“No parents asking about her?”
“No one’s come forth, ma’am.”
“That’s sad.”
Little Rocky peeped. Shifted. Bellowed. Anna Ramirez went over and removed him from the crib. Poor kid was flushed and dyspeptic-looking. Swaddled in too many blankets for the heat.
Anna sat back down and lay her grandson across her commodious lap. Rocky burped, frowned, went back to sleep. Circular dumpling of a face, curly black hair. Very cute. Petra noticed that his nails were trimmed and the blankets were spotless.
She said, “He’s beautiful.”
Anna Ramirez sighed. “Very active. So… this girl…”
“I was wondering if Bonnie knew her,” said Petra. Realizing she’d used the singular since entering the house. Should she include Isaac? He was sitting there, upright and stiff, looking like someone waiting for a job interview.
“You didn’t ask Bonnie if she knew her?”
“I did and she said no. I’m just following up.”
Anna Ramirez frowned. “You don’t believe her.”
“It’s not that- ”
“It’s okay. Sometimes I don’t believe her.”
Petra hoped her smile was empathetic.
Anna said, “Her brothers all finished school, two of them are in J.C., but Bonnie never liked school. Down deep, she’s a good girl…” She glanced down at Rocky. “This was kind of a- So now I’m being Mama again, so okay, it’s okay. It’s hard to tell Bonnie anything, but I’m insisting she’s definitely gonna have to get at least her GED. What kind of job can you get without that?”
Petra nodded.
Anna sighed again.
“Anyway, ma’am, when she gets home, if you’d be so kind as to give me a call.”
“Sure,” said Anna. “This girl, you think she could’ve been with Bonnie?”
“I really can’t say, ma’am.”
“What did she look like?”
“Short, a little heavy. She wore pink sneakers.”
“That could be Jacqui,” said Anna Ramirez. “Jacqui Olivares. She’s short and she used to be much fatter till she lost weight. But she’s still not skinny. And she’s got problems.”
“What kind of problems?”
“Two kids. A boy and a girl. And she’s only seventeen.”
“Have you ever seen her in pink sneakers?”
Anna touched a finger to her mouth. Rocky stirred again and she bounced him gently on her knees, smoothed sweaty hair off his little brow.
“No,” she said, “I never noticed that. But Jacqui doesn’t come around here no more. I told Bonnie I didn’t want her here.”
“Bad influence,” said Petra.
“You bet.”
“I have a picture of the unidentified victim, ma’am, but I need to warn you it’s not pretty.”
“A dead picture?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I seen dead people, saw my Rudy dead, go ahead.”
Petra produced the least deathly of the morgue shots and handed it to her. Anna said, “That’s not Jacqui, I never seen this girl.”
The address Sandra Leon had given wasn’t far from the Ramirez home, but when they got there, Petra knew she’d been had.
The numbers matched a boarded-up bodega on a run-down stretch of abandoned homes backed by weed-choked alleys. Graffiti everywhere. Angry young men with shaved heads and eye-filling tattoos cruised the rutted streets, bopping, staring, sneering.
Petra got out of there fast, drove to Soto Avenue, not far from the county morgue, and into the lot of a busy-looking gas station where she bought coffee for herself and a Coke for Isaac. He tried to pay her back but she wouldn’t hear it. As they drank, she got the number for Western Pediatrics Hospital, asked for Oncology, and waited a long time to be connected.
The secretary on the other end said “That’s confidential” when she asked for Sandra Leon’s address.
Petra lied easily. “I have reason to believe that Ms. Leon is in danger.”
“Because of her illness?”
“Because of a crime. A multiple murder that she witnessed.”
Long pause. “You need to speak to her physician.”
“Please connect me.”
“The last name is… Leon… okay, here it is, Sandra no-middle-name. That would be Dr. Katzman. I’ll put you through.”
What Petra got on the other end of the line was a soft, male voice on tape. “This is Dr. Bob Katzman. I’ll be traveling for the next two weeks, but I will be picking up messages. If this is a medical emergency, the Oncology on-call extension is…”
Petra hung up and reconnected to the secretary. “Dr. Katzman’s gone for two weeks. All I need is Sandra Leon’s address.”
“You’re with the police?”
I am the police, honey. “Detective Connor.” Petra spelled it. “Hollywood Division, here’s my badge number and you can call to verify- ”
“No, that’s okay, I’ll give you Medical Records.”
Five minutes later, Petra had the address Sandra Leon had listed on her intake form.
The girl had signed herself into care.
“Is she an emancipated minor?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said the records clerk.
“Is there any adult’s name on the form?”
“Um… doesn’t seem to be, Detective.”
“Who pays her bills?”
“CCS- Children’s Cancer Service, it’s a county fund.”
“No family members,” said Petra.
“She’s not the only one,” said the clerk. “We get runaways all the time. This is Hollywood.”
The other address Sandra had used was on Gower north of Hollywood. Minutes from the station. If you were in an energetic mood, you could walk.
Petra got back on the freeway. “See what I mean,” she told Isaac. “Tedious.”
“I think it’s interesting,” he said.
“What is?”
“The process. How you go about putting it all together.”
Petra didn’t believe she’d put anything together. She glanced over at Isaac. Not a trace of irony on his face.
He said, “I also find it interesting the way people relate to you. Bonnie’s mother, for example. She clearly saw you as an authority figure and that caused her to be respectful. She’s a conventional woman, proud of her husband’s military service, takes her responsibilities seriously.”
“As opposed to her daughter.”
“Yes.”
“Generation gap,” said Petra.
“Generational breakdown,” he said. “People in Bonnie’s generation see themselves as free from convention and regulation.”
“You think that’s bad?”
Isaac smiled. “I’ve been instructed by my dissertation committee not to make value judgments until the data are all in.”
“We ain’t in school. Go a little crazy.”
He fingered his tie. “I think an extremely open society is a double-edged sword. Some people take advantage of freedom in a healthy way, others can’t cope. On balance, I’d opt for too much freedom. Sometimes, when I can get my father to talk, he tells us about El Salvador. I know the difference between democracy and the alternatives. There’s no country as great as America in the twenty-first century.”
“Except for people who can’t cope with too much freedom.”
“And they,” said Isaac, “have you to contend with.”
Gower Street. Unit eleven of a twenty-unit apartment complex the color of honeydew melon set midway between Hollywood Boulevard and Franklin Avenue.
“Okay,” said Petra, getting out of the car. “Let’s see what our little fibber has to say for herself.”
When she scanned the mailboxes near the front door, unit eleven was registered to Hawkins, A.
No Leon on any of the slots.
The front door was unlocked. They climbed the stairs and walked to the rear of the hallway where number eleven was tucked. Petra rang the bell and a very tall, black man in a green sweater and brown slacks answered the door. White snowflakes were printed at the neck and cuffs of the sweater, a ski-thing in June. An intricate zigzag cornrow sheathed his high-domed head- one of those architectural masterpieces NBA pros liked to sport. Rapidograph pen in one hand, ink stains on his fingertips. What Petra could see of the apartment was spare and well-kept. Drafting table pushed up against a window. A cloud of incense drifted out to the hall.