L.A. Blues III Read online

  Later that evening, Shirley came up to my garage apartment, crock pots of cooked food in tow. She’d even made one of my favorites—salmon croquettes.

  “You can freeze some and heat them up. This should get you through a few days,” she said, putting the food in my small refrigerator.

  “Thank you, Moochie.” I kissed her cheek when she reached down and hugged me. I decided to tell Shirley the good news. “Guess what?”

  “What? You’re full of surprises. I hope you’re not pregnant with twins.”

  “No, I don’t think so. But it’s something just as miraculous.”

  “What is it? Tell me.”

  “I found my baby sister, Ry-chee.” My voice sounded dry.

  “What? Wonderful! Then, why are you looking so down?”

  “I don’t know if I did the right thing. I told Venita, but now I’m having second thoughts. I don’t want to share her with Venita.”

  Shirley paused for a long time. “Of course, you did the right thing. Your mother has a right to know. That’s her child.”

  “She wasn’t any mother to her. She dropped her out and left her in a prison hospital.”

  “Well, Venita was incarcerated when your sister was born. It wasn’t like she had much choice.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Look, you have to forgive your mom,” Shirley said, giving me a serious look. “She has tried to make amends with you, and you keep rejecting her.”

  “No, she has made amends with everyone but me. She’s taking care of Mayhem’s kids right now, albeit on the run with them. She even sucked me in to help free this fool and it has made a mess of my life.”

  “What mess? Don’t you know life is a gift from God? Remember how I told you I lost my firstborn child and was never able to conceive again?”

  “No, I didn’t mean that. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad about the baby. I was just a little shook at first.”

  “Look you need to resolve these issues with your mom. You don’t know what you might need your mom for.”

  “She’s not my mom. You’re my Moochie.” That was the nickname I had for my foster mother, Shirley: the one who got me through my teen years without me having a baby because she guarded my foster sister, Chica, and me like prize pumpkins at a fair. Although Chica got pregnant at eighteen with her deceased son, Trayvon, she’d moved out the house and was on her own when she became a teen mom. Definitely not on Shirley’s watch.

  Besides, Shirley was the one who sat through my detox withdrawal from alcohol three years ago. No, she was my mother in every sense of the word.

  “Child, you don’t have to brownnose with me. I know you love me and I love you too. But Venita’s your birth mom and I want to see you guys heal and get close to each other. You won’t be whole until you forgive her. Forgiveness frees us. When we hate, we keep the carbon copy.”

  I didn’t answer. Anger rose up in my chest and I had to breathe deeply to calm down. “Well, what do you think I should do with Rachel when I meet her?”

  “Give her plenty of love.”

  Later, my foster nieces, Malibu, Soledad, Charisma, and Brooklyn came to see me. “Auntie, are you really having a baby?” Brooklyn, who was now eight, asked.

  “That’s what the doctor says.”

  “Wow! We’re going to have a baby cousin. Awesome,” Malibu, the fourteen-going-on-forty-year-old chirped. She was such an old soul, it scared me sometimes. She was the one who tried to keep the family together when Trayvon, her fifteen-year-old brother, was murdered two years ago, and Shirley lost her mind for a while. Malibu had cooked, taken care of her younger sisters, and even tried to take care of Daddy Chill, who, unbeknownst to us at the time, had dementia. Although she had the body of a twenty-one-year-old, you could look in her face and see the innocence still there.

  At last, the family was settling down, and here I was, pregnant with a baby. I guessed, in a way, this was good news after all we’d gone through together as a family; but then I thought about the message I might have been sending as a single woman to young, impressionable girls.

  “Now listen, girls. Don’t go get any romantic ideas in your heads about having babies without a husband. I’m a grown woman and this is scary without a husband. I was planning on marrying Romero before he died. Don’t try to act like that Teen Mom show. I want you girls to be married when you start having babies, you hear me?”

