Grave on Grand Avenue

by Naomi Hirahara

  Cortez immediately registers my sarcasm; I’m not sure about Johnny, who’s in both French dip and Chale heaven.

  “I didn’t know you were assigned to that case,” Misty says to Cortez.

  Uh-oh, do I detect a lack of communication here?

  “Well, I have to go. I have to get back to work.” I’m good at piling on guilt. I’ve learned from the best: my mother.

  I turn to the exit, and hear some quick good-byes behind me. I go back to the rack to retrieve my bicycle and start riding north on Alameda to burn off some steam. I know I’m being ridiculous. Cortez owes me nothing. No explanations. We are not dating. We are not girlfriend and boyfriend. Yet I felt a sharp pang of jealousy when I saw him sitting there with that woman. Another bike cop. A prettier and nicer bike cop than me.

  I curse myself. I hate when I feel and act this way. When we were dating, Benjamin always told me I got so crazy insecure over nothing. I want to stop feeling inferior. I mean, hey, I graduated from college in three years. Got through the Police Academy. I’m working as a cop. I should be proud of myself. Stand tall. But it’s hard for me to change. I can’t just wave a magic wand and make myself feel better.

  I pass a low-budget hotel that some of my friends from San Francisco have stayed at. The hotel itself is fine, but the rest of the area here is pretty industrial. I pedal past the Chinatown Gold Line train station, painted in bright red, green, orange and yellow, and adorned with—what else?—dragons. Across the way is Homegirl Café, a “second-chance” eatery that trains former convicts and gang members. I’m tempted to stop by to at least pick up a shortbread cookie, but I’m not in a mood to stand in line.

  Before I know it, I’m practically out of Chinatown. I’m next to an old factory that maybe once manufactured noodles or embroidery thread. There’s a beat-up van parked at the curb, its side door open. I see a man wearing a torn T-shirt guide a bicycle from the van into the back of the building. It’s not just any kind of bicycle: it’s a pink one with a big metal basket on the back, now missing a front tire. It’s the same exact one that I saw in front of the hospital earlier. The roll-up door is then quickly lowered by another man from the outside. He spots me and acts weird, slamming the van’s side door shut and running to the driver’s-side door. Before I can stop him, he gets in and drives away.

  I radio in that I may have located a piece of stolen property. The bicycle didn’t look like it was worth that much, so it’s not going to fall into grand theft or anything like that. There’s a regular metal door next to the roll-up. I bang on the door’s surface with the back of my club. In spite of the noise, no one lets me in.

  I ride to the front of the building. It’s a storefront selling big, plush stuffed animals, the kind offered as prizes at carnivals. The woman behind the counter is talking on a cell phone and makes a face when I enter on my bike. Walking toward me from the back storeroom is the same Asian guy in the torn T-shirt. He didn’t go far. The woman barks out something, maybe a warning, I think, because he dashes out the same way he entered.

  “Stop! Police!” I call out. I jump off my bike, pushing away a gigantic stuffed panda to follow him through a hallway into a darkened storage area. The back door opens, a rectangle of light filling the room for a moment, enough for me to run after it. I reach the door before it closes completely. I wrench it open and my eyes adjust to the blinding sun outside.

  Boyd and Azusa must have been close, because they’re already here in a patrol car; it’s parked in the middle of the narrow street. They stand in the street, their hands on their guns. The suspect clearly knows the drill. He immediately raises his arms and falls down on his knees.

  As Azusa cuffs him, Boyd checks with me.

  “Yeah, that was the guy,” I confirm. Torn T-shirt is actually much older close up. He gives me a side eye of hate.

  “So where’s the bike?”

  “I think he placed it here.” I go back through the metal door in the storefront storage area and turn on the light. It takes me a few seconds before I fully absorb what’s in front of me: at least a hundred bicycles stacked on top of one another, some missing front tires, some with sawed-off frames. Newish-looking tires are piled in the middle of the room, next to large tubs of paint. There’s a faint smell of chemicals in the air.

