The Silent Second

by Adam Walker Phillips

  I arrived early and waited at the ticket booth. Cheli showed up a few minutes later and smiled warmly as she saw me. The confident detective owning her element at the precinct had transformed into the picture of femininity. The conservative pantsuit was replaced by a summer dress and sandals. She had straightened her hair and pulled it back to show off her slender neck and a diamond pendant. As she approached, she threw her arms out for a hug, and I was relieved we didn’t have to go through the awkward moment of each deciding if it should be a hug or handshake greeting.

  “What a beautiful day,” she commented.

  The conversation stayed at a water-cooler level, where weather and weekend plans reigned and were related with enthusiasm that didn’t match the content. Like all good museumgoers, we lingered on the first few paintings we saw, all English portraits, dutifully read the information cards and absorbed the remarkable use of light and deft hand at re-creating the lace cuffs. We occasionally threw out a comment or two, something safe and most likely overheard from another patron. The more paintings we saw, the less we lingered. Then we skipped a painting or two, then whole rooms, and eventually we rushed through the museum like two people trying to find the bathroom.

  At the main attraction, an original Gutenberg Bible, we milled about with the other gawkers to get a glimpse of this rarest of rare books. I glanced at the security guard standing a few paces off to the side. He was a middle-aged black man with watery eyes and graying sideburns. He kept his hands clasped behind his back as only a museum guard would do. Apparently, it was his job to make sure no one flipped through the Bible to his or her favorite psalm. But really there was nothing for him to do as the Bible was encased in what looked like bulletproof, UV-proof, everything-proof glass. His job then was to stand there for eight hours and do nothing. Although he was my height, he seemed shorter, like the great weight of boredom was ever so slightly pressing down on his shoulders in five-second intervals. He then looked up and caught me staring at him. He had a glazed look that screamed, “Shoot me!”

  I turned to Cheli and was dismayed to see the same glazed look as the guard. And if there had been a mirror in the room, I am certain that same look would have stared back at me in my reflection.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “Really?”

  “Are you enjoying this?”

  “Not at all,” she said. She took my hand and led me out of the museum.

  We took my car and drove through the side streets of San Marino. As the Spanish estates melted away, so did the water-cooler talk, and we felt at ease for the first time that day. The conversation slipped back to what we were comfortable with, the only thing we really shared, which was Ed’s disappearance. I filled Cheli in on the developments I had learned from Mike, leaving out any details involving Claire. She fixed her eyes on a distant spot in front of us as she processed the details, slightly nodding her head as she catalogued each piece of information. She reverted back to who she was, the detective. A detective in a yellow sundress.

  “Is anything they did in building these low-income units illegal?”

  “As disgusting as it sounds, it’s all aboveboard.”

  “Then why kill Langford?”

  “Or Ed?”

  “We don’t know for sure Mr. Vadaresian is dead,” she corrected. “But for argument’s sake, why kill him if it was an aboveboard deal that seemed to work for all sides? Langford was doing his deals and getting paid. Mr. Vadaresian was selling a building he wanted to sell and which sat for a long time on the market.”

  “Maybe they realized there was bigger money involved?”

  “In what?” she asked.

  Cheli was nosing around the issue I wanted to avoid, namely, the fact that Claire and McIntyre and presumably Valenti were somehow connected.

  “These low-income housing community redevelopment projects can be big business.”

  “Says who?”

  “My friend Mike Wagner.”

  She nodded her head, acknowledging the name.

  “You know Mike?”

  “Of him. He did a story on some officers on the GPD who were using DUI checkpoints as a way to get sexual favors from women caught up in the net. They’d threaten them with jail time but offered to let them go if they performed…acts on them. It burned the department pretty badly,” she said, with disgust in her voice.

  “Was it true?”

  “I’m not mad at your friend,” she explained, “but at the department. They put on a big dog-and-pony show, mandatory suspensions, closed-door investigations into misconduct, speeches in the paper. Then just sort of let the story die. They purposely drew it out until people lost interest. No one lost a job. One of them even got his shield before me,” she added bitterly.

  “That doesn’t sound fair.”

  “Not much is for a woman on the force.”

  I could see her swallow the resentment.

  “So where did you guys leave it?” she asked.

  “Mike’s following up on another lead. It could be just a coincidence, but a few months after the purchase of these buildings, there was another batch of transactions on an adjacent block to the properties we’re talking about.”

  “More factory conversions into low-income housing?”

  “Not really,” I explained. “These were residential sales. Four-unit apartment complexes, single-family homes, et cetera. All bought within a month. All on the same block. All bought by the same person.”

  “Do you think it’s connected?”

  “Not sure. Mike said he was going to do some research on it, maybe talk to the owners.”

  “Why wait for Mike?” she quickly threw out.

  I pulled my eyes from the road to study her.

  “Seriously?”

  “Why not?” she said, looking around at the neighborhood. “We’re almost in Lincoln Heights already.”

  In all the talking, I had managed to drive us all the way through South Pas and Hermon and now skirted the bottom of Montecito Heights. Lincoln Heights was on the next bluff.

