The Concrete River (8 page)

“Sure, I know.”

As far as Liffey knew, nobody imported them back then, the bored-out engines couldn't make the smog regulations. They were brought in special order and modified at great expense.

“It's all black, black chrome, and blacked out glass. Do you ever see anything like that around town here?”

The boy shook his head. “You kidding? Only Nigger dope dealers drive that thing.”

“Say black men. For me. Some yuppies have them, too, and others.” It had been in the lot outside his office before he ran into the Cowboy and it had been gone when he came down. And he remembered seeing it the morning of the break-in. “Keep your eye out and see if you can find out who has one.”

“Is this about my mom?”

“It might be.”

“I get the C-60 Locos to find it, man. We blow him away.”

“I said ‘might’. Don't spook him. Just find out who it is. Let's talk to your grandma.”

Senora Schuler was in the kitchen, spreading masa with her hands on a large sheet of plywood. Her eyes were red rimmed and she greeted him with great dignity. Immediately she washed her hands and offered him coffee. He could see it was not in her nature to chat with him in the kitchen, as a Midwest farm wife might have. She would have felt it rude, so he waited with the boy on the worn brocade sofa. The room had been tidied since the relatives and police had gone, but it looked even more cluttered, with every space taken up by something, photos, china, a crucifix, a book. It gave him an odd feeling of rigidity, like a world that would never have room for something new.

She brought a brass tray with coffee and sugar-cookies.

“She wants to thank you for coming back,” the boy translated. “And she wants to hire you to find who killed mama. She doesn't think the police will try very hard.”

“Does she have some reason for thinking that?”

“Does she need to?”

That was the boy's reply, a twelve-year-old's world-size cynicism, and it might have masked an infinity of real issues.

“Ask her, please.”

The woman flicked her eyebrows once and poured out the coffee. “She spoke for a while. She has a feeling, she says. Ahm… the cop who is half Mexican isn't very honest. And the other doesn't count.”

“Is she just judging on her experience of the Hermosillo police? Or does she have a reason for disliking Lt. Zuniga?”

She stared at the carpet for a long time.

“She says he took things without asking. Something from under the bed and some papers from mama's drawer.” The boy indicated the chest built into the wall with a mirror over it, a kind of sideboard. “It was her desk.”

The coffee was strong and good. He would have to spend some time going through what was left in the drawer, but presumably if there was something interesting, it was in a manila folder on Zuniga's desk. What did people keep under the bed?

“Grandma owns land in a village outside Hermosillo. If a lot of money is necessary to pay you, she can sell the land and get it.”

“I've already hired myself.” He smiled. “Remember, I'm
simpatico
. How big was the thing that was under the bed?”

The old woman shrugged. She made hand gestures that indicated it could have been anything from a missing earring to a smallish book. He made a mental note to look under all the beds and under the stuffed furniture.

He drank up and asked permission to look over the house himself and use the phone.

A dial phone was in a built-in plastered alcove in the hall. He hadn't seen a dial in years. “Art Castro, please.”

Castro was a real detective, in a big agency with a secretary and a lot of electronic toys. Rosewood Agency, home office Cincinnati, where they once supplied strikebreakers to all the bigger robber barons. They even had a big eye painted on the door.

“May I tell him who's calling?”

“No.”

He had no secrets, he just hated the formula, and she probably made him listen to the elevator music longer than normal on account of it.

“Hello, who is this?”

“This is Jack Liffey, Art.”

“Next time why don't you give your name. You got Ellen really steamed.”

“It's good for her. Besides, I don't want you being out to old friends.”

There was an electronic squawk. “This is Art Castro's voice mail. Please leave a message.”

“I swear to god, Art, if you've actually punched me over to voice mail, I'll come down there and make you eat the telephone.”

“Just a joke, Jack. Lighten up.” Over the phone, there was a sudden rattle of tinny machine gun fire, then an ambulance siren, finally a fart. “Somebody gave me this battery thing from a funny store.”

Liffey described the Cowboy and his pal in detail, and the car. “You know anybody like that on the east side?”