  Boyd, probably wondering what was taking me so long, joins me inside. “Wow, Rush,” he says, as he props up his sunglasses on top of his head. “You’ve hit the mother lode.”

  * * *

  Officer Jorge Mendez, our official LAPD liaison with the bicycling community, is beside himself. He keeps walking from one side of the warehouse to the other and swearing, not in anger but in amazement. I’m working as hard as I can to tag all the bicycles with a case number, date and time, location, and the name of the officer who found the property (me!). Other officers are taking photographs, and evidence clerks have come in vans to take the tagged items to police storage.

  “Ruuuuuush,” Jorge says my name like a sports cheer. And then goes back to more swearing.

  I’ve tagged at least fifty bicycles. At least fifty more to go.

  “Biggest bike theft ring in maybe the history of downtown LA—put down by the Central’s Bicycle Coordination Unit,” Jorge says to no one in particular. “Take a break,” he says to me. “Stand up.”

  “Why?” I murmur. I want to finish before my shift ends.

  “I want to take your photo for my Twitter feed.” He aims his iPhone toward me and I scowl in response.

  “Your Twitter feed? I thought that we stopped all that.”

  “Not the bicycle units. All the bike groups are active on social media. They’ll Retweet this for sure.”

  Before I can grab his phone, Captain Randle enters the warehouse. “Mother of God,” he mutters as he stares at the stacks of bikes.

  “Media Relations is already working on this,” Jorge says to Captain Randle. “There will be a press conference on Monday. Haines will be calling you.”

  Captain Randle nods.

  “And you!” Jorge turns to me. “I have to take you out for at least one beer.”

  The captain smiles his approval. “You deserve it, Rush. If I didn’t have this dinner to go to with my wife, I’d even join you.”

  “How about it, Rush?” Jorge extends his arms. If it’s good enough for Captain Randle, I guess it should be good enough for me.

  “I have to finish tagging,” I tell him. It would be nice if someone else were helping me.

  “Of course,” says Jorge. “And you have your police report, too. In the meantime, I have a ton of Tweets that I have to catch up on.”

  It takes me forty-five minutes to complete tagging, and another half hour to write some detailed notes, which will be helpful when I complete my report. I want to start on it now, but my shift is over. It’ll have to wait until first thing tomorrow morning.

  Jorge and I go to the Far Bar, which is on the same block as Osaka’s. The bar is an extension of Far East café, which used to be one of Grandma Toma’s favorite restaurants. The restaurant now is more like a sports bar, but apparently at one time it was the place to go for “chop suey.” I’ve never quite understood why Japanese Americans of my grandparents’ era liked to eat “fake” Chinese food, as Noah calls it. (Noah considers himself the Anthony Bourdain of all Chinese food just because his best friend, Simon, has roots in Taiwan.)

  The Far Bar is not a claustrophobic hangout. It’s mostly outdoors, in between two brick buildings, so you feel like you’re at a friend’s house in New York City or something. It’s casual, and best of all, it’s open, so I feel that I can make a quick getaway if need be. Although it’s not like Jorge and I are here on a date or anything, right?

  We sit on the side, away from a large group making a lot of noise. The waiter delivers our drinks. I ordered a martini for the heck of it, since Jorge did say that he was buying.

 
“So,” he says after taking a sip of his scotch and soda. “Tell me about yourself, Rush.”

  Surprised, I look up from my martini. Jorge’s a nice enough guy and good-looking in a fresh-faced way, but he’s always been a bit self-absorbed. I know that he grew up in East LA, close to where Eduardo Fuentes’s funeral was, and that he went to Don Benito High School. That his mother is a school clerk and that his father works in Parks and Rec. I know these things because he’s told me his background without ever asking for mine. Until now.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Well, I know that you’re part Japanese. You’re the assistant chief’s niece, right?”

  So news has spread to Jorge’s ears, too. There’s no use denying it.

  “Yup.” I bite into the olive. Its saltiness makes me cringe for a second.

  “What’s the other half?”

