Who Killed Jenny Schecter? Ch. 07

Chapter 7 Scene of the Crime

Carmen, barefoot and wearing cut-offs and an oversize Cal U. sweatshirt with the sleeves rolled up, was curled up on the couch between her mother Mercedes, and her grandmother, Abuela, when her cell phone buzzed. They were watching an episode of the Ellen DeGeneres Show Mercedes had TIVO'd.

Ever since she had come to terms with her own beloved youngest daughter's lesbianism shortly before the aborted wedding in Canada, there was no bigger fan of Ellen DeGeneres than Mercedes Morales. Or of Will and Grace. Tears streaming down her face, Mercedes devotedly watched reruns of Hospital Central, the medical drama on the Spanish TV station Telecinco, where Esther García, the hospital's chief nurse, became friends -- and then lovers -- with the new lesbiana pediatrician Maca Fernández Wilson. At the end of the 2005 season, just as Carmen and Shane were becoming lovers, Esther and Maca were married, the first gay/lesbian wedding on Spanish television. It didn't matter to Mercedes, who at the time refused to watch the show because of the story line. But the first time she saw the wedding in reruns several years later, she cried all afternoon. And then the unthinkable happened: Esther cheated -- and with a man! -- and got pregnant! Mercedes was furious! That bitch! And she could hardly blame Maca for cheating herself, with the psychiatrist Veronica "Vero" Sole. After Esther and Maca broke up, the Maca-Vero relationship solidified. Well, who could blame them? Still, Mercedes held out hope ... and it looked like Maca and Esther might be getting back together ...

In countless e-mails, text messages, telephone calls and the occasional letter, Mercedes kept Carmen informed of every plot twist and turn. True love, Carmencita, true love. In this world, anything is possible. You never know, mi carita. But she could never overtly talk to Carmen about getting back together with Shane; Carmen wouldn't hear a word of it. It was the Reconciliation That Dare Not Speak Its Name.

"Hey, Lauren," Carmen said, answering her cell phone.

"Hi. You busy?"

"No, just hanging out with my mom and Abuela, watching TV. What's up? How'd the talk with Shane go?"

"Uh, okay, I guess. I was a little rough on her. She took it as well as can be expected. Listen, want to take a ride with me?"

"Okay, sure. Where to?"

"Tina and Bette's house." There was a long silence on the line. "Carmen?"

"I'm here."

"I know, it's a major downer," Lauren said quietly. "But please consider two things. First, I've never been there, and I need to go with one or the other of you to show me around. Even if it weren't for this morning's session, I don't think it should be Shane. You're a lot tougher emotionally than she is. I know you won't fall apart. Second, it'll give us a chance to have our private talk."

"Yeah, okay, I understand. You have keys? Doesn't somebody live there?"

"Yes, I called and got permission to come over. They're okay with us looking around. How's half an hour?"

"Fine."

"See you soon."

* * *

Carmen changed into a pair of non-holey jeans and a teal polo shirt with the name of Olivia Cruise Lines embroidered on it, and was standing at the curb when Lauren pulled up in her white Miata convertible.

"Nice," Carmen said, admiring the car. "It's you."

"Hop in," Lauren said. Her sunglasses were perched on top of her head. She was wearing jeans, a man's shirt and a pale blue blazer. "Like my outfit? It's my Don Johnson look. Everybody says I dress like Miami Vice."

"They're right, you do. Can you come in for a minute? My mom would like to meet you."

"Uh, okay, sure," Lauren said, turning off the ignition. "I don't usually get taken to meet the parents until after I fuck somebody."

"Fuck you and shut up," Carmen whispered, laughing. "Don't talk like that! My mom is suspicious enough as it is, without anyone giving her ideas. And there's no fucking way I'm dating a homicide detective."

"Missing persons, ex-homicide, but okay. As we cops in the Missing Persons Bureau like to say, you don't know what you're missing. I'll be on my best cop behavior," Lauren said as they went up the walk. "Want me to flash my badge? Draw my gun?"

"I can see this isn't going to go well," Carmen murmured, opening the door and ushering Lauren in. "Hey, Mom?" she called out, "Lauren's here."

"In the kitchen," Mercedes called out.

"Follow me," Carmen said. "Don't draw your cannon yet."

Mercedes was standing in front of the stove, stirring a very large pot of something that smelled spicy and divine. She wore a flowered print dress, as she usually did, and an apron over it that said "Kiss the Cook" in Spanish.

