Grave on Grand Avenue

by Naomi Hirahara

  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?”

  “He’s all right on both counts, far as I know. If things get real bad, he has his family.”

  It’s true—the Chois are a tight-knit family. They’re nice people, and Benjamin’s sister, Sally Choi, is a defense lawyer. Truth is, crime does pay, at least for the attorneys. They can afford to help him out if he needs it.

  “Here, watch my cart,” Rickie says as he begins to climb up a Dumpster. So gross. Fortunately, he doesn’t actually jump into the garbage; he stands on a metal bar connected to the outside of the container, then bends straight down to begin his hunt.

  I’m impressed how flexible he is. Who needs yoga?

  A plastic garbage bag is opened, and empty fast-food cups—the straws still poking out from the lids—tumble out into the alley.

  “You know you’re making a mess?”

  “Going to arrest me for littering?”

  More garbage, smears of barbecue sauce on plastic plates, half-bitten sandwiches, tangles of Chinese noodles. I feel like throwing up after seeing this hodgepodge of multicultural food.

  Rickie retrieves a grocery store salad, its packaging still intact. He looks at the expiration date and then tosses it into the cart.

  “Ew, Rickie, you’re not actually going to eat that?” I’m aghast.

  “Expires today. It looks fine, no brown lettuce. Do you know how much perfectly good food Americans waste?”

  I stay quiet, feeling chastised. I can imagine, based on my own habