by Jan Burke
Corky laughed. “Right. Never have to worry about them having a vacancy.”
“It’s a start,” Rachel said, and gave over the fifteen bucks. Corky quickly stashed it inside his fatigue jacket.
“Have any of you seen him at one of these places in the last few days?” I asked.
Another round of head shaking.
I was noting the names of the hotels when I heard Rachel ask, “Who else has been looking for him?”
Complete silence. I looked up to see them shifting uneasily.
“Ten bucks,” Rachel said.
No takers.
“Five bucks each,” I said. Rachel rolled her eyes.
The others looked at Corky. “All right, all right,” Corky grumbled. “But I better not find myself standing up against him alone.”
“Ain’t we stood by you so far, Corky?” Blue said. “I’m not scared of tellin’ her.” He turned to Rachel. “There’s this one guy — name of Two Toes. Used to call him Holler. You know him?”
“Haven’t had the pleasure,” she said.
“Won’t be no pleasure. Guy’s a 5150. Nuttier than a damned fruitcake. Makes up weird poetry, talks all kinds of religious stuff. And he’s a real knucklehead to boot. Used to call him Holler ’cause that’s all he does, day-in and day-out — hollers at people. He was always hassling Corky, but the Prof made him lay off.”
“Long as he could, anyway,” Corky muttered.
“That’s right,” Blue said. “Two Toes punched the Prof a good one a little while back.” He pretended to wallop himself on the cheek, complete with sound effects. “Pow! Old Prof swelled up like a damned chipmunk.” He laughed a little, then slanted a glance my way and grew quiet.
“When was that?” I asked.
“Not too long before he sobered up, I’d guess,” Corky said. “Few weeks ago.”
“Where’d Two Toes get the new nickname?” Rachel asked.
“Cut off two of his own toes,” Corky said.
“And ate them!” Blue said.
“I don’t believe that,” Corky said, looking as if he did.
“He’s been looking for Lucas? For the Prof?” I asked.
“Always. Thinks the Prof’s ring is magic,” Beans said.
“His college ring?”
“Yeah,” Corky said with a wheezy laugh. “I told him if it was magic, it would have been from my alma mater, not some lousy place like Las Piernas College.”
“Your alma mater?” Rachel asked.
“Yeah, UCLA. And if you’re a Trojan, I’ll just thank you to keep your mouth shut.”
The others stared at him. He looked down at his pair of stained Adidas, as if suddenly embarrassed. I began to despair of getting any further information from him.
“Where’s that five bucks?” Blue asked.
No one paid any attention to him. We were watching Corky.
When at last he looked up at me, his eyes were hard. “Keep your lousy five bucks.”
“He don’t mean it,” Blue said, but I was watching Corky walk away.
“Corky and Prof were good friends,” Rooster said. “Prof only hung around with the rest of us because he liked to talk to Corky.”
There was a lot of nodding on this point.
“Where can I find Two Toes?” Rachel asked, as I reached into my jeans pocket and pulled out a handful of fives.
“It’s Sunday,” Blue said, not taking his eyes off the cash. “He’ll be out in front of St. A’s.”
“St. Anthony’s?” I asked.
He nodded. “He stays on his knees in front of that statue out front. Can’t miss him. He’s a big guy with a crazy kind of hat on, and a big beard. He’s been Catholic the last few Sundays. Better catch him before he turns Baptist or something. And watch out for them fists of his.”
ST. ANTHONY’S IS A BEAUTIFUL old Catholic church. I like it better than my old parish church, which — after redecorating — went so ultramodern that I feel like I’m on the set of a cheap science-fiction film every time I set foot in it. (Which is admittedly so rare, it could have changed back to something more traditional since the last time I was there.)
But St. Anthony’s has stained-glass windows, mosaics covering the walls and parts of the ceiling, marble on the altar, and all sorts of alcoves and nooks and crannies with statuary and candles and holy water. If you’re the kind of Catholic who knows what it is to own a calendar with red fish printed on the Fridays, then St. Anthony’s is your kind of place.
