The sight of L.A.’s harsh sun on the bending vistas of asphalt and concrete was so familiar and comfortable that it compressed and decreased his fear. A smooth-edged ball in his gut, the fear was now heavy, but at least bearable for the time being.
The last of the milkshake gurgled up the straw and he tossed the empty container on the car’s floor. Pulling the scrap of paper from his shirt pocket, he studied the first address, then glanced up and saw the sign for the exit he wanted. He cut across two lanes and barely made it into the mouth of the exit.
The offramp was a long curving descent into another, darker world. The freeway had been coated with the sun’s glare. Below it, the light was shut out by the massive cubes of the Nueva Esperanza Housing Project, like the walls of some smoothly machined canyon. The Ford cruised slowly down the project’s main avenue with its dividers of yellow grass and stunted palm trees, as Ralph searched the high windowless walls for the right building number.
He strained to make out the stencilled numbers, buried under layer upon layer of slogans and names in the fluorescent spray paints with their oddly kinked style of lettering. Ghetto baroque, thought Ralph. Some of the words were meters high and would have required some kind of primitive mountain-climbing skills to accomplish. He envisioned the wiry Nueva teenagers rappelling down the faces of the buildings, propelling themselves from side to side with squirts of paint like gravityless space explorers in old ’50s science fiction flicks. He shook his head to get rid of the image and saw the number of the building for which he was looking.
The Ford managed to squeeze into an open space at the curb between two rusted, immobile hulks. A covey of dirty-faced children peered at him through the smashed windshield of one of the old cars as he got out of the Ford, locked it, and crossed the sidewalk to the building’s entrance.
His foot didn’t quite clear the top of a mound of trash lying in the doorway. The mound shifted and grumbled, opening one blood-rimmed eye for a moment. Ralph walked faster into the dark lobby.
Inside, he studied the list of names and apartment numbers posted between the two elevators, each bearing an Out Of Order sign. For a few uneasy seconds, the poorly-lit space brought back the memory of the inside of the Thronsen Home. But the air here was sour-smelling with the cramped miasma of old people’s diseases and the dry odor of envelopes and checks for too little money from the government offices downtown. A squat woman wearing sneakers and a thin shawl scuttled away from the mailboxes, glancing nervously at Ralph before she disappeared into a stairwell. As he reached into his shirt pocket and took out the scrap of paper, he turned back to the list.
That must be the one, he decided, comparing the name on the paper with one in the middle of the list. He re-pocketed the paper and headed for the stairwell. A short man with some kind of a sheaf of newspaper in his hand was talking to a hard-faced teenager slouched against the wall.
His legs were starting to ache by the time he reached the fifth floor. The building’s stale odor was even worse in the upper hallway. He walked slowly, scanning the doors. He heard one open after he passed by, then quickly close again.
One of the metal numbers, a five, dangled head downwards on the door at the end of the hall. After a moment’s hesitation he brought his hand up and knocked.
Muted footsteps came from inside the apartment, then the door, spanned by a chain, opened a few inches. A woman’s suspicious face peered out at him.
“Mrs. Alvarez?” Ralph had already planned what he would do. He reached into his pants pocket, brought out his wallet and flipped it open to his Opwatch ID card—the way cops in the movies did. “I’m from the, uh, California State Correctional Research Commission. Like to talk to you about your boy, Ruben.” That had been the name on one of the folders.
The woman’s eyes flicked from the open wallet to his face. Her expression didn’t change.
“You are Mrs. Alvarez, aren’t you?” He returned his wallet to his pants.
She nodded. “What’s Ruben done now?” Her voice was sullen and resentful.
“Nothing. I just want to ask—”
“You can’t do nothing ’til I talk to Mr. Hahey at the Legal Clinic.” Her chin lifted and her eyes narrowed.
“Ruben’s not in any more trouble, Mrs. Alv—”
“It’s his probation officer,” she interrupted angrily. “He causes all the trouble. Why can’t he let Ruben alone?”
