Chapter Three
He looked at me like I’d grown a spare head. “What?”
“Is she wanted, for child abuse? Did she skip out on some charges or something?”
He scratched his chin and said, “I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. No, she is not wanted. Why would you ask me that?”
I had gotten myself into it now. I took another long pull off my water and walked over and sat down on a stack of mats. Paul followed me. He just stood there, staring down at me until I finally said, “Mitch showed up at my apartment yesterday…just a bit after you dropped me off.”
He dropped down next to me and said, “What the hell? How did he know…? Shit! He must be following me. Mother fucker! Did he hurt you?”
I looked at him. The veins in his neck were all extended and I’d bet a million that his blood pressure was up. “No, he didn’t hurt me. He told me that he’s a cop. Why didn’t you tell me that?”
“Because it’s beside the point. He thinks it gives him the right to get away with any shit he wants to pull. He also thinks it makes him respectable. In my eyes it doesn’t do either.”
“He also said that Marie is wanted for child abuse. He said that she’s abusing Victor.” He jumped back up to his feet and began pacing back and forth. His fists were clenched tightly at his sides.
“That lying son of a bitch!”
“Calm down…”
“Fuck that! Do you know what it means that he found you? He’s following me, Jessie. What if he’d shown up at the apartment while I was out and Victor was there alone? What if he followed me to where Marie is at? What did you tell him?”
“I told him I didn’t know anything about a sister or a nephew; that I’d barely met you.”
“Did he buy that?”
“I don’t think so, but he eventually let it go.”
“I’m sorry,” he said with a far-away look in his eye.
“Will he hurt her, Paul? Is that what he wants?”
“He wants his son and he won’t stop at hurting her to get him. I’m really sorry that you got dragged into all of this, Jessie. I have to go…”
I stood up then. “Wait! Where are you going?” He was so angry that I was afraid he was going to do harm to Mitch. I didn’t want him getting into trouble.
“I need to go make sure my sister is okay and Victor is safe at school.”
“Can you call her?”
“No. She’s so worried. She only uses throwaway phones so that she has a number for a job interview. Each time she gives it out once, she replaces it with a new one.”
Wow, serious paranoia, seriously fucked-up life. I wondered if it was really all that warranted, but then I thought about that look Mitch had in his eyes. He wanted to hurt me and probably would have if he’d thought he could get away with it. “Well, if Mitch is following you then he’s probably out there waiting for you right now.”
“All the more reason for me to go check on my sister.”
Again, without thinking, I blurted out, “I’ll go for you. He’s already talked to me and he got nothing. He has no reason to follow me.”
Paul looked like he was considering it and then he said, “Maybe…but who knows with that creep?”
“I think the odds are better that he’s following you.”
“I think you’re right, but just to be on the safe side, we’re both going to leave. We’ll go in different directions and when we’re sure that it’s me who’s being followed, you can go see about Marie.”
“Okay. Just tell me where to go.” We went into the little office off the gym floor and Paul wrote down the address. “It’s an apartment above the restaurant…Teppen-yaki Palace,” he said. My old Sensei lives there. He let her and Victor stay there. She won’t answer the door for you without our code word. It’s Fishhook.” He put his hands in his hair and rubbed across it. He looked like he was going to explode. My heart hurt for him, especially when he said, “We’re going to have to move them again…shit!”
I put my hand on his arm and said, “One thing at a time, okay? I’ll make sure she’s okay and if Mitch follows you, you can be sure he doesn’t know where she is, right?” He nodded and then took the paper with the address on it back and wrote down his phone number.
“Call me when you get there and let me know she’s okay?”
“Yes, of course.” I wrote mine down for him as well.
While Paul got his things from the locker room, I found Greg and let him know I was taking off for a while. Since I didn’t have any clients that day it didn’t really matter, but I was diligent that way. I left out the front and got in my car before Paul came out. I looked around, but the street the gym sat on was just off a busy one and the parking was usually always congested. I had no idea what kind of car I was looking for, but I didn’t see anyone that looked like Mitch. I put the key in the ignition and my phone chirped.
I looked at it and saw a text from Paul that said, “I’m really sorry for all this. Thank you for your help.”
“You’re welcome. Do you see Mitch?”
“Yeah, I’m pulling out now. He’s behind me.”
“Be careful.”
