Grave on Grand Avenue

by Naomi Hirahara

  “What happened?”

  I shrug my shoulders. Put on a mysterious Mona Lisa smile.

  “Are you feeling all right, Rush?” is all the response I get. Cherniss says that he’s going to sit down with both of us to talk about our issues, but in the meantime he assigns me with Armine for today.

  After our roll call, Armine and I get our bikes from the wall rack.

  As soon as we’re outside, fastening our helmets, Armine asks, “What is going on, Ellie?”

  “What do you mean?” I’m trying to maintain my cool demeanor, but I think that my upper lip is starting to tremble.

  “Everyone in the squad room was whispering about you and Mac. They say you guys are having a feud or something.”

  “It’s a one-way feud. He has a problem with me.”

  Armine gets on her bike and I get on mine. “I heard about your aunt. I didn’t know that you were related to one of the deputy chiefs. You could have told me.”

  “I didn’t want any preferential treatment. I want to earn my way up.”

  “You’re still young.” Armine then sighs. I hate that kind of sigh. My mother does it constantly. “No sense in being too proud. You’ll find that we need all the help that we can get.”

  * * *

  The Public Practice program is taking place at both the Music Center and Grand Park, so Armine and I decide to split up, with me taking the north side by the Music Center fountains.

  Public Practice is a totally cool idea—amateur musicians apply to practice in public around the centers of music in downtown Los Angeles. Benjamin actually submitted his online application last year to practice his guitar. He didn’t get accepted, and we both thought it was because a guitar is so commonplace. A didgeridoo, a long aboriginal instrument made out of bamboo, on the other hand, is not so common. A heavyset African American man, who looks anything but aboriginal, blows into his bamboo pipe on the edge of the fountain. The organizers have placed a sandwich sign that reads PRIVATE PRACTICE in front of him. The sign is also a self-introduction. It says that the didgeridoo player’s name is Jervey; he’s a writer and English professor at USC. He got into the aboriginal instrument when he badly fractured his leg and had a lot of time on his hands. A friend gave him the didgeridoo as a semijoke; I guess the joke is on the friend because Jervey sounds pretty darn good as he places his mouth on the end of the large reed and blows. The sound is bouncy and repetitive; I feel like I could be in the Australian outback, watching kangaroos jump by.

  On another corner I actually do see a guitar player, a woman about my mother’s age. Lois is a banker who picked up the guitar after her daughter left for college. She first started playing once a week and now does it five times a week because it relaxes her after work. Lois is definitely a beginner, but seems determined. I see why Benjamin wasn’t accepted. You have to be willing to be swept away by your passion. No cool stoicism here.

  * * *

  After work, I stop by Osaka’s, somehow expecting the Fearsome Foursome to all magically be there, intact. I recognize a couple of girls who were active with one of PPW’s sororities. They’ve graduated now, and they look gainfully employed in their suits and ID lanyards hanging from their necks.

  I don’t expect that they would remember me. I stayed away from the Greek scene; I was known among jocks and Asian American circles. But one of them calls out to me. “Hey, didn’t you go to PPW?”

  She has freckles all over her cheeks and on the bridge of her nose. She’s cute, really cute. She wears her straight blond hair back in a headband.

  “Yeah,” I say, in no mood for small talk. I’ve changed into my street clothes, and I look a bit rumpled. My hair is mussed up and frizzy. I’m wearing jeans and a knit shirt, compliments of Target.

  “You played on the volleyball team,” the taller, brunette one says. Her voice is low and steady; she’s the quiet one of the pair. “My brother was on the men’s team.”

  She tells me his name and I remember him. He looks like her, tall and lean with wavy brown hair.

  “So what are you doing now?” the brunette, who tells me her name is Emily, asks.

  “I work for the LAPD,” I tell them.

  “Oh, wow, communications?” the blonde—Hailey—interjects.

  “No, patrol. I’m with the bicycle unit.”

  “You have got to be kidding me.”

