Lullaby Town (1992) (7 page)

"Okay. Thanks."

"I really broke my ass to find this stuff. Christ, I had it in storage in Glendale and I was two hours in traffic. You gonna tell Peter? You gonna tell Peter that I came through?" Peter making a little flipping gesture with his drink. Fuck'm.

"Sure, Oscar. I'll tell him."

Oscar said, "Oh, man." Excited at the possibilities.

I said, "Hey, Oscar? Thanks. I appreciate it."

Oscar Curtiss laughed. "Yeah, your thanks and appreciation won't buy dick. Just tell Peter, okay? This town, you're on Peter's team, you're made."

"You bet, Oscar. Made." Fuck'm.

I hung up.

At nine-forty that morning, I looped down Mul-holland to the Cahuenga Pass, then followed the pass down to Franklin Avenue and across the northern parto f Hollywood to Beechwood Canyon. Beechwood Canyon starts high, just beneath the Hollywood sign, and winds its way down to Franklin at the bottom of the Hollywood Hills. There is a school at the bottom and a gas station and a lot of large apartment houses that used to be small apartment houses and don't look as nice large as they did small. Urban redevelopment. Between the big places sat small stucco bungalows that were neat and pretty and still managed to look like garages. The higher up the mountain you went, the more you saw of the bungalows and the less you saw of the developers. was four narrow green stucco apartments stepping up the side of the hill in a line from the street, each one higher than the one in front. Cement steps went up along the left side, the steps cracked and uneven where a couple of ancient yucca trees had lifted them. The front apartment had a little porch with wooden wind chimes and lots of little cactuses in old clay pots that were painted the way maybe Indians would paint them, only the paint was chipped and faded just like the apartments. Four big century plants nested at the street, overgrown with the silver weeds you always see around them. All of it looked clean and all of it looked tended to, but only partway, as if whoever did it couldn't quite get the high spots and couldn't quite get in the corners and couldn't quite get all the grime or the weeds or the litter out. There was no driveway and no garage. Curb parking only.

I drove past, turned around, and parked the Corvette on the steep grade across the street, then went up onto the little porch. The door opened before I could knock and a woman in her seventies looked out past three security chains. She was wearing a paisleyh ousecoat. She said, "Can I help you?" high and hard, like maybe if she didn't like my answer the sort of help she'd give me was the LAPD's Metro Squad.

I showed her the license. "About ten years ago a woman named Karen Shipley Nelsen lived here with a baby. I'm trying to find her. Do you have a few minutes to talk?"

She stared at the license, then at me. "How do I know that's you?"

I took out my driver's license so she could see the picture. Outside on the street a very tall white man and a short, slender Hispanic man walked past. The white guy was bald and wore a tie-dyed dashiki like people used to wear in 1969. The Hispanic guy combed his hair straight back and traced his hand along the lines of the Corvette as they went past. The woman squinted from the picture to the guys on the street, then to me, and said, "That your car?"

I said it was.

She nodded once, knowing. "You'd better watch after it. That little sonofabitch will steal it."

I said I would keep an eye out.

She craned around to watch the two guys on the street until she couldn't see them anymore, then she closed the door and unlatched the chains and opened it wider. "My name is Miriam Dichester. You can come in, but I think we'll leave this door open."

"Sure."

The living room was small and musty, with gray lace drapes and an ancient RCA black-and-white console television and a deep purple wingback couch with crocheted doilies on the arms. A long time ago the doilies had been white. The drapes had probably been white, too. Very old movie magazines sat in neat stacks on either side of the couch, and on the console televisionw ere framed photographs of Clark Gable and Walter Brennan and Ward Bond. The picture of Ward Bond was autographed. Ashtrays sprouted from the furniture like mushrooms and an open carton of Kent 100s sat on the coffee table. The air was sour with cigarettes and perspiration and Noxema skin cream.

Miriam Dichester took a single cigarette and a little blue Cricket lighter from her housecoat and fired up. I sat on the couch. She sat on a Morris chair. I hadn't seen a Morris chair in years. She said, "I watch the street out here and I know. These days, you better watch. That's why I have my place down here by the front. I can keep an eye on anything that comes up that walk." She waved the cigarette at the little broken walk that went up alongside the building. "Anything I don't like goes up there, I know about it. I got a little something to take care of it, too."

I showed her the 8 x 10. This is Karen Shipley. Her son's name was Toby."

"I know who you're talking about."

I put the picture away. "Do you know how I can get in touch with her?"

"No, I do not." She sucked more of the Kent, looking down the flat planes of her face at me. "I take care of my people. I guess I take care of them even when they don't live with me anymore."

I said, "She's not looking at trouble here, Miriam. The ex-husband hasn't seen her or the boy since they were divorced, and he's feeling pretty bad about it. He wants a shot at knowing his son."

She breathed in the rest of the Kent, then crushed it out. Three puffs, and she had drawn through 100 millimeters down to the filter. She said, "I don't like this. A woman gets dumped, then the sonofabitch who dumps her wants to come back to stir the pot again.

And I'll bet you a high hand to heaven I know what he wants to stir it with, too."

I gave her a little shrug. "They're adults, Miriam, they can work that out The boy isn't. He's about twelve now and he's never met his father."

She pursed the wrinkled mouth. She was wearing only the upper teeth. The lowers were in a glass by the telephone. She finally took out another Kent and lit up. Succumbing to the inevitable. "She lived with me for almost a year. She lived in number two, that's the one right behind."

"Okay."

"She wanted to be an actress. A lot of them come out here wanting that" She looked at the picture of Ward Bond and drew heavy on the Kent "Only it wasn't happening."