"Wow, that smells incredible!" Lauren said, coming forward to shake hands with Mercedes. "Hi, I'm Lauren Hancock."

But it wasn't going to be a handshake, of course. Mercedes put down her spoon and wrapped Lauren in a smothering hug.

"Detecteeve Lauren! Hallo, hallo! I hear so much about you! Welcome to my kitchen!"

"In the entire LA barrio, this kitchen is considered to be Ground Zero, the center of the known Hispanic and Latino universe," Carmen said, laughing as Lauren was unfolded and released.

"I don't doubt it for a second," Lauren said. "That's the biggest pot I've ever seen on a stove."

"Mom only cooks food in two kinds of pots," Carmen said, laughing. "Cauldrons and vats. She's never heard of a sauce pan."

"After you do your visit you will come back for dinner tonight?" Mercedes asked. "I think we can squeeze out a little bit of chili for you, and maybe a chicken bone for my Carmencita." She winked broadly.

"You must understand that you can't refuse," Carmen told Lauren. "An invitation from my mom for dinner carries the force of an all-points bulletin from the FBI, Homeland Security and Interpol. The only person who ever refused her dinner invitation was never seen again. We suspect he's in the Witness Protection Program."

"Missing persons are right down my alley," Lauren laughed. "Okay, okay, dinner it is. And if I have a guilty pleasure, it's Tex-Mex in general and chili in particular."

"Oh, jeez," Carmen moaned. "That means mom's going to make you leave with a couple gallons of leftovers."

"I will not resist," Lauren said. "Mercedes, we'll be back in time for dinner, I promise, and with hearty appetites."

"I will hold you to it," Mercedes said, brandishing her wooden spoon.

***

"Your mom is something," Lauren said as they drove away.

"She's a force of nature," Carmen said. They stopped for coffee to go and as they drove away from the 7-11 Lauren flicked the radio on, not too loud so they could talk if they wanted to. But Carmen was comfortable lost in her own thoughts. After a few minutes Lauren took her eyes off the road and looked over at her, then back at the road. A few minutes later she did it again.

"Something wrong?" Carmen asked.

"Huh? No."

Carmen let a block go by.

"What is it you want to ask me?"

Lauren drove another block.

"That story about you and Shane. That you were engaged to be married, and that you went up to Canada, and she left you at the altar."

"I'm sure that's all in a file somewhere," Carmen said. "You must have heard it from just about everyone you talked to. Shane McCutcheon, Runaway Bride. Or groom. The terminology is a little fuzzy. But you already knew it's true."

"Yes."

"So why did you ask?"

Lauren drove another block.

"Because I wanted to hear you talk about it, even if you just told me to go fuck myself. I wanted to get a reading on what you feel about it. How you've come to terms with it."

"It's ancient history, that's all."

Lauren drove two miles. "I'm sorry," she said, not taking her eyes off the road.

"Don't worry about it," Carmen said. "It's your job to ask questions."

"No, that's not what I meant. I meant ... I'm sorry it didn't work out. The wedding. I'm sorry you didn't get married. I'm sorry you got hurt. You seem like a nice person. Everybody I talked to says that. I think you really loved her. Everybody says that, too. Maybe you still do love her, that's the part I can't say. I'm beginning to suspect she still has feelings for you, for what it's worth. I think she really fucked up, and she knows it. I don't mean just screw up the wedding, embarrass herself and humiliate you, bad as all that is. I mean she knows she screwed up to let somebody like you get away. Man, that's crazy. And ... to hurt you. So ... what I meant was, I'm sorry it didn't work out, for both of you, and that you got hurt. That's all."

Carmen let a block go by. "Thank you." She let two blocks go by. "I have a loaded, intrusive question of my own, and please feel free to tell me it's out of line. But I'm curious how you met Shane way back when."

"She didn't tell you?" Lauren asked. "I'm a little surprised."

"No. One of the things you may not know about Shane is how well she keeps secrets, how discreet she is, by nature. She hates to talk about her own history even at the best of times. And I didn't ask her about you because I figured it wasn't any of my business. I figure you either arrested her or slept with her. Or both. Things are difficult enough between Shane and me as it is, but at least we've agreed to call a truce so we could team up to help Alice. Anyway, I would never have asked her about one of her old conquests. I mean, shit, where would I start?"

"No, she didn't tell me much about her life story, either. We mainly talked about Jenny."

