Page 5 of Hanging and Burning

“Was she the girl’s grandmother?”

“What the fuck kinda question is that?” a completely different persona dared.

“Look, man,” I said, getting serious myself. “I just came because Grandma B asked me to. If you don’t want me here, I can go.”

I was sure that if he could have gotten up, he would have tried to put me down. His bulging eyes were both unhealthy and intent, and his big hands made even bigger fists.

I almost called Nurse Lund to come give him some kind of sedative. I would have done so if he hadn’t said, “The one that raised her—that Mara Macintosh—she did an okay enough job, but she was never very—very loving. When Twyla used to come stay with me and Connie, she’d always wanna stay longer.”

“Her real mom’s dead?”

“No. No.”

I never liked double negatives.

“I don’t know where she’s at,” Arman Babylon said to his blanket. “But she’s not dead.”

“And this Mara raised Twyla pretending to be her mom?”

“Yeah. She told the child that she was her mother and that her father was a man name of Fredricks—Lonnie Fredricks. But he never existed, and Mara needed a new life. So I paid for her to raise my—my granddaughter.”

“Twyla.”

He nodded. “Twyla.”

“And who are her parents?”

The old bruiser looked at me, I believed, as if I were his mirror. He studied himself in me, did so for quite a while.

“I can’t,” he said at last. “No.”

“You can’t tell me what you want?”

“I want you to find—to find Twyla and talk to her.”

“Talk to her about what?”

“Tell her that she’s my blood but not Mara Macintosh’s.”

“What good is that gonna do?”

“She’s my blood.”

“Doesn’t she already know that?”

“I want you to tell her about Mara.”

“Why would I tell her anything, when you could just call her on the phone?”

“I don’t know where she’s at. She’s disappeared.”

“Missing?”

“No. Not missing. She sends postcards sometimes. From different parts of New York mainly. Either she’s there or somebody there knows where she’s at.”

There was nothing wrong with what he was asking for. Even if he was lying, I couldn’t see how finding the young woman would cause her trouble. He was an old guy, and my grandmother usually had an accurate grasp of human nature. She said he was okay.

“Do you have one of those postcards?” I asked.