“Jeez, the east side of what? What's in it for me?”

“Maybe I can get you a sublease on the case. There seems to be some money here. You don't have to catch these guys, just identify them.”

“Man, I can tell there's something there to be afraid of and you don't care if I'm afraid or not.”

“Hell, Art, you got all the troops. When the going gets tough, the tough get toys.”

“East side, huh? The
gabacho
cowboy sounds more like Canyon Country. But, okay, I'll ask a couple gentlemen I know. Know anything about the license plate?”

“I don't even know if it had one. I don't think there was one in front, where I saw, but I wasn't paying attention.”

“That's how you get hurt, my friend.”

“You get hurt being a wiseass. I'll be in touch.”

Of course he should have noticed the license plate. And the guy should have been looking up when the meteor came in low, too. You couldn't watch everything. It was only in the movies that the detective noticed the patch of red dust on the lounger's boots. The rest of the guys were busy watching women with big breasts or somebody in a flashy shirt or a beautiful blue sky. Maybe he'd always be an out-of-work technical writer.

The drawer, actually two drawers, didn't help much. One was all bills and receipts, as if she had been saving up to file a Schedule C. Electricity, cable TV, gas, lots of grocery bills, phone. He set the phone bills aside, made sure all the recent ones were there, in case he wanted to look over the long distance numbers later. The other drawer was a tidy school desk, with class notes in spiral books and some loose papers in a Pee-Chee. They still made Pee-Chees, he thought with wonder, with the same sprinter heading for the tape. And still a white guy, the sprinter, as if the artist had never seen a real track meet.

History of Religion. Historiography. Twentieth Century American. Russian. Europe after 1400. Labor History. Pre-Columbian Americas. And some other subjects, English Literature and Drama. Sociology. Anthropology. What was the difference between sociology and anthropology? The lives of white people, the lives of dark people? Her notes were all in a tidy hand and all in complete sentences.

Under Tony's bed there was a dog-toy, a knot of leather like a bone, nothing under the other one. There were only the two bedrooms.

When he was done, Tony was gone. Senora Beltran had retreated to the kitchen where she was wrapping masa in corn husks and he said goodbye. She held up one hand, as if she wanted to say something. They were both frustrated by the languages. Why had he always put off learning Spanish? Why had he taken Latin in high school?
Latin!
So now he could talk to old priests and read prescriptions.

“Take very careful,” she said.

“
Si, cuidado. Gracias
,” he said. He hadn't told her about the snake.

*

Fifteen minutes later he was peering in the glass door at the Catholic Liberation House, at all the empty desks in the storefront. The only person there was the earnest kid in the Pendleton, typing with two fingers like a cop. Most of the dismembered car in the street had been hauled away, though the seats and part of the dash had been left attached to the chassis for some reason, like the setup for a cheap play.

“Eleanor Ong here?” The last name, as if there were a lot of other Eleanors he might be asking about. Jack Liffey noticed that the cops had been. All the drawers of Consuela Beltran's desk had been sealed up with yellow tape.

“She's in the kitchen.” The boy nodded to the inner door and Liffey thought he sensed the boy's irritation. He went in to find an untidy hallway, bikes, coats on pegs, an aluminum walker. He guessed left and found an equally untidy kitchen.

“You shouldn't see this,” she said.
This
was the fact she was frying slices of Oscar Mayer baloney.

He was surprised, by the baloney and the getup. Since she'd worn a gypsy dress the first time, he expected her to be in something like that always, but she wore a tight green leotard and black jeans. She was thinner than he remembered, but that might have been the contrast to Marlena. It wasn't a value judgment, even deep in his head. Marlena's body had been a lot of fun. His heart was light. How was it that being attracted to one woman could make you attracted to another one at almost the same time? The way Eleanor Ong's body moved under the leotard was fabulous.

“Sometimes I slice a crumb doughnut,” he said, “and make a swiss cheese crumb doughnut sandwich.”

She laughed. “In the convent, we'd pool our mad money once in a while and buy a packet of baloney and do this. One of the sisters grew up in working class Philadelphia and apparently this is popular there. I got a real taste for it. Did you really make cheese and doughnut sandwiches?”

