North of Montana ag-1

by April Smith

  Following up on Galloway’s idea to look for someone close to the doctor who would be motivated to talk, I go through the file again and come to the printouts subpoenaed from the phone company. During a period of several months a whole lot of calls from the Eberhardt home were made to a local 454 number listed as belonging to Theodora Feign. After highlighting them with a marker it becomes graphically clear that Ms. Feign is linked to the Eberhardt household in some way: for one week alone there are twenty pink lines.

  The Bank Dick’s Undercover Disguise and I are working on the same wavelength. We agree that since the calls were placed from the residence during the day they were most likely made by the wife, maybe to a girlfriend, maybe her only friend in California, someone the displaced nurse from Boston could unload on about how lonely she is over in the contemporary Mediterranean on Twentieth Street.

  Theodora Feign could be the kind of source Galloway is looking for. But if I call her cold, she could easily turn around and tell bosom buddy Claire the FBI has been asking questions about her husband, thereby blowing the entire operation and busting me back to desk duty.

  To be safe, I should talk to someone who has knowledge of Theodora Feign’s relationship with the Eberhardts. Who would know?

  It was obvious from cruising the streets that there was a dual society north of Montana, upper-middle-class whites and working-class Hispanics living in parallel worlds. While the white women are absent you can see the housekeepers gathered on shady corners of those lush residential streets with crowds of strollers and babies, gossiping in Spanish like there’s no tomorrow, and it’s a safe bet, I explain to the Bank Dick’s Undercover Disguise, that the gossip has to do with the white women and how much they pay and how they run their households and who has an unhappy marriage and who is good friends with whom.

  If Theodora Feign were close to Claire Eberhardt, there’s a good chance her housekeeper, Violeta Alvarado, would have known, and maybe Violeta talked about it with her good friend, the older woman in the building who was also from El Salvador and baby-sat for her kids; a comadre who understood and cared.

  I dial Mrs. Gutiérrez’s number and say I have questions concerning my cousin. What kind of questions? she wants to know. Oh, about her life, how she came to America. Pleased that I am showing interest in my family, Mrs. Gutiérrez agrees to meet on Sunday.

  Of course that stuff about Violeta is a lie, what I’m really after is information on her employer. Hanging up I glance smugly at the Bank Dick’s Undercover Disguise, but sense disapproval: it knows I am lying only to myself.

  • • •

  Sunday afternoon we get a break in the rain and although it is overcast and fifty degrees I grab the opportunity to put the top down on the Barracuda, bundling up in boots, a leather bomber jacket, aviator sunglasses, and a Dodgers cap turned backward. When I pull up in front of Violeta Alvarado’s apartment building, Mrs. Gutiérrez is already waiting out front with Teresa and Cristóbal.

  The children barely murmur a response when I say hello. I thought they’d get a kick out of riding in the convertible but they say nothing. The wind whips their glossy black hair but their faces remain blank.

  Mrs. Gutiérrez and I exchange a few words in the front seat about whether it will rain again tomorrow. As I accelerate down Sunset Boulevard she clutches a large white pocketbook to her bosom, cupping the other hand over her ear as if to stop her lacquered hairdo from blowing.

  What now? Do I try my few words of Spanish to get a conversation going? Put on a Latino station? Would they enjoy that or be insulted? Finally the uneasy silence is more than I can take and I shove in an old Springsteen tape, withdrawing to my own space — my car, my Sunday, my music — for the twenty minutes it takes to get on the freeway and off again at Traveltown in Griffith Park.

  The damp, smoggy air on the other side of the Hollywood Hills smells like cigar smoke and old rust. Despite the uncertain weather the parking lot is half full. We pass beneath some frail eucalyptus trees and through the gate, finding ourselves at a tiny railway station where a tiny steam-driven train has just rolled in.

  “Do they want to go for a ride?” I ask Mrs. Gutiérrez.

  Teresa shakes her head no. Her brother simply holds her hand. He is wearing a new Ninja Turtle sweat suit.

  I notice some outdoor tables. “Are they hungry?”

  “They have lunch but maybe they like to eat.”

