Nica of Los Angeles Read online

  4. The Lie Oozed Around Us

  There was only one way that I could function normally and that would be if I evicted the memory of the hall vanishing. That proved more difficult than my earlier efforts to evict concern about my seemingly psychic dream and my fantasy of Jay's demise. Still, although my imagination was an adrenaline junkie, there would surely be a logical explanation for everything. When my two newest clients returned, I would get the vanishing explained. I like to pull the plug on unhealthy thoughts and these were off life support by the time I straightened from not petting the cat. In fact, throughout the afternoon, I managed to keep my thoughts away from the vanishing, but the underlying memory of that incredible event infused my commonplace hours, like being in love while shopping at the supermarket.

  I was relieved to see Aurelio and Norma Garcia exit the elevator. Of my three pairs of prospective clients today, they were the only ones I might have expected to get. He carried a large thin book like it was an hors-d'oeuvres tray. With them was Jay's substitute custodian, now wearing crisp slacks and plaid button-down shirt.

  We made introductions. "Mr. Hernandez, thank you for coming here. I can see that your shift has ended and we are interrupting your free time."

  Hernandez sat like an iceberg awaiting a ship. It seemed like he understood when I spoke, yet he waited for the Garcia translation. His head snapped at points during it, with a nod like a rusty stapler. Yes, that's what I thought she said.

  "You work here as a substitute for Jay?" He did. "Do you know why he is not at work?" He did not. "How long will you be working here in his stead?"

  Hernandez' reply to this had numerous syllables, and Señor Garcia translated it as though he were being forced to discuss toilet habits. "He says, 'I have not been informed, but that is not any problem. Substitute custodians have no [smile] families, so do not need to know how long will they have a job.'"

  This was going well. "Do you think Karina's friend Edith is missing?"

  "I think nothing about this." Mr. Garcia translated without the original's sneer.

  "Do you think her mother should search for her?"

  This provoked a venomous barrage that Norma Garcia answered in kind. I understood zip nada zero percent of what they said. "Excuse me!" I jimmied the words in. Norma and Hernandez shut up and turned their glares on me.

  After Mr. Garcia omitted the angry words, there weren’t many left. "He says [smile] no."

  "Does Karina know where Edith is?"

  Hernandez answered for himself. "I will ask my daughter." He plucked a business card from the holder on my desk. He stood and nodded goodbye to me only.

  "Today ask her, tomorrow morning tell me what she said," I requested.

  Garcia's translation was still at mañana when Hernandez replied in English, "I will do as you suggest."

  "Excellent." I was optimistic that we had just arranged to speak without the Garcias present. I was not surprised to find that Hernandez understood English just fine. The Garcias had a control-freak vibe so I got why they wanted to 'translate'. But why did Hernandez agree to let them act as his interpreters?

  I watched him walk away, his back stiff and erect thanks to pride or a back brace. The door slammed behind him with a muffled sharp sound like fireworks across town.

  While the Garcias whispered in Spanish, I considered Hernandez, who was nothing like Jay, yet reminded me of him. That closet arrogance must be an occupational hazard for a smart man in a position where at best he would be overlooked. Human woodwork.

  Jay. Memory is a remarkable contrivance, the way it shifts time and space. In the moment it took the Garcias to finish their whispers and approach me, I recalled in detail the night I'd met Jay.

  It was back in February, during the best storm of the winter. The wind drove an echoing howl through the parking garage. I was waiting for the elevator. Waiting.

  At last the doors opened and I hastened to drag my stuff inside the elevator car. I couldn’t move during the day because the items indicated I was sleeping in my office. I heaved the futon frame across the elevator threshold then realized I was not alone.

  A sandy-haired man with a thick ponytail and a build like a bobcat stepped from the back corner of the elevator. "Hi," I greeted him, "this futon will help on nights when I work so late that I'm too tired to go home." The lie oozed around us like fresh asphalt on a hot day.

