Grave on Grand Avenue (16 page)

“Ellie, you can’t cook.”

“But I have money.”

“Don’t worry about it. But this helps. Just talking to you.”

“Have you told anyone else yet? I mean, other than relatives.”

Benjamin is silent, so I know he hasn’t. Except for me.

“I remember when I first found out my mom had cancer,” I tell him. “I couldn’t believe it. I mean, she was supposed to always be around for me.”

It was before college and the Fearsome Foursome. It had been around the time that my college applications were due. My high school friends hadn’t known how to deal with it. So, for the worst months—the months of operations and chemotherapy—I felt alone. Noah was still in elementary school, so most of the babysitting duties were on me. He was the one who would ask me, as we watched Mom’s hair fall out and heard her throwing up in the master bathroom,
Is Mom going to die?
So, at seventeen, I had to put on a fake happy face and say, “What, you idiot? Mom’s not going to die. She’s going to be torturing us forever.” My mother put on a brave face because she didn’t want it to affect my grades or my essays. But how could it not? I’d had good grades, had considered applying to Ivy League schools or maybe Stanford or Berkeley, but I changed my mind when all that was going on. Both my parents argued with me, but I wouldn’t back down. Pan Pacific West, a reputable liberal arts school only a few miles away, was good enough. Noah didn’t say anything at the time, but I know that he was relieved to hear I’d be sticking around. He was only ten years old at the time.

“I’m glad that we can still talk,” Benjamin says now. “After everything.”

“Listen, when all is said and done”—I take a deep, deep breath—“we are friends, Benjamin. Nothing is going to change that.”

“Oh, the family’s all here. I gotta go,” he says.

“Tell your mom Happy Mother’s Day, for me, okay? And that I know that she’ll pull through this.”

“Thanks, El.” Benjamin’s voice cracks and then our conversation ends.

I sit in the Green Mile for a while, next to the vacuum hoses, curved like elephant trunks.

In terms of my love life, there’s my pre-Benjamin phase and my just plain Benjamin phase. During my pre-Benjamin, I dated my share of guys in high school. Nothing hot and heavy. Dances, football games, group events. But I noticed a trend: when I wasn’t that interested, it seemed that they always were. I had that conversation several times.
You know, let’s just be friends. I value our friendship too much to mess with it
. Blah, blah, blah.

I hated those talks most because they were lies. It wasn’t that I deeply valued my friendship with these guys; it was that I didn’t like them in that way. I couldn’t imagine myself kissing them (yuck!), holding their hands, or having their arms around me. Absolutely no chemistry.

On the flip side, I did have my share of unrequited crushes. You know, the kind when your whole body flushes when you see
that guy
? Your body temperature goes up about fifty degrees. You imagine kissing their face, their lips, their neck, and having them ravish you. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, that’s as far as any of those ever went. Just in my head.

With Benjamin, though, there had been immediate attraction on both sides for once. I was into his casual messy style. The longish hair. The slight afternoon shadow—well, as much as a Korean guy could have—on his unshaven face. He didn’t talk a lot. He was perfectly comfortable with moments of
silence, and I became comfortable with them, too. We didn’t have to entertain each other, be on our best behavior. I could burp and fart and wear no makeup. He honestly didn’t care. I loved how easy our relationship was, at least until I graduated early and entered the Police Academy. Then it became . . . less easy. More moments of nagging, on both our parts, accusations, arguments. A whole lot of drama. Our breakup had been messy, but after all that drama, in a way it was a real relief by the end.

I finally shake myself out of my reverie and start to clean out the interior of the car. I throw away all the balled-up fast-food wrappers and containers. I attempt to suck out all the dirt with the gas station’s vacuum cleaner, and a strange rattling noise emanates from the hose. I turn off the vacuum and take a closer look at the backseat floor. There are a bunch of rusty screws all over the place.
What the heck?
What was Fernandes doing in here?

Whatever
. This day has been too complicated already, and I’m in the mood for a simple reward. I feel an urge for sugar. Pure sugar. After I finish vacuuming, I go into the car wash and get a big bag of gummy bears. I go back to the Green Mile and eat every single dang
one.

