Leigh didn’t like visiting police stations. Ever since Chicago in ’68, she’d despised the decaying institutional decor and the sweaty, musty smell, which could have been bottled as “Old Police Station” to men with very odd taste in cologne. But now she had pinned a bright and engaging smile on her face and not even the old dinosaur in uniform sitting across from her would wipe it from her face.
She was here to get what she needed for a story, and she wouldn’t let anything stop her. “But Captain Dorsey,” she said, not betraying her frustration, “I’m not doing an expose on the NYPD. I just want some leads on the new trend of girls joining gangs or forming their own.”
He snorted. “And I keep tellin’ ya. It isn’t new, and we don’t want you encouraging gang activity of any kind.”
“I’m not encouraging it. I just want to write about it and try to stop it.”
“You—” He pointed his ballpoint pen at her. “—write about it and it gets publicized, and you’ll end up making it even more popular.”
She felt like hitting him in the head with a two-by-four. But it would probably take more than that to get through to this man. “Well,” she said, rising and holding out her hand, her false smile holding, “I won’t take up any more of your time then. Thank you for your help.” Or lack thereof.
He stood and shook her hand with his large paw. “You be careful. A pretty woman like you shouldn’t be messin’ around with gangs. It could be very dangerous. You’re out of your league, lady.”
Now in her mid-thirties, Leigh was inured to the compliment he paid her. For once, she wished a man wouldn’t feel he had to tell her how pretty he thought she was. To be honest, she had traded on her good looks to get information—but only when no other way was open to her. And today she’d dressed in a stylish black suit with a flared skirt and had left her hair down, knowing she would be trying to get what she needed from a man.
After expressing her empty gratitude, she flashed a charming smile at him—who knew when she might need him or someone he knew to help her on another story—and then exited. As she walked down the narrow hallway back to the entrance, a broad-shouldered man brushed against her. She got a tantalizing whiff of his English Leather. She leaned away from him, unaccountably irritated.
But then she felt him slip something into the outside pocket of her suit jacket. She gave him a startled look, and he gave her the slightest shake of the head as if to stop her from speaking. She gave him a nod and went on outside.
A block away, she pulled out the business card he’d slipped into her pocket. It gave his name, his rank as a plain clothes detective, and contact information. She turned it over and in ink, he’d written: “Call me.”
Ten-year-old Carly, in a plaid winter coat over her white ballet tights and pink Care Bear boots, was waiting for her. Leigh approached the poorly lit doorway of the dance studio where Carly went with friends after school for tap and ballet. Her expression broadcast that she was vexed with her mother again.
“Don’t look so growly at me. I just proved I can get here on time,” Leigh said as she smoothed wisps of her daughter’s long black hair away from her pretty, oval face.
Carly looked up, her gray eyes serious as always. “I was afraid you weren’t going to be, and I don’t like it when I’m the last one picked up.”
Yes, lay the guilt trip on me. “I know, but today you weren’t. I really try to get here early, but sometimes things happen. You know what to do when I’m delayed, right?”
“Yes, I’m supposed to wait inside the doorway until you come,” Carly recited as she walked alongside her mother toward the subway station. “But I don’t like being last. Everybody walks by me and asks me why I’m standing there.”
Leigh only half listened to her daughter’s oft-expressed complaint. The business card in her pocket kept generating questions. Who was Nate Gallagher, beyond the fact that he was a plainclothes detective with a face that looked like it grinned a lot? Why did he want her to call him? Was it professional, or was he just using a unique pickup line? She hoped it wasn’t the latter. But if it were, she was experienced in keeping men at a distance. In fact, by now she had perfected rejecting unwelcome advances—or any advances really—to a fine art. She’d decided she was busy enough with work and Carly. Men took up too much of a woman’s time.
Now, she leaned down, kissed her daughter’s head, and then took her gloved hand. “I won’t be late again. Promise.”
“When’s Grandma Chloe coming?” Carly gave a little skip. “She’s still coming to my recital?” Carly always needed reassurance about family visits. It was as if she couldn’t trust that family really was coming.
“I told you,” Leigh admonished her, hurrying against the cutting wind, “Grandma Chloe and Grandma Bette are coming the Friday night before your recital.”
“Isn’t Aunt Dory coming, too?”
“No, she can’t come, honey. She’s going to be in Africa with the Peace Corps by then.”
“Mama, how come I don’t got any uncles?”
Where had that question come from? “Because I only had a sister. And it’s ‘have,’ not ‘got.’”
“Didn’t my daddy have any brothers?”