"It isn't just you she won't discuss her history with, it's everybody," Carmen said, "so don't take it personally. Even if it isn't about sex. She'll barely tell you she was born in Texas, and she wouldn't show you where Texas was on a map. That's TMI. It's harder than pulling teeth, it's root canal. Alice says Shane has slept with nearly a thousand women, and Alice was Shane's official scorekeeper. Out of that thousand or so women, I know some vague details about exactly two of her old girlfriends, three if you count Jenny. And one of those three Shane didn't even sleep with, because she was eight years old at the time. The only one besides Jenny I really know anything about was the one Shane cheated on me with, and that was Cherie Jaffe Peroni. I'll give Shane this much: She's no gossip."

"But you know about Harvey?" Lauren asked.

"Yes, I do know about Harvey. He's the one who saved her. Turned her around."

"Well, the way I first met Shane was I didn't arrest her," Lauren said. "It was the day Harvey died. I was one of the officers they sent out to Harvey's house to break the news to the next of kin. But there was no kin, only Shane. She identified herself as just a tenant, and that Harvey was her landlord, and she did some chores and stuff for her room and board. The way she said it was like she didn't have much of a relationship with Harvey, other than tenant and landlord. But then the way she immediately broke down crying. My first thought was bullshit, honey, you're fucking him. Younger girl, rich older sugar daddy, all that. But I didn't pick up that vibe, and when Shane said she and Harvey were gay, I believed her. For some reason I always seem to believe her."

"Shane's like that," Carmen said. "I'm trying to think if she ever told a flat-out lie, but I don't think she ever did, not to me. She doesn't say much, but you always believe her."

"Anyway, I was the one who had to tell her Harvey was dead, jackknifed tractor-trailer on the 405. And from the way she reacted I could tell there was more to it than just her landlord had died."

"She was crushed," Carmen said.

"She was. She cried. She lost it. It was heart-breaking, but then again, telling people that kind of news always is."

"What did you do?"

"Just held her. Let her cry, until she got through the initial part. Then after a while she pulled it together, and Larry and I took her into the house."

"Larry?"

"My patrol car partner and training officer, not significant-other partner. We took Shane inside, and she made us a pot of coffee, and she helped us contact Harvey's lawyer and agent and various family members in New York. We stayed with her until a friend came over to take care of her."

"Alice?"

"The Alice in jail? No, not her. This was an older woman, about sixty years old, named Carol."

"Oh. That was her shrink."

"Her shrink? I didn't know. Neither of them ever said."

"Carol was Harvey's shrink after Harvey's partner committed suicide. And then when Harvey rescued Shane after the rape, Carol became Shane's therapist."

"Shane was raped?"

"Yes."

There was silence as two blocks went by.

"There's nothing in Shane's file about it. Did it happen in Texas or someplace?"

"No. It was in LA. She never reported it. You know how that story goes. Just another unreported rape."

"When did this happen?"

"About eight or nine months before Harvey was killed."

"How'd she know Harvey? That seems ... well, I never did get a good handle on that. How they linked up."

"I guess that's not in Shane's file, either," Carmen said.

Lauren looked over quickly, not sure if Carmen was making some kind of point. She didn't seem to be.

"Shane's police record was totally clean when Harvey died. Which is to say, there was no record. She'd never gotten into trouble. Not so much as a parking ticket."

"Until Harvey, she didn't know how to drive, and didn't have a car. Imagine being car-less in Los Angeles, of all places. At any rate, she had been in trouble with the law, but she was using a fake name. You probably do have a file on her somewhere, you just don't know about it."

"Can I ask what she'd done?"

Carmen shrugged. "Mostly she just got hassled, she never did any serious jail time, just a couple of overnights and got kicked out in the morning. Vagrancy, suspicion of prostitution, suspicion of drugs. She got released on her own recognizance once, she said. She was a runaway from some foster home in or near Austin and hitchhiked from Texas to Hollywood. She was this dirt-poor, drug-abusing, gay, homeless, malnourished runaway, just like a million other street kids. She was boyish-looking, she had that andro punk thing going a lot more than she does now, and she could pass for a gay guy. So to survive she and this actual, real gay guy she hooked up with started turning tricks on Santa Monica Boulevard, giving gay men hand jobs for twenty bucks a pop. When she got picked up by the police she had no ID except her street name, so that's what her file probably has, the street name she was using. You better slow down or pull over to the curb. You'll laugh so hard when I tell you you'll put us into a light pole."

"Go ahead, I can probably handle it," Lauren said, although she involuntarily took her foot off the accelerator.

