Midnight Baby

CHAPTER 11

Bloated, half his face eaten away by the fishes, poor Randy didn’t have any looks left to be vain about when I finally met him. He was a big man, though. Puffed up even bigger by the gases that come with putrefaction.

The breeze off the water lifted his fine, light hair and ruffled through the shirt of his creamy silk pajamas, so that he looked as if he were panting after a hard swim. His last, best effort. Around his legs was still wound a shroud made from a luscious peach-colored satin sheet, accessorized with three anchors on chains.

When I looked down at him from the balcony, he had been a beached absurdity, a Macy’s Parade balloon that had strayed. Up close, however, he was beyond grotesque. Poor Randy.

Mike had Mentholatum smeared under his nose, like the other police and the county coroner’s people. I could smell it ten feet away. I could smell Randy, too, though he wasn’t as bad as I had expected.

I wondered how many men leave home forever wearing their monogrammed pajamas.

Mike stayed with the locals until Randy was zipped into a green plastic body bag. Green about the same shade as the trash bags that held a few cubic yards of his personal treasures. Odd, the tomb he had been taken from. Like the pharaohs, buried with the junk that gave him pleasure in this world. Had he, like they, planned to take it with him? Or had someone simply done a very thorough housecleaning, emptied the closets along with the occupant snoring on the left side of the big satin-covered bed?

Mike stripped off surgical gloves, dropped them into a receptacle for contaminated waste. Then he got down on his belly at the edge of the dock and scrubbed his hands in the dark water. I wouldn’t have done that. Randy had come out of the same water.

Martha had given me a vacuum bottle of coffee before she went inside to stay, to lie down she said. Regina had long since called her husband to pick her up.

I poured Mike the last of the coffee and carried it over to him. His hands were still wet when he took the china mug from me.

“Thanks,” he said.

“What happened to Randy?”

Mike inhaled the steam rising from the cup. “Throat was cut. Deep. Severed the trachea.”

“That makes three, if you count the raft. So, is it over? I mean, don’t bad things come in threes?”

“Sure. Unless they come in fours or fives.”

“I was looking for reassurance.”

“I can’t give you any, Maggie.”

“So, tell me. What sort of madman would sink a raft right over the very spot where he had left one of his victims? A victim, need I say, he had gone to great lengths to keep on the bottom.”

“Couple of possibilities. One, he didn’t know Randy was down there. Two, he wanted us to find Randy. I’m inclined toward number two, because I don’t believe in coincidence of the magnitude implied by number one. Two also makes this raft business a crime of opportunity, suggesting he didn’t know who the hell you are.”

“Meaning he didn’t follow me here?”

“That’s what I would like to believe.” He filled his lungs.

“I’m finished for now. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m staying over with Martha tonight.”

“I think that’s a real bad idea.”

“She’s scared, Mike.”

“She should be.”

“I can’t leave her alone.”

“She must have family.”

“She asked me.”

“Is there any point in arguing with you?”

“Is there ever?”

Tired, stressed, he sighed.

I took Martha’s empty cup from him and poured the coffee dregs into the water. “Why don’t you stay with us?”

“No.”

“Martha thinks you have a nice ass.”

He wasn’t ready to be jollied.

“She told me she takes her hearing aids out at night. Can’t hear a thing.”

He looked up at me from under furrowed brows. “Did she really say that?”

“Not exactly. She said it was pleasant to watch you walk away.”

“Uh huh.” He wasn’t buying yet. “Sure she did.”

“I can’t leave her alone, Mike.”

“She isn’t expecting to climb into bed with us, is she?”

“Maybe.” I smiled; he had come around. “You never know. She might be a lot of fun. Ben Franklin said all women are the same in the dark. And older ones are so much more appreciative.”

“He was old his own damn self when he said it.” Mike wiped at the Mentholatum under his nose. “I don’t have any clothes.”

I glanced over at the pile on the dock. “Maybe Randy will lend you something.”

