Nica of Los Angeles

by Sue Perry

  We turned the next corner and Anya resumed muttering. Again, we plummeted sideways and we were back in my Frame, in the narrow alley at the delivery entrance to the Henrietta. We were alone there and I felt exposed. Anya braced my arms in farewell, then backed away, speaking rapidly to me while muttering to herself. As she backed away, she grew as faint as last week's dreams.

  "Do not return to your rooms until Anwyl comes tonight. He will help you dispose of the books that do not belong. Tell him everything that you witnessed today. Tell him I have begun the journey. Goodbye, Nica. We will meet in better times. Now go, and quickly." She vanished before she finished speaking and her last few words came from all directions.

  9. One Mighty Big Compass

  I was a shipwreck in need of an island. Whenever a thought touched on my last hour with Anya, an evil black ooze filled the fringes of my thoughts. I had to stay in the present, so I made a to-do list for my afternoon and repeated it until it became a mantra. Find Edith's mother Maria. Question her about Edith's disappearance. Return to the Henrietta. Get input from Hernandez about the conversation with Maria. Eradicate library books. No - that last one brought the ooze so I scrapped it from my list.

  I noted without judgment that I already trusted Hernandez.

  I must have caught the Red Line train into Hollywood, because here I was where Maria worked. I stood outside Yucca Elementary School and watched buses line the driveway at the end of the school day. According to their window placards, the buses came from several schools. This must be a hub of summer school activity. I thought about budget cuts and working parents and my eyes filled with tears. I had a titch of PTSD, or I sensed this would be the last time for a long time that I would spectate such a normal scene.

  Hernandez’ description of Maria was as authentic as a photograph. When she emerged, I had no doubt it was she. Short and sturdy, Maria reminded me of the log cabin where Ben and I finished our honeymoons. She wore sensible shoes like she had no other styles at home, and she walked as though she was on her way to her second but not her last job of the day.

  She stopped because I asked her to, listened after I said that Hernandez had sent me, shut down when I explained that I wanted to help find her daughter.

  "This I do not ask!" she said, angry or frustrated. "Edith is no - Only the family -" She shoved her arms folded.

  "Señor Hernandez told me that you understand much English but it is difficult for you to speak it. I am in a worse position. I only know Spanish that is no use to anyone. Hace frio este deciembre?" This demonstration earned the world's most fleeting smile. Emboldened, I continued. "The Garcias say that you are searching for Edith. Together."

  "No!"

  "Did they lie to me? You are not looking for Edith together?"

  "They did not lie about that."

  "But they lied about other things?"

  "I miss my bus."

  I walked with her down the street.

  "Are you still looking for your daughter?"

  "No more. Mistake."

  "So she was okay all along?"

  "No more. Mistake." Her voice was brick scraping cement.

  "Why do the Garcias want to find Edith?"

  "My bus is here," she whispered.

  Getting info from Maria was like the time I tried to drive my scooter up a runaway truck ramp. I kept gunning it, then, too, until the friction burned a hole in a tire. I boarded the bus behind her. She did a cornered animal thing with her eyes when I slid into the seat beside her.

  "Do you want the Garcias to stop looking for Edith?"

  She nodded.

  "Why did you partner with them?" She didn't understand that one. "Why did you help the Garcias to look for your daughter?"

  It wasn't any of the answers I anticipated. She met my eyes and announced, "I was ignorant." The way she turned to face front, I knew those were the last words I would get from her today.

  I thanked her for her time and got off the bus at the next stop. I'd only ridden about half a mile but I hadn't attended to the turns and I had no idea which direction would get me to the train station. My map app was no help. The dreaded compass interference. I waved my phone to draw infinity symbols in the air as I walked. Still nothing. That was one mighty big compass.

  I chose a direction that put the Hollywood Hills to my left, which meant I headed east. Within two blocks, the neighborhood became detectably scuzzier, which meant I was nearing Western Avenue, which meant I was walking away from the station and needed to hang a left and a left.

