by A. D. Miller
“You followed me.”
“Only because I need to find Eric. It’s important.”
“Why?”
“You know him, then?”
“I didn’t say that,” she said, taking a step backward. “I didn’t say anything. I don’t talk to cops.”
“In that case,” Nyman said, “it’s a good thing I’m not a cop.”
“You told them at the Hive you were.”
“I told them I was a private investigator. There’s a difference. I couldn’t put your friend in jail if I wanted to.”
A bus had pulled to the curb and opened its door but she didn’t seem to notice.
“I don’t understand why everybody’s always bothering Eric,” she said with sudden anger. “He didn’t do anything to you. He doesn’t deserve this.”
Nyman asked her what Eric deserved.
“To be left alone,” she said. “With me and Kelsey. That’s all he wants.”
“Who’s Kelsey?”
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t know anything. That’s why I need your help. Is a Kelsey a friend of yours?”
Kelsey was their little girl, the woman said. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
Nyman asked her how old her daughter was.
“What do you care? It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“I’m just curious.”
She looked at him for a moment in indecision. Then, shyly, she took a phone from her backpack and showed him a photo of a prematurely born baby. Its head was narrow and misshapen; its arms were thin and formless and pink, with a layer of soft hair still covering the skin.
“Brown eyes,” she said with a note of pride. “Just like Eric’s.”
Nyman said that she must be a very happy mother. “What’s your name, by the way?”
“Marissa.”
“I’m Tom.”
They shook hands stiffly and formally. Nyman nodded to the photo and asked if the baby was with Eric.
“No, she’s with my aunt. My aunt’s been letting Kelsey and me stay with her for a while.”
“Eric’s not living with you?”
Her pride and happiness went away. Pretending not to hear the question, she turned to watch the bus merge back into traffic.
“I’m not trying to pry,” Nyman said, “but I need to talk to him. About one of his friends.”
She kept her gaze on the bus. “Yeah? What friend?”
“Alana Bell.”
The name brought a flush to her cheeks. “Yeah. That’s what I thought you’d say.”
“You know her?”
“I met her once. At the park.”
“I heard that she and Eric are pretty close.”
The flush deepened. “I guess so. I don’t know. You should ask Eric.”
“I’d like to. And I’d like to tell him what happened to Alana last night.”
She turned back to him. “What do you mean?”
“Eric should probably be the first one to hear about it. Since he’s her friend.”
For a time she didn’t respond. They stood together in the shade of the bus shelter, watching cars pass in the hazy afternoon heat. Finally, looking down at her phone, she typed three or four sentences with her thumb.
After less than a minute the phone chimed.
“All right,” she said after she’d read the text. “He says he’ll meet you.”
* * *
The 4th Street bridge was a concrete viaduct connecting downtown to Boyle Heights. Beneath its arches ran Burlington Northern railroad tracks and the culverts of the L.A. River.
Leaving his car on Santa Fe Avenue, under the bridge’s western end, Nyman made his way along a sidewalk planted with fir trees and bordered on one side by a fence topped with razor wire. Beyond the fence was a short stretch of scrubby grass, then the glinting lines of the railroad tracks.
He came to a section of fencing that had been cut and pulled to one side. Wriggling through, he crossed the scrubby grass to the nearest of the bridge’s arches, forty or fifty yards away.
The arch cast a deep, wide shadow. Distributed here and there in the gloom were tents and sleeping bags and encampments, some elaborate enough to have laundry lines. A skeletal woman with brittle gray hair lay on her back beside a shopping cart, smoking the dying end of a cigarette.
“Looking for somebody?” she said.
Nyman nodded. “Eric Trujillo. I was told he lives around here.”
“You mean Ricky?” The woman gave a toothless smile. “Like a kid to me, Ricky. A son. You got a problem with him, you better tell me first.”
“I don’t have a problem with him.”
The woman made a courtly gesture with her cigarette, indicating the tent farthest from her cart. “All right. Then you can pass.”
He stepped around her and made his way to Trujillo’s tent.
It was a pup-tent stained with mold. Nyman said Trujillo’s name, got no response, kneeled beside the tent’s opening, and lifted the flap: inside were a tangle of dirty clothes, a pack of cigarettes, two empty beer bottles, and a pamphlet from the Mormon church. He lowered the flap and walked to the other end of the arch, where the shadows gave way again to sunlight.
The blow came from his left. It struck him behind the left ear and pitched him forward, sending him sprawling among rocks and gravel and grass. Two kicks—one to his ribs, the other to his head—followed in quick succession.
When he woke up a moment later he was being turned onto his back by strong hands. A young man’s face loomed over him: handsome and pocked by acne. The man put his left hand on Nyman’s throat and drew back his fist.
Nyman tried to roll away; the punch caught him on the cheek and mouth, driving his bottom lip into his teeth. Blood came first from his lip and then from his nose as the man punched him a second time.
Then the grip on his throat abruptly loosened; the man drew back on his haunches, out of breath. Nyman dragged himself a few feet away and wiped his face with the sleeve of his jacket. The fabric came away wet and dark.
