36

Pix was a talker. I could have her opinion of the goddamn government—thank you very much—the last fifteen terrific movies she’d seen, the last four guys she’d screwed, the AIDS epidemic, which she personally considered a scare tactic to keep kids off the street. She was getting on my nerves. I’d have knocked her clear into the backseat, except that her chatter was studded with useful gems.

Alonso had deep brown “bedroom” eyes, and she thought he was, like, different than anybody she’d ever known in her whole entire life. He had a killer tan or maybe he was Hispanic, but he didn’t speak Spanish so maybe he wasn’t, and his eyes were so terrific anyway, and she had no idea why he called himself the Alien, which was cool. Yeah, and he was really thin, but not like the sick kind of thin you get when you have AIDS. Pix could tell. He had muscles, not like some stupid beach bum prick, regular-guy muscles, and that way cool Honda motorbike and she was pretty sure it wasn’t stolen, but he had trouble getting enough bread to keep gas in the tank. He was totally uptight about money.

When I asked if the motorbike had a Mass. license, Miss Chatterbox looked at me as if I were crazy. She wasn’t about to betray Alonso to an almost-cop. Took her almost two minutes to start blabbling again.

Yeah, and did I know Alonso was like an artist? Yeah, I said, she’d mentioned that. Well, not really an artist, she said, but a writer.

I kept silent. It’s the best way to question a talky witness.

See, she knew because, well, first she thought he was an artist artist, like a painter, because he had these artist’s, like, pads of paper—whatcha-callems?—sketchbooks and stuff. But when she took one, and she wasn’t like gonna steal it or anything, she was just interested, it was full of pretty weird writing, not pictures like she thought. And did he get pissed when he found her reading it. Wow, talk about ballistic! Talk about postal! He said the stuff was worth money, and she thought he was, like, pretty full of himself ’cause she could write big words, too, but nobody was gonna pay her diddly for it. And she didn’t know who’d pay for shit with one word here and another there and some of it not even like real sentences with verbs and stuff.

“‘I have been here for an hour,’” she said, “‘watching rain beat melancholy, on panes and regrets, I can neither conquer nor break—’”

“What?”

“It’s Alonso’s. Would you pay for it?”

It hadn’t been part of the chapter I’d read. I was certain of that.

“Do you have it?” I asked.

“Maybe. Depends.”

“How many sketchbooks did Alonso have?”

“Tons of ’em,” she said. “I don’t think he should of gotten pissed when I just read one.”

For “read” one I substituted “took” one. Where was it? Did her knapsack have a hidey-hole, a zippered compartment I hadn’t searched?

I took a good look at Pix, bottle-blond, short boy-cut hair. Sturdy kid’s body. Thin gawky legs.

“You and Alonso went to visit a school.” A young man and a girl, Emerson had said. Street urchins.

“So what?”

“So why?”

“Is my mom paying you to find me, or some kinda shit?”

It wasn’t much as cries for help go, but Pix had imagined it, that her mother would try to get her back. I wished the damned woman had hired me.

“Why did you go to the school?” I asked.

“Alonso said he wanted to visit his alma mater. That’s like old school, right, like he went there, with uniforms and shit. This old fart almost threw us out. Alonso just laughed.”

“He asked about a woman named Thea Janis.”

“Yeah. Like he always talked about her. He was pissed the old fart didn’t have her picture. You know about her? ’Cause I don’t, and the way Alonso talked, it’s like she’s some movie star, somebody I oughta know, and, like, I’m not ignorant.”

What the hell would I do with her? Lock her in a closet? Keep her on a leash?

Roz. I could stick her with Roz. Or vice versa.

Like Alonso was maybe not exactly right in the head, Pix was saying. Not wrapped real tight, maybe.

I tuned back in. Fast.

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“He was lookin’. for a shrink. Is that such a big deal?”

Seemed like he’d found one. On the beach.

“Was he looking for a particular shrink?” I asked. “Or just somebody to talk to?”

“Guy who worked at that place for wacko rich kids.”

“What place?” I asked.

“Like, you know, rich suckers send their kids, the kids who aren’t quite right? You have to know it, it’s like famous, for chrissakes. It’s like Harvard for the messed-up, you know. Celebrity kids go there when they totally fuck up.”

“In Weston?” I asked almost afraid to break the flow.

“Yeah, right, Weston. Rich people live there, all right.” She couldn’t exactly remember, but the shrink had something to do with the place in Weston where all the bratty kids who couldn’t cut it go, you know, the ones fried their brains and took dope and didn’t want an Ivy League diploma.

I was stopped at a red light. If I hadn’t been I’d have pulled off the road.

Weston Psychiatric Institute. WPI had been initialed on Drew Manley’s calendar. Every single week, once or twice. WPI. WPI.

My house is close to Harvard Square. Pix shut off the conversational flow and started to pay attention to her surroundings as soon as she clicked on the fact that we were now in friendly Cambridge, miles from the corpse on the beach, close to places she could negotiate, squats where she could disappear into the anonymity of street life.

“Stay put,” I warned, draping my arm across the back of the seat, leaning to reach the passenger side door lock, keep it locked. And I could have held her, stopped her, if it hadn’t been for the three cop cars parked outside my house, flashing their cherry lamps. One look at them and she was in the backseat, out the door, and gone.

My hand moved automatically to the dashboard, swept Manley’s belongings to the floor. I didn’t have time to stash them in the knapsack, and I sure wasn’t taking it out of the car for the police to admire. In the dark, I shoved it firmly under the passenger seat.

By the time I exited, Pix was halfway down the block, a fleeing shadow. I was tempted to pursue, but curiosity dragged me home like a cat.