The Deader the Better (2 page)

“That’s right.”

“Are you the girl’s legal
guardian?”

I figured this would be the end of
it. She’d tell me that she wasn’t, and then I’d tell her that
working for anybody other than the legal guardian was considered
extremely poor form by the local constabulary and generally resulted
in things like kidnapping charges. Wham bam, no thank you, mama.

“Yes, I am,” she said.

Before I could close my mouth, she
reached into the pocket of her dress and produced a folded piece of
paper. I took it. A copy of a court document. Indeed she was the
kid’s legal guardian. Peninsula County, September fifth this year.
Constance Pierce Hart was awarded full-time permanent custody of
Misty Ann McMahon, her granddaughter. Now I really didn’t want to
hear the story. The state of Washington exercises the greatest
reluctance—some say entirely too much—in separating children from
their parents, and on those rare occasions when they deem the child’s
welfare to be better off elsewhere, they are far more likely to
remand the child to the foster care system than they are to award
custody to a relative. I groped for an excuse as I slid the paper
across the table to her.

It’s like any lawyer will tell you.
Don’t ask questions that you don’t already know the answer to.
Curiosity got the best of me.

“What’s with the parents?” I
asked.

I slouched in my seat, waiting for
the painful dance that inevitably precedes a person admitting that
the seed of his or her loins is the scum of the earth. Tales of how
he’d always been a difficult child. Of how he’d always been far
too sensitive for the other children to understand. How maybe that
unfortunate incident with Mrs. Zahniser’s cat and the electric
charcoal lighter should have alerted them all. I’d heard it all
before. In my business, denial isn’t exactly a river in Egypt.

Constance Hart, however, was made of
far sterner stuff. Instead of making excuses, she pulled herself
erect, looked me hard in the eye and said, “My son Mark is a
pederast, Mr. Waterman. He molested his own daughter, Misty”—she
averted her eyes—“probably since birth.”

The air between us felt magnetized,
as if the leaden weight of her sudden admission was now partially
mine. It’s a feeling I get when people are forced to let me further
into their lives than either of us would prefer. I changed the
subject.

“And the mother?”

Her black eyes rolled back my way.

“Mona’s weak. She’s whoever and
whatever Mark tells her she is, and nothing more.”

She could tell I understood. Back
before no-fault divorce, I used to meet a lot of people like that.
People who had some how gotten the threads of their identities tied
up with those of their mates. People who’d spent twenty years
driving minivans and beginning sentences with “we,” as if they
had tapeworms, only to awaken one middle-aged morning to find the
fabric of their lives unraveling before their puffy eyes. Divorce
work had been steady, but somehow I didn’t miss it a bit.

“Did she know?”

“Of course,” she snapped. “She
was right there in the house. How can she say she didn’t know?”

When I didn’t respond, she went on.

“Which is why Misty has to be told
that she’s not going to have to go back home. Ever,” she added.
“That she will stay with me for as long as she chooses. If she
thinks you’re taking her back home, she won’t come with you.
You’d have to—”

I held up a palm. “Whoa, now…I
haven’t said anything about taking on the case.”

She didn’t argue or plead. She
simply said, “You must.”

I knew what I was letting myself in
for, but I asked her anyway.

“Why’s that?”

She told me her story. Mark McMahon
was her son by her first marriage. Raised by his father after the
divorce. Over in eastern Washington. He and Mona had been married for
nearly fifteen years. Three years ago, Mark had been transferred to
the Seattle area, affording Constance Hart an opportunity to get to
know the granddaughter she’d hardly met. From the beginning, she’d
sensed something was terribly wrong.

Misty had always been a timid,
withdrawn child, seemingly more content to play alone indoors than to
be outside with the other kids. A poor student. Unable to concentrate
on anything for very long, she was adjudged to have a learning
disability and was assigned to classes for the differently abled. And
it might have ended that way, too. She might have just been another
misdiagnosed kid who slipped through the cracks in the system and was
never seen again. Three months into the fifth grade, all students at
Westwood Middle School are shown a videotape designed to inform them
as to what is and is not appropriate touching on the part of
grown-ups. The tape is no big deal. Mostly drawings and arrows. Most
of the kids have seen it twice a year since second grade. Many nap.

