Grave on Grand Avenue (12 page)

“He’s all right on both counts, far as I know. If things get real bad, he has his family.”

It’s true—the Chois are a tight-knit family. They’re nice people, and Benjamin’s sister, Sally Choi, is a defense lawyer. Truth is, crime does pay, at least for the attorneys. They can afford to help him out if he needs it.

“Here, watch my cart,” Rickie says as he begins to climb up a Dumpster. So gross. Fortunately, he doesn’t actually jump into the garbage; he stands on a metal bar connected to the outside of the container, then bends straight down to begin his hunt.

I’m impressed how flexible he is. Who needs yoga?

A plastic garbage bag is opened, and empty fast-food cups—the straws still poking out from the lids—tumble out into the alley.

“You know you’re making a mess?”

“Going to arrest me for littering?”

More garbage, smears of barbecue sauce on plastic plates, half-bitten sandwiches, tangles of Chinese noodles. I feel like throwing up after seeing this hodgepodge of multicultural food.

Rickie retrieves a grocery store salad, its packaging still intact. He looks at the expiration date and then tosses it into the cart.

“Ew, Rickie, you’re not actually going to eat that?” I’m aghast.

“Expires today. It looks fine, no brown lettuce. Do you know how much perfectly good food Americans waste?”

I stay quiet, feeling chastised. I can imagine, based on my own habits. Throwing out the rotting vegetables and fruit in my refrigerator is a weekly ritual of mine. I always go to the store thinking that I’m going to eat healthy, but then just end up doing takeout while the good-for-me food goes bad.

We hit a couple more Dumpsters, adding two unopened bags of tortillas and an untouched roasted chicken, wrapped in an aluminum bag, to our shopping cart. Since Rickie now has dinner, we search for miscellaneous treasures down a residential side street dotted with small houses and apartment buildings.

Since it’s garbage day tomorrow, the city-issued Army green containers are all out on the street. The recyclables, of course, have already been picked over. Rickie leaves those for the homeless and semipro scavengers anyway.

We walk past an apartment where pieces of furniture have been hauled out onto the dead grass by the sidewalk.

“Oh, lookee what I found!” Rickie crows. It’s a red retro-looking chair.

“That’s actually pretty nice,” I admit.

“You want it? You need some color to punch up your place.”

I walk carefully around it, half expecting a rodent to run out from underneath its round cushion.

“It’s not going to bite you. It’s perfectly fine.” Rickie’s gloved hand gives the chair a good shake and it rotates back and forth. “Oh, snap, it swings. Cool. You’ve got to take this, El.”

“Why don’t you go for it?”

“Are you kiddin’ me? My roommates will kick me out on my ass if I bring in anything more from the streets. My stash for eBay and craigslist sales is already taking up most of the apartment.”

A truck full of flattened cardboard boxes and assorted broken furniture parks in front of the driveway beside us. The driver also spies the red chair and starts to get out of his truck.

“Look, we have some competition.” Rickie wipes his forehead with the back of his gloved hand. “What do you say?’

I lift the chair on top of the shopping cart. Luckily, it’s light; less than thirty pounds. With that, I’ve officially become a Dumpster diver.

I forgot how fun it can be to spend time with Rickie. There’s a reason for his eccentricities, I know. His family is crazy big—between his older stepsisters and stepbrothers, there may even be as many as twenty of them. Like a runt in a large litter, Rickie’s always had to fight for every scrap of food or clothing. He’s street-smart and City Hall–smart. He has a passion for local politics, and his knowledge has come in handy when needed. It’s just that he’s so damn high-maintenance.

He helps load the red chair into Kermit. “Ugh,” he says. “This car is a disservice to that awesome chair. See what treasures you can find in the trash.”

A switch flips on in my mind.
Treasures and trash
. The page that Boyd had thrown in the trash can. A public trash can. On a public street.

“Hey, have you done any trash diving in downtown?” I ask Rickie.

“What do you have in mind?”

I drive Rickie to Grand Avenue. With the red chair in the rear, he’s like a rolled-up pill bug in the passenger seat. Luckily, the drive is short, barely ten minutes.

Since too many people might recognize me on this block, I ask—well, plead—with Rickie to do the dirty work. I promise him some carne asada tacos from a local food truck, which seals the deal.