  I brace for the awkward looks, the mocking comments. But the girls seem interested.

  “You mean, you have a gun and everything?” Hailey asks.

  “Yup.”

  “That is so wild.”

  “Hailey and I both work at City Hall in city planning. We should get together sometime,” Emily says.

  “Have you been to the Edison? Coolest bar ever,” Hailey comments.

  “Haven’t made it over there yet,” I tell them.

  “We’re planning to go over there now,” Emily says.

  Hailey gives me a once-over. “They do have a dress code. No jeans,” she adds apologetically.

  “Another time.” I smile. Although I do have a couple of skirts and dresses hanging in my closet, my wardrobe is pretty jeans-centric.

  We exchange contact information and even business cards (how important are we?) and bend over our phones, plugging in one another’s numbers.

  The two girls, their squishy handbags in the crook of their arms, then wave good-bye and leave the crowded ramen house. I notice the eyes of a number of men follow their exit, probably imagining what could have been. I know that I should be happy that I’m making new friends, but to be honest, interacting with them just makes me miss Nay all the more.

  * * *

  I don’t even bother ordering anything at Osaka’s. There’s no wait for a counter spot, but I don’t feel like eating alone. I instead go down the street to Fugetsudo, a Japanese confectionery shop that’s around a hundred and ten years old, according to a sign proudly showcased out front announcing that milestone, along with some old black-and-white photos to establish their history.

  When I say confectionery, I mean manju, sweet cakes usually filled with red bean, as well as mochi, steamed sweet rice that’s pounded and sometimes flavored and colored. There’s a pretty white one with pink and green stripes called suama. Some cooks have experimented with more contemporary ingredients like peanut butter and chocolate. I get a suama, Aunt Cheryl’s favorite, and a peanut butter one, mine.

  “Aunt Cheryl, are you still at work?” I ask on my cell phone. Carrying my little white paper bag of sweets, I walk down First Street toward her office.

  “Working late,” she answers.

  “I’m nearby, and I have mochi, the striped kind you like.”

  It doesn’t take much to entice her. “Come on up.”

  Since Fugetsudo is only two blocks away from headquarters, I reach her office in a few minutes. Her administrative assistant has gone for the day, so it’s only the two of us, chewing on mochi around her glass table.

  “How are things at work?” she asks in between chews.

  I’m sure not going to mention anything about what happened with Mac. Aunt Cheryl is the main reason that he is out to get me, anyway. “Fine,” I say, “although it’s too bad that they couldn’t figure out why Eduardo Fuentes was after Xu’s cello. I went to his funeral, you know. He seemed like a nice man.”

  “Well, nice men sometimes do not-so-nice things. That whole case is a royal headache.”

  “What do you mean? I thought it was closed.”

  “Xu and his father are missing, and the Chinese government is not happy about it. They want them back immediately. Apparently they fear for their safety.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. They even took the cello that was being held in storage for Xu.”

  I’m confused. Why would the government be interested in Xu’s cello? Would officials there care tha
t it was a fake?

  “I actually saw Fang Xu yesterday,” I tell my aunt, “on my day off.”

  On Aunt Cheryl’s otherwise flawless face, lines deepen above the bridge of her nose. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She is annoyed.

  “I didn’t know that we were keeping tabs on him.” It’s not like any of the detectives, Cortez included, is sharing information with me.

  “Where is he?”

  “He was in this office building for Phoenix Instruments. It’s over in Arcadia.”

  “He’s staying there?”

  “Well, he was up until yesterday afternoon.” I find the address on my phone and e-mail Aunt Cheryl a link. “I doubt he’s there now.”

  Aunt Cheryl’s phone beeps with probably my e-mail message.

  “I don’t think that he knows where Xu is.”

  “The Chinese authorities are more interested in the father, Fang Xu,” my aunt tells me as she strokes her phone screen to presumably check the address for Phoenix Instruments. “The father is more their target than the son.”