“I just want to ask you some questions—”
“Sending him from this place to this place to this place. When’s he coming home?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Alvarez. I just—”
“What kinda questions?”
Ralph took a deep breath. “When was the last time you heard from Ruben?”
A shrug. “He writes every week or so.”
He had expected that. “What does he say in his letters?”
“Not so much. He don’t write so good.”
“Does he say anything about the Thronsen Home? Anything about the treatment program he’s in?”
“He says he’s lonely out there in the desert. And he misses Angela—that’s his girlfriend. Por vida, he says.”
“Anything else?”
“I think he said in his last letter he won the ping-pong tournament. They gave him a coke for a prize.” She tilted her head and inspected him harder. “Hey, what’re you asking these questions for?”
Ralph swallowed and tried to smile. “We’re attempting to find out what the parents of the children in the Operation Dreamwatch program think of it. Sometimes the parents get feedback from the kids that the people who run the program aren’t aware of.”
“Yeah, a mother always knows.”
He nodded. “What do you think of the program he’s been sent to? This Dreamwatch thing?”
She looked suddenly tired, as if the mask had faded for a moment to reveal the fatigue beneath the skin. “I don’t know.” She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “I don’t know anything about it. I guess it’s okay. Ruben’s gotta be someplace, I know. He’s kind of a wild kid. He gave me a black eye once, and broke his sister’s arm. That was the last time he was home.” She sighed. “Maybe if his father hadn’t left when he was a baby . . .”
“But you feel the project’s all right? There’s nothing wrong with it?”
Another shrug. “I didn’t understand when Ruben’s P.O. told me about it. Something about dreams—I don’t know. But if it changes Ruben just a little bit, that’d be nice. Just so he didn’t blow up all the time. Then he’d be a good boy.”
“But you’re sure he’s okay?” persisted Ralph. “Nothing’s happened to him?”
“Naw, he’s okay. Hey, look.” She went away from the door, then returned with an object she handed to Ralph across the chain. “He sent me that last week. He made it in woodshop.” She smiled proudly.
It was a short piece of pine board, varnished so inexpertly that little half-beads of clear yellow had formed around the bottom edge. The words TO MY LOVING MOM had been crudely incised into the wood. It looked just like all the shop projects he had seen in the Juvenile Hall where he had once worked. He started to hand it back through the door’s narrow opening but Mrs. Alvarez waved it away.
“You keep it,” she said. “Then you can tell them at the Juvenile Court that Ruben’s not a bad boy. And you can show them that.” A kind of childlike hopefulness had filtered into her voice.
He hesitated, then nodded. “All right,” he said. “I’ll tell them.” She’s probably been disappointed so many times, he thought. A couple more lies won’t hurt.
As he headed down the stairwell, Ralph passed the man with the bundle of newspapers he had seen in the building’s lobby. Their eyes met for a moment, then the short man continued trudging upstairs. Ralph noticed that the papers under the man’s arm were copies of the Revolutionary Worker’s Party Agitant. He hurried down the dark steps before the man could come after him and ask him to subscribe.
Chapter 7
&n
bsp; The other address was in an expensive suburb north of the city. Ralph left the Ford at the curb with the neatly stencilled house number on it and walked up the little stone path winding across the trimmed lawn.
The house itself looked like a Spanish mission that had melted in the sun and spread out over the landscape. He pressed the doorbell, heard the muffled chiming on the other side of the high wooden door, and waited.
After a minute he rang again, but still no one came.
He turned to walk back to the Ford but a faint sound of splashing water stopped him. His feet sinking in the lush grass, he circled the house and came to a small wooden gate in the cinder block fence that extended behind the house. Stretching on his toes, he peered over the gate and saw a large, irregular swimming pool, like a blue gem cut in two, set in the landscaped yard. A woman’s head moved surrounded by ripples through the water, her brown hair trailing. “Mrs. Teele?” called Ralph.