“Maybe I’ll do without.”

“Even better,” I said.

Martha put us up in a downstairs guest room that faced out on the Ramsdale side of the house. As cheerful as her chatter was, I knew she was scared half to death. While her house was equipped with a state-of-the-art alarm system, it wasn’t enough for her that night. She was immensely relieved to have our company. She walked around the house with Mike, checking every window and door with him. When we called a moratorium on fussing and saw her up to her room, she was still edgy.

“To think he was next door all the time. Right there under the dock.” She had a grim thought that crossed her lined face like a gas pain. “What if he had floated up?”

“Then we would have known what we know now, just sooner,” Mike said.

Martha shuddered.

“Try to sleep,” I said. “We’re right here if anything happens. Don’t worry.”

She wasn’t so upset that she had lost her sense of humor. She stretched up to kiss my cheek. “I’ve always been one to believe that I could take care of myself. But, now and then, it is nice to have a man around the house, isn’t it, dear?”

I had Mike by the hand. I gave it a pat. “It’s nice to have this man around.”

Martha had found toothbrushes for us, and a razor for Mike. He shaved, and then got into a hot shower.

I folded my clothes over a flowered chintz easy chair and slid, naked, between the crisp sheets.

According to my watch, it was just after eleven. I dialed my home from the bedside telephone to make sure Casey had gotten in from Denver on time and intact. The machine came on after the fourth ring.

“It’s me,” I said after the beep. Then I gave Martha’s number. “Call me if you have a problem. Otherwise, I’ll talk to you in the morning. Lyle, the muffins were wonderful, but I think you were too skimpy with the pineapple in this batch.”

Mike had given me the code so I could check his answering machine for messages from Lyle. I called Mike’s number, pushed the code, and listened.

Mike’s ex had called to tell young Michael she would be home late. Michael called. He was home safely but had left his calculus book in Mike’s car. He needed it for class Monday morning. Lyle called. Casey’s plane had arrived on schedule at nine, but Casey wasn’t on it. At ten-thirty he had called again. He was still at the airport. No Casey.

I quit breathing.

Shaking so hard I almost could not hit the buttons, I dialed the airline, and got nowhere. I called the San Francisco airport and had Lyle paged. He must have been listening for the call, because he came right on the line.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice tight. “Except she’s not here.”

“Did you call Scotty?”

“Constantly. No one answers.”

“Lyle, will you stay there? If she missed her plane, she knows to page you.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

I gave him Martha’s number. Then I hung up and dialed Denver. Scotty, my ex, answered just as his machine kicked on. He fumbled to shut off the outgoing message, muttering crankily. Finally, he said, “Hello.”

“Scotty, where’s Casey?”

“What the fuck?”

“She didn’t arrive in San Francisco.”

“Shit, Maggie. We put her on the plane. Where could she be?”

“It was a nonstop flight, Scotty. If you put her on, one way or another, she would have to get off at the other end. She didn’t.”

He blew off some air.

“Did you actually see her get on the plane?”

He blew again.

“Scotty, answer me now, or so help me, I will reach through this telephone and rip off your face.”

“Calm down, Maggie.”

“I will not. You lost my daughter.”

“Everything has a rational explanation.”

“Give me one.”

“Well, we didn’t actually see Casey get on the plane. We had a very pressing appointment. So we dropped her at the airport an hour or so early.”

“At the curb or at the gate?”

“Maggie, this child has more flight time than most commercial pilots. She can get herself from the curb to the departure gate unassisted. She only had carryon.”

“But she didn’t make it,” I shouted.

Mike came running out of the bathroom at that point. “Maggie, what?”

“Casey is missing,” I gasped.

“Where?” He wanted more, but I still had the telephone to my ear.

Scotty demanded, “Who’s there with you?”

“The best sex I ever had.” I hissed it. “Where is our daughter?”

“I’ll check it out. I’ll call you.”