Leigh stilled inside. Every once in a while, Carly brought up “her daddy.” Her little girl had figured out at the tender age of three that children were supposed to have a mommy and a daddy. And then she’d promptly demanded to know where her daddy was. Had he gotten lost somewhere?
Leigh never knew how to answer these questions. She had never told Carly anything about her father except that he couldn’t live with them. She hadn’t wanted to lie to her own daughter, but neither could she tell her the nasty truth. So the forbidden topic remained wedged between her and her daughter. At these moments, guilt was a dull blade sawing, gouging her spirit.
Now Leigh did what she always did—she ignored the question. I do my best for you, my sweet child. But all mychoices are second-best. I didn’t choose your father well I’m to blame.
Carly glanced up at her, studied her, and then wordlessly accepted that Leigh once again was not going to answer her question. She changed topics. “And Aunt Kitty’s taking us all out to dinner afterward?”
Leigh was happy to answer this one. “Yes, Aunt Kitty is taking all of us to her favorite French restaurant to celebrate the occasion.” Shivering, Leigh tugged Carly’s hand, and they both ran the last gloomy block to the subway. When Carly had been around a year old, Aunt Kitty—now in her early eighties just as Grandma Chloe was—had sold her townhouse in San Francisco and bought a two-apartment building near them. The much-loved older woman had become an indispensable part of Leigh and Carly’s everyday life.
As they boarded the subway train, her daughter prattled on about her friend Katy and the dance recital. Swaying with the motion of the train, Leigh answered automatically while the focus of her mind remained on why the detective wanted her to call him.
Later that evening, after supper at Kitty’s apartment and tucking Carly into bed back at home, Leigh dialed Nate Gallagher’s number. She tingled with anticipation while it rang and rang. No answer. Disappointed, Leigh put back the receiver and walked to the kitchen to boil water for a cup of herbal tea. Soon she took her warm mug of cinnamon-apple tea and stood by the window, watching the street below. Had her anticipation as she dialed been from the hope she’d get help with the article or because of her memory of his enticing masculinity?
Below her window by the light of the streetlamps, a young couple was walking down the street holding hands. She sipped the hot tea, trying to deny the restlessness that sometimes stirred inside her. Another evening home alone. Would she ever meet someone she trusted enough to love, or would she end up like Kitty and live alone for most of her life?
From there her mind went back to the day’s question: What did Nate Gallagher want? But his face lingered longer in her mind than her question.
Two days later, around three in the afternoon of another chilly day, Leigh shifted from one cold foot to the other at the corner of a street of small stores with caged fronts. She was waiting for Gallagher as arranged. He’d said the meeting had to do with her article, but had hung up before she could ask him how he even knew about the piece. She hoped he was going to offer her help, and she’d find out soon enough. That’s all she wanted from him.
The scarred and dirty street where she waited was near a rough area of Brooklyn, Bedford-Stuyvesant. Pulling her scarf up around her freezing ears, Leigh kept a wary eye out for trouble and gripped a can of Mace in her pocket. A dark-blue sedan slowed and stopped in front of her. From the driver’s side, Gallagher leaned over and pushed open the passenger’s side door and motioned for her to get in.
Studying him swiftly, Leigh slid inside and hooked her seat belt. “Hi.” She’d remembered Nate Gallagher accurately. With a head of auburn hair, he looked to be of medium height and was solidly built. He was a man you’d like at your side in a fight. But his clean, blue eyes had laugh crinkles around them and that reassured her.
“Hi.” Pie kept his eyes on the tricky traffic on the narrow street. “I thought we’d drive around in Bedford-Sty to give you a firsthand look at some gang territory. And while I drive, you tell me exactly what you’re looking for on your article about girls and gangs.”
She considered this, still guarded. “May I ask you two questions first?”
He gave her a sidelong glance. “Sure.”
“How did you know what I was working on? And what’s in this for you?”
He grinned. “Easy answers. Someone at the station let me know who you were and why you were talking to Dorsey. Second, I’m directly concerned about gang activity, especially recruitment. I’ve volunteered to work with city agencies to try to come up with coordinated strategies to fight this. I wondered why the department didn’t refer you to me instead of Dorsey.”
She liked his grin, but kept herself on task. She could think of one reason for her being handed to Dorsey. The city didn’t want a reporter horning in on what it considered its territory; municipal bureaucrats always feared uncomplimentary news coverage, and misdirection was a popular tactic. But she didn’t voice this. She merely shrugged as she noted pinpoint snowflakes floating onto the windshield.
“I figured we’re on the same side,” Gallagher continued, “and an article by Leigh Sinclair could go a long way in convincing the city fathers to allocate more funds for this type of prevention program.”