"She tried, though. She'd ask me to mind the baby so she could go out on readings, and I would, and for a while she worked at one of these carhop places, and I minded the baby then, too. She was good about it. She didn't abuse." Miriam leaned past me and peered out the open door. The flash of a bird. A passing car.

"How long did that last?"

Two months. Maybe three." She leaned back as if whatever had caught her eye was gone. "I heard her crying one day and I went to see. She said she couldn't keep on like she was going. She said she had the baby. She said there had to be a way to make a life for herself. She was very serious about it She talked about going to school."

I thought of the Karen Shipley I had seen on the tape. Giggle. Do I havta, Peter? Giggle. "Did she enroll?"

Miriam Dichester shook her head and finished off another Kent. "She didn't have the money. And what was she going to do with the baby?"

"Did she have friends? Boyfriends, maybe." As soon as the one Kent was dead, she fired up another.

"No. She was alone. Just her and the baby. Not even any family to go to. After a while she didn't even leave the apartment. She just sat there, a young girl like that. Then she moved out."

"She tell you where she was going?"

"She didn't say nothing when she moved out. She just up and left, owing me three months' back rent."

She leaned forward again to look out the door. This time when she looked, I looked with her. It was catching. I said, "You seem to like her."

"I do."

"Even though she stiffed you on the rent."

She waved the cigarette at me. "She paid it back. Couple of years later I got a letter. There was a U. S. postal money order in it for every nickel and the interest, too. How many people you know would do that?"

"A couple."

"Then all right. There was a little note in there apologizing and saying she hoped I wouldn't think bad of her for what she did but it couldn't be helped."

"You like her a lot."

Another nod. More of the Kent.

"You keep the letter?"

She said, "Oh, Lord, I got so much stuff scattered around."

"Maybe you could take a look."

She squinted out past the drapes to the street. "I go digging around in the back, I can't see the front."

"I'll watch the front for you."

"That little sonofabitch is looking to steal something, mark my words. They're coming back."

"I'll watch. I'm good at watching." I tapped my cheek under my right eye. Watchful.

She nodded and bustled over to a little secretary that was against the wall near where the living room L'd into the dining room. Three small drawers were fit across the top of the secretary, and she opened them one by one, looking through pens and pencils and note cards and small envelopes and photographs and a crushed flower and newspaper clippings that looked, from across the room, like obituary columns, and things that might've been forty years old. Precious things. She rustled around in it for a while, talking to me but really talking to herself, saying how she'd have to clean the place up, saving that she started to last week but then someone named Edna called and that had been that, no one ever calls until you're about to do something. She went through the drawers and she came up with a small white envelope that had been torn along the top edge. It had been in the little drawer for so long that the ragged tears were crushed flat and smooth and the paper was dingy. She took out a single sheet of folded yellow notepaper and read it and then showed it to me. It was exactly as Miriam Dichester had said it was, Karen apologizing for leaving while still owing money, saying she hoped Miriam hadn't experienced a hardship because of it, saying a check had been enclosed to pay Miriam back in full, including 6^% interest, and that she appreciated the kindness and friendship that Miriam had shown her and her son while they had lived with her. There was no return address and no hotel letterhead and no mention of where Karen was or where she was going. The envelope was postmarked Chelam, CT.

Miriam said, "Does it help?" I nodded. "It's more than I had before." She said, "You find them, you do right by them, hear?"

"That's my intention."

"Well, you know what they say about that, don't you?"

"No. What do they say?"

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

When we were in the door the tall white man and the shorter Hispanic man were walking down the street in the other direction. She said, "You see. I told you they'd be back."

"Maybe they live down the hill. Maybe they're just out for a walk."

"My dying ass." She was a pleasant old gal. "Mark my words, that little sonofabitch is out to steal something."

I thanked her and gave her one of my cards in case she remembered anything else, and then I went out to the Corvette. A hundred yards down the street, the white guy and the Hispanic guy were using a two-foot steel shim to pop the door on a white 1991 Toyota Supra.

I yelled and ran after them, but by the time I got there they were gone.

Two hours and ten minutes later I was on a United Airlines L-1011 as it punched its way up through the haze layer and climbed out over the Pacific. The air was slick and clear and, below us, the red of the mountains and the desert and the gray of the ocean looked clean and warm. It was your basic outstanding Southern California afternoon. The people around me were relaxed and pleasant, and the flight attendant had a deep tan and when her smile was wide enough she dimpled. She was from Long Beach. Outstanding.

Five and one half hours later we landed at Kennedy airport beneath an overcast layer so thick and so dark that it looked like casket lining. Unseasonal cold snap, the papers had said. Arctic air down through Canada,t hey'd said. First snow of the season. I had brought a brown leather Navy G-2 jacket and a couple of sweaters and a pair of black leather gloves. It wasn't enough, even for standing around in the terminal.

While I waited for my suitcase at the baggage carousel, three different guys asked if they could borrow cab fere and another wanted to know if I'd found Jesus. An airport security cop arrested a pickpocket. The air smelled like burning rubber. A woman with a baby told me she didn't have enough money to feed her child. I gave her fifty cents and felt like I'd been taken. Maybe I looked like a tourist I frowned and looked sullen and tried to make like a native. That seemed to work. I got a couple of road maps and a metallic-blue Taurus from Hertz and drove over to the Kennedy Hilton and took a room for the night. Dining-room service was slow and the food was bad and the hostess in the bar had an attitude. A guy on the radio said that the cold air was going to keep pushing down from Canada and that maybe we'd get some more snow. The room cost two hundred a night and nobody had deep tans and dimples. This was my fourth time visiting New York in eleven years. Nothing much had changed.