Baby, Baby, Baby

Chapter 3

There was no wake-up call in the world quite like the squeal of the hydraulic lift on a big flatbed as it prepared to slide a boxcar-size Dumpster onto a concrete pad.

Melanie groaned her way out of bed, snarled through her shower, and then got dressed and stomped downstairs to fix breakfast. She was starving after eating just a skimpy bowl of cereal the night before.

Sometime during the course of the night—sometime between the raucous hooting and door slamming of the party and the ground-shaking thud of the Dumpster bin shortly after dawn—she had decided to not let Sonny Randle ruin her life. Twice. If he couldn’t accept the fact that their marriage was over, that was his problem. Not hers. If he wanted to waste his time trying to convince her otherwise, it wasn’t going to work.

She had plans, and she was going to follow through with them no matter who moved in next door. Anyway, dammit, she was here first.

Muttering to herself, she pulled a box of eggs and a carton of orange juice from the refrigerator. She wasn’t going to quit eating right just because Sonny was here. Of all the times in her life that good nutrition was important, it was now, prior to her pregnancy. She wasn’t going to alter a lifetime’s worth of good habits just because the King of Chaos had moved into the neighborhood.

As if to emphasize her steely resolve, she cracked an egg so hard against the edge of the bowl that it splattered across the shiny white tile counter and dribbled down the front of the oak cabinet. She didn’t feel the least bit guilty blaming that on Sonny, too, as she grabbed a paper towel to clean it up. In fact, whatever went wrong from here on out would clearly be his fault if for no other reason than sheer proximity.

While she ate her scrambled egg with neat little bites of whole wheat toast, Melanie did what she did best. She made a list. Even if she decided to postpone Monday’s appointment until next month, there were a million things that needed to be done. These weren’t tasks she’d overlooked, but ones she’d saved for this special time. It was how she’d planned to spend her pregnancy, indulging herself in getting ready for the birth.

The nursery, on the second floor adjacent to her room, needed everything. She couldn’t wait to shop for the crib and the dresser and the sweet little night-light that would adorn it, but those would only come after she painted the walls the perfect shade of yellow that she had yet to find. Not daffodil. And it wasn’t quite pale lemon sherbet, either. The best way she could describe the color in her head was baby-duck yellow. Melanie wrote that at the top of her list. Surely someone at the paint store would know exactly what she meant and be able to mix up a batch with ease.

She wrote down brushes, rollers, and paint tray, then decided that was probably enough for one day’s To Do list. After all, she didn’t want to finish everything in the first month and then have nothing to do for the next eight.

After she rinsed her breakfast dishes, she peeked out the window to see if the coast was clear enough to sneak out and get the morning paper. The big red sandstone house next door looked just as deserted as it ever had. The Cop on the Block, she supposed, was somewhere in the debris, sleeping off the effects of his orgy last night.

Melanie opened her front door and stood on her front steps a moment, stretching her arms toward the cloudless azure sky, then gazing at the pink-and-white blossoms of the dogwood trees in Channing Park. Next April on a lovely morning just like this one, she couldn’t help but think, she’d be bundling the baby in a stroller and heading off for a lovely turn around the park. One more reason, she thought, to not cancel Monday’s procedure.

There were always joggers and power walkers and just plain amblers moving at their individual paces around the park. Right now Melanie could see the Wrenn sisters coming down Kassing at a pretty good clip. She waved, hoping if they paused to chat, she didn’t mix up their names the way she usually did. One was Susan and the other Sandy, but she was never quite sure which. There was only a year between them but they looked like identical twenty-something twins, both tall and terribly blond, and tended to dress that way, no doubt thoroughly enjoying the confusion they created. This morning they were wearing jiggly little T-shirts and a thin coating of hot-pink Spandex on their long legs.

She didn’t have to worry about their names, though. As they passed on the sidewalk in front of her yard, both sisters waved and called in chirpy unison, “Hi, Melody,” getting her name wrong as they always did. Then, without slowing, they continued on to 1224 where they quite suddenly put on the brakes.

“Hi, there,” Susan or Sandy purred.

“Hi, there,” Sandy or Susan echoed.

“Morning, ladies.”

That voice! That sandpapery baritone with its top notes of booze and tobacco nearly brought Melanie to her knees. One quick glance revealed her ex-husband, a vision in a faded denim shirt and jeans, lolling on the little front porch next door as if he actually belonged there.

While he was chatting up the Wrenns, Melanie stalked down the walk for her paper. It wasn’t on the walk, or under her little boxwood hedge, or anywhere to be seen. It was when she turned back toward her house and cast another furtive glance in Sonny’s direction that she realized he was sitting there with the sports section draped over his knee. The son of a bitch stole her newspaper!

