About Seven Months Earlier
The Tommy’s Burgers on Hollywood and Bronson was a 24/7 joint. Rhea slowed as she approached it, driving west on the Boulevard. It was one in the morning and about as dark as it gets in LA. Four guys were hanging out in the parking lot. One of them caught her eye, watching her as she turned up a residential side street, her car disappearing from view.
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The marigold colored walls of the main dining room at Barragan’s on Sunset screamed “sunshine!” Rhea hurried through it and headed for the darkness of the bar. It was “Two Buck Taco Tuesday” – her choice for her first review. The tacos were OK – somewhere between the soulful carne asada ones at the Saturday night pop-ups on York and the fast food addictions of Taco Bell. At two bucks a piece she could meet Manny’s ten buck limit.
Rhea sat at the end of the bar, near a window where she had a sliver of a view of the street outside. The bartender smiled at her, “San Miguel dark, right?” She smiled back, “Yeah Ernie, thanks. And five tacos. Mixed.” He slid her the beer and wrote up her order. She took a swig and took out her phone. She opened her notepad app and wrote a few words: “2 dollar tacos. back room. chorizo. Cacique. poblano.” She looked out the window, straining to see the boys on the street. It was a good spot to check them out – and maybe she’d find one to share a few tacos with. Several potentials strutted up the street, dark wavy hair, fit, strutting, laughing…
A waiter brought Rhea her tacos. She looked back out the window. A scruffy girl about sixteen came into view, carrying an overstuffed blue IKEA bag. Rhea drained half her beer in a single gulp, wrapped the tacos in a few napkins, slapped twenty dollars on the counter, took the tacos and left.
Outside, Rhea looked for the girl. She spotted her at a stoplight half a block up. She approached.
“Sheena?” Rhea said, close now. The girl turned.
“Officer Porter!” she cried out, recognizing Rhea.
Are you OK?” Rhea asked her. The girl seemed shaky.
“Yeah. Yeah…” Sheena answered, unconvincingly then looked at the wrapped tacos.
Rhea offered them to her, “One is oxtail.”
Sheena flashed a brief smile as she took four of the little tacos, leaving the oxtail one. “I was looking for you. Where’ve you been?”
“Sorta on a break.” Rhea admitted then asked again, “Everything OK?”
Sheena, who’d devoured one taco already, shook her head.
“What happened?” Rhea asked, concerned.
“Nothing happened really, it’s just… There’s this smell…”
“Where?” Rhea asked.
“Down by camp.”
Rhea looked at Sheena’s IKEA bag, “So you’re moving?”
She nodded “Just until it goes away… ”
“It’s that bad?”
“Yeah.” Sheena confirmed.
Rhea tried to offer an explanation, “It’s probably just all the trash down there. Or maybe all the piss, soaking the ground.”
“No…” Sheena said, thinking about it. Something was bothering her.
“Could be the muck in the L.A. River.” was Rhea’s next idea.
Sheena looked her in the eye, “It’s kind of a scary smell.”
Rhea followed Sheena along the top rim of the cement embankment that cradled the LA river. It was a little after nine, daylight was almost gone. As they neared the Chavez Bridge, Sheena hesitated above a clutter of debris lumped under the bridge. Sheena’s camp.
“Stay here.” Rhea told Sheena as she scrambled down the bank where the trickle of river water ambled under the bridge. She walked a few yards to the camp remains: a moldy sleeping bag, some squishy old sweat pants, three empty Cheetos bags and an empty can of Progresso Light Pot Pie soup.
A sudden whoosh of air brushed down on her – a Santa Ana gust – that carried on it the smell. Unmistakable. She looked around for a body but she knew it would be a little farther away. She took another whiff then looked up the opposite embankment toward where it came from. A skinny coyote sauntered across the bridge just above. A woman in her twenties followed it, stopping mid-bridge to gaze out and around. It was the same woman who sat on the stone wall overlooking the reservoir. She was still barefoot. Noticing her, Was she homeless? Rhea wondered. Maybe not… she carried an old 35mm camera and an air of cool. The woman looked back at a building just behind her. Then she looked down at Rhea. A look came over her – a hesitant half-smile that pulled Rhea in like a memory.
