Sammy Keyes and the Search for Snake Eyes (13 page)

I lean back a little and double-check the number running down the stucco wall. “This is four ten South Pinos, isn't it?”

“Yes … ?”

“Does
Mr
. Moreno live here?”

“No…?”

At this point, her singing me nos and yeses is getting a little annoying; but I try to bite my tongue as I say, “Does
any
body with the last name Moreno live here?”

“No…?”

“Anyone anywhere
around
here named Moreno?”

She hesitates, then manages to spare me a whole sentence. “Try in B.”

“In…B?”

“In the rear.” She points around the right side of the house. “Through that gate.”

It was a six-foot wooden gate with a pull wire sticking through a plank. And when I tugged on the wire, the latch swung up just fine. But as I pushed the gate forward, the gate sagged onto the ground and stuck. I collapsed Grams' umbrella and squeezed through, then muscled the gate closed, put the umbrella back up, and headed down the muddy path in front of me.

There were tall fences on both sides, and I felt like a little rat nosing along in a maze. The fence on my right kept going, clear to an intersecting alley. But the fence on my left stopped a few feet before a rickety garage and took a sharp left, separating the garage from the house.

I walked past some bushes growing wild along the side of the garage and stopped when I came to the alley.

Now, I'm not big on alleys. I've had some really
slimy
experiences in alleys. And this one wasn't looking any friendlier than the ones I'd been down before. There were overturned garbage cans and beer bottles, and the ground was grimy. It seems strange when you think about it, dirt being dirty, but that's what every alley I've ever been down is paved with—dirty dirt.

I peeked to my left and took a look at B. The garage had been converted into an apartment, a regular door cut right into the garage door, a fiberglass awning bolted overhead. There were no steps, just a small pad of cement poured in front of the door and a glaring bare bulb to the side.

People lived here? I couldn't quite believe it. But the alley stretched for blocks in both directions, and there were bare bulbs at other Bs, speckling the darkness, and even a couple of cars pulled way off to the side, telling me it was true.

I looked again at the front door of this B. Was this Lena's home? Had she had her baby here? Maybe she wasn't missing after all. Maybe she'd just given me Pepe because she didn't want him to grow up this way.

My mind was spinning, trying to weave together some sort of picture from what few threads I had. And I wanted to find out more, wanted to know who was inside. But the truth is, I was afraid to knock. Afraid of this place. Afraid of being alone at night in an alley.

So there I am, sort of shivering under the tent of Grams' umbrella, trying to convince myself to go up and knock, when a car turns down the alley. The headlights bob up and down as it swings around and begins to inch forward.

I back out of view and peek around the fence to keep an eye on the car. The headlights cut to parking lights, and now I can see that it's a lowered sedan with a dark blue finish, a big gold hood ornament, and shining mag wheels.

The whole car seems to glow in the alley light as it creeps over potholes, and the closer it gets, the more I want to find someplace to hide. Trouble is, there
is
no-place. I can't go forward into the alley, and I can't go back along the path. All I've really got to work with are
some scraggly overgrown bushes along the side of the garage. But as the car gets closer, I decide that scraggly overgrown bushes are better than nothing.

So I collapse Grams' umbrella and back into a gap between two bushes, then crouch down, keeping my eye on the alley.

The front of the car comes into view, then passes along. And I'm thinking I'll give it a couple minutes before I stand up when I realize that the car has stopped. Right there, where the path intersects the alley—it's stopped.

Now, the back end of the car is blocking the alley, so I'm sort of trapped. I hold my breath and shrink back deeper into the bushes, trying to decide what to do. Should I make a break for it? I could climb over the trunk of the car and charge down the alley, but I know from experience that it's hard to run with shoes caked in mud and alley dogs at your heels. But going back the way I'd come felt dangerous, too. I'd be easy to spot, and I'd be trapped in the corridor of fences, blocked by a heavy broken gate.

So I'm busy thinking I should stay put for a little while—that a little rain never hurt anyone, and that really, in a few minutes whoever drove up would drive off—when I hear “Who you hiding from?”

The voice is soft, but it shoots through me like a jab in the rear. I leap forward a few feet and choke on a yelp, and when I turn around and look, what I see is someone crouched
inside
the bush next to me.