“Damn right you will.” I gave him Martha’s number and slammed down the receiver. I needed to scream some more. When I looked up at Mike, all that came out was: “She’s only fourteen.”

The telephone rang under my hand. I snatched it up. “Lyle?”

“There’s one sorry little teenager here,” he said. “Want to hear her last words on earth?”

“Lyle, have I ever told you I love you?”

“Too often. Here she is.”

“Mom?” Casey was really sweating. I could hear it.

“What happened?”

“The flight was overbooked.”

“But you had a reassigned seat. You’re an unescorted kid. They couldn’t bump you.”

“I volunteered. They gave me coupons for two free tickets if I took the later plane. Round-trip coupons. The next two times I go to Denver, it won’t cost anything.”

“Oh my God.” I fell back on the bed.

“I only had to wait two hours.”

“And during those two hours Lyle died a thousand deaths. Didn’t you call?”

“I left a message.”

“If Lyle was at the airport, how would he know you called him at home? Why didn’t you page him?”

“Mom.” She was crying. “I’ve already gone through this with Lyle, okay?”

“Not okay. Have you learned something here?”

“Yes,” she sobbed. “I’m never going to Denver again.”

“Go home,” I said. “I’ll yell at you some more tomorrow. And Casey?”

“What?”

“After you drop down to your knees and kiss Lyle’s feet and beg his forgiveness?”

“What?”

“Call your father.”

“Bye,” she said, and then she was gone.

Mike was standing by the bed, naked except for a damp towel, face worried. “So?”

“She took a later flight.”

“So she’s all right?”

“She’s fine. The rest of us may die of apoplexy. But she’s fine. Just another example of independent thinking.”

“Gotta nip that in the bud.”

I shook my head. “Gotta get both of us cellular phones. Little hand jobs.”

“We’ll go shopping tomorrow.”

Mike turned off the lights and slipped into bed beside me. For the third night in a row. I was getting used to rolling up against him in the dark. Three nights in a row. Three different beds. I was still juiced with adrenaline. We lay quietly in the dark, parallel bumps under Martha’s sheets, letting our minds slow down. It was very companionable.

I reached out for his towel on the nightstand and used it to cool my face. “My God, Mike. It’s so easy to lose them.”

He shook his head. “No it isn’t. You raise them right, they know how to take care of themselves. Casey’s okay.”

“I was seeing her on the street, like Pisces.”

“Never happen.”

Mike coughed and I felt him turn onto his side to face me.

“Casey’s a good kid,” he said. “You just have to tell yourself that she’s at one of those ditty ages and roll with it. Give her a couple of years and she’ll be a normal human again. Like Michael. Now he’s seventeen, the worst is over. He can pretty well be trusted to take care of himself.”

“Michael left a message for you.” I was glad he couldn’t see my face in the dark, the smug grin. “He left his calculus book in your car and he needs it before school tomorrow.”

Mike laughed softly. “What I just said?”

“Yes?”

“Cancel it.”

Mike left before sunrise. He had to deliver Michael’s book, then go home and dress for work. His shift officially began at seven-thirty.

I remember kissing him goodbye, I think. The kiss may have been part of the dream I had about swimming with the Ramsdales, Randy and all of his women. Pisces was there, and so was Hillary, dressed in a stiff party frock. The water was red and full of fish. I was glad when I woke out of it and found myself in Martha’s bright, flowered guest room.

When I went downstairs – showered, hair brushed, teeth brushed, but wearing day-old clothes – Martha was in the living room chatting with a fresh team of Long Beach detectives. They were both very good-looking, sharp in suits and ties. I thought she was flirting again. I hated to interrupt her.

“Good morning,” I said, hovering near the door.

“Good morning, Maggie. There’s coffee in the kitchen. Are you hungry?”

“Not yet. I need to go tend to business, but I’ll check in on you before I leave town this afternoon.”

“Lovely, dear.” She dismissed me with a cheery wave and went back to her detectives.