“Downtown’s a different deal than MacArthur Park,” he says before he leaves the car. “Requires more stealth.” He takes the trench coat back from me and drapes it over his body. Rickie is tall, over six feet, but he somehow manages to blend in with the other artistic night wanderers on Grand Avenue. Once he’s at the trash can, he descends over it like a gigantic crow and then returns to the Hyundai, stinkier and a few pounds fatter with a plastic bag of trash.

“Dang, did you have to take the whole thing?” I quickly drive away, checking my rearview mirror for any of my law enforcement colleagues.

“What, did you want me to dump it all on the sidewalk?” Rickie takes a small flashlight from his pocket and holds it in his mouth as he paws through the contents in the trash
bag. “Aha!” He plucks out a ball of lined paper and uncrumples it in his gloved hands, bits of food falling into the car. I try not to gag. He attempts to read the note: “‘I asked Mr. Bikel if he had heard of any . . .’ This is real bad handwriting.”

“Go on, Rickie.”

“Okay, something, something . . .”

At the next light, I snatch the note from his hands. Sure enough, it’s Boyd’s boxy handwriting.

I asked Mr. Bikel if he had heard of any stories of persons wanting to steal Xu’s cello. He replied in the negative. Mr. Bikel was quite hostile and claimed that Mr. Fuentes would never participate in anything illegal. Mr. Bikel apparantly was a friend of Eduardo Fuentes.

It’s no wonder that Boyd had thrown this draft of his report away. The little he’s written here is too wordy and confusing. And he also misspelled the word
apparently
.

“Ellie, green light.” Rickie nudges my elbow. “Good stuff in the note?”

“Not bad.”

“Anything you’d like to share, Officer? After all, I am your partner in crime.”

I give Rickie an eye roll.

“Hey, I could have been arrested for what I did. The evidence is still on me.” He shakes the trash bag for effect, spreading all that pleasant-smelling goodness inside my rental car.

“I thought it was all legal. Abandonment of property and all that.”

“Well, the city could claim ownership. Who knows when you get the government all involved.”

“Well,” I say, “I know that I need to find out who Mr. Bikel is.”

“Okay, whatever. Doesn’t sound that exciting.”

“Thanks, Rickie,” I tell him when I reach his apartment after stopping to get the tacos—now already devoured. “You really helped me out. I appreciate it.” His shirt is covered in wet spots from God knows what, so I forgo a hug and just wave good-bye as he gets out of the rental car.

*   *   *

Driving home with the red chair in my backseat, I pass by my neighborhood Catholic church. I’m friends with the priest, Father Kwame. Although I can’t even call myself a lapsed Catholic, I’m a product of their private school education. Even more important, I do believe that God is out there; I’m just not quite sure how to label Him; although calling God a “He” comes more easily than a “She” (maybe a result of my mother-daughter issues?).

I park Kermit outside along the curb and walk across the sidewalk, up the stairs to the small attached office where Father Kwame also lives. I press down on a button on the intercom and in a few seconds hear his familiar comforting voice. I identify myself and then the door swings open.

“Ellie, it’s so good to see you. It’s been a while. A couple of months?”

Father Kwame doesn’t ask me if I want to come in. He
assumes it. I walk inside and he follows me into his living room, which is the closest thing I’ve seen to a parlor in twenty-first-century Southern California.

He goes into the kitchen to brew some tea—again, it’s just what Father Kwame does, so I don’t even bother to tell him not to.

He brings the tea in ceramic cups on a tray. After he settles down in his easy chair with his teacup, he finally asks, “How are you doing?”

“Crappy,” I say. Father Kwame’s not your typical Catholic priest. At least not like any other one I’ve ever met before. First of all, he prefers listening to talking or sermonizing. And he doesn’t seem to mind if you say something a little off-color or rude. In fact, he says that he prefers to hear someone’s true heart, not something prettied up or manufactured. So I give him my current truth. I tell him about Nay, the situation with my grandfather, and the death of Eduardo Fuentes. Even though in some ways it’s the least personal to me, the passing of the gardener has affected me the most.

“I really feel bad for his family. He seemed like a man who was well loved, who people looked up to. I only spoke to him for a few minutes, but he was really kind.”

“Maybe you can write his family a letter.”

