The slow head-nod answered his question. “Most of it,” she said, reaffirming his suspicions. He thought about candy and babies, and taking one from the other. “How much do you have?” he asked, knowing nearly every word that would follow.
Lorraine reached in her blouse pocket and pulled out a wad of crinkled-up bills, including ones. She laid it on Dixon’s desk. “Four hundred. I can get the rest in a few days. The restaurant is going to let me wait tables on the weekends.”
Her words were simple enough, but he knew she was bluffing. They all had stories like that. He also knew that the best way to beat a bluffer was to come right back at her with an enormous raise. “I doubt your tips are all that good,” he said while he stuffed her cash in his desk drawer. “You still won’t have enough to avoid eviction. You understand that, don’t you?”
Lorraine’s eyes confirmed that Dixon had essentially won the pot as he always did. He immediately dealt the next hand. “What about next month?” he asked.
She wrinkled her brow. “What about it?”
“Even if you get this month figured out, you’re going to come up against the same situation in a few weeks. You also have to pay for utilities and groceries and bus fare. Correct?” He waited until she nodded. “I guess you could take on a roommate, but you only have one bedroom. Do you know anybody else who’d want to live with you?”
Her brown eyes sought the floor. “What about the job you mentioned?” she asked.
He hid his grin, but his chest throbbed like a beginner with four of a kind. “On Mondays?” he said. "I suppose we could still work something out.”
“What would I have to do?”
He shrugged. “Easy things, mostly. Clean vacant apartments, run errands, cook meals. Anything I need.”
She looked off to the side. “What about what you tried to do last time? I don’t want to do that.”
Dixon rose, took her hand and urged her to stand. He gently touched her chin and lifted her head. “You’ve kissed a boy before, haven’t you?”
“Just Ricardo. In Mexico.”
“Well, Ricardo’s not here to help you pay your rent.” Dixon leaned forward to taste her luscious lips. This time she didn’t run away.
Chapter Five
Playing her role and dressed in second-hand clothes, Detective Delores Sanchez, AKA Lorraine Martinez, caught the 9:15 bus toward her bogus job. From the rear of the bus she verified that she wasn’t being followed before she pulled the overhead cord.
Two blocks later she departed, walked one block down the side street, made a right, then walked another half-block back toward Cal-Vista. A final look over her shoulder confirmed she was all clear. She grabbed a key from her purse and slithered behind the wheel of a near-new, grey Audi. Ten minutes later she pulled into the driveway of psychiatrist Jeanine Moreno.
Delores had been a cop a few years, and she’d already experienced more than her fair share of stress, but it wasn’t until Dixon Browne dumped a baleful of last straws on her shoulders that she actually sought professional therapy. This would be her first meeting with her shrink.
She was escorted into a private office where Dr. Moreno stood behind a beautiful, but cluttered, antique desk. “Come in, Detective,” the doctor said, brushing aside a few strands of her streaked blonde hair. “I’m so happy to meet you.” About ten years Delores’s senior, the doctor pointed with long, multi-colored fingernails toward a sitting area, near a large window. “Please take a seat.”
Delores nodded and curled her own boring fingernails deep into her palms.
At the sitting area, two high-backed leather chairs, each containing a large purple velvet pillow, sat face-to-face. The tidy area looked like a well-planned island of sanity amid a sea of madness. Delores snatched the pillow from the left chair for no particular reason and eased into the soft leather. “I’ve never been to a psychiatrist before,” she said. “You’re going to think I’m screwed up.”
“First off, Detective,” the doctor said as she kicked off her shoes and tucked her feet up under her rear end, “you can call me Jeanine. It’s usually a lot easier to talk with a friend,” she said, making air-quotes.
Whew! The feeling was mutual. “And you can call me Delores.”
“Alright then, Delores, now that we’ve got all the yucky stuff out of the way—”
Delores grinned and set her pillow aside. She uncurled her fingers and gestured toward a framed picture next to a bottle of hand lotion on Jeanine’s desk. “Is that your family?”
