“Okay, Inez?”
“When Tony’s ready.”
“Go ahead,” the cameraman said, and I saw the red filming light come on.
Inez went into her spieclass="underline"
“We’re standing outside French Hospital in the heart of Chinatown. It is sadly ironic that this institution, built a century and a half ago by French missionaries to provide succor for their countrymen, pioneers in the untamed environs of early Los Angeles, and who then stayed to give assistance to the Chinese immigrants who followed, should now offer its services to one who seems to have followed in the footsteps of the original missionary doctors.
“Dr. Emily Duchamps, one of our nation’s leading figures in health care for the poor, was found earlier this evening, gravely wounded by an unknown assailant.
“With me now is Dr. Duchamps’s sister, award-winning filmmaker Maggie MacGowen.” She closed toward me as the camera pulled back. “Miss MacGowen, what is your sister’s condition?”
“She’s stable and comfortable. Out of pain.”
“And the doctor’s prognosis for her recovery?”
“Hopeful.”
“The name Aleda Weston is also in the news tonight, a name once closely associated with your sister’s. Have you spoken recently with Miss Weston?”
“No.”
“She is due to arrive in Los Angeles within the hour. Will you be in contact with her?”
Ms. Sanchez was no dummy, damn her. I decided I had been cooperative enough. “Detective Flint can answer more of your questions than I.”
I backed out of the camera frame, leaving Flint in the red beam of the lens. I unhooked the mike and the power pack and handed them to the soundman on my way past.
I had gone less than fifty yards through the drizzly prelude to another downpour when Flint caught up to me.
“I said I’d drive you,” he said, panting a little from his sprint.
“I want to see Aleda Weston,” I said. “Can you arrange it?”
“Depends. I’ll try.”
Flint’s city-issue, green four-door was at a curb marked OFFICIAL VEHICLES ONLY. He opened the passenger door and I slid in across the scratchy imitation tweed upholstery. Flint didn’t bother with his seat belt. And he didn’t bother with conversation, either.
All the way up the hill to Emily’s apartment, I listened to the rain hammering against the car roof and the calls coming across Flint’s police radio: “Any unit in the vicinity of the southeast corner of Third and San Pedro, four-five-nine suspect in the building. Handle code two.” “Any unit in the vicinity, one-ten South Hope, see the woman, two-eleven purse snatch.” It was a dangerous world out there.
“It’s painful, but we need to talk about Emily,” Flint said, finally.
“Sure,” I said. “Just give me a little time to get pulled together.”
“Whatever you say.”
That’s when I saw the flowers in the street, a bright spill along the dark pavement in front of Emily’s building. The candles had been tossed out among them, helter-skelter, a few of them still glowing. All the little pots and jars filled with flowers and candles for Emily, all the offerings that had so neatly lined Mrs. Lim’s stoop, were smashed. Not randomly broken-every one smashed.
Broken glass crunched under Flint’s tires as he pulled to the curb.
“Kids,” he said.
“Uh huh.” When I opened the car door, I could smell crushed flowers and burning wax. Behind me I heard Flint’s radio: “Any unit in the vicinity, Echo Park and Logan, assault in progress. Handle code three.”
There were sirens in the distance, and I wondered if they were already rolling in Echo Park. It was only a couple of miles away. Truthfully, what I wondered was, how fast could they get to me?
I can take care of myself. And Flint was only five feet behind me with his automatic holstered on his belt. Didn’t matter-what I saw scared me.
Spray-painted on the wall beside Mrs. Lim’s front door, two feet high in a very careful script, were the words DIE FAST, BITCH.
Chapter Five
Em’s landlady, Mrs. Lim, must have been lying in wait for me while I said goodbye to Flint. She was out of her apartment and rushing down the hall in my direction before I had rebolted the front door behind me. Mrs. Lim grasped my free hand and pressed it against her bony chest.
“Emily, Emily,” she wailed. With her gray bun disheveled, the gaps among her teeth, the shocked pallor of her face, she was scary to behold.
I didn’t know whether she had seen the mess that had been made of the candles and flowers, or the graffiti painted on the front of her building. Maybe she had heard it all happen. She was certainly frightened.
Not knowing what else to do, I put my arm around her thin shoulders. She was so tiny, it felt like holding a child. I tried to sound reassuring, “The doctors are taking good care of Emily. They’re doing everything they can.”
She started talking at me in a rapid-fire, high-pitched mono-tone. I couldn’t understand much of what she said. It may have been Chinese, it may have been despair. Whatever it was, she kept it flowing all the way up the stairs to Emily’s third-floor apartment. I nodded or tsk’ed when it seemed appropriate.
As I read it, the gist of her anguish was deep guilt that she had not somehow better protected Emily. In other circumstances, the notion was ludicrous of Mrs. Lim, maybe five feet tall if she stretched, physically shielding the gigantic Emily. Unless physical protection wasn’t what she was talking about.
I had Em’s keys in my hand, but Mrs. Lim was faster with her passkey. She opened Emily’s door and kept up her stream of talk. I needed to be alone for a while and didn’t want her to follow me inside. To my relief, though she kept talking while I slipped past her, she came no further than the threshold.
“You tell me,” she demanded. “Doctor call, you tell me.”
“Absolutely,” I nodded. “I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything.”
She brushed the sleeve of my wet coat. “You change. I get eggroll.”
After the intimate tone of our conversation all the way up the stairs, by the time she padded away down the carpeted hall, I was almost sorry to see her go.
I went into Emily’s empty apartment and closed the door. I stood there for a moment, hesitant, thinking about Emily, listening for her voice. All that I heard was rain falling on the tile roof above me. A desolate sound, a solo drum tattoo.
I had never spent much time in Emily’s apartment. From what I saw, she hadn’t either. She certainly hadn’t gone to any pains to make the place comfortable. Her rooms had a Zen simplicity. They were small, sparsely furnished, efficiently proportioned. The entry, where I stood, served as a sort of hub, with a bath to my left, the bedroom Em had converted into an office to the right, and through the double doors ahead a combination kitchen and sitting room where she slept, when she slept, on a sofa bed.
The bulb in the entry ceiling fixture was out, so there was very little light, only the general city glow coming through the sitting-room windows and a small night light plugged into a socket beside the bathroom door. Feeling like an intruder, I picked up the only familiar object I saw, a framed photograph of our brother, Marc, and carried it into the sitting room with me.
Still hugging Marc’s picture against me, I closed the curtains, switched on a lamp and looked around.
The house I had left in San Francisco was a mess. I live in the Marina District, a block behind the block that was leveled by the big earthquake a couple of years ago. I lost some very good neighbors, as well as the back wall of my restored wood-frame Victorian.
Under normal circumstances, reconstruction on the house should have been completed, the frame bolted to a reinforced foundation, and all of it painted a bright new color. But the year of the earthquake had also been the year of my divorce.