  I wasn't lost, exactly; after all, it can be slow to get your bearings when on foot. I didn't know this area, the dregs of Hollywood. Elvis Cole would know his way around here. He knew his way around everywhere - he knew every street in Los Angeles County. He must just drive around between cases... er... between books. Well, anyway, his author sure knew L.A.

  Was it possible to be a detective in Los Angeles without a car? Whatever the answer, I would have to make it possible for now. I hadn't expected to get cases so soon. I had recently loaned my car to Jenn, and if I took it back even briefly, she would refuse to borrow it again - and she needed it to get to her more exotic medical treatments. Jenn has M.S. and fights it with medicine from all hemispheres.

  I had a blister where my Asics met one ankle.

  I turned into an old neighborhood with mature trees, whose roots made the sidewalks treacherous. I had to watch where I put my feet, so almost collided with a construction flatbed that pulled into a driveway in front of me. The driver was a kid who knew he was too good for this job. He jumped out like he dared me to complain about how he had cut me off. I gave him two days on the job, I wouldn't have to lift a finger, he'd hurt himself just fine. I detoured around the back of the truck, turning my other cheeks to him. Gandhi lives.

  The apartment buildings that flanked the driveway were three-story boxes with the architectural flair of loading docks. Over one carport was a wooden sailboat, riding waves with most crests broken. Chain link fence with green webbing surrounded the complex and signaled a construction site.

  The truck driver caught my attention a second time. His walk had lost its strut and he slunk to a corner outside the webbing, where he huffed an electronic cigarette, pretended to study the dried weeds, and cast furtive peeks at the crew who unloaded his truck.

  Call it curious. Call it nosy. I crossed the street to perch on a porch step and get a broader view of whatever had so altered his mood.

  Five guys in hard hats unloaded rebar from the flatbed. A sixth stood to one side, watching them. It took me a minute to figure out what was weird. They worked in full sync yet complete silence. At one point, without discussion, they all stopped and changed direction, backing up to turn left in order to deliver that load - and only that load - to the other side of the site. They didn't look at one another, but they would occasionally turn in unison to regard the foreman, before performing a new action in unison.

  My waist prickled where Anya's lanyard touched me. The prickle became a searing jolt when the foreman turned to look at me. The crew had their backs to us but turned in unison to follow his gaze to me. I hunched lower onto the porch step, grabbed my phone, and pretended to mess with it.

  "Help you with something?" came a bass voice from behind me. In retrospect, I recalled hearing the door and the screen door open behind me.

  "Train station? Think I took a wrong turn. Sorry to intrude - your porch has the best shade in blocks," I said, and listened carefully to the porch owner's directions. While we talked, the flatbed drove away and the gates to the construction site closed. The lanyard ceased its prickling.

  I had the train station to myself, which disturbed me. I reminded myself that it was typical for a station to be empty at this time of day. Rude attention from construction guys was also typical. It was no wonder that I reinterpreted the ordinary in terms of my experience with Anya. But I had to stop extrapolating or I'd become no use to anybody, especially myself.

  I had just missed
one train and at this time of day, the next would arrive in 20 minutes. That gave me some time to think about what I had and hadn't learned from Maria. I found a not-very-sticky bench and adjusted my shoelace so my shoe hit my ankle below the blister. There was a rustle of synthetic fabric and after that I was not alone.

  The other bench dweller spoke to me. "Why are you looking for Edith Moreno?"

  I gave her my best you talkin' to me? She flashed a badge and I hid my surprise with a blurted question of my own. "Which side is the mother on, anyway?"

  "Maria's coming around," the detective replied, out-murking me. I didn't like taking second place in the cryptic answer competition, but I liked my new companion, immediately. No makeup, freckles, good bones, auburn hair slicked back in a tight wrap with a shine that said it was pampered off-duty. She wore Doc Martens with toe scuffs that may have come from kicking wrongdoers, and a pantsuit purchased on an honest cop's salary. The jacket was tight like a weightlifter wears tight.