I wasn’t going to see the inside that day, though, because the man we were looking for was right where Blue had told us he would be — outside, kneeling before a statue of St. Anthony of Padua. Patron saint of the poor.
The “crazy kind of hat” turned out to be a long stocking cap of rainbow colors — it vaguely resembled one an aunt gave me in the 1960s, the Christmas after she got a knitting machine. His beard, which was dark brown, was almost as long and pointy as the cap. There was a sort of symmetry in it, I suppose.
Inside the church, a mass was being said. I could hear the congregation singing the Gloria. “Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth,” they sang, a group of guitars strumming in the background.
Two Toes was a big man. I could see that, even while he was on his knees. He heard us approaching and suddenly stood. He turned toward us, his feet planted wide apart. He pointed at us, his eyes narrowed, and he sniffed the air, as if catching a scent.
Rachel immediately put me behind her, her own stance one of calm readiness. “Hello,” she said, watching him.
“Who are you?” he thundered.
“I’m Rachel,” she said in a quiet, but firm voice. “This is Irene. We just wondered if we could talk to you for a minute.”
He tilted his head to one side, tried to peer around to see me. “Tell her not to hide behind you,” he said to Rachel, not shouting now. “This is the Sabbath. A day of rest. Peace be with you.”
I stepped over to one side, but Rachel said in a low voice, “Whatever you do, don’t get between me and him.”
“Have you lost something?” he asked.
Rachel looked puzzled, but I said, “Yes, that’s why we’ve come to St. Anthony.”
“Good, good,” he said. “St. Anthony prays for those who have lost something. Then the Lord helps them find what they have lost. A saintly service, free of cost.”
“Of course,” Rachel said, her own Catholic days coming back to her.
“What have you lost, my dear? I have St. Anthony’s ear.”
“I’ve lost a friend,” I said.
He closed his eyes and swayed a little on his feet, began humming to himself. “Tell me more,” he said after a moment.
Any minute now, I thought, Toto will pull back the curtain. But if this was the way he was going to play it, there wasn’t much I could do about it.
“My friend is named Lucas. Some call him the Prof.”
His eyes flew open. He raised a fist over his head.
“Step back,” Rachel said to me in a low voice. “Slowly.”
“No!” he roared. “You are not worthy!”
Inside the church, the congregation began singing the Alleluia. It distracted him. He tilted his head again, listened. He lowered his fist.
“Our Lord loves sinners. He takes sinners and makes them winners. He wants me to tell you.” He lowered his head, then raised his eyes up to us again.“An angel watches over the Prof — watches over him all the time. Seen it with my own eyes at the Great Wall of China.” He smiled and started singing in a loud voice — to the tune of “Chattanooga Choochoo” — “Nothing could be finer, sittin’ in the diner, than eat your ham and eggs in good ol’ China.” He stopped singing and frowned. “Wall of China. An angel led me to him. Got to say it three times, when the bells ring. The ring, the ring, the ring.”
“What?” Rachel asked, though I doubt she had high hopes for an explanation.
“Amen, amen, I say to you.” He turned back to the statue and dropped back down to his
knees. He began humming “Chattanooga Choo-choo” again.
“What angel?” I asked.
“Many angels,” he replied. “I follow the angels. Go in peace. Go while you can.”
We stood there for a while, but he only hummed. We gave up trying to get his attention. As we walked back to the car, I could hear the parishioners of St. Anthony’s singing again. The Lord’s Prayer.
Give us this day…
But in an association of ideas perhaps only slightly less random than those of Two Toes, the singing of that prayer gave me an idea about where we might find Lucas.
13
“STOP THE CAR,” I said.
Rachel complied, pulling over. “Do you see it? Over there. Look at the building across the street.”