“Come close to me again and I’ll kill you,” the man said in a quavering, adolescent voice. “You hear what I’m saying?”
Nyman took a handkerchief from a pocket and tried to clean his face. “You’re Trujillo?” he said thickly.
“What difference does it make?”
“Need to talk to you about Alana Bell.”
Trujillo made a disgusted noise. “You don’t want to talk about her. You want to kill her.”
Gingerly, Nyman ran his tongue along his swelling lip. “Why would you think that?”
“Because you’re security,” Trujillo said. “Marissa says you’re private security. Just like Fowler.”
“Who’s Fowler?”
“Come on. I’m not stupid.”
“Is Fowler someone who wanted to hurt Alana?”
“Course he is. Who do you think gave her that bruise?”
Nyman was quiet for a time, bleeding and thinking. “On her face,” he said at last. “Her cheek. Right?”
“Yeah, you know about it. You know because you were there when he did it. You work with him.”
Nyman put the handkerchief back in his pocket. “I don’t work with anybody. Alana came to see me in my office.”
“Liar.”
“She said she was in trouble. She wanted me to help her.”
“That doesn’t even make sense. Why would she go to you when she could come to me?”
“I don’t know. But that’s what happened.”
“You’re lying.”
“If you were really her friend, Eric, you should be helping me. It’s what she would’ve wanted.”
“Why are you talking like it’s the past? None of this is over. Fowler’s still trying to kill her.”
Nyman sniffed at the blood that was dripping from his nose. “It’s too late for that, Eric. She’s already dead.”
Chapter 8
Traffic whined above their heads as t
hey sat under the 4th Street bridge. From their left came the clanging of a railroad bell. Trujillo put a hand in his jacket and took out a lighter and a half-smoked joint.
His hand on the lighter was trembling. He got it lit on the second try and inhaled hungrily as it started to burn. Without looking at Nyman he said in a shaken voice:
“I don’t believe you.”
Nyman said he didn’t blame him. “You can check for yourself, though. Call the Vista Hills police.”
“Vista Hills?”
Nyman told him about driving up to see the body. “The coroner’s office thinks it was a hit and run. No witnesses and no suspects.”
Blood continued to drip from his nostrils onto his lips and chin, where it was drying in the heat.
Trujillo shook his head and stared down at the joint. He sat hunched forward with an arm around one knee and a foot twitching in the grass. Despite the heat he wore black jeans, a black flannel shirt, workman’s boots, and a black-and-silver Kings jacket. His brown eyes, like his daughter’s, were flecked with gold.
“I want to see a license,” he said. “What you’re saying is true, you should have a license, right? Some kind of badge?”
Nyman took a folded piece of paper from his wallet and handed it across. Trujillo studied it intently, then tossed it onto the grass, rubbed a hand over his eyes, and said in a calmer voice:
“What would she be doing up in Vista Hills?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“Why me? How’d you even find out about me?”
Nyman told him what Michael Freed had said about their meeting in Zamora Park.
“That’s bullshit,” Trujillo said. “I never threatened anybody. Freed showed up one time, acting like he was Allie’s dad or something. Telling her they needed to talk. I told him maybe she doesn’t want to talk, so why don’t you get the hell out of here?”
“What did Freed say to that?”
“I don’t know. Said he’d call the cops if I didn’t leave him and Allie alone. Said he didn’t want Allie working with me anymore.”
“How exactly was she working with you?”
Trujillo shrugged. “It wasn’t really work. Just talking. The city wanted to build something in the park—told us all we had to leave. Allie wanted to know how it would affect me.”
“Why you?”
“She talked to lots of us, not just me. Said the study she was doing needed to take account of our lives, too.”
“Did Freed come to the park with her?”
“Only that one time. When he told me to leave her alone.”
Nyman’s next question was interrupted by Trujillo’s phone. He took it from the pocket of his jeans, glanced at the screen, made an irritated noise, and silenced it.
“Call from Marissa?” Nyman said.
“None of your business.”
“She seemed like a nice girl to me.”
“I don’t care what she seemed like to you.”
“Were you having a relationship with Alana, Eric?”
Trujillo’s glare was cold and angry, but his voice was still calm. “You got it all worked out in your head, don’t you? Kid gets a thing for a girl he can’t have. Kills her when she tells him no.”
“That sounds like the theory Freed was suggesting.”
“And you believe it?”
“Not necessarily,” Nyman said. “What’s your theory?”
“I don’t have a theory. I have facts.”
“Such as?”
Trujillo held up a finger. “Number one. This Monday. Guy shows up at the park and starts asking where Allie is. Says his name’s Fowler and he needs to talk to her.”
“Talk to her about what?”
“I don’t know—I didn’t hear it all. She went over with him to his car and came back after a while. Said he’d told her he worked at the Rexford and wanted her to come there to meet somebody.”
“The Rexford?”
“It’s a club,” Trujillo said. “Real expensive. Models and bottles and shit like that.”
“Who did he want her to meet there?”