“Man, you're jumpy. Must be somebody bad,” came the voice. It was young. Female.

I inched toward her. “What are you
doing
in there?” I asked.

“Waiting,” came the voice.

“For what?” I scooted in a little more.

“You're getting pretty wet. Why don't you use that umbrella?”

I could see her now, crouched inside a little cave in the bush.

“Put it
up
,” she says.

The rain was coming down harder, but I didn't want to risk putting the umbrella up. I didn't know where the driver of the car was, but they couldn't have gone far. I could hear the car idling, and puffs of exhaust were coming from behind the wheel. There was something about the wheel, too, that was creepy. It was smooth and deep, with only lug nuts, no hubcaps. With a shiver I realized that it looked like the chamber of a gun.

“They won't see you. Put it
up
.”

“Whose car is that, do you know?” “Put it up and I'll look.”

Who am I to argue with a girl hiding in a bush? It was like having an argument with myself—I was bound to lose. I pushed the umbrella up and it rested across the bushes like a little tent.

“Wow,” she says, crawling out and crouching next to me. “This is great.” Her hair's pulled back into a long braid and she's clutching a one-legged Barbie. She smiles at me. “Much better.” Then she leans forward and looks at the car. “Dunno,” she says.

“You think they're visiting you?”

She shrugs. “Dunno.” Then she adds, “But probably not.”

So I'm trapped in the bushes with a little girl and a one-legged Barbie, and before I can figure out what in the world to do or say, she looks me in the eye and asks, “Your old man drink, too?”

“What?” I ask her, not believing my ears.

“Is that why you're hiding?”

“Is that why
you're
hiding?”

She nods and strokes Barbie's hair back. “It's probably okay now, though. Been quiet a little while.” She looks up at me again. “Does yours throw things? I hate when he throws things.”

I was staring. “How old are you?”

“Seven,” she says.

To me she looked five or six. Max. “But … do you have a mom?”

She nods. “She don't come out here with me, though.”

“But she knows you're here?”

She shrugs. “Dunno. She's passed out.”

“Passed … out?” “Your mom don't do that?”

I just shake my head.

She shrugs again. “Mine says it's the only way.”

I felt like saying, You've got to be kidding! but I could tell she wasn't.

“He starts coming at me when she's passed out, so I hide until he's out, too. Then everything's okay.”

Rain's streaming off the edge of the umbrella into little puddles in front of us, and she's stroking the hair on her
Barbie like the doll's a kitten nestled in her lap. She looks up at me and smiles. “This is
way
better.”

Now really, I don't know how to ask her any of the questions running through my brain. Like, Why doesn't your mother stop him? and, How can she let him hurt you? I mean, she's talking about her parents passing out and beating her up like most kids talk about the weather. Is it like that for her? Some days stormy, other days calm? Or does she have to batten the hatches every night?

So finally I just ask, “What's your name?”

She smiles at me. “Tippy.”

“Tippy?” I tried to think what that could be short for—Tipper? Tippanita? I couldn't think of a thing. So I just asked, “Tippy… Moreno?”

“Yeah!” she says, lighting up like a hundred-watt bulb. “How'd you know that?”

“I, uh … I've met your … sister.”

She starts stroking Barbie's hair like mad. “I miss her so bad. I wish I could've talked to her tonight, but —”

All of a sudden my heart was racing. “She called? Tonight?”

“Uh-huh.”

“When tonight?”

“Before.”

“Like an hour ago?
Two
hours ago?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did she say anything? Anything at all? Like where she was, or
how
she was?”

She shrugged. “Mama say she barely told her hi, then the phone went dead.”

“Well, do you have Caller ID or Star Sixty-nine?”

She gives me a puzzled look. “What's that?”

“Well, does she call home a lot? Do you think she'll call back?”

“Nuh-uh. She don't never call. She did at Christmas, but Papa got the phone and he yelled at her.”

Christmas. That was only about two months ago. “Did you get to talk to her that time?”

“A little. She tol' me she was sorry she didn't get me nothing, and promised me a surprise for my birthday.”

“When's your birthday?”

“February twenty-first.” “Yesterday?”

She blinked at me, and in that instant I knew—everyone had missed her birthday, even Tippy.

