five

Gato stood in the living room of Mallen’s floating home. He checked his messages, then closed the phone with a click. Said, “None of my hermanos report that a car matching mine is being looked for. I’m going to garage her somewhere out of the way for a while, just to be safe.”

“You know a place?”

“Oh yeah, man. No sweat. I can even pick up a loaner,” he said with a grin.

Mallen’s phone rang and he pulled it out. It’d been the tone he reserved for anything from Chris. She’d sent him a text: Can you come by? Need your input. He couldn’t help but feel good about the request. She was asking for his help. She must be feeling good about where he was, where they were, if she was going to do that. It was hard to suppress the smile on his face.

“Yeah, you should garage the car for a while,” he said to Gato as he shoved his phone back into his coat pocket. “But can I hitch a ride back to the city with you? Chris needs to see me. You see if you can get a line on Teddy Mac. I’ll call you when I’m done, and we’ll hook up then, okay?”

Gato had a smile on his face the moment he heard Chris had sent his friend a text. “Hope it’s all good with her, man.”

“I’m sure it’s about Anna, but yeah … she’s trying to include me again. That’s a good thing, right?”

“Most definitely, bro.” Gato went to the front door, but then stopped and turned around. “Hey man,” he laughed, “we sound like some private detective duo!”

“Yeah,” he answered, surprised at the positive effect his friend’s words had on him, “guess that’s true.” He paused then for a moment. Knew his next request might not make Gato so happy. “I think you should give me that gun, okay?”

The smile left Gato’s face. “Why, man?”

“Because if for some reason your buddies are wrong, and you get stopped, they will find that gun on you, and then you’ll be in the shit. Up to your ears. Give it to me to stash for a bit, okay? I won’t hurt it. I promise.”

Gato thought about it for a moment. Reluctantly he brought out the nickel-plated .38. Handed it over. “Only use the Remington 158-grain in that baby, okay? She likes to be fed on that.”

“No worries.”

Gato grinned. Followed it up with a shrug. “I got another at home, anyway.”

“G, just be careful. We need you on the outside, okay?”

His friend seemed to appreciate the thought. “Of course, bro. I’m no hothead.”

_____

Gato had insisted on dropping him right at Chris’s house. As it was the last time he’d been there, Mallen couldn’t help but realize just how much he’d lost. Well, he thought as he stood looking up at the house, maybe he could get it back one day. He was clean now. Had no job, sure, but maybe that would come later. He could provide for his family again. Yeah, Chris had been dating, but still … He couldn’t help himself: he wanted it all back. Somehow. Another part of him then spoke up, saying that if he couldn’t have it back in the way that he really wanted, then he would still be there for the both of them in any way they needed. If that’s what it would be, well then that’s what it would be.

He went up the tan-painted concrete steps to the dark wood door. They’d chosen this house because it was in the Mediterranean style, painted in a happy, light blue color. He could tell it’d been painted recently, and he was happy to see that Chris had not changed the color. He knocked and waited.

After a moment, the door opened and there was Anna. Her hair had been cut in a short bob, one that matched her mother’s. She wore a bright yellow sundress and tan sandals, and looked like the prettiest thing in the universe. “Daddy!” she yelled as she threw herself at him, and he grabbed her up and hugged her tightly.

“Hey, A,” he said. “You stayin’ out of trouble, Little Miss Criminal?”

“Are you?”

“Yup.”

She laughed then. “I’m not!” Like she’d won a game. He hugged her again and then put her back on her feet as Chris came down the hall. She looked worried, but smiled when she saw him.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Thanks for coming so fast,” she replied. “I’m sorry if the text sounded dramatic. It’s just that a friend of mine, well, she …” her voice trailed off.

“No need to apologize. What’s up?”

For an answer, she glanced back down the hall. Toward the kitchen. “You remember Liz Goldman? I went to Mills with her? She was a year ahead of me.”

“Sure. Of course. You were Architecture, she was Poly Sci. You married a cop; she was married to Richard Goldman, who is now Mr. New Mayor.” And it had been a landslide too. Goldman had captured almost 70 percent of the vote, even running on the standard bullshit: clean up Market Street, bring in new businesses and jobs, convert old hotels into condos. The usual, but it had worked. Mallen had to admit it helped that the man had charisma. Charisma in spades.

