Lifeblood (3 page)

“It’s okay. I know it was awful. Especially after everything else.” He put his arms around her but it was awkward. Maybe it was the bucket seats.

Neither said anything more as he drove her back to the garage.

“Shall I come up?” he asked.

Key already in her hand, she shook her head, got out, unlocked the red side door of the garage and closed it behind her.

Chapter Five

“Okay, it’s terrible,” Goldie said. “So you want to go to MacArthur Park and look for worms to eat? Or maybe I should hold your arm nice and steady while you aim a gun up your nose?”

Under the streetlight, teeth flashed brilliant bluish white in the black woman’s face. She and Rachel were sitting on the bench in front of the garage where they had met and become close friends. Goldie supervised a crew that worked nights cleaning nearby offices.

Downtown traffic was practically nil after ten p.m. A lone car passed, weaving across two lanes. “That one has a snootful.” Goldie folded her arms across her chest, watching Rachel from the corner of her eye.

The night was chilly. Rachel pulled her shapeless old cardigan sweater closer about her. “You saying I’m over-reacting?”

“You? Over-react? I’d never say that about you, honey. I just think you sometimes get your hair on fire and can’t figure how to put it out.”

“So how do I put it out?”

“Stick it in a nice bucket of ice water.”

“Goldie! This isn’t funny.”

“Well, it isn’t easy getting a fix on where you are, you know. Like trying to tape Jell-O to a board. And you wouldn’t be down here this time of night if you didn’t want some such answer from me.”

“I’ve gone and had a fight with Hank, too.”

Goldie tossed her head. “Aaaah…That was real smart. That guy would throw himself in front of a semi for you.”

Rachel leaned back on the bench, brought a foot up under her, and propped an elbow on her knee. “He wants to get married. Like soon.”

“That’s bad news?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? When did that happen, you don’t know? What’s the matter with you, girl? What’s that rock on your finger? A paperweight?”

Rachel was examining the home-made gauze bandage that covered the place where the broken glass in the van’s window had ripped her arm.

Goldie pressed on. “You gonna give that ring back?”

Rachel blew a stream of air from pursed lips. “I just want to wait a while.”

“So tell him that. He’ll understand.”

“I tried. He didn’t understand.”

“Did you stick your head in that bucket first, before you said it?”

“I guess not.” Rachel was silent a moment. “Goldie, those kids were….” Her voice caught and it was a moment before she continued. “They shouldn’t have been left there.”

Goldie put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “I know, honey. But they were. There’s nothing on God’s green earth you can do to change that.”

Rachel was staring into the middle distance. “You think it had something to do with their being Mexican?”

“Well, I don’t like people who are always playin’ the race card, but with those two boys, I imagine it did have something to do with their being Mexican.”

“Is it that bad? Are Mexicans just non-people here?”

“Sometimes. In some ways.”

“You sound like an oracle or something,” Rachel said impatiently. “I’m part Mexican. No one ever treated me bad because of it. Not that I know of anyway.”

Goldie drew in a long breath and peered over her glasses at Rachel. “You are just a quarter. What do they call that?”

“Quadrexican?” Rachel said, and they both laughed.

“Anyway, that hardly counts. It’s just a pinch,” Goldie said. “Besides, you’re different. Even the quarter you are isn’t cultural.”

“What does that mean?”

“Like your family didn’t follow the culture, did they? You’re not even Catholic. And you probably don’t even know what a piñata is.”

“I do so know about piñatas.”

“And your family was well off.”

Rachel made a face. “Was is right.” After her mother died, her father had bet their very real farm in a poker game—and lost it.

“That still don’t make much never-mind compared to a lot of folks. Especially to lots of Mexicans.”

“Maybe that’s why I can’t shake this awful feeling,” Rachel said, not sure exactly what she meant. “You know what else is odd?”

“Now what?”

“I brought two kids to the emergency room. One dead, one almost. Whatever had happened to them, it was criminal negligence. Not that I like talking to cops or anything, but don’t you think it’s odd that the police haven’t been around asking about those boys?”

“Yeah,” Goldie said. “But nothing surprises me about Rampart.” Rampart was the nearest LAPD station. “They might be too busy bustin’ the old folks for playing chess in MacArthur Park.”