The minute Susan and Sandy cooed “Nice meeting you” and got under way again, Melanie yelled, “Is that my paper?”

“I borrowed it to look at the Classifieds,” he called back.

She chewed on a few prime curses before she shouted, “Well, are you done?”

“Almost.” He picked up the paper and disappeared behind it, apparently without the slightest intention of returning it to her in the near future.

God! Nobody on the planet could set her hair on fire the way Sonny did. She knew she should’ve shrugged with monumental indifference and sauntered back inside her house, but instead she clenched her fists and went charging across her yard toward his.

“Give me my damn paper,” she shrieked as she pounded up the little flight of stairs to his porch. But just as she reached to grab it from his hands, Sonny stood and held the paper high over his head.

“Just a minute, Mel. I want to see if my ad is in here.”

She glared at him. Not that she cared one bit or was even mildly curious, but she still heard herself asking, “What ad?”

Sonny was looking up now, squinting in order to read the paper high over his head and well out of her reach. “This ad,” he said. “Good. They got it in.”

Melanie was gearing up for a leap worthy of a W.N.B.A. superstar when he suddenly snapped the paper closed and handed it to her. “What ad?” she asked again.

“I’m selling my car.”

He lowered himself onto the thick sandstone blocks that formed the sidewall of the small porch while Melanie continued to stand. She wasn’t at all sure that she’d heard him right. He’d had that gas-swilling, evil, black vehicle forever. It wasn’t just transportation. It was his alter ego, as much a part of him as his sea-colored eyes and his devastating smile.

“You’re selling the Corvette?”

“Yep.” He leaned back against the house and slung a jean’s-clad leg up onto the porch wall. “You were right. It’s not a family car.”

She blinked. “You don’t have a family, Sonny.”

“Not yet.” He cocked his head, squinting against the morning sun at Melanie’s back, but nevertheless pinning her with eyes that had turned a deep and warm Bahamian blue. “But I’m working on it.”

“Well, I wish you’d work on it someplace else.” She let go of an exasperated sigh as she plopped down on the top step. Her anger seemed to suddenly fizzle out, frustration taking its place. “This is crazy, Sonny. Buying this house. Pretending to be a docile Cop on the Block when you’re nothing of the sort, not to mention pretending to be Joe Homeowner.”

“I’m not pretending.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, please.”

“I’ve changed, Mel. Honest to God. Just give me a chance to—”

“Stop. I don’t want to hear this.” As she spoke, without even being aware of it, she was rolling the classified pages into a tight little log. When Sonny reached out for her hand, she batted his away with her newly discovered weapon. “Don’t. Just don’t.”

He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender, then grinned. “You’re going to have to iron that paper before you read it, Felix. I know how much you hate wrinkled news.”

That did it. She was mad again, and only partly because he was right. She despised it when anybody read the paper before she did and got the pages all misaligned and unwieldy and…well…just messy.

“I’ll just take my wrinkled news and go home,” she said, snatching up the rest of the paper he’d littered all over the porch. “And since you’re the Cop on the Block, I don’t think I should have to remind you that it’s illegal to take someone else’s property, Lieutenant Randle.”

“It won’t happen again,” he said solemnly despite the twinkle in his eyes. She was halfway across the driveway when he called, “Hey, Mel.”

Now what? “What?” she snapped.

“Got any plans for this afternoon?”

Did she have any plans? That was a little like asking the state of Idaho if it had any potatoes, wasn’t it? “Yes, I do. Why?”

“I need to drop the ’Vette off at Stover’s Garage. There’s a kid up there who’s going to detail it for me before I sell it. I wondered if you could give me a ride back.”

She sighed. “Okay. But the only reason I’m doing it is because I don’t think you’re capable of letting that car out of your sight for more than two seconds. I’ll believe it when I see it.” She looked at her watch. “I’ll pick you up at Stover’s at eleven, Sonny. That doesn’t mean eleven-ten or eleven-fifteen.”

“Mel, darlin’, eleven to you means ten forty-five. I’ll be there.”

“I doubt it,” she muttered under her breath.

At ten forty-five, true to his word, Sonny was out in front of Stover’s Garage, watching the Saturday traffic on Grant Parkway for Melanie’s little Miata. He chuckled to himself, thinking how he’d raised her hackles with the newspaper this morning. It hadn’t been intentional. He’d planned to read the ads, then press every seam and fold before slipping the whole thing back into its plastic sleeve and tossing it onto her front walk.

