare. Just the same, there was a gracious air about the old place, a sort of well-tended, if impoverished, gentility. A house full of women.

  The old floorboards complained as we walked across the large foyer. But no one seemed to notice us. This house was filled with activity, and newcomers in the night weren’t cause for special notice. The chorus of conversation rose and fell as we passed each open doorway: women in the living room talking back to Arsenio on TV, others around the polished dining-room table grading papers, sharing a liter of diet Coke and a bag of Oreos.

  Gripping his bag of “stuff,” Sly clung close to Agnes Peter as we made our way toward the back of the house. Pisces seemed more at ease, openly curious about the place. Without seeming forward, she stopped as she passed a nearly antique baby grand piano and picked out the first few bars of “Fur Elise” with her right hand. Casey had been struggling mightily with the same piece for weeks.

  Pisces caught up to Agnes Peter. “The G is flat.”

  “I thought so, too,” Agnes Peter chuckled. “So, Pisces, Sly, how did you two meet?”

  “He was in trouble,” the girl said with a smug grin on her face.

  “Was not.” He gave her a token shove. “She was the one in trouble. Any asshole knows you get busted panhandling inside the market.”

  “Shoplifting is any better?” She returned the shove. “And who got busted?”

  “Both of us.” Sly finally smiled, an economic little crook at the corner of his mouth. “And we both got away, didn’t we?”

  “I’m glad you’re here. Both of you,” Pete said. She glanced over her shoulder at me. “Maggie, will you be staying the night?”

  “No. I’m at Guido’s for a couple of days.”

  Guido gave me a sharp jab in the back and a mortified glare. Like me, he had been raised a good Catholic.

  “Calm down,” I said. “Pete knows we’re just friends. Friends can stay under the same roof and not go to hell for it.”

  Agnes Peter laughed. “I saw Mike Flint last week, Maggie. He looks fine. Does he know you’re in town?”

  “I haven’t had a chance to call him,” I said.

  “Uh huh,” she said. “There’s a phone in the kitchen. Mike’s number is in the directory under F. You know, F as in ‘friend.’ “

  In the kitchen we interrupted two women who were seated at the enormous kitchen table poring over a ledger and a stack of bills. They looked up and smiled as we came in.

  “Mary Grace, Mary Catherine, we have some hungry guests,” Agnes Peter said. “Would you please see if we have anything in the refrigerator that might interest Miss Pisces and Master Sly? I want to see Maggie and Guido out.”

  Sly snapped his face up at me. “You leavin’ us?”

  “It’s late, kiddo,” I said. Sly had big, moist brown eyes that reminded me of a sickly puppy I had found dodging traffic on the Embarcadero a few years back. He had been a panic-stricken mess. Like any good citizen, I had taken him to the animal shelter. When I left him, his pathetic cries had followed me all the way out to the parking lot. He now weighs about fifty pounds and sleeps on the antique brocade sofa my grandmother bequeathed me. He still has big, moist brown eyes, and he still cries every time I leave the house.

  Pisces clutched the back of a chair, her eyes wide and steely. “Are you coming back?”

  “You’re in good hands here,” I said, wishing I didn’t feel so rotten about going away. “Just behave yourselves. If you need anything, tell Agnes Peter.”

  I watched Pisces swallow back panic. My impulse was to be a hero some more, promise her something. I just had no clue what that something might be. We had already done the Prince Charming thing and rescued her from the woods. Now what? I had no castle to offer her. Nor any happily ever after. Whether we left sooner or later, the pain for all of us would be the same. So I did what I hoped was the sensible thing. I followed Agnes Peter’s lead and walked out.

  When we were again out of earshot of the kitchen, Agnes Peter turned to me. “What do you know about them?”

  “Very little,” I said. “They seem to have been working the streets around MacArthur Park. She’s a nice kid. But Sly? You should lock up the silver tonight.”

  Pete smiled. “He’ll be fine. Did they say anything about family?”

  “Nothing specific,” I said. “Certainly nothing I could repeat without going to confession after. They both were very clear that they did not want to answer questions. I only got them here by promising that there would be none.”

  “You know I can only keep them here for so long, Maggie. I prefer to begin by making some contact with their families, determining whether that situation is redeemable before we call Child Protective Services. The kids will have to give me some background.”

  “Good luck,” Guido said. “They won’t talk.”

  “Don’ worry,
mein Herr.” Agnes Peter narrowed her eyes. “Ve haf our vat’s.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow, Pete.” Fighting back tears, I handed her all of my cash, maybe eighty dollars. “Anything you need…”

  “We’ll be fine, Maggie.” She wrapped a reassuring arm around me. “You’ve done all that you reasonably can. Sly and Pisces have troublesome problems. Their own problems. Remember that, Maggie, and don’t feel guilty about leaving. Your hands are full taking care of Casey. And Guido here. Don’t beat yourself up about what you can’t do.”

  “I’ll call,” I said.

  She shrugged. “That’s up to you.”

  “I’ll call.”

  I felt miserable all the way to Guido’s house. I think he did, too. He was very quiet, for which I was grateful. He took the long way home, driving through the hills of Elysian Park instead of going straight to the Hollywood Freeway.

  The park road offers one of the best views of the city. As the night was exceptionally clear, the city below shimmered like a movie version of fairyland. It was spectacular. I wondered what had happened to Cinderella after she moved out of her stepmother’s small house and into Prince Charming’s big one.

  When we were blasting north on the freeway, I turned to Guido. “Who said they lived happily ever after?”

  “Who?”

  “Cinderella and Prince Charming.”

  “The word probably came down from his public relations people. Why? What’s on your mind?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Please, God. Give me strength.” “For what?”

  “I know the signals. You’re cooking something, Maggie. I’m afraid to find out what it will be this time.”

  “Right,” I said. I was in the strangest mood, very antsy, and I couldn’t figure out exactly why. I slumped back against the seat to watch the lights go by, trying to clear the clutter from my mind.

  Guido lives in an inherited cottage that overlooks one of the canyons behind the Hollywood Bowl. The house is small but comfortable, an unpretentious ornament set on a million-dollar lot. When we turned up his street, we were less than two miles from the peak insanity of Hollywood Boulevard. Cradled deep among the canyons, we couldn’t see or hear anything except the sounds of wilderness around us.