The woman glanced up, saw him, then turned over on her back and swam slowly towards the other end of the pool. “Just leave it at the front door,” she shouted over the splashing of her arms and legs.
“I’m not delivering anything, Mrs. Teele.” Ralph held his open wallet above his head. “I’m from the California State Juvenile Treatment Department. I’d like to talk to you about your son, Thomas.”
“Thomas?” she floated to the edge of the pool and hoisted herself halfway out of the water. “Oh, you mean T.J.,” she said, her face losing its puzzlement. “How’s he doing?” With a splash she was out of the pool and reaching for a towel draped over an aluminum and plastic garden chair.
Her tan was so dark that she seemed to be some species of seal with legs.
“That’s what I want to talk to you about.” He put his wallet away.
Mrs. Teele walked towards the gate, the towel draped over her shoulders. “Why ask me? You’ve got him. Isn’t he still out there in the desert someplace?”
“That’s right,” said Ralph. “He’s still committed to the Operation Dreamwatch program. We’d like to know if there’s been any communication between you and your son—anything Thomas might not have wanted to tell the staff at the Thronsen Home. Does he write to you?”
She wiped a damp tendril of hair away from her brow. “I think he writes every week or so. I’m not sure. Haven’t really felt like opening my mail for the last couple weeks.”
“Well . . . when you do read his letters, do you ever sense anything wrong? Anything that just seems funny about them?”
“Wrong?” She laughed. “Listen, I don’t know what they’re doing to my kid out there, but anything’s better for T.J. than letting him back out on the street. It took thirty-eight stitches to put his head back together after that last stunt of his. The car was totalled, of course, but we had insurance on it, at least.” Her voice had changed by the last words, making them harsh and steely.
He had to look hard before he could see the faint tracery of lines around her eyes and mouth. They betrayed her real age and the tension beneath the skin. “So you think he’s okay, then?”
“Sure.” A quick nod of the head. “Look, you got any more questions? I usually take a nap, or go shopping, or something, in the afternoon.” She pressed the fingertips of one hand against her brow.
“No,” said Ralph. “Wait a second. Has Thomas sent you a package or anything recently?”
“Let me go see.” She walked to the house, slid open a glass door, and stepped inside. In a few moments she returned with a narrow, flat parcel, still wrapped with brown paper and twine. She tore it open to reveal a varnished pine board.
“Isn’t that sweet?” she said, the same hard tone cutting under her words. “ ‘To my loving mom.’ ” She handed the board over the gate to Ralph.
He glanced at it, then back at her. “Can I keep this? It might, uh, help us with our study.”
“Go ahead. What do I want with a piece of junk like that?”
“That’s true. Well, thanks for your cooperation.” He started to turn away from the gate.
“Hey. Wait.” She smiled at him. “How come everybody’s asking about my kid today?” Her voice was relaxed again, the harshness pressed back inside of herself.
Ralph stiffened with her words. “Who else was asking about him?”
“I know there isn’t any connection, of course. Just a funny coincidence, is all. You right now, and then that other guy this morning—or was it yesterday morning? I’m not sure.”
“What other guy?”
She blinked, surprised at his sudden intensity. “A little short guy. Real dwarfy. He was selling subscriptions to some weird newspaper. Hold on, I’ll get you the sample copy he left.” With an apprehensive glance over her shoulder at him, she ran into the house and returned with the folded newspaper.
He reached over the gate and took it out of her hands. It was the latest issue of the Agitant. A brief image shot behind his eyes, of a bundle of the same issue clasped under the arms of a short man in Mrs. Alvarez’s building. Ralph gripped the paper together with the pine board in his hands. “What did he ask you about your son?”
“Oh. Gee—I don’t remember. Just the same kind of thing you asked, I think. He said he was doing a paper for some college class he was in.” She slowly backed a few steps away from the gate.
Hold on, he told himself. Don’t let her think anything’s wrong. He swallowed, then forced a smile.. “That is . . . kind of a funny coincidence, all right.” He nodded and started away. “Thanks for your help, Mrs. Teele.”
