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Marilyn heard the siren before she saw the black-and-white in her rearview mirror. She pulled over to the shoulder.
“License and registration.”
Officer Ernesto Landry watched the driver as she reached for her purse, which was perched in the backseat on an empty child safety seat. Twenty, maybe twenty-two, he figured. Pretty. Although the shellacked platinum hair and heavy eyeliner didn’t help. Marilyn Monroe with an edge.
The male passenger was closer to thirty, with curly dark hair and tan skin—ethnicity hard to figure. We’re all mutts, thought Landry, who was a quarter English, a quarter Scottish, and half Portuguese.
The passenger opened the glove box slowly, like he knew not to spook a cop. Landry registered it. Might be something to that. But he dismissed the suspicious feeling, chiding himself. Ever since his buddy got shot on a routine traffic stop a month back, Landry didn’t view anything as innocent. Ernesto knew he’d have to move past that or he’d have another ulcer.
“Your left taillight is out. Texas plates—you here visiting?”
“We’re moving here,” she answered politely.
Seems sober enough.
The male passenger smiled, a little too broadly.
Landry handed the driver a citation for the broken light. “Be sure to take care of this or the fine will run into some money.” He looked at her Texas driver’s license a second time before returning it. It matched the vehicle registration—Marilyn Lewis. He’d put a fiver on Marilyn not being her given name.
As Officer Landry drove away, Billy stuffed the ticket in the glove box.
“Jerk!”
“Doing his job, babe,” Marilyn said, smiling before easing back into traffic. “I can’t wait to see her. Do you think she looks like you?”
Billy had only seen the kid once, when he had shown up to get money from Sal that first year. He had no idea before that visit that there was a baby and hadn’t cared when he found out.
“You said she had red hair, but she could have your eyes. I don’t care what she looks like. I just can’t wait to hold her.”
So happy, Billy thought, and we don’t even have the kid yet.
Marilyn told Billy shortly after they met that she couldn’t get pregnant. Fine with him, made it easier when they were having sex, everywhere, all the time. They hadn’t slowed down, either. Marilyn seemed to like it as much as he did as long as he didn’t do the rough stuff. She liked to be treated like a lady. Fair enough, she’d been raised that way—ritzy Houston royalty. So Billy went elsewhere. A few bucks did it in the right—or make that the wrong—parts of town. No need for her to know. Really, the only problem with Marilyn that Billy could see was she didn’t just want sex, she wanted a baby.
Man, did she want a baby.
When Marilyn found out Billy had a kid being raised by his sister, there was no stopping her. She had gotten a second job, saved money for this move, even bought the damn car seat. And she was counting on Billy to make her dreams of motherhood happen. It was a pain. He still wasn’t sure what the big deal was with a kid, but Billy knew he had gotten lucky with Marilyn, and he wasn’t going to screw it up. Much better than when he was with that uptight Catholic girl back in Sacramento.
That one had wanted it too, Billy recalled. The prim and proper ones always do. No matter what they say, before or after.
So he was willing to do what he needed to keep Marilyn happy. He told her his sister would be more than ready to stop single parenting and give the kid to a proper set of parents, a dad and a mom. But he wasn’t as sure about that as he made himself out to be.
Billy was high when he showed up that last time at Sal’s, and she had been anxious for him to leave. Not that it was anything new. Sal hadn’t wanted Billy around for a long time. Ever since he started wanting fun in his life and was willing to take some risks and use alcohol, weed and blow to get it. Meanwhile, Sal seemed stuck in “Ms. Responsible” mode. He figured that was why Sal accepted the kid from Tilly in the first place. Out of a sense of duty. His older sis was such a straight-arrow goody-goody. If she saw now that he had changed, that he had a good woman, that he stayed sober most of the time (Marilyn didn’t like him using), Sal would hand the kid over.
He remembered the tiny baby sleeping in the crib. True, Sal had made him sign some paper she wrote on the spot saying he gave up his rights, something like that, he couldn’t remember exactly. Then she had given him money, more than she usually did.
But she can’t buy a baby, he reassured himself. Or at least he didn’t think she could. Anyway, things are different now, Sal will see that, he told himself, still more conclusively than he felt.
It was after 10:00 p.m. when they pulled into the lot in front of a Motel 6 in downtown Davis. The next day they planned to check out apartments, and Billy would apply for temporary landscape help or construction jobs. Marilyn wouldn’t work so she could get the mom thing going. She insisted on that. She had even endured a visit with her old man to wrangle some extra dough. They would visit Sal, make nice, and show how stable they were. Not ask for anything. He hoped Sal wouldn’t take long to see what was best. As soon as they had the kid, he wanted to get back to Houston. Sacramento was too law-and-order for him.
As he carted their bags from the car to the motel room, Billy had a pleasant thought. It will fall in love with Marilyn. Everyone does. Then he corrected himself. She. She will fall in love with Marilyn. At least, he was pretty sure he had it right when he told Marilyn his kid was a girl.