An LA Crime Story

Tag: la river

  • Marigold Walls

    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, fit, strutting, cocky… but the hair was too wavy, the teeth too white, the vibe too sharp.

    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.”

  • Remains

    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.

  • Ice Cream

    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.”

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