Grave on Grand Avenue

by Naomi Hirahara

  EIGHT

  The next day, I’m at the station all day. Since I’ve gotten a reputation for being able to write and edit police reports, Captain Randle has tapped me to go through some other officers’ reports that need work. Arresting suspects is only part of our job; we also need convictions. Of course, those are the responsibility of the DA’s office, but we don’t want a shoddy report to be the reason why a perp gets off on a charge.

  We learned things at the academy I hadn’t expected. Sure, there’s firearms training and all the physical stuff, including getting tased (hurts like hell when you get zapped, but when it’s over, it’s like it never happened. Pepper spray, now, that’s altogether different; the burning sensation can last for a couple of days). Also on our academy training schedule were Spanish and report writing classes (both of which I aced). My ability to craft solid reports, understandable to a regular layperson on a jury, is being talked about. So much so that even veteran detectives have asked me to proofread what they’ve written.

  A little before noon, I get a call. Not on my personal phone, but at the station.

  “Hello, Ellie.”

  I can recognize that voice anywhere. “Ah, hi, Aunt Cheryl. I mean, Chief Toma.”

  “I was hoping to see you. Time for lunch?”

  I’ve stacked some finished files on Captain Randle’s desk. He won’t refuse me a lunch break.

  “Ah, sure.” I expect her to suggest the Metro Club, a fancy-schmancy place where the city’s power brokers hang out. Not too excited about that prospect because I always feel like a dork there in my bicycle shorts and messy bun.

  She surprises me by suggesting the Japanese garden at the community center in Little Tokyo. “I’ll pick up a couple of bentos,” she tells me. “Broiled salmon okay?”

  I bike over to the center and carry my bicycle down the stairs of the building. I’ve always called this place my “secret garden” because I first visited it with my parents after I read Frances Hodgson Burnett’s book about the poor little rich girl who discovers a secret garden in her uncle’s house. Except instead of roses, this garden has sculpted pine trees and a stream that travels down three terraces.

  Since it’s located at basement level, the garden is not readily visible. Only locals, or visitors who have read about it online, know where it is, and around lunchtime on a weekday, it’s absolutely empty except for my aunt, who’s sitting in the shade by a bamboo grove. The plastic bento boxes are laid on napkins. Aunt Cheryl, in fact, is also sitting on a napkin and there’s one spread out for me, too.

  “How much do I owe you?” I go for my wallet in my shorts and Aunt Cheryl waves me off. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  The man-made stream and pond glisten in the distance. We eat in silence for a while, our disposable wooden chopsticks digging into sections of the grilled salmon, stewed carrots and taro, crunchy bright yellow pickled daikon and sticky rice decorated with black sesame seeds.

  “I wanted to talk to you about Pascoal Fernandes,” Aunt Cheryl finally says. Our clandestine location for lunch suddenly makes sense. My mysterious grandfather is not only my secret; he’s also hers.

  I swallow a mouthful of food.

  “He gave me a phone number and address in San Bernardino, but the man who lives there says that he hasn’t heard from him in more than a week. The taxi on Mother’s Day dropped Fernandes off on a corner in North Hollywood, but there’s nothing really there.”

  “You mean you don’t know where he is.”

  Aunt Cheryl nods. “I’ve been doing some independent research. Pascoal Fernandes was arrested in 1964 for being an accessory to a bank robbery in North Hollywood. He was sentenced to seven years in prison, got out in five. But other than that, nothing. Not even a traffic ticket over the past fifty years.”

  “Well, he did say that he’s been in and out of the country, working on a container ship.”

  “Do you believe what he says? This man, a convicted felon, who just appeared out of nowhere?”

  I hadn’t really thought about that.

  “If he was working on a ship, what kind of ship was it? What was it transporting? Are you getting my drift, Ellie?”

  “Are you saying that he might be a pirate or something?”

  “Maybe nothing so extreme. It’s just that we don’t know. I’ve done all I can on my end without raising suspicions. I can’t keep accessing records like this without cause. I need your help, Ellie. I need you to find him. Because Pascoal Fernandes is as much your problem as mine.”

