Earth Angel (7 page)

I dialed Tina Grover’s phone number.

“Hello?”

“Tina Grover?” I asked.

“Who’s this?”

Her voice was brusque and no-nonsense. I tried to summon what little charm I had. “This is Rita Hayes with A. C. Nielsen.
Are you familiar with our ratings service?”

“Sure. You’re the guys who rate the TV shows.”

“Exactly, Ms. Grover.”

“You want to stick one of those meters in our TV? Is that what this is about?”

“Well, you do fit our age and income profile, Ms. Grover. You do have a teenage daughter, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Terrific. Then what I’d like to do is send you a TV diary form. You just mark down what you watch over a week’s period and
send it back to us. After that, one of our representatives will contact you about becoming a Nielsen family. How’s that sound?”

“Sure, why not? Maybe I can save a couple of my favorite
shows from cancellation. You remember
Civil Wars
with Mariel Hemingway?”

“The divorce lawyers?”

“Right. I loved that show. They canceled it. Same with
Brooklyn Bridge,
about that Jewish family. My daughter and I watched that together.”

“If you’ll just give me your address, Ms. Grover, I‘ll send the packet out today.”

She gave me her address and I hailed a cab and raced over there.

I brushed my hair in the cab, raking it harshly so it hung straight down. I’d dyed it from blond to dark brown, and I’d abandoned
my contacts for my old wire-rimmed glasses. Straight brown hair, wire-rimmed glasses, jeans, white fisherman’s sweater: I
looked like a folk singer in search of a coffee house. I didn’t look anything like the Season Gottlieb who had been a nightly
feature on the news for three days. Fortunately, on the fourth day of my infamy, a famous baseball player ran over his girlfriend
with his car and I was dropped in favor of interviews with her from her hospital bedside. Tim and I were pretty much forgotten
after that.

The cabby stared at me in the rearview mirror. “You somebody?” she asked.

“Sorry?”

“You look familiar, so I thought you might be somebody famous. I collect famous people.” She popped her glove compartment
and took out a small photo album the size of a paperback book and handed it back to me. “Those’re some of my famous fares.”

I thumbed through the book. Each page was a plastic-enclosed snapshot of a person sitting in the back of this cab. Each person
looked startled, a little embarrassed, as if blackmail were somehow involved. I recognized some of the faces—Dan Ackroyd,
Diane Sawyers, Geraldo Rivera,
et cetera—but many I didn’t know. They were mostly big black men, so I assumed they must be professional athletes of some
kind.

“We’ve got a contest, the cabbies,” she said. “Whoever gets the most celebrity fares each month gets taken out to dinner by
the other cabbies.”

“That’s a lot of cabbies,” I said.

“Well, not everybody’s involved. Just a few of us women, you know, to keep things interesting. You gotta keep life interesting,
right? There’s an old Japanese prayer: ‘May you live in interesting times.’ ”

Actually, it was Chinese, and it was a curse, not a prayer. Interesting times were filled with strife and chaos. But I didn’t
mention that to her.

“So, are you somebody?” she persisted.

And for no reason that I understood, I said, “My fiancé gunned down a bunch a people a few weeks ago.”

“Jesus. Really?”

I nodded.

“What did you do?”

“Do?”

“Yeah, like did you dive for cover. Was this at work? Most women are murdered at work, you know?”

Carol had already told me as much, although this woman was misstating the statistic: most women aren’t murdered at work; most
women who die at work are murdered. Completely different statistic. But who cared about statistics? If this cab driver really
thought about statistics she’d jump out of the cab right now and keep running. After all, taxi drivers had a job-related homicide
rate of twenty-seven murders per hundred thousand, which was forty times the national average, three times the risk faced
by liquor-store workers, who rank second (gas station attendants rank a distant third). I tried to imagine how she faced work
each day knowing that risk. I guess I never got around to answering her question because after a minute she said, “Well,
what could you do? Something like that, what can you do? Cover your ass and hope for the best. What’s your name?”

“Season Gottlieb.”

She shook her head. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

That surprised me, but pleasantly so. I just assumed my name was branded into everyone’s brain.