“But wouldn’t you think some kind of report would have to be filed? Some routine investigation?”

“I guess.”

“Well, the only questions I’ve been asked are about almighty money, like who’s going to pay the hospital bill. Not a single soul has asked if I have any information about how one of those kids got sick and the other got dead. Don’t they care about that?”

“You got me.” Goldie glanced at Rachel. “Come to think of it, there is one thing you can do about this. And maybe it’ll make you feel better.”

“Like what?”

“Get your butt down to that hospital tomorrow and visit the kid who’s still alive.”

999

The next morning was hectic. Two clients locked their keys in their cars. One had flipped the door lock and wandered off, leaving the motor running. He must have really heavy stuff on his mind, Rachel thought. She didn’t know his name, but she recognized his car. She used the jimmy to unlock the car and turn it off. Then she left a note in the driver’s seat for the owner.

It was ten-thirty or so when she spotted Irene, sitting on a pink blanket on the sidewalk in front of the garage, playing solitaire. Irene’s persona changed from time to time, like that of an actress, depending on the clothes she put on. Today, in a pink apron over a long blue skirt dotted with pink flowers, she looked as though she had flounced off the pages of a Jane Austen novel.

Rachel left the glass booth and walked over to her. “Who’s winning?”

“I am, dear girl. Wouldn’t have it any other way, would I?” A gray felt hat with floppy pink and white flowers all but hid her face. “Would you like a Twinkie?” She pointed to the somewhat battered supermarket cart pushed up against the fire hydrant on the corner near the bench. “I found some in the Dumpster down at Farmers Market. Unopened, of course.” Irene nodded her head up and down until it threatened the hat’s ability to remain seated.

“No thanks, really,” Rachel said. “I had a bagel earlier.”

“Good girl. Your age, you got to watch that figure.” Irene patted the long skirt that covered her round stomach. “Luckily, that age passes.”

“You want to make ten bucks?” Rachel asked.

Irene removed her hat, exposing hair shorn drastically short. “Of course, luv.” Peering into the hat, she drew out two chiffon ties. “You want I should mind the shop?”

“Just for an hour or so. I need to visit someone in the hospital.” Rachel had once had someone to help with the long hours the garage required, but with Lonnie’s long detour into drug use, she’d found herself both paying him and running the place alone. After he died, she had decided to get a bit ahead on the bills and maybe even put a little money into savings rather than hire someone.

Irene replaced the hat, tied the chiffon in a bow under her chin and cocked her head at Rachel. “Not your dear dad in the hospital, I hope.”

“No, no. He’s fine.”

“A friend, then.”

“One of the kids I told you about yesterday. I just want to see if he’s okay.”

Irene tilted her head. “How thoughtful you are, dear girl.”

A rendition of the William Tell Overture began softly somewhere nearby and grew louder. Rachel glanced up and down the street looking for the source.

“Ah, me, I forgot. You haven’t seen my latest accouterment.” Irene pulled a phone from the ruffled pocket of her pink apron.

Rachel blinked and nodded. There was no use wondering how someone who apparently lived on the street managed to have a cell phone or why Irene wanted or needed one. Acutely aware of her own need for privacy and reluctance to make her own life an open book, Rachel had never asked Irene much about her lifestyle, believing the woman might rightly call her impertinent.

“Hello,” Irene was saying into the phone. “Hold on.” She peered back at Rachel.

“You’ll sit in the booth and answer the phone and all till I get back?” Rachel asked quickly.

Irene scooped up the cards with her empty hand. “Of course, luv. Didn’t I say I would?”

999

Rachel parked in the main lot this time and entered the hospital through the front door. Two women and a man sat at counters, behind Plexiglas panels with little speak holes, fielding questions from people who stood in line to ask them.

When Rachel reached the front of the line, a woman in a bright blue blouse, with frizzy black hair and pallid skin, just stared at her when she asked about the boy who was admitted from the emergency room about noon yesterday.

“A Mexican boy, I think,” Rachel added. “One of the medics in the emergency room said he was very dehydrated.”

“Name?”

“Mine or his?”

The woman frowned. “His, of course.”

“I don’t know his name.”

