H is for HOMICIDE

by Sue Grafton

  We drove back to the apartment through rush-hour traffic: six lanes of the Indy 500, featuring business execs and other control freaks. I was tense, but Raymond didn’t seem affected. External stresses didn’t seem to disturb him the same way emotional matters did. He flipped the radio on to a classical station and turned the volume up, treating the cars on either side of us to a sonata that sounded like it was made up almost entirely of mistakes. This stretch of the 405 was flat, a sprawling expanse of concrete, riddled with factories, dotted with oil derricks, power lines, and industrial structures designed for no known purpose. In the distance, an irregular fence of chimneys was silhouetted against the skyline, which had browned down to an eerie sunset of green-and-orange light.

  It was after seven o’clock and fully dark by the time we pulled into a parking space out in front of the apartment building. Walking up to the second floor, I was struck by the sounds of apartment life. As usual, many front doors stood open, televisions blaring. Children were running along the balconies, engrossed in a game of their own devising. A mother leaned over the railing and yelled at a kid named “Eduardo,” who looked to be about three years old. He was protesting in Spanish, probably complaining about the indignity of an early bedtime.

  Luis took the dog and went home soon after we got to the apartment. He’d been baby-sitting Bibianna, making sure she didn’t bolt the minute Raymond’s back was turned. The television set was on, tuned to a cable rerun of “Leave It to Beaver,” which Bibianna watched halfheartedly while she laid out another hand of solitaire. Nobody seemed to feel like fixing dinner since we’d all spent a hard day smashing up cars and cheating California motorists. Bibianna’s depression was exacerbated by cramps, and she went off to bed with a hot-water bottle. Raymond conjured up the telephone from its latest hiding place and sent out for Chinese. His tics were back, though they’d ceased to bother me. The guy’s personal problems were much larger than the Tourette’s, which I suspect other people probably learn to cope with pretty well. His sociopathology was a different matter altogether.

  While the two of us sat at the kitchen table, waiting for the guy to deliver the order, Raymond rolled and smoked a joint. I picked up a couple of the half-completed insurance forms I’d seen earlier. Time to make myself useful, I thought. I looked from the first form to the second. “What’s this?” I said, a laugh bubbling up again. I can’t help it ��� some spelling errors tickle me. “Suffering from a bad case of ‘bruces’?” As I reached for a third form, Raymond snatched the papers away from me.

  “Raymond, come on. What’s the matter with you? You can’t send that to an insurance company. Both of those claims say exactly the same thing.” I went ahead and pulled a third claim form from the pile. “Here’s another one. Same date, same time. Don’t you think they check this stuff? They’re going to pick up on that. Here, look. If you want to have those guys fill out the forms, at least use a little imagination. Set up a few different stories…”

  “I was going to do that,” he said with irritation.

  “Let me have a turn. It’d be fun,” I said.

  At first, I didn’t think he’d do it, but his gaze had settled on my face and I could see I’d piqued his interest. Reluctantly, he relinquished the form we’d been wrestling over. I picked up a pencil stub and began to print out the narrative for an auto accident.

  “Don’t make it sound too smart,” Raymond said.

  “Trust me.”

  I proceeded to invent, off the top of my head, several variations of the accidents I’d participated in that afternoon. I had to pat myself on the back. I was really good at this. I’d make a fortune if I ever turned my hand to crime in earnest. Raymond apparently thought so, too. “How you know all this stuff?”

  “I’m a person of many talents,” I said, licking my pencil point. “Quit peeking. You make me nervous.”

  Raymond got us both a cold beer and we chatted while I wrote up fictional fender-benders and minor wrecks. Raymond hadn’t managed to graduate from high school, whereas I attended three whole semesters of junior college before I lost heart.

  “Why’d you quit, though? You’re smart.”

  “I never liked school,” I said. “High school, I was smokin’ too much dope to do well. College just seemed to be made up of all this stuff I didn’t like. I was too rebellious back then. And it’s not like I had a ‘career’ goal in mind. I couldn’t see the point in learning things I didn’t want to know. Poly sci and biology. Who needs it? I don’t give a damn about xylem and phloem.”

  “Me neither. Especially phloem, right?”

  “Yeah, right,” I said, laughing on the assumption he was making a joke.