  “How is he your problem at all? You don’t have anything to do with Fernandes,” I protest. “It’s not like you’re a blood relative or anything.”

  “He’s still connected to me, whether I like it or not. He’s connected to me. My critics look for anything that can be used to undermine my credibility. News that my brother-in-law’s father is a convicted felon could be dangerous ammo in the wrong hands. I just want to find out what I’m up against. Before they do.”

  I ball up a napkin in my fist.

  “Do you get what I’m saying, Ellie?”

  I do, but I’m not happy about it. After my meal with Aunt Cheryl, I tell myself to avoid having work lunches with her in the future. Nothing good really comes from them, only more stress. What can I possibly find out about Puddy Fernandes that Aunt Cheryl hasn’t found out already? She’s the assistant chief and had ties to the FBI fingerprint database and LAPD mug shot files. What more can I bring to the mix?

  * * *

  The next day, I ride my personal bike to work; not something I do often, but I have extra energy to burn off. Sometimes it’s good for me to see things as a regular civilian bicyclist does: like how cars get ridiculously close and how drivers even sometimes yell obscenities for no reason, just mad at the world, I guess. My bike is old, from high school. I’m not like Johnny with the latest bicycles—he has more than a dozen, including BMX racing and mountain bikes. He brags that he’s spent more than twenty grand on his bicycles. I just think to myself, Dude, you could have put a down payment on a condo with that much dough.

  I’m doing outreach today with various tenants’ groups, and I meet with Mrs. Clark, whom I’ve known since I first started my job with the Bicycle Coordination Unit. She thought she was getting a raw deal when I was first assigned to her group, but although it’s taken a good six months, she’s gotten used to me. And I, to her. She’s prickly, but I’ve grown fond of her, and she gets that I care about her, her grandchildren, her neighborhood. She used to always wear her hair relaxed, but she’s gone natural and wears it in a halo of salt-and-pepper ringlets. It becomes her, and I tell her so when I enter her home, just a few blocks east of Staples Center.

  Her bungalow is similar to ones in Eagle Rock and Pasadena. It has a sturdy porch outside, and inside are plenty of built-ins like dish cabinets and bookcases, lined with photos everywhere. There are photos in standing frames on the fireplace mantel and shelves. Photos arranged underneath various oval and rectangular cutouts. Photo magnets on her refrigerator door. Framed photos hung in the doorway. Most of the photos are of her grandchildren and late husband. Very few are of her daughter, although a prominent one does feature the daughter, her children and their father. A much, much happier time.

  The LAPD is a cosponsor for an upcoming health and children’s fair that will be taking place at a local community center. Although Mrs. Clark has been able to get tons of sponsors, nobody wants to actually help plan the thing.

  “It’s the first one,” I tell her, remembering other outreach events I’ve helped launch. “Maybe people just need to find out what it’s all about.”

  “Nobody wants to work together unless something bad happens. Then everyone gets riled up.”

  We plan to pass out children’s fingerprint identification kits to families, but it turns out that some parents are resistant to participate. All of the reluctant ones happen to be
Spanish-speaking, so we jump to the conclusion that they may suspect the information will be used against them in some way.

  “I’m actually trying to learn some Spanish,” Mrs. Clark tells me.

  I’m surprised. She’s been the most vocal complainant about things like store signs that are only in Spanish.

  “You know, Spanish was my major in college,” I tell her. “I can recommend some good language books if you want.”

  “No need. I’m not much of a book person. I’ve been watching Spanish TV. Actually the Lakers were so bad this season that they looked better on the Spanish channel. Hey, I’m even starting to watch soccer!”

  We both laugh and her granddaughter walks into the living room from her nap. There are creases on her face and her eyelashes are clumped together from wake-up tears. I remember how when I first met her, she was so scared of me in my uniform, with my holster and my club. Now she views me like an aunt or older sister and stumbles toward me to give me a hug. This is how it should be, I think.