"Tommi Hilfiger," Carmen said. Lauren did laugh, a nice hearty hoot Carmen liked. "She spelled Tommi with an 'i' at the end. And she told me somebody at a shelter didn't know who Tommy Hilfiger was, so her name in the sign-in book became Tommy Hellfinger, Tommy with a 'y.' Hell like in go to Hell, and finger like give you the finger. Which she actually liked. So somewhere in an LAPD archive in a basement somewhere you have a file for a 19-year-old gay male prostitute suspect named Hellfinger, comma Thomas NMI. And even more ironic is the fact that except for the actual rape itself, Shane never blew a guy, or fucked one, or took it in the ass from a chickenhawk. Handjobs, yes, but nothing else. That part about the handjobs, she blanks that out as though it never happened. It hardly even qualifies as sex at all, and she was in extreme survival mode. In her heart she's a pure, certified, one-hundred percent Gold Star, and I can't disagree."

"No one with any sense would. So how's Harvey come into this story?"

"Harvey was one of her johns. He treated her decently, and even took her to lunch a couple times."

"Lunch? You fucking kidding me?"

"Nope. There's a long story behind it, but basically Harvey was a nice, lonely, gay guy whose partner had recently committed suicide. He couldn't help noticing Shane was this starving, anorexic, street kid and he felt sorry for her, so one day after a handjob he bought her a sandwich. Of course, he thought she was a he, but still, it was a nice thing to do. And so when Shane was kidnapped and raped for two days by a couple of her johns she was really in bad shape, beat up and punched a couple times, and had a concussion. She didn't know how to contact her gay street friend and he'd have been useless, anyway. Harvey was the only other person she knew, so she called him. And he came and rescued her, and took her to a private doctor, took her in, gave her a place to live, got her into rape counseling. That was Carol, Harvey's shrink and then hers. Then Harvey got her into hairdresser school, bought her an old pickup truck. He pretty much did a total makeover on her, in fact. Changed her life, that's for sure. Cleaned her up, got her off the street and out of the life, taught her lots of stuff, socialization skills, proper table manners, all kinds of things. He was basically the first and only father she's ever had."

"See, I never knew any of that. And like you say, none of it's in her jacket."

Carmen lapsed into a deep silence.

***

Lauren approached West Hollywood from the south, heading up San Vicente Boulevard, passed Cedars-Sinai on her left, and a few blocks later turned left onto Ashcroft, then a quick right onto 14th Street, a quiet residential street lined with trees and parked cars. The street was only three blocks long in this part of Los Angeles, and near the end of the second block she pulled over in front of the two houses at numbers 254 and 256 14th Street. She turned off the ignition.

Carmen looked at the two modest bungalows that had become a major part of her life for two years. "Haunted houses," she said quietly, and not moving. "Speaking of ghosts."

Lauren got out, closed her door quietly, walked to the curb, and stood on the sidewalk midway between them. She propped her sunglasses up on top of her head, Don Johnson Miami Vice, studied the two houses, then turned, making a 360 of the neighborhood. "Nice," she said. "Quiet. I could live here."

Carmen got out of the Miata. She scanned the house she had lived in. "I see my roses are gone."

"What?"

"My roses. I planted that front flower bed with roses. They're gone now." Someone had replaced the flower bed Carmen had carefully and tenderly nurtured and replaced it with white river rocks and an assortment of cactus and succulents. Then she looked over at Tina and Bette's house. "I knew they had added that whole second floor," Carmen said, "but this is the first time I've seen it."

Lauren turned and looked at her. "You going to be okay?"

"Yes, I'm fine. Let's get this over with. Which one first?"

"Let's go to Tina and Bette's," Lauren said, leading the way up the walk to the front door, where she rang the doorbell. She retrieved her badge folder from the side pocket of her blazer and placed it in the breast pocket so the badge faced outward. In a moment a woman answered the door. She was in her forties, wore glasses, and was dressed in flannel pajamas and slippers.

"Hi," she said, smiling. "You must be Detective Hancock, we talked on the phone. I'm Gladys Wilkinson. Come in, come in."

When Carmen came in she smiled at Gladys, offering her hand. "Hi, I'm Carmen Morales, nice to meet you. I used to live next door, back in the day. Thanks for letting us look around."

"Sure, help yourselves," Gladys said. "Please forgive my pajamas. I'm an ER nurse over at Cedars, I work nights and I'm going to bed in a little while. But you aren't disturbing me, feel free to look around anyplace you want, ask me anything you want. You want to see out back first?"