  We make an unlikely contingent, me in my leather and baseball cap, Mrs. Gutiérrez who is wearing turquoise flowered leggings and a big red sweater the size of a barrel, and the two orphans.

  I buy nachos and microwaved hot dogs. We are surrounded by birthday parties, mostly Hispanic. Teresa and Cristóbal eat slowly and carefully, as if they had been taught to appreciate each bite, staring at the wrapped presents, a piñata hoisted into a tree, a portable grill laden with smoking pieces of marinated meat and long whole scallions, releasing the aroma of roasted garlic and lime. Each group seems to include ten or twenty family members, good humored and relaxed. The birthday cakes are elaborate, store bought. Teresa is watching without envy. Without any discernible emotion at all.

  “Mamá!” Cristóbal suddenly exclaims, excited, pointing.

  “He think that lady look like his mother.” Mrs. Gutiérrez strokes his head. “Pobrecito.”

  A pretty young woman, who might in fact resemble a reconstruction of the decimated corpse I saw in the autopsy photos, is holding a baby while unwrapping aluminum foil from a tray of fruit. She laughs and nuzzles the baby, who grips the wavy black hair that falls to her waist.

  “Does Cristóbal understand …?” I find it hard to finish.

  “He know his mommy isn’t coming back.”

  Cristóbal tugs at his sister’s arm. She continues to chew uninterestedly as if he were pointing out a passing bus.

  “Do you remember if Violeta ever talked about a friend of Mrs. Eberhardt’s named Theodora Feign?”

  “You mean Mrs. Teddy?”

  “Could be.”

  “Oh yes, Mrs. Claire and Mrs. Teddy were very close. And Mrs. Teddy’s housekeeper, Reyna, was also close with Violeta.”

  “So the four of them got along.”

  “Not so much anymore.”

  “No?”

  “Mrs. Teddy is very mad with Mrs. Claire.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I don’t know, but Violeta was sad that she didn’t get to see Reyna anymore. And the two little girls liked to play together.”

  “What happened? Did Teddy and Claire have a fight?”

  “Oh, yes. They don’t talk to each other anymore.”

  This is good news. It means I can approach Theodora Feign with confidence. As far as I’m concerned, the afternoon is over. I get up and stretch my back, staring idly at a dense rose garden sprinkled by a few light drops of rain. Returning to Mrs. Gutiérrez I inquire politely,

  “Did Dr. Eberhardt send you that check?”

  “Yes, he do, and I buy new clothes for the children.” She nods proudly toward Cristobal’s bright green sweats. “Then I write to the grandmother to ask what she want to do. Maybe she come here, maybe the children will go back to El Salvador and live with her and their big brother.”

  “Violeta had another child?”

  “Yes, you saw him in the pictures. The baby that the grandmother is holding, that is Violeta’s oldest son. She left him to come to this country.”

  “How could she leave a little baby?”

  “To make a better life,” Mrs. Gutiérrez explains with an ironic lift of the eyebrows. “She work to send money home to take care of the son and the grandmother. Inside”—she taps her heart—“she miss her mommy.”

  She clicks her purse open, discharging the scent of face powder, and removes a fat roll of folded tissues.

  “Now the boy must be eight or nine years old. He doesn’t even know he lost his mommy yet.”

  There is nothing between us but a gentle splatter of raindrops — on our hair, th
e bench, on a hundred fading roses.

  Mrs. Gutiérrez bends her head forward and presses two tissues against the corners of her eyes. It is as if Grief himself has taken a seat between us on the cold concrete and put his mossy arms around both of our shoulders. I can feel the weight of the children’s loss. My own heart tightens with the same bereavement, the kind that bubbles up from time to time and overwhelms you in an instant. Within myself it remains mysterious, an underground spring without a source.

  “It was Violeta’s dream for the family to be together.”

  “Were Teresa and Cristóbal born in this country?”

  “Yes,” says Mrs. Gutiérrez. “The father left.”

  She sniffs and snaps the pocketbook shut.

  “If they were born here, they are American citizens, wards of the U.S. government. That means the government will take care of them.”

