We took up two long tables on the far side. Steak and lobster. Cocktails and wine. We blew enough money that night to live on for a semester. Hallie came in around midnight. I saw her spot me and I watched her come through the tables toward us.’
Sitting in his courtyard now, Stromsoe could as good as see her. She was smiling at him but he could tell something was wrong. She walked carefully. She had lost weight. She wore a pink trench coat over a black-and-pink floral-print dress. Her hair was up and her earrings dangled and flashed.
Up close he saw that her face was clammy, with sweat beads at her hairline, that her pupils were big, and behind her pretty red lips her gums were pale.
‘Congratulations,’ she had said, then hugged him. ‘I’m back at Mom’s and Dad’s after a little tiff with Mike. I saw your announcement in their mail pile. Not raining on your parade, am I, Matt?’
‘Not at all,’ he’d said.
She touched his face. ‘I miss you.’
Stromsoe got her seated and ordered her a soda water but Hallie told the waiter to make it a Bombay martini, rocks with a twist. She drank three of them in short order. He introduced her to his friends. The guys smiled and glanced knowingly at Stromsoe when they thought Hallie wasn’t looking. The women were actively disinterested in her. She made several trips to the ladies’ room.
Hallie ordered a double at last call, took one sip, then collapsed to the floor.
Stromsoe carried her back to the restaurant manager’s office while one of his friends called paramedics. She was conscious but stupefied, trying to focus on Stromsoe as he lowered her to a couch and wrapped a blanket around her. Her eyes were swimming and her teeth chattered.
‘Ohhh,’ she whispered, closing her eyes.
He smartly smacked her cheek. ‘Stay awake, Hallie. Look at me and stay awake.’
She was half awake when the paramedics got there and took her away. Stromsoe followed them to Hoag Hospital in his old Mazda, called her parents from the waiting room. His hands were shaking with anger at Mike while he talked to Hallie’s mom.
It took the doctors two hours to stabilize her. Inside Hallie boiled a witch’s brew of Colombian cocaine, Mexican brown heroin, Riverside County methamphetamine, Pfizer synthetic morphine, and Bombay gin.
‘She was okay,’ said Stromsoe. ‘Too much dope.
Too much booze. It wasn’t until later that I saw the really bad stuff.’
Susan looked up from her notepad.
The day after Hallie had gone to the hospital Stromsoe had gotten a call from Sergeant Rich Neal of the Newport Beach police. Neal told Stromsoe to meet him outside Hallie’s room at Hoag at 2 P.M. sharp.
Neal came from her room and shut the door behind him. He was stout and florid and asked Stromsoe what he knew about Hallie’s drug problem. Stromsoe told him what had happened at the Charthouse. Neal asked about Mike Tavarez and Stromsoe confirmed that he knew him, and that Mike and Hallie were a couple.
‘The parents think he supplied her with the drugs,’ said Neal. ‘They think he did that work on her body. She says no. What do you think?’
‘He probably gave her the drugs. I don’t know what bodywork you’re talking about.’
‘Ask her about it,’ said Neal. ‘Where is he? Where’s Tavarez right now?’
‘I have no idea.’
Neal asked Stromsoe about other friends of Hallie’s, other boyfriends in particular. He asked if Stromsoe had met Mike Tavarez’s parents and the answer was yes, Rolando and Reina, he’d spent some time in their home back in high school, eaten dinner with them on rehearsal nights, and sometimes he and Mike would just hang out there on weekends, shooting pool and drinking sodas, maybe ride their bikes or, when they got older, go for a drive. Stromsoe had always liked quiet Rolando and large, expansive Reina.
He asked if Stromsoe had given Hallie any of the drugs she had ingested last night and Stromsoe told him just the last few drinks.
Neal gave Stromsoe a card and an unhappy stare, then walked away.
‘So I went into the hospital room,’ he told Susan. ‘Hallie was sitting up. She had some color back but her eyes were flat and her face was haggard. I held her hand for a minute and we didn’t say much. Then I asked about her body and she told me to give her some privacy. I faced the door and heard her rustling around. When she said okay, try to control your excitement, I turned back and she had rolled the hospital smock just to her breasts, and pulled the sheet to just below her belly. Her torso was pretty much one big black-and-purple bruise, with a few little clouds of tan showing through.’
Stromsoe now remembered the bend of Hallie’s ribs under the livid skin. He remembered the pert Muzak version of ‘Penny Lane’ that was playing while he stared at her. Susan Doss looked up from her notepad.
‘She’d gotten an abortion a month earlier,’ said Stromsoe. ‘She told him it was her body, her decision, that she was a druggie and not ready to be a mother. There was no discussion. Hallie was that way. She said Mike went quiet, didn’t talk for days, didn’t even look at her. One night they went to a club and Hallie drank some, got talking to a guy. For the next couple of days, Mike drank and did blow, and the more loaded Mike got, the more he accused her of having a thing with this guy while he was away at school. She’d never seen him before in her life. Just when Mike seemed to be calming down a little, he and some of the guys drove her out to the middle of nowhere and the men held her while Mike hit her. And hit her some more. She passed out from the pain. They left her by the side of the Ortega Highway in the middle of the night. Mike flew back to Boston the next morning.’
‘My God.’
Talk on, thought Stromsoe. Tell how Hallie handled that pain. Words, don’t fail me now.
‘She hitchhiked to the nearest house, called a friend to pick her up. Stayed in bed for three days at her Lido apartment, medicated herself with antibiotics, dope, and liquor. She forced herself to make an appearance back home for her parents’ twenty-fifth anniversary, saw my graduation announcement, called my folks, and found out where the party was. By the time the doctors saw her, she was bleeding inside, infected, poisoned by the dope. Three of her ribs were broken and there were internal injuries to her spleen and ovaries. They took one ovary and said she’d probably never conceive. Three years later she had Billy.’
‘What did she tell the cops?’
‘That she picked up the wrong guy one night. They knew she was protecting Mike but they couldn’t crack her. Hallie was tough inside.’
‘Why cover for him?’
‘The beating was five days old, so she knew it would be hard to make a case against four friends with their alibis lined up. And pride too – Hallie thought it was a victory not to go to the law. She also realized he might kill her. The cops busted him from a liquor-store videotape a week after Hallie left the hospital. So, she thought Mike would get at least a partial punishment for what he did to her. Big news, when the Harvard boy was popped for a string of armed robberies in California.’
‘I remember.’
He closed his eyes and could see Hallie