“Yep. Two daughters. One husband, but sometimes he can be more challenging than both the girls combined. How about you? Married? Children?”
“I’ve met a few guys, but nothing has worked out.”
“I see. Do you mind if I ask how you heard of me?”
“Oh, sure. I’m from a little two-person department, out in Palmdale. We don’t have many resources so when I decided I wanted to talk with somebody I called the L.A. office. They had a couple people on contract. I picked you because, well—”
“I’m a woman.”
“Well, yeah, but I hate to admit it, considering all the crap I give men about being sexist.”
Jeanine waved a dismissive hand in the air. “I get that quite a bit. Who else knows you’re here?”
“Nobody. I don’t want anybody to know I’m a head case.”
“A head case, huh? The reason I asked is, the county might pay my fee if your supervisor recommends the meeting.”
“But then everybody would know I’m a weirdo. I don’t think I’m ready for that. If I can just meet with you a couple times on my own, I’ll pay you myself.”
“Good enough. When you first sat down, you claimed to be ‘all screwed up.’ What did you mean by that?”
Delores sighed. “Everything. My personal life. My work. All of it. It’s stress everywhere I go.”
“A common problem in law enforcement. But something must have changed. What was it?”
Delores hesitated a moment. Then, “I guess it was Dixon Browne.”
“A boyfriend? A boss?”
Delores smirked. “Neither, but he thinks he’s both. He manages an apartment building. I have reason to believe he’s a rapist and I’m in an undercover role to gather evidence. That’s why I’m dressed like this.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“As far as we can tell, he doesn’t attack women physically. It’s more of a psychological matter. He knows they’re vulnerable so he manipulates them into sleeping with him. It’s part of a new crime called rape by deception.”
“Never heard of it. So, if you’re not particularly concerned for your safety, what’s the problem?”
Delores clucked her tongue. “Dinosaurs.”
“I assume you mean that metaphorically?” Jeanine said.
“Yeah. I’m mostly talking about the DA. He thinks the rape by deception idea is a farce. As far as he’s concerned, if a woman gives consent, there’s no rape. He wants me to work on other cases, so I’m basically forced to drop the matter or work on it on my own time.”
“What’s so bad about working on something else? I’m sure there are plenty of people who could use your help.”
“I wish I could, Jeanine, but I’m the only one who understands the victims. If I don’t stop that animal, nobody will. And that’s the problem. I’m damned either way. Now, I’m doubting if I really belong in police work.”
“It sounds as if you want me to tell you to quit your job.”
Delores looked Jeanine square in the eyes. “Is that what you think I should do? ’Cause I sure don’t know.”
”Sorry,” Dr. Moreno said shaking her head. “I can’t make your decisions for you. All I can do is help you think things through.”
Delores sighed. “I dunno; maybe this is what I needed to remind me how tough other people have it.”
“It never hurts to keep that kind of thing in mind. Tell me something about your personal life. I believe you said it was ‘all screwed
up’ too.”
Where to begin? Delores could have gone on for hours about the resentment she carried around over the loss of her sister, but she wasn’t ready to discuss any of that with a stranger. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how she looked at it, she had other woes she could discuss. Of those, one was somewhat benign. “For one thing, I never should have bought my car. I was doing okay when I just had my condo payment, but I thought I needed a status symbol. Now the payments are too high, my credit cards are maxed and I’m barely getting by.” She gazed downwards. “I should have known better. What the hell was the matter with me?”
“I wouldn’t be so hard on yourself,” Jeanine said. “These things usually have a way of working out.” She rested her hand on her ankle. “I have a little mental exercise that might help you. I call it IMT, for Innermost Thoughts. Would you like to give it a try?”
Delores sighed. “Why not? I’m up for anything that will make some sense out of my life.”
“Okay, then,” Jeanine said. “I’d like you to remove your shoes, pick up your pillow and lay your head back. Get comfortable. I’ll present you with a simple question that most women face and you tell me what you think about it. Can you do that?”