Trujillo said that he didn’t know, then held up another finger. “Number two, though. Allie comes to the park the next day with that bruise on her face. Tells me she hit herself on the bathroom sink. I said it was Fowler, wasn’t it, and she just ignored me. Around then was when the cops came in and told us all we had to leave.”
“Did she go on ignoring you after you moved out of the park?”
The joint had dwindled to a nub and Trujillo tossed it away into the grass, brushing his hands.
“Pretty much. That was the last time I saw her.”
“Is there a number three?”
Trujillo nodded. “Yesterday I called up the Rexford and said I wanted to talk to Mr. Fowler. Made up a story about how he’d offered me a job and I wanted to discuss it with him.”
“What’d they say?”
“That I must’ve made a mistake, because they weren’t hiring any bouncers.”
Nyman said: “And that’s why you think he’s some kind of security?”
“One reason, yeah. And the look he had.”
“Look?”
“He looked like you,” Trujillo said. “Cheap suit. Blank face. All you guys look the same.”
Saying that he would have to get a new stylist, Nyman took the notebook and pen from his pocket. In a narrow cursive hand, he wrote a timeline of the events Trujillo had described.
“Fowler came to the park on Monday, then? Two days before she was killed?”
“That’s right.”
“And you never talked to Alana again after Tuesday morning, when you got forced out of the park?”
Trujillo’s foot stopped twitching. He lowered his gaze and inspected the lighter in his hand. “Nope,” he said.
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“You didn’t try calling her?”
“What makes you think I even had her number?”
“Freed said you called her quite a bit. He made it sound like harassment.”
“Freed’s a lying son of a bitch.”
Nyman nodded and put away his notebook, then rose to his feet. The movement brought a fresh stream of blood from his nose. Reaching again for the handkerchief, he said:
“Personally, if my friend was being threatened, I would’ve called to check on her. I might’ve even gone to see her. Tried to protect her.”
“That’s nice. I didn’t do either one.”
Holding the handkerchief to his nose, Nyman said: “I don’t believe you, Eric.”
“I don’t care what you believe.”
“Can I give you my card, at least? In case you change your mind?”
“No.”
“What about giving me your phone number?”
“No.”
“There’ll be other people interested in you. The coroner’s investigators, for one. And probably the Vista Hills police. If they talk to Freed, he’ll tell them about you, and if they talk to me, I’ll have to tell them where you’re living.”
“I’m not sticking around here,” Trujillo said.
“That’s what I figured.”
“And I’m sorry about your face.”
He said it in a clipped, pained voice and went on staring at the lighter in his hand.
Nyman told him not to worry about it and walked back to his car.
* * *
The Palm Court was a low stucco building in Little Armenia. Leaving his car in the alley, Nyman walked to the building’s street-side entrance, passed through a common room where two or three residents sat sleeping in their chairs, and went down a linoleum-tiled hallway.
At the end was a door on which a small American flag had been taped. The door was open a few inches; from the other side came the sound of a baseball game. Nyman went in without knocking and said in a voice loud enough to be heard above the game:
“Mind if I clean myself up?”
Joseph Morit
z sat in an armchair in front of the TV. He was a large, broad-shouldered man in his early eighties, with sparse white hair combed neatly to one side and a somber, aquiline face. He looked at the dried blood on Nyman’s face and clothes and said without a change of expression:
“Clean up what?”
“A little mustard on my tie.”
“All right. But don’t get any mustard on the towels.”
The bathroom and was covered in pink tile and smelled of bay rum aftershave. Nyman took off his coat and tie and cleaned himself at the sink.
The game was in the top of the ninth when he came out. The Angels were leading the Red Sox by two runs. He sat down without speaking and watched Joseph watch the game.
The older man’s hands—large and thick-veined—lay spread across his thighs, moving occasionally in response to the play on the field. When the half-inning ended, he muted the TV and looked at Nyman questioningly.
“Teenage kid,” Nyman said. “Thought I was threatening the woman he had a crush on.”
“At the office?”
“Under the 4th Street bridge.”
“Odd place to be.”
“I’ve been several odd places today,” Nyman said, and started to tell him about Alana Bell. As soon as the game resumed Joseph turned back to the T.V. and Nyman fell silent.
The middle of Boston’s order was up to bat. When the last batter popped up to center, Joseph turned off the T.V. with a grunt of satisfaction and said:
“Only five back of Houston now.”
They left the room and walked down to the cafeteria. Joseph’s spine and shoulders were curved by age and he leaned heavily on his walker, but he was an inch taller than Nyman and thirty pounds heavier.
At the doorway to the cafeteria a smiling woman in scrubs called them by their first names and told them the evening’s menu. They put in their orders and sat down by the coffee station.
“So she wanted to hire you,” Joseph said, resting his elbows on the table, “but she couldn’t pay you. I hope you had the sense to turn her away.”
“I did.”
“You’re learning, then.”
“A little bit.”
“More than a little. And what happened after that?”
“She was murdered.”
For a moment Joseph allowed himself to look surprised. The impassive face became briefly soft and human; the eyes widened; spots of color came into the marble-white cheeks.