I pulled out too and drove the six blocks to the freeway. I headed north and when I did, I realized that my hands hurt. I looked down at them. I was clutching the wheel so tightly that my knuckles were white. I loosened them up and when I did, they started to shake. My stomach felt sick again. I had no idea why I felt compelled to go around “helping” people all the time. Why me? Why couldn’t I just say, “Wow that sucks, good luck?” And walk away like a normal person. I was headed to a place I’d never been to talk to a woman I didn’t know about two men I’d barely met…and all of her private business. Sometimes, I thought I needed medication.
I exited off the freeway onto Mendocino Blvd. and found the address I was looking for. I had to park four blocks away, but that was good. The stroll to the restaurant in the fresh air cleared my head a little bit. I walked up to the door of the restaurant and that was when I saw a set of stairs off to the right. I looked up and saw a cute little potted plant at the top of the landing and a small mailbox hanging next to a red door. That had to be the apartment. I walked up the stairs and when I reached the door I took a deep breath to calm myself down before I knocked.
“Who is it?” It was a female voice and she sounded afraid. I felt bad.
“Hi, Marie…Um, my name is Jessie…Paul sent me.”
“I don’t know any Paul. Go away.” She was good, convincing.
“Oh! Um, Fishhook,” I said. I felt silly saying it, but as Paul had said it would, it worked. I heard the lock disengage and she opened the door. She was the woman that I’d seen at the MMA match hugging Paul. She was a petite little woman, but she had Paul’s face and eyes. “Hi,” I said. She grabbed my arm and pulled me inside, closing the door behind me and locking it right away.
Then she turned to me and said, “Is he okay?”
“Yes, he’s fine.”
“Then why are you here?”
“He wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Why didn’t he come himself? What’s wrong?” The worry in her eyes looked genuine. I was becoming more and more convinced that Mitch was the liar.
“Mitch came to my apartment yesterday. We think he’s following Paul.”
“Damn him!” She fished a phone out of her purse.
“Um, Paul said you didn’t use a cell phone. Is that okay?”
“It’s a throwaway,” she said. She punched in a number and after a beat she said, “Hello, this is Marie Newman. My son Victor is in fifth grade in Mr. Glover’s room. I just need to make sure that you understand absolutely no one is to pick him up other than myself or my brother Paul Delport…” She was quiet, listening, and then she said, “Okay. Yes, I appreciate that so much. Thank you.” She hung up the phone and for the first time, she really looked at me. I hoped that the really freaked-out by all of this way that I was feeling wasn’t showing on my face. “I’m sorry,” she said. “What did you say your name was?”
“It’s Jessie,” I said. “I need to call Paul.” I took out my phone and she gestured for me to have a seat. Paul answered after a couple of rings and I said, “Hey! I’m here. Marie is fine. She called the school and Victor is too.”
“Great. Thank you so much, Jessie. Tell her I’ll be by later tonight. I have to get rid of this asshole on my tail first.”
“Paul, don’t do anything—”
“Stupid? Don’t worry. Mitch is the fool here, not me.”
I hung up and turned to Marie who had sat down next to me. I managed a nervous smile and she said, “I’ve seen you before, I think. You were at the fight the other night?”
“Yeah, I was.”
“And you must be the “Pretty lady with the long red hair” that Victor told me about. You met him at Paul’s house. It’s rare for Paul to have a “friend” that he introduces us to.”
I smiled genuinely then. “Aw, that’s sweet. Yes, that was me. Your son is a really cute, polite kid.”
“Are you Paul’s girlfriend?”
“No!” I said that a little too forcefully. Marie looked amused and said,
“I might be a little biased, but most women would be happier than that about being my brother’s girlfriend, I think.”
I laughed and said, “Yeah, I’m sure. I didn’t mean that in a bad way. Paul and I actually just met. The morning that Victor saw me he’d driven me home from the sports bar because I had a little too much to drink. I work at the gym where he trains.”
“So you’re a trainer?”
“Yes.”
“Very cool. I’m sorry that you had to get mixed up in my mess.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I said. “It’s not your fault.”
“How did you and Paul figure out that Mitch was following him?”
“Mitch showed up on my doorstep. He forced his way into my apartment.”
“Oh my God! He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
Mitch must’ve really been something since everyone kept asking me that with genuine concern. “He didn’t hurt me,” I told her. “He told me that he’s a detective and he told me that he was after you for child abuse charges.”
Marie stood up off the couch. I could tell that she was angry now too. “He’s lying. Jessie, I swear…I’d die before I hurt my son. I’ve changed my whole life to keep him safe.” Her eyes looked so sincere; it was hard to doubt her. I didn’t know her, she could’ve been lying. At that point though, I wanted to believe her and Paul over Mitch.