It was another beautiful, clear morning, full of newly washed sidewalk smells. Wind whipped the empty sail lines of boats at anchor, snapping their metal lanyards against mast poles, making music like wind chimes. A very zen and soothing music. Filled with a longing to stay, I walked back to the yacht club where I had left Mike’s car. I wished for my running shoes.

I wiped heavy dew off the Blazer’s windshield and got in. First thing, I checked Sly’s bundle of stuff to make sure it was still intact – it was. Then I drove into Belmont Shore, following the scent of fresh cinnamon rolls. I had several bakeries to choose from, so I settled on the first one with an open parking space in front.

Fortified with rolls and coffee, I walked down the street to The Gap for a change of clothes. According to the sign on the door, I had ten minutes to wait until opening. I found a news rack and used the time to scan the local paper, the Press-Telegram.

There was a brief stop press on the front page about Randy and Hillary. Grisly murders, they were labeled. A cliche, but apt. The salient point the paper passed over was that even though both of them had their throats slashed, there was perhaps a two-month space between them. And not a word about Elizabeth Ramsdale.

When The Gap opened I went in and found a shirt on the sale rack, a loose-fitting thing with green-and-red parrots all over it. Casey would like it. I changed in the fitting room, paid, and was back in Mike’s car before my half-hour investment in the meter had expired.

As I drove along the waterfront toward downtown, I began to think that I had a handle on how Hillary had been misplaced.

Nothing I had learned came even close to explaining how she had ended up on the street, but it was clear enough that long before reaching that point, she had dropped into the crack between what she needed and what the adults around her wanted. A big crack.

She had a wicked stepmother. So what? A lot of kids do. My Casey says she does. Very few stepchildren end up trolling for tricks.

As I put the sequence together, after Randy supposedly went abroad, Hillary had been at home, alone, with Elizabeth from around Valentine’s Day until perhaps St. Patrick’s Day. About a month.

I tried to imagine what would happen to Casey if she were stuck with Linda for a month or so. I felt an old rage begin to bubble up from its hiding place. Linda – and Scotty – had lost Casey after only two days. And not for the first time. A year or so earlier, Casey had been so upset by the situation at her father’s house that she had put herself on a plane and come home. I figured that this back-and-forth-to-Denver routine now had two strikes against it. Strike three and we were headed to the judge for an amended custody agreement.

As hard as everyone tried to make things work, Casey had never lasted more than seven days with her stepmother. Hillary had lasted over thirty.

The first pay phone I came to, I stopped and called Lyle. “How are things this morning?” I asked.

“Status quo. And what do you mean, I skimped on the pineapple? I don’t put pineapple in my bran muffins.”

“No wonder,” I said. “Did Casey get off to school okay?”

“Oh yeah. She’s one repentant little tyke. Even made her bed before school.”

“Lyle, did she tell you why Scotty dropped her at the airport so early?”

“If I tell you, are you going to scream in my ear?”

“Probably.”

“Just be gentle. According to Casey, it seems that Linda was done in by the baptism party, pooped. So she talked old Scotty into taking her out for dinner to some special place. They could only get an early reservation, so…”

“So they dumped Casey.”

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

“Thanks, Lyle. I’ll call Casey after school.”

“How come you’re not yelling? What’s the matter?”

“I have to think about it. When I’m ready to yell, I’ll call back.”

“Lookin’ forward to it,” he chuckled. “The grant administrator on your film called a couple of times. She wants a progress report before she releases the next check. We haven’t paid bills yet this month.”

“I’ll get in touch with her.”

“When are you coming home?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Take care of yourself, Mag.”

“You, too. I’ll bring you home a pineapple. Bye, Lyle.”

I got back into the Blazer and rejoined the stream of Monday-morning traffic.

Amazing, I was thinking, how easily an intelligent, normally careful, affectionate father like Scotty could be yanked around. As if Linda were magnetic north and his dick were a compass. All evidence suggested that Randy had also been a pushover in that department.