  I hate that question. It’s like I’m split down the middle, some kind of human mutant. “White and other stuff.” I don’t want to get into the “other stuff” right now, because that would mean thinking about Fernandes.

  “Well, we’re all mixed in America. Mutts. It doesn’t matter if you’re white, red or green. People are people.”

  “But we wouldn’t be people if we were green,” I say. “We’d be aliens.”

  Jorge lets out a weird hacking laugh. “I didn’t know that you were funny, Rush.”

  I finish off my drink and chew on the plastic stick from the olives.

  “Seriously, that was good work today. The bike coalition groups are stoked. Turns out, one of the bikes in there is their former president’s. That baby is worth two grand.”

  My eyes grow big. “You’re kidding me.”

  “Yup, that’s grand theft, right there.” The party next to us break out in laughter—some inside joke.

  “Robbery detectives are questioning the suspect. There might even be another branch of their operation on the other side of downtown.” Jorge flags a waitress. “You pulled a real coup today. By just paying attention. Detective material, Rush.”

  * * *

  Jorge wants to buy me another drink, but I turn him down. I drove today and the last thing I need is a DUI to ruin my best day of work so far. I wish that I could be celebrating with Nay. Rickie is busy with some sort of school project and Benjamin is still spending most of his free time in the hospital. All I have is this one martini with a cop with a shiny forehead. I shouldn’t be complaining, but I am. I leave Jorge at the Far Bar, giving an excuse that there’s somewhere else I need to be.

  I decide to stop by my parents’ house and celebrate my victory with my family. But when I turn on their street, I notice that my dad’s hybrid is not parked in their driveway.

  I ring the doorbell a couple of times, but there’s no answer. I have my own set of keys and dig in my backpack to get them, when I hear the double lock turning. “Hold your horses.” The muffled voice of my grandmother before she opens the door to me.

  “Where is everybody?” I say, immediately embarrassed to imply that Grandma Toma is a nobody.

  Of course, she’s oblivious to the slight. “Goofing around,” she says and walks back into the hallway. She then turns back to me. “You’ve been drinking?”

  I follow her inside. “Why do you say that?”

  “Your earlobes are all red. Your grandfather’s earlobes always got red when he drank.”

  I don’t know how to take this new piece of information.

  “It was just one drink. And it was to celebrate.”

  Grandma Toma stops in mid-shuffle. “You got a raise?”

  “No, not until I get a higher rank.”

  “When will that be?”

  “Grandma, can I just tell you my piece of good news?”

  Grandma Toma dutifully nods and situates herself on the couch. “What is it?”

  “I busted a bicycle theft ring.”

  “Well, that’s very nice.”

  “This is a big deal. Some of these bicycles are worth two thousand dollars.”

  “Why on earth would someone be riding around on a bicycle worth that much money? Don’t they know that you can get a perfectly good one from Costco for a hundred dollars?”

  Only Grandma Toma could pour such cold water on my accomplishment so fast. Wait a minute; I take that back. Mom could probably do it in even less time. What am I doing here?

  “Have you heard from Lita?” I ask.

  “She was here for dinner. All of them are at Fosselman’s getting ice cream for dessert.”

  “You didn’t tell me that.” Fosselman’s is the best place in Los Angeles County for ice cream, which they actually make there on the premises. “Why didn’t you go?”

  “Ice cream gives me the runs.”

  “There are pills to prevent that, Grandma.”

  “I take too many pills as it is. Don’t need to take another one just so I can eat a scoop of lychee ice cream.” Grandma Toma is crankier than usual tonight. “She’s been here every night for dinner.”

  “Who?”

  “Your other grandmother.”

  “She has?”

  “She says that she’s sworn off men. She’s been a lousy mother, she says. So now we get to see her every night.” Grandma Toma looks weary. “I don’t know how long I can take this.”

  “Maybe you could introduce her to somebody.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were part of that widowed group or something. Any available widowers?”

  “Are you crazy? There are ten women to every man. It gets scary sometimes. That’s why I stopped going.”