“I don’t believe him. He’s not given me any reason to trust him. I want to believe you…and Paul.”
Marie smiled and said, “You like my brother, I can see it in your eyes.” I wasn’t sure what she saw there, but at the moment all I was feeling was extreme stress and a little bit of confusion. “He’s a good guy. He’s overcome a lot and he’s so determined to be the best…If my problems didn’t keep getting in his way. He can’t stop living to protect us.”
“Marie, is Mitch abusive?”
She stared at a spot on the wall for a long time before saying, “Yes. He takes great pleasure in the feelings of control he gets from hurting a woman. He’s a bully. He goes after anyone weaker than him. He gets on Paul every chance he gets because he knows my brother is too good to do to him what he’d really like to, but he usually won’t pick fights with other men. He’s a coward, just like most bullies are. Women and children…That’s why he targeted you. He thinks women are weak.”
“And what about Victor? Are you worried that Mitch will hurt him?”
“He hasn’t ever physically hurt him…yet. But, one night about a few years ago Mitch got really violent with me and put me in the hospital. It was the first time he’d ever done it in front of our son. Victor was six at the time. I knew when I got strong enough I had to leave. I couldn’t have my son growing up that way. Victor and I have been moving around ever since. Every time I think we’ve lost him for good, he finds us. Paul won’t go on with his own life because he’s taken it upon himself to protect us twenty-four seven now. This has to end. I just wish I knew how to do that so that everyone was left safe and sound.”
“Have you tried going through the court? Can’t you document all of this, use it against him?”
“He’s a cop. He’s a well-respected one in the city, believe it or not. He’s a bully and a terrible human being, but he does his job well and his colleagues cover for him. I have a record. I was arrested when I was a teenager on a drug charge. I was holding a few pounds of marijuana for a friend. I decided to roll a joint for myself and my friends as a young, stupid kid would do. I was smoking it in a bathroom in the park. The cops busted in and my friends ran faster than me. Mitch was a beat cop then. He arrested me.”
“Oh wow!”
“Yeah…he booked me in and then took me into an interview room. He was really sweet and he told me that he didn’t want me to be saddled with a record for the rest of my life…a drug charge. It was an “Intent to sell” charge because I had so much dope on me. I started thinking that he wanted sex at the time, but he didn’t ask for anything and I was a scared kid…I wasn’t offering it. He told me that he was going to let me go and to stay out of trouble…I was so naïve…”
“What did he do?”
She smiled, sadly, and sat back down. “He let me go and then every time I turned around, he was there. He’d be outside my school or at the fast-food place where my friends and I hung out. No one wanted to hang out with me after a while of that. Who wants a cop following you around when you’re a teenager, right? The attention sort of went to my head though… Messed with it, I guess I’d say now. Eventually he was the only one I had to talk to and we started seeing each other…socially.”
“How old was he?”
“Twenty-six,” she said.
“And you were…?”
“Fifteen.”
I was so shocked I couldn’t even form the words. That made him not only a creep in my mind, but a pedophile. “That’s…”
“Illegal?” She laughed. “Yes, I know. But he didn’t sleep with me until I was sixteen and once I was pregnant it made me a consenting adult…it’s all legal mumbo jumbo, but he held it together…he was wonderful to me in those days. I thought he was my savior from a crummy life and I tried hard to be a good wife and be grateful for everything he was doing for me. I didn’t find out until Victor was two that he’d actually gone through with the booking that night. Somehow he had made it look like I bailed out and I had a “failure to appear” on my record that I knew nothing about and the charges were still pending. It’s too late with statutes and all of that for them to put me in jail for it now, but not too late for him to use it against me in a battle for our child. So when he hurt me so bad that I started fearing he would kill me, I took Victor and ran.”
“What about your injuries when he hurt you? Wasn’t that documented? Why wasn’t he arrested?”
“I was so afraid of him…and afraid of what he’d do to Paul if Paul found out he was hurting me and went after him. I made up stories, and I never called the police. Paul would have tried to kill him and ended up dead or in jail. He had the whole police force to back him up…Paul had no one.”
“I’m so sorry, Marie. That sounds awful.” I thought about the siblings and all they had gone through to protect each other and I was genuinely touched by it. Marie had tears in her eyes and my heart was breaking for her. If she was lying, she was really, really good.