My plan was to do some research in the local library, find out what I could about Amy Elizabeth Metrano. According to my map, the city’s main library was in the Civic Center. It took me a couple of passes to get myself oriented on the right one-way street, but I managed to find the entrance of the public lot. And a parking space.

When I walked up out of the lot and into the sunshine, I was in a brick courtyard between City Hall and the library. There were a few homeless types sunning themselves on benches, but for the most part the people I saw were city workers going about their business, and schoolchildren with picture books under their arms. No one panhandled me.

Once inside the library, I asked for directions to the periodicals section. I found the shelves of newspaper indexes and looked up Amy Elizabeth Metrano in both the Los Angeles Times and the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

Through October 1983, when Amy disappeared, and continuing well into November, there was at least one, and frequently several, Amy Metrano stories daily in the first section of both papers. Around Thanksgiving the frequency of the stories began to taper off and move toward the back pages. I found irregular listings, a month or so apart, over the next year. Progress updates.

I made a list of the newspaper editions I wanted to check. By the time I had pulled all of the pertinent spools of newspaper on microfilm from the files, I needed a basket to carry them.

Reading newspapers on microfilm is a bitch. The image on the projection screen quivers constantly and wears out the eyes in a hurry. I learned a long time ago that it’s best to make hard copies of the text I want and then read it all later. I staked out a working projector, went out to the circulation desk for a couple of rolls of quarters, then set to the dismal task in the dim light of the reading room.

After two hours, I had a thick sheaf of slick photocopies on the table beside the spools of microfilm. In the process, I had also gleaned a fair outline of the major events surrounding the disappearance of little Amy Elizabeth Metrano and the comprehensive, heartbreaking search that went on for months afterward. And I had a massive headache.

I boxed the spools of film, put them in the basket for refiling, gathered up my notes and copies, and went back out into the light.

It seemed to me that the press had been hung up on the details of the search and the questioning of a legion of possible witnesses. Most of the ink was spent on speculation, covering a huge range: all the way from the kid got lost in the woods to she was snatched by aliens. I saw sparks of creativity, but very little hard information.

The reportage was space-filling puffery and human-interest sidebar because, in the end, the only facts were these: Amy Elizabeth Metrano, age four and a half, on a family outing to Lake Arrowhead, vanished during a game of hide and seek with her four older sisters. Period.

I went downstairs to the city directories and looked up George Metrano. In 1983, the year Amy disappeared, the Metranos lived on Sixty-eighth Way in Long Beach, George and Leslie and five minor children. Mr. Metrano’s occupation was listed as pipefitter, hers as waitress. The house was rented.

Over the following nine years, the Metranos moved three times. Their last listed address was on Cartagena Street. He was listed as self-employed, she as homemaker. They owned the house.

I found a table in a quiet corner of the stacks and sorted through my copies, looking for Metrano biography. Anything suggestive.

According to the Press-Telegram, at the time of Amy’s disappearance her father was an unemployed shipworker, laid off when the Long Beach shipyards cut back. Money was tight. The patrons of Hof s Hut, “a popular local eatery” where Leslie Metrano worked, had contributed to the search fund. The management had given her time off at full pay to tend to her family. The pipefitters’ union was helping with old bills. The community, it seemed, had embraced the grieving Metranos in a number of decent and generous ways. People can be good. It was nice to be reminded.

While I had the directories out, I had looked up Randall Ramsdale, too. There was no city listing until late 1984 when Randall, Hanna, and minor daughter were in residence at the address in Naples. The occupation listed for him was investments. I interpreted that to mean coupon clipping.

Usually when people talk about a man, his job is maybe the second or third thing mentioned about him, after his marital status. No one yet had even suggested that Randy was inconvenienced by the need to work. If the way he lived was a fair indication, Randy had money. Lots of it. Ergo and to whit, a sluggard scion of the idle rich, as my father would have defined him.

I walked across the library to the government documents section and looked up birth certificates for both Amy and Hillary. Amy’s I found. Hillary’s I didn’t. But only births in California are recorded. No one had said where the Ramsdales lived before they moved to Long Beach. Could have been anywhere.