  "Are you looking for Edith?" I tried.

  "I am not and you need to stop. Are you working for the Garcias?"

  "They asked me to find her. I want to make sure Edith is safe."

  "What did they tell you?" Her voice was a draft through an igloo door.

  "That there was trouble at home with her mother and she split and she is their goddaughter so they are concerned."

  "And which parts of that did you believe?"

  "Not enough to tell them where Edith is - assuming I find her - before I understand what is going on. Enough to believe Edith could need help."

  "She did. She's safe now."

  "Do you know where Edith is? Are you hiding her from the Garcias?"

  She stripped her face of expression, which seemed to tell me yes when she non-answered, "Why would you think that?"

  "You're hiding her? Really? Why? See you've got a really expressive face so when you freeze it up like that, you answer me without answering."

  Surprise registered. She didn't know that about herself.

  "I don't want to cause trouble for Edith. Tell me what else I need to know about the Garcias. What is their interest in Edith?"

  "It's not in her health," she snapped, reinforcing my instinct to doubt my clients. The train arrived and she walked me to the train's door, but did not join me in the car. She handed me a card. "Tell me before you tell the Garcias anything."

  I had just spoken with Detective Pat Henson, Domestic Crimes Unit, Los Angeles Police Department.

  The train trip downtown was uneventful, apparently. I had too much on my mind to pay it any heed. The walk from the train station to the Henrietta was hot yet refreshing. It was late afternoon, so the sun was low enough to build thick shadows between the downtown buildings. Anwyl was due to arrive in just under two hours.

  When I got to my building, I couldn't open the entrance door. It wasn't locked but it was stuck. From what I could see when I pressed my forehead to the glass, the lobby was empty. I searched for a buzzer to the office, but then - shooting up from my toes, flooding my body - came rapid realizations: I didn't want to be there, I had come back too soon, I needed to leave, and I needed to find a crowd to blend in with.

  I joined a brisk squadron of commuters headed for the train hub at Union Station. From there, I rode the trains back and forth and all around. Rush hour flowed and ebbed. At 6:45 p.m., I tried to go home again. Now the building door opened like it had just been oiled. I entered the lobby timidly, but it felt fine. As my finger reached for the elevator call button, the elevator doors slid open for me. There was no one in the elevator but my floor, number 9, was already illuminated.

  10. Do You Prefer This To Be A Dream?

  Anwyl was at my desk behind my locked office door and acknowledged my entry with a lightning bolt of a smile. He was doing something on my laptop - or to my laptop, which made a throbbing noise I'd never heard before. I looked over his shoulder. Gone from the monitor were the usual windows of apps and docs. The view seemed more like a real window now, looking onto a steep barren mountain that seemed dimly familiar until it began to spew chains of numbers that slid down its sides. Anwyl's head moved back and forth like he was reading teletype. At one point he slid a finger across the keyboard, which moved a grid on the screen. Under the grid, numbers flowed. Outside the grid, rocks and dirt slid down the steep slope. "Again," Anwyl said to the screen, then watched intently as a duplicate rockslide occurred.

  "Thank you, my friend, and tell no one." Anwyl spoke to the screen as he skimmed a fingernail across the keyboard. The mountain vanished and my computer's desktop windows reappeared.

  "Tell me everything that you experienced on the roof," Anwyl belatedly greeted me. "Omit no detail, however insignificant it seems."

  I tried to comply, but Anwyl isn't a good listener. In fact, I predict he is somebody who skips ahead to read the last page of a novel first. What am I saying? Anwyl's not a fiction kind of guy. But if he were, that's what he would do. He is about as patient as I am quiet and my attempt to tell the story of my day frustrated him beyond what his rudimentary politeness could handle. Clearly, I didn't understand what mattered. He was dismissive of what I considered the big deals: something came after us that could bulge the steel door on the roof and mess with my thoughts; we went to a Frame where the Henrietta's doorway resembled a poorly healed wound; we had to jump off the roof because he had confiscated my Guide.

