Water from Stone - a Novel (25 page)

Joe steps right out, cuffs a few dogs fondly as he passes them on the way to the house. Sy takes it a bit more gingerly, finding the noses that shove for space in his crotch a little disconcerting. Wonders if there is something about his personal hygiene that makes dogs nuts.

“Boots! Get your nose outta there, you old pest!” the woman commands. Boots, however, doesn’t choose to listen and Sy finds himself fending off about eighty pounds of excited canine as he makes his way to the porch.

“Come on in,” the woman says and opens the door to let them into the house.

“Ms. Mason, I’m Deputy Doodle. This is Sy Colomanos, the one I told you about on the phone.”

“You all can have a seat, I guess,” she replies, waving them to worn country furniture. “I’ve got coffee on if you want some.”

“That’ll be fine,” Sy tells her. “Thanks.”

The thick, black brew finally in hand, the three sit looking at one another for a few minutes, taking a moment to size each other up.

“Well, I reckon you want to talk to me about my brother,” Trudy eventually speaks.

“Well, not so much about your brother, but about your niece. About Myrna.”

Trudy takes off her hat and drags a sun-and-work-roughened hand through her short-cropped hair. “Ah, hell, what’s that girl gone and done now? Is the baby OK?”

“The baby?” Sy asks cautiously.

“The little twit went off and got herself knocked up in New York City. The daddy wouldn’t have nothing to do with her or the baby so she came back here, came home to start fresh.”

“Was this recent? I mean, how old’s the baby?”

Trudy looks at him a moment. He can see her thinking, coming up with the questions. “Listen, Mr. Colomanos,” she begins.

“Sy”

“OK, Sy, whyn’t you tell me what’s on your mind, why you want to know about my niece.”

“Well, there’s a possibility, and I mean a possibility only, that your niece got herself mixed up in something back in New York and if it is her, I’ve been looking for her for about four years.”

“Mixed up in something? What kind of something?”

Sy shoots a look at Joe, how much to tell this woman?

Before he can answer, she speaks up, “Listen, Sy. You seem to be having some trouble wondering what to tell me. Let me tell you, I don’t truck with nonsense. Ain’t got no time for it, nor any interest in it. When my brother finally got caught, it was me that told the police where to find him. That sonofabitch had been hurting people and, family or no, there was no way I was gonna let him go on hurting people. If you’re here to tell me my niece got herself into some kind of trouble, then you’d better tell me all of it. If I can, I’ll help her. But, I’ll help her through legal ways. I won’t help her break the law or hurt people like her daddy did.”

Sy believes her. The coffee goes cold while he lays it all out for her. She asks a few questions, he answers them. In the end, she believes it could be her niece he has been looking for.

“She was a troubled girl,” Trudy tells them. “I didn’t have any idea what her daddy’d been doing to her. Not until it was too late. But any idiot could see she had some serious issues. She had this little doll, a baby doll, that she carried around for years. The only thing she’d talk to. She’d have full-on conversations with that doll, but wouldn’t say boo to any human being. It was down-right scary sometimes. She’d be talking to that doll, and then when you come up to her, her eyes’d go all flat and she’d fall mute. She couldn’t go to school. Social Services came out a few times to check on her. We all figured she was a bit crazy, you know? And then her daddy took off and all of a sudden she started talking, like she’d been normal all along. It was the damndest thing but, hell, I was just glad she wasn’t crazy anymore. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that she told me about her daddy. Shortly after that, she took off and I didn’t hear from her for years.”

“When was the last time you did hear from her?” That from Joe.

“Oh, hell, when was it?” she muses. “I think that was the year Spark was born. Yeah, that’s it. I remember her looking at the foal and commenting on how pretty he was. So, that’d make it about three, maybe four years ago.”

“So, she came out here.”

“Yeah. Came to ‘visit’, so she said, but that girl wasn’t much good at visiting. I could tell it was more like to see if I had any money. Said she’d pay it off and all, but that never happened and I don’t expect it too. Anyways, she showed up with her baby and, hell, she’d never had much anyway, so I gave her some. Thought it’d be the least I could do for her.”

“Tell me about the baby,” Sy prompts.

“Oh, she was a little thing, and quiet as a mouse. Never did make much noise. Maybe she’s feeble-minded or something, but it didn’t seem too natural for a baby that young to be so quiet.  Not mute-like, just real quiet.”

“Did Myrna tell you about her? About her father?”

“Well, now, and remember, this is what she told me and what I always believed, but she told me she’d been living in New York City and doing real well, selling flowers or something. Said she met a nice man, someone she had hopes of having a future with, but when she told him she was pregnant, he confessed to being married. He wanted her to get an abortion, but she wouldn’t have anything to do with it. After the baby was born, she came back home to raise her by herself.”

