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Authors: Tareka Watson

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BOOK: Addie Combo
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“You just said he’s got money troubles.”
“No, I said he’s not doing as well as he might have seemed to be doing. That’s a far cry from
enough motivation to risk his entire life, even if he’s got a pigeon like you to take the fall.”
I decide not to be offended by his use of the term
pigeon.
That’s what I allowed myself to
become, after all. But something else he says gnaws at me.
Thinking out loud, I say, “He seemed like such a tender, caring person. But of course he’s a
pure BS artist, so he was lying about that too!”
“Stands to reason.”
“So probably, this guy doesn’t really care about anything at all. Maybe after losing his
family, he just decided, y’know,
Screw it! Right or wrong, legal or illegal; what’s the
difference?
He might have been a decent person before that, but then he just sort of ... fell off the
moral grid.”
“And when you don’t believe in anything,” Quinton suggests, “when everything you’ve ever
loved has been taken away from you ... ”
“When nothing means anything, money’s as good a thing to have, to love, as anything else.”
“Better, if that’s the way you see the world.”
We look at each other, each asking ourselves what kind of person we truly are inside, how
guilty we might not be of the same transgressions.
Well,
I quickly decide,
I’m not as guilty of anything as this dirtbag con artist is! None of us
is perfect, but some of us are a damn-sight closer to it than others!
Moving away from the question for a moment, Quinton asks me, “You’re sure you never
knew this man before moving here?”
“I’m sure of it, absolutely.”
“Your father’s never heard the name, doesn’t have any longstanding feuds or -”
“We’re from Colorado, Quinton, not the Ozark Mountains or the Okefenokee Swamps.”
“Revenge is a primary motivator of almost every type of crime there is, Addie.” He looks at
me with stern coolness, his line of sight holding my own in its icy beam. “Now isn’t the time to
be careless. We can’t afford to overlook a single possibility. I’ll ask him. Or ... you could.”
“I called him, told him how grateful I was about what he’d done, putting his house up and
everything.” I’m chilled just to recall the clumsy phone conversation. “He just grunted once or
twice, hardly said a thing.”
“Really.” Quinton gives it a little thought, mouth in a considered frown. “I don’t think he’ll
ever be published in
The New Yorker,
but I found your father to be quite ... not erudite, but
articulate at least.”
I can hardly believe what I’m hearing. My father and I barely shared more than twenty
words my whole life, of which fifteen passed between us while my mother was still alive. And
while I always did attribute it to her death, I look back and realize that even in the years before, I
was lucky to get more than a grunt out of him.
“Y’know, Addie, a lot of men ... they just can’t relate to women well. It’s not that they don’t
like them, or love them, or entertain the full spectrum of feelings for them. But they just have a
block of some kind, keeps them from reaching out, making contact.”
I sit in the silent wake of his summary, reflecting on sad scenes and long nights of isolation
and disquiet, a festering sorrow I couldn’t shake even in my happiest moments. I can’t shake
them now. But I may understand them, at least a little better.
“If he felt that way before Mom died,” I reason out loud, “no wonder he found it even harder
to relate to me after.”
“It’s good of you to be so sympathetic to him,” Quinton says with a smile that shows his true
admiration, not merely his desire. “A lot of people would hate him for the way he treated you.”
“And I -” But I stop myself; unwilling to say it, much less believe it, or abide it, or live
with the burden of it. “And I
did
, for a long time. But he’s risking everything now to save me, I
... I know it’s not that he doesn’t love me, that he never loved me. I guess he just didn’t know
how to show it.”
We sit in the sad calm of my realization; it brings no joy, but it does relieve some sorrow.
And at least I manage to extract some bittersweet amusement from the irony it conveys. “Funny
thing is, I think Randolph has more-orless the same relationship with his own mother.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Well, I guess we all feel this way to a certain extent, but there was a weird kind of tension in
the room when we visited, an energy I found kind of disconcerting. Looking back, I guess they
were just having one of those moments. Hard to tell, with that Scottish accent, I couldn’t make
out most of what she was saying.”
“Scottish?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure.” I sit, watching Quinton roll it over in his mind. “What?”
He says, “Nothing, but ... he’s about mid-thirties, that would make her about mid-fifties,
maybe sixty.”