  The man raised an eyebrow to direct my attention to the large bags stacked in a corner. Soil amendment, garden soil, potting soil. I wasn't the only one with contraband.

  He helped me set up my futon, then I helped him drag bags up the penthouse stairs. When he opened the roof door, I gasped. Darkness at our feet, magic all around. Taller buildings surrounded us, with windows illumined to make walls of lights that glittered in the wind.

  Around the corner, redwood planks formed a raised planting bed. The wind continued to gust, but here we were sheltered by the stairwell enclosure. I sat on the piled bags of dirt, grinning like a dog at the beach. He grinned back. Jay came up to my shoulder in height and in years but from that moment I looked up to him as the mentor he quickly became. We shared the hard work of his rooftop garden and, shoulder to shoulder, tending plants, I felt as close to him as I've ever felt to anyone, including certain of my spouses.

  The Garcias waited patiently for my attention. "You may be too polite," I told them.

  Their thin book was a photo album of pink embossed velveteen, holding scant few pages of photo sleeves. When I opened it, I released faint fumes of fresh vinyl. Most of the pages were blank and there were not many photos. "Why are these photos of Edith in a book by themselves?"

  "You wish to see photos that are not of Edith?"

  "So you assembled this album just for me."

  "No, we did not know who would be the detective."

  I abandoned my fishing expedition. It wasn't helping me to identify what troubled me. I wished Walter Neff were here, he would have already figured out the Garcia angle. According to him, everybody has an angle. But Walter wasn’t the helpful type. To find out what he knew about the Garcias, I would need a curvy dress and maybe some pearls. Nica! Focus!

  "Alright, let me start with this," I hefted the album and walked with them to the outer office door.

  Once in the hall, Mr. Garcia turned back to say, "Tell your brother thank him for waiting."

  Brother? Sure enough, Ben was standing at the stairwell door, leaning like a forgotten mop, messing with his phone.

  As soon as the elevator removed the Garcias, Ben shoved off the door and sauntered closer. "Hey, sis."

  "What's with the lurking?" I greeted him. Watch his feet: gait tells all.

  He knew what I looked for, or rather, feared to see. "I'm not high."

  "Thanks for sharing." I headed back toward my office with a hand wave that told him he was okay to follow. I was pissed. Using, not using, I didn't care, I didn't need to ask or know. Anyway, that was the theory. Every time I went for a while without Ben in my life, I had to relearn how to let him back in it.

  "Got yourself some customers. Good for you."

  "The proper term is clients although so far mine are more like patients." He had stayed put, so I circled back to join him. We had spent so much of our together time like this, one holding firm, requiring the other to advance or retreat.

  "What I asked earlier, about staying with you - stay chill! I get it and I won't ask again. The thing is: where I'm staying now, I don't like to leave my favorite stuff there, so could I store it with you?"

  I searched for hidden catches. Somewhere a faucet dripped like the second hand on a cheap clock. Think about it, in another generation no one will get that reference any more, digital has -

  "Neeks, you still here?" He knew better than anybody about the daydreaming. There was a time when I self-distracted myself out of any gainful conversation.

  "Long story," I shrugged.

  "Always is."

  We each held up a wall. He stepped forward and clu
nked his forehead against mine, hard enough to sting but leave no mark.

  "Ow," I said.

  "Ow," he repeated, which completed our post-fight ritual.

  "Yeah. I have space in the closet here, bring the stuff by any time before seven."

  Just past yeah he was dragging stuff from the stairwell where he had it stashed. He had known or assumed I would agree. I could get huffy or I could laugh it off. I snorted, grabbed the saxophone case, and led the way to my closet.

  The stuff fit, barely. Now I no longer had a walk-in closet and it took me a few jumps over boxes to reach the pull chain that toggled the closet light. By then, Ben was paging through the pink photo album. "This for a case?"

  "She's missing." I pointed to a tall slim girl with mahogany hair that was corralled in a tight band atop her head but loose over her shoulders. "Edith." She would be striking when she finished growing into her face. I touched Edith's emulsified cheek. I was worried about her.

