If You Really Loved Me Part 24

Cinnamon had urged David to bring Patti up for a visit, and he was apparently nervous enough about his daughter's unexpected a.s.sertiveness and sticky questions that he, indeed, brought Patti along on the next possible visit.

It was two o'clock in the afternoon on August 27, 1988, when Cinnamon whispered, "Jay .. . can you hear me? I hope so 'cause I don't really want to go and mess up the tape. . .. h.e.l.lo. Thank you."

Newell could hear her well, but he could not see her. He was in the same room where he had set up his equipment before, and Cinnamon, Patti, and David would be across the quad, behind the guard tower, out of his sight completely. Walt Robbins, deputy security chief at the CYA, was in the guard tower, less than twenty feet away from where Cinnamon and her visitors would be. He would be taking pictures.

Cinnamon was not quite as nervous this time. She had managed to get through the worst part, the first time taping her father. Now she would face Patti Bailey, the girla"now womana"who had been a childhood friend, a teenage irritant, perhaps a co-conspirator in murdera"and who she suspected was probably her father's mistress and the mother of his latest baby.

Cinnamon hadn't seen Patti for a long, long time.

Now she saw Patti and David headed toward her, holding Krystal by the hand. Patti looked older, a little heavier. She wore blue jeans and a pink blouse, and her thick blond hair was pulled back into a curly ponytail. Her father wore a pink T-s.h.i.+rt, stretched tight across his ma.s.sive midsection, and gray slacks.

Cinnamon remembered his "gotcha" from the last time, and Newell grinned as he heard David say only, "Hi," and Cinnamon quickly respond, "I love you too!"

Cinnamon knelt to Krystal's height and said, "Hi! Are you my friend?"

Listening to this family visit inside the reformatory was strange. And a little sad. Children in the background laughed and cried. Krystal wanted a doughnut, then promptly dropped it. It sounded so normal, and yet it was anything but normal.

Cinnamon and her two visitors moved over to a round table, s.h.i.+elded from the sun by a large white umbrella. Twenty feet away, Walt Robbins snapped pictures. David drank Perrier while the girls sipped c.o.kes.

Much of their transmitted conversation was about mundane things, as if Cinnamon, Patti, and David were hesitant to speak of the real reasons they had finally found themselves all together again. At one point, David looked toward the young women playing on the field nearby.

"Great," Cinnamon teased. "You want to stare at the people on the field, don't you?"

"My daughter knows me," David said with a laugh. "And I like the dark meat myself."

"You like the what?" Cinnamon asked.

"The dark meat." He was referring to the black girls playing ball and vulgarly pointing out their physical attributes.

"You're disgusting," Cinnamon said.

"Yeah," Patti echoed.

There was that same inappropriate behavior. He was the adult, almost thirty-six, and yet Newell realized David interacted with both his daughter and Patti as if they were all the same age. The girls seemed more mature, however, and David only a case of ugly, prejudiced, arrested development. He complained bitterly about the freeway jam-up on the way up.

"They got the freeway up herea"five lanesa"and you get on this part, you knowa""

"No, I don't know," Cinnamon said softly.

"Well, you get out of L.A., you come to five lanesa""

"I guess I miss out on a lot of things."

He was oblivious to her meaning. He rattled on, about traffic, about bills for Cinnamon's stationery. Suddenly, he asked, "Why did they ha.s.sle you so much the last time I was here?"

Why was he so wary? Newell wondered. There was no way he could have known that Cinnamon was wired. Not two weeks ago. Not today. She wore the same bulky blue s.h.i.+rt. Not a wire or a bulge showed.

Cinnamon fielded the question smoothly. "'Cause my pa.s.sa"the staff didn't know I was off the cottage."

"How did you get a pa.s.s if they didn't know you were off the cottage?"

Newell held his breath.

"They have s.h.i.+ft trade at two o'clock... . And when I was up here in between the lasta"somehow they lost me."

"It was so irritating," David complained to Patti. "We were just sitting there on the gra.s.s. That stupid a.s.shole kept coming over and scaring the s.h.i.+t out of us. [Mimicking] 'Are you Cinnamon Brown?' I need to see your pa.s.s. This pa.s.s is no good.'"

Cinnamon laughed. He wasn't suspicious. He just hated authority figures.

Both David and Patti explained that they had sent Cinnamon their new phone numbersa"David's new phone numbers. The letters must have been lost. Newell waited for something he could sink his teeth into, but Cinnamon couldn't seem to steer them away from trivia. And this time, David didn't ask what she was worried about.

Patti explained that she had hired Betsy Stubbs to babysit Heather in the van. It had cost her $20.

"How old is Heather now?" Cinnamon asked suddenly.

"... She'll be a year next month," Patti answered, biting her lip.

David quickly changed the subject. "Where did you find the doughnuts? Were they under the bed for the last thousand years?"

"Hundred," Patti said.

"Get your digits righta"or don't get them at all," Cinnamon said.

