Grave on Grand Avenue (11 page)

“My phone died.” Her useless Android is still in her hand. “Why are you here, anyway?”

“Where is everyone?”

“Mr. Xu went to the bathroom. But then he was taking too damn long, so Washington went to check on him.”

“Dammit. They probably took off.”

“I really don’t think that he meant to push that guy down the stairs, El. I think it was an accident. Both of us think that.”

“You mean you and that Lincoln guy—”

“Washington!”

“Whatever, you don’t know him. You just met him. He could be in on this whole thing with the Xus.”

“In on what?”

“I don’t know.” I’m totally frustrated and I’m not quite sure what I’m saying. “It’s just not smart to trust strangers. You don’t have the best track record with men.”

“That’s harsh.” Nay’s voice takes on a coldness that I’ve rarely heard. “Ms. Perfect. Ms. Protector of the Public.”

“Don’t go there—”

“No, let’s go there. You and Benjamin were together for two years, so that makes you a solid judge of character? And I’m what? A skank?”

“I didn’t say that. Don’t put words in my mouth.” Nay and I have never exchanged words like this, and our fight seems surreal. This is a bad dream, right? Except it isn’t. “Didn’t you see the news reports? This is turning into an international incident.”

“Don’t tell me. You called him. Mr. Yummy. I suppose he wants to talk to me.”

“I had to keep him posted,” I admit. “Cortez and his partner will probably be here at any minute. I can take you home if we leave right now.”

She shakes her head. “I’m a journalist. I’m not scared of any cops,” she says.

A man comes from around the counter. “Sorry, miss, but we just got notification from the police that we need to cancel this flight,” he tells Nay. He doesn’t seem to notice that his two passengers are missing.

The flight crew is now unloading the luggage from the plane. The last piece of luggage catches my eye: a bright purple cello case with a splash of silver logo. I can make out the abstract design better now. It’s definitely the outline of some kind of bird with nine heads.

More than what’s on the case, I’m interested in what is inside. Why would the Xus abandon a five-million-dollar cello? A cello that one man already nearly died over? The cello that Mr. Xu was fighting to retrieve? The cello Kendra Prescott was hassling the police about?

No one’s here yet, so I go over to the purple case.

I snap it open to reveal a honey-hued cello. Is it the same one that Xu was playing last night at the concert? Beats me. It looks like any other cello, as far as I can tell. Since I don’t know when I’ll get the opportunity again, I start taking a healthy number of photos of this cello with my phone. Nay starts taking pictures of me taking photos—for what purpose, who knows?

“I’m going to take off,” I tell Nay after I’m finished. I really don’t want to be around when Cortez and Garibaldi get here. I’ll be pushed aside again, and it’ll be too embarrassing for that to happen in front of Nay. “Are you sure that you won’t come with me?”

She shakes her head. “No, thanks. I have a job to do. I’m a big girl; I don’t need you. In fact, get out of here.”

Her words sting. We’ve been through heartbreaks, all-nighters, dictatorial professors and probably hundreds of bowls of ramen.

I feel shaken, down to my
corazón
, my heart of hearts, my
kokoro
. Nay is the sister that I never had but always wanted. Sure, she’s a bit wild, but it’s true—I’m too vanilla sometimes even for my own taste.

But Nay turns her back on me, and I have to hustle. As I get into Kermit, without Nay, I see Cortez parking his car on the other side of the lot. I freeze, but he has no idea that I’m driving this Hyundai. Cortez’s partner, Garibaldi, gets out of the passenger’s side door, and for a moment, I consider running back inside the charter plane terminal to flail my arms around Nay and tell them to back off of her. Yet I don’t. Nay made her choice.

As I drive back home, I barely notice what freeways I
travel. Sometimes in LA, you go into automatic driving mode when your thoughts are heavy. And my thoughts are superheavy right now.

It’s not until I’m back home and practically in bed that I officially receive the breakup text from Nay at midnight:
THINK ITS BETTER IF WE DONT TALK FOR A WHILE.

I hold my phone still, just staring at the text until the screen finally goes dark.
What the hell happened tonight?
I wonder. I drove all the way to Van Nuys to help her. Or was it to help myself?