“Well…” She was a little taken aback at his reference to her name, as if he were aware of her writing. Probably not. “I’m glad to find an ally.”
“Same here. Now I’m going to point out some hot spots of gang life. But first you must promise me—on your honor—that you will not ever—never—come here as a lone pedestrian and walk these streets without me.” He gave her a long look and then turned right at another corner.
The way he said this warning sent a chill through her. This was a man who would not make light of danger, so if he put it that way, he meant business. But she was already aware of how dangerous gangs could be. I read the newspapers, Gallagher.But he didn’t know her. “I’m not a daredevil. I have a daughter I’m raising alone, and I don’t take chances with my safety. That’s why I sought NYPD assistance in the first place.”
“Great. I thought you looked smart.” He grinned again.
She ignored its effect on her as best she could and thought it was a nice change that he’d referred to her intelligence not her looks.
After a brief tour of the area’s hot spots, Nate drove her out of Bedford-Sty and took her to a small cafe beside a large Roman Catholic Church in whose small lot he parked. The snow was falling faster now. In the homey cafe, he waved to the waitress behind the counter. “Two coffees, please.” Stopping at the rear booth, he motioned Leigh to take a seat.
He’d acted like he knew the waitress, and she’d given him a very flirty smile. Leigh was irritated with herself for noticing all this. Distancing herself, she shook the snow off her black muffler, sat down, and took out the steno pad and fine-line blue marker she always carried. “Okay. Tell me what your observations have been about girls and gangs.”
He grinned. “I do like a woman who knows what she wants.” I’ll bet you do.But what if the woman doesn’t know what she wants?
* * *
Two days later, Leigh sat in a nondescript yet grim-looking visiting room at “Juvey” or Juvenile Hall. She was nervous, but it was a good type of nervousness. She was ready for the group interview she was about to do, and her article was shaping up nicely.
As she watched, a forbidding uniformed matron ushered three teenaged Latino girls into the room. A tall, slender girl led them to the table, followed by a plump girl with teased hair and a petite girl with curly hair. They sat down in that order facing her.
She was visible to them, but Nate, who stood on the other side of a one-way mirror behind her, wasn’t. Feeling his gaze on her, she resisted the urge to turn around and look at him.
None of the three girls would meet her eyes. The sound of voices from the floor above them filled the silence. “Hello,” she began, trying to put them at ease. “Thank you for agreeing to talk to me.”
“What you give us for talkin’ to you, lady?” the tallest girl challenged her. She pronounced “you” like “chew.”
“I’m giving you the chance to have your opinions printed in a magazine.”
“What ma-ga-zine?” the petite girl with short, curly hair taunted, looking pouty.
“I write for Women Today.”
The three girls exchanged looks. “We never heard of it.”
Leigh hid a smile. She was used to this kind of sparring with some of her interview subjects. “If you don’t want to talk to me,” she said without inflection, “I’ll ring for the matron, and you can go back to whatever exciting activity you three were enjoying.”
That did the trick. The three girls began telling Leigh how and why they had joined a new gang that would take girls. “We thought it would be kind of cool, you know?” the tall girl said. “But then we find out the guys don’t let any of the girls call the shots, you know?”
Leigh was finding the girl’s repetition of “chew know?” annoying but she went on taking notes. “So what you’re saying is that it was the same old male-dominance thing?”
“Male what?” Once Leigh explained the term, the girl agreed. “Yeah, but once you’re in, it’s scary to get out, you know?”
“Yeah, we know stuff and how do they know we don’t tell,” the petite girl explained, one palm up.
“So we’re stuck,” the plump girl finished and snapped her chewing gum.
“What would it take for you to get out of the gang?” Leigh asked, jotting notes.
“No way, lady.” The tall girl spoke, but all three shook their heads. “No can do.” The matron appeared at the door and cleared her throat authoritatively.
“How long will you three be in Juvenile Hall?” Leigh asked.
Each of them shrugged. “Talk to our lawyer,” the tall girl said. Then the three stood and shuffled out without another word.
When they were gone, Nate opened a door and joined her. “How about tomorrow we go and cruise their neighborhood?”
Leigh frowned, irritated that the interview was over so soon, more irritated that when Nate walked in, her whole body hummed with awareness. I have to get done with this article fast. “Where would you like me to meet you?” she asked coolly.
“I’ll pick you up in front of your apartment.”
No, I don’t think so.She kept men away from her apartment, away from her private life. “I don’t know—”
“I know where you live so I might as well.” He had the nerve to grin at her.
She gave him a miffed look. “Did you have me investigated?”
