The average house in Long Beach sold for nearly two hundred thousand dollars. I had read that gem while waiting for The Gap to open. I didn’t know when they might have bought a house, but I calculated on the assumption that housing prices had not risen very much since the late eighties, and in some areas had actually gone down. So, I was thinking that even at a meager 10 percent down, with the double-digit interest rates that prevailed during the last decade, the monthly payments on a modest starter house would still have to run maybe two thousand dollars a month. Principal and interest only.
Not to mention that somewhere along the way, the unemployed pipefitter and the waitress had become self-employed.
I supposed that could mean anything from running a catering truck to, well, anything. The point was, it takes money to start a business. Had the community been that generous? Had there ever been an accounting of donated funds?
My destination was a straight shot up the freeway from downtown. As soon as I left the narrow coastal strip, the scenery changed in a hurry. The new high rises were like a ridge that dropped suddenly into the ugly, flat gray industrial sameness that spreads north from the harbor to Los Angeles. The neighborhoods that slid by on my right were worn-out, ticky-tacky tracts and low-rent apartments covered with indecipherable graffiti. I decided I should have held off before I speculated on the low-end cost of the Metrano house.
The Sixty-eighth Way address turned out to be a tiny duplex tucked up against the freeway, almost in Compton. The construction was early postwar, a single-story stucco rectangle with a flat white rock roof. Some time ago, it had been painted lime-sherbet green and the small front yard had been paved over.
Every house on the street had bars on the windows. Ten years ago, when the Metranos lived there, it might have been a safer neighborhood. But never, even when the small houses had been new, could it have passed as a nice neighborhood. What I saw was fast, cheap construction, the barest possible amenities provided. Rentals for the profit of absentee landlords.
The Metrano family had numbered seven in 1983. If there were even two bedrooms in either half of the duplex, they would be minuscule. My mind boggled at five little girls living in such tight quarters.
Working-class families expect, I think, to start out in simple circumstances. But Amy’s eldest sister had been sixteen back then. The Metranos were not just starting out.
I unpacked a videocamera, and, through the car window, aimed it at the house. Then I drove away slowly with the camera still hanging out the window, getting some of the rest of the neighborhood and the cars zinging by on the elevated freeway that marked the end of the street. I had no idea what I would do with it, but it looked like I was working. If I had to report to the grant administrator, at least I wouldn’t have to lie too egregiously.
At the corner house, an old man lugged a green garden hose out into the middle of his small yard and aimed a puny stream of water at the grass, holding it low in front of him in parody of exaggerated manhood. He wore Sears-blue work pants and a white T-shirt that had been washed so many times it was little more than gauze draped over his concave chest. The politically correct label for him would be Dust Bowl refugee. He would call himself an Okie.
When I waved, he waved back. Taking that as a good sign, I parked at his curb and got out.
Shielding his eyes from the sun, he watched me approach. “You a reporter or the police?” he asked in a tobacco-ravaged rasp.
“Neither one,” I said. “Exactly.”
“I just bet you want to ask me about the little girl, though, don’t ya?”
“Amy Metrano? Did you know her?”
“Sure did, her and her family.” A gentle breeze lifted the fine wisps of his white hair, standing them like feathers. He had red skin-cancer blotches on his face. “Pretty little thing, she was. Used to ride her trike over with her sisters to borry a cup of sugar or an egg from my wife. Real polite little girls, every one of them.”
“George and Leslie were good parents?”
“Well now.” He gazed down the street toward the Metranos’ duplex. “If I was to tell you the God’s honest truth, I’d say Leslie was a real hardworking woman. Kept her kids clean. Kept them out of trouble. There was a passel of kids in that family, and things was pretty tight. But she did her best by them.”
“You said she did her best. What about him, George?”
The old neighbor gave me a canny leer. “You’re a smart one, aren’t you?”
“I can hold my own.”
“You said you wasn’t a reporter.”
“I used to be,” I said. “Now I make films. It’s different from reporting news.”
“Films, huh? There was another fella asking about Amy just the last week or so. Not many folks is interested in the little girl anymore, but now and then someone comes askin’. But I start to think something is happening when two people come peckin’ around. I never thought someone was makin’ a movie about it.”
“Who was this man?”
“Didn’t say. ‘Course, I didn’t ask, neither. Like I didn’t ask you.”
“Can we back up to the question about George? What sort of father was he?”
The neighbor raised a bony shoulder. “He didn’t use the belt, never heard him raise his voice. I guess you would say he was easy. Real easy.”
“Easy meaning calm?”
“Meaning that.” He nodded, shifting his hose to dribble over another spot of lawn. “And meaning it was hard to light a fire under him for anything, including picking up his lunch bucket and heading out the door for work in the morning. He was a nice enough fella. But he sure let the little woman carry a full share.”
“Do you ever see them anymore?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not since they moved out. Place has too many bad memories, by my calculation.”
“When did they move?”
He thought about it, playing the water in a crystal arc. “Not long after they lost the little one. ‘Bout Christmas, as I recall. My wife used to make them girls all a big gingerbread boy for Christmas, all frosted up with their names on them. That year she didn’t bake nothin’. She just sat in her big old chair and bawled.”
“May I speak with your wife?”
“Yes you may.” He smiled slyly. “But I wouldn’t be in no hurry to do it, if I was you. You’ll find her sittin’ up there next to Jesus.”
“My condolences,” I said.
He had liked his joke. “Next time I talk to Jesus, I’ll have him send them along.”
“Thanks for your time,” I said.
“Come by again.”
I chuckled to myself all the way back to the car.
Ten minutes later, I found the second Metrano house. I had been expecting something on the same economic level as the duplex. Modest though it was, the Metranos seemed to have made a step up from Sixty-eighth Way. Perhaps with the help of friends, I thought.
The new house was in a tract built around a large green park, down the street from Jordan High School. It was a good location for a family with two girls of high school age. The house wasn’t large, three, perhaps four bedrooms, with a yard behind. I thought it must have been a great relief for all of them to have some space, some privacy. They had more room and one fewer family member.
George Metrano hadn’t told us when he had mortgaged his house to pay the detective. Maybe it was this one.
I videotaped the front for a few seconds, and then went on. What if the extra loan had been too much? What if they had lost this house?
On that depressing thought, I searched out house number three.
My concern, it turned out, had been groundless. The third house was a giant leap up, a large, lovely custom-built home with a brick wishing well in front. The neighborhood was well established, big trees, lush broad lawns. An air of graceful living.