  I wipe my mouth with one of the napkins in the paper bag.

  “I also found out some information about Ron Sullivan,” Aunt Cheryl then announces.

  “You found him?”

  “No, but I know more about his relationship with Pascoal Fernandes.” She rises and pulls out two cold bottles of water from her mini-refrigerator. After offering me one, she opens the other and takes a sip.

  “Yeah, they were coworkers on the same movies.” I recall what my grandfather had told me. “Ron had gambling debts; he was the one who got Puddy to help him rob that bank.”

  “Well, according to an old detective that I was able to track down, that’s not what happened.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your grandfather was actually the mastermind.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, he was the one who orchestrated the heist. Ron Sullivan actually testified against Fernandes in the trial back in 1964.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Puddy was the actual brains. He saw Ron’s skill as a makeup artist and thought of exploiting it as a way to rob banks.”

  “I don’t get it. So why is Fernandes in town?”

  “Retribution, perhaps. Maybe he wants in on the action. No luck in finding him?”

  I shake my head. “Maybe we should have let him hang on to the Skylark. At least then we would have known what he was driving.”

  “True,” Aunt Cheryl says. “Who would have known that old beater would be worth something?”

  Her diss of the Skylark stings for a second, but I let it slide. The more important thing I need to focus on is what she’s telling me about Fernandes. And it’s not anything a granddaughter wants to hear.

  TWELVE

  So, Puddy Fernandes is a liar. Why should I be surprised? Dad certainly didn’t pick up that gene, but could be it skipped a generation and now maybe has touched Noah. How about me? Although I’m known to be a terrible liar, maybe that’s not my true self. Maybe I’m the biggest liar of all, because I can’t even see the lies I tell myself.

  I look down at Shippo, who sits at my feet beside the couch. “You know me, right, Shippo? I can’t fake anything with you.”

  He tilts his head at me, and I know he’s probably thinking, Is it time to eat?

  * * *

  At work the next day, Johnny and I are assigned to Chinatown. There’s a funeral for a prominent Chinese leader at the Baptist church not far from the 110 freeway. Apparently some of the elders were present during a shooting at a church funeral back in the eighties, and they don’t want to tempt fate by not having some armed officers at the sanctuary. Bike cops will be less intrusive than officers in black-and-whites.

  I stand at the back door, while Johnny is at the front. He’s started to attend neighborhood meetings with a Chinese-speaking officer, so he’s been able to cultivate some good relationships with both merchants and residents. Johnny’s clean-shaven (he couldn’t grow a beard even if he wanted to) and nonintimidating. People think that he listens well since he doesn’t say much, though that’s mostly because of his speech impediment.

  The funeral goes long and I’m dying of boredom. Most of it is in Chinese, and it seems the so-called mourners are bored, too, because they’re all talking to one another during the pastor’s eulogy. It’s like a weird black comedy with the family members weeping in front but the others all chatting about whatever in the back. Once it’s over, sans any kind of violence, I go around to the front of the sanctuary.

  “Gotta run. I got a lunch thing at Philippe’s. I’m late,” Johnny tells me before riding off.

  What the—? I think. Did he just ditch me? We usually eat lunch together, so now I’m feeling dissed and at loose ends. Where am I going to eat? Nearby is Eat Chego’s, a brick-and-mortar branch of the Kogi Korean-Mexican taco truck enterprise, but the line is at least eight feet long.

  I backtrack on Hill Street past a small hospital. While I wait at the intersection, I see a man dressed in scrubs hasten to lock up his bike on a rack. He does it all wrong, at least according to the Cycling Task Force’s flyer, threading his lock through only the front tire. He runs inside the hospital before I can stop him.

  The bike is pink, with a big metal basket on the back—not that there’s anything wrong with a guy riding a pink bike; you just don’t see it that often. It’s kind of weird how there’s a whole color guys aren’t supposed to like. When Noah was in grade school, he always wanted to be the pink Power Ranger. My parents didn’t care, but it bothered the headmaster of his private school when he declared pink to be his favorite color during an assembly.