  He smiled at me, rather sweetly. “I wish Bibianna were more like you,” he said.

  “Forget it. I’m a mess. Divorced twice. I’m not any better at relationships than she is.”

  He cleared his throat. “You know, in my experience? Women are no fuckin’ good. The average woman will take you for everything you got. Then, you know what they do? They leave your ass and walk off. I don’t get it. What’d I ever do?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Raymond. Guys have left me and that doesn’t make ‘em bad. That’s just the way life goes.”

  “They break your heart?”

  “One or two.”

  “Well, now see… that’s the difference. You get your heart broke like I do, it’s hard to trust, you know that?” He stared at his beer bottle, peeling a strip of the label with his thumbnail.

  I felt myself go still and I chose my words with care. “I’ll tell you what somebody told me once. ‘You can’t make anyone love you and you can’t keep anyone from dying.’

  He stared at me, his dark eyes nearly luminous. There was a silence while he digested that. He shook his head. “Here’s what I say. Somebody don’t love me? They die.”

  At eight forty-five, our dinner arrived in six white cartons, complete with tiny flat plastic pillows of soy sauce and Chinese mustard strong enough to cause a nosebleed. I forked up my food with the voracious appetite generated by secondhand marijuana smoke, which was probably fortunate under the circumstances as the dishes themselves seemed remarkably similar. All of them were tossed together in a flurry of bok choy and bamboo shoots, one smothered in a sauce that looked like Orange Crush thickened with cornstarch. Both Raymond and I made little snuffling noises as we ate, polishing off everything except a golf-ball-size clot of steamed rice. The strip of paper in my fortune cookie read, “Your sunny disposition brightens everything around you.” Raymond’s read, “No two roads ever look alike,” which made no sense whatever. He seemed to think it was profound, but by then the whites of his eyes had turned pink and he’d started eating a dope-inspired snack that he had devised ��� grape jelly scooped up with stale com chips. I went to bed, but before I turned off the light, I took out the stolen bridal photo and took one more look. Who was this woman? I knew it would come to me. Her identity might also turn out to be unrelated to the investigation, but I didn’t think so.

  I settled down for the night on my lumpy couch. I longed to be at home in the safety of my own bed. I could feel anxiety whisper at the base of my spine. There was an ancient, familiar physical sensation I couldn’t at first identify ��� some piece of my childhood being stirred up by circumstance. I felt a squeezing in my stomach ��� not an ache, but some process that was almost like grief. I closed my eyes, longing for sleep, longing for something else, though I couldn’t think what. My eyes came open and in a flash, I knew. I was homesick.

  My aunt had sent me off to summer camp when I was eight, claiming that it would be good for me to “get away.” I see now maybe she was the one who needed the relief. She told me I’d have a wonderful time and meet lots of girls my own age. She said we’d swim and ride horses and go on nature walks and sing songs around the campfire at night. In dizzying detail, memories passed across my mental screen. It was true about the girls and all the activities. What was also true w
as that after half a day, I didn’t want to be there. The horses were big and covered with flies, hot straw baseballs coming out their butts at intervals. Their muzzles were as soft and silky as suede with little prickles embedded in it, but when you least expected it, they would whip their heads up quick and try to bite you with teeth the size of piano keys. Nature turned out to be straight uphill, dusty and hot and itchy. The part that wasn’t dry and tiresome was even worse. We were supposed to swim in a lake with an Indian name, but the bottom was vile and squishy. Half the time I worried there’d be broken bottles buried in the ooze. One false step and I knew my tender instep would be slashed to the bone. When I wasn’t worried about slime and sharp rocks, I worried about the creatures gliding through the murky depths, tentacles trailing languidly toward my pale skinny legs. The first night around the campfire, after we sang “Kumbayah” about six times, they told me about this poor girl camper who had drowned two years before, and one who’d had an allergic reaction to a bee sting and nearly died, and another who broke her arm falling out of a tree. Also one of the girl counselors had been parked with her boyfriend necking when the radio announcer told about this escaped raving maniac and after they rolled the car window up and drove away quick, there was his hook right in the window. That night I cried myself to sleep, weeping in utter silence so as not to disgrace myself. In the morning, I discovered that I had all the wrong kind of shorts and I was forced to endure a lot of pitying looks because mine had elastic around the waist. At breakfast, the scrambled eggs were flabby and had white parts this girl in my cabin said were made out of unborn baby bird. After I was sick and got sent to the infirmary, there was a twelve-year-old girl who was bleeding, but they said wasn’t really hurt. It was just a dead baby coming out of her bottom every month. At lunch, there was carrot salad with dark spots. The next day, I went home, which is where I wanted to be now. I slept poorly.