This time, however, when the lights
were turned back on, something was amiss. Misty’s seat was empty.
The halls and restrooms were checked. Then the school grounds. The
police were called. Nearly an hour after her teacher reported her
missing, Misty was found huddled and nearly comatose in a supply
closet at the back of the maintenance room. Subsequent sessions with
the district psychologist revealed a pattern of sexual abuse dating
back to Misty’s earliest memories. Unfortunately, while the girl
was able to speak quite cogently of her father’s abuse within the
confines of therapy, Misty proved unable to handle cross-examination
in open court and eventually, despite three criminal trials, the
protests of the school district and the best efforts of Constance
Hart’s attorneys, the girl was remanded back into the custody of
her parents, from whom she then proceeded to run away at every
opportunity.

Misty’s father Mark made his fatal
mistake about three months ago. He’d kicked in his mother’s front
door, thrown her to the floor and then dragged his runaway daughter,
kicking and screaming, back out through the shattered portal. Big
mistake.

What Mark McMahon overlooked was that
Constance Hart’s front door was in Peninsula County, not King
County, and in Peninsula County, Ms. Constance Hart was both
extremely prominent and astonishingly well connected. Seems her late
husband Frank had not only left his widow extremely well fixed, but
had shown the remarkable foresight to have gone to college with both
of the county’s district judges, one of whom, after a suitable
period of mourning, now considered himself to be a serious suitor for
Constance Hart’s affections. She only had to ask once. Within
forty-eight hours, Mark McMahon had been arrested on a Peninsula
County warrant charging him with kidnapping, felonious assault, child
molestation and breaking and entering. As Misty was witness to the
alleged crimes, the county insisted that she be present at her
father’s arraignment. Once they had her back in their jurisdiction,
they ruled that Mark and Mona McMahon were unfit parents and awarded
permanent custody to Constance Hart. Halfhearted protests from King
County fell on deaf ears. That was the good news. The bad news was
that Misty’s previous experience with the social welfare system
had, quite understandably, failed to foster a great deal of faith in
the judicial process. While Constance Hart was in the Peninsula
County Courthouse, on the very day when she was awarded custody,
Misty ran away. That was three months ago yesterday. Constance Hart
gave me a rundown of her efforts to find her granddaughter. First the
cops. Overworked and understaffed. Runaways not a high priority. The
shelters. Doing the best they can. The CPS folks. Barely holding
their own. The missions. Same deal but with religion. Somebody said
maybe she ought to try a private firm. Hired Consolidated, the
biggest firm in town. For the past six weeks, they’d had an army of
suits papering the city with posters of the kid. No go.

“What makes you think she’s in
Seattle?”

“She called. About a month after
she ran away.” Her spine stiffened. She took a deep breath.
“She…she sounded like she was on drugs. She kept saying she was
fine. Just kept repeating that she was fine. I tried to explain the
court order…but she hung up.” She took a sip of her tea.

“I’m afraid you’re my last
resort, Mr. Waterman.”

Par for the course. Nobody comes to
me first. At least not with anything legal. In my business, you get
over any ro mantic idea that you were their first choice to help
them with their problem and come to realize that by the time they
worked their way down to your yellow pages ad, they’d already
consulted everything from the cops to the I ching.

“Why me?”

She eyed me carefully. “I heard—in
several places—that you were quite skilled at finding people and
things that didn’t want to be found. They said you were tenacious
and knew people on the street.”

Tenacious
was a pretty big
word for most of the people I knew on the street, so I asked, “Who
said?”

“They asked me not to use their
names.”

Couldn’t say I blamed them.

“What else did Misty say?”

“She said she was okay. She said
she’d seen her picture on a poster and wanted me to know that she
was okay.”

“That all?”

“I tried to tell her about the
court order, but she kept repeating that she was okay and that I
should stop looking for her.” She took a deep breath. “She said
an angel was taking care of her.”