  “Well, I bet there’s no one like Lita in that group.”

  Grandma Toma contemplates this, jutting her chin forward. She rises. “I’m going to make some calls.”

  * * *

  With Grandma Toma on the phone, now there’s really no one to talk to at my family’s house, so I go home. I give Shippo some extra treats in celebration of the arrests today, but my heart isn’t fully in it. I’m not in the mood to take him for a walk. I just want to curl up in my bed and watch more episodes of Dawson’s Creek. There’s absolutely nothing good to eat in my house, so I take some hard nuggets of brown sugar and pop them in my mouth like candy. I don’t text Nay, because I’ve already left too many texts as it is. What they say is definitely true. I know that I sound like a lame country singer, but if there’s no one to share your successes with, what does it really matter?

  THIRTEEN

  The next morning, I wake up feeling much better. I figure that martini, being a depressant, probably didn’t help my dark mood. Besides, with the sun streaming in through my mini-venetian blinds, how can I not feel hopeful?

  I work an antiquarian book festival at USC on Saturday—not many criminals spotted there, but there were some really cool old books and even old-school mechanical typewriters. I’m partnered with Johnny, who is bored out of his mind, probably imagining the Bunker Hill divorcée in various revealing yoga positions. Day off on Sunday—I actually go off the grid and take a long bike ride on the beach, leaving my phone in the trunk of my car. Lately, between everything going on with Puddy and Xu and Nay, I’ve been feeling unsettled, distracted. Uncovering this bicycle theft ring reminds me what I’m supposed to be doing in my job. Focus, Ellie, focus.

  My sunny delight follows me to work on Monday. Today is the press conference, Jorge said. A part of me is surprised that I wasn’t called in early or told to come into work wearing my full uniform. I mean, I don’t expect that I’m going to be on television or anything; but then again, maybe I do.

  That feeling intensifies during the roll call, which is all about me. Well, actually, just the beginning is, but the glow stays with me throughout even the boring parts of the meeting. Mac, I notice, sits in the back, his arms crossed over his chest as if he doesn’t want any Ellie
Rush love to touch him.

  After the roll call, a few officers come up and congratulate me. We’re a bureau that gets knocked for targeting the homeless and jaywalkers, and it’s nice to get some positive attention for once.

  I’m working on my report when I hear someone turn up our television set. “Captain Randle’s on,” someone shouts, and I, like everyone else, crowd around the monitor.

  Captain Randle is indeed there, looking as distinguished as ever in his uniform, explaining the details of the bike ring found in the former warehouse. “This is the largest discovery of stolen bicycles in the history of our division,” he says. “This case was cracked due to the hard work and perceptive actions of our officers.” My heart burns with pride as I wait to hear him say my name—Officer Eleanor Rush.

  But the broadcast then cuts to Jorge, looking even shinier and more scrubbed than usual. “Since its inception, the Bicycle Coordination Unit has been working to support the enjoyment of bicycling in our city. These arrests and the recovery of stolen goods are proof of our commitment and hard work.”

  Everyone is hooting and hollering, but I sit there, feeling numb. Our? What happened to a certain officer named Ellie Rush who used her wits and observational skills to catch these thieving suckers? I know I’m being self-absorbed, but I can’t help it. I try to snap out of my personal pity party, then catch Mac’s gaze. He’s been watching me this whole time, and based on the sly smile on his face, he knows that I’m feeling dissed.

  To further relish my discomfort, he saunters over toward me. “Nice press conference, huh, Rush?”

  “Yup, Captain Randle was great.”

  “I noticed that you were not at all mentioned, although apparently you were the one who found the bikes.”

  “Well, you know, we are a team.” Team LAPD, rah-rah.

  “I didn’t know that you were such a team player.”

  “Hey, Rush, you have a phone call. It’s Deputy Chief Toma,” one of our clerks calls out.

  Perfect timing, I think. As I get up, Mac sneers. I can read his thoughts: little Ellie, running to her aunt Cheryl.