  Chapter 20

  *

  Early the next morning, the Santa Teresa cops called to say Chago’s autopsy had been completed. Raymond went off to the funeral home to make arrangements to have the body brought down. The funeral director had apparently assured him by phone that he could have Chago ready for viewing that evening. Rosary would be recited Sunday evening at the funeral chapel. A mass would be said at 10:00 A.M. Monday morning at Blessed Redemption, with interment following at Roosevelt Memorial Park in Gardena.

  When Raymond got back he conferred with Luis, who left soon afterward with the dog. Word was apparently out on the street. The same two girls I’d seen the first day showed up and sat down at the kitchen table, where they began putting together paper booklets with a stapler and some colored marker pens. I could see “R.I.P. CHAGO” in ornate Gothic letters on the front. A stack of Xeroxed photographs were being collated with printed matter. Within an hour, Chago’s old homies began to arrive in twos and threes, some accompanied by wives or girlfriends. Most of them seemed too old to be active gang members at this point. Drugs, cigarettes, and booze had taken their toll, leaving bloated bellies and bad coloring. These were the survivors of God knows what turf wars, guys in their late twenties who probably considered themselves fortunate to be alive. The mood of the gathering was one of muted uneasiness, a community of mourners assembling to honor a fallen comrade. All I’d known of Chago was his last inching journey toward a Santa Teresa street corner. In the rain and the darkness, he’d set his failing sights, hunching toward home. I saw no sign of Juan or Ricardo, Raymond’s two remaining brothers, but Bibianna assured me they’d be at the funeral home later. I gathered visiting hours would extend through the evening and both of us would have to be there. In the meantime, I was feeling awkward. I hadn’t known Raymond’s brother and didn’t know any of the people who’d come to pay them respects. I was looking for the opportunity to excuse myself discreetly and retire to my room. There was a little flurry by the front door and the priest arrived in clerical black, a hyphen of snowy white collar visible at his neck.

  Bibianna leaned close and murmured, “Father Luevanos. He’s the parish priest.”

  Father Luevanos was in his sixties, a spare man with a withered face and a frizzy cloud of white hair. He was small and trim, shoulders narrow, his hands long and thin. He seemed to hold them away from his body, palms facing outward, like St. Francis of Assisi only minus the birds. He moved through the crowd, talking softly to each of his parishioners. He was treated like royalty, people parting to let him through. Raymond crossed to his side. Father Luevanos took his hands and the two murmured together in a mixture of English and Spanish. I could see Raymond’s grief surface” in response to the priest’s compassion. He didn’t weep, but his face underwent a curious series of tics that, from a distance, looked like the fast-forward sequence of a man in tears. I gathered Chago had been one of Raymond’s anchors, perhaps the only family member who really loved Raymond and was loved in return. Raymond caught my eye. He beckoned me over and introduced me to the priest. “She’s from Santa Teresa.”

  Father Luevanos held on to my hands while we talked. “Nice to meet you. You have a lovely community in Santa Teresa. How long have you known Valensuelo?”

  “Who?”

  “Chago,” Raymond murmured.

  “Oh.” I could feel my cheeks color. “Actually, I’m a friend of Bibianna’s.”

  “I see.”

  As if on cue, Bibianna moved forward to greet the priest. She had changed into a black skirt, a white blouse, and black spike heels. She had tucked a red satin rose in her hair. Her face was very pale, makeup looking stark against the pallor of her cheeks. “Father…” she whispered. She was close to tears and her mouth began to tremble when he took her hands. He leaned toward her, murmuring something in Spanish. She must have felt an almost overwhelming impulse to unburden herself.

  Once Father Luevanos had departed, the mood of the place began to lighten. The afternoon had a lazy feel to it, despite the occasion. The front door stood open and the crowd spilled out onto the balcony. Some of the guys had brought six-packs, chips, and salsa. Conversations were punctuated by the hiss of pop-tops. There was muted laughter and cigarette smoke. Somebody brought a steel-string guitar and picked out intricate melodies. A nine-month-old baby named Ignatio toddled five steps and then sank down on his diapered behind, thoroughly satisfied with the applause his journey had netted him.