BFF breakups are ten times worse than boyfriend breakups. Boyfriends can usually be replaced, sooner or later. But a best girlfriend? Those are hard to come by. Me and Nay took a good two years before we transitioned from friends to best friends.

With Nay cutting me loose, I feel anchorless, untethered. I’m not used to being completely alone. Over the past four years, I had Benjamin and Nay. Now I have neither.

*   *   *

I wake up the next day with a migraine. By the time I get in to work, my head is throbbing in spite of the two TYLENOL Extra Strength capsules.

I sit in our roll call. My CO, Tim Cherniss, is leading our session. Cherniss is so squeaky clean and straight that some officers find him difficult to listen to. He hardly ever cracks jokes, and when he does, they’re usually the kind you might tell your kid or nephew, not a roomful of cops.

“As I’m sure you’re all aware by now, a seventy-year-old
Hispanic male, Eduardo Fuentes, passed away at LA County General yesterday. Injuries sustained from a fatal fall at the concert hall. He was one of the contract gardeners there.”

“What garden?” one of the officers asks.

There’s a garden upstairs, idiot,
I think. Nobody explains it to him because they don’t know, either. Cherniss ignores the comment and continues. “Ever since the media reports last night, we’ve received some anonymous calls. Detectives will be following up with interviews of all musicians and staff members. Rush, Jaffarian, you two will patrol the area to make sure there are no disturbances.”

“What’s this all about?” one of the senior members of our team asks.

“I’m not privy to the details—we have a job to do, and we’ll do it.”

Anonymous calls,
I think to myself. It does sound suspicious. Could Fuentes’s attempt to take the cello be connected to something bigger?

Detectives have already arrived by the time Officer Armine Jaffarian and I arrive. I station myself and my bike in front of the stairs, while Armine takes the corner.

The artists’ entrance is connected to the elevator in the parking lot. But since they don’t want anyone walking through the upstairs garden, now the musicians have to get off at ground level and walk to the front of the hall. The elevator that opens up to the sidewalk is encased in a glass box. There’s a door that locks from the outside, to protect the musicians from the riffraff, I guess.

The musicians look like ordinary people casually dressed in jeans, T-shirts, knit tops—except for the instrument cases they’re all carrying. One man, with a case the size of a big
backpack, wears a leather jacket over a black Who T-shirt, definitely evoking more of a rocker image than that of a classical musician.

Most people have already arrived when I hear some deafening rap music coming from a black BMW. Cece is in the driver’s seat. The pink-streaked violist makes a wide turn into the street leading to the parking lot; then, a few minutes later, I see her reappear on ground level in the glassed artists’ entrance. Her viola case in hand, she pushes open the door to the sidewalk and jogs to the hall entrance. She’s wearing an orange peasant dress cinched at the waist and large sunglasses—and a huge smile on her face.
Do you not realize that someone died yesterday from a fall that occurred a few feet away?
I want to shake the yellow crime scene tape in her face.

I feel like everything is getting under my skin today. I stop some European tourists from going up the stairs, and I guess I’m pretty harsh with them, because Armine calls me on it later after she goes across the street to buy us a couple of hot dogs from a street vendor by the court building. “What’s going on with you, Ellie? Man problems?” she asks, handing me a hot dog. She’s put mustard, onion and relish on it—just how I like it. We’ve worked as partners enough times to know each other’s preferences. For example, I know she’s a café Americano woman and that she takes her dog with only ketchup.

I lift my hot dog from its cardboard holder and take a bite. It’s not bad for courthouse street food.

“No, actually, girlfriend problems,” I say as I’m chewing. I don’t even care if it’s rude.

“Girlfriend? But I thought . . . Oh.”

“No, I’m not gay—”

“It’s okay. It really is.”

Armine, who has a husband and two kids, probably doesn’t have a lot of time for female friends. But when you’re my age, you’re nothing without your homegirls. I don’t bother to convince Armine that she’s getting the wrong idea about me. She’s constantly peppering me with questions about my love life anyway. Maybe now she’ll stop.

We return to our stations. Through the glass of the hall lobby, I can see Cortez and Garibaldi talking to the PR flak. She’s still wearing her hair back in a ponytail, except this one is a bit messier than the one the other night.

