“Then how did you know she had all that red hair?”
“I don’t know. I guess I saw it.”
“Well, would you recognize the hat? The shirt, the shoes, the blouse?”
Block shrugged again. He was a big shrugger. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
April looked at her watch. Twenty-five minutes had passed. Time to go. Had he clarified anything? Maybe he had. She told Albert Block she’d be back.
66
Milicia got out of the taxi a few yards north of Bouck’s building. Nothing could calm her down and cool the rage she felt. Not the hours of talking to Charles and Brenda, not the Valium Charles had given her. Not the sleepless hours she spent tossing around on her bed. What if going to the police had not been the right thing to do? They never would have found Camille, never would have put together what happened. And even now they were all mixed up. First they took Camille away, and now they brought her back. What was going on?
The police car parked in front of Bouck’s door puzzled Milicia. She didn’t like the police. She felt a sharp pain in her mind’s eye from the bad memories of police cars. They were on reels that played over and over. The worst ones showed the policemen making her father stagger along the yellow line on the side of the road all those times he had trouble driving at night.
“Let’s go for an ice cream cone, girls,” he used to say. Then, as soon as they were in the car, he suddenly remembered he had to meet somebody in a bar. He always said he’d be gone for just a minute. The girls were not allowed to leave the car. When he came out two, three hours later, he was always mad. He’d forgotten they were there.
Milicia approached the building cautiously, remembering everything, as if it were yesterday—she and Camille huddling under the old gray beach blanket that, year after year, no one ever took out of the car. The things they said—the whispering, wheedling, and whining. Crayon drawings all over the window. Cigarettes and matches in the glove compartment. Smoking. She wouldn’t ever forget the burn marks on the car seat, on Camille’s arm. Nobody ever figured out what the wounds were, even after they got infected and Camille had to go to the doctor.
Oh, yes. She remembered the police stopping them on the road. “You’re going to kill yourself one of these nights, Mr. Stanton.”
The bastard couldn’t even stand up. That was the reason he never locked the front door. Once he passed out before he got it open. She and Camille found him sleeping on the lawn the next morning when they left for school. And there was the time a policeman brought them home in the middle of the night, and then had to take them away again. He rang the doorbell over and over, but their mother was lying asleep in the living room, her makeup messed all over her face, with a puddle of vomit beside her. They saw her through the picture window. Then they were taken away to spend the night in a shelter.
It took a long time for the policeman’s predictions to be fulfilled. She and Camille were all grown-up. Daddy had to take Mother with him in the brand-new Mercedes the night of his crash. A few years earlier it could have been them. Milicia shuddered. And if Camille hadn’t run away from her to Bouck, none of this would be happening now. Camille just wouldn’t grow up. She was still a little girl dressing up in fancy clothes, doing destructive things. Only now they were worse things than drawing on car windows and mutilating herself.
Milicia could see that the front windows of the police car were open. Inside, a uniformed cop was eating a danish. For a few seconds she had the wild hope that maybe he had just stopped there outside Bouck’s building to eat. But even as she thought it, she knew it wasn’t true. If Bouck was really in the hospital, the policeman must be there to keep Camille from getting away.
Her mind raced. Her body vibrated with tension and fury. What happened in there? Did Camille find one of Bouck’s guns, shoot him, and tell the police he’d done it himself? Milicia didn’t know how she was going to manage this cleaning job. She was supposed to be at her office, supposed to be living a life. Instead, she was a wreck. Her face was bruised and puffy. She was having an anxiety attack. No, she was like an overheated car trying to dig its way out of a muddy bog. Every part of her was racing, and she wasn’t getting anywhere.
She moved toward the entrance of Bouck’s building without turning her head to acknowledge the strips of crime-scene tapes still stuck to the tree and the doorframe of European Imports across the street. She didn’t look that way, but she knew from the night before that the store was still sealed up.
Last night, after she had left the police station, she walked around the West Side for hours, all the way down Columbus Avenue and back, debating what to do. She considered running away. She didn’t want to think about the police going to Camille’s house and ringing the bell a hundred times, trying to get in. She knew Camille would be in some upstairs room, cringing at the sound of the buzzer. And the puppy would jump around, yelping. She hated Camille more than anything in the world. And somehow she found herself walking there, back to Second Avenue, hoping to be in time to watch them take her sister away.
And then when she got there, it was too late. No one would tell her anything except that neither Bouck nor Camille was inside. Her head hurt worse. A huge generator was heating things up inside so her blood boiled, and she could hardly breathe. Milicia stood on the corner across the street for a long time, watching the police bring things out of the house in paper bags. Finally, she turned to the phone, called Charles and Brenda.
She reviewed all this in her mind as she tried to put her anxiety in another place. Her sister was a maniac who could kill salesgirls and get away with it. She had no choice but to walk up to the door of the house and deal with the situation.
Before she could insert her key in the lock, however, the policeman was out of the car, telling her it was a crime scene and she couldn’t go inside.
67
April left Block’s apartment and stopped at a pay phone on the street to try Milicia Honiger-Stanton’s number again. At least the woman had gone home at some point. Her answering machine was back on. The voice on the machine told April this call was important to Milicia: “Please leave the day, date, time, and purpose of your call, and I will get back to you as soon as possible.”
It did not sound promising, but she left a message anyway.
The woman who answered the phone at Milicia’s office told April Ms. Honiger-Stanton wasn’t coming in. She had called in sick that morning. April figured Milicia was home and just not picking up. Her apartment was not far away. April decided it was worth going over there to find out.
The building was right near John Jay College, behind Lincoln Center. It was big and plush, with marble floors and carpeted hallways. The surly-looking man behind the desk said Miss Stanton wasn’t there. The name on his uniform was Harold.
“Do you know when she went out?”
“Are you a friend?”
April flashed her shield.
Harold examined it skeptically.
“Cop?”
“That’s what it says.” April smiled. “So, about what time did she leave?”
“Uh, she walked the dog at about eight o’clock. Then maybe half an hour later she went out.”
“She has a dog?” April started to sweat again.
“Yeah, cute little thing. Poodle, I think it is. What’s this all about? She not picking up its poop, or something?”
“Yeah, something like that.” April paused for a new thought. “Does she ever wear big loose blouses, long skirts, and big floppy hats?”
“Nah, not her. She’s got it, she flaunts it. Never seen her in pants neither.”
“Thanks.” April turned to go.
“You wanna leave a message?”
