A Flower in the Desert (13 page)

“Look,” she said when I finished explaining my reason for invading her life, “let's cut the shit.” Sitting back in her swivel chair, holding a yellow Bic pen between the first two fingers of her right hand, she tapped it against the edge of her desktop, rapidly, steadily, like a speed-freak drummer in a rock band. “First of all, even if I
had
been contacted by Melissa Alonzo, which I don't for a moment admit, the nature of the attorney-client relationship precludes my discussing it. You're familiar with the word
precludes?
”

I smiled pleasantly. “Maybe if you spelled it.”

“Secondly,” she said, “I don't like private detectives. I've had too many nasty experiences with them.”

I smiled pleasantly again. It was only slightly more difficult this time. “Mrs. Drewer—”

“Ms.,” she said, without losing her steady beat against the desktop.

“Ms. Drewer.” Of course. “I only accepted this case because it seemed to me that Mrs. Alonzo”—she frowned, I smiled apologetically and silently cursed the person who had invented that ugly word—“
Ms
. Alonzo might be in danger. Her sister was killed last week. It's possible that there may be a connection between the sister's death and Ms. Alonzo's disappearance.”

“What evidence do you have to support that contention?”

“None. But it's not a contention. If I'm contending anything, I'm contending that it's a possibility.”

“It's an unlikelihood. Melissa Alonzo disappeared almost two months ago.” Still tapping against the desktop, she said, “You're working for Roy Alonzo.” It wasn't a question.

“No,” I said.

Her thin lips moved slightly in something that was more a sneer than a smile. It suggested that she knew more about this particular situation than I did, and probably more about most other situations, as well. “Really?” she said. “For who, then?”

For whom
, I nearly corrected her. I didn't. We might have sat there all day, taking turns correcting each other's speech. “For his uncle.” I explained the arrangement I'd made with Norman Montoya.

“You expect me to believe that?” she said. The small superior sneer hadn't left her lips.

I was beginning to suspect that Elizabeth Drewer and I would never exchange girlish confidences. “What I expect and what I hope are two different things,” I said. “I was hoping that you'd give me the benefit of the doubt.”

“The benefit of the doubt,” she repeated, and bitterness made the words curl up at the edges. “That's what the judge gave Roy Alonzo. Do you know what Roy Alonzo did to his five-year-old daughter?”

“I know what he was acquitted of doing.”

“If you'd read the transcripts, you'd know that the evidence was absolutely conclusive.” She swiveled the ballpoint, held it as though it were a pen and not a drumstick, and then knifed its point against her desk blotter, once, sharply. “Winona testified that her father forced her to commit fellatio.” She knifed the penpoint against the blotter again. “Winona's hymen was ruptured.” Another stab. “There was evidence of rectal scarring.”

Involuntarily, I winced. “Why did the court decide that the abuse hadn't occurred?”

She turned the pen into a drumstick again, began tapping it. “Because the judge couldn't believe that such a thing was possible. No father, no upright male citizen, could ever commit those terrible acts. And since it was impossible—despite the incontrovertible evidence—Roy Alonzo was given access to his daughter.”

“There must've been conflicting medical testimony.”

“Oh, naturally there was. Alonzo paraded his two paid physicians past the judge. Hired guns.” She smiled a small bitter smile. “Like yourself.”

“Ms. Drewer,” I said. “I know you're convinced that Roy Alonzo sexually abused his daughter. For all I know, you're right. But suppose you're wrong. Suppose Melissa Alonzo invented all this, out of anger or spite.”

“She didn't invent the medical evidence.”

“The medical evidence is open to interpretation. And suppose that once Melissa made the accusation, the process she set in motion made it impossible for her to retract it. Suppose she got caught up in something she never intended. Suppose Roy Alonzo is innocent.”

She had been waiting for me to finish, and not patiently. Still tapping her pen against the desktop, she said sharply, “I don't deal in suppositions.”

“If Roy Alonzo is innocent,” I said, “if he didn't abuse his daughter, a father has been separated from his child for no good reason. And his child is being dragged around the country, living like a fugitive, afraid to answer the door, afraid to answer the telephone. She's a six-year-old girl. If Roy Alonzo is innocent—even if he isn't—should any six-year-old girl have to live like that?”

Eyeing me, still tapping: “What makes you think that the girl is living like a fugitive?”

“I'm assuming that she and her mother are somewhere along the Underground Railroad.”

“It sounds to me like you're awfully fond of assumptions and suppositions.”

“From what
I
understand, the people in charge of the Railroad are sincere and dedicated. They honestly believe they're doing the right thing. And probably, in most cases, they are. But they're still only people. They can make mistakes.”

“No matter what you may have heard,” she said, “I can't speak for the Underground Railroad. But from what I understand, their screening process is extremely thorough. And if they've assisted Melissa Alonzo, they haven't made any mistake. That was as clear cut an example of sexual abuse as I've ever seen.”

“You said yourself that at least two doctors disagreed.”

“I also said they were hired hands.”

“But what if the Railroad did make a—”

She stopped tapping her pen. She leaned forward and narrowed her eyes. “Listen to me. I was an abused child myself. I married a slimeball who abused my daughter when she was three years old. It's an insidious pattern—abused children become abusers themselves, or marry men who are. Not always, but often enough. Too often. In any case, I know
personally
the kind of psychological damage that sexual abuse can cause. And if it were up to me, if I
did
have any say into who was helped by the Railroad, and if there were even the remotest possibility that the child in question had been subjected to abuse, I'd say help her. Get her away from the father.
Immediately.
Anything, even living like a fugitive, is better than that. Better than even the
possibility
of that. And, frankly, if it were up to me, I'd see to it that every man convicted of sexual abuse was legally castrated.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but she wasn't finished. She was summing up, and I was merely a member of the jury.