As I walked back out toward the parking lot I felt I had made some progress. I at least had some interesting avenues to pursue.

Back in the car, I took the list I had made of Metrano family addresses and looked them up on the map. Sixty-eighth Way, where Amy had last lived with her family, was in North Long Beach. Using that address as a starting point, I charted the Metrano family’s moves, a jagged line heading south, toward the water.

In California cities generally, the closer to the ocean, the higher the rent. I was increasingly bothered by something George Metrano had said that day at the morgue. If he was renting and out of work when Amy disappeared, how had he acquired the house he’d said he’d mortgaged to hire a private detective? The implication of that story was that they had spent every nickel, and then some, looking for their little girl.

The average house in Long Beach sold for nearly two hundred thousand dollars. I had read that gem while waiting for The Gap to open. I didn’t know when they might have bought a house, but I calculated on the assumption that housing prices had not risen very much since the late eighties, and in some areas had actually gone down. So, I was thinking that even at a meager 10 percent down, with the double-digit interest rates that prevailed during the last decade, the monthly payments on a modest starter house would still have to run maybe two thousand dollars a month. Principal and interest only.

Not to mention that somewhere along the way, the unemployed pipefitter and the waitress had become self-employed.

I supposed that could mean anything from running a catering truck to, well, anything. The point was, it takes money to start a business. Had the community been that generous? Had there ever been an accounting of donated funds?

My destination was a straight shot up the freeway from downtown. As soon as I left the narrow coastal strip, the scenery changed in a hurry. The new high rises were like a ridge that dropped suddenly into the ugly, flat gray industrial sameness that spreads north from the harbor to Los Angeles. The neighborhoods that slid by on my right were worn-out, ticky-tacky tracts and low-rent apartments covered with indecipherable graffiti. I decided I should have held off before I speculated on the low-end cost of the Metrano house.

The Sixty-eighth Way address turned out to be a tiny duplex tucked up against the freeway, almost in Compton. The construction was early postwar, a single-story stucco rectangle with a flat white rock roof. Some time ago, it had been painted lime-sherbet green and the small front yard had been paved over.

Every house on the street had bars on the windows. Ten years ago, when the Metranos lived there, it might have been a safer neighborhood. But never, even when the small houses had been new, could it have passed as a nice neighborhood. What I saw was fast, cheap construction, the barest possible amenities provided. Rentals for the profit of absentee landlords.

The Metrano family had numbered seven in 1983. If there were even two bedrooms in either half of the duplex, they would be minuscule. My mind boggled at five little girls living in such tight quarters.

Working-class families expect, I think, to start out in simple circumstances. But Amy’s eldest sister had been sixteen back then. The Metranos were not just starting out.

I unpacked a videocamera, and, through the car window, aimed it at the house. Then I drove away slowly with the camera still hanging out the window, getting some of the rest of the neighborhood and the cars zinging by on the elevated freeway that marked the end of the street. I had no idea what I would do with it, but it looked like I was working. If I had to report to the grant administrator, at least I wouldn’t have to lie too egregiously.

At the corner house, an old man lugged a green garden hose out into the middle of his small yard and aimed a puny stream of water at the grass, holding it low in front of him in parody of exaggerated manhood. He wore Sears-blue work pants and a white T-shirt that had been washed so many times it was little more than gauze draped over his concave chest. The politically correct label for him would be Dust Bowl refugee. He would call himself an Okie.

When I waved, he waved back. Taking that as a good sign, I parked at his curb and got out.

Shielding his eyes from the sun, he watched me approach. “You a reporter or the police?” he asked in a tobacco-ravaged rasp.

“Neither one,” I said. “Exactly.”

“I just bet you want to ask me about the little girl, though, don’t ya?”

“Amy Metrano? Did you know her?”