“She had a boyfriend? Did she tell you anything about him? Maybe his name?” Sy has a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He’d been so sure that this was the right lead, that he was finally, finally getting close. If having a boyfriend checks out, then it is more than likely that Myrna is not the kidnapper he is looking for.

“I’m sorry,” she says finally. “I don’t remember his name. She mentioned some high-powered man, but, personally, if you ask me, her story sounded a little off. I mean, what would a high-powered man want with Myrna? She wasn’t much to look at, and not at all sociable, if you know what I mean. I kind of thought that maybe someone else was the father of the baby and she was too ashamed to admit it. Like, you know, maybe she got raped, or met up with the wrong kind of man. Anyways, I never did find out. She hasn’t been back and she hasn’t called.”

“Do you know where she went? Where she was going?”

“She said she had a job in Boulder, working in a shop. It was one of those college shops, sell all that crap to druggie kids. I swear, I don’t know where this world is going to, they let that kind of place do business. It’s ruining this nation. Anyways, I tried to get her to stay here, help me work the ranch, give that baby a good home, but she wouldn’t. Said she was just working in that shop until something better came along. So, she stayed a few days, I gave her some money, and she took off. We had a real nice time while she was here, though, and I’ve been wondering when she was gonna come back again. Do you think maybe something happened to her?”

“I don’t know, ma’am,” Sy says. “If it did, I’ll find out and let you know. And, if it didn’t, I’ll let you know as soon as I find her.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

Fifty-Nine

Sy.

Compared to the years of waiting, the rest is almost too easy. It takes Sy three days to track down the kid who had owned the head shop. He now owns a juice-and-snack bar in a local fitness club and he admits that there is a hell of a lot more money in health than there had been in drugs.

He pushes the photo Trudy had given to Sy back across the juice counter. “So, you really think Natalie stole that kid? That’s freaky,” Craig says. “But, yeah, there was something weird about her. Now that you mention it, that explains why she hardly ever answered when I said her name. You kind of had to get in her face and get her attention. Myrna. Yeah, that fits her better than Natalie. I felt sorry for her, man. It was obvious she was doing something, always looking strung out, but she kept that kid clean. Took real good care of her.”

“Why didn’t you call Social Services or something, if you thought she was doing drugs around the kid?”

Craig looks at him like he is from Mars. “Man, you just don’t get it, do you? You’re spending too much time in the clean world, all polished up. I’m talking about a whole different culture. There are kids out there, teenagers and younger, running the streets of America, homeless kids, drug addicts, kids that’ll sell their bodies for a slice of bread. You think calling Social Services is gonna fix that? You gotta be kidding.”

Sy’s heard it all before. Always a reason for not stepping in. He feels the anger build and thinks about pounding the punk in his prissy little spandex outfit, his designer hair and perfect little teeth. He sighs. Hell, the kid is right. How was he supposed to know that turning the baby into Social Services might have brought her home four years sooner?

“Nah, you’re right. There was nothing you could’ve done.”

“Exactly my point. I did what I could. I gave her a job, paid her. Hell, half the time she was so wired, she wasn’t worth having there anyway, but I liked the baby. So I kept Natalie, I mean Myrna, on, and brought in food for the baby. Probably did a helluva lot more good for her than Social Services.”

“OK, I got ya. Now, you said she only worked for you for about six months. Any idea where she went after that? Where she is now?”

“Well fuck me blind!” the kid says. “You mean you don’t know?” His eyes are wide as saucers.

“Know? Know what?”

“She’s dead, man. OD’d about three years ago. Fried her brains out. That’s when I started looking for something else to do, got outta that business.”

Now it is Sy’s turn to look incredulous. Dead? He’s been looking for a corpse all these years? Well, no wonder no one could find her. “You’re sure about that?” he asks, just to be sure.

“Sure. The cops came down to the shop, asked me a few questions. The lady from Social Services came down a couple of times, asked me a bunch more. Did she have any family? Where was she from? All that,” he waves expressively.

“What’d you tell them?”

“Hey, I might’ve been selling paraphernalia to druggies, but I wasn’t one myself, and didn’t need any hassles from the cops. I told them what I knew. Natalie didn’t have any family. In fact, until you just told me, I didn’t even know her real name. I thought her name was Natalie Jones. At least, that’s what she told me. And, yes, OK? I did pay her under the table, and I did have a nice long talk with Uncle Sam about that. Won’t be doing that ever again, no way. So, no, I didn’t know her Social Security number or anything else. She just showed up one day, looking for a job and she had this baby to take care of and I felt sorry for her. End of story.”

