She stands up and proudly walks over, the magic of the moment, alive and living again with her truest love, Mickey Cantu, she trots over to me like a beaming model that knows she’s a shoe-in for the crown at the pageant.
Carla sits so close to me the fabric of her shirt runs along my skin. She hands me the picture and she does look lovely. The Hoover Dam in full majesty behind them, pouring ocean after ocean into the world. Carla is young and fresh. She looks radiant, and the way she stands, the look on her face, she’s by happenstance identical to a picture I’ve seen before.
She looks just like Ursa Hanchett’s mother in the picture he had on his kitchen counter. Which makes sense, because the man next to her is the rapist I set on fire.
“So, Mickey and you, huh?” I ask, handing back the picture.
“Yes. Those days could have gone on forever,” Carla says, admiring the photo with a love that is as unstained and pure as an infant. “I wish they had.”
“Me too,” I say and pat her hand. She smiles and I let her think I mean something else. Eventually she puts the photo away.
“So, I’m a little confused on a few things,” I say, and even though I’m starting a new conversation I stand up to leave. “Mickey’s birth mother...divorced? Died? Was never around?”
“She, ummmm...she suffered a lot. From things. Addiction. Probably some kind of mental illness. She ended her suffering.”
Took her own life, fell to her own hand, ended her suffering. Committed suicide. Messed that boy up for life when she killed herself on the boy’s birthday. Yeah. Crazy bitch did it on purpose.
“Ahhh...and Mickey’s dad eventually remarried?”
“Well, I’m not sure his parents were ever technically married, but yes. Mickey never spoke much about it. I just pieced it all together.”
“Ever give you his birth mother’s name?”
“Oh yes. Exotic but really bizarre. Ursula Cantu.”
This just got weird. But all the pieces are falling into place, even if I have to fill in the gaps.
I say my goodbyes, and true to my original promise, I only tell Carla the good. I don’t bring up that her one true love was a deeply disturbed man. I don’t say his real name was probably Mickey Hanchett and that after his mother died he probably pranced around in her house coat and curlers and wanted the world to call him Ursa and that everybody did except his own father. Then his father remarried and it caused a fissure in his life that reverberated forever. I don’t tell her I’m sure Ursa spent his teenage years in a miasma of self-identity crisis. He probably wasn’t a cat burglar. He was a home invasion rapist and the only break he took was when he found Carla. Her presence must have quieted the demons in his head. All he needed to vent his urges was to step on bugs and he’d feel power over something.
I don’t tell Carla that she knew her love during one of his good streaks and that he probably loved her to the extremes he did because she was a spitting image of his own mommy. That maybe while he got to know Petticoat in prison he heard rumors of how Petticoat slept with all those women inmates and while Petticoat was trying to buy good will with Ursa by telling him how he “took care” of Carla, what Ursa really heard was Petticoat slipped her the big one and the burglary/insurance fraud thing was just sweet revenge.
I tell Carla only the good.
48
“The sky is beautiful today, all of it, it’s all beautiful.”
Molly’s head is tilted to the heavens above, where no doubt Willibald and Eustace Clevenger are, looking down on us. I stand there, my back aching from being on my feet for the whole funeral. We’re outside again, same spot in the boneyard, same crowd no doubt wearing the same black clothing they wore last week when we interred Eustace. Same rent-a-preacher. Graham next to me, still needing a few more days for the laceration he took to the head when Ursa Hanchett jumped him. He looks at peace, though, and for that I am thankful. Eternally thankful.
One would never guess that Molly spent a half hour in her own trunk, tied and gagged. She still has the shitbox car. I’ll never understand her.
“Yes, it is beautiful,” Graham says. Puts an arm around her and tugs her head forward in his elbow. He kisses her forehead and they share a loving glance. Graham turns to me.
“Where’s mine?” I ask, smile. Molly leans over and punches me in the chest.
We start to leave and Detective Collins, the SAPD homicide dick who worked both Eustace and Willibald’s cases, comes over to us. “Hey, boss, good news.”
Graham shakes his hand. So do I. “I love good news,” Graham says.
“Well, you know last week we found LaTrell ‘Thuggie’ Williams shot dead, correct?”
We all nod and Collins continues. “Anyway, the gang unit made short work of announcing that to the world. We also found a bunch of his boys burned to death in a building nearby. Whatever it was they were doing, I’m afraid to ask. Playing with fire, I guess. But, skirmishes have broken out all over the city.”
“Vying for Carnivore Messiah territory?” I ask.
“Yes. The Carnivores are all but done with. We’ll see splinter groups and new crews pop up, but Thuggie’s legacy will be forgotten next week.”
Molly scrunches her eyebrows, asks, “So what’s the good news?”