When The Bough Breaks

"All right, Alex, forget it. I've got this dead psychiatrist and this Gutierrez girl hacked up. I've got a seven - year - old who thinks she might have seen or heard something except she's too damned scared to make any sense of it. I ask you for two hours of your time - and time is one thing you've got plenty of - and I get bullshit."

"Hold on. I didn't say I wouldn't do it. You have to give me time to assimilate this. I just woke up and you barge in and drop double homicide on me."

He shot his wrist out from under his shirt cuff and peered at his Timex. "Ten thirty - seven. Poor baby." He glared at me and chomped into the pear, getting juice on his chin.

"Anyway, you might recall that the last time I had anything to do with police business it was traumatic."

"Hickle was a fluke. And you were a victim - of sorts. I'm not interested in getting you involved in this. Just an hour or two talking to a little kid. Like I said, some hypnosis if it looks right. Then we eat gnocchi. I return to my place and try to reclaim my amour, you're free to go back to Spaceout Castle here. Finis. In a week we get together for a pure social time - a little sashimi down in Japtown. Okay?"

"What did the kid actually see?" I asked and watched my relaxing day fly out the window.

"Shadows, voices, two guys, maybe three. But who really knows? She's a little kid, she's totally traumatized. The mother's just as scared and she impresses me as a lady who was no nuclear physicist in the first place. I didn't know how to approach her, Alex. I tried to be nice, go easy. It would have been helpful to have a juvie officer there, but there aren't too many of those any more. The department would rather keep three dozen pencil - pushing deputy chiefs around."

He gnawed the pear down to the core.

"Shadows, voices. That's it. You're the language specialist, right? You know how to communicate with the little ones. If you can get her to open up, great. If she comes forth with anything resembling an I.D." fantastic. If not, them's the breaks and at least we tried."

Language specialist. It had been a while since I'd used the phrase - back in the aftermath of the Hickle affair, when I'd found myself suddenly spinning out of control, the faces of Stuart Hickle and all the kids he'd harmed marching through my head. Milo had taken me drinking. At about two in the morning he had wondered out loud why the kids had let it go on for so long.

"They didn't talk because nobody knew how to listen," I'd said. "They thought it was their fault, anyway."

"Yeah?" He looked up, bleary - eyed, gripping his stein with both hands. "I hear stuff like that from the juvie gals."

"That's the way they think when they're little, egocentric. Like they're the center of the world. Mommy slips, breaks a leg, they blame themselves."

"How long does it last?"

"In some people it never goes away. For the rest of us it's a gradual process. By eight or nine we see things more clearly - but at any age an adult can manipulate kids, convince them it's their fault."

"Assholes," muttered Milo. "So how do you get their heads straight?"

"You have to know how kids think at different ages. Developmental stages. You talk their language - you become a language specialist."

"That's what you do?"

"That's what I do."

A few minutes later he asked: "You think guilt is bad?"

"Not necessarily. It's part of what holds us together. Too much, though, can cripple."

He nodded. "Yeah, I like that. Shrinks always seem to be saying guilt is a no - no. Your approach I can buy. I tell you, we could use a lot more guilt - the world's full of fucked - up savages."

At that moment he got no argument from me.

We talked a bit more. The alcohol tugged at our consciousness and we started to laugh, then cry. The bartender stopped polishing his glasses and stared.

It had been a low - a seriously low - period in my life and I remembered who'd been there to help me through it.

I watched Milo nibble at the last specks of pear with curiously small, sharp teeth.

"Two hours?" I asked.

"At the most."

"Give me an hour or so to get ready, clear up some business."

Having convinced me to help him didn't seem to cheer him up. He nodded and exhaled wearily.

"All right. I'll give a run down to the station and do my business." Another consultation of the Timex. "Noon?"

"Fine."

He walked to the door, opened it, stepped out on the balcony and tossed the pear core over the railing and into the greenery below. Starting down the stairs he stopped mid - landing and looked up at me. The sun's glare hit his ravaged face and turned it into a pale mask. For a moment I was afraid he was going to get sentimental.

I needn't have worried.

"Listen, Alex, as long as you're staying here can I borrow the Caddy? That," he pointed accusingly at the ancient Fiat, "is giving out. Now it's the starter."

"Bull, you just love my car." I went into the house, got the spare keys and threw them at him.