“No, but I thought it would make you feel better.”

She laughed again. “I love the way they curl up and you sort of push them back down until you sear a ring and then flip them over and they invert themselves like some kind of sea anemone. There must be some branch of physics that explains it.”

“Topology,” he said.

She glanced up. “Seriously?”

“It's the study of the deformation of surfaces.”

“I never know when you're serious.”

“I'm serious enough about taking you to dinner.”

“Not tonight, but maybe soon.”

Her voice had dropped a tone. She piled the baloney onto a slice of wheat bread, slapped another slice of bread on top and had a little fun with the way it resisted and tried to rise up.

“Shouldn't play with your food,” he said.

“Would you like some?”

“I'll wait for the pickle ice cream. Did Senora Beltran ever talk about the big Samson Rubber building?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Did it come up in the city council campaign?”

“Not really, but it was the ghost at the feast that you don't talk about. There's been hints about rebuilding it as an opera house for years. The Slow Growth people were probably in favor because it was a prestige project and developing it would supplant a lot of crowded Latino homes and would soak up a lot of redevelopment money that ought to go to low-cost housing. The community people were probably against it for about the same reasons. Prestige only meant prestige for the Anglo establishment in downtown L.A. Not many people here hum Figaro. Are you sure you wouldn't like something?”

“No thanks.”

She sat down at the scarred kitchen table with a glass of milk and began to eat.

“How does it stand now about the opera house?” he asked.

“I don't know. There's nothing public, just the rumors.”

“You know,” he said, “the papers say some mucky-muck opera impresario has decided to come to L.A. Maybe he knows something we don't. How strong would the opposition to the opera house be?”

“It doesn't seem to me that big an issue. Maybe it would heat up if it meant diverting a serious amount of redevelopment money. You should talk to Xavier Gallegos. He's the savviest guy in the neighborhood organization.”

“If you'll get me his number.” Cars meant nothing to her, but he described the Cowboy and what he could of the Cowboy's buddy. “Has anyone like that been around here?”

She shook her head. “Did you ask Jonathan?”

“Is that the kid out front?”

“The kid is almost twenty.”

“I sense he doesn't really want to talk to me, not since I got chummy with you, anyway.”

She took some time chewing, as if thinking about the food.

“It isn't surprising he'd be smitten,” Jack Liffey said.

“Let it go right now, Jack.”

“You did tell me you weren't still a virgin.”

“Isn't that sort of an impertinent thing to say?”

“You take pains to be an impertinent sort of woman.”

“Perhaps we'll talk about it again when you know me better.”

“I look forward to it. In the meantime, if those guys show up, please don't antagonize them. They've got a real mean streak.”

For a minute there, he'd felt an unreasoning happiness as he drove out Atlantic and crossed the straight scar of the L.A. River, heading toward Samson Rubber. He felt as if he'd fallen out of time and space. Something that he didn't want to look at too closely was cheering him up. Not looking was probably the key.

The mood frayed as he glanced off the bridge just across the river. In a waste of industrial land, a few homeless had set up an encampment of old sofas and refrigerator boxes, and in the sea of mud two enraged old men were dueling with prosthetic arms. The fluorescent pink arms with shiny pincer-hooks slammed into one another like sabers. When he stopped the car, he could hear the clack of plastic on plastic. The hairy filthy men circled one another, shouting and feinting, and he heard another blow and a bellow of pain. No one was too far gone to partake of the human condition.

He parked opposite the rubber factory, so big and tall that it was really a walled city. There were watch towers in the corners and every fifty yards, with toothy battlements all along. The walls had Babylonian warriors in relief, striding kilted into battle, or riding war chariots. It was far too big to be just an opera house. Perhaps it was meant to contain a number of theaters, maybe even enclosed parking and shops. Opera City, Opera Mall, with guards along the battlements to fire on the massed poor and other non-consumers.

Who would kill to transform the ruin? Or prevent it? It seemed ridiculous.