"My digit's fine," he said. "Want to see it?"

Newell shook his head. The guy was always thinking about s.e.x; he was steeped in it, and he censored nothing for his daughter.

Cinnamon was persistent. "I wanted to ask you some questions about the baby," she said to Patti. "I never get to talk to you."

Patti said nothing.

"I don't even know what the kid looks like."

"Like a t.u.r.d," Patti answered.

"Doesn't she look like the father?"

"She doesn't look like anybody; she looks like a baby. All babies look the same."

"Who's the father?" Cinnamon asked.

"She told me she was dating Doug ona"" David cut in.

Patti said nothing and stared down at the table.

Again, David changed the subject, back to Betsy Stubbs, who "said she was pregnant, but then she said she had a miscarriage. She said she threw up the baby. I told her if that was true, you got a major physical problem.... She's that stupid. . . ."

Patti brightened. "Honest to G.o.d, I'm beginning to think she's a lesbian!"

"She does," David said. "She follows Patti into the bathroom."

"I'm really scared to undress in front of hera""

"Well, you undressed in front of somebody," Cinnamon shot out. "And I'm curious. This is driving me crazy. Who is the father, Patti?"

Patti refused to discuss Heather's parentage. It was "too upsetting."

David started to chime in with his guess, but Patti stopped him. "Be careful. I don't want you to tell her."

Patti turned away and bent her head near Krystal's as David talked. "He's still living at home with his momma and daddy and he drives a Trans-Am or Firebird," David continued. "I've seen him once and he's about as intelligent as a grapefruit. He's got real, real curly hair, not like anybody I see here. Greek kind of looking."

Heather's hair was red, David said. "And you and her," he said, pointing to Krystal, "you guys have, you know, my color of skin, and this kid you can see almost through to the bonea"just like her [indicating Patti]."

Cinnamon knew who the baby's father was. They all knew.

This time, Cinnamon allowed David to change the subject. For the next twenty minutes, they talked aimlessly. Newell waited impatiently. Why was she holding back? He didn't care about records or watches or Betsy Stubbs's latest peccadillo or why David preferred Perrier. David was offering Cinnamon more and more presents. Both he and Patti were being most gracious and generous.

They laughed, and Newell could hear David and Patti relaxing, a.s.sured that Cinnamon wasn't going to push this thing after all.

Abruptly, Cinnamon turned to Patti. "Soa"did Daddy discuss with you what we talked about last visiting?"

Patti stopped in mid-laugh and answered slowly, "And I told him and he told you."

"He did not tell me anything."

"That I'd trade?"

"I want to know what you think about it," Cinnamon said.

Patti was apathetic. "If that's what you want to do."

"We could walk on the Twilight Zone or something," Cinnamon said sharply. The idea was ridiculous, yet both Patti and her father seemed to think you could just shuffle prisoners around w.i.l.l.y-nilly.

"The only thing," David pointed out, "you would have to still do what you've always done. You don't remember anything and she'll come forth with her story and clear you."

"But will she tell the truth?"

"She'll tell them whatever she wants to tell them."

"Are you going to tell them the truth?" Cinnamon asked.

"What's the truth? I'm, I'ma""

David ignored Patti's question and drilled Cinnamon. "The thing is you don't know the truth. You don't know what happened. Stay the way you did from the day you got here. You don't remembera""

"So you're going to tell them the truth?"

David explained that Cinnamon was not to remember, because Patti was the one who knew everything. "She did it. That's how come you don't know."

Patti saw a flaw. "Then they'll ask me why did she take the pills."

"You gave them to her," David instructed.

"She didn't give them to me," Cinnamon argued.

"However you want to do it, I'll do it," Patti offered.

"Just tell them the truth," Cinnamon repeated for the tenth time.

What was David up to? Newell tried to follow the conversational volleys. David was reconstructing history. And Patti was allowing him to serve her up on a plate. Why?

And then the whole plan changed.

"There's nothing to tell them," Patti said.

"None of us remember a whole lot," David agreed.

Cinnamon was incredulous. You could hear it in her voice. "You don't remember a whole lot of what happened that night? Even Grandpa knows."

Cinnamon began to pepper her father and Patti with questions.

How many gunshots?

Who shot the gun?

You had me write that note. Why?

Both David and Patti were suddenly seized by a hazy kind of amnesia. They were stonewalling Cinnamon. David thought maybe Larry or Alan had broken in. Patti could not remember the tiger tapestry in her room. "I can't think of tapestrya"I'm thinking Tupperware. I don't know. . . . Believeme,ifIwastoremember,I'dcomehereandtalkto you."

Cinnamon stared at her visitors with incomprehension. They had come up to Ventura with their stupid plot to play switcheroo, and now, suddenly, their minds had gone blank. Neither remembered more than their own names.

"You don't remember anything said at the house or when we were in the van or anything?"

"The van?" Patti asked vacantly.

"Oh, now you're going to say, 'What van?' Right?"