“No, that would be overstepping. This is still an active investigation. The family might be able to turn around and use my letter as evidence that Mr. Fuentes hadn’t been doing anything wrong. In fact, I actually doubt that he was. But the thing is, I have no proof.”

“Will you go to his funeral?”

“I don’t even know when or where it might be.” I’ve only
ever been to one funeral, Grandpa Toma’s, and I was still in elementary school at the time. Besides, he was cremated, so all we had to do was bow to a photo of him in his fishing vest.

“It wouldn’t be too difficult to find out,” Father Kwame says.

Dammit. He would have to be a voice of reason.
Ellie,
I tell myself,
you’re a cop. You have to get used to seeing dead bodies.
“You’re right,” I say. “Do you mind if I look it up now?” I pull my phone out of my pocket.

“Of course not. Your portable computer, yes?”

I check the website of the Spanish-language newspaper
La Opinión
first; there’s nothing there. I wonder whether there hasn’t been enough time for the family to make arrangements yet.

The story does quote a pastor at an East Los Angeles church where Eduardo Fuentes was a member. I show Father Kwame the name of the church. Templo Arbol de Vida. The Temple of the Tree of Life.

“It sounds Pentecostal,” Father Kwame says. “Those churches often use phrases like ‘river of life’ in their names.”

Once I hear that the church may be within the Pentecostal denomination, I really don’t want to go to the funeral. What if they start speaking in tongues or something? I won’t know what to do.

“You may have been the last person he ever talked to,” Father Kwame reminds me gently.

“I’m pretty sure that I was.” I study Father Kwame over my now-cold tea. “You think that I owe it to him to go?”

Father Kwame shakes his head. “No, he’s already passed. He doesn’t care anymore. But I do think that you owe it to
yourself to attend. To pay your last respects to his family. And if you need someone else to accompany you . . .”

“You’ll be my plus-one.”

Father Kwame smiles. “You betcha.”

*   *   *

When I get home, I strip off my uniform and stuff it into my washer. It’s one of those tiny ones with an attached dryer above. However small those appliances are, they are a hundred percent better than my last apartment, which had no washers or dryers. Going to the Laundromat at ten o’clock at night in Los Angeles is no fun, I’m telling you. Definitely did my wash with my Glock around my waist.

After tossing Shippo a bully stick, I pull a pint of salted caramel ice cream from my freezer and a spoon from my kitchen drawer. Plopping down on my bed, I look over the
Don Quixote
concert program while licking spoonfuls of ice cream. Shippo mimics me by chewing his treat. Like owner, like dog.

I turn to the back of the program where all the musicians are listed and look for the name “Bikel.” I easily find an Oliver Bikel under the category of “Contrabassoonist.” I take out my phone from my pocket and Google the name, and an image of the musician who was wearing the Who T-shirt at the concert hall comes up. I think that he might be the same guy sitting in the back row of the orchestra during the Brahms performance. There’s a brief bio, too. In addition to all of his musical accomplishments, it says that he’s “an avid amateur gardener.” Maybe that’s why the Mr. Bikel mentioned in Boyd’s handwritten report was so emphatic about Eduardo Fuentes. It could be that he knew him as more than just a
laborer who worked at the concert hall. Were Fuentes and the classical musician unlikely friends?

Even though people talk about how LA is some kind of melting pot, the truth is that we pretty much stick close to people like us. Is Bikel an exception or is there another reason why he came to Fuentes’s strong defense?

SIX

I have my earbuds in as I leave Kermit at home and ride the Gold Line to work the next morning. It’s not even eight o’clock on Saturday. My phone rings; it’s my mother. We haven’t spoken since the fiasco at my parents’ house, but it doesn’t surprise me that it’s her. Who else would call me so early? “I’m calling to inform you that your father and I will be out of town tomorrow.” My mother sounds very businesslike, a secretary instead of a family member.

“But tomorrow’s Mother’s Day.” And also my day off.

“We were thinking that under the circumstances, it would be better to take a break from family activities.”

“Dad’s that pissed? It’s not our fault that this Puddy Fernandes suddenly appeared in our life. We’re the victims, too.”

Mom doesn’t say anything for a moment. “That’s his name? Puddy Fernandes?”

“Well, I guess his legal name is Pascoal Fernandes. So Dad, Noah and I are part Portuguese.”