Bonnie dropped her head again and began to cry.
'I can understand how that would feel,' Susan said to her. 'You loved him, bore him a child. Did you give the child away because he'd leave you if you didn't?'
Bonnie nodded without looking up, still crying.
'And then he took up with the woman who had the child.'
Bonnie nodded again.
'Was he suddenly interested in the child?'
Nod. Susan smiled sadly.
'How awful,' Susan said. 'You gave away your child to be with Shaka, and the child became something that took him away from you.'
Bonnie cried loudly now.
'For crissake,' I said. 'Lovers, children. You people passed each other around like Fritos.'
'It was a different time,' Susan said gently.
Bonnie raised her teary face and looked at Susan. 'It was,' she said. 'It was different. And I loved him so much, and that little Jew bitch took him away from me and she used my own kid to do it.'
'And you had no other choice,' Susan said. 'You had a gun and it was your chance.'
'I loved him too much to let her have him.'
'I understand,' Susan said.
'She was gone, and the kid got sent back to Barry and it was me and Shaka again.'
'And Daddy killed him,' I said.
She dropped her drink on the floor. The noise made Pearl jump and slink in behind Susan's chair. Susan put her hand back automatically and patted Pearl. Bonnie put her face in both hands and doubled over and began to rock back and forth, gasping for breath between the huge sobs that made her whole body shake.
'And gave you to Ziggy,' I said.
She couldn't speak, but she nodded. We all sat. No one said anything.
Finally I said, 'We'll send you home. When you are able to, call your father, and let me speak to him.'
61
I was on the front porch of Susan's apartment when Sonny Karnofsky got out of the backseat of a black Mercedes sedan with tinted windows. Behind him was the Cadillac Escalade, also black and tinted. Menacing. Sonny stood alone next to his car and looked at me. On the porch behind me, Vinnie sat on the railing. Ty-Bop and Junior lounged in elaborate boredom next to him. Junior had a shotgun.
I walked down the steps to the sidewalk, and Sonny crossed the yard toward me. He looked old and tired in the bright sunlight.
'Where is she?' he said.
'Inside.'
'Bring her out,' he said.
'No. You come in.'
Sonny was silent. I waited.
'Let me see her,' Sonny said.
I nodded and waved my hand above my head. Susan's front door opened and Hawk stood in the doorway with Bonnie. Sonny looked at her silently for what seemed a long time. It was a hot day, I realized. There was a persistent locust hum high up above us. The trees were still and full of substance in the windless heat.
'What's the deal?' Sonny said.
'You come in. We talk. You and Bonnie leave and we're square.'
'What do we talk about.'
'We got problems to resolve,' I said.
Sonny was an ape. But he wasn't stupid. And he loved his daughter. He had no leverage and he knew it. We went into Susan's house and sat with Bonnie and Hawk in the downstairs study across from her office. Susan was downstairs. Bonnie didn't say anything, and after his first look Sonny didn't look at her again. He focused on me and waited.
'When Bonnie was eighteen,' I said to him, 'you sent her to college so she'd get an education and become a lady and be something besides the daughter of a thug.'
Sonny's gaze was steady. The skin under his chin had sagged into a wattle, and his eyelids were so droopy that his eyes were slitted.
'But she fell in with the wrong crowd and turned into a hippie and dropped out. She got involved with drugs and sex and revolution. She had a fling with a black man and had a baby. She gave the baby away to some other hippies named Emily and Barry Gordon. Later, she killed Emily during a bank robbery because she was jealous of her. Then she came back home in a panic.'