  After leaving Mrs. Clark, I visit a couple more tenant representatives and attend a neighborhood meeting at a school. Teenagers like my bike. They often want to ride it, but I have to tell them they can’t. The last thing I need is someone circulating a cell phone photo of a kid with a possible gang affiliation on an LAPD bike. Officer Marc Haines, who’s now working with Media Relations, would definitely be on my case for that.

  Throughout the day, I check my phone. Benjamin’s mother is still in ICU. Mrs. Choi has always been sweet to me, always giving me little gifts of candy and cakes. After living in Brazil for a couple of decades, her Portuguese is better than her English, so our conversations were usually a mix of Spanish and Portuguese. Now, finding out that I’m actually part Portuguese, I wish that I had learned more of the language from her.

  The weather has been beautiful, so even after I get home, I keep riding up Figueroa to York and then east through South Pasadena. South Pasadena reminds me of a real-life Stars Hollow from the TV show Gilmore Girls. There are trees everywhere, old ones with leaves the size of outstretched hands. It’s a place where at Halloween people put pumpkins and scarecrows out on their front porches, where they have Fourth of July parades with old cars, and a weekly farmers’ market near the library. No wonder Mom wants me to live here.

  When I reach Old Pasadena, I slow down. There are a lot more pedestrians here. All ages, but mostly soccer moms wearing outfits taken from their daughters’ closets, or young people about my age. Old Pasadena is so cool, with its preserved and rehabbed old vintage buildings. There are intricate, unique moldings near the roofs of structures—better than a mall from the seventies. Unfortunately, most of the businesses are still the same ones you’ll find in any mall. So much for uniqueness. At least you can shop while feeling the warmth of direct sunshine instead of interior fluorescent lights.

  I lock my bike on a rack next to a two-story building. Adjacent to it is a nine-level structure that most passersby wouldn’t think twice about. But some real estate people are banking that this corner of Old Pasadena will become the heart of Silicon Eastside. One of my PPW classmates, Supachai Sperber, has a corner office on the top floor. Supachai is already a millionaire—actually, a billionaire. Supachai was raised in Bangkok, with a Thai mother and Jewish American father. He went to a boarding school in San Marino (I hadn’t even known until then that we had boarding schools in LA!) before enrolling in PPW when he was sixteen years old. He graduated in three years, same time as me, but even younger; he was only nineteen. He didn’t waste any time before launching his own company, SupaSper, Inc., which specializes in computer facial recognition. He got his billion (mostly in stock options, but still) from selling it to some social media site.

  Supachai, ironically, is now all about Internet privacy and preventing companies from following our Internet surfing. He feels guilty about contributing to mass surveillance, and now spends most of his time trying to help regular people, especially millennials like us, hide our digital footprints. So those ill-advised photographs with plastic red cups—gone. Racy videos with your ex—gone. Information about your shoe purchases—gone. Supachai tells me if I don’t want to be trailed by businesses, I should turn off my smartphone when I’m not using it. I forget to, but then, I don’t have a ton of apps anyway.

  He calls his new company “SupaSpies” and even has “Supachai Sperber, Head Secret Agent,” on his glass door. (I guess if you have a billion dollars, you can call yourself anything you want.) I know Supachai is a night owl, so I’d banked on still finding him at his office after six o’clock at night. The workday has probably just begun for this head secret agent.

  “Ellie Rush, it’s been ages!” The door opens automatically when I arrive, thanks to Supachai’s robot secretary. Supachai already knows it’s me from the security camera mounted at the top of his doorway. “What’s it been, five months? Not since my New Year’s Eve party?”

  Supachai is famous for his rooftop party on December 31. The biggest challenge is getting to it, since the streets are closed to vehicles and clogged with Rose Parade campers. Nay convinced me to go with her this year. I’d planned to hole up at home and feel sorry for myself—I’d just split with Benjamin.

