The Operative

‘Excuse me,’ Stratton said.

‘Can I help you?’ she asked in a serious tone, looking him up and down.

‘I’m here to see a boy who was brought in today or last night, I don’t know which.’

‘The facility is closed to visitors right now. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.’

‘Do you work here?’

‘Yes,’ the woman said, sounding tired and eager to get going.

She was attractive despite her frumpy clothes. Her fatigued eyes made her look older than she probably was.

‘Could you just tell me if you know anything about a young English boy who was brought in today or last night?’ Stratton asked, restraining his temper.

‘We get a lot of children brought in every day. Like I said, you’ll have to come back tomorrow,’ she replied, impervious to his persistence. She was not a tough woman by nature but years of practice dealing with hostile parents and guardians had inured her to confrontations.

Stratton could see that he was up against a wall because of the way he was handling this so he took his attitude down a couple of notches. ‘I know it’s late but I’ve come a long way – is it too much for you to tell me if he’s okay? That’s all I want to know and I’ll go. He’s six years old, English, his name’s Josh—’

The door to the centre opened and a stout black lady wearing thick bifocals leaned out. ‘Oh, Vicky, you’re still here. Do you know where the DCS 4334 forms are? I’ve looked everywhere.’

Vicky looked around at her.

‘They’re the court medical-consent emergency worksheet forms,’ the black lady said.

‘I know what they are, Dorothy,’ Vicky sighed, frustrated at her unsuccessful efforts to get away from the building. ‘Have you tried the bottom drawer of the second filing cabinet to the right of my desk?’

‘Uh-huh. They ain’t in there.’

‘I’ll come and look,’ Vicky said, heading back to the door.

‘That’s okay,’ Dorothy said. ‘It can wait till tomorrow. You run along and have yourself some fun. You spend too long in this building as it is.’

‘I’ll look for them,’ Vicky said as she reached the door.

‘No,’ Dorothy said, trying to act firm though she was obviously a subordinate. A grin crept onto her face. ‘I didn’t know you had company.’

‘Dorothy,’ Vicky said, feigning anger through clenched teeth.

‘Okay, okay,’ Dorothy said, stepping aside to let her through. ‘Sorry. She won’t be a minute,’ she said to Stratton, the grin remaining on her face as she checked him out.

Dorothy followed Vicky inside and Stratton considered joining them. But he decided against it and looked out onto the street.

It was a clean, quiet neighbourhood, the centre surrounded on three sides by well-tended bungalows, the garden dotted with tall, slender palm trees and with a kids’ climbing frame in one corner. It might have been quaint had it not been for the back of a row of unattractive, three-storey non-residential buildings across the street. There was no brickwork anywhere to be seen: all the buildings were less than fifty years old and were made from stuccocoated, earthquake-spec frameworks, wood for the houses, steel for the non-residential places. This was still Santa Monica, some thirty blocks from the ocean and in a nicer part of the sub-city.

It would be dark soon and Stratton directed a thought to where he would stay. But he couldn’t get Josh out of his mind for long enough to think straight. It was safe to assume that getting the boy back to the UK was going to involve a lengthy bureaucratic battle and at some stage Stratton was going to have to call his boss and let him know what he was doing. He told himself he was going to have to be very patient and work with the system, whatever that entailed.

He heard the door close behind him and turned to see Vicky walking back down the steps and onto the path.

‘You were going to tell me about the boy.’

‘No, I wasn’t. Look, I’ve had a long day—’

‘Nothing compared to his,’ Stratton snapped, practically barring her way.

Vicky felt the sting of his sudden attack and looked into his steely eyes. Although she did not feel threatened by him his stare had an intensity she could not ignore.

‘Are you a relative?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘I can’t give information about any child in this centre to anyone other than a close relative or a court- approved guardian. I’m sorry but those are the rules,’ she said, moving past him to open the gate.

‘All I want to know is if he’s okay,’ Stratton said. ‘Why is that breaking any rules?’

It was clear that this guy was not going to give up easily: he was obviously concerned and was not actually asking for very much. ‘There was a young English boy brought in this morning,’ Vicky said, relenting slightly. ‘I don’t know anything about him yet. We’ve had a busy day moving a dozen kids out to new homes and admitting over a dozen more. If he had been physi cally hurt then I would have known about it. Any child brought to us is here for a reason and it’s never good, but I promise you that he’s being well taken care of … Come back tomorrow and I’ll be able to tell you more.’

‘What time?’ Stratton asked, his hand remaining on the gate latch.

‘Not before nine a.m. Does he have any relatives in this country?’

‘No.’

‘Will any be coming over to get him?’

‘He has grandparents, but they’re old – I’m all he’s got right now.’

Vicky nodded, understanding the situation far better than Stratton did. ‘It’s not going to be easy, mister …’

‘For him or for me?’

Stratton saw the irritation return to her face, signalling that he had gone as far as he was going to get. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ he said as he pushed open the gate for her. ‘Name’s John Stratton.’

Vicky walked through the gate and down the sidewalk, feeling his gaze on her. She concentrated on putting Stratton and the boy out of her thoughts. It had the hallmarks of another difficult case but there were so many. This was just another in an endless line that she had to deal with every day. After ten years as a social worker in the child-protection agency she had almost managed to do what she knew she had to in order to preserve her sanity: disconnect herself from the job as soon as she left work – almost managed, that was. Had she known that it was going to be such a depressing, distressing vocation she might have chosen a far less ‘noble’ line of work after leaving college. Quitting was always an obvious option but even though she had often thought about it, desertion – for that was what it would really have been as far as she was concerned – was not something that she was prepared to contemplate. Only one other way of life was likely ever to get her away from the centre and that was having a child of her own. But that was so far off her life’s radar that it was almost as depressing to think about.

Stratton watched Vicky walk around the corner at the end of the block as he let the gate close behind him, shouldered his pack and headed in the opposite direction. There was clearly scant chance of a taxi coming by in this area so he crossed the road and headed for the corner where another street led to Wilshire Boulevard, a main traffic artery that ran east from the coast and into the heart of Los Angeles.

A few minutes later Stratton was in a taxi, heading for the beach area.

‘Any suggestions for a hotel?’ he asked the taxi driver, an old, mellow man wearing a battered straw hat.

‘How much you wanna pay?’ the man asked in a relaxed Midwestern drawl.

‘What are my options?’

‘You new in town?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, you got motels. They’re around fifty bucks a night. Then there’s places along the front. There’re some fancy hotels. Don’t know exactly what they cost but it’s a few hundred dollars, easy. There’s others not so fancy that you can get for something like seventy or so. How long you stayin’ in town for?’

‘Don’t know.’