“The one they’re working on?” she asked, indicating a scaffolded tower, where on a weekday, workers with jackhammers and cement mixers and other equipment would create the cacophony of construction work. Today, it was silent.
“No, the one to the right of it,” I said.
On the next lot, a tall, gray building stood, its dignity sagging like the chain-link fence which surrounded it. Like a lonely old woman whose dress and makeup are passé, it was both ornate and abandoned. At the top of the building, at each corner, a pair of angels stood, wings long and tucked close, hands folded in prayer, long robes draped heavily to their feet. Faces solemn and watchful.
If they were guardian angels, there was little left to guard, but perhaps it was through their protection that one or two of the large street-level windows miraculously remained unbroken. The owners and patrons of what I would guess were once opulent shops and elegant restaurants were long gone, no wares displayed in the windows dull with dirt and brick dust from the project next door. Still, the bright red Chinese characters painted on one of them were plainly visible, as were the words which had caught my attention: Great Wall of China Restaurant.
My gaze moved to the building’s front entry. At the top of a set of stairs, a banner held by two smaller stone angels spelled out a name: The Angelus Hotel.
An angel watches over the Prof — watches over him all the time. Seen it with my own eyes at the Great Wall of China… Got to say it three times, when the bells ring.
“Looks like you were right,” she said. “Two Toes was talking about the Angelus.”
“It was the only hotel on Corky’s list that fit with anything Two Toes was saying. I’m not sure they ever served ham and eggs in there, but maybe he was just saying that it was a restaurant, not the actual Wall of China.”
“Saying?” she chided. “I think it was as much a secret code to him as to us.”
We got out of the car and started walking toward the old hotel. It looked like it had been built in the 1920s, one of Las Piernas’s boom periods.
“Domini angelus…” Rachel intoned, reciting the Latin opening which gave the prayer its name. “Should have known. Used to say the Angelus three times a day. You, too?”
“Sure. I went to Catholic school, remember? Should I sing a few bars of O Salutarus Hostia for you?”
“Some other time. Wonder if a Catholic built the hotel?”
“That or someone who was trying to connect this town up with Los Angeles. But L.A. might not have been such a big place itself when this was built, and given all those angels on the corners, I’m betting this was put together by one of our more devout brethren.”
“One of our more affluent brethren,” Rachel said.
The fence along the front of the hotel was intact, if not exactly forbidding. We walked outside it to our right, away from the construction site and toward an alley on the other side of the Angelus. The alley was deserted, cut off from a one-way street by three large metal posts with bent reflector signs on them. I burrowed my hands into my coat pockets and followed Rachel as she walked down the alley, studying the building.
Ahead of us, in a section that would have been out of sight from the construction workers, the fence had been cut. Rachel pulled back on the mesh of chain link and made an “after you” bow.
Squatting low, I made my way through, then waited for Rachel. We now stood on a long strip of ground that might have once been a lawn or garden. A pair of tall palm trees and a few clumps of weeds were all that remained of it.
A long paved drive ran between the strip and the hotel. Beyond the drive was what must have been a parking lot — what I could see of it was cracked asphalt studded with weeds.
Rachel stood still, looking at the hotel, and then at the ground. “Good thing it rained the other night,” she said. “That will help us find the preferred entrance.”
“Footprints.”
“Right. The ground is dry now, but some folks definitely took shelter here when it rained. These ought to point the way.”
The trail of bent grass and depressions in the dried mud angled to and from the back of the building. We followed them.
“Don’t slip on this palm crud,” Rachel said as we crunched our way across the messy drive. The “palm crud” was actually hundreds of unfertilized dates, dropped onto the concrete over God knows how many seasons without a gardener.
We made our way closer to the building. At one end of the hotel, we went past a metal door at street level — it was welded shut. Two floors above it, a series of small windows began, going to the top of the building. The lowest windows were broken out.
“So much for the stairwell,” Rachel said, looking up as we continued toward the back of the building. “Look — even the fire escape has been welded in place. Bad news.”
