Midnight Baby

CHAPTER 15

L.A. freeways don’t have a true rush hour, only times when the engorgement of cars reaches critical mass. Like constricted bowels. I headed north too late in the day to fit in stops at MacLaren Hall and Guido’s if I was going to see Mike at any reasonable hour. And getting to Mike was my first priority. As it was, the forty-mile trip took two hours and at least three years off my life.

When I opened the door of Mike’s condo I was in desperate need of strong drink, a hot bath, and some quiet before we got into anything. Mike was generally fairly easygoing, but from the tone of our last conversation, I expected him to be angry. A reflex, I guess. I was still in recovery two years after a long marriage to a human powder keg, still walking around with a lot of protective armor, according to Mike.

The living-room lights were turned down low. Ray Charles was on the CD player, loud enough to appreciate, but only just. Mike was stretched out on his back on the gray carpet wearing white sweats, a black pillow under his silver head, his eyes closed, hands resting on his stomach with a glass of white wine balanced between them.

I closed the front door as softly as I could, not wanting to disturb him. I had disliked his ex-wife’s gray-and-black decorating scheme until I saw Mike lying there in the middle of it. The tones of his hair and skin blended so perfectly with the room that I couldn’t decide whether his wife had decorated to show him off or had tried to make him invisible among the furnishings. Domestic camouflage.

I had my camera in my hand without really thinking about taking it out. More light would have been nice, but I opened the aperture all the way and took a couple of hand-held time-release shots. The texture would be interesting, I thought, if the pictures came out at all.

I was leaning over Mike for a face shot when he wrapped his fingers around my ankle and opened his eyes.

“The late Maggie MacGowen,” he said, mellow and smiling.

“Hold still,” I said.

“When you’re in the room, I can’t hold still. You move me.” His hand slid up my leg inside my jeans.

“Keep talking,” I said.

“What are you doing?”

“We have Whistler’s mother, A Study in Gray. I thought it was time for Whistler’s father.”

“My kid’s name is Flint. Does that make a difference?”

“Not to the artist.” I reached down for his glass of wine, but he held on to it.

“You want the wine? Make me an offer.”

“How about a trade?” I took Rebecca out of my bag and showed it to him.

He sat up enough to look at the title, then he dropped back down. “No deal. I read it in grade school.”

“Maybe it’s a clue. Rebecca sailed away and never came home again. Like Elizabeth Ramsdale.”

“Still no deal.” He massaged my ankle. “We located Elizabeth down in Cabo San Lucas. Arrived two days ago.”

“No lie?” I knelt on the floor next to him.

“No lie.”

“Tell me about it.” I reached for the glass again, but he held it away.

“One thing at a time here.” He slid his hand into the crook of my knee. “I believe the bidding is still open on this fine, vintage, supermarket plonk.”

I leaned over him close enough to feel his warm breath on my cheek. “I bid one kiss.”

“I’m bid one kiss. Do I hear two?”

“Nope. My offer stands at one.”

“Sold. If it’s a good one.”

I kissed him. A good – no, a magnificent – one. His fingers moved slowly up the inside of my thigh, spreading uncontrollable heat like a pot boiling over on the stove. Reduced to a quivering mass, I sat back on my heels to catch my breath, trapping his hand between my legs. His eyes were still half rolled back in his head when he passed me up his glass.

“Thank you.” My voice sounded husky, as if I had inhaled some of that heat. “What’s the next item in your catalogue?”

He raised his head into my lap. “Our next offering will cost you.”

“That’s all right.” I stroked his shiny hair and his fresh-shaved cheek. “In the currency of this auction, I’m loaded.”

“Bidding opens at one shirt with birds all over it.”

“How do I know what you’re offering is worth even one button of this fabulous shirt?”

“It’s worth it.” He tugged out my shirttail and tickled my belly with his little cookie-duster mustache. I giggled, and he grinned up at me. “In point of fact, I think I started bidding too low. Now it will cost you the shirt and the pants, too.”

“I don’t bid on closed lots,” I said. “Show me what you have.”

His hands were soft on my bare abdomen. “I found Hanna Ramsdale’s mother.”

“Alive?”

“Alive as anyone can be in Pasadena.” He pulled the shirt off over my head and bent forward to kiss the lace covering my left breast.

“Wait,” I said, pushing against his shoulders.

“No.” He grinned. “Prepayment required.”

I stripped off my pants and handed them to him. “Payment in full. Now, talk to me.”

