Free Rag and Bone by Michael Nava Page A

señor, quiero cerrar. ” Finally, she came out from behind the counter, went to the door and was about to turn the sign from OPEN to CLOSED, when I found the ticket and waved it in her face. Grudgingly, she grabbed it out of my hand, went back around the counter and through a door that led into the dark recesses of the store. When she returned, she opened her palm. I saw the glint of gold and then I woke up.

6.
    I GOT OUT OF BED filled with energy, and after breakfast went into my office for the first time since the heart attack. I turned on the computer and spent a couple of hours organizing my calendar, which showed about twenty appeals in various stages of progress. On most I was either waiting for oral argument to be scheduled or for an opinion to be filed. Fortunately, as it turned out, just before the heart attack I had been trying to clear the decks for a death penalty appeal with a ten-thousand-page transcript. The handful of trial court matters left on my docket I could either continue or hand off to other lawyers. When I finished working out my calendar, I saw the disk with the judicial application that Inez had brought me and copied it onto my hard drive. The application ran to ten pages, with almost a hundred questions, many of which, in typical legal fashion, had subpart piled upon subpart. The bar exam had been less complicated. The first question was easy enough, though: applicant’s name.
    I had worked on the application for nearly an hour when the phone rang in the kitchen. I let the machine take the call, but when my office line rang, I picked it up.
    “Law offices.”
    “Henry? Is that you?”
    “Hi, Elena. Did you just call on the other line?”
    “Yes, when you didn’t answer, I called this number. Are you working?” she asked with a note of concern in her voice.
    “A little.”
    “Is that wise?”
    “I’m not doing any heavy lifting. How are you?”
    “I heard from Vicky.”
    “She called?”
    “She wrote me a letter,” Elena replied. “She said her husband found out she was staying with me and that’s why she left. She apologized for taking the money and she returned the credit card.”
    “Did she use it?”
    “I haven’t called to check.”
    “Where’s the letter postmarked from?”
    There was a pause, a rattle of papers. “San Francisco.”
    “Well, at least you know she’s still up there.”
    “Do you have any ideas about how I can find her?”
    “She’s not missing, she’s hiding. She doesn’t want to be found.” An alarm went off in my head. “She said her husband learned she was staying with you. Did she tell you how?”
    “No,” Elena replied. She was silent for a moment. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she told him.”
    That tallied with my assumption. “Maybe she’s gone back to him and she’s ashamed to tell you.”
    “I doubt that my disapproval means much to her,” she said. “If she was with Pete, she would have said so in her letter. I think she was struggling with what to do, and in a moment of weakness, called him and told him to come get her and Angel, but then changed her mind and ran. Well, at least I know she didn’t leave because she was mad at me. I’ve got to talk to her.”
    “What can you do for her that she can’t do for herself?”
    “Persuade her to do what you suggested and call his parole officer or, if that doesn’t work, get a restraining order.”
    “What’s going to restrain her if she changes her mind again?”
    Exasperated, she said, “Henry, she needs help. She may not accept it from me, but she’s certainly not going to get any out there on the streets and neither is Angelito.” She paused. “Do you think I should call the police?”
    “She’s not missing and she’s not the victim of a crime,” I said. “They won’t be interested.”
    “He beat her,” she reminded me.
    “And she didn’t report it,” I said. “They’re not going to pick him up on a stale complaint. Did she mention a friend or someone