The woman stared at Rachel, two red splotches appearing on her cheeks. “You want to see someone, but you don’t know the name,” she said flatly.

“I…uh…yes.”

“Yes, you do know his name?”

“No.” Rachel tried to throttle her frustration. “Look, I own the parking garage down the street. Yesterday I found two unconscious boys in a vehicle parked there. I brought them to the emergency room here. The doctor or nurse or whatever he was said it was too late for one of them, but the other was alive. I was just hoping to check on him. He was very young, maybe only nine or so, and I don’t even know if he has any parents.”

The woman in the blue blouse tapped on the keyboard in front of her computer monitor, then looked back at Rachel. “Sorry, I can’t help you.”

“What do you mean? I just want to see him, or at least find out how he’s doing.”

The woman drew together thin red lips outlined in a darker color. “No one of that description was admitted here yesterday,” she said slowly, her tone underlining each word, as if speaking to someone who had little command of English. “Not after nine a.m. anyway.”

“That’s impossible. I brought two boys here about eleven-thirty. One was admitted to the hospital.”

The woman tapped some more keys and shook her head. “Sorry,” she said, then looked past Rachel to the person behind her. “Next.”

Chapter Six

“Just a moment.” Rachel’s voice rose. “Please. He has to be here.”

“No boy of that age or diagnosis was admitted from the ER yesterday. Period.” The woman looked a bit wild-eyed, as if Rachel had sprouted a horn in the middle of her forehead. Then she picked up a phone, punched three buttons, and murmured something into the mouthpiece.

Almost immediately a tall man in navy pants, white shirt and a string tie, appeared. He raised his eyebrows at the woman behind the desk. She dipped her head at Rachel.

The man put a firm hand at Rachel’s elbow. “Come with me, please, ma’am.”

Glancing at the people in the lobby who were now looking in her direction, Rachel let him steer her to the door.

“Sorry ma’am,” he said. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

Rachel explained it all again. “The second boy was being admitted. Now she says he wasn’t, that they’ve never heard of him. How can that be?”

The man gave her a calm stare, as if he dealt with unhinged people every day of the week. “I don’t know. But if they say he isn’t here, he isn’t here. I’m sorry, but if there’s nothing else we can help you with, you’ll have to leave.”

999

Irene rolled her eyes when Rachel got back to the garage and told her the hospital had no record of the child. “Doesn’t surprise me dear girl. No, doesn’t surprise me one whit.”

“Why not?”

“First off, that is one big hospital. You know how many patients?”

Rachel shook her head.

“I hear they have room for seven hundred patients. I reckon they might misplace one here and there.”

“It still doesn’t seem possible.”

“Stranger things have happened,” Irene said sagely.

Rachel handed her a ten-dollar bill. Sometimes Irene was a total realist. Other times, just a tad, well, eccentric.

When the woman had gone back to her card game on the sidewalk, Rachel sat down in the booth, thought for a moment, then picked up the phone and touched a few numbers.

“I just want to apologize for last night,” she said when Hank answered. “I don’t know what got into me. I guess I’m a little stressed out.”

She could almost see him lift one shoulder, as he often did when perplexed.

“Happens to all of us,” he said. “I guess I picked a bad time. Whatever.”

“You know that kid I took to the hospital? The one they admitted?”

“Yeah.”

“I went over there today to see him and he wasn’t there.”

“At the hospital?”

“No record, no nothing. He’s just gone, missing, lost, kaput.”

“Maybe they transferred him somewhere else.”

“Wouldn’t they have a record of it?”

“If my experience with medical billing is any indication of medical record-keeping….”

Rachel made a bitter sound meant to be a chuckle. “Well, that’s a point. Maybe they didn’t check him in the right way, so he sort of disappeared.” She stopped, but Hank didn’t fill the gap.

“Well, I’m sorry. Really.”

“Apology accepted….” This time it was Hank who paused. “Have you given any more thought to it?”

“To what?”

“Setting a date to get married.”

“Yes,” she said, “I’m thinking on it—oops, gotta go. I’ve got another call.”

The incoming call was not good news.

“Ms. Chavez, please.”

“Speaking.”

“Gerald Mason, Patrick Hutton Advertising.” Hutton leased almost three-quarters of the third level of her garage.