“Don’t they have two kids?” he asked. “Older kids. I think I remember reading about the son. Thomas? Living in New York, right? Being a big-time stockbroker or something?”

“Right. Then there’s the younger daughter, the one who was in kindergarten when I met Liz.”

It was the way she said it that made him answer with, “What’s Tracy up to?”

“That’s why I texted you.” She led him to the kitchen. There he found Liz Goldman, sitting at the round, mid-century kitchen table. She huddled over a cup of coffee, and he noticed a bottle of Baileys near her right hand. She’d been crying. Chris sat down opposite her. He took one of the spare seats.

“Hi Liz,” he said. “Something going on?”

She looked over at him. “Hi Mark. Been awhile. You doing okay?”

Everyone of course knew about his past. He nodded. “Yeah. Every day’s a victory now.”

A nod. Silence filled the room, and he looked a question over at Chris. She urged him on with a look back at Liz.

“I hear Thomas is doing well in New York.”

“Yes, and as to your next question, no, Tracy’s not doing well. In fact, she’s—” Liz took a drink of her coffee cup. Wiped away a tear. “She’s gone.”

“Gone?” he said.

“Took off a week or so ago.”

Man, he thought, is everyone’s daughter going missing? Made him think of Lupe, and of Anna, and how he’d feel if she had gone missing. Shuddered at the thought. He knew nothing really about Tracy, figured she would be about eighteen, maybe nineteen tops. And man, kids were so impulsive nowadays. Anna came into the room at that moment. Smiled at him as she went to the fridge. Opened it and pulled out some roll-up snack that Chris kept in the house. Trotted out like the world wasn’t a bad place, and even if it was, it couldn’t hurt her here, in her house. He had to admit: he envied his daughter then.

“Took off,” he said. “For parts unknown? Or someplace closer to home?”

A shrug. “I think she’s in the Mission. Maybe Hunters Point. Those were the last places she mentioned to me, anyway.”

What would she be doing there, he wondered. People didn’t usually go running around Hunters unless they called it home. He could understand Liz’s worry.

“Why did she mention those neighborhoods?” he asked.

“She said she was looking for a place there. Told me she might be rooming with friends there.” She broke down then. Pushed aside the coffee mug and began to cry. “My baby, my baby, my baby …” was all they could get out of her for a moment.

Mallen wondered why exactly he’d been called over, but knew Chris enough to know that if she’d summoned him here to listen to this woman, there was a good reason for it.

After Liz composed herself, she continued on in a halting, hoarse voice. “She’s a legal adult, but she’s still so young. It’s not like when any of us were kids, right, Chris? Back then, when you went to college, you were expected to be an adult. Act like an adult. Now? Now it seems that college is just an extension of high school. You’re not expected to act like an adult. Maybe it’s the world we live in? Bad behavior isn’t looked at as being, well … bad. It’s something like outrageous or epic. I don’t get it.” She shook her head, looked over at Mallen. Her eyes were very sad. “Tracy’s suddenly left home. Moved out, and in with a couple of her girlfriends about ten days ago. I was okay with that. Why shouldn’t I be? She didn’t want to go to college right away, and no, I wasn’t okay with that. Tuition wasn’t a concern for us, which we told her, but she has these new friends. I don’t know where she met them, but I didn’t like them when I met them. They weren’t like the other friends she has. She only met them a month ago.”

He automatically reached into his coat pocket for a pen and notebook that weren’t there, and hadn’t been for some time. He caught Chris’s slight smile at his movement, recognizing it immediately. They both knew what he was going to do. Chris pulled a pad and pen from a nearby kitchen drawer and handed it to him with a look of gratitude.

“What are those girl’s names? Do you know?”

“Only their first names. Jinky and Minta.”

“Jinky?” he said to himself as he wrote it down. Definitely a street name. Maybe Gato could help him track one or both down. “What did ‘Jinky’ look like when you met her?

Liz thought for a moment, then said, “Tan to dark skin. Short. Only just over five feet or so. Dyed purple hair when I saw her with Tracy a few weeks ago. She was wearing a pink tank top and very short shorts. Both arms were tattooed. Completely covered, from wrist to the shoulders.”

He wrote all that down. “And Minta?”

“Full figured. Young-looking black girl. Dyed red hair, all done up in these short braids. Same kind of clothes as the other one. Average in height, I guess. Same height as Tracy.”