  "Who are the others?"

  "Those are her girlfriends on the basketball team." A trio of girls joined Edith in many photos. Three thoroughbreds with a colt. The three had an assurance that she lacked. "Karina, Griselda, Edith, Graciela." I pointed to each as I said her name.

  "Edith was absent the day they passed out the fancy names." Ben studied two team photos. The same two males hovered in the background of each. The coach, Antonio Garcia, a short, squat man with a greased buzz cut and a whistle around his neck; and a teenager who carried a clipboard and sported a similar buzz cut which didn't suit him.

  "Unrequited here, huh?" Ben pointed to the teen boy, who high-fived Garcia the coach but looked beyond the coach to Edith.

  In both photos, the boy stared at Edith. "Could be, thanks, I hadn't noticed that yet."

  "Nice to be of use," he said, and I felt the old familiar surge that charged the air between us. No matter how bad it gets, you never fully move past your first.

  OK, before you call the incest squad. Ben Taggart isn't actually my brother. He is my first and third ex-husband. But saying that doesn't define the ties between us. Notwithstanding the occasional surge - especially after Ick died and I spiraled - we are much more like siblings than spouses or ex-spouses. So for purposes of clarification, we misrepresent our relationship.

  We lingered in shared air space for a moment, then he imitated the way I took a step away, making clear that he knew I had felt the surge, too. He doesn't care about the prospect of sex. This is a hobby. He collects proof that I will never really run him off my property, no matter how threateningly I brandish that shotgun.

  "I'll need my closet back soon," I warned, knowing his crap would be in my closet as long as it was my closet.

  Reassuring to watch him hurry away. There was nothing alarming about his walk. Would he really be able to live the rest of his life sober? Could he stand it?

  Nothing alarming and nothing special about his walk today. How long had that been true? The first time I saw him, he moved like the street thanked him for walking on it. I lacked his confidence but made up for it in balls. From the first moment, I knew we would be marauders together.

  Now that was a long time ago.

  I dragged his boxes out and nosed through them, curious about what he classified as stuff that mattered. One box held a Patagonia rain parka, a pink and orange gym bag with some fancy-ass designer's label on it, and Bang and Olafson headphones. He never had money, but he always had high-end loot. Stuffed between items and down the sides were loose photos including several of me, but nobody else I recognized. And there were notebooks that appeared to be journals. Self-preservation jumped me and crushed my arms to my sides, preventing me from opening the journals.

  In another box were some vintage books, CDs, yellowed philatelist sleeves, vinyl 45 records, antique woodworking tools, and gold-plated silverware wrapped in felt. This month's strike-it-rich collections.

  The saxophone gleamed, pampered as ever. The bottom of its case was lined with pawn tickets.

  I got the highball glass I'd found in my bathroom cabinet and kept as a promise of hardboiled adventure. I browsed the mini-fridge under my desk and decided on carrot juice, neat. I settled in to scrutinize the photos of Edith and to make legible my notes from my conversation with the Garcias.

  Eduardo, the teen boy in the photos, made me sad and uneasy. He watched Edith all the damn time, but I guarantee he never spoke to her. A kid like that could be completely harmless, or very much not so.

  The Garcia son, Antonio. He had a face that was youthful like things usually went his way. Only the skin on his throat told me he had journeyed to the far side of thirty. I looked at him with distaste, which became self-distaste as I realized I didn't like him because I didn't like his parents. No good reason. We just didn't click. Was it too late to ditch the Garcias? I’ve always been so picky about who I spend my time with. It hadn’t occurred to me I might not like my clients. Could I afford to restrict myself to clients I enjoyed?

  Really, that depended on the standard of living to which I aspired. Sorry to say I have several modest inheritances - in addition to the lease on this office - which allow me to exist, albeit frugally, without getting up off my ass to lift a thin dime. Sorry because I had to lose my closest and dearest to earn those inheritances; and because, cumulatively, they give me reason to do nothing with my life. But I digress.