“Find anything?” Sheena’s voice broke the spell.
Rhea turned. Sheena was about to skitter down the embankment.
“Stay there!” Rhea called up to her. Rhea glanced back up at the woman on the bridge. She was moving on… just another hipster photog, Rhea figured, looking for a moody downtown LA pic.
Rhea scrambled back up the embankment to where Sheena was waiting. “You have somewhere you can stay for a few nights?” she asked her.
“What is it?” Sheena asked, unsure if she wanted to know.
“Probably just a dead dog or racoon. I’ll get animal control to pick it up in the morning. Is there somewhere else you can crash-”
“I’ll find somewhere–”
“Try the shelter on San Pedro–”
Sheena shook her head. Hard.
“They’ve got better security now–” Rhea half-heartedly tried to convince her but Sheena wasn’t having it. Rhea understood – it would take an army of security and the compassion of masses to stem the violence and troubles of the homeless in LA. Rhea dug around in her pockets and gave Sheena all she had, almost seventeen dollars.
“Get some food. And be careful–”
Sheena took the money. Suddenly she grabbed Rhea and hugged her. “You too.” she cautioned then hurried across the street and headed downtown.
Rhea walked across the Chavez Bridge. Below her was the homeless camp. Behind her was the city skyline. A few yards from the boulevard on the northeast side of the bridge was a sagging, shuttered old bar called Domingos. She went around to the back. She checked in trash cans and knee high weeds, sniffing and honing in on a spot behind an old tire.There it was: a rotting dead possum. She backed away then turned around. She was facing the back of the bar. She sniffed; smelling something else. She walked to the bolted back door and put her nose to the edge of it. She sniffed again. She went around to the front. That door was jammed tight with twenty years of grime and a ten dollar lock. Deciding the smell gave her cause, she jimmied it open. The whiff of charred beans kissed her as it escaped the place. She went inside.
The light of an LA night bled through three small curtained windows. Her eyes adjusted to a hazy dimness. There was a bar against one wall, a pool table in the middle of the small room and a closed door in the back. A page of smoke slid out from under it. The door was locked. Three kicks knocked it open. Smoke veiled the room. Rhea walked through it. A blackened stove stood against a burned wall, splattered with the scorched remains of a pot of food that had exploded.
Rhea slid a finger through a layer of wet soot, pitted by drops of water from the ceiling sprinklers that had put out the fire. But they hadn’t put it out fast enough. There was a spent extinguisher on the floor, still in the hand of a dead girl lying there. The girl looked around eleven. Her other arm reached out to two more dead girls, huddled together by the bolted back door. They looked about six and seven. Their arms were around each other. Their eyes were open. Their bodies were splattered with extinguisher foam. Their nostrils were blackened with smoke.
Rhea checked them for a pulse. The youngest girl was still warm.
She pressed the sides of the girl’s mouth open. Her blue lips puckered like a snapdragon. A poof of air slipped out, shimmered, then fluttered away, as though she’d exhaled one last dream.
It made Rhea jump.
Outside, on the cement bank across the river from Domingos, the young photographer dropped to one knee. She braced her elbow on her thigh to steady her lens and snapped off a half dozen pictures of a faint little puff of shimmering light as it rose up into the night sky just above Domingos.
In the blackened kitchen, Rhea checked again for a pulse on the little girl. Nothing. The girl was dead. Rhea took out her phone and snapped a few pics of the three bodies. Then she called the boss.
It was Detective Sergeant Matt Strickland’s night off. He’d had Stouffer’s lasagna for dinner, watered the 57 succulents he kept on the screened-in little terrace of his ground-floor one-bedroom Hollywood apartment, watched the nine o’clock news then taken four herbal sleep aids. He woke up fast when his cell phone buzzed. When he heard Rhea’s familiar cadence, “Hey Strickland–” he was fully awake.