“Sure,” she said. “Watch out for the bougainvillea behind you.”
He threw the board and the paper beside him on the seat of the Ford and drove for several blocks. When Mrs. Teele’s house was out of sight, he pulled over to the curb and killed the engine.
As he had suspected, had known in fact, the two varnished pine boards were identical. Right down to the wood grain, he thought, turning each over in his hands. Even the blobs of varnish at the bottom were the same.
They must have some kind of factory that stamps them out.
The boards clattered as he tossed them onto the floor of the car. He picked up the paper and unfolded it. After a few minutes of examining the rough-edged newsprint, he threw it on top of the boards. It was just like any other issue of the Agitant he had ever seen—the same as the ones that came every two weeks to his mailbox at the base. He started up the car and headed for the freeway back into the city.
A little while later, he parked the Ford in a hamburger stand’s parking lot and watched the five p.m. rush hour traffic creep along a nearby section of freeway. Meditatively, he sipped at a milkshake.
Now what? he thought. There was something wrong about Operation Dreamwatch—something big enough for someone to murder in order to hide it—but he was going to have a hard time proving it to anyone else. He couldn’t just march into the L.A. office of the FBI, toss the two identical boards on the counter, and expect much of a reaction. Probably put me down as just another crank, he thought. Must get dozens every day.
He looked up through the windshield and watched two plasma jet trails trace through the late afternoon light. A sudden urge rose in him, an urge to just get on the freeway and head north. The traffic would thin in a little while, and then he’d be able to make pretty good time. Oregon or Washington, he thought. Maybe even Canada. The desire to get away, to forget everything about Operation Dreamwatch . . .
But they’d find me. He squeezed the greasy hamburger wrapping into a ball in his fist. They’d figure I’d found out something when I didn’t come back to the base, and they’d find me somehow. No matter where I hid. And then they’d kill me. Just like Stimmitz and Helga.
He knew there wasn’t any choice now. He either found some kind of proof about Operation Dreamwatch, something solid enough to get the proper authorities into it, or else he didn’t—and could start waiting for his own death. They’ll find me out sooner or later, he grimly told himself.
He picked up the copy
of the Agitant again and studied it. Tracking down the parents of the two kids whose folders he had taken hadn’t revealed anything new to him, beyond the continuous forgery of letters to allay any suspicion by the parents. The newspaper was now the only thread he had left to follow.
Somebody, he thought, is poking into the same things I am. But the Revolutionary Workers Party? I don’t get it. Why would they be interested?
Two possibilities came into his mind. The little group of radicals was also aware of something being wrong with Operation Dreamwatch. Or they were a front for whoever was behind the Opwatch project.
Ralph considered the last. Yeah, that makes sense, he decided. They could have been talking to the parents of the kids in the Thronsen Home just to see how well their cover-up is working.
But either way, the RWP was the only point in the foglike mystery he could move towards. He opened the Agitant and located a column headed “Activist Calendar.” There was to be a public forum tonight at the RWP headquarters in L.A., with somebody named Peter Vallejo talking on “Ximento—The Facts Behind the Myth.” Ralph memorized the headquarter’s address and closed the paper.
That’ll have to do for a start, he thought. He rolled down the Ford’s window and stuffed the trash from his meal into the mouth of a container shaped like a malevolently grinning clown.
Chapter 8
The front yards of the little frame houses were choked with weeds. Most of the windows were broken, showing like transparent teeth beneath the rough boards that had been sloppily nailed over them. As Ralph parked the Ford at the side of the narrow street, the old street lights came on, spreading weak yellow splotches in the twilight.
He got out, locked the Ford, and headed back along the cracked sidewalk to the busier street he had turned off. The small vacant houses remained silent, as though they were the discarded husks of their former occupants. Where did they all go? thought Ralph as he walked past.
The Dreamfields Page 6