“Either of them carrying bags that might stand out?” Clothes you can change daily, but women tended to stick with purses.

Liz thought about that. Nodded then. “Yes. Minta’s bag was a huge, knitted sack-like affair. Jinky had nothing like a bag that I saw.”

As he sat there, his mind formed images of what these two girls might look like. Maybe it was his history in law enforcement. Maybe it was his history of shooting dope in the Tenderloin. Whatever it was, all his mind could conjure was an image of two young prostitutes. Man, he thought, Mallen? You’re gettin’ old.

He glanced again at Chris, then back at Liz. It was time for the million-dollar question. “Why no cops?”

And now the two women exchanged glances. Liz took up her mug. Kept her gaze on the dark liquid inside as she said, “Richard doesn’t believe that she’s in trouble. Thinks I’m overreacting.”

“Ah.” He wondered if that’s what Goldman really thought, or if he just wanted to really keep it quiet. Keep it on the down-low. He’d heard of this type of shit going down before. Some guys he’d known, back in his SFPD days had done a little digging into private matters for the local politicos, on their own time. It was the way of the world, or so it seemed.

“Yes, ‘Ah’,” Liz replied. “We don’t expect you to do it for free, Mark.”

The statement alone was fine. It was the glance at the crook of his right arm that told him exactly what she was thinking. Even though Chris had probably filled her in on how he was doing, Liz Goldman obviously thought otherwise. Man, but the world was filled with cynics. “The cynics are right nine times out of ten,” was a famous quote, though he couldn’t remember the guy it was quoted from. Something that Dreamo used to say to him from time to time as Mallen stood there in the bathroom of the Cornerstone, buying balloons of H to fill the emptiness of his right arm and soul. He knew now that the saying was a fun play on itself. Very meta. This saying about cynics was itself cynical. Well, Mallen knew every day that he didn’t shoot dope he was proving that saying wrong. He was good with that fact too.

“No worries, Liz,” he said as he folded the piece of paper he’d scribbled his notes down on and shoved it into his coat pocket. “I don’t want any pay. I’ll see what I can find out. If I can help you and Richard, I will. But, if it looks bad I’ll tell you immediately and you should really then go to the police, husband’s opinions be damned, okay?”

Liz nodded in reply. He would help her, but because of Chris. Any parent who didn’t want to go to the police out of appearance sake bugged him. And Mayor Goldman now officially bugged him. He said his goodbye to Liz after getting her cell number, telling her he would contact her in a couple days. Chris followed him back down the hall and as they got to the entryway, he heard a voice from the stairs behind him.

“Freeze, Daddy-O,” Anna said as she lay in wait, ready to pounce.

He scooped her up off her feet, a squeal erupting from her lips. He hugged her tightly, telling her they would fly a kite soon, that he was just about done with one. Chris told her it was time for a bath and she should get upstairs. Once she was gone, he turned to Chris and said, “You okay with this? Her using me to find their daughter?”

She didn’t look sure, at all. “We go way back. And she asked.”

“I’ll do what I can. You know that.”

A smile. “Thanks, Mark.” Then after a moment. “Everything still okay?”

“Yup. Even went for a test. Should have results very soon.”

She hugged herself, ever so slightly. “You think … think it’ll be negative?”

If he could remember every needle he ever shot into his arm, he’d be way ahead of the game for sure. As it was, he knew he was clear on about 85 percent of them. “Odds are that … yeah, we’re good. I never got into sharing needles, and that’s a biggie,” he said. Shrugged then. What else was there to do? “It never got like that,” he told her quietly. “I always kept it clean … thinking I was like Keith Richards or Jimmy Page, yeah? Shooting clean. Sure, we won’t know until the results, but I’m willing to bet you a dinner that the results will be negative.” He smiled then.

And she smiled back. “How about ten dollars instead?” That hurt him, and she could tell. She added quickly, quietly, “Come on, Mark … our history? What do you expect?”

“Yeah … I know. And you’re right. Sorry.” Held out his hand then, the smile on his lips as genuine as he could work up. “Ten goddamn dollars, lady.”

She shook his hand, then pulled him close and hugged him. Whispered into his ear, “Deal, asshole. You’re her father, and I want you around for her high school graduation, her senior prom, and her graduation from college. Don’t fuck it up again, okay?”

And he answered back in the same whisper: “Deal.”