  “Don’t worry,” Malibu said, slinging her waist-length wavy hair over her shoulder. “G-Ma has given us the talk. She says boys tell pretty girls and ugly girls all the same thing. Sex doesn’t have a face. If you have a baby, you won’t be able to go to prom and the boys will be off with someone else, laughing at you, while you’re stuck with a baby.”

  “You’ll be left holding the bag,” we all said in unison. Even Brooklyn knew the “talk.” I laughed at how effective that sex talk had been for Chica and me too.

  The girls scrubbed and cleaned my apartment and I felt like a queen. They took Ben in his cage to visit at “the big house.”

  Chapter Nine

  While I was on bed rest over the next week, I watched Training Day (my current DVD from Netflix) so many times until I knew most of the lines backward and forward. Watching this film made me think of my days in the Los Angeles Police Department. It often made me wonder about my tenure as a law enforcement officer. Ten long years I gave of my life. Did I regret it? No. It was my destiny. It was what brought me to being a private eye.

  Yet one thing I knew for sure was I never questioned if I crossed the line from the good guys to the bad guys back then, even with my alcohol problem. But now I often asked myself: had I crossed the line since I became a PI? I didn’t even want to answer that question.

  To pass time over the week I was on bed rest, I even began to play chess with myself. I taught myself to crochet and started making a baby blanket. I made some origami flowers. I worked crossword puzzles. I learned Sudoku. I scheduled an appointment with an ob-gyn doctor, an African American female, Dr. Gail Henderson. I ordered and downloaded books on pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting for my Amazon Kindle, and started studying up on a doula when I read an article and found out that one of my favorite artists, Erykah Badu, delivered babies. I was already thinking of a home delivery with all my loved ones to welcome my new baby.

  I researched DNA tests during pregnancy, to see if I could establish the paternity of the child, but when I saw that there was a risk of miscarriage, I changed my mind. I would have to know Romero’s blood type, which I didn’t know. I resolved that I would not do the test, and would wait and see what happened.

  I was also able to do research into Agent Stamper’s and Agent Braggs’s lives. I was able to hack into the DEA frame and the FBI frame to get information on them. Their records were clean. I Googled them and found they both had won awards in their jobs. Of course, I couldn’t find anything about a covert operation where they would have given Mayhem the money to go to Brazil.

  Both were married with three and four children, respectively. They both participated in bake sales at their children’s school. They even volunteered at the homeless missions in downtown L.A. at Thanksgiving and Christmas. But, my first red flag was that they lived in Bel Air and Beverly Hills, which are expensive areas. They both had children in Ivy League colleges and minor children in private schools. They both drove Lamborghinis, in addition to owning two Cadillac SUVs, and two Rolls-Royces apiece. I looked up the average salary and they both lived beyond that. My gut told me this didn’t add up.

  I did some more on my search for my brother Diggity aka David de la croix. I had a list of people named David de la Croix who were born in 1985 in California. I felt horrible as I did it, but I checked the death certificates for the past ten years and I checked the prison system. Each time it came back negative, I would let out a sigh of relief.

  I decided I wouldn’t take any money from Mayhem’s account, unless it was for his lawyer. I in no way wanted to get involved in his madness. If
I didn’t use his money, I wouldn’t feel any obligation.

  I started trying to figure out a plan to find out what happened to Tank, my brother’s lieutenant. I knew his head had been cut off, but where was his body? I did some searching for Tank. I called F-Loc, OG Crip, and my street informant.

  “Hey, Loc.”

  “Where you been, Z?”

  “I went out the country. Do you know anything about Tank, who was my brother’s lieutenant?”

  “Naw, ain’t nobody seen him. He been ghost like a mug as far as I know.”

  “Can you see what you can find out?”

  “I’ll put word out on the street and see what I can come up with.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Sho’nuff. Take care, baby girl.”

  After I hung up, I wondered, where could Tank’s body be? Did his head got picked up when I put in the 911 call before I flew to Rio?