  Mrs. Gutiérrez is as immovable as the poured cement table. “That is wrong.”

  “It’s not up to us. It’s the law.”

  “The law is wrong.”

  I take a sip of sugary lemonade. I don’t want to get into an emotional argument. I am an agent of the federal government — obviously I believe that society has the obligation and compassion to care for those of us who are lost, or damaged like Teresa, with the face of a pupilless angel carved in stone. The drizzle has passed, the burn of the sun presses through a thick layer of cloud. I can see it is painful for her just to be sitting here outside her secret places in the apartment, alone and unprotected in the dull glare of this world.

  “When is your birthday, Teresa?”

  She looks at Mrs. Gutiérrez and says nothing.

  “Come on, you must know your birthday.”

  She whispers a date.

  “What would you like for your birthday?”

  “I would like a bed,” Teresa answers without hesitation.

  “Don’t you have a bed? Where do you sleep?”

  “Under the kitchen table.”

  I look away, squinting into the brightening distance, thinking that although these sunglasses are supposed to afford the best UV protection, the lenses are not nearly dark enough — not dark enough at all.

  Teresa’s eyes are on her empty plate.

  “Want another hot dog?”

  She nods. I buy two of everything the lousy little snack bar has: popcorn, ice cream sandwiches, tortilla chips, and watch the children work their way through it all.

  “Tell them to go and play.”

  Mrs. Gutiérrez repeats my request in Spanish, but the children do not move. There’s not a hell of a lot to do in Traveltown if you are not part of a big exuberant family on a picnic. I wish I’d known that when I picked it from the front pages of the phone book. You can run through a transportation museum housed in a dark old barn and see a horse-drawn fire engine from 1902 or climb on engines of defunct trains like iron behemoths sunk into the mud. Teresa and Cristóbal don’t want to do anything. They cling to Mrs. Gutierrez’s hands, squat down, and wrap their arms around her chubby knees.

  “Tell them to play,” I repeat with an edge.

  She speaks more sharply and they drag reluctantly toward the trains.

  “If the family cannot be located, Teresa and Cristóbal will have to go into foster care,” I tell her, speaking slowly, with absolute level conviction, as clearly and emotionlessly as possible, the way you advise a criminal of his rights. “I will notify the proper agencies myself.”

  Mrs. Gutiérrez takes a sharp breath and covers her mouth with both hands. Her broad square nails are earth-red, three or four dime-store rings on pudgy fingers.

  “I love these children!” she cries. “I thought you gonna help.”

  “We have to do what’s right.”

  “What is right?” Mrs. Gutiérrez asks. “Violeta wanted to make a better life. To make money in America to send back to her child. She was only eighteen years old. She got on a bus from Mexico City to Tijuana and she was raped by the men on that bus, each in his turn, right there on the floor. Is that right?”

  “That’s why we have the law.”

  “She just left a baby. Her breasts were full of milk. The law means nothing.”

  Cristóbal and Teresa have been screwing around behind the bench and finally Mrs. Gutiérrez can’t stand it anymore. She gets off to see what they’re up to, then comes back dragging Cristóbal by the arm.

  “This lady is the police,” she says smartly, presenting him to me. “Show her what you did.”

  Cristóbal refuses to look up. Mrs. Gutiérrez yanks his hand out of his pocket. He is clutching a plastic car worth about sixty-nine cents.

  “From the birthday party over there.” She shakes him roughly. “Little thief.”

  She glares at me. Since I know what’s best for the children, obviously I will take care of this.

  I lead him across the plaza. “We can’t take things that aren’t ours,” I explain gently.

  We come upon a broken piñata, some candy, and a few small toys left scattered on the damp grass.

  I march him up to the father of the birthday party. “Cristóbal took this, but he knows it isn’t right and he wants to give it back.”

  The boy remains rigid, the car in his hand at his side.

  “It’s okay, let him keep it,” the man says.

  Cristóbal breaks from me and tears back to his sister.

  “Thank you,” I say desperately. “Thank you very much.”