  Anyway, Johnny’s mention of Philippe’s has got me hungering for one of their French dip sandwiches. The restaurant claims to have invented the French dip (slices of beef, lamb, turkey or ham on a crunchy French roll with au jus to dip it in on the side in a little container. Yes, a vegetarian’s nightmare). It’s a simple place—coffee for forty-five cents, believe it or not—with plain, polished long tables and wood shavings on the floor. It’s my family’s go-to place to eat before Dodger games. (Of course, we also eat Dodger dogs at the stadium, too.)

  Anyway, it’s a free country, right? If I feel like eating at Philippe’s, with or without a formal invitation from Officer Johnny Mayhew, I can. I could even choose to sit with him and his date at one of the eatery’s communal tables. I lock up my bike next to his on the rack outside and saunter in, expecting to see him in a cozy spot with a female. As it turns out, he is not only with a woman—the Bunker Hill Divorcée herself, Chale Robertson—but he’s also sitting with Cortez Williams, and next to Cortez is a woman I don’t know. What is Cortez doing with Johnny, and more important, what is he doing with this woman?

  She looks to be a little older than me, which makes her a little younger than Cortez, and she’s got a great tan, but not the old-lady skin-cancer kind. She’s naturally bronze, no need for artificial bronzer, damn her. Her light brown hair has plenty of blond highlights and brushes against sun-kissed shoulders. I know that her shoulders are sun-kissed, because I can plainly see them exposed in her tank top.

  Johnny’s right cheek is full of food. He waves me down with a napkin. “Hey, Ellie, over here!”

  My annoyance ratchets down. Based on his enthusiasm, he obviously didn’t have a grand plan to leave me high and dry at the Chinese funeral; he just had people to meet.

  Cortez shifts his weight on the bench as I approach. “Hello, Ellie,” he says.

  “Hi.” I wait for an introduction to the woman beside him, and surprisingly, it’s Chale who offers it. “This is Misty. She’s with the Venice police bicycle unit,” she says, gesturing with a hand whose nails are even bejeweled.

  “And this is Officer Ellie Rush. She’s with the downtown BCU,” Cortez says.

  “We work toge
ther,” Johnny manages with his mouth full.

  “Wow, we should get together sometime.” Misty says wow with great enthusiasm and earnestness. “We girls have to support each other.”

  Yeah, we girls. Wow.

  “Hey, maybe Ellie can be part of this, too,” she says to the others, as if an idea has suddenly crossed her mind.

  A part of what?

  Chale explains that the Venice and Central bicycle units are going to be featured on an episode of Divorcées of Bunker Hill.

  I don’t get it, and I guess my lack of understanding is plain on my face.

  “Okay, my purse is going to get stolen in Bunker Hill and then Misty is going to find it on a street entertainer on the boardwalk in Venice,” Chale says. “I’m going to rush over there”—she smiles slyly—“in my designer bikini, of course—and it’s hooray, LAPD!”

  So much for the reality in reality TV.

  Johnny just nods, devouring the other half of his French dip.

  “Ellie, would you like something? I can order for you,” Cortez says.

  “Oh, yes, Cortez, get Ellie a sandwich.” Misty gently nudges Cortez, like they’re an old married couple.

  “Come on, sit down,” Chale insists.

  “I’m okay,” I say, even though my stomach is growling. The purse-theft episode sounds totally lame. “Are you sure that the captain . . . ?”

  “He thinks it’s great. So does Officer Haines with Media Relations,” Cortez tells me.

  Haines would, I think.

  “Cortez will have a role, too,” Misty says. “He’ll be the one giving the public service announcement at the end.”

  What public service announcement? “Beware of reality stars in bikinis with large designer handbags”? “I’m surprised that you have time for this, Cortez,” I finally say. “With the Old Lady Bandit investigation and everything.”