  Supachai’s office is an incubator of creative ideas (and perhaps bacteria, the latter from the half-empty cups and take-out containers on the edges of tables). He’s hung a bunch of found objects—a single tennis shoe, a rusty hamster cage, a child’s drawing—from his ceiling. In one corner are wads of chewed gum à la Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s Bubblegum Alley, where students created 3-D gum graffiti on the walls of a narrow walkway. He’s also taped about a hundred fortune cookie messages together lengthwise to serve as a decorative garland.

  “You seem busy,” I say.

  He shrugs. “What do you need?”

  “Can’t I just be making a social call?”

  “You’re not that type of girl, Ellie.”

  “What, I’m not social?”

  “You’re not the type to visit someone without a reason.”

  That makes me sound like an opportunist. I frown.

  “No, I like that about you,” Supachai insists. “You’re a purpose-driven person. And we need a lot more of you types out in the world.”

  Whatever. I hate it when Supachai gets philosophical. It makes him sound like a total jerk.

  “I need to find out what someone has been doing for the past several decades,” I tell him. “And where he might be now.”

  “You know I don’t do that stuff anymore.” I stay quiet and Supachai sighs. “Okay, who?”

  I give him the name. I spell out the first name for him. “P-A-S-C-O-A-L. He’s also known as Puddy. And it’s Fernandes with an ‘S.’”

  “Pascoal Fernandes,” he says as he types on my laptop. “Only about fifteen thousand hits on Google. Pretty common name in Portugal and all over the U.S.”

  “Well, he’s in his seventies. And from San Diego.”

  “That’s a start.”

  “He has a record. Was arrested for bank robbery in North Hollywood in 1964.”

  “Now you’re talking.” Supachai is typing all this in. “You got a photo?”

  “I don’t. But I might be able to get one.”

  “No worries. This may be enough.”

  “I need to find out what’s he’s been doing for the past fifty years. I mean, he claims that he’s been on a boat.”

  “Military?”

  “Container shipping.”

  “Ooh. That’s a tough one. Those guys are like hobos, you know, the ones who used to ride on railroad cars. That’ll be a challenge, but I might be able to dig out some kind of employment records. Any other aliases? A cell phone number? E-mail address?”

  “Nope. I guess he’s been off the grid for a while.”

  “I’ll try,” he says.

  “Thank you, Supachai.
And you know—”

  “This will all be on the QT.” He nods. “Anything else?”

  I swallow. Supachai has me pretty figured out.

  “Any idea on how I can find Nay?”

  “What’s going on? You two are usually like the Little Twin Stars,” he says, referring to the Sanrio cartoon angels.

  “The angels have split up.” Or, should I say, are taking a break from each other. “I really can’t get into it now. I just want to make sure she’s okay.”

  Supachai tells me that research will take a bit longer. I reconsider what I’m asking. “You know what? Forget about the Nay thing, okay? I owe you one.”

  “Drinks at Eastside Luv,” Supachai says. He loves exploring East LA but doesn’t like to do it on his own.

  I get up to leave and the robot secretary instantly opens the door for me.

  “Hey,” Supachai calls out, “do you still see Benjamin?” He knows we broke up, but he’s in the dark about the details. Supachai is close to all his exes—there were quite a few at his New Year’s party.

  “Yeah, we still keep in touch.” I don’t mention anything about his mom’s cancer and surgery.

  “Tell him hi for me, okay?”

  I nod. As it happens, I’ll be seeing Benjamin tonight, but we probably won’t be talking about Supachai Sperber.

  * * *

  St. Vincent’s Hospital is east of Little Tokyo, on Alvarado and Third streets, and walking distance from the Original Tommy’s, the meanest, tastiest chili burgers on the West Coast. I’ve never been to this hospital before, but it’s not large, so I’m easily able to find the waiting room on the floor for ICU patients.

  “Ellie!” Benjamin’s four-year-old niece, Camila, comes running toward me. I didn’t think that they let kids that young in a hospital, but I’m so happy to see her. I give her a quick hug and ruffle her brown hair. I have missed her.

  She has the smoothest skin, and adorable tadpole eyes, which she obviously gets from her mother’s side. Camila’s dad is white, like mine. We hapas have to stick together.