in a long jean dress stretched to its absolute maximum. A colorful scarf was wound around her head and her long toes poked out from the sandals she wore.
“You know them?” said Baldy.
The scarf lady clutched Mace’s hand. “Damn right I do. Now get your sorry asses out the way right now! I am not messing with you today, Jerome, and I mean what I say.”
The men moved quietly if grudgingly aside and scarf lady led Mace down the hall while Roy scurried after them, his gaze back on Jerome.
“Thanks,” said Mace.
“Thanks doesn’t come close to cutting it,” Roy chimed in.
“Alisha told me Carmela called a little bit ago and she asked me to be on the lookout for you. But I was taking some laundry down and you got past me. Sorry about those jerks. Barks worse than their bite, but they still bite.”
“Were those shots we heard a minute ago?” Roy wanted to know.
“Just a little disagreement probably. No blood no foul.”
“What’s your name?” Mace asked.
“Just call me Non.”
CHAPTER 58
NEITHER MACE nor Roy probably knew what to expect next. But what they certainly didn’t expect was what they found in Alisha Rogers’s apartment. The place was clean, smelled of Pine-Sol, and was amazingly tidy, particularly because in the hallway leading to her apartment they had passed twelve large bags of garbage stacked nearly to the ceiling. Maybe, Mace thought, that was the reason why Alisha used so much Pine-Sol.
The furniture was cheap, all probably secondhand, but arranged with some thought and even design. The small windows had what looked to be hand-sewn curtains. A few toys were stacked in one corner in an old cardboard crate that had “Deer Park” stamped on it. From what they could see, the place consisted of only two rooms, the one they were in and another, probably the bedroom, where the door was closed. The “kitchen” had a hot plate and an under-the-counter mini-fridge.
Non had a key to the apartment and had let them in.
“Alisha!” she called out. “Social’s here.”
There were footsteps in the other room, a door opened, and Alisha Rogers stepped out. A three-year-old boy was riding on her slim right hip. Her hair was long and pulled back and tied with a clip except for a tightly braided ponytail that poked out on the right side of her head. Her eyes were big, her face small, and her lips thin and cracked. At five-three she probably didn’t weigh more than ninety pounds, while the little boy had to be almost half that.
Roy looked down at the file he was holding documenting Alisha’s background. Roy had seen enough while at CJA that teenage mothers did not really surprise him, though he also knew that a child raising a child was never a good thing. Yet it was far better than leaving the little boy in a Dumpster. He had to admire Alisha Rogers for taking that responsibility when some others didn’t.
Non said, “I’m gonna leave you folks to it. Alisha, you need anything I’ll be down in the laundry room.”
“Thanks, Non,” Alisha said, her gaze on the floor as the boy stared at Mace and Roy openmouthed.
Mace stepped forward. “Alisha, I’m Mace and this is Roy. We met with Carmela this morning.”
Gaze still on the floor, Alisha said, “Carmela’s nice.”
“And she was very excited about us meeting with you.”
“That’s a good-looking boy you have there,” said Roy. “What’s his name?”
“Tyler,” she answered. She lifted one of her son’s pudgy fists and did a small wave. When she let go, however, Tyler let his arm drop limply to his side and continued to stare at them, his mouth forming a big O.
“You want to sit down while we talk?” said Mace. “Tyler looks like a load.”
While Roy and Mace sat on a small battered sofa with trash-bag-covered foam, Alisha put Tyler down on the floor and sat cross-legged next to him. She snagged a toy out of the Deer Park box and handed it to him.
“You play, Ty, Momma’s got to talk to these people.”
Tyler plopped down on the floor and obediently started playing with the spaceman action figure from Toy Story that was missing an arm and a leg.
Alisha looked up. “Carmela say you folks got something for me.”
“To be part of a study,” said Mace.
Alisha didn’t look happy about this. “I thought it gonna be a job. A real job, you know, with child care and some health benefits.”
“No, that’s right. The study does have a money and training