  Wherever his body was, he needed to be put to rest.

  I wondered what happened to my blackmailers. For the moment, I hadn’t heard from whoever it was. What would be their next move?

  “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” Shirley said to me when I told her how I almost regretted telling Venita that I’d found Ry-chee. It seemed unfair that she should share in our reunion, but from what I learned from Rachel, she really wanted to see her mom. A real Leave It to Beaver family moment. Yuck.

  “I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem right that she should benefit from all my searching. I’ve gone to the Adoption Central Registry, which didn’t come to anything since Ry-chee and Diggity never signed up. I’ve interviewed the foster parents who last had Ry-chee, and the one who last had Diggity. I’ve begged social services for their records, to no avail. It’s the weirdest thing that I found Ry-chee through social media.”

  “Yes, this social media is something else. But, baby, you’ve got to let your sister meet your mother. If you didn’t and your sister found out later, that could blow up in your face.”

  I heaved a sigh. “I know, I know,” I conceded.

  I struggled to beat down my sense of jealousy. I was the one who found Rachel, yet Venita was going to get all the glory. I guessed “mother trumped sister.” Just like “wifey trumped sister,” when it came to Mayhem.

  I guessed who you came out of meant more than who you were related to by sibling-ship. In Mayhem’s case, it was like that song, “When a man loves a woman . . . she can do no wrong.”

  Anyhow, I wanted to get this right this time though. I wanted to make my family whole again. Now underneath I admitted, for the first time, I’d always wanted a family. Now that I was going to have a baby, I wanted a family even more. I couldn’t get over it. I—who had never wanted children—was now looking forward to motherhood. I pondered this change in me while I was on bed rest.

  Chapter Ten

  I decided that with the pregnancy, I would slow down taking cases. I was glad I told Mayhem I would not go to Brazil with him. Who did he think I was? Superwoman? I didn’t wear a cape. I’d have to rethink my whole business as a private investigator, now that I was going to be a mother. I’d only deal with safe cases. No more dangerous cases.

  No sooner than I thought this, I received a call.

  “Hello, are you Zipporah Saldano—the private investigator?”

  I had never heard the voice on the other line. “Yes, this is she speaking. Who am I speaking to?”

  “My name is Attorney Penny McCord.”

  “How may I help you?”

  “I’m calling against the recommendation of the FBI, and my husband doesn’t even know that I’m calling you.” I could hear tears in the woman’s voice.

  “What is the problem?”

  The woman took a deep breath. “My husband and I went out of town to a law convention in DC. We left our eighteen-month-old daughter, Kyle, with our nanny, Jill, who is a Nigerian from London. She always seemed to be a responsible person—or I thought she was, but now our baby has come up missing. She claimed that a man in a mask broke into the house, knocked her out, and snatched the baby.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Where is Jill at now?”

  “The police had released her, and now we can’t find her. We heard you’re one of the best in the business. That you can find a needle in a haystack.”

  “Thank you for your kind words,” I murmured.

  “I feel so badly now. Jill came highly recommended and we trusted her implicitly with our daughter . . . .” Her voice faltered. “But, I guess we were wrong.” She began to weep softly into the phone.

  “So how may I help you?”

  “I’d like to hire you on the side. The FBI is involved, but they are not moving fast enough for me. I’d like you to help find my baby.”

  My gut started churning the way it did whenever I sensed something wasn’t right. Well, at least this was not a dangerous case; but, then, you never could tell going into a case.

  Finally I answered. “I won’t be able to meet you for two days, but, in the meantime, I can work the case from my computer.”

  “You’re sure you can’t meet me tomorrow?”

  “I am really interested in taking your case. You see, I’m going to be a mother too, but I’m under a doctor’s care for a couple of more days. I really understand how you must feel. I’d die if anything happened to my baby. I will do searching from my database, but I’ll need information from you.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Soldano. I knew there was a reason I needed to come to you. Congratulations on your baby. How far are you along?”