“Sure did, her and her family.” A gentle breeze lifted the fine wisps of his white hair, standing them like feathers. He had red skin-cancer blotches on his face. “Pretty little thing, she was. Used to ride her trike over with her sisters to borry a cup of sugar or an egg from my wife. Real polite little girls, every one of them.”

“George and Leslie were good parents?”

“Well now.” He gazed down the street toward the Metranos’ duplex. “If I was to tell you the God’s honest truth, I’d say Leslie was a real hardworking woman. Kept her kids clean. Kept them out of trouble. There was a passel of kids in that family, and things was pretty tight. But she did her best by them.”

“You said she did her best. What about him, George?”

The old neighbor gave me a canny leer. “You’re a smart one, aren’t you?”

“I can hold my own.”

“You said you wasn’t a reporter.”

“I used to be,” I said. “Now I make films. It’s different from reporting news.”

“Films, huh? There was another fella asking about Amy just the last week or so. Not many folks is interested in the little girl anymore, but now and then someone comes askin’. But I start to think something is happening when two people come peckin’ around. I never thought someone was makin’ a movie about it.”

“Who was this man?”

“Didn’t say. ‘Course, I didn’t ask, neither. Like I didn’t ask you.”

“Can we back up to the question about George? What sort of father was he?”

The neighbor raised a bony shoulder. “He didn’t use the belt, never heard him raise his voice. I guess you would say he was easy. Real easy.”

“Easy meaning calm?”

“Meaning that.” He nodded, shifting his hose to dribble over another spot of lawn. “And meaning it was hard to light a fire under him for anything, including picking up his lunch bucket and heading out the door for work in the morning. He was a nice enough fella. But he sure let the little woman carry a full share.”

“Do you ever see them anymore?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Not since they moved out. Place has too many bad memories, by my calculation.”

“When did they move?”

He thought about it, playing the water in a crystal arc. “Not long after they lost the little one. ‘Bout Christmas, as I recall. My wife used to make them girls all a big gingerbread boy for Christmas, all frosted up with their names on them. That year she didn’t bake nothin’. She just sat in her big old chair and bawled.”

“May I speak with your wife?”

“Yes you may.” He smiled slyly. “But I wouldn’t be in no hurry to do it, if I was you. You’ll find her sittin’ up there next to Jesus.”

“My condolences,” I said.

He had liked his joke. “Next time I talk to Jesus, I’ll have him send them along.”

“Thanks for your time,” I said.

“Come by again.”

I chuckled to myself all the way back to the car.

Ten minutes later, I found the second Metrano house. I had been expecting something on the same economic level as the duplex. Modest though it was, the Metranos seemed to have made a step up from Sixty-eighth Way. Perhaps with the help of friends, I thought.

The new house was in a tract built around a large green park, down the street from Jordan High School. It was a good location for a family with two girls of high school age. The house wasn’t large, three, perhaps four bedrooms, with a yard behind. I thought it must have been a great relief for all of them to have some space, some privacy. They had more room and one fewer family member.

George Metrano hadn’t told us when he had mortgaged his house to pay the detective. Maybe it was this one.

I videotaped the front for a few seconds, and then went on. What if the extra loan had been too much? What if they had lost this house?

On that depressing thought, I searched out house number three.

My concern, it turned out, had been groundless. The third house was a giant leap up, a large, lovely custom-built home with a brick wishing well in front. The neighborhood was well established, big trees, lush broad lawns. An air of graceful living.

From hardscrabble to blue-collar to House and Garden in ten years. Upward mobility, the American dream, come to full flower.

I thought about what the old neighbor had said. So, maybe someone or something had lit a fire under George. Maybe all he had needed was a hand up. Still, the dream was sustained by two paychecks, his business, her job.

I had a jolt trying to visualize Leslie coming home in her Bingo Burgers blazer. It didn’t work. Unless…

I needed to know who owned the burger franchise.

In some parts of the world, I hear, when times are hard and nothing brings relief, in desperation folks have been known to throw the occasional virgin into the volcano.