I shuddered. Not
an
angel.
Angel. Angel Monzon. Kiddie pimp.

“Consolidated came up a complete
blank?” I asked. She pressed her lips into a thin line. “They
said…,” she began, “they said they had information that she
was…” She stopped again. Looking away this time. Shook her head.

“Turning tricks?” I prodded.

She gave the smallest of nods. I
wasn’t surprised. Pimps like Angel Monzon have a sixth sense when
it comes to finding the broken ones. The secret is to find the ones
who’ve already been to hell. Then the rest is easy. All that’s
left is to get them strung out on something they can’t afford and
then turn them out. I was betting Angel had been standing right by
Misty’s side while she talked to Grandma. Didn’t like the heat
from the posters. Especially not with one so young. Theysend your ass
down for thirteen-year-olds, and nobody but nobody wants to do state
time as a baby raper.

“Suppose I do find her,” I said.
“She’s been on the streets for three months.” She was stirring
her tea. “Mrs. Hart,” I said. Reluctantly, she raised her eyes to
mine. “Have you given any thought to what I might bring back to
you? Three months is an eternity on the streets for a kid that age.”

“What you bring home will be my
granddaughter.” She said it with such immense dignity that, for a
second, I almost believed it myself.

The words escaped my lips before I
had a chance to think.

“I’ll try to get a line on her,”
I said. G’s voice startled me. “What?” he barked. I showed him
my palms. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Yeah, but your big ass was
thinkin’. I could hear it.”

Two guys in yellow hard hats came out
of the diner and got into an orange Parks Department pickup truck.
The glare of the backup lights bathed the two women in stark black
and white.

Funny how light works. In the
spectral glare, Narva looked like the Vampire Princess. Tall,
translucent, seeming to glow with a deep inner light, the midnight
blue of her raincoat transmuted to black, lustrous and panther-rich.
Darlene just looked old. Like you could lose your Visa card in the
creases in her cheeks. She waved a long white cigarette as she spoke.
About every third word, she’d jerk her chin over her shoulder,
making sure the car hadn’t moved, and then she’d go back to
talking.

G noticed, too. He made a smacking
noise with his lips.

“That Narva girl.”

“You said you guys work a straight
percentage,” I prodded.

“Strictly business,” he said
quickly. “Hell…she don’t work but Friday and Saturday nights.
Gross five, six grand a weekend. Goes to graduate school the rest of
the time. Getting her a master’s or some such shit.”

“How much?”

“How much what?”

“How much does she get?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Lookin’
for a little somethin’ you can’t git at home?”

“Just curious.”

He eyed me closely. “The G man can
be very discreet. No reason Rebecca got to know. You know me…hey,
hey, I always say…a man’s business is a man’s business.”

“How much?”

“Fifteen hundred. Straight half and
half. Anything exotic is extra. Got her a small but real loyal
following.”

“That what she charges you?”

He scoffed as he adjusted his tie.
“You crazy? I don’t pay for no nappy dugout.”

“So…you gettin’ it for free,
then?”

He didn’t say a word, so I stayed
in his face. “What? No freebies for the G man? I thought the G man
always got freebies. You know…like one of the perks.”

He rolled his eyes toward the
headliner. “This one’s different.”

He sensed my astonishment.

“Shit, Leo. You know me.” He
twisted his lips into a wry grin and then laughed into the back of
his hand. “She first come to me with the proposition.” He made
his astonished face. “I figured, you know…so who’s this pushy
ho tellin’the G man hisself what she’s gonna do for him? So I
grab a handful of her hair…” He reached out over the dashboard
with his left hand. The handful of imaginary hair struggled mightily,
but the G man held on with grim resolve. “And I tell her, you know,
that ain’t how it works down here, sweet cakes.” He curled his
lip as he began to force the hand down toward the floorboards. “I
tell her, hey, baby…listen, what you do for me is get down on your
pretty little knees and polish the G man’s knob for a bit. That
way, you and me get this arrangement off on a right and proper
footing, so to speak.”