“Detective– ” he automatically responded, “Are you ok? Where are you?”
“Fine. Cesar Chavez, a half block up from Pleasant. Place called Domingos.” She said no more. She didn’t need to.
He already had one leg in his pants. He ended the call, stuck his other leg in, gave his balls a sprinkle with Gold Bond, swished a mouthful of Listerine, shrugged on a worn-out short-sleeved shirt, grabbed his badge and gun and was out the door.
Nineteen minutes later he was inside Domingos, standing next to Rhea, looking down at the three small bodies. He took out his phone and called it in. Rhea hung close, listening as he asked dispatch who was available to partner.
“Who’s coming in?” she asked him after he hung up. He ignored her and looked back at the dead.
He knelt down and looked closely at the girls’ sooty mouths. “Smoke.”
He looked around “But no fire called in.”
“Probably a grease fire.” she suggested. “They choke you fast.”
He agreed with the probability. He looked around the room. There were no other exits— “Just these two doors. Locked.” He looked at her. She nodded, pointing to the kitchen door. “I busted that one down.”
“Three girls. Locked in.” he continued his early questions, adding, “Mexican?”
Rhea looked back at them. “I’d say so.”
He looked around the room again; he peered into empty cupboards and into the empty pantry.
“Place has been closed for awhile.” she offered.
He nodded. “Stash joint.”
“Yep.”
He went over to the stove, he studied the burned food that had exploded against the wall, looked again at the bolted door. “No way out.”
Rhea nodded, “So we find who locked them in.”
“We? Have you even gone to therapy?” Strickland asked.
“Yes.” Rhea answered but didn’t elaborate. Something bright pink caught her eye, lying on top of a little trash can, on top of burned, sooty trash and three charred, melted plactic spoons: a burned ice cream cup.
“What?” Strickland asked.
“Baskin Robbins.”
“Yeah?” Strickland asked.
“Yeah. They had some ice cream. There’s one up on Sunset, in that strip mall by Michelotorenia.”
“I’ll tell Dawson when he gets here–”
“Dawson.” Rhea shook her head.
“Dawson is a good cop–” he cut her off.
Rhea looked back at the bodies on the floor; studying them. Powerless.
Outside, across the river the photographer stood on the bank, searching the skyline. Her blonde hair hung down her back. Her t-shirt said “Endeavour”. Her eyes searched the skyline. The moon was full and rising. She held the old zoom on her Pentax and moved it until it reflected caught a beam of moonlight then bounced it over the river bed, pooling its way across the crack in Domingos’ bolted back door.
Inside Domingos’, that reflected moonlight found its way through that crack and crossed over the dead girls like a soft laser. It hit something purple. It shimmered, catching Rhea’s eye. She looked closer. Then closer. Transfixed. A gasp caught in her throat. Strickland turned, followed her gaze, saw what she was looking at. On one of the dead girl’s wrists – barely visible but now glinting in the sliver of reflected moonlight – was a plastic bracelet with a purple tin charm on it that advertised “Boom Boom Carneceria. Ensenada. Mexico.”
It was a cheap little tin charm and Strickland knew exactly what it could mean. Everything.
Or… “It could be nothing.” He reminded Rhea.
“Boom Boom is two doors down from Joe’s–!” Rhea let loose, hating the escaped emotion.
“I know where it is.” Strickland reminded her. “But not every kid that goes missing near Boom Boom was snatched—”
“One was.” She reminded him back.
“We’ll follow the evidence.”
“Yes. We.”
“As soon as you’re cleared.”
“Eighteen, Strickland. The guy was eighteen–!”
“He’d been eighteen for four days.”
“Still… Legal.” She pointed out, calming herself. “And this is my case.”
“It’s the Department’s.” he corrected her.
“I’ll stay on unpaid leave and just work this-” Rhea gestured toward the dead girls.
Strickland knew she’d be an asset. He knew he probably should let her back on the squad. But she’d messed up. Finding her in the back seat of her car with that kid pissed him off. It hurt, too. Yeah the kid was eighteen and she’d hadn’t paid him – yet – or officially broken the law but Strickland wanted to make her pay.