I wished with all my heart I could take it back, but it was too late. She burst into tears, burying her face in my chest. “I'm sorry,” I whispered, thinking that Tippy's parents made mine look like positive saints.

Finally she sniffs and says, “Lena always made me a party.” Then she wipes her face with the sleeve of her shirt and smiles at me. “You're really nice, you know?”

“So are you. And I'm sorry about your birthday.”

She strokes her Barbie's hair, then looks at me and says, “What's your name?”

“Sammy.”

“That's a boy's name!” She's smiling at me, tears all gone.

I almost said, And what kind of name is
Tippy
? but I
laughed with her instead. “Yeah, it is. But mine's short for Samantha.”

“Oh,” she says; then we're both quiet, just listening to the rain pattering on the umbrella. Finally she looks at me and says, “Are you going to wait for him to pass out?”

“Who?”

She cocks her head at me like I'm a boulder brain. “Your old man! Where do you live, anyway?”

“Uh … up the street.” I nod over my shoulder. “How long are you planning to stay out here?”

“I could probably go back inside. I'm pretty cold.”

I was, too. And I did want to get going, but how could I just grill her and disappear? She wasn't
just
someone who maybe had some information I wanted. She was also a wet barely-eight-year-old with a one-legged Barbie, hiding from her parents in the bushes in the rain. I smiled at her, and of all the questions I could have or
should
have asked, what came out of my mouth was “So how'd you lose the leg?”

Her eyebrows wrinkled together and her eyes got stormy. “It's the only part I couldn't find back. He tore her all apart—even the head!”

“Who? Your dad?”

She nodded. “I tried to catch them, but he threw them so hard and they came so fast! Her head hit me right here,” she said, pointing to her temple. “Felt like a rock.” She stroked Barbie's hair. “At least I got it back, though. Don't know what I'd do without the head.”

Head-butted by Barbie. Normally, the thought would have just busted me up, but now it made me cringe.
“Have you ever told anybody about … you know… your parents?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like your teacher or someone like that?”

She shook her head.

“You do go to school, don't you?”

“Used to.” She looked up at me. “Do you?” “

'Course!”

“Did you tell
your
teacher?” “Uh … no, but my dad doesn't throw stuff at me.” “He don't? Then why you hiding? From your mom?” “Actually, I'm hiding from … well,
actually
, I'm here because I'm trying to find Lena. Do you think your mom knows where she is?”

“Nuh-uh. No one seen her since Joey died.”

“Joey? Who's that?”

“The guy she married.”

“Married?”

“Uh-huh.” “What was his last name?” “Dunno. But he was really nice. He let me visit at the muffler shop and called me Tippy-toes. Funny, huh? He had the funniest freckles and used to buy me pretzels. Those big soft ones they sell at the mall? And he'd always get me double cheese.” She stroked Barbie and sighed. “The cheese is so good. I wish I could have some right now.”

“Well, how did he die?”

She shrugged. Like it didn't really matter.

I sat there for a minute, trying to make sense of every-thing she'd told me. Finally I asked her, “Do you know a guy named Raymond Ra —?”

Before I could finish, her eyes got really stormy. “I hated him! He was so mean! One time Lena brung me with her and I accidentally spilt some paint. He hit me! Right across the face!”

“You're kidding!”

“I didn't spill it on nothin' important, either. Just the floor.”

“In his house?”

“No! His garage. Where he was fixin' up a car.” “Do you know what street it was on?”

She shrugged. “But my eye swole clear up. It looked real bad.”

“So what did your sister do?”

“She made me promise not to tell.” “Why?” “I wasn't suppose to be there.” Suddenly she breaks into a smile. “She tol' me I could get a donut if I didn't say nothing, and brung me to a shop where I got the best donut ever. Puffed clear up with strawberry creme and tons of sugar dust. Made my eye feel lots better.”

The car was still idling in the alley. “You sure you've never seen that car before?”

She shrugs and shakes her head.

There was no doubt that I needed to get going. The rain had let up, and I'd found out enough from little Tippy to know that I wasn't going to find Lena here. But
still, I didn't like the thought of leaving Tippy shivering in the bushes. So I said, “I've got to get home. What are you going to do?”