“No, I did it myself. You’re thirty-six, originally from Arlington, Virginia,” he recited, his blue eyes, crinkling, gleaming with amusement. “Your stepfather was FBI, and your mother was CIA. You have a daughter named Carly—”
She didn’t trust his obvious interest in her. “I know all about myself,” she interrupted, halting him. “Thank you,” she added repressively.
Still smiling, he led her to the door and opened it. “And try not to look like a reporter tomorrow, okay?”
She made a face and walked from the room. But his honest, teasing grin lingered in her mind, tantalizing.
The next afternoon, Leigh and Nate walked through the neighborhood where the girls she’d interviewed had lived. And Leigh was more than glad she had Nate at her side. In fact, she had to fight the urge to grip his arm.
On a personal level, the sights depressed her. Garbage dribbled out of alleys. Ripped-up newspaper and candy wrappers clogged the bottom of every fence. Windows were boarded up, and starved-looking dogs sniffed crumpled fast-food bags along the sidewalk.
Large, white-haired women who reminded her of Jerusha looked out through cracked, patched windows, and old men like shriveled tobacco leaves sat on the curb drinking from paper bags. Idle men slouched, smoking in doorways of buildings old and scarred. The leering looks they gave her made her feel dirty, slimy.
Elsewhere, gang members congregated around the en trances to pool halls or bars, strutting and preening like prides of young lions. They gave Leigh “the eye,” and again she was glad Nate was with her. Men often were a nuisance to her, but she had a feeling that these could become more than a mere nuisance.
On a professional level, Leigh was at her best, her mind acting like a camera, recording every sight and every sound. Words and phrases mushroomed in her mind, and she filed them all away for later use.
One pride of gang members followed her and Nate for several blocks, probably indulging in aimless intimidation. The hair on the back of her neck prickling, she tensed, but Nate acted as if nothing were happening. After a while, they drifted off into an alley, and she breathed easy again.
Finally, they returned to civilization. As she and Nate were getting out of the subway near her apartment, Leigh caught herself just as she was about to say, “Nate, why don’t you come in for coffee?” That surprised her. She’d never invited a man inside before. And I won’t start now.
But unable to force herself to bring their conversation to an end, she stood talking to him about what they’d seen. Before she knew it, Carly was coming home with her best friend—red-haired and freckled Katy. “Hi,” Carly said, looking up at Nate and assessing him. “I’m Carly.”
Leigh took her daughter’s hand, and even as she introduced the two of them, she was urging her daughter up the steps into their apartment building. Looking thoughtful, Nate took the hint, waved, and left.
Carly looked back as he walked away, tugging against Leigh. “Is that your boyfriend?”
“No.” She’d be careful next time and watch her timing better. She didn’t need Carly getting the wrong idea. She and Nate were just working on an article together. And had they even discussed a “next time”? This might have been their last meeting.
Carly stopped in the narrow vestibule. “Why don’t you ever have boyfriends? Katy says that if I don’t have a daddy, you gotta have a boyfriend.”
“How was school today?” Leigh asked, totally ignoring her daughter’s words and hoping this wasn’t the last time she’d see Nate Gallagher. Even though that probably would be best. For one second, she longed to do what wasn’t best, but to do what she wanted.
She wanted to kiss Nate Gallagher.
“Was my daddy your boyfriend?” Carly looked up at her intently.
Like icy water splashed down her spine, her daughter’s question immediately quenched all thought of kissing Nate.
“And if you and him aren’t dating anymore,” Carly went on, “why can’t you get another boyfriend? Katy says you’re pretty. All the girls think I have the prettiest mom—”
“That’s nice,” Leigh cut in, her heart beating fast. The whole topic of boyfriends had the power to panic Leigh. She was unlucky in love. She’d found that out the hard way. And her daughter was only ten. What did she know about boyfriends? Or need to know? “What do you want for supper?”
Carly looked into Leigh’s eyes for a long moment and then subsided. Her shoulders down, she stomped up the steps without looking back. Her body language broadcast her dissatisfaction with her mother’s lack of candor.
Leigh’s heart split in two for her daughter. I’m sorry, Carly. I’ll explain everything when you’re old enough to understand. I can’t tell you the truth yet. The truth could damage you more than my silence. I will tell you when the time is right. Promise.
Leigh kept her eye on the wall clock in the clingy office. It was Friday afternoon, and she had to be on time to pick up Carly after dance. But she still had a few minutes to complete this interview. After she’d finished her article into the facts of gang activity in New York City, she’d decided to delve into what was being done to combat it. Nate had given her the names and phone numbers of some community groups that were working with gang members who wanted to get out. This one was funded by churches and supported a live-in shelter for the “lost.”