They heard cars drive up.
“Go home.” he told her, ushering her out of the room.
“Don’t do this to me. I’ve stopped. OK? I promise.”
“Go home.” He held the door open for her to leave. He meant it. She left.
Outside, Rhea crossed over Chavez and sat on a cement bridge railing.
She watched as three of her colleagues walked into Domingos: The CSI tech, the ME and Detective Dawson. It was hard being outside. This was her case. Man she was hungry. She wondered if nearby Guisados was open. She wondered what young men were hanging out at Tommy’s or Torung or Alegria, eating Dim Sum and Phad Thai and Chili Fries and how nice it would be to eat an onion ring off of one of them. She shook her head to get those thoughts out of it. She forced her mind back to the scene and waited. She looked over the bridge, below it the 101 and the 10 freeways converged. She watched the streaks of red tail lights pouring into LA. This was nearly the exact same spot she was at on her first night in LA., completely alone at seventeen. Twenty plus years later and here she was again, still looking for her sister. What a fucking failure.
She sniffed the air, then sniffed her clothes. She pulled the lone Barragan’s taco out of her pocket. The napkins it was wrapped in were blotched with grease. She ate it. It was cold and flattened but still pretty good. She opened her phone notepad. She typed a few words: beefy, ancho, warm night, two dollars.
Half an hour later, the ME carted three small body bags out. He glanced across the street as he closed the back of the morgue van. He saw Rhea. He raised one hand in a small, inconspicuous wave. She did the same, acknowledging the solidarity. He was the only one who contacted her after her back-seat bust by Vice nine and a half weeks ago and her subsequent temporary expulsion for “indecent behavior”.
Another twenty minutes later, Strickland and Detective Dawson left Domingos and headed four and a half blocks to Headquarters.
Rhea got in her car and followed. She parked her LeBaron outside and waited for Strickland and Dawson to come out. She was impatient. She took out her phone. Using her favorite INFO app, she looked up Domingos’ data, got the name of an owner and found out he also owned a furniture warehouse on Palmetto near Fourth. Just under twelve blocks away. She started her car and took off, heading south, toward Fourth Street.
Inside Headquarters, on the sixth floor, Strickland was online, also finding out who owned Domingos.
Four minutes into his search, he had a name: Leland Hays.
Rhea eased her LeBaron down the garage ramp under the The Laurel Terrace Apartments on the 1500 block of North Laurel Avenue in Hollywood. She parked, walked a ramp up to the ground level courtyard, walked past the 1960’s aqua blue kidney-shaped pool and went into apartment 114.
Rhea had lucked out with this apartment, a one-bedroom with shag carpeting and a big picture window that looked out onto that swimming pool. She’d first moved in sixteen years ago. It was rent-controlled, so even now, at $1875 it was affordable for a single woman on a veteran cop salary. But she’d sent her mom a good chunk of her paycheck over the past fifteen years and with the added “tips” for several young dudes every month and now her recent suspension, her cash flow was seriously suffering. For the first time since she’d been off the streets, she felt that familiar pang of panic about having a safe place to sleep.
She poured some leftover coffee over ice and laced it with milk and a few of the packets of Stevia George had given her. She brushed her panic away. If she lost her apartment, she was pretty sure Strickland would take her in again. But it wouldn’t come to that, she told herself. She had a new job to help tide her over until…
She looked at her food notes. She tried to concentrate on chorizo and Barragan’s and San Miguel. She tried to write more. But she couldn’t. Thoughts of the dead girls crowded her brain. She knew – more than likely -they would not be ID’d and claimed, the case would cool fast and more than likely, their cremated remains, after a three year hold, would be buried in a mass grave in a south east patch of Evergreen Cemetary in Boyle Heights with all the other un-named un-claimed remains that died that year. The grave would be marked “2025”.