“But she said she didn’t have any family?”

“That’s what she said, man, and I didn’t press.”

“What happened to the baby?”

“Lizzie? I don’t know. That lady from Social Services or the Kid’s Network, or whatever that place is, came and took her away. I heard she wasn’t doing too good. Natalie, I mean Myrna’d, been dead for awhile before someone came and the kid had been in there all alone with the body, nothing to eat or drink. It was pretty messed up, let me tell you.”

Yeah, it is pretty messed up. Sy rubs his eyes, feeling a headache coming on. Something to compete with the pain in his arm that doesn’t seem to be going away any.

“So, Social Services took the kid.”

“Yeah, yeah. I checked a couple of times, called them just to see how Lizzie was doing. They put her in foster care and eventually she got adopted by some local artist lady. I thought that was good, it all worked out, then.”

Sy gives him a look.

“Well, yeah, but that was before I met you. Before I knew the kid was stolen in the first place.” Craig pauses, shifts gears, “So, what’re you gonna do?”

“I’m going to find the kid. See if it’s really the one I’m looking for.”

“Of course,” Craig allows, “it’ll be really fucked up for the artist lady. She thinks she’s the kid’s mom.”

Sy hadn’t thought of that. Now he does and he realizes the kid is probably right. It is going to be a major fuckfest all around.

Sixty

Sy.

Sy takes the rest of the afternoon off. Finds himself a table at Mickey D’s and has a strategy meeting with himself. Dora is still harping about going to the Feds, though now that he is so close, she isn’t yammering quite as much. Still, they could come in and wrap this thing up by sundown. They’d be able to just go down to Social Services and get the records from around the time Myrna’d died. Hell, by tomorrow, the kid could be on a plane home.

But he doesn’t get up to call the Feds. He takes another bite of cholesterol and waits for the pieces to settle in his mind.

He could go to Social Services, find out what agency deals with foster care up here, maybe ask them. But what are they going to do? Probably deny deny deny, make him get a court order to see their records. Maybe call in the FBI themselves. They’d have to, if there was a kidnapping involved. And what if this wasn’t the baby? A lot of people would be hurt by this. Not to mention the artist lady who’s been raising the kid as her own all these years. Yeah, that could screw you up. Like that case a few years ago, the mom putting the kid up for adoption without the dad’s consent. Then the adoptive parents raising the kid for years until the courts made them give the kid to the biological dad. He remembers the news on that one. Heartbreak all around. Mostly for the kid. The kid was too young to understand why it couldn’t be with Mom and Dad anymore, why it had to go live with a stranger.

Sy makes a decision and calls for opposition. There is none. Meeting concluded, he gets up and heads back to his hotel for a drink. Tomorrow will be soon enough to start looking for the artist lady.

Sixty-One

Sy.

A nice-looking woman looks up as Sy pushes the gallery’s door open. She seems to look him up and down and he feels like an ass. Under his winter coat he wears a denim shirt, jeans and cowboy boots.

“Can I help you?” she asks pleasantly. When he meets her eyes, her smile broadens.

“Uh, yeah, I guess so. Is it OK if I just look around?” He asks, wondering if there’s some sort of gallery protocol he should be following.

“Of course, go right ahead. Do you know Mar’s work?”

“Well, no, I’m afraid not.”

“Would you like me to tell you about her? Or maybe you’d prefer to look around first?”

“No. I mean, yes. I think I’ll look around first.”

The woman smiles at him and returns to her desk.

Sy nervously jams his hands in his pockets, afraid to touch anything. She’d picked up right away on the fact that he doesn’t know a damn thing about art. Maybe he’ll say he is looking for something for his wife and she appreciates art. Something special for her birthday or something.

He continues to meander through the gallery, going a lot more slowly than he had planned. Hell, even he can tell it is good. A little weird with all those bright colors and not at all like what he is used to seeing, realistic stuff. But, it is good. Not that whole crappy, modern stuff that looks like a kindergartner on acid had done it, throwing the paint all around, stomping on it, gluing weird stuff to it and calling it art. These paintings make you feel something just looking at them.

He glances around. There are a lot of women artists in Boulder. Most do Native American kind of art, or flighty kinds of stuff with angels and apples and a lot of weird things all mixed together, shit he wouldn’t want to look at day-in-and-day-out. Hell, shit he didn’t want to look at even the first time around. So far, though, he hadn’t found any artists with a daughter around Mia’s age. Mar Delgado is one of the last on the list.