He moved quickly, retrieved it. Exhaled. Held the yellow nub in a grubby, moist palm. “Sorry.”
The paper was confetti. The pencil’s graphite tip had broken off, leaving behind splintered wood. Sharp little spikes.
I took the pencil. Put it in my pocket.
After my final visit, walking to the subterranean parking lot, I heard someone call my name and turned to see a heavy woman in a flowered dress leaning on an aluminum cane. The dirty-milk sky matched her complexion. I’d awakened to sunny blue Beverly Glen firmament, but cheer had eluded the grimy corner of East L.A. dominated by the jail.
She took a few steps toward me and the cane clunked on pavement. “You’re the psychologist, right? I’m Rand ’s gram.”
I walked to her, held out my hand.
“Margaret Sieff,” she said, in a smoker’s voice. Her free arm remained at her side. The dress was a scratchy- looking cotton print, relenting at the seams. Camellias and lilies and delphiniums and greenery sprawled across an aqua background. Her hair was white, short, curly, thinning so severely that patches of pink scalp shone through. Blue eyes took me in. Small, sharp, searching eyes. Nothing like her grandson’s.
“You been here all week but I never heard from you. You don’ figger to talk to me?”
“I plan to when I’m finished evaluating Rand.”
“Evaluatin’.” The word seemed to distress her. “What you figger you can do for him?”
“I’ve been asked by Judge Laskin to- ”
“I know all that,” she said. “You’re supposed to say was he a kid or an aldult. Ain’t that cristo clear? What
“What’s crystal clear, Mrs. Sieff?”
“The boy’s dumb. Screwy.” She pinged her waxy forehead with an index finger. “Din’t talk till he was four, still don’t talk so good.”
“You’re saying Rand ’s- ”
“I’m saying Randolph ain’t never gonna be no
Which was as good a diagnosis as the jargon in my notes.
Behind her, rising above both of us, the concrete grid of the jail was the world’s largest window shade. “You coming or going, ma’am?”
“My appointment’s not for a coupla hours. With the buses from the Valley it’s hard to figger, so I get here early. ’Cause if I’m late, those bastards don’ lemme in at all.”
“How about a cup of coffee?”
“You payin’?”
“I am.”
“Then, fine.”
CHAPTER 5
Jails spread a very specific commercial rash, a trickle-down of cheap lawyers, bail-bond outfits, translation services, fast-food joints. I knew of a hamburger stand nearby but the walk through the parking lot was too much for Margaret Sieff’s stiff legs. She waited by the entrance as I pulled up in my car. When I got out to open her door, she said, “Fancy-dancy caddy. Must be nice being rich.”
My Seville ’s a ’79, with a rebuilt engine. At that time it was well into its third vinyl roof, and a second paint job was already losing the battle with corrosive air. I took her cane and braced her elbow as she struggled to get in. When she finally settled, she said, “How much they payin’ you to evaluate?”
I said, “That’s not your concern, ma’am.”
That made her smile.
I drove to the burger joint, set her up at an outdoor table, went inside, and waited in line behind a motorcycle cop who’d outgrown his tailored shirt, an A.D.A. who looked fifteen, and a pair of scruffy, mustachioed guys with faded gang tattoos. Those two paid with coins and it took awhile for the kid behind the counter to do the math. When I finally reached the front, I ordered two cardboard-flavored coffees.
When I returned to Margaret Sieff, she said, “I’m hungry.” I went back in and got her a cheeseburger.
She snatched the food from me, ate ravenously, made token attempts at daintiness- quick dabs of paper napkin on mottled chin- before returning to her spirited attack. “That hit the spot,” she said, scraping ketchup onto a finger and licking it off. “I tell you, sometimes I could eat five a those.”
“What do you want to tell me about Rand?”
“Other than him being a dummy?”
“Must’ve been hard raising him.”
“Everything’s hard,” she said. “Raising his mama was hard.”
“Your daughter had problems.”
“Tricia was a dummy, just like him. So was that fool she went and married. It was
I said, “Tricia had trouble in school.”
Her glare said she was starting to doubt my intelligence. “That’s what I said, ain’t it?”
“What kind of trouble?”
She sighed. “When she even bothered to go to school, she hated reading, hated ‘rithmetic, hated everything. We were in Arizona back then and mostly she snuck away and ran around the desert with bad influences.”
“Where in Arizona?”
Instead of answering, she said, “It was hot as hell. My husband’s big idea, he was gonna grow cactuses because he heard you could make big money growing cactuses and selling ’em to tourists. ‘Be easy, Margie, no water, just keep ’em in pots till they’re big enough.’ Yeah, and make sure the dog don’t eat ’em and die from spikes in the guts, then you have to set up a stand on the highway and breathe all that heat and dust and hope some tourist’ll bother to stop.”
She gave her empty cup another glance. “I sat at that stand day after day, watching people speed right by me. People going somewhere.”
She pouted. “Guess what? Even cactus need water.”
She held out her cup. I got her a refill.
“So Tricia grew up in Arizona,” I said.
“And Nevada and Oklahoma and before that we lived in Waco, Texas, and before that southern Indiana. So what? This ain’t about where we lived. It’s about Randolph and the bad thing he did.” She pressed forward against the table, bosom settling on grease-spotted blue plastic.
“Okay,” I said, “let’s talk about that.”
Her lips folded inward, tugging her nose downward. Her blue eyes had darkened to granite pebbles. “I told him don’t be hanging with that little monster. Now, all our lives is turned to shit.”
“Troy Turner.”
“Mister, I don’t even want to hear that name. Sinful monster, I knew he’d get Randolph in trouble.” She finished the refill, squeezed the cup and folded it over, placed her hand over the misshapen wad. Her mouth trembled. “Didn’t think it would be trouble like this.”
“What scared you about Troy?”
“Me? I weren’t scareda that little shit. I was