Unless…she could ID them. In her gut Rhea thought they were somehow connected to the disappearance of her five- year-old sister from a cafe two doors down from Boom Boom Carneceria. Yes, it was twenty-two years ago but that shit – kidnapping, trafficking – was big business. Booming business. Steady business. She knew she needed to get back to Ensenada.
Rhea looked at the pictures on her phone of the dead girls. She looked at the picture she’d taken of Hays’s rustic Mexican desk. She googled searched the picture, tagging the Baja Peninsula. There were hundreds of results. She’d expected that – the desk wasn’t in any way unusual. The good news was she could place it in any one of three Ensenada area rustic furniture exporters. It was a start. She still had a few contacts down there and now she had the time. All she needed was money. About five hundred should be enough for gas, motel, essentials.
She looked back at her food notes, closed her eyes. She thought, then wrote:
“I sidled up to a Happy Hour dude in Barragan’s back room, smelling his chorizo with cacique cream. Tucked into a mini corn tortilla, at two bucks a pop – it was a two-bit writer’s dream. “Give me a bite.” I told him as I downed a swig of my San Miguel, “And I’ll give you a bite of my chipotle beef on a pillow of black beans…”
She wrote about skin and hands and mouths and juice, toying with it, changing it… wondering if it was good enough. What if Valdez hated it? What if he fired her before she made a dime?
She was hungry. Again. Still. She opened her bag of Fritos and looked out her window and caught a glimpse of a coyote skulking just outside the courtyard on the far side of the pool.
She slipped out of her apartment. She leaned against a palm tree, eating the corn chips, looking for the coyote. She tugged at her T-shirt, pulling the V neck down to flick off bits of salt and crumbs. She looked back up, startled to see Strickland, standing a few yards away from her, looking at her chest where her tugging had highlighted her cleavage. Even in the dim light, she could feel him blush.
What the fuck? she thought as the heat of realization rippled through her. He wanted her? It threw her for a minute. It was weird. I mean, good lord, he’d scraped her off the sidewalk more than once. Pulled her out of a dozen dark nights. Wiped her flu snot. Wiped her ass when when they’d both eaten some bad Chicken Mole on the Day of the Dead. Sure, if she thought about it, he was kind of hot in a James Comey way but he was a second father to her. More than that, he was nice. She didn’t know what to do with this. Neither did he. He looked away. He started to walk away, toward his apartment across the pool from hers. She wasn’t going to let her moment of power go.
“Did you find that bartender? Myrna?” She called after him.
He stopped; shook his head, “Not yet.”
“I’ve got three furniture joints in Ensenada that that desk in Hays’s warehouse could’ve come from.” She told him.
Strickland nodded; kept walking. He was embarrassed and needed to get away from her.
“Weird that Hays is a furniture importer, yeah?”
“Maybe.” he cautioned. “But there’s a hundred in LA, Rhea.” he added, resuming his retreat.
She followed him. She wouldn’t let up. “There is only one who also owns a bar with three dead Mexican girls in it, at least one of whom has a tie to Boom Boom.”
He kept walking.
“I’m as good as Dawson–”
“Yes.” Strickland acknowledged.
“If I was a man, I’d never have been punished.”
“That has nothing to do with it. Nothing.” Strickland tried to claw back some control.
“Let me back, Strickland.” She whispered into his back.
He was a few feet from his door. She begged, “Please.” He slowed.
“I’m sorry, OK? It’s just–” She told him, wanting him to understand, at least a little.
“Look, it’s how I deal, Strickland. That’s all. It’s just how I deal.” she offered. “And the kid was eighteen.”
He reached his door. He opened it. He turned to her, softening a little. She stepped toward him.
“How do you deal?”
He looked at her, hard. He’d known her so long. He’d seen her scared and he’d seen her brave. He’d seen her fight, learn, cry. He’d seen her chase down a lead with no sleep for three days straight. He’d seen her give up. He’d seen her start over. He’d seen her kill. He’d seen her hate. Lord knows he’d seen her eat. But looking at her now, he wondered if she’d ever really seen him.
