My Name Is Venus Black(86)
“I’m sorry, Leo. You can’t go home,” the lady says.
“Why?” He tries to look at the lady’s eyes. People are supposed to like it when you do that. He can’t lock on. His eyes feel the kind of funny that they always do when he’s been crying for a long time. Has he been acting like a crybaby? That’s what they say at school if you cry too much.
“I can’t explain it all to you, Leo. But tomorrow you will get to see your mom.”
“My mom?”
“Your mother, Leo. Do you remember your mother?”
“From before?”
“Yes, Leo.”
“But I want Tony. I want Tessa. I want to go home.” He can’t understand why this woman is doing this to him.
* * *
—
TONY IS EXHAUSTED. The metal bed with the thin mattress is almost a relief. He has spent the last hour talking through his situation with James P. McKinney, the defense lawyer Marco found for him. He’s a slick-looking guy with eyes that seem too blue to be true—like he stole them off a doll or something. But Marco says he’s supposed to be good.
Tony never dreamed he’d need a defense lawyer. He never imagined himself in a jail cell. Often, his customers would reference their drug use or scrapes with the law, assuming that they were in the company of a tough guy. But they couldn’t have been further from the truth. Tony was a plain-vanilla good boy at heart.
So how could it be that tonight he’d been read his Miranda rights and arrested and booked on charges of kidnapping? It all seemed surreal. Except for Tessa’s tears. The look of shock and fear on her face.
“You are in pretty good shape,” McKinney had told him. “They can’t prove intent for kidnapping, and we’ll be able to prove that Mr. Brown rented a room from you and that he worked at the Burger Bar. Hopefully they’ll focus on building a kidnapping case against this guy, not you.”
“So what am I looking at?”
“Interfering with child custody is where I hope we can end up. Maybe even a suspended sentence and parole. But they’ll start out by charging you with kidnapping, even if they know it probably won’t stick. It’s hard to say how hard the D.A.’s office will come down. Ironically, you may be in more trouble for knowingly providing false documents—the birth certificate and Social Security fraud. But given the circumstances, I would expect a minimum amount of jail time.”
Tony had tried to take it all in. “So can I tell the mother I’m sorry?”
“No contact. Definitely not.”
Now, lying in his cell, Tony can’t stop thinking about the girl who came into the house just before they took Leo away—the girl the police scolded and quickly escorted out. He’s almost positive she’s the same young woman he saw walking down Rockefeller near Inez’s house last Sunday afternoon on his way out. As he drove by, she was passing under a streetlamp, and her height, along with her head of curly hair, made a strong impression. She’d been carrying a suitcase that looked too heavy for her. He’d almost pulled over to see if she needed a ride.
Now he thinks she may have passed by his shop today, too. This was the girl who murdered her stepfather?
How could she have tracked Tony down from his visit to Everett? He can’t put it together, and he finally gives up trying.
He thinks of praying. God, if Maria could see him now. He tells himself that children’s-services people are experts at these situations. They’ll take good care of Leo. Tomorrow this whole mess will get straightened out. He tells himself this and many more lies before he is finally rescued by sleep.
* * *
—
IT TAKES TESSA a few seconds to realize where she is. And then the memory of what happened comes crashing in. It is worse than any bad dream she’s ever had. Her father in handcuffs. Leo being dragged away by strangers.
She is lying on the hide-a-bed in Marco and Maureen’s living room. She hears one of them making coffee in the kitchen. Her eyes feel thick. She has a completely out-of-place thought that she should try coffee for the first time today.
She hears voices. M and M are both in the kitchen, talking. Tessa is not normally one to eavesdrop, but she can’t help herself. She quietly climbs off the hide-a-bed and makes her way toward the half door that opens into the kitchen. She positions herself just outside so she can hear what’s being said.
Maureen is saying, “Once we find out the bail, can we get it reduced?”
“For kidnapping?” says Marco. “It’s gonna be high. Twenty-five thousand is probably a good guess. Of course, at some point—I’m not sure how it works—Tony’s lawyer will try to get the charges reduced to interfering with custody.”
“What are you saying? That we leave him in there?”
“Well, I’m pretty sure you can get someone out by paying a bail bondsman ten percent, but we don’t have twenty-five hundred dollars lying around.”
“No, of course not.”
“Let’s just wait and see,” Marco says. “We’ll know more after the arraignment. They have forty-eight hours to arraign him, but since that goes into the weekend, it might not happen until Monday.”
Tessa hears Maureen say quietly, “Monday?”