We pulled up to the curb of a fairly suburban neighborhood. My wallet was in my jacket because there was no room in my purse,
what with the fifty thousand dollars crammed in there. As I pulled a twenty out of my wallet, I looked up to see the cabby
turn around with a disposable camera in her hand.

“You mind?” she said. “just in case one of the other cabbies recognizes you. Hell, it could mean a free dinner to me.”

“Fire away,” I said. She snapped my photo, gave me change.

“Would you mind waiting,” I said. “I’m only going to be a couple of minutes.”

She turned around and started the meter again. “It’s your time.”

I knocked on the door and Tina Grover answered. I recognized her from the news video of the memorial service. She seemed shorter
in real life, shorter and more delicate, classically Japanese. She was thirty-six, worked part-time for a realty company,
and got home early so she could be waiting for her daughter after school. It was only two in the afternoon and her daughter
wasn’t due home for another hour. I’d gotten all that from an article the
Chicago Sun
had done on her after the shooting.

“Ms. Grover?” I asked.

She didn’t answer, just looked blankly at me. Only half her body stuck out of the door. I imagined she had a baseball bat
or gun in the hand I couldn’t see.

“Ms. Grover, I represent the Victims’ Association of Orange
County. We wish to express our sorrow and regret over your recent loss.”

She said nothing. Just stared.

“Our organization was formed as a nonprofit charity designed to compensate surviving family members of violent crimes. Local
businesses contribute to a general fund and we give this money to family members.”

“Do you have any ID?”

I faltered. I didn’t expect that. Usually when you want to give something free to people they just take it. “Of course,” I
said, smiling. “It’s at the bottom of my purse. If you’ll just let me hand over the award from the Victims’ Association, I‘ll
show you my authorization.” I was hoping that holding fifty thousand dollars in cash would help her forget the whole ID issue.
I swung my purse around so it rested against my stomach. It was fat as a bowling ball, pregnant with crisp new bills. I opened
the clasp and it sprang open to reveal the money. I started taking it out, lining it along my left arm like cradling a baby.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “I’m not taking any cash.”

“It’s a gift, Ms. Grover. No strings attached.”

“First of all, I don’t know you or your organization. If you want to give me money, contact my lawyer first. I’m in the middle
of preparing a three-million-dollar lawsuit against the city of Irvine as well as the medical clinic where my cousin was killed.
Without proper paperwork, accepting this money might be construed as a settlement.”

“But I don’t represent either of those parties, Ms. Grover. This is meant to be a gift. Just a gift. To ease your pain and
suffering.”

“My lawyer is Daniel O‘Hara with Thompson, Jenning, and O‘Hara. Talk to him.” She closed the door.

Beth Grover, fourteen, ate the first corn dog in three bites. The second one she took her time with, nibbling the fried batter
exposing the tip of the hot dog, then biting
the naked dog. She repeated this technique all the way down the stick. Afterward, she drained her lemonade and threw the empty
cup into the garbage. She hoisted her blue backpack onto one shoulder and headed back through the mall again.

While Beth had been eating her corn dogs, I’d ducked into the Hallmark store and bought a fancy gift bag and some colored
tinsel stuffing. Inspired by the cabby, I also bought a disposable camera. Took less than a minute. I sat at a Food Court
table away from everyone but still keeping Beth in sight. Under my table, I lowered my purse into the fancy gift bag, emptied
the money into the bag, removed my purse, and fluffed the orange tinsel over the top of the money.

I watched her eat her corn dogs, drink her lemonade, even conscientiously wipe the table afterward with a napkin. From what
I’d been able to guess about Beth from just observing her, she seemed like a pretty decent kid. On the video of the memorial
service, she’d held her mother’s arm the whole time, hugged her shoulder when her mother cried. Watching her wipe the table
with that tiny folded napkin, I felt that familiar tweak at my heart I got lately whenever I ran across a child who wasn’t
a monster. My first thought was always the same: Maybe Tim and I will get lucky and ours will turn out like that, not hating
us, but asking for advice and bringing friends over because we’re cool to be around. Then the tweak turned to a burn as I
remembered Tim was dead and we wouldn’t be having a child. Realistically, what were my chances of falling in love with someone
new, going through the lengthy commitment ritual, followed by the protracted should-we-procreate debate, and somehow ending
up with both a loving husband and a devoted child?