“I garden.” he answered, burned that she didn’t remember; she’d seen his garden a thousand times. She’d lived in it.
She realized her mistake. She started to speak.
“Fix it, Rhea.” He finished the conversation, “Fix yourself then come back.” He went inside and shut the door. She heard the deadbolt click shut. His light went on and his shades stayed half-down.
Rhea stood there a moment. Rebuffed, again. What the fuck? “Fix herself?” She took off her shoes. She took off her skirt. She lifted her T-shirt up over her head, baring her breasts. She dropped the t-shirt on the ground. She slipped off the men’s boxers she wore, paused for moment, faced Strickland’s window, then dove into the pool.
Inside apartment #122, Strickland looked out the side of his front blind and watched Rhea swim under the water – rippling, shimmering. Wet. He watched her break the surface. He watched her imperfect beauty glistening in reflected pool light.
He poured himself a short iced tea and laced it with Makers Mark. He hated her right now.
Rhea tread water, watching Strickland’s window. She could feel something besides the water – a vibe. It wasn’t a good one. She swam to the steps, got out, pulled her clothes on over her wet body and hurried to her apartment.
Once inside, she wrapped herself in a towel and sat at the little table by the front window. She looked across at Strickland’s apartment. All his blinds were now closed. She knew he was pissed. That wasn’t good. She was messing up right and left; miss-judging, lashing out, blowing every chance she had. Literally. God she hated self-reflection. She needed chili cheese fries. They had some good ones at that 24 hr. Tommy’s.
Fifteen minutes later, closing in on four am, Rhea hit Tommy’s. There were still a scant few of the late night boys hanging around. They were the not-so-beautiful. Thank god for that. She was determined to resist the urge and these were easier to ignore than the finer ones who got swooped up before midnight or one.
She pulled into the drive-through lane, behind a car full of Stoners.
The speaker squawked. “Welcometotommy’swhatchoowant?”
Stoner driver yelled back, “Two big motherfucking tacos and a, a–”
The speaker squawked, “We don’t have no tacos–”
“And a couple Chimmichangas–” Stoner carried on.
Squawker drowned him out, “This is Tommy’s, man–”
Stoner blasted on, “And some nachos and a–”
Squawker blasted back, “We don’t have that shit, man, lookit the menu-”
The three stoners stared at the backlit plastic menu for forever. No comprende. Rhea was hungry. And annoyed. She looked around and saw a white boy with long legs, sitting on the cement wall next to the drive-through, nursing a coke. She didn’t see him before. He was definitely not ragged. And it looked like his jeans had a button fly – easy access. “Lordy, no–” she thought. I cannot go there. She looked back at the stoners, who were still staring at the menu, and honked. Loud. The stoners jumped and looked back at Rhea. The head Stoner yelled at her.
“Whatchoo want, baybee, Huh? How ’bout I getchoo a taco? Huh? You like a taco?”
Another stoner pulled him back in the car. Their windows were open. In the quiet late night air, Rhea heard every word, “No, man, she’s too old–”
Rhea had enough. She got out of her car, walked up to them and leaned into the driver’s window.
“Put the smoke down and look at the menu.” she ordered them. Still no comprende. She pointed to it and read, “Hamburger. Double Burger. Cheese Burger. Chili Dog. Fries. Double fries. Chili fries– and oooh! Look! there’s a burrito–” she leaned in farther and addressed the stoner who’d dissed her.
“Maybe just some plain fries for you, fat boy, you’re looking a little chunky.”
“Woo hoo hoo hoo hoo–” they started laughing. Cracking up. But they did not look at the menu. Chunky boy started to unzip his fly, “I’ll show you something chunky, lady–”
Rhea pulled out her badge and slammed it against the windshield for all to see.
That really cracked them up. They laughed. Giggled. Guffawed. Higher than a kite. Rhea glanced up and saw the white boy looking at her, cooler than cool. Shit. Rhea slipped her badge back into her pocket – she didn’t want him to know she was a cop, just in case… He hesitated then came over. As she straightened up, the stoners stepped on it and drove away.
