“Who are you all, and what’s your relationship to this little girl?” she asked, her tone especially authoritative. She found that, when she used that tone, most people jumped up and answered her.
But one man, larger than the others and on the belligerent side, spoke up. “Why should we tell you?”
She pulled out her badge and said, “Because I’m the one who found this little girl,” she said, “and I want to know who you all are and what your roles are in this little girl’s life.” With that, she pulled out a notebook and her phone. What she really wanted was photos of each and every one of them. One person in the background was inching away. She immediately put her phone on Camera mode and snapped a picture of him. “You,” she said, pointing at him. “Let’s start with you, since you’re trying to sneak off.”
He glared at her. “I just came because I’m with him,” he said, pointing at the belligerent guy.
“Good,” she said. “Name, address, phone number. Let’s have it.”
“Like hell,” he said. “You don’t have anything on me.”
“I didn’t,” she said, “but I will in about two minutes, if I don’t get some cooperation,” she said, her tone flat and hard.
The belligerent guy said, “Come on, Jackson. Shut the fuck up with the whining and give her what she wants.”
He gave her the name of Buddy Malone—she figured Buddy was a nickname for Jackson—and said he lived downtown on Houston Street. He gave her a cell phone number that she knew would be completely bogus.
“What do you do for a living,… Buddy?”
“I don’t work,” he said. “I don’t have to.” She looked at him, studied his clothing, made a mental note that he definitely had a trust fund look, and wrote downunemployed.
Then she turned to the belligerent man. “Name, address, cell phone number, and occupation.” He gave her the information. His name was Benjy. She mentally cracked up at that. Some of the names that people gave their kids, jeez. Would they still do it when they realized how they turned out as adults? “And what do you do for a living?”
“Construction,” he said briefly.
That stopped her pen on the paper because this guy couldn’t bend over and swing a hammer. He was too big, too fat, and too out of shape. “You own your own company?”
“I manage a bunch of contractors,” he said, with a nod.
She wrote that down. “What is your relationship to this little girl?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” he said, with a sour tone. “We all lost a niece a couple years back, and we’re trying to figure out if this is her.”
“Do you show up in every hospital when a little girl is found?” Kate asked, studying the faces of those around her. A couple looked guilty.
One, a woman, her arms across her very ample bosom, nodded. “That’s right,” she said. “That’s exactly what I do.”
“Name, address, and cell phone number,” she asked. And she quickly took down that woman’s information. “So, Susan, what makes you think this could be your niece?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I saw the picture on the TV, and she just looked like my sister’s little girl.”
“Where is your sister?”
“She died of a drug overdose a few years back,” she said. “She gave her daughter to a friend of hers, but, by the time we went and contacted the friend, there was no way to find her, and the little girl had disappeared.”
“What was the friend’s name?”
“Trish Bell,” she said. “But she was another druggie on the street, so I don’t know why the hell my sister would have thought her daughter would be safe with her.”
“And how many of you opened your arms to accept this little girl and raise her as your own, so your sister would be sure her child would be safe?”
“Not one of us,” said another woman, young, leaning against the wall off to the side. “Not one of us gives a shit.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because I live and stay with Mom, and she says I have to come.” She pointed at Susan, the big-breasted angry woman, as the young woman chewed bubble gum, blew a big bubble in front of her, popped it, and said, “But don’t kid yourself, nobody here cares.”
“You’re all here,” Kate said, “so something matters.”