— Dunno.
— Can we walk there?
Her withering look indicates there’s little chance of that.
— Let’s go and get some breakfast and work out how far it is. I’m hungry. What about you?
— I guess so.
He looks at her bare arms. Her tank top and its salacious proclamation. — Better stick on a jacket. I think it’s colder than it looks, he says, heading to the lounge and picking up the copy of Perfect Bride.
9
Police
THE SUN RADIATES through a thin mesh of cloud, but a cool, persistent wind steals the heat from the air. Lennox is right; it isn’t as warm as advertised. Tianna, carrying a backpack designed as a flattened sheep, and wearing a light blue denim jacket, kindles some jealousy in him; he could do with something to cover his arms. He’s lost the Red Sox hat and his shades, probably left behind in one of the bars or on the bus. His good hand clutches the bridal magazine. He doesn’t have a clue where he’s going, or why. A white van sets his hackles rising as it pulls up outside the apartment block. A boiler-suited man emerges with a metal canister on his back, and is cursorily greeted by Tianna.
— Who’s that? Lennox asks.
— The exterminator, she explains, his glaikit expression compelling her to add, — They spray all the apartments for bugs.
They walk through the streets of square blocks over huge cracked concrete sidewalks, past houses and yards, coming on to a main road and a strip mall. There’s nothing of interest: a real-estate agent, a security firm and a hairdresser’s. It isn’t a bad neighbourhood, though. He’s seen a lot worse. The girl keeps step alongside him, deep in thought. Her hair blows a little in the breeze, and he imagines her walking to school, like Britney used to.
For Tianna walking to school was always Alabama. Sucking in the medley of forms, sounds and movements along the Tallapoosa River route, the swampy aromas taking the urgency out of the day’s excited voices. It was different in Miami, that mirthless ride in the school bus rambling down the palm-treed avenues. Teased from the start for her rudimentary Spanglish. Her bag seized on her first day by two boys who tossed it back and forth to each other. She knew they’d wanted her to exasperate and humiliate herself by trying to retrieve it. But she’d been suddenly stung by the dire recall of what he’d said to her about being a woman, not a little girl, and she’d simply waited disdainfully till they’d become bored. They’d cursed her in Spanish as they dropped the bag at her feet, but it was half-hearted as they were quickly off in search of a more responsive victim. Pappy Vince, she remembered, had shown her good things too.
The apartment, a palace of functional understated luxury, is a short cab ride from the cocktail bar. A pool and hot tub built into a glass-enclosed patio look out on to the ocean beyond, the inky blue of each almost imperceptibly blending in the night. He’d suggested the nightcap at his place, and when she thought of Ray, out carousing full of cocaine, and probably in the arms of some slut, she was happy to agree.
Aaron Resinger seems as designed as his home. Hair dark and wavy. Body heavy with muscle built and honed in the gym since college years. An admitted workaholic, he tells her that he is one of few native South Floridians. He’d studied Real Estate Finance and Urban Planning at the University of Miami and made his money in the condominium boom of the early nineties. Success has come at a cost, as a few months ago, he’d split up with a long-term partner. — I guess I’ve been licking my wounds since, he sings with a hint of melancholy through a grill of perfect white teeth.
After pouring Trudi a drink, and showing her his art collection, they stand on the patio, looking out to where the Biscayne Bay meets the Atlantic Ocean. — When I built this place I decided that I simply couldn’t find anywhere better to live, he purrs. Trudi feels like a film star, ennobled and exalted by the attentions of this man. When he kisses her, she responds. At first tentatively, then, as she thinks of how Ray Lennox has treated her, with ferocious abandon. When they break off, he sweeps the hair from her face, looks into her eyes, and says with a sincerity she finds crippling, — I would really like to make love to you.
Trudi smiles and allows herself to be led by the hand into a master bedroom. She knows at that moment that when she tells this story to the girls in some wine bar back home, they will all be letting out volleys of uncontrollable laughter. But right now, in this luxury, under the moonlight, with the crashing waves outside and her burned by alcohol and thoughts of a treacherous, uncaring fiancé, it is by far the best show in town.