  “You want to go knocking on doors on our first date?”

  “It’ll be fun,” she laughed. “We can pretend to be partners. How’s your Spanish?”

  “Yo conothzco español,” I said in my best Castilian accent, with a heavy lisp on the “z.”

  “They’ll think you’re a Mormon and slam the door in your face!”

  MIRADA ARRASADORA

  We parked on a dusty street a stone’s throw from the Deakins Building and Carmen Hernandez’s proposed new development. The block was unnaturally flat, like a giant bulldozer had smoothed the field and tamped out even the slightest deviation in the earth’s surface. It produced a great leveling effect, where a person making morning coffee in one of the ramshackle row houses was at eye level with whomever happened to be strolling by out front.

  The sun was intense and unobstructed. The only solace from its glare was the narrow strip of shade cast by the eight or so telephone poles that dotted the block. Standing in one of those shadows was an abuelita waiting for the local bus. She covered herself in a long skirt and a blouse that tied tightly at her wrists. She had a lizard-like stillness to her, as if any exertion would prove too much, and possibly give her away to whatever predator was lurking nearby.

  “Buenas tardes,” Cheli said and asked her if she lived in the neighborhood. The old woman didn’t answer right away. She studied Cheli, then looked at me, and grew even more suspicious. My sheepish wave didn’t help ease her concern.

  Cheli explained who she was and offered up her badge as proof of her identity. The abuelita studied the badge like it was a legal contract written in Sanskrit.

  “Do you live in this neighborhood?” she asked again in Spanish.

  “Sí,” the old woman answered.

  Cheli showed her the list of sales on the paper Mike had provided. The abuelita brightened and pointed to one of the addresses. She then emerged from her spot in the shade and started rambling in
Spanish, directing it all toward me.

  “I don’t understand,” I pleaded, which did nothing to slow the onslaught. “Cheli, why is she talking to me?”

  “She thinks you’re the police,” she explained.

  “Me?”

  “And I’m your…translator.”

  Discrimination was often perpetuated the most by one’s own people.

  “Tell her I’m not the police. No soy policia,” I tried.

  “She won’t listen,” she answered and reluctantly stepped into the role of translator.

  “She says she has lived here for over twelve years. They don’t make any trouble and no one bothers them. It’s just her and her daughter-in-law and her grandchildren. She works over in Cypress Park at a shipping company. She says she is legally here—”

  “It’s okay,” I told the woman, “we aren’t interested in that.”

  The abuelita smiled as Cheli translated. She then said something to Cheli that made her blush. Cheli tried to pass it off but the old woman kept at her.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Cheli replied.

  “Clearly something is being said.”

  Cheli shrugged. “She tells me I need a man like you.”

  The old woman stroked my arm and spoke into my eyes.

  “She says you are kind and strong and—”

  “And what?”

  “You, um, have mirada arrasadora.”

  “Which means what?”

  “Bedroom eyes.”

  “I usually get ‘smoldering,’ but bedroom eyes isn’t bad.”

  “You realize you are preening like a peacock after being hit on by an eighty-year-old woman.”

  “The old ones know from experience. Maybe you should listen to your elders.”

  Cheli interrupted the lovefest to pump the old lady for more information. There was an issue several months back when some men showed up at her door and started asking a lot of questions about her immigration status. Apparently the earlier part about being legal wasn’t entirely accurate. Her grandchildren were legal, having been born in the States, but she and her daughter-in-law were undocumented.

  “Were these immigration officials?” I asked.

  “ICE?” the old woman repeated. “No, no, not ICE.”

  “What did they want with you?” Cheli asked.

  The abuelita explained that these men threatened to turn them in to the authorities. They somehow knew, or guessed, she was not in the country legally. They also knew she had her family and warned her that she was putting her grandchildren at risk of losing their mother and grandmother.

  “So now we have vigilante immigration officers?” I said.

  The old woman went on to explain that these men said they would leave her alone if she did them a favor.

  “What kind of favor?”

  The woman’s response appeared to puzzle Cheli.

  “What’d she say?” I asked.

  “They told her to stop paying her rent.”

  We heard a similar story at several of the other properties in question. Most involved some sort of threat—either exposing the occupants’ immigration status or just the good old-fashioned violent kind of threat. Those who were told to stop paying their rent were also told that these same men would protect them if the landlord tried to get tough with them.

  Evicting renters from a property is a long, drawn-out affair involving court orders, US marshals, and endless documentation. Many deadbeat tenants manage to hang on for months after the initial request to vacate. In the poorer neighborhoods where the oversight was lax and the participants were largely unaware of their rights, the eviction process was often much faster and much nastier. It mostly involved a new set of locks, your belongings piled on the sidewalk, and a German shepherd on the stoop in case you got any bright ideas about returning.

  Clearly, the men who threatened the abuelita and the other residents knew how the landlords would retaliate. The question then was why go through all this trouble. Talking to one of building owners gave us the reason why.