“Sounds fun,” Delores said while she toed off her shoe with her other foot, “but I’ll probably mess it up.”
“Can’t. There are no wrong answers. Just relax and tell me your thoughts when you ponder this question: If you had to choose between a career or a family, which would you pick and why?”
Comforted by the easy topic, Delores cocked her head to the side and shrugged. “Both situations have appeal. I’d like to have children, but I’d also need some adult interaction to keep me sane. I’d probably be like you and try to do both.”
Jeanine pressed her fingertips together in a colorful steeple. “Those are good surface-level thoughts, but we’re looking for something deeper. Your innermost thoughts. Let’s try again. This time, I’d like you to think about living out in the country with a good hubby, three kids and all the rewards and sacrifices that come with being a mom and housewife, but where there aren’t many adult things to do. Compare that to you and hubby living in a more active community where you can have a career and join clubs and a church and do anything you want with adults, but you won’t be able to have children. Got it?”
“I think so.”
“Okay then, close your eyes and imagine what your life would be like in one of those situations. Consult all your senses. How does it look, sound and smell? What are your innermost thoughts?”
Delores nodded. For the next twenty minutes she played a grownup version of make-believe, much like she had done with her sister, Simone, when they were kids. She let her mind wander and shared all sorts of particulars of what she thought each fantasy life might feel like. Finally she opened her eyes, lifted her head and set her pillow down. “You know something, Jeanine. I think I’d prefer to be a happy mom.”
Jeanine grinned. “Okay then, I think you’ve got it. You found a way to find your deepest thoughts. This should help you to make tough decisions, both personally and professionally. Just get in a quiet place and concentrate on the specifics, rather than vague generalities. That’s all there is to it.”
PING!
Suddenly, both heads turned toward Jeanine’s desk. Jeanine patted her pillow. “Oh, darn. I’m sorry, Delores, but our time is just about up. I don’t know about you, but this hour flew by way too fast. Shall I expect you again next week?”
Delores rose and inched toward the window. High up, and off in the distance, a lone gray cloud appeared to be lost. She could relate because far off, in the back of her mind, she had an ugly black cloud of her own. An IMT-like secret that she’d never, ever, ever told anybody. Not her family, not her friends, not her priest. Nobody. And with her finances as they were, she couldn’t possibly afford to keep paying psychiatrist fees out of her own pocket. She faced Jeanine. “We’d better find out if the department will pay for me to come back.”
Chapter Six
Soon after Delores took on the role of Lorraine Martinez she resigned herself to the likelihood that she’d have to spend a fair amount of her time at Cal-Vista. It was boring as hell. TV sucked without cable, and she couldn’t read any books or magazines that might suggest she was somebody other than a struggling young Latina. And she sure as hell couldn’t have any quests that might contradict Lorraine’s image.
The sleeping arrangements were especially uncomfortable. She converted an old exercise mat into a mattress and scrounged an old sofa pillow she had. When she was hanging out, she kept her badge and a small gun under the pillow in case of an emergency, but sleeping like that caused her to wake up with an aching neck. Meanwhile, about all she had to do was think about her past and why she was there in the first place. Sometimes she employed the IMT technique that Dr. Moreno taught her.
Every morning, Delores acted just as she thought Lorraine would. She dressed in old but decent clothes, boarded the 9:15 bus and disembarked a few blocks later and wiggled through a couple side streets to her Audi. From there she drove to her real apartment, took a shower, downed some ibuprofen, put on some eye makeup and dressed for her cop job.
Fortunately one good situation eventually revealed itself. After a handful of all-nighters, she concluded that Dixon Browne had meant what he said about seeing Lorraine only on Mondays. The rest of the time, he simply didn’t come around. But that was the rest of the time. Now it was indeed Monday and she fully expected him to drop by a little later.