  Would I ditch the Garcia case? No, because Edith might need help.

  Edith and her friends. They all had the same look. I knew it, I remembered it. That searing need to be grown, to do what you choose. Back then, adulthood looked like freedom and excitement and we I they couldn't wait to have their turn.

  If I were Alex Delaware, I'd be on the phone to book an extra session with my therapist, to ensure that my connection with the victim didn't distort my judgment on the case.

  There, I had said it. Victim. My bowels churned like I’d dined on dirt. I had an unreasoned fear that something bad had happened to Edith.

  The photos with Antonio Garcia reminded me of the crushes I had suffered over teachers. Edith looked at the coach with a somber affection that shrieked major honking crush. I hoped the coach understood how much her wellbeing depended on his kindness. He looked like the kind of jock who specialized in practical jokes in the locker room, which bode ill for his solicitude to the porcelain ego of a shy thirteen-year-old girl.

  5. Crazyass Beauty

  It was nearly 7 p.m. The building ventilator exhaled air from a remote forest and suddenly here they were. I assume they returned the same way they had vanished, because I hadn't heard anyone at the elevator or the stairs - and I had been listening, with doors and ears open. I was excited to see them again. Just being in their presence raised my pulse. His eyes swept the room like a wolf beginning his evening prowl. She tossed her head to release a hood that shielded her face from view, and caught me in her gaze. "We must depart," she greeted me.

  "I’ve been ready for hours." I sounded like the dork who got invited to prom night by the head cheerleader. I tried to regain stature with a businesslike, "Now that you are my clients I need your names."

  "Here is Anwyl and there is Anya," he replied.

  "So you're doing the Cher and Madonna thing? No last names?"

  "No." His tone dismissed further questions.

  I led us into the hall, where we milled around until I walked us to the elevator, where we milled around until I pushed the down button and the G for ground floor. I considered asking about the vanishing or whatever the hell had really happened, but my gut told me to wait. In the lobby, yet again we milled around, this time near the building directory. My name was still not listed. "Didn't you say you got my name from the building directory?"

  "We had a recommendation from your building," Anya said agreeably and gestured to the entrance. "Is this our way?"

  "Sure." I let the conversation drop and wondered what her native language was. They weren't inclined to tell me, so I'd spent the last hour on line, listening to ac
cents, but hers sounded like none of them.

  As soon as we got outside, we milled around.

  Eventually I determined that they were waiting for me to fetch my vehicle. But I don't have a car right now; it is on loan to Jenn. Instead - lo, behold, and voilà - I produced a cab. Anyway, that's how it felt. In Los Angeles, taxis are not recurring, yet one happened by just as I formulated the thought, if this were New York we could take a cab. I stepped out in front of the taxi, arms waving like my chest was in flames.

  The driver was smoothly bald except for sprays of silver hair projecting from each ear and nostril. The age spots on his scalp suggested the Milky Way, with the Big Dipper above his right ear. He plucked his teeth with a toothpick then slipped the pick back into his window visor, behind a photo of a very young woman wearing strategic hands and a thong. She shared his broad hooked nose. I hoped she wasn't his granddaughter.

  He slid the car back in gear while I showed my clients how to use shoulder belts. It was a tight fit for the three of us in the back seat. "Where to?" the driver droned.

  I was seated between the two of them, felt his leg muscles contract and hers relax. She recited, "Seventeen twenty seven east One Hundred Seven, nine oh oh oh two."

  The driver shoved the gear lever back to Park. "That's in Watts."

  "Our destination is the Watts Towers," Anya agreed.

  "I don't drive Watts at night."

  "We’re already your fare. You’re going to make us late!" My voice was a xylophone mallet thudding the high octave bars. I needed to get with it. A good detective would have known the clients’ destination before getting in the cab.

  The taxi driver turned to glare at us and Anya met his eye.

  "It is important that we depart now," she said.