The Big Kahuna (Fox and O'Hare #6)(79)

I turned my back to the sun, so the baby would be in the shade, and radioed dispatch again. I couldn’t remember what the procedure was in a case like this, I had to wait for instructions from the sergeant. But for once, Vasco was nice. “Stay put, Gorecki,” he said. “We’re sending help right away.”

The moment the paramedic put his stethoscope on the baby’s chest, he started to cry again, kicking his feet inside the blankets. “Heartbeat’s good,” the medic said with a smile. He was an older guy who dyed his hair and wore a thick layer of ChapStick, trying, I think, to hold on to what remained of his surfer looks. When he was finished taking the baby’s vitals, he brought out a bottle of water. “He’s got crystals in his diaper. He’s completely dehydrated.”

“How long do you think he’s been in there?” I asked.

“Hard to say. If I had to guess, twenty-four hours. Maybe thirty six.”

“Jesus.”

Behind us, the neighbor was giving a statement to the detective, spelling out his last name carefully. “N-o-v-a-c-e-k.” The suspect I’d almost forgotten about was still waiting in the back of the cruiser. Two deputies were checking the house one more time for evidence. And all the while, Sergeant Vasco was giving an interview to a reporter from the Hi-Desert Star. The next morning, his picture was on the front page of the newspaper, with the baby in his arms. “Police Rescue Abandoned Baby” the headline said.

He didn’t ride my ass so much after that.





Maryam




Memory is an unreliable visitor. For a long while, I couldn’t remember the name of the young man who had brought Nora to the cabin when her car key broke, although he looked familiar to me, and I knew I had seen him somewhere before. Then one day, while I was taking the recycling out to the garage, it all came back to me at once, not only his name, but his father’s name, too. The summer before Nora went to college, I needed an electrician to fix the wiring on the garage door, and one of the mothers at school said that she had hired this man, Mark Gorecki, so I called him. He didn’t just fix the garage door, he kept finding new things that needed to be done, like a three-way switch that didn’t work, or a broken light fixture on the deck. He repaired everything perfectly, but I could smell beer on him at noon, and I didn’t like that he had racked up a $300 bill by the time he was finished, so I never called him again, not even when the fan in the bedroom stopped working and we had to sleep with the windows open.

Coming back in from the garage, I went to the front hallway and stood looking at the framed photos on the wall, pictures from all the important moments in my family’s life, and especially my daughters’ lives, their birthdays and graduations and achievements. At length, I found the young man, standing in a suit that looked too small for him, in the middle of Nora’s jazz band. Running my finger over the list at the bottom, I found his name: Jeremy Gorecki. It was nice of him to drive her back that day, I thought; waiting for Triple A in the heat would’ve been tough, especially since she was by herself.

I hadn’t expected to see him again, but a few weeks later, while I was waiting in the express lane at the Stater Brothers, he came to stand behind me in line. At first, he didn’t see me, he was texting on his phone, smiling at whoever he was talking to, and only after he finished his conversation did he put down his items on the conveyor belt, a canister of coffee, a pack of sugar, a box of condoms, and a blue-and-white carryall with a zipper pocket on one side. It was my carryall, the one I had used to bring Tupperwares of food to the cabin, and I had left it hanging on a nail in the kitchen, in case Nora needed it for groceries, but now here it was, in the hands of Jeremy Gorecki. I reached for the plastic divider and put it down on the conveyor belt between us.

“Thank you,” he said, reflexively, but when he looked at me, I saw recognition come over him. I turned to look at the tabloids, their covers screaming about celebrities’ addictions to drugs or affairs with the nanny, then pulled out a copy of People, just to give myself something to do, and made a show of reading it. “Mrs. Guerraoui?” he asked.

How strange it was to hear my husband’s name in this stranger’s mouth. What did he know about us, and why did he want to talk to me, here at the grocery store, with that box on the conveyor belt between us? To my relief, the line moved forward, and I stuffed the magazine back on the rack and pulled a few bills out of my wallet to pay for my groceries. I was planning to make stuffed bell peppers with lamb for my son-in-law—that was his favorite dish, he and Salma were coming to have dinner with me—but the thought of cooking an elaborate meal was far from my mind now. All I wanted was to get out of this place.

“Eleven eighty is your change,” the cashier said. She took out two bills from the register, then stopped. “The change machine is broken, and I’m low on quarters and dimes.”

“It’s okay.”

“You don’t mind so many pennies?”

“No.” I wanted her to hurry, but she counted the pennies slowly and carefully, whispering to herself so she wouldn’t lose track.

Jeremy tried again. “Mrs. Guerraoui,” he said. “Hello there.” His voice was deep and clear, and I couldn’t pretend any longer that I hadn’t heard him.

“Oh,” I said, feigning surprise, “hello.” He was very tall, and I had to look up to meet his eyes, which were very blue against his tanned face, it was not an unpleasant face, though his lips had a purple tint that came from smoking, a terrible habit. On his upper arm was a tattoo, which is common enough in this town, you see them everywhere, especially on low-class people and criminals, although nowadays artists get them, too. My daughter has one, it’s very tiny, it’s usually hidden by her bracelets, but a tattoo on the arm is different, it makes a statement, it wants to be seen, perhaps that was what this young man wanted.