Still, he had to admit he kind of enjoyed her snit. It had been a while since he’d seen one. Not that he found all of her quibbles and quirks endearing, particularly the virgin newspaper one, but they all stemmed from the part of her he loved and needed so desperately in his life. She was as beautiful and predictable as the sunrise, and he’d spent way too many years alone in the dark.

And as much as he needed her stability, she needed him to loosen her up, to raise those hackles of hers and ruffle her pretty feathers once in a while so they didn’t harden in concrete. Damned if she’d acknowledge it, though.

He looked over his shoulder at his car—low slung, black as Darth Vader and twice as dangerous—parked on the garage’s back lot between a wimpy turquoise Neon and a hulking Chevy Suburban. For a second he was tempted to snatch his key off the pegboard in the back room, start the throaty engine, and peel out onto the parkway after laying down ten feet of rubber in a desperate attempt to recapture his youth. But why he wanted to do that was a mystery. His youth had sucked. So had his entire life until Melanie had come into it.

He reached into his shirt pocket for a cigarette and was lighting it just as familiar voice nearby said, “Hey, Lieutenant, babe. Long time no see. What you up to these days?”

Sonny had a network of snitches all over the city that was the envy of every cop in every precinct. Hookers and pushers and thugs. Dime-bag men with dollar grudges. Disenchanted gang bangers. Snoopy grandmas who spent their days glued to their front windows. Some of them knew him as a vice cop. To others he was just a guy out hustling on the streets like everybody else.

Walking toward him now in a halter top and short shorts and on high platform shoes was a young woman he knew only as Lovey. She wasn’t much over twenty and had huge, sleepy amber eyes and skin the color of café au lait with enough needle tracks to make her a leading contender for Miss Pincushion. What a waste of a beautiful young woman.

“Hey, Lovey. How’s it going?” He plucked another cigarette from his pocket, lit it, and handed it to her.

“Thanks, man.” She reached out a long-nailed, slightly trembling hand for the proffered smoke, no doubt in need of a much more potent fix. “Hey. I heard you got shot.”

“Nah. That was just a nasty rumor somebody started,” Sonny said. “Or maybe wishful thinking.”

“You got enemies, Lieutenant?”

“One or two,” he said. “You know, that offer I made you a while back about the rehab program still stands. You interested?”

Lovey shrugged and inhaled so deeply there was hardly anything to exhale. “Maybe one of these days. You still in the market for information about Slink Kinnison?”

Was he! He’d been trying for more than five years to pin something that would stick to that scumbag and send him away so he couldn’t get any more sixth and seventh graders hooked on his locally made and often lethal meth. Last week’s raid hadn’t put a dent in the guy’s operation. If anything, it probably gratified him to have blown Sonny through a window.

Already reaching for his wallet and a couple of twenties for Lovey’s information, Sonny had to remind himself that he wasn’t on the job right now, which meant he wouldn’t be reimbursed for the money he laid out, no matter how important her information was.

A week ago he might have thought, What the hell, it was only money, but now that he was a responsible homeowner who needed every spare cent to rehabilitate his ancient dump, Sonny said, “I’m on vacation for a couple weeks, but if you want to check with Heilig or White down at the precinct, I’m sure they can come up with a little something for you. You know them, right? Heilig’s the tall guy and White’s black. Here. I’ll write down the precinct phone number for you and their extension.”

He patted his pockets to no avail. Where was a pen when you needed one? “Do you have a pen and something I can write on?” he asked Lovey, who, after a lengthy search, managed to produce a crumpled tissue and a stick of black eyeliner from her tiny purse.

The tissue tore all to hell when he tried to scribble the numbers and the thin black crayon broke. Just as Sonny was swearing a blue streak, Melanie’s little yellow Miata pulled up at the curb. Out of habit, he checked his watch and was shocked to see that it read two minutes after eleven, which made her late for maybe the second or third time in her entire thirty-one years!

“Wait here,” he told Lovey. “I know just where I can get a pen and paper.”

He opened the passenger door, leaned inside, and couldn’t restrain himself from saying, “You’re late.”

Melanie stabbed him to death with a look. “That’s because I changed my mind about coming forty-eight times.”

“I’m glad you came. Can I borrow a pen, Mel, and something to write on?”

It didn’t surprise him to see her flip open the little center console and immediately produce a tiny spiral notebook with a tiny, color-coordinated pen clipped to its cover.

“Who’s your friend?” she asked as she handed it to him.

“My snitch,” he corrected. “I’ll be right back.”