“So?”
Quinton can only shrug. “First generation immigrant from Scotland, circa 1970s or so, and
she didn’t grow up speaking English?”
I give it some thought for the first time.
It’s true, that is kind of strange; but there are
immigrants from all over who speak their native language. Besides,
“She might have been
speaking in Scottish so she could talk to Randolph about me without me knowing.”
“Scots, they speak Scots.”
“Who, the Scottish?”
“No, Scots.”
“The Scots.”
“Yes.”
“They speak Scottish?”
“No, Scots,”Quinton says. “The people and the language, both called Scots.”
I have to look at him sideways for a moment. “How do you know so much about it?”
“I’m Scottish myself ... Scots, Abbie; Quinton James ... ?”
Something else to which I’d given absolutely no thought at all. I don’t see people that way; I
judge the person, not their race or ancestry.
But it’s not just an insider’s view of Scottish history (or Scots history, or ...
Scots-ish?
) that
Quinton is alluding to. “I wonder if she wouldn’t mind having a little chat.”
“You can speak ... that language, Scots?”
“A bit ... enough, I think. She’d probably be thrilled just to knock the mother tongue a
round
a little bit. Y’never know.” After a moment, in which Quinton seems to be assessing the
possibilities, he adds, “She might even be willing to flip, give us something that’ll settle this
once and for all.”
“You really think she’d rat out her own son?”
“You know how people treat the elderly in this country,” Quinton says with a wry smile.
“You remember where she lives?”
“I do. Shall we make an offer?”
It does feel a little desperate, but I guess that makes it all the more appropriate too. And I’m
glad to be out, moving forward instead of merely around in circles, getting nowhere in that little
living room.
We drive down to her apartment and ring the bell, but there’s nobody home. Quinton takes a
look at the directory. “Name’s MacLeish, right?” Without waiting for me to ask, he says, “Unit
1?”
“Yeah, right in front here.”
“And you’re sure this is the right building?”
I think about it for a minute, not sure whether to be confused and embarrassed or offended
and self-righteous. Instead, I simply wait and he explains, “Name’s not right on the directory,
that’s all.”
Hhhmmm,
I think,
really? Well ...
“Maybe she remarried at some point.”
Quinton looks around. “Maybe.” We cross back to his car and climb in.
“Now what?”
With a long, tired sigh, Quinton scrunches down in the driver’s seat and peaks out at the
apartment across the street. “Now, we wait.”
I can’t deny that I’m a little excited. I’ve never been on a stakeout before, and the suspense
is really quite thrilling. The longer it takes, the more suspense accumulates, ratcheted up tighter
and tighter, right to the breaking point and then just a little bit beyond it.
A royal blue Honda Accord rolls up as the subterranean garage gates open. A woman is
behind the wheel. I slip down just a bit.
“That her?” Quinton asks.
I have to shake my head. “Don’t think so, hard to tell.”
The gate closes behind the door as it disappears into the dark of the parking lot. We wait, the
sound of our breaths the only distraction. I see her walking through the interior of the complex,
past several apartment doors from the rear and straight toward the unit in front.
“You’re sure you went into that front apartment?”
“I am, Quinton; yes, I’m sure.”
The woman approaches the apartment and puts the keys in, taking just a few seconds to get
herself in. She’ s not unattractive; in her mid-thirties, I’d guess, with red hair and a shapely
figure.
“And that’s not her?”
“Look at her, Quinton, does that look like a sixty-yearold hag?”
Quinton looks at her, then at me. “Well then?”
I think about it, running through the possibilities in my head.
Different name on the
intercom, different-looking woman, same apartment. Rudolph’s mother’s maid or caretaker?
No, dummy ...
“She’s an actress,” I say.
Quinton cranks the key and the engine turns over, growling and ready for action. “Plenty of
ways to find out.”
We head back across town to the apartment. Quinton gets on the internet, running quick
checks on the name listed on the intercom for that apartment and address (Lawrence is the last
name), then searching that name and the name of Margaret MacLeish. It doesn’t take long.
“She’s in the IMDb,” he says, reading my confused expression. “Internet Movie Database.
Caroline Lawrence was on an episode of
Gossip Girl
, as a TV reporter, and an unaired American
pilot of the English sitcom
Black Books.

