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She opened her MacBook and began a search for Erica Fish. Even before her fries and shake arrived, she found more than a hundred and fifty women with that name, equally distributed across the country. Between courses, she typed “Erica Williams” into her browser and found another four hundred listings, scattered from sea to shining sea.
Her search assumed that Erica Williams Fish was using some version of her actual name and that the closely guarded custody of young Ben Morales Fish had gone to the little boy’s paternal grandmother.
So it was also logical to check out Mackie’s mother, Deanna Mackenzie Morales, and her father, Joseph Morales. Mackie and her parents had lived in Chicago, but the thousands of listings for J. Morales totally swamped any possibility of a fine-tuned search without limitless funds and endless time.
But it took no time and cost nothing to type Mackie’s mother’s name in different permutations into her browser. Cindy did it—and like freakin’ magic, she got a hit. D. M. Morales, the one and only person in the entire country with that name, was listed in the San Francisco white pages.
Just the name.
The number and address were unlisted—which made sense.
If Mackie’s mother had lived in San Francisco prior to her daughter getting busted, she may have gotten custody of the child. If so, she would want to be way under the radar. So she’d blocked her phone and address so that people like Cindy couldn’t find her.
Cindy slurped her milk shake down to the bottom, paid the check at the register, and walked back to the office. As she crossed 3rd Street, she thought about how Mackie Morales’s recent past had taken her from Wisconsin to a bank in Chicago and possibly to a highway in Wyoming. She was heading west.
She might well be coming to San Francisco to visit Ben and her mother.
And here was the dark hunch she’d been harboring. Morales might have other business in San Francisco as well.
CHAPTER 45
TO BE HONEST, I had to force myself to go to Susie’s that night. Normally, a Club meeting was like a dip in the Caribbean Sea—salty, warm, rousing, and comforting at the same time.
But tonight, as I stood in my bare feet in my bedroom, I wanted to take off all my clothes, get into bed, and pull the covers over my head.
But I knew even that wouldn’t assuage my twin feelings of frustration and bone-deep exhaustion from the fruitless day in Fruitvale. And the upshot of the entire pathetic operation was that the belly bomber had the money and was planning to kill again.
Joe said, “You’ll feel better if you go out with the girls. I’ll wait up.”
I showered and changed my clothes and drove to Susie’s, hoping that Claire and Cindy would both be okay if I ate and ran. That was pretty much all I could handle.
I pulled open the big wooden door, and the calypso party spilled out. Hot Tea was working the steel drums, the rum punch and margaritas were flowing, and the whole place smelled like spiced meat on a grill.
My girls were waiting at our booth when I got there. I slid in next to Claire, who read the expression on my face and put her arm around me.
I laid my head on her shoulder and pretended to cry, and she squeezed me and said, “There, there. Whatever is wrong, it will get better with beer.”
I leaned across the table and exchanged cheek kisses with Cindy, who said, “Someone had a bad day. Are you all right?”
Cindy looked kind of radiant, as did Claire, so I guessed I would be tapped to be the first to piss and moan.
“You’re not still mad at me, are you?” Cindy said.
“What?” said Claire. “I didn’t hear anything about a fight between the two of you.”
Cindy smirked and said, “It’s off the record,” then called our waitress over.
Lorraine appeared, her red hair freshly permed, and wearing a new, brighter-red lipstick than ever before. She said, “Hey there, Sergeant Boxer. You look thirsty. What can I get you?”
Before I could say, “I’m just going to watch,” Lorraine vanished and returned with a foamy pitcher of brew. She said, “I’ll be right back with glasses and to take your order. The fish and rice is nice.”
Claire said, “Have you all seen Yuki’s Facebook page? Pictures of that aurora borealis? It’s like something you’d see on the Discovery Channel.”
“I haven’t checked her page,” I said, “due to a belly bomb mission of the epic fail kind. What a day this has been.”
The beer glasses arrived. We all ordered the Friday-night fish-and-rice special with ripe plantains and extra-hot sauce. Cindy booted up her tablet and we perused Yuki’s honeymoon pictures—and yeah, without my knowing it was happening, my mood lifted.
We cracked some off-color jokes about just-married sex rocking the boat and we toasted my boss and Yuki, our good friends who’d fallen in love. After we ordered a second pitcher of beer to cool down the hot sauce, I talked about the belly bomber and wondered out loud what the creepy killer extortionist was really after.