EIGHT

The next day, I’m at the station all day. Since I’ve gotten a reputation for being able to write and edit police reports, Captain Randle has tapped me to go through some other officers’ reports that need work. Arresting suspects is only part of our job; we also need convictions. Of course, those are the responsibility of the DA’s office, but we don’t want a shoddy report to be the reason why a perp gets off on a charge.

We learned things at the academy I hadn’t expected. Sure, there’s firearms training and all the physical stuff, including getting tased (hurts like hell when you get zapped, but when it’s over, it’s like it never happened. Pepper spray, now, that’s altogether different; the burning sensation can last for a couple of days). Also on our academy training schedule were Spanish and report writing classes (both of which I aced). My ability to craft solid reports, understandable to a regular layperson
on a jury, is being talked about. So much so that even veteran detectives have asked me to proofread what they’ve written.

A little before noon, I get a call. Not on my personal phone, but at the station.

“Hello, Ellie.”

I can recognize that voice anywhere. “Ah, hi, Aunt Cheryl. I mean, Chief Toma.”

“I was hoping to see you. Time for lunch?”

I’ve stacked some finished files on Captain Randle’s desk. He won’t refuse me a lunch break.

“Ah, sure.” I expect her to suggest the Metro Club, a fancy-schmancy place where the city’s power brokers hang out. Not too excited about that prospect because I always feel like a dork there in my bicycle shorts and messy bun.

She surprises me by suggesting the Japanese garden at the community center in Little Tokyo. “I’ll pick up a couple of bentos,” she tells me. “Broiled salmon okay?”

I bike over to the center and carry my bicycle down the stairs of the building. I’ve always called this place my “secret garden” because I first visited it with my parents after I read Frances Hodgson Burnett’s book about the poor little rich girl who discovers a secret garden in her uncle’s house. Except instead of roses, this garden has sculpted pine trees and a stream that travels down three terraces.

Since it’s located at basement level, the garden is not readily visible. Only locals, or visitors who have read about it online, know where it is, and around lunchtime on a weekday, it’s absolutely empty except for my aunt, who’s sitting in the shade by a bamboo grove. The plastic bento boxes are laid on napkins. Aunt Cheryl, in fact, is also sitting on a napkin and there’s one spread out for me, too.

“How much do I owe you?” I go for my wallet in my shorts and Aunt Cheryl waves me off. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

The man-made stream and pond glisten in the distance. We eat in silence for a while, our disposable wooden chopsticks digging into sections of the grilled salmon, stewed carrots and taro, crunchy bright yellow pickled daikon and sticky rice decorated with black sesame seeds.

“I wanted to talk to you about Pascoal Fernandes,” Aunt Cheryl finally says. Our clandestine location for lunch suddenly makes sense. My mysterious grandfather is not only my secret; he’s also hers.

I swallow a mouthful of food.

“He gave me a phone number and address in San Bernardino, but the man who lives there says that he hasn’t heard from him in more than a week. The taxi on Mother’s Day dropped Fernandes off on a corner in North Hollywood, but there’s nothing really there.”

“You mean you don’t know where he is.”

Aunt Cheryl nods. “I’ve been doing some independent research. Pascoal Fernandes was arrested in 1964 for being an accessory to a bank robbery in North Hollywood. He was sentenced to seven years in prison, got out in five. But other than that, nothing. Not even a traffic ticket over the past fifty years.”

“Well, he did say that he’s been in and out of the country, working on a container ship.”

“Do you believe what he says? This man, a convicted felon, who just appeared out of nowhere?”

I hadn’t really thought about that.

“If he was working on a ship, what kind of ship was it? What was it transporting? Are you getting my drift, Ellie?”

“Are you saying that he might be a pirate or something?”

“Maybe nothing so extreme. It’s just that we don’t know. I’ve done all I can on my end without raising suspicions. I can’t keep accessing records like this without cause. I need your help, Ellie. I need you to find him. Because Pascoal Fernandes is as much your problem as mine.”

“How is he your problem at all? You don’t have anything to do with Fernandes,” I protest. “It’s not like you’re a blood relative or anything.”

“He’s still connected to me, whether I like it or not. He’s connected to me. My critics look for anything that can be used to undermine my credibility. News that my brother-in-law’s father is a convicted felon could be dangerous ammo in the wrong hands. I just want to find out what I’m up against. Before they do.”