  At five-thirty, the crowd began to thin. We were expected over at the funeral home early so Raymond could view the body before the others arrived. We headed out for the funeral home at six. Bibianna and I sat together in the backseat. Luis drove. Raymond sat in the passenger seat, silent and distraught, clutching a bundle he’d carried out of the bedroom with him, wrapped loosely in the folds of a white satin scarf. His emotional distress had set off a whole galaxy of symptoms, jerks and twitches that seemed all the more wrenching for the look on his face. In the space of an hour, he’d gone from a vicious hoodlum to a scared-looking kid, overwhelmed by the ordeal that lay ahead of him.

  The funeral home was housed in an extravagant Victorian mansion, one of the rare remaining structures from the early grandeur of Los Angeles. The onetime single-family residence was three stories tall, the roofline broken up by towers and chimneys. The face of it was smoke-darkened stone and brown shingle, ancient tattered palms and cedars overpowering the lot, which was flanked on either side by squat concrete office buildings. The facade jarred my sense of reality, placing me for a split second in the year 1887, past and future trading places briefly.

  The interior was a cavernous collection of hushed rooms with high ceilings, dark varnished woodwork, textured wallpaper, and indirect lighting. The muted chords of an organ were barely audible, creating a subliminal mood of sorrow and solemnity. The furniture was Victorian, damask and ornately carved wood, except for the metal folding chairs that had been arranged around the “parlor,” where Chago had been laid out. The pearly gray coffin rested in a bay at the far end of the room, half lid open to reveal a white satin interior and a
portion of his profile. The bier was surrounded by big sprays of white gladioli and wreaths of white carnations, white rosebuds, baby’s breath. Raymond had apparently spared no expense.

  Luis, Bibianna, and I lingered discreetly near the entranceway while Raymond approached the coffin, bearing his bundle like an offering. I gathered this was the first time he’d seen Chago since his death on Tuesday night. He bowed his head, staring into the coffin, his expression not visible from where we stood. After a moment, he crossed himself. I saw him unfold the white satin scarf and lean close to Chago’s body, but it was hard to tell what he was doing. Moments later, he backed away from the coffin and crossed himself again. He took out a handkerchief and blew his nose. He mopped at his eyes and tucked the handkerchief away, then turned and walked the length of the room in our direction. When he reached us, Luis put out a hand and clasped him by the shoulder, giving him a consoling pat. “Hey, man. It’s rough,” he said his voice barely audible.

  Bibianna moved away from us. She approached the coffin reluctantly, her apprehension apparent. She looked at the body briefly, then crossed herself. She went over and took a seat, fumbling in her handbag for a Kleenex.

  “You want to see him?” Raymond asked. His eyes were clouded by a pleading impossible to resist. It seemed like an intimate moment, observing the dead, and since I hadn’t known the man, it seemed inappropriate that I’d join his friends and family at the head of his coffin. On the other hand, it seemed insulting to refuse.

  Raymond picked up on my indecision, smiling sweetly. “No, come on. It’s okay. He looks good.”

  That was a matter of opinion, of course. I’d actually seen Chago twice: once on Tuesday at the CF offices when he bumped into me in the hall, and again that night at the Bourbon Street restaurant when he’d abducted Bibianna at gunpoint. He’d seemed like a big man then, but death had pressed him flat. He looked like a Ken doll on display in an oversize carrying case. He was probably four or five years younger than Raymond, with the same good looks. His face was smooth and unlined, chin and cheekbones prominent. His hair had been blown into a dark glossy pompadour that made his head seem too large for the width of his shoulders. Raymond’s satin-wrapped packet had apparently contained religious items. An oversize Bible, bound in textured white, had been clumsily propped up against the chalky pink of Chago’s folded hands. A rosary had been laid across his fingers and a framed photograph of him as a small boy placed on the small white pillow on which he lay. The pillow was satin and looked like the sort women use when they don’t want to mess up an expensive salon hairdo. Luis and I studied Chago as attentively as one watches an infant in the company of a proud parent.