“Maggie.” He pulled me down onto the floor on top of him. On the way, he undid my bra. “Do you really want to talk now?”

“No,” I whispered into his ear. He was hard against me. I wanted him so badly that the room around us disintegrated into a vague, warm blur and he was the only solid reality. He helped me slip off the bra.

“What I really want,” I said, “is to make mad, passionate love to you. Right here. Right now.”

“Bidding opens at one kiss.”

I paid. He delivered.

Gathering clouds obscured the moon. The canyon below Guido’s house was a velvet abyss that opened beyond the gravel shoulder of the road and swallowed Mike’s high beams.

“It’s quiet up here,” Mike said.

“If I were ever to live in L.A., it would have to be somewhere like this. Somewhere away from the city.”

In the green light from the dash, I saw the strangest look cross his face; pain, glee – I couldn’t read it.

“What did I say?” I asked, touching his hand on the wheel.

“It’s good to know you’ve given some thought to moving down.”

“Just making conversation. I said ‘If.’ “

“There are a lot of canyons around L.A. We could probably find you one a helluva lot better than this.”

I felt another sort of canyon open up under me.

“Guido’s driveway is right there on the left,” I said. “It’s easy to miss. Go slow.”

“Can’t go any slower, Maggie.” He turned up into the steep drive. “If we go any slower, we’ll stop dead.”

“I work long hours,” I said. “Sometimes I’m away from home for a couple of months at a time.”

“Guido seems happy with his nine-to-five. Casey would be real pleased to have you home more.”

“We’re fine with things as they are.”

“Land somewhere, Maggie.” He stopped in front of the garage and turned off the lights. “Casey will only be with you four more years before she goes away to college. Make the best of it.”

“What are you saying? I neglect her?”

“No. You’ve done a great job with her. What I want to say is, I retire in three years. It isn’t so long. Come, you and Casey, stay here with me for three years. Then I’ll go anywhere you say. I’ll live with you in a tent in the middle of the Sahara, if that’s what you want.”

I turned around in my seat to face him. “Are you proposing?”

“Don’t make it sound like a threat,” he said, laughing softly. “The last six months have been the worst years of my life. Maggie, I don’t ever want to lose you again. I know marriage scares you. As long as we’re together, I don’t care whether we’re married or not.”

“I would drive you crazy, Mike.”

He laughed. “You already do.”

“There are so many complications.” I opened my car door, misjudged how far down the ground was, and stumbled a little. “So much to think about.”

He shut his door after him. “If you want something bad enough, you can overcome the complications.”

I saw Guido spying on us from the window in his front door. When I waved, he came out onto the porch.

“Hello, children,” he said. “What’s new?”

“This and that.” Mike squeezed my hand. “What’s new with you, Guido?”

“My friend the computer nerd generated an interesting picture for us.” He led us inside. “Until I saw it, I hadn’t realized the political implications of the case.”

Guido was grinning. I knew we had to let him play his joke to the end before we could move forward. He winked at me.

“You look good, Maggie,” he said. “Even better than yesterday. You been running or something?”

“Why?”

“Well, your hair’s a little damp in the back there. Thought maybe you ran all the way over.”

“I just got out of the shower, Guido,” I said, glaring a little. “So did Mike. You want a play-by-play?”

He winked again. “Why should I care?”

“Indeed,” I said. “Can we see the picture now?”

“On the table.”

Mike lifted a file folder from the coffee table and opened it. He looked, grimaced, and passed it to me.

I looked. I sighed. “Very funny, Guido. Richard Nixon was driving the red Corvette I taped?”

“Sorts.” He bounced up next to me and peered over my shoulder. With his thumbnail, he outlined the face. “See this furriness along the jaw, around the eye sockets, and around the hairline? The computer couldn’t read it. My nerd and I speculate that your man – or your woman – was wearing a mask.”

Mike put on his glasses to look closer. “Son of a bitch.”

“Surely someone would have noticed,” I said.

“I didn’t. You didn’t.” Guido shrugged. “Anyway, this is L.A. If you saw some guy wearing a mask, you wouldn’t think a lot about it. Especially a guy trolling for poontang in a car like that ‘vette. Looking for a little anonymity.”

“What do I owe your nerd?” I asked.

Guido shook his head. “Nada. He assigned this as a class project. They got a big yuk out of it. Helped his image a lot. If he gets a date with a student, I think he should owe you.”

“Good, because I have something else you might pass along to him.” I handed him the two rolls of exposed film I had in my bag. “I shot one of these rolls of the slasher this afternoon. The other one is Mike. I didn’t mark them, so I don’t know which is which. Would you develop them all for me?”