He beats out an edgy rhythm on his thigh with Perfect Bride as they walk. Lennox had tried to chat but the kid wasn’t forthcoming. It was easier getting information out of hardened cons. He didn’t push it because he sensed she carried the sort of hurt that engendered introspection.
His mouth feels bad, and he thinks about getting some gum. It’s a strain with the American kid, and he’s relieved when they come across a local police station. He doesn’t want to alarm her. Luckily, there is a diner across the street. — I been there before, Tianna says uneasily, pointing at it. — Starry works there.
Perhaps Starry would be able to help sort out this mess. She was a total bitch last night but then she was coked up. And she is Robyn’s friend. Or is she? He’ll soon find out.
Mano’s Grill might have been considered a good place to waitress. A very narrow L-shaped space, there are no tables as such, just a counter that runs along the length of one wall, alongside which chairs are positioned. The customers can almost reach over and touch the short-order cooks: one of whom he believes to be Mano himself. Another counter with more stools underneath runs round the periphery, along some big plate-glass windows. Lennox can envision Starry stretching across to pass the plates to these customers over the heads of the poor stiffs at the counter.
But he’ll bet that she never does that when Mano’s around. An aggressive caricature posted above the counter depicts a younger, hairier, slimmer version, but still instantly recognisable as him. It warns underneath: THIS AIN’T BURGER KING – HERE WE DO THINGS MY WAY.
With Tianna reluctantly alongside him, Lennox watches Mano in action. As he shouts at a waitress, bitterness seeps from him, strong enough to taint every bite of the food he cooks. Then Lennox sees that there is an alcoved passage leading to restrooms, then a bigger dining space. Mano’s empire extends to a busy area of tables, chairs and another counter with a register. Even a separate kitchen seems to be in operation.
Lennox hazily recalls Starry telling him last night that she’d been working there for four years. It was probably a lifetime in a place like this, he considers. In caustic semi-drunkenness, she’d told him somewhere between a boast and a lament that it was the longest she’d ever held down a job in her life. No matter how crazy her own lifestyle got, Starry contended she’d never missed a shift. This had seemed doubtful to him at the time. It’s exposed as nonsense as he asks the waitress – the one Mano chewed out – if she’s due in. The woman glares confrontationally at him. — You know that beetch? Where ees she?
— I was hoping you could tell me.
— Ha! How should I know? I have to cover her sheeft, she spits in uncontrived anger.
Lennox sits down with Tianna who seems relieved at Starry’s absence. He fancies a milkshake. He remembers the ones in the Howard Johnson’s on Times Square in New York with the boys. They were good. But they’d soon turned into Bloody Marys.
They order a chocolate shake for him, with toast and eggs. Tianna gets a Coke, burger and fries. Lennox’s appetite is shot. He dabs at the eggs with toast, dropping an accidental bomb of yolk on Perfect Bride, and sucks on the shake that cools his raw throat. The kid is hungry. There is a quick, methodical single-mindedness about the way she attacks her food. He wonders when she last ate. — You stay here, he tells her, standing up. — I’m just going to get some cigarettes next door, he raps out the easy lie of the infidel cop.
— Uh-huh, she replies and now her eyes seem so big, — That would be way cool.
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— For me, he snaps in exasperation. — Wait here, he reiterates.
Striding out of the diner, Lennox marches across to the smart new building bearing the sign indicating Miami–Dade County Police Department. It takes up a good part of a city block. Inside there would be men and women, like his colleagues back home, earning a living through law enforcement. It’s crazy. He’s an experienced cop, but he doesn’t know what he’s going to say. Without authority or status he’s pared down to his essence: a doubter, operating in a world where such luxuries were frowned upon. Lennox stops outside the glass doors. Now is not the time to doubt. Now is the time to act.
The likes of Dougie Gillman would stride in and report the kidnapping, abandonment, molestation and attempted rape of a minor to the desk officer. Not only that, he’d do it with a sneering contempt that said: ‘Where the fuck were youse?’ And that’s what he is steeling himself to do, thinking of his actor brother, Stuart, telling him how he got himself into role.
