MY cell phone rang almost immediately. “Where are you going?” Peter said. “I heard your car in the driveway, and then you pulled out again. What’s going on?”
“I’m going to Figueroa Street.”
“Goddamnit, Juliet. You promised you wouldn’t go back there.”
“I’m not going anywhere near Sylvester, I promise. I’m just going to the taco truck. This is the last time, I promise. I have to, Peter. Before I quit this case I have to be sure that I’ve done everything I can.”
Peter knows me like no one else does. He can hear the slightest change in the timbre of my voice; he knows what I’m feeling, sometimes before I do.
“Stay in the car, okay?” he said. “Don’t get out. Just pull in the parking lot, and ask whoever you want to talk to to get in the car with you. And if you see that Sylvester guy, swear to me that you’ll book the hell out of there as fast as you can.”
“I promise,” I said.
“And keep your phone on. I’m going to sit on the line with you.”
“That’s crazy, Peter.”
“I don’t care if it’s crazy. It’ll make me feel better.”
“Okay.”
When I got to the taco truck I said, “I’m going to turn the volume down so they won’t be able to hear the static and realize that the phone is on. Just don’t talk, okay?”
“Fine.”
I pulled into the parking lot and up next to the truck. Baby Richard was in his usual spot on the bench. As I rolled down my window I saw Jackie getting out of a car that had just pulled up to the curb in front of Baby Richard. She blew a kiss to the driver of the car and handed her nephew something. M&M was sitting next to Baby Richard.
“Hey, Mary Margaret,” I called.
She looked up from the donut she was eating. She seemed neither pleased nor displeased to see me.
“Want to get warm?” I said. It was a cool night, an edge of damp in the air. The morning fog was rolling in early.
She glanced over at Baby Richard. He shrugged. “Okay,” she said. She hopped up into the passenger seat and wrinkled her nose. What did it mean when a Figueroa Street prostitute was disturbed by the odor in my minivan?
“One of my kids got sick in the backseat yesterday,” I said.
“My daughter gets real carsick,” she said. “She’s got to ride in the front or else she just pukes her guts up.”
I decided that a lecture on the danger of allowing a small child to ride in the front seat would be lost on her.
“Hey!” Jackie called, knocking on my window. “Open the door.”
I pushed the automatic door button and it glided open.
“Oh my goodness,” she said. “I seen that on TV.” She got in the car and scraped the food wrappings, stuffed animals and Uno cards from the seat onto the floor. “Close that door now, I’m freezing. Juliet, you owe me a buck twenty five.”
“What? Why?”
She held up her coffee cup. I laughed and pulled two dollars out of the armrest where I kept my change and small bills. “Here,” I said. “Now you owe me. You want me to pay for yours, M&M?”
M&M shook her head. “S’okay Baby Richard bought it for me.”
“Whew,” Jackie said. “Like my ol’ auntie Florene used to say, it smells like a sack o’ granddaddies in here.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Isaac gets carsick.”
“So,” Jackie said. “What you doing down here again? You looking for Sylvester, maybe beat his sorry ass?” She cackled. Clearly Baby Richard’s sense of humor was an inherited trait.
“No,” I said. “I’m just tying up some loose ends on Violetta’s case. I wanted to make sure there was nothing else you remembered from the night she was killed. Can you think of anything? Anything at all?”
M&M shook her head. “It was just a regular night, you know?”
“And you’re sure you can’t remember who picked her up?”
She shook her head. “She had a couple of dates early in the night, and then we got some coffee over here and went back out on the corner. We stood out for a while, and then I had a date. She was gone when I got back.”
“And you, Jackie? Do you remember seeing anything?”
Jackie blew on her coffee and shook her head. “It was just a night, you know? Like every night. I don’t even remember seeing her much. Next thing I heard she was dead.”
“Did you guys know Annette?”
“Sure we did,” Jackie said. “Sure we did, Lord rest her soul. I got an AIDS test after she died. Just to be sure, you know? It was negative. I’m clean as they come. But I never touch needles. Annette, she used needles all the time.”
“What about you, M&M?” I asked.
“I knew her,” she said. “She was real sweet. She used to help me and Violetta out at the beginning. You know, show us stuff. Like Jackie does.”
Jackie smiled proudly. “I’m a real mother hen to the young girls. Teach them how to get what’s they due. All that.”
“Do you remember when Annette died? Violetta’s brother-in-law came to get her for the funeral. Did either of you see him?”
Jackie hooted. “Sure I did. Mm-mm.” She licked her lips.
“I didn’t see him,” M&M said. “But I know he was real generous with Violetta. He gave her money sometimes, and didn’t ask nothing about what she was going to use it for.”
“When did he give her money? When Annette died?”
M&M shrugged. “Yeah, then again a couple of days before Violetta died. He came down here like he did that other time when Annette died, but this time he didn’t take Violetta away with him. She just sat in his car with him for a little while, and when she came out she told me he gave her a lot of money.”
“How much?” I felt a rising excitement.
Jackie said, “Enough that she bought five hundred dollars worth of dope from Baby Richard. And not junk, either. The really nice stuff. The kind he keeps for hisself She was flying on that dope until the night she died.”
“She didn’t just buy dope with it,” M&M said. “Violetta gave me back two hundred dollars she owed me, and she was planning on buying her son a Game Boy. She was going to give it to him the next time she saw him. She was going to buy her mama some real nice new shoes. Her mama wears these special shoes, because her feet are like fat, but small. Like a weird size, and they hurt her real bad. I heard Violetta tell her mama that she was going to buy her a new pair of shoes.”
“When was that?”
M&M shrugged. “I don’t know, I guess the day after she got the money? The day before she died, I think.”
“Mary Margaret, did Violetta tell you why Thomas gave her the money?”
She shook her head. “She just said he was trying to play her, but he was messing with the wrong girl. That’s all she said.”
“And you don’t know how much money?”
“Sylvester knows,” Jackie said. “She was waving it around so much, he found out she had it and took it away from her.”
“All of it?”
“Oh, he probably left her a little, you know. Just to keep her from going crazy,” Jackie said.
I looked at M&M. “Do you know what happened with the money?”
She nodded. “He took it. But he said he’d buy her some new clothes with it, so she should be quiet. She was real upset, though. She cried hard.”
“When was that?”
“The day before she died. She didn’t even want to work that night, she was so upset. But Sylvester made her. It was lucky she bought all that stuff off of Baby Richard, because Sylvester never found it, and it made her feel a lot better.”
“Hey,” Jackie said. “You gonna buy us some more coffee?”
“Jackie,” I replied, “I’m going to buy you anything you want.”