  “I’m about three months.” All of a sudden I realized I was becoming a part of that tribe I used to pooh-pooh—the group of mothers who loved to talk about their pregnancies, and their offspring. It felt great, too, even under these dire circumstances, to feel like I belonged to the tribe of women.

  “Oh, I remember when I was pregnant with Kyle. I was on bed rest the entire nine months because I’d had four miscarriages, all in the first trimester. I had a surgery that helped me hold her, so as you see, I don’t know what I’d do if . . .”

  “Look, don’t say that. I’ll do all I can to help you. With technology, we can track people in ways we couldn’t before.”

  “We’ve got two good guys from the FBI, but they don’t really seem to be sensitive to a woman’s feelings.”

  I took down all the information I could over the phone, and started working on my latest case.

  Two days later, after I had my first appointment with Dr. Henderson and I was released from bed rest, I headed to Beverly Hills.

  Afterward, I met with Attorney Penny McCord at a restaurant. She was a petite brunette with a pixie haircut and solemn brown eyes. Her eyes were bleary and I could tell she’d been bawling nonstop. She looked to be in her late thirties.

  “You can call me Penny,” she said after our introductions.

  As soon as she sat down, she broke into tears. She was almost hysterical.

  “It’s gotten worse,” she stammered between her sobs. She let me hear a terse message on her iPhone that she’d saved:

  “We want $100,000. Do not contact the police or we will kill your little girl. We will cut her up slowly in little pieces.”

  Just hearing the message, Penny broke down into tears. I patted her back and comforted her, really feeling her pain.

  “Let me hear that message again.”

  I listened one more time. I noted the African-sounding male accent. I had a hunch.

  I sat in my car and watched as a SWAT team bum-rushed a room on the first floor at the Marriott Hotel near LAX. I’d given them the tip where the nanny was hiding out. I held my breath and prayed for the toddler’s safe return. I still hadn’t even cashed the retainer fee check. I didn’t know what I would do if anything had happened to this baby. I felt like this case had come to me for a reason.

  A half hour later, the place was swarming with FBI agents. About another half hour passed and I looked on as they brought out the nanny and a male, who was lat
er identified as her husband, a Nigerian, who was in the country illegally. They both were in handcuffs.

  A female FBI agent came out, carrying the little fat-cheeked baby girl who was chattering away. She was wearing a clean dress with a pinafore, her hair was pulled up in golden-red ringlets, and she appeared to be unharmed.

  It was part luck and part skill as to how I tracked little Kyle down. I had asked around at Jill’s neighbors’ in Westchester about when she was last seen. They said they hadn’t seen her, but a man who said he was her husband had been staying at her house recently.

  Penny had provided me with Jill’s social security number, and I was able to track her down through her debit card. I tracked her last expenses and found her paying for a room at the Marriott.

  The first thing I did was call Penny. “Your baby is safe. Go down to Parker Center to pick her up. The missing children’s division has your baby.”

  She broke into tears of joy. “Thank you, Ms. Soldano.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “How did you know how to find her?”

  “It was just a hunch. I realized when I found out her husband was in the country illegally that he was the one who probably masterminded the entire scheme. I didn’t think Jill would hurt the baby, but now she’s going down with him.”

  I thought about how this case made me even more committed to wanting to have my baby. It’s like I had discovered a whole new world that I’d never been privy to—the subterranean world of a mother’s love.

  Chapter Eleven

  A week later, as I drove to LAX to pick up my long-lost sister, Rachel, my thoughts were in turmoil. I wanted to get it right this time. I’d always felt guilty, as if I were the reason the family had broken up. I was the one who’d call my father, Buddy, when Rachel’s father, Strange, was beating Venita. My father got killed because he was trying to make sure I wasn’t molested. My mother went to jail to hide the fact that her then ten-year-old son, Mayhem, had killed her boyfriend, Strange. Through therapy, I’d learned it was not my fault, but I still felt guilty.