As he opens the door, he sees a very large woman leaning across the desk. Her outsized rump, encased in pink stretched leggings, sticks in the air and partially blocks his view of the officer behind the reception counter who attends to her. Then the man shimmies to one side and lifts his head and Lennox and the desk cop gaze at each other in mutual shock.
It is Lance Dearing who speaks first, as the flight urge explodes like a starter’s pistol in Ray Lennox, who twists away from the desk.
— Why, you jus hold on a minute there, Ray – Lance begins, but the barrel of a woman is shouting at him: — You gotta get him outta my house! He ain’t got no business to be in my house!
— Ma’am, if you don’t mind … Dearing says, stepping out from behind the counter.
Ray Lennox walks quickly through the glass doors and out of the police station. His jarring staccato descent down the steps evokes a pianist playing chopsticks. At the bottom he breaks into a trot and then a sprint. The lay-off from his sporting endeavours is painfully evident: his weight hangs around his heart and lungs and his leg muscles ache. Under his soles the slabs on the sidewalks are cracked and uneven, and he self-consciously fears for his footing. Then the bilious mass seems to lift, his chest holding the air, lightening him, and Lennox is flying.
Tianna is sitting where he left her, finishing off her food, looking at the wedding magazine. The urgency signalled by Lennox’s entrance makes her pack a few ketchup-laden fries into her mouth before he reaches the table.
— We have to go, he gasps, counting out some bills.
— What about Momma? Tianna asks, making Lennox briefly think of his own mother.
— Your mum’s not well, but she’s gonna be okay. He rests his hands on the counter, shoulders heaving. He is rewarded by a suspicious glance from Mano that reminds him of a scene from some movie. — We have to go now, go and see Chet, he emphasises, picking up the magazine and heading to the register. He pays the clerk and ushers Tianna towards the door. — You have to tell me about those two guys who came by last night. Johnnie and Lance.
— I don’t wanna talk about them. She turns her head in rapid, emphatic movements. — I don’t like them!
— Who are they? he persists. — Have they tried to hurt you before?
The girl’s line of vision shoots past him, her eyes wide with the expectation of impending trauma. She’s gone somewhere and he needs her here. Gently but firmly, he grips her shoulders and she meets his gaze. — I know you’ve heard this bullshit line before in your life and I absolutely guarantee that you’ll hear it again. But now it’s time to believe: trust me.
A spark ignites in her as she glances over his shoulder again. — Quick. She takes him by the arm and leads him through the doors to the restrooms. Following her, he steals a look across the crowded diner. At the other door Lance Dearing has walked in and is scanning the joint. Their eyes meet and Dearing’s brows knot, his bottom lip curling. Guessing that the man would have the balls or the desperation to shoot him dead in a packed diner, then claim he abducted a Florida minor, Lennox lets the sprung door snap shut behind them.
Tianna evidently knew that the restrooms also led to the restaurant extension, the back of which empties out on to a parking lot. They move swiftly across the space, which contains only a few cars and a skip. The terror of a marksman’s bullet in his back pulls him inwards in expectation of impact. His head swivels to Tianna but she’s keeping an even, measured stride with him as they run on to another road. Again, he glances back for signs of Dearing, but there’s nothing. Rather than give chase by foot, he’d be back in his car, trying to track them down. The main road opens back on to one more set of neighbourhood side streets cut into blocks, and they steal down one. To Lennox they seem featureless in their uniformity, as they move swiftly, looking back for pursuing vehicles. It’s hotter now and heavier after the effort he’s expended in this flight from Dearing. The sun spreads across the back of his head and neck, his brain numb and oxygen-deprived as they slow to a trot and then a walk, mute with fear and breathlessness, just waiting to be apprehended.
Yet nothing happens as they continue to trek in zoned-out quiescence, glad of the meagre cover of the trees sprouting from street and garden, affording at least some shelter from both sunlight and passing eyes.