I ball up a napkin in my fist.

“Do you get what I’m saying, Ellie?”

I do, but I’m not happy about it. After my meal with Aunt Cheryl, I tell myself to avoid having work lunches with her in the future. Nothing good really comes from them, only more stress. What can I possibly find out about Puddy Fernandes that Aunt Cheryl hasn’t found out already? She’s the assistant chief and had ties to the FBI fingerprint database and LAPD mug shot files. What more can I bring to the mix?

*   *   *

The next day, I ride my personal bike to work; not something I do often, but I have extra energy to burn off. Sometimes it’s good for me to see things as a regular civilian bicyclist does: like how cars get ridiculously close and how drivers even sometimes yell obscenities for no reason, just mad at
the world, I guess. My bike is old, from high school. I’m not like Johnny with the latest bicycles—he has more than a dozen, including BMX racing and mountain bikes. He brags that he’s spent more than twenty grand on his bicycles. I just think to myself,
Dude, you could have put a down payment on a condo with that much dough.

I’m doing outreach today with various tenants’ groups, and I meet with Mrs. Clark, whom I’ve known since I first started my job with the Bicycle Coordination Unit. She thought she was getting a raw deal when I was first assigned to her group, but although it’s taken a good six months, she’s gotten used to me. And I, to her. She’s prickly, but I’ve grown fond of her, and she gets that I care about her, her grandchildren, her neighborhood. She used to always wear her hair relaxed, but she’s gone natural and wears it in a halo of salt-and-pepper ringlets. It becomes her, and I tell her so when I enter her home, just a few blocks east of Staples Center.

Her bungalow is similar to ones in Eagle Rock and Pasadena. It has a sturdy porch outside, and inside are plenty of built-ins like dish cabinets and bookcases, lined with photos everywhere. There are photos in standing frames on the fireplace mantel and shelves. Photos arranged underneath various oval and rectangular cutouts. Photo magnets on her refrigerator door. Framed photos hung in the doorway. Most of the photos are of her grandchildren and late husband. Very few are of her daughter, although a prominent one does feature the daughter, her children and their father. A much, much happier time.

The LAPD is a cosponsor for an upcoming health and children’s fair that will be taking place at a local community center. Although Mrs. Clark has been able to get tons of sponsors, nobody wants to actually help plan the thing.

“It’s the first one,” I tell her, remembering other outreach events I’ve helped launch. “Maybe people just need to find out what it’s all about.”

“Nobody wants to work together unless something bad happens. Then everyone gets riled up.”

We plan to pass out children’s fingerprint identification kits to families, but it turns out that some parents are resistant to participate. All of the reluctant ones happen to be Spanish-speaking, so we jump to the conclusion that they may suspect the information will be used against them in some way.

“I’m actually trying to learn some Spanish,” Mrs. Clark tells me.

I’m surprised. She’s been the most vocal complainant about things like store signs that are only in Spanish.

“You know, Spanish was my major in college,” I tell her. “I can recommend some good language books if you want.”

“No need. I’m not much of a book person. I’ve been watching Spanish TV. Actually the Lakers were so bad this season that they looked better on the Spanish channel. Hey, I’m even starting to watch soccer!”

We both laugh and her granddaughter walks into the living room from her nap. There are creases on her face and her eyelashes are clumped together from wake-up tears. I remember how when I first met her, she was so scared of me in my uniform, with my holster and my club. Now she views me like an aunt or older sister and stumbles toward me to give me a hug.
This is how it should be,
I think.

After leaving Mrs. Clark, I visit a couple more tenant representatives and attend a neighborhood meeting at a school. Teenagers like my bike. They often want to ride it, but I have
to tell them they can’t. The last thing I need is someone circulating a cell phone photo of a kid with a possible gang affiliation on an LAPD bike. Officer Marc Haines, who’s now working with Media Relations, would definitely be on my case for that.

Throughout the day, I check my phone. Benjamin’s mother is still in ICU. Mrs. Choi has always been sweet to me, always giving me little gifts of candy and cakes. After living in Brazil for a couple of decades, her Portuguese is better than her English, so our conversations were usually a mix of Spanish and Portuguese. Now, finding out that I’m actually part Portuguese, I wish that I had learned more of the language from her.