  I mean it. I am tense, and despite the rawness of the air, drenched with sweat. I didn’t want to take away his wretched little car. I don’t want to be here at all, but I have promised the children of my cousin, motherless and fatherless and sunk in unhappiness, maimed by malnutrition of the soul, an afternoon in Traveltown. And the pony rides are yet ahead.

  FOURTEEN

  DURING THE NIGHT another storm blows in. Monday morning the sky is white, the light is brown as I head toward Teddy Feign’s house through dense unrelenting curtains of rain. I choose not to detour past the Eberhardt residence on Twentieth Street or Poppy’s old place on Twelfth, sticking to the main thoroughfare, San Vicente Boulevard, where it is slow going, dodging around stalled cars and palm fronds that have been blown into the road. Several delicate coral trees have been completely upended, roots clawing the air, finished.

  I take a right at the light on Seventh Street heading for Santa Monica Canyon. Going down the hill the wimp-ass government Ford loses traction and skids for several long seconds, lurching to a stop just short of a traffic sign, with two wheels stuck in the mud. I fight to maneuver back onto the road but the strength in my arms isn’t enough and my hands slip painfully along the steering wheel. I sit there, steaming. If I have to call a tow truck it will be an embarrassment and a huge waste of time. Just then the back of my neck prickles up. Something is approaching fast from behind. Instead of slowing down a Range Rover speeds past, intentionally swerving through a puddle and spraying the windows with a noisy mix of pebbles and water the color of bile. The driver, wearing a baseball cap, never looks back.

  A rock gets caught in the wipers and etches a half circle across the glass with a chilling nails-on-chalkboard scratch. Enraged, I blast it loose with a plume of bright blue windshield cleaner and jam on the gearshift.

  Easing back and forth between first and second gear, concentrating on nothing but the whining tires, I rock the Ford gently in the soup, straining for that first touch of friction, nursing it, feeling the tires finally catch and heave up onto the pavement, scooting across the curve into the canyon, cursing the Range Rover all the way. Only on the Westside would someone driving a forty-five-thousand-dollar vehicle feel the need to go out of their way to kick mud in your face.

  Santa Monica Canyon is a tiny valley between the elevated flat-lands north of Montana and the southern bluff of the Pacific Palisades, two miles from the Eberhardt residence. At sea level and only blocks from the beach, its mouth is open to constantly flowing ocean breezes that become trapped between
the canyon walls, creating a microclimate of uncommonly clear sun, deep shade, and fresh salt-kissed air. It has become an exclusive neighborhood for attorneys and people in television, but the most extravagant home is the one built by Teddy and Andrew Feign up against the hillside at the end of San Lorenzo Street.

  It is an enormous Tudor mansion, half timbered with ashlar veneer of brown gray, an ivy-covered arch over the driveway. It has twin pent roofs, three large medieval chimneys, and diamond-shaped panes of glass in tall bay windows that make you think Snow White herself is about to flow out the door. In fact, if you don’t look at the Guadalupe palms across the street, the house gives a pretty good impression of Leicestershire, England, on a rainy day.

  Opening a wrought-iron gate, I follow a flagstone path that has now become a running stream. Teddy Feign appears in short order, an attractive slender woman wearing high yellow boots and holding a mop. When I explain that I am from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and have questions about some acquaintances of hers, Dr. and Mrs. Eberhardt, her eyes brighten and she beckons me in. Like the driver of the Range Rover she appears more than willing to take a swing through the mud, if only for the opportunity of slinging it at somebody else.

  I follow into the kitchen.

  “Do you believe this? Could you die?”

  We are splashing through a half inch of water that covers the oak floor. The somewhat amusing source of this minor flood is a utility closet where rainwater is pouring in through the light switches and cascading in shiny sheets down the walls. A young girl wearing a white pants uniform is methodically moving everything that was in the closet to another room. Brooms, a vacuum cleaner, piles of wet rags, detergents, flowerpots, tennis racquets, and a slide projector are piled on the counter as she retrieves them one by one.

  Whereas the girl moves with deliberate slowness, her boss is going at a couple of thousand rpms.