  This particular landlord was the proud owner of a building that didn’t strive to one day be a called a dump. The carpets were stained and rank, the windows grimy and cracked and in some cases missing the panes entirely. Dark corners of rooms were darkened further by patches of mold that contributed to the sour air and tickled the back of the throat.

  He was that rare breed of fat man who was neither jolly nor gentle. A cheap oscillating fan in his office gave us a whiff of diabetes and deodorant soap with each pass. His leg was propped up on a stool, his knee a leaky mess, crisscrossed with surgical scars and pink circles where fluids were drained. Empathy for his physical suffering only partly offset the anger I had for how he treated the people living in his buildings.

  “They told me if I went to the police, I’d never walk again,” the man explained. “So I went to the police anyway. They shattered my kneecap. They hit me ten times in the same spot. They were right about the not-walking part,” he added.

  “What’d they want from you?” asked Cheli.

  “This building. First they tell everyone to stop paying rent and they put the squeeze on me. They know I need the money. It’s my only income. But I’m a stubborn bastard. I don’t budge easy. A few weeks later there’s these guys again with a few friends in my living room. I told them I’d sell. They accepted the offer but gave me a beating anyway.”

  “I assume you didn’t get a fair price.” I said.

  “What do you think?” he said. “Now I got to figure out what to do when the money I got from the sale runs out.”

  “Can you describe the men?” I asked.

  “Nothing special,” he replied. “Just your regular set of Armos.”

  Cheli and I shared a look.

  “They were Armenians,” I stated.

  Cheli pulled up a series of mug shots on her smart phone, the same ones she had me look through after the incident at the tire shop. The man picked out a few.

  “These guys all look the same,” he said, laughing.

  But then he settled on one picture.

  “This is the guy. He’s the one who told me what to do.” He held up the phone. On it was a photo of the hook-nosed, junior Vor, Ardavan Temekian.

  As the sun started to slip behind the hill, we stopped off at a crowded Mexican seafood joint and split a goblet of shrimp in a spicy tomato broth. We chased it down with cans of Tecate dipped in lime juice and salt. Overhead, clear bags of water and vinegar hung from the rafters, apparently to keep the flies away, but it didn’t seem to be working, as the buzzing of wings nearly drowned out the busy street.

  “Is that supposed to get rid of the flies or attract them?” I asked.

  “My mom used to put out a bag of ammonia to keep stray cats from peeing on the grass in front of our house.”

  “Did it work?”

  “About as well as it is with these flies.”

  A few sips of Tecate brought more of those stories out of Cheli. Her parents were first-generation Mexican Americans from a small barrio outside Mazatlán. “Shrimp was a big part of my childhood,” she said, laughing. After the age of six she was pretty much raised by her mother. Her father didn’t up and disappear as much as he sort of drifted away. One night away from the house turned into two. Soon he was more houseguest than family member, but the kind of houseguest you actually wanted to stay longer. There was another woman, but Cheli didn’t think that was an accurate description. “There was more than just one.” She smiled when she said that, but there was pain behind it.

  Cheli had a brother who never amounted to much of anything unless you put stock in extended stays at Lompoc. They were all minor infractions, but eventually they added up into a long sentence.

  “El Principe sure knows how to find trouble.”

  “Doesn’t sound like a prince.”

  “In my mom’s eyes, he’ll always be the Prince,” she said. “Let’s just say in a Latino family, the men
can do no wrong. Not that I am bitter or anything!”

  “I’m not so sure that’s unique to Latinos.”

  “But we have a special way of putting men on pedestals.”

  “Then you must be the prodigal child, Detective Alvarado.”

  “You would think,” she shot back. I could tell she no longer wanted to talk about it. It sounded like she was in that vortex we all fall into of perpetually trying to please the people who turn us away. She quickly changed the subject.

  “I want you to be more careful. The AP can be ruthless when they have to. I know you find this detective stuff interesting, but this isn’t a game.”

  “I never said it was.”

  “I think you need to step aside and let me run with it.”

  She must have seen the disappointment on my face. I had never felt so alive as I did these past few weeks. To willingly walk away from it was going to be hard. Cheli tenderly reached out and touched my arm. “I also don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll step aside.”

  By the time we got back to the Huntington parking lot it was after dark and the guard at the gate was about to lock Cheli’s car in for the night. Los Angeles has this incredible ability to scald you during the day with relentless sunlight, but at night, as soon as that sun slips over the horizon, the air turns cool and quiet.

  I felt goose bumps on Cheli’s arm as I took hold of her hand. We silently leaned in and kissed, a little awkwardly at first, but it felt comforting to have someone in my arms again. As she pulled away and got into her car, I heard her whisper, “Mirada arrasadora.”

  THE STEAMER INCIDENT

  Tuesday morning brought a new chapter to my Human Resources career. A regional manager for distribution returned to work after a long weekend only to discover that her office had been vandalized. This type of incident was rare to the corporate setting and warranted senior manager–level involvement due to the nature of the vandalism. As my co-manager, Paul, was out with his typical “eye problem” after a three-day weekend (he couldn’t see himself working after such a nice, long weekend), the investigation into the affair landed in my lap.