“You’re kidding me,” I mutter, long past the possibility of being shocked by anything this
cad could do. And yet, he manages to outdo himself! Maybe it’s my sad experiences with my
own mother, and how he used that to manipulate me; even with everything else he’s pulled, it
just makes me sick. My blood feels like it’s boiling in my veins, my skin prickling with a
thousand angry needles.
Until Quinton says, “We finally caught a break!”
CHAPTER NINE
My preliminary hearing comes just a week or so later. The question is whether there is
enough evidence to take my case to trial, not my ultimate guilt or innocence. Other than that, it’s
very much like a trial, with witnesses both for andagainst me. The idea here, I’m told, is to
analyze evidence, weigh the credibility of witnesses, and resolve factual conflicts.
And no prosecutor wants to prosecute an innocent person, or a case they can’t win. So
Quinton assures me it won’t be a terribly uphill battle; we’re simply outgunned and
outnumbered.
And for the State to prove that there is probable cause for a trial, which is all California needs
to do in this case, is not going to be too challenging.
They do this all the time,
I figure as I sit, waiting for my turn on the chopping block.
But I don’t have to face the block alone. Of all the witnesses, surely the most amazing to me,
and the most startling I think to everyone present, is my father, Archibald Compo. I’ve almost
never seen him in a suit before, accept for my mother’s funeral. And if I’m not mistaken he’s
wearing the same suit now he wore then.
But he’s here,
I tell myself, his shaggy, graying hair
nicely trimmed, my brothers with him and also well dressed and respectful. Even with a growing
business to see to, they’ve come to support me. This is a feeling that I haven’t known since my
mother was alive; that we are a family, a single unit that nobody and nothing can tear apart. The
feeling of family is like no other; a sense of security, of belonging, of being in tune with the
vibration of the people around you. It may sound hokey, but that’s what family feels like to me.
Blood knows its own. And no matter how this hearing or my future goes, I’ll be grateful to have
that feeling once again; even if it comes too late, and for the last time.
My father gives his name and expresses his understanding that he’s under oath to tell the
truth, the whole truth and nothing but. He swears to God that he will.
The prosecuting attorney, the familiar, pouchy Sabrina Jerome, seems very friendly to my
father, welcoming him to California and extending all kinds of courteous well-wishes.
Smiling like a crocodile,
I think to myself as she sets him up for a fatal strike.
She finally gets around to the question of my life in Colorado before moving to Los Angeles.
“So you would describe your daughter as a happy little girl,” Miss Jerome says, “well
adjusted after her mother’s death?”
My dad clears his throat, pulling his chin away from his collar a bit, loosening its grip around
his neck. “I’m afraid I could not say that, much as I would like to be able to. And ... and it was
my fault that she wasn’t happy, her brothers and I ... ” I glance at my brothers, Jared and Jesse,
too sheepish in their shame to face me. But I’m not angry with them now; and I wish I could tell
them that I don’t mind what kind of life I had then, that it’s in the past and not important.
My dad goes on to say, “We worked her like a slave, cooking and cleaning for us, all the
while going to school and holding down a job at the little bakery. No wonder she wanted to get
away, live her own life -”
“And do you think that, given those circumstances, she would be likely to try something
desperate, something illegal -?”
“Objection,” Quinton says, “leading the witness. Your honor, is this the kind of case we’re
going to have to fight? There’s no evidence against my client in this testimony -”
“Overruled,” the Honorable Yoshi Takimara says, “I’m going to let the witness continue.”
My dad looks at the judge, who gives him a nod. “Well,” my dad goes on, “to answer the
question, I can tell you my daughter would not have done anything illegal. We hadn’t driven her
that far over the brink. I’d say we made her angry at us, but not a
t the whole world. For that, she
deserves the credit; but I’m the one who’s grateful.”
“And we’re all very impressed with her work ethic,” Miss Jerome says.
My dad nods as he seems to think about it. “It’s all in the records; school full-time, worked
more’n thirty hours a week at the shop. Either o’ my boys’ll tell you she spent at least a few
hours a day cooking and cleaning. That doesn’t even count the time she spent studying. She had
a high grade average, three-pointfive! You don’t get that without putting some time in with the
books.”

BOOK: Addie Combo
2.66Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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