She literally rolled out of bed before she stretched out the kinks she’d gotten from balancing her head on a gun-padded pillow. While taking a quick shower she thought about how much she loathed men like Dixon Browne and her stepfather, who had a history of his own.
She may not have been able to do much about her stepfather, but she hoped that today she could gather some evidence that would eventually put an end to Dixon’s abuse of innocent women. It was half past eight when he first entered the yard. She flicked on her recorder pen and double-checked her pistol.
* * *
Each part of the month lent Dixon Browne different opportunities to grow his fortune. When the last half of the month rolled around, the owner, Rodger Kraft, was aggressive about renting out the vacants. “This is when they like to move,” he’d say. “If we don’t get them while we can, somebody else will and we’ll be stuck with a vacant apartment for another month.”
To induce a prospective tenant to sign a one-year lease, Kraft was willing to give them up to two weeks free rent. He might as well have given Dixon the combination to a private safe.
There were plenty of potential tenants who were willing to pay a bargain basement price for the very days Kraft was willing to give away for free. If said tenants had cash, which many of them did because they weren’t stable enough for checkbooks and banks, Dixon would grab a wad here and there, then tell Kraft that they took the “incentive plan” and paid nothing. Once again, in Dixon’s eyes, it was a big win for everybody, especially for Dixon and Maria. Most months he snagged over seven hundred bucks.
The latter part of the month also presented Dixon with certain nonmonetary opportunities. Nearly all the rents had been collected and the workload was lighter, which afforded him extra time to visit people such as Lorraine Martinez. At half past eight, he grabbed some hand tools and scurried across the courtyard and through the early morning fog to building five. Just outside Lorraine Martinez’s apartment, he wiggled his jaw, sucked in his gut and tapped the door.
* * *
When the knock finally came Delores reminded herself to act like Lorraine. She slowly opened the door.
“Good news,” Dixon said instantly. “I got your name off the eviction list for this week.”
“Just for a week? I thought you were going to take care of the whole month.”
“Not all at once. I need to see if you’re going to do your part before I pay the rest.” He held up
a sheet of paper. “I’ve got two apartments for you to clean.”
Cleaning? She frowned.
“Relax,” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder. “My other people only take about four hours per apartment.”
Delores would have preferred to do something that kept him close by and hopefully talking about some of his shady activities, but Lorraine would be more submissive. “Is that all I have to do? Clean two apartments?”
“All I want is to get my money’s worth. I’ll show you where everything is.” He held up a pair of pliers and a screwdriver. “While you’re doing that, I’m going to come back here and fix it so you won’t have to pay for electricity. That’ll save you at least forty bucks a month, more in the summer when you use the air conditioning.”
Huh? This sounded suspicious. “How are you going to do that?” she asked as she drifted a couple casual steps toward the recorder.
“No big deal. First, I turn off your electricity in the meter room. Then I come back here and crosswire your electrical box with the one just behind it that services the apartment next door, and Bingo, you get each other’s bills. Since that other unit is vacant, it doesn’t use much power. Meanwhile, your usage will be charged to the other apartment and paid by the building.”
“Is that safe?”
“No problem. I’ve done it several times. If you treat me right, I treat you right. That’s how it works.”
While Lorraine would probably appreciate such a clever money-saving tactic, Delores suspected that wires weren’t meant to be shifted around like that. “But what if somebody moves into that apartment. Then we’d both be paying a full amount. Maybe it’s not worth it?”
“Don’t worry,” he said in a near whisper. “I’ve got other vacants I can show to new prospects.” He put his hand under her chin. “I know lots of tricks.”
She would have liked to call off the wire-switching scam but Lorraine Martinez would likely have a different response. “Thank you,” she said, faking a grin.
“God. I love your smile,” Dixon said. “Okay then, let’s get you set up for a day of cleaning.”
A couple hours later, Delores came to realize that cleaning other people’s toilets and stoves was more unpleasant than she would have guessed. It made her appreciate the pros. In spite of a reasonable effort, she had fallen well behind.