Boyd and Azusa, patrol officers from our station who’ve been assisting with interviews, come out and greet me.

“What’s all this about the anonymous leads?” I ask them.

Boyd’s not going to offer me anything. All Azusa says is, “Nobody really knows anything.”

About what?

“Well, gotta go type up our reports. If we had iPads or the newest laptops like the school district, we’d be done by now,” complains Boyd. “I’ve rewritten this damn thing three times already.” Throwing away a page of his notebook in the trash, he walks over to the patrol car parked along the curb.

I get what he’s saying. When I was first hired, I was shocked to see how shoddy the equipment and facilities are that we patrol officers have to work with. It’s a completely different world at the new LAPD headquarters, though, where my aunt and Cortez are stationed.

“They’re not giving up anything,” I tell Armine as I ride over to her. “No idea what this new anonymous information is.”

“Does it matter?” Armine asks. “It’s not like we are detectives or anything. It’s like the sergeant says—we just do our job and that’s that.”

Armine has two kids and a husband who’s out of work. For her, the LAPD is a steady gig. A job. But I didn’t go through the academy for just a job. I want to make a difference. Our division is going through the motions to uncover the truth, but I’m starting to wonder how committed we really are.

After work, I stop by Osaka’s but don’t see anyone I know other than the waitstaff and line cooks. I feel so out of it, I can hardly believe it when Kermit takes me to the edges of MacArthur Park, to Rickie’s apartment.

He’s outside and wearing a beanie, which has flattened his Mohawk and makes him look like any other Filipino twentysomething now.

“No Osaka’s tonight?”

He shakes his head. “Trash day tomorrow. Gotta do some diving. You can come with me.”

I realize I’m pretty desperate, but am I desperate enough to raid trash cans for the sake of Rickie’s company?

“It’s legal, you know, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

I know that it’s legal.
Abandonment of property
—isn’t that what the proper term is? Once you throw something out, it’s public domain.

I extend my arms. “I’m in my uniform. Can’t have someone take a photo of me and post it on the Internet.”

“Well, here you go.” Rickie peels off his black trench coat. He’s wearing short cargo pants, and I can see one of his tattoos, a character from his favorite comic book series,
Love and Rockets
, on the side of his left calf. After removing a pair of rubber gloves from the pocket, he tosses the coat to me. “There’s another pair in the other pocket.”

The trench coat fails to cover my bare legs—I definitely look like a female flasher. But in the neighborhood that we’ll be wandering in, it’s better to be mistaken for a sexual deviant than an LAPD cop. “I’ll go with you, but I’m not getting inside any garbage bins.”

“Suit yourself.”

We go on foot, Rickie pushing an abandoned shopping cart from the local drugstore. So incredibly embarrassing. We walk down an alley on the side of a mini-mall, one of the hundreds that exist in the area. I pretend that I’m going undercover as a homeless woman—that’s the only way I’m going to get through this.

“How did you learn all that stuff about the legal precedence?” I have to admit that I’m at least a little impressed about his know-how.

“Meetup group.”

“There’s a Meetup group for Dumpster diving?”

“There’s Meetups for everything.”

He’s right. Mom used meetup.com to find a group of fiftysomething breast cancer survivors who wanted to start running marathons
and
master the art of making macaroons. Believe it or not, turns out there were a bunch of them.

“So what’s up?” he asks.

I almost stumble on a broken piece of sidewalk.

“You must be pretty distressed to hang out with me by my lonesome.”

I can’t BS Rickie, and it’s actually a relief. I tell him everything about Fuentes, Xu, Mr. Xu, Nay and her man of
the day, Washington Jeung. What I keep to myself is the stuff about my long-lost grandfather.

“It’s not like Nay to blow me off,” I tell him. We’ve had our fights, but they’re usually over practically before they start.

“She’s taking this journalism thing seriously.”

“She just started at the
Citrus
. It’s not like she’s Christiane Amanpour.”

“It’s like when you joined the academy, you totally disappeared. You kind of blew her—well, all of us—off.”

I want to deny it, but I can’t argue with the truth. Instead, I change the subject. “What’s going on with Benjamin, anyway?”

Rickie shakes his head. “Dunno. Talk about being MIA.”

“Is he doing okay in school? Is it money?”