The Innocent

The doorbell rang again.

Kimmy looked down at her ebony legs. Thirty-five years old, never had a baby, but the varicose veins were growing like feeding worms. Too many years on her feet. Chally would want those worked on too. She was still in shape, still had a pretty great figure and terrific ass, but hey, thirty-five is not eighteen. There was some cellulite. And those veins. Like a damn relief map.

She stuck a cigarette in her mouth. The book of matches came from her current place of employment, a strip joint called the Eager Beaver. She had once been a headliner in Vegas, going by the stage name Black Magic. She did not long for those days. She did not, in truth, long for any days.

Kimmy Dale threw on a robe and opened her bedroom door. The front room had no such sun protection. The glare assaulted her. She shielded her eyes and blinked. Kimmy did not have a lot of visitors—she never tricked at home—and figured that it was probably a Jehovah’s Witness. Unlike pretty much everybody else in the free world, Kimmy did not mind their periodic intrusions. She always invited the religiously rapt into her home and listened carefully, envious that they had found something, wishing she could fall for their line of bull. As with the men in her life, she hoped that this one would be different, that this one would be able to convince her and she’d be able to buy into it.

She opened the door without asking who it was.

“Are you Kimmy Dale?”

The girl at the door was young. Eighteen, twenty, something like that. Nope, not a Jehovah’s Witness. Didn’t have that scooped-out-brain smile. For a moment Kimmy wondered if she was one of Chally’s recruits, but that wasn’t it. The girl wasn’t ugly or anything, but she wasn’t for Chally. Chally liked flash and glitter.

“Who are you?” Kimmy asked.

“That’s not important.”

“Excuse me?”

The girl lowered her eyes and bit on her lower lip. Kimmy saw something distantly familiar in the gesture and felt a small ripple in her chest.

The girl said, “You knew my mother.”

Kimmy fiddled with the cigarette. “I know lots of mothers.”

“My mother,” the girl said, “was Candace Potter.”

Kimmy winced when she said that. It was north of ninety degrees, but she suddenly tightened her robe.

“Can I come in?”

Did Kimmy say yes? She couldn’t say. She stepped to the side, and the girl pushed her way past.

Kimmy said, “I don’t understand.”

“Candace Potter was my mother. She put me up for adoption the day I was born.”

Kimmy tried to keep her bearings. She closed the trailer door. “You want something to drink?”

“No, thank you.”

The two women looked at each other. Kimmy crossed her arms.

“Not sure what you want here,” she said.

The girl spoke as if she’d been rehearsing. “Two years ago I learned that I was adopted. I love my adopted family, so I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I have two sisters and wonderful parents. They’ve been very good to me. This isn’t about them. It’s just that . . . when you find out something like this, you need to know.”

Kimmy nodded, though she wasn’t sure why.

“So I started digging for information. It wasn’t easy. But there are groups who help adopted kids find their birth parents.”

Kimmy plucked the cigarette out of her mouth. Her hand was shaking. “But you know that Candi—I mean, your mother—Candace . . .”

“. . . is dead. Yes, I know. She was murdered. I found out last week.”

Kimmy’s legs started to feel a little rubbery. She sat. Memories rushed back in and they stung.

Candace Potter. Known as “Candi Cane” in the clubs.

“What do you want from me?” Kimmy asked.

“I spoke to the officer who investigated her murder. His name is Max Darrow. Do you remember him?”

Oh, yes, she remembered good ol’ Max. Knew him even before the murder. At first Detective Max Darrow had barely gone through the motions. Talk about low priority. Dead stripper, no family. Another dying cactus on the landscape, that was all Candi was to Darrow. Kimmy had gotten involved, traded favors for favors. Way of the world.

“Yeah,” Kimmy said, “I remember him.”

“He’s retired now. Max Darrow, I mean. He says they know who killed her, but they don’t know where he is.”

Kimmy felt the tears coming to her eyes. “It was a long time ago.”

“You and my mom were friends?”

Kimmy managed to nod. She still remembered it all, of course. Candi had been more than a friend to her. In this life you don’t find too many people you can truly count on. Candi had been one—maybe the only one since Mama died when Kimmy was twelve. They had been inseparable, Kimmy and this white chick, sometimes calling themselves, professionally at least, Pic and Sayers from the old movie Brian’s Song. And then, like in the movie, the white friend died.

“Was she a prostitute?” the girl asked.

Kimmy shook her head and told a lie that felt like truth. “Never.”

“But she stripped.”

Kimmy said nothing.

“I’m not judging her.”

“What do you want then?”

“I want to know about my mother.”

“It doesn’t make any difference now.”

“It does to me.”

Kimmy remembered when she first heard the news. She’d been onstage out near Tahoe doing a slow number for the lunch crowd, the biggest group of losers in the history of mankind, men with dirt on their boots and holes in their hearts that staring at naked women only made bigger. She hadn’t seen Candi for three days running, but then again Kimmy had been on the road. Up there, on that stage, that was where she first overheard the rumors. She knew something bad had gone down. She’d just prayed it hadn’t involved Candi.

But it had.

“Your mother had a hard life,” Kimmy said.

The girl sat rapt.

“Candi thought we’d find a way out, you know? At first she figured it’d be a guy at the club. They’d find us and take us away, but that’s crap. Some of the girls try that. It never works. The guy wants some fantasy, not you. Your mother learned that pretty quick. She was a dreamer but with a purpose.”

Kimmy stopped, looked off.

“And?” the girl prompted.

“And then that bastard squashed her like she was a bug.”

The girl shifted in her chair. “Detective Darrow said his name was Clyde Rangor?”