  Actually, that last point made him look like he might know the definition of contrite. He extracted my Guide from his tunic. When I took it from his flat open palm, his fingers snapped to grab my wrist like I was slipping off a cliff. "You must never Travel on your own, for any reason. You could be lost in a manner that prevents us from finding you."

  "Okay, I get it." I wanted my wrist back. "Promise."

  "A vow uttered aloud has more strength."

  "I said I promised. What else do you want me to say?" He made me repeat after him. "I promise I will never use the Guide to Travel the Frames by myself, whatever the reason, however short the journey." I wondered if that was a promise I intended to keep.

  He released my wrist. Someday it would bend again. Another lightning bolt of a smile and I savored the flow of electricity, until he muttered, "Anya will banish me to the far Frames if I allow harm to befall you."

  He resumed pacing my office like a marathoner in a dash, unable to stride far enough to satisfy his need to move. "Continue your tale. You may have observed something of value." He sounded skeptical.

  I'd already told him the afternoon's chronology, from the moment I'd found Anya crouched in the garden to the moment I returned to the building and was permitted to enter. Now I closed my eyes and free-associated tangential memories as they came to me. Three things proved important. Or so I assumed, because Anwyl questioned me about details. I couldn't tell heads from tails with any of it.

  "When the door bulged, from inside the building there was a sound like a helicopter in a cavern."

  "How far inside the building was the sound?"

  "Far. Like down in the lobby."

  Grunt. "What else?"

  "She didn't want me to hold on to the library books. She made me leave some in the stairwell."

  "Where in the stairwell?"

  "Just a few stairs from the top. I should show you. She said you should help me return those. And my others, too."

  "There are no books in the stairwell now. Where are the others?"

  I looked to the shelf by the door, where I keep library books: empty - but there had been five or six books there.

  "They're gone. Somebody took them while I was - - did you see anyone else around when you got here?"

  "What books resided here?"

  I was a little embarrassed to tell him. They were mostly save your life and start fresh, pep-talk self-help drivel, plus a couple new detective series I had skimmed for business research. I didn't mind telling him about those. But as for the self-helpers, "I don't remember for sure what I had, because my frien
d Jenn picked them out for me, she thought I needed a boost but to me that kind of crap is more like a kick in the -"

  "Most likely they have enlisted. Mercenaries," he hissed, with a violence that frightened me.

  "We're talking about books, right? Not soldiers."

  He gave me the look you'd give a used car that you were offered for free. "Books are the armies of the Frames." His frustration with my ignorance was palpable.

  "Anwyl, lose the long-suffering, okay?" My sharpness of tone surprised us both. "You use this tone of course everybody knows this stuff - and maybe everybody does in your neck of the Frames. But I ain't from around there."

  Now, he did look contrite. "I extend apologies. You have adjusted so quickly that I forget your inexperience." He finished with one of those smiles.

  I've never been the type for reassuring hugs, but he couldn't know that. If I said I needed a hug, he would have to - he interrupted my fantasy with, "What else do you recall?"

  "Anya said you should help me get rid of books I don't love." I opened the doors of the floor-to-ceiling cabinet, revealing the crammed bookshelves inside.

  He grunted again, strode to the bookshelves. Shelf by shelf, he withdrew books and hefted them. Some he returned to their places, some he piled on an emptier shelf. Somehow he removed and piled all the books that mattered least to me. He did this rapidly, then said, "I sense no traitors here. We will thin the ranks another day. What else do you remember?"

  The last additional memory I could conjure was of the emotional Doppler effect when Anya and I were on the sidewalk and the happy party talk changed to angry shouts as we walked below the windows. That had thoroughly creeped me out, but Anwyl dismissed it with a rude hand wave and grabbed my arm to pull me toward the door. I reacted to the rude wave and he forced his manner to seem less brusk.

  "You have done well, Nica." He looked up at my skylight and the darkening sky outside. "We must away."