House of Blues

bother Darryl again. He'd kill
me."
    "What's wrong with just telling me where you
live?"
    "Well, I'm not going home yet."
    So that was it. "You want to go to Maya's?"
    " No! Uh . . . no, of course not. I was only at
Maya's for you, Skippy. I wanted to find Dennis for you because I
fucked up so bad the other night."
    " Okay, where then?"
    "Listen, really. That's the only reason I was
hanging there. I'm going into treatment right away, I swear; I just
wanted to do this one thing for you."
 

    17
    Back in her car, her head beginning to clear, Skip
realized she was barely disappointed at all not to have found Reed
and Sally. She hadn't expected them. After Toni's story, she had
known in her heart that Dennis was traveling alone.
    He was waiting for her at headquarters. She found one
of the officers on the night watch. "Is his lawyer on the way?"
    "He says he doesn't want one."
    "You're kidding."
    "Looks like your lucky day."
    " I'm way overdue for one."
    Hours later, after she'd gotten her warrant and
conducted her search, she joined Dennis in an interview room. "I've
been looking for you."
    He didn't answer.
    "I hear you don't want a lawyer."
    "That's right. I just want to tell my story and
go home."
    "Go home? You really think you're going home?"
    "I haven't done anything."
    "Oh, no? As it happens, I just searched your
room. I found some white powder in there."
    "Are you trying to bully me?"
    " I'm trying to impress on you the seriousness of
your position."
    " I told you—I want to cooperate."
    "Okay. First things first. Where are Reed and
Sally?"
    "I don't know."
    " You don't know."
    A sob came out of him. "I feel like shit. I just
feel like shit."
    "You kind of look that way too." He wasn't
the Dennis of the photograph. He was thinner and he obviously hadn't
shaved since he left home. Skip didn't think he'd bathed or changed
clothes either. "And smell that way. "
    He looked surprised, as if personal grooming were
something from a strange country that he could barely remember
hearing about.
    " Dennis, what happened the other night?"
    He looked at her out of eyes that seemed surrounded
by bruises, the skin around them was so dark. "Evie came. She
took Sally."
    " Evie? Who the hell is Evie?"
    " Reed's sister."
    "Wait a minute. You're telling me Reed has a
sister?" And nobody's mentioned it? Am I going crazy here?
    "Yeah. Evie. It's a long story."
    "Well, in that case, maybe you could just tell
me some other time. I got things to do, you know?"
    " Huh?"
    "Start talking, Dennis."
    "She came in and tried to get Sally. Naturally,
we resisted. I mean, Arthur did—he was closest to Sally. So Evie
shot him."
    "How'd she get in?"
    " Rang the doorbell. Reed answered it, for some
reason."
    " What reason?"
    He closed his eyes and thought. He opened them.
"Arthur asked her to. He was always ordering her around."
    "Then what?"
    " Reed came in, with Evie behind her. Nobody'd
seen her in more than a year. She said hello and Arthur didn't say
anything—just went on eating as if she wasn't there. Then Reed
asked her if she was hungry—and she said no, she just came to get
Sally."
    "Came to get Sally."
    " Uh-huh."
    "Was she going to take her to the playground or
what?"
    "Sugar didn't tell you any of this?"
    " Sugar was there?"
    "No. No. Sugar was gone. I mean, she didn't tell
you about Evie?"
    "You tell me."
    "Well, she claimed Sally was hers."
    "Claimed. "
    "She was Sally's biological mother."
    "Ah. Maybe you'd better tell me all about Evie
before you go any further."
    He looked down at the table between them. "I
should know. She used to be my girlfriend."
    " Before you met Reed?"
    "Oh, God yes. That's how I met Reed. See, Evie
was the bad sister. She and I were junkies together, and when we ran
out of money, she said she had this rich family we could get money
from even though they hated her. So we went to see them, and I saw
Reed and—" He stopped, his eyes filled with tears. "She
yelled at us. Both of us. She'd never seen me before in my life and
she yelled at me. She really made me feel like shit." He
shrugged. "But then I fell in love with her."
    "Just like that?"
    "Sometimes I think so. I mean, I was always
attracted to her. She was healthy and beautiful, and Evie was wasted,
you know? And so was I. But I got to know her over a long period and
she got me to clean up. I mean, to want to clean up.
    "So I did. She got me into treatment. And that
was it for Evie and me. She was a junkie and I was clean and
sober—what could we