Tianna is thinking about the boys on the school bus. She didn’t mind them calling her a slut. They said the same to the white-socked Catholic Latinas in the plaid school dresses, even when they came out of church. That old stucco one with the crude stained glass, colour weakened by constant sun spitting through the palm leaves. Tianna had even thought about going in there, wondering if other girls had shared her fate, and if they’d found peace inside. But her momma had no time for it, for the dirty old pious-faced men in frocks and bad shoes. The only men she didn’t have time for. Now she’s looking at the tall Scotsman – Bobby, she’ll call him, after Baseball Bobby from Scotland – but he’s talking to himself like a real crazy asshole, his eyes bulging: a loony man for sure. She hears him saying something weird under his breath, about needing to keep walkin, about kids, about how he always has to look after kids, and just who in hell’s name does he think he is, this Scottish creep who knows jack about her. Walkin was always Mobile. Doesn’t he know that?!
One thought in Lennox’s head: I am the uncomfortable silence. Yet he must have been mumbling, delirious in the heat, effort and drugs comedown, maybe said something about needing to walk.
Because now Tianna is shouting at him. At first he can’t hear her, only a noise as uniform as silence. He has to stop, to consciously tune in.
— … and I like to walk and I ain’t no kid, she declares violently, her face creasing in anger, — so don’t you be treatin me like one!
— Right, he says, humbled. They walk silently on for what seems an age, distrustful of each other and 7th Street they’ve emerged back on to, blinking like chain-gang fugitives in the desert. Every cruising police car makes Lennox’s heart pound. The magazine beats in stronger cadence against his thigh.
Gamekeeper turned poacher.
He feels that people are watching him. Dress, bearing, skin tone, he doesn’t fit in here. Perhaps it’s the girl; her slow angel eyes tracking him in his grim mission of mercy. The air thickens in the heat and the glossy magazine sweats in his hand. They seem to be the lone pedestrians: this white man and this young girl. It strikes him then that he can’t even tell from Tianna’s features and colouring anything about her father’s ethnicity. He could conceivably have been black, Asian, white or Latin. He thinks of the golfer Tiger Woods: a new model American. Tries to mentally Photoshop Robyn out of her daughter and see what’s left, but still no compelling image presents itself. The only thing that comes distastefully to his mind is Robyn’s pubic hair.
In Britney’s neighbourhood nobody would have noticed us. Their wars in that scheme were against the Bosnian refugee who was rehoused by the council, or the quiet model-railway enthusiast who lived alone. Or the moonlighting house pain
ter. Maybe the nippy cow who got the last packet of beefburgers from the corner store and the slimy Paki bastard who sold them to her. Or the burly thug who kicked in the door and grabbed the telly and stereo while the scrawny, cadaverous sheriff officer waved the warrant in their bemused faces. Or the guilt-ridden pisshead of a husband who blew another month’s rent on drink and horses. Their wars were with each other and were all-consuming; born out of underemployment, poverty and frustration. Meanwhile, a real monster had slipped undetected through their midst.
Mr Confectioner would never have been casing an affluent middle-class district, with its busybodies and its neighbourhood watches quick to call the police about the white van parked in their street.
Then a sports stadium – a jubilant sight for a Scotsman – bears imposingly in front of them. Tianna tells him it’s the Orange Bowl. Heading towards it, they come upon another short and shabby strip mall. But at this one sits a taxi, and its sign indicates that it’s ready for hire.
In the stifling cab, paranoia has taken a couple of layers of skin from him. Lennox is now determined to keep the girl away from Dearing, Johnnie and Starry; she’s in danger from these people and Robyn can’t protect her. But maybe this Chet guy could. The problem is that she’s gone into a strop. So he shows the cab driver the address. The man speaks poor English and doesn’t know where it is. He explains that he is from Nicaragua. — No from here, he keeps saying.
I’m stuck with retarded people who don’t know this country, Tianna is thinking, but Bobby Scotsman’s trying to help her, to get her to Chet’s, so she relents. — It’s pretty far away.
Lennox first sinks at her words, then feels a spike of elation. It’s the first time she’s volunteered anything. — How far? Out of the state?
— No, it’s in Florida. By the sea, but kinda right across the big freeway.
Lennox considers the airport: the car-hire concessions. It isn’t too far. They head out there, as he tries to gather his thoughts. His head spins. He has no antidepressants. He is scared. Think like a cop, he tells himself, trying to put his scrambled brain back into order. His eyes are full of the phantom grit of sleeplessness and his head throbs.