Beth was on the move again. I followed her as she browsed through a couple more stores, kind of proud of my shadowing abilities.
She’d been easy to find. One of
the local newspaper articles had mentioned which school Beth attended, and after being dumped by her mother earlier, I’d had
the cab rush me straight to the high school and waited for her to get out. I’d been on her tail ever since.

But it was time to get this over with. If the mother wouldn’t take the money, maybe the daughter would. Once they had it,
there would be no one to give it back to.

She began checking her watch every few minutes and I knew she was getting ready to leave the mall. Apparently she’d just come
by here to kill some time before going home, where she’d be asked about her day in school, help prepare dinner, and have to
finish her homework before she could watch TV or call her friends. Finally, she headed for the exit. I started closing in.

As I got closer, I could see how pretty she was. Her long, shiny black hair hung to her elbows, and her face was clearly Asian.
She was half a foot taller than her mother and not at all chubby as I’d first thought, but broad and athletic.

I waited until she left the mall before approaching her.

She was walking briskly toward the bus stop.

“Ms. Grover?” I called out.

She stopped and turned toward me.

“Beth Grover?” I asked.

“Who are you?” She stared at me. Her mother had warned her about strangers.

“I’m Rita Hayes with Sears. It was brought to my attention that you just bought a compact disc from our store.”

She nodded. “I paid for it.”

“Of course you did, Beth. That’s why I’m here. Our cash registers have been programmed to monitor our sales. When you bought
that CD, the computer popped out your name as our one millionth customer!” I smiled broadly, injecting my voice with great
enthusiasm. I pulled my disposable camera from my pocket and snapped a couple
photos of her. “For the publicity department. Naturally we’ll be sending some real photographers over to your house for the
publicity campaign. A couple of reporters will contact you—”

“How come you guys waited till now to say something? I left Sears half an hour ago.”

“New sales clerk. She didn’t know what the computer meant when it flagged your sale. Another clerk spotted it, gave me your
name from the check, your description, and I thought I’d catch you before you got home. Now, the store has a special gift
for you.” I handed her the bag. She took it tentatively. Before she could look inside, I pulled out my camera again. “Now,
I just need a couple more shots of you with the gift.” I snapped away. “Okay then, that should do it. We’ll be calling you
about showing up for a ceremony. Meantime, take the gift home, enjoy it and we’ll be in touch.” I started walking away. My
heart was pounding but I tried to stay calm, not walk too quickly.

I heard her behind me, rustling through the bag. Under her breath she muttered, “Holy shit.”

Her footsteps slapped pavement as she ran up to me. “Wait a second, ma’am.”

I turned to her and smiled. “What are you going to do with all that money, Beth? Spend it at Sears, I hope.”

“I don’t know. How much is it?”

“Fifty thousand dollars. Enough for college.”

“I guess I‘ll talk it over with my mom. I know we can use the money.”

Good, I thought. I relaxed, let the warmth from having done something good spread inside my chest. Somebody’s life was better
off than it had been before. That’s all I’d wanted.

“Listen,” Beth said, “I’m kinda embarrassed, but I have to go to the bathroom. I don’t want to go with all this money. Can
you go with me?”

I didn’t want to hang around now that I’d delivered the
money. I was uncomfortable lying to her and I had other people on my list. I had to make reservations for San Francisco. I
had to go to the bank and withdraw another fifty thousand dollars.

But I liked Beth. Besides, it might seem suspicious to refuse.

I walked with her to the restroom but waited outside the door holding the bag of money. Women kept going in and out. One woman
coming out gave me a strange look, as if I were some pervert loitering. After about ten minutes I started to get concerned
and went inside. Beth was washing her hands.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Sure.” She patted her stomach. “Nerves. I’ve never seen that much money before.”

I laughed. “Me neither.”

I walked her back into the mall corridor, shook her hand. “Take care, Beth. Good luck.”