“Because of the danger to the unofficial tenants?”
She nodded. “These guys light fires to stay warm; if they fall asleep, or if they’re drunk or high or careless, there goes the building — and maybe everybody in it. Or they suffocate — the fire stays under control, but they don’t have proper ventilation in the room, and the fire burns up all the oxygen.”
We climbed some concrete steps at the back of the building. A little less picturesque than the front, the back was comprised mainly of a series of doors that had been boarded up.
“Wood’s fairly new,” I said. “Doesn’t look like this was done so long ago.”
“No, but look — here’s one that’s already been jimmied back open. Let me go in first, just in case any of the unofficial residents are in.”
She pulled the big flashlight out of her belt and turned it on. As she cautiously opened the door, we were greeted with the sharp, overpowering smell of excrement.
“Yeeech,” I said, backing away.
She laughed. “You weren’t expecting the maid service to have the place all clean and tidy, were you?”
“No, but I wasn’t expecting to walk into the bottom of an outhouse, either.”
She turned her back to me, flashing the light around the large room, which was lined with rusting pipes and sets of valves. A shaft of some sort rose from one end of the room.
“Laundry room, I think,” she said.
“Maybe so. But nothing’s been cleaned here for a while.”
“This isn’t so bad. Think how awful it would be if it were a warm day — just watch your step in this one place near the door,” she said, spotlighting it with the flashlight. It was about two feet away from where I stood.
“Let’s move on, okay?”
“Prop that door open,” she said. “I want to be able to get out of here in a hurry if we have to.”
The door still had a stop attached to it, so I kicked it down. It held.
We made our way to an interior door. We stepped into a long, dark hallway. Several doors led off it. The floor was sticky, and the odor of urine permeated the cold air. I tried not to think about it, and swore I’d throw my shoes away when I got home.
“Prop that one open, too,” Rachel said. “Make it easier to find our way out.”
As we walked away from the door, the hall grew darker, and it was the darkness and sense of confinement, not the stench, that began to stir a growin
g panic within me.
I once spent a few days locked in a small, dark room as the guest of a couple of creeps who got their kicks out of hearing people scream. One result of the experience is that I sometimes have to sleep with the light on. Other times, it’s better not to go to sleep at all. Darkness is not my old friend.
I tried to keep my mind away from memories as we went on. Rachel kept moving forward. I followed more closely. She looked back at me, holding the flashlight so that it didn’t blind me.
“You okay? You want to wait outside?”
I wanted it more than just about anything, but I shook my head. “Lucas knows me, he doesn’t know you.”
“He’s not likely to be hanging out here during the day.”
“I’m going with you.”
She shrugged and moved on. She stopped often to listen as we approached doors. The only noises to be heard were the now-distant sounds of occasional traffic on the street, our sticky footsteps, and the hammering of my heart. My claustrophobia was kicking in.
“We’re making our way to a stairwell,” she said, her tone gentle, coaxing. “There should be more light there.”
I couldn’t answer.
She looked back at me again, then put the light on the doors around us. Some were marked, most weren’t. She paused, as if debating something. I started shaking. I tried to force insistent images from my mind. This is different, I told myself. You’re safe, you’re safe. I heard my own breathing — quick, short breaths.
“Slow down,” she said. “You want to carry the light?”
“No.” I made myself take slower breaths.
She reached back and took my hand, then started walking again. My own hand felt cold in hers. I wanted to protest, to say she was making me feel like a child, but I was grateful for her warm, firm grip.
“Hope that stronzo we found back there didn’t bother you too much.”
I shook my head. Useless in the dark. Get me out of here! I wanted to scream.
“Look at it like a hunter would,” she said. “Think of it as fresh spoor. Maybe your friend left it.”
“No, he didn’t,” I said, my voice tight. “Somebody else, maybe. Not Lucas.”
“Oh, so your friend the bum is such a saint he doesn’t ever take a shit, eh?”