While he wrote the phone numbers for Lovey, Sonny said, “After you talk to Heilig and White, you stay as far away from Slink Kinnison as you can, Lovey, okay? It probably wouldn’t even hurt to leave town for a little while just to be on the safe side. Tell Heilig you need a little extra for bus fare. Is there any place you can go?”

The hooker shook her head. “Gotta stay close to my main man, Elijah. He takes care of me. He takes good care of all of his girls. You know?”

He knew only too well how her main man took care of her, by keeping her higher than a kite. Over the years Sonny had come to the bitter conclusion that the only thing wrong with prostitution was the pimps. Lovey’s was Elijah Biggs, who weighed four hundred pounds when he wasn’t wearing fifty pounds of gold jewelry and whose license plate proclaimed Bigg Man. One of these days Sonny was going to see that the big man got a one-way ticket to the state penitentiary instead of always using the revolving door of the city jail.

“Here.” He flipped to a clean page in the little notebook. “Here’s my cell phone number and my new address, just in case.” He tore off both pages and gave them to her.

Lovey studied the numbers a moment. “You move into one of those big old ugly places on Channing Square? What’d you want to do that for?”

“I don’t know. I must be crazy.”

She angled her head toward Melanie’s car at the curb. “That’s your lady?”

“Yep.”

“She live in Channing Square, too?”

“Yep. Next door.”

“Next door!” Lovey laughed. “Well, that explains why you’re crazy, then. I’ll see you around, Lieutenant.”

“You be careful, Lovey.”

“All the time, honey. All the time.”

By the time Sonny slung his long legs into her little car, Melanie was wishing she’d changed her mind forty-nine times instead of forty-eight. That way she would’ve stood him up instead of having to sit and watch him do the job he did so damn well.

He wasn’t one of those cops who got off on being the long, hard arm of the law, who wore a badge and a constant smirk, and felt entitled to push people around if they dared get in his way. Sonny honestly believed he was making the city a better and safer place, day by day, person by person. She could tell from the expression on his snitch’s face that the woman not only felt safe with him, but adored him, as well.

And if she knew her ex-husband at all, she knew he had probably just given the woman his phone number and told her to call him anytime, day or night.

“I thought you were on vacation,” Melanie said as she angled her car back into the flow of traffic.

“I am.”

“So, what’s with the snitch?”

“Nothing,” he said. “She just needed a little advice.”

“I guess you’re aware that the city’s not responsible or in any way liable for actions or expenses of officers when they’re on leave.” She knew her words had come out in an annoying, almost schoolmarmish tone, but she couldn’t help it.

Sonny just laughed. “I’ll bet you’ve got a copy of the city code in your handbag.”

“I do not.”

“In the glove compartment, then.”

Still laughing, he reached forward to open it, and Melanie swatted at his hand.

He turned to face her as much as his seat belt and the confines of the car would allow. “I guess you’re aware that I’ve been on the job for over thirteen years now, and despite my charming and lackadaisical air, I do have some idea what the hell I’m doing.”

“I know, but… Oh, damn.” She slapped the palm of her hand against the steering wheel.

“What?”

“I just missed the turn onto Channing. Now I’ll have to circle around and that’ll make me late. Dammit, Sonny. It’s all your fault.”

“Late for what?”

“The hardware store.”

“You have an appointment at the hardware store?”

She took her eyes off the road long enough to pitch him her most irritated look. “No, I don’t have an appointment. I just wanted to be there by eleven-fifteen.”

He looked at his watch and said, “Well, I’ll tell you what. It’s eleven-oh-eight right now. If we forget about dropping me off at the house and just head straight to the hardware store, we can be there by quarter after.”

Braking for a red light, Melanie turned her head to her right. Sonny was sitting there, his knees up against the dashboard and the world’s most innocent expression on his face. “‘We’?” she asked.

“Yeah. I needed to go to the hardware store anyway. This’ll save me a trip later. Then I can take you out to lunch when we’re finished. Maybe to Dominic’s or that new place down on Jefferson. What do you say, Mel?”

What did she say? To herself Melanie said she should have seen this coming. Give Sonny an inch and he immediately wanted a mile. How could she have been such a jerk? Knowing him as well as she did, how could she have allowed him to blindside her like this? Why was she letting him rattle her so?

“No problem,” she said, trying to sound as if she meant it, as if his mere presence didn’t faze her in the least. “I’ll take you to the hardware store. But I’ll pass on the lunch. Thanks, anyway.”

Sonny had forgotten that shopping with Melanie was the equivalent of attending a nitpicker’s convention. Even before they got in the store, she had to wait for just the right spot to open up in Dandy Andy’s parking lot.

“Pull in over there,” he’d said, pointing out an open space up ahead of them.