He frowned. “Okay. But there’s a one-hour processor down on Cahuenga. Wouldn’t that be faster?”

“Here’s the problem,” I said. “I never got the subject’s full face.”

“Mike’s or the slasher’s?” Guido grinned.

“I got all of Mike, Guido. Buck naked, in the moment of ecstasy.”

“Maggie!” Mike blushed. “You did not.”

I turned to him. “I was simply offering Guido some incentive. Next time, though, I am taking the camera to bed with us.”

He laughed. “When was the last time we made it all the way to the bed?”

Guido was comically round-eyed.

“So, Guido,” I said, “the program is this: I want you to go through every shot and isolate the face parts. Then I want you to reassemble them and make a whole face for me.”

“Like a jigsaw puzzle?”

“Something like that. Can you do it?”

“We can do something, my computer nerd and I. Something beyond cut-and-paste.” He looked down at the film in his hand, and I knew the film was talking back to him. Guido sometimes seems really hyper. He isn’t, exactly. It’s just that when his mind is working on overdrive, the excess electricity he generates makes him bounce. All the springs in his taut body cannot be stilled. He could never play poker.

I grabbed his hard forearm, anchoring him like the string on a helium balloon.

“It’s interesting, isn’t it, Guido?” I said.

“Interesting? God, there’s an understatement.”

Mike frowned. “I don’t get it. I mean, it’s pretty damned amazing Maggie might have this guy’s face on film. But that isn’t what you mean, is it?”

“What do you see, Guido?” I asked.

“Same as you. A collage. Fragments cut and pasted together. In the end, when you sort it all out, what will you have? The truth? Or another mask?”

“Or another sort of mask?” I said. “I believe the only naked truth lies under those blurry edges your computer nerd couldn’t read. When you stitch me together a new face from this film, are you going to show me what’s under the blur, or just more obfuscation? What’ll it be, truth or a new lie?”

“Just don’t mess up the negatives,” Mike said. “They’re evidence.”

“Trust me,” Guido said. “How much time do I have?”

“None,” I said. “We need it now.”

“Let me call my friend and see if I can lure him back to campus.” Still bouncing on his springs, Guido went to the next room to use the telephone.

Mike was giving me a dark look. “You two were talking in some sort of code. What’s up?”

“Basically, the structure of this film project. More than that, though, it’s the whole question of what happened to Hillary.” I let out a breath and studied the grotesque parody of a face lying on its manila folder on the table. Then I turned to Mike.

“When I moved into my house,” I said, “there were ten layers of wallpaper on the kitchen walls. I was interested in seeing the old patterns, to get some idea what the kitchen used to look like, what I might try. I started stripping it. But every time I had cleared away a goodly patch and could almost get some effect, I would break through to the next layer, and the next. Each layer obscuring the others. So you know what I did?”

“Tell me.”

“I said fuck it. I rented a steamer and stripped the walls down to the plaster.”

“Seems consistent with the woman I know and love.” He smiled. “What is the point of this story?”

“This Hillary thing is like that, layers. Peel one away, find another.”

“Most police work is like that.” He waved a dismissive hand. “You never get the whole picture. You just hope for enough pieces so you can put the bad guys away.”

“We were set up, Mike.”

“How?”

“You said it last night when Randy was found. We were meant to find him. There are two overlapping layers here, two chronologies of events. The first is the chronology of discovery: Hillary is found first, then Randy. Then there is the chronology of death: first Randy, then Hillary.”

“Right. So?”

“So, it’s time to rent a steamer, Mike. Find the bare walls.”

“Where do you think you’ll find this steamer?”

“Hanna Ramsdale’s mother.”

He nodded with a sort of weary resignation. “I have to talk to her. She probably hasn’t been told her granddaughter is dead.”

“She should know. What were you waiting for?”

“Daylight, I guess. I hate bringing bad news to old ladies.” Guido came back just then.

“All set,” he said. “I’m meeting nerdo at the computer lab in fifteen minutes. It’s a twenty-minute drive, so I’m out of here. Maggie, how do I reach you?”

“Mike’s machine.”

“Mi casa es su casa. Stay here if you like. Bye.” He ran, or rather he sprang, out the front door and banged it behind him. “Shall we raid the refrigerator?” Mike said.

“Let’s get something on the way.”

“On the way to?”

“Pasadena. Isn’t that where Hanna’s mother is?”