“You OK?” White boy asked her, surprising her with his concern. A nice boy, huh, she thought. This was new. It turned her off a little but they were alone in the parking lot now and he was two, maybe three feet from her. Up close, he was irrestible. She could smell his skin. Deserty. Mesquite. She was about to make her offer when the speaker squawked.
“Welcometotommy’swhatchoowant?” startling them.
“Jesus!” She laughed. She was nervous all of a sudden. Excited. She spoke back, “Double order of chili fries.” she turned to white boy, “You want anything? It’s on me.”
“Umm.” he said. “Just some regular fries. Thanks.”
She added an order of plain fries then told him, “You should get into my car. I’ll pull up to the window.” He did. Then she did. As they waited for their order, she kept looking at his forearms. They were lightly golden, kissed by the sun, well defined. And young. She wanted them holding her legs open as she swallowed a hunk of chili fries as he buried his head between them.
“You’re kind of wet.” he mentioned, looking at her hair.
“I just went swimming.”
“Nice.”
“You want to go?”
“Swimming?”
“Yeah.”
“Now?”
“After we eat. Yeah.”
“Naw.” he said. “Thanks anyway.”
He must’ve seen her badge, she thought. “I’m not gonna bust you.” she let him know.
“What?”
“I’m not vice.”
“Ahh…OK.”
“So–you want to go?”
“Naw. I’m working.”
“I know. I’ll pay you.”
“For what?”
Well he was a coy one, she thought. Or maybe he was shy – new at this. Even better. It gave her a feeling of power, control. She was gonna like this. Maybe even love it.
Their order was ready. She paid then rather than pull into a parking spot and let him out, she pulled out and onto the boulevard.
“Where you going?” He asked.
At a red light she stopped and leaned over and whispered. “After we go swimming, I’m gonna eat these off of you.”
He backed away. “It’ll be good.” she smiled,
“You think I’m a whore?” he asked.
That threw her.
“Lady, I was killing time at Tommy’s waiting for the all-night lab on Vine to process some film I need to pick up.” He checked his watch, “It should be ready in, like, twenty minutes.”
Rhea couldn’t look at him. She was embarrassed. And mad. He felt bad for her. He looked her over, deciding she was kind of cute.
Her left hand was on the steering wheel; her right hand was on her thigh. He reached over and took her hand.
She freaked. “What’re you doing?”
“Holding your hand.”
She pulled it away. Wasn’t her thing.
They were stopped at a red light. She reached across him and opened his door, pointing up the street, “Vine’s half a block up–”
“Ok. I’ll see you around.” He got out and hurried across the street, never looking back.
As she waited for the light to turn green, Rhea tore open her bag of chili cheese fries and dug in.
After nineteen-year-old Travis Del Rio got out of Rhea’s car, he hurried across Vine to an alley a half-block up from Fountain. Three doors down, he pushed a button next to a steel door with a camera above it. Someone buzzed him in.
Inside the cavernous photo studio and lab, Travis approached the woman behind the long white counter that spanned the back wall. She looked up from a lightbox. “It’s ready.” She handed him a round tin film container about three inches in diameter. “Uncut.”
“Thanks Jess.” He pocketed the tin, then left.
Back outside, on Vine, he checked the traffic. It was pretty light. When there were no cars on the block in either direction, he leapt straight up and disappeared into the night sky.
Travis loved flying at night. The skies, even over LA, weren’t very crowded between four and five. It just wasn’t an all-night town. New York was; Vegas was, Paris was but LA was a company town and that company was the film business and people had to be on set usually by five or six am. There were only a few flying about now, getting from one place to another or just digging the swoon through night air. There were a few birds and bugs out too, some of them he knew. Two night owls, Chloe and Drew, were perched on the Spectrum cable stretched above the little houses on Vista del Mar, looking for rats. But for the most part, he felt harmoniously alone. It was basically a forty second flight from Vine and Fountain to his boss’s house but Travis zipped on over to the Gelson’s on Franklin and Bronson. The upscale supermarket was open twenty-four hours. It also housed Victor Bene’s pastry shop. Travis bought a slice of Princess Cake, a blond brownie and an individual kiwi tart. To go.