“So you see, we are trying to use the love of Christ,” the earnest young black man explained, “to help these young people whose lives are taking them straight toward early graves or life in prison.”
“Have you had much success?” Her pen poised over her faithful steno pad.
“Many. Would you like to speak to one whose life this ministry turned around?”
“Sure. When could I—”
“Right now. Here I am.” The young man grinned at her. “I’ve been clean for four years now. I became a heroine addict when I was only fifteen.”
Leigh’s eyes widened.
“And there’s someone who recognized your name when you called for an interview. Would you like to talk to her, too? Her story is quite remarkable.”
Something in the young man’s tone of voice alerted her to expect something or someone that would surprise her. But after years of interviewing, she was very hard to surprise, as he would find out. “Of course.”
He went to the door and opened it. “Ms. Sinclair says she’d like to talk to you, too.” He stepped back and ushered in a plump woman with short brown hair, wire-rim glasses, and a dark skirt and blouse.
The shock of recognition shook Leigh to her core; her pen dropped to the floor. She gawked. “Mary Beth?”
Mary Beth closed the distance between them. “Leigh, oh, Leigh, it is you.”
Quivering, Leigh rose and opened her arms. Mary Beth wrapped hers around Leigh, too. Minutes passed as Leigh hugged and was hugged. Tears flowed and were ignored. It was a time of unadulterated joy, of release, of cleansing.
Finally, Leigh wiped her cheeks with her hands and staggered back onto her chair. “I have to sit down. I feel weak. Why didn’t you warn me?”
Mary Beth sat in another straight chair opposite her, beaming at her. “I just couldn’t. It was like if I’d let you know I worked here, I’d have chickened out again today. Many times I’ve almost called your mother to find out where you were living. But I always… I couldn’t get past the last time I saw you. I was so wasted on drugs and felt so lost—”
“Why did you leave?” Leigh asked, dabbing around her eyes trying to wipe away her smeared mascara. “I wanted to help you.”
“I wasn’t ready to be helped,” Mary Beth said simply. “A drug addict has to be at the point of no return. I was still playing out my ‘counterculture, self-destructive, rebel-with-a-cause’ premise. Two years later, I woke up from a bad acid trip that must have lasted for days. A woman was sitting beside my bed at a Salvation Army shelter. She was holding my hand and praying out loud.
“I lay there and listened to her praying so urgently, so lovingly, for me—a stranger, a drug addict, a failure. Something snapped into place in my mind. I didn’t want to die. And I wanted to know how a stranger could love me that much.”
Mary Beth shrugged and made a wry face. “I’d never even been to church, you know. My parents were agnostics. I’d never heard about the love of God for sinners like me, the chance to be born again.”
Leigh tried to put this Mary Beth with the Mary Beth who’d stolen money from her in San Francisco and then with the girl she’d attended high school with and shook her head. “I just can’t believe this. How long have you been in New York City?”
“Almost five years now. I stayed at the Salvation Army until I was clean from drugs for over a year. Then as a new Jesus freak—” Mary Beth gave one of her puppy-dog grins. “—I signed up with Campus Crusade for Christ and began working on campuses in California, one-on-one with kids starting to make the same mistake I did. I met another CCC staff member at a conference.” Mary Beth blushed. “We fell in love, and we married.”
“I’m so happy for you, Mary Beth.” Leigh had given up on ever seeing her friend again. Kitty would be thrilled and so would Cherise. “When can you come—” Then she glanced at the clock. And felt her stomach contract with guilt pangs. Oh, no. “Mary Beth, I’ve got to run. I’m going to be late picking up my daughter from her dance lessons. I promised I wouldn’t be late.” Leigh leaped up. “Call me. I gave the young man my card.”
Outside, Leigh grabbed the first taxi and rode it to the nearest subway, and then she was on her way to the dance studio. She fretted as her watch ticked away the minutes, and she began preparing her excuse and how to repay her daughter for being later than she ever had before. She ran all the way from the subway station and reached the dance studio.
The silent, dark, locked-up studio where Carly was nowhere to be seen.
It was like a nightmare. She tried the door. It was locked up tight. She called her daughter’s name. She ran along the block looking into doorways. She finally stopped at the phone booth on the corner and dialed Katy’s number. Dear God, let her have gone home with Katy’s mom. “Hi, this is Leigh. I’m sorry I was late again. Is Carly with you?”
“No,” Katy’s mom said, “Katy was sick today and didn’t go to school or dance. Is something wrong?”
Leigh’s heart thundered, and she hung up. Faintness made her sway.