“And in the case of Winona Alonzo,” she continued, “there's not the remotest possibility that she
wasn't
sexually abused.” She sat back, folded her arms beneath her breasts. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

I nodded. Time to change direction. I said, “Once a mother and a child are being moved along the Railroad, is there any way for someone to contact them?”

She shrugged, her shoulders stiff, her armor locked tightly into place. “Why ask me?”

“Because I'm assuming that you have some connections with people in the Railroad.”

“Another assumption,” she said flatly.

“Look, Ms. Drewer, no matter what you think, I'm not the enemy.” I'd been saying this a lot lately. “I'm trying to help Melissa and Winona Alonzo. Let's phrase it hypothetically.
If
a woman and a child were being hidden by the Railroad, would there be some way for someone to contact them?”

She shrugged again. “Possibly.”

I reached into my blazer pocket, took out the envelope carrying the letter I'd written this morning, at the desk in my hotel room. I sat forward, laid the envelope on her desk, sat back. “That's a letter to Melissa Alonzo. It outlines the arrangements that Norman Montoya is prepared to make on her behalf. The envelope is open, you're welcome to read it. It also includes my Santa Fe office number and address. And my home phone number. Melissa can call me at either place, anytime. If I'm out, she can leave a message.”

“If I accept that,” she said, “my acceptance might imply that I was in some way aiding and abetting a fugitive.”

“Then don't take it,” I said. “Leave it on the desk. Maybe Melissa Alonzo will wander in here and pick it up.”

She glanced down at the envelope, her face empty, her body immobile.

I asked her, “Did Melissa ever mention a woman named Deirdre? Or a woman named Juanita?”

She smiled sourly. “I told you. Even if I had been contacted by Ms Alonzo, the nature of that contact would be confidential.”

I stood. “Thanks for your time, Ms. Drewer.”

She looked up at me. “You won't find her,” she said.

“I'll find her,” I said. But I said it less out of genuine belief than out of a sudden childish desire to pierce that brittle armor she hid behind.

I didn't succeed. She only sat there and smiled up at me, smiled her small superior smile.

I left.

Calvin Bigelow, Melissa's father, hadn't returned any of the phone calls I'd been making since yesterday, so I decided to try the personal approach. Bigelow Realty was in Century City, across town. I took Santa Monica Boulevard, the rented Chevy scooting demurely alongside sleek Rolls-Royces and Jags and Mercedes-Benzes. Mostly Benzes, sedate sedans and sporty convertibles, although I noticed an occasional low-slung Ferrari slinking by. The Ferraris would've been a novelty in Santa Fe. The kind of people who own Ferraris in L.A. buy Range Rovers when they move to Santa Fe, so they can demonstrate their pioneer spirit.

Today a breeze was straggling in from the sea and the smog had scattered. The air still smelled stale, as though it had been pumped there from some vast underground storage tank, but the sky overhead was bright blue and the windows on the skyscrapers sparkled like diamonds. Or at least like rhinestones. Los Angeles, I decided, wouldn't be a bad place to live, if you liked living among a lot of tall buildings and a lot of tanned people.

Calvin Bigelow's office was in one of the tall buildings, on the top floor, and his secretary was one of the tanned people. In her mid-twenties, regulation beautiful, she wore a white ruffled blouse, a small black bow tie, frosted blond hair, and a pair of designer glasses with stems that dipped down to her angled cheekbones before sweeping up to the top of the lens frames. I suspected that the lenses were plain plastic, a prop to make her look more like a secretary and less like a cupcake.

Maybe Ed Norman was right. Maybe L.A. made everyone cynical. Or maybe I was just feeling somewhat sour after my encounter with Elizabeth Drewer.

I gave her my name and asked to see Mr. Bigelow. She was polite but dubious, despite the tie I'd put on downstairs in the marbled lobby. One of the three ties I owned, it was red silk, and I was mildly distressed to discover that it hadn't swept her off her feet.

She told me, her feet firmly planted somewhere beneath her large Danish Modern desk, that Mr. Bigelow was busy at the moment and didn't see anyone without an appointment. I suggested she let him know that I was here, and told her I'd wait. I sat down on a long gray tweed settee and picked up a copy of
National Geographic.
It was the classic September 1986 issue. I was just getting excited about the Pacific island of Nauru, where a mountain of bird guano provided the citizens with one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, making it something like Los Angeles, when the secretary told me that Mr. Bigelow would see me now.

Nauru and the bird guano would have to wait.

Twelve

C
ALVIN BIGELOW
'
S OFFICE WAS TWICE THE
size of Ed Norman's. Two walls, paneled in dark wood, held framed paintings of ships running with the wind, sails taut, and framed photographs of prosperous people shaking hands and grinning at each other. Prosperous people evidently did this fairly often. The other two walls were of lightly tinted glass, providing a lovely panoramic view of some tinted windows on another tall building. At the angle where the glass walls met, an enormous oval desk of mahogany or teak sat, and behind it, turned into a silhouette by the light beyond, sat Calvin Bigelow.

He didn't stand during the fifteen or twenty minutes it took me to cross the expanse of ivory-yellow carpet. He didn't stand when I reached the desk. He looked up at me, his arms atop the desk, his fingers laced, and he said, “I let you in so we could get this over with. You've got three minutes.” He nodded to a chair to my right. “Sit,” he said.

I sat down and admired the scale model perched atop his desk. It was a sailing yacht, a ketch, a beautiful boat, built to sit low in the water and slice through it like a saber.