At a little after eight that same morning, Daisy Valentine walked the half mile down from her ridge house to The Beachwood Canyon village, a cluster of five quaintly hip shops cradled just below the Hollywood sign. She picked up a Hollywood Pulse from a stack of already-read newspapers loosely scattered on a front window ledge inside the Village Café. The casually trendy diner was peopled with local mid-scale movie industry peeps who liked their eggs yolk-free, their bacon fat-free, their toast gluten-free and their coffee organic.
Daisy took it to a seat at the counter, where she ordered a cappuccino and a donut with rose petals in the glaze. Her nod to the waitress was nominal. She was a regular but not really. Cordial but not chatty. Opening the pulse, she scanned the ads and found one for a local landscaper: “Bernardo’s brush clearance and Landscaping.” She circled it.
It was a green curry wan that beckoned Rhea hardest. ‘Toolong’ on Hollywood Boulevard was a tiny, cheap joint wedged between a used appliance store and Mel Pierce Camera. She had always thought they had a so-so Kee Mao but a pretty decent Pad See Ew. But she’d never tried their Wan. She found a parking spot only a half block away – a miracle in LA. As she approached, she passed by three young men hanging around outside.
“You shouldn’t eat alone.” the one with olive skin and a careless vibe whispered as she opened Toolong’s decaled door, around nine that night. She’d intended to write the sexy parts of her reviews based on memories and fiction – but this one smelled like clean cotton T shirts and summer skin. He smelled like youth. She didn’t intentionally hold the door open for an extra second but maybe she did.
She took the booth farthest from the front windows. He slipped in across from her.
“What’re we having?”
She pulled two menus from the slot behind the bottle of soy sauce and slid him one. As he looked it over, she wasn’t quite sure he could read. The waitress showed up.
“Something to drink?”
“A Tsing Dao” Rhea told her “For me and…”
He nodded, “Me too.”
“You have some ID?” The waitress asked him.
Though his ID said twenty-one, Rhea was pretty sure he was younger.
“But all we’re doing is eating.” She thought, then ordered,
“Green Curry Wan, Pad See Ew, Phad Thai and…” she looked at the kid. He smiled,
“Whatever you want.”
“Chicken Sa-Tae.” Rhea closed her menu. The waitress left.
“So…?” She asked him.
“Andy.”
“Andy. Yeah,” she thought. And my name is Beyonce. Still, the less she knew, the better. And… all they were doing was talking.
“Been in L.A. very long, Andy?” She asked as the waitress brought them their beers.
“’bout three years. I’m from St. Paul.” He answered and told her he’d left there so he wouldn’t be a burden on his mom who “Praise God” had beaten cancer but still had a lot of bills to pay. It was an OK story, good for playing the “heartstrings” card. He even wore a saint’s medal around his neck, which he fondled: Saint Nicholas. Patron saint of children.
Even if it wasn’t just a prop, Rhea didn’t want to tell him there wasn’t any God or any saint that protects kids so she let him ramble on… about video games, comic books and bands. While all she could think about was how smooth his arms were, how soft his lips as he mouthed the neck of that beer; how young his dick was, how good it would feel and how bad this could be for her… Trying to concentrate on her new job, she got out her notebook and wrote down a few words.
“What’re you doing?” He asked.
“Writing.”
“Is that your new job?”
She looked at him.
“Kevin’s a friend of mine.”
Ah. Her reputation preceded her. She wanted to ask how Kevin was – if he was still on probation. She hadn’t seen him around. Not that she was looking. But she missed him a little. She’d come close with him.
“I made more money when I knew Kevin.” Was all she said, letting Andy downsize his expectations.
“That’s ok.” he smiled. She felt that familiar, addictive throb between her legs and smiled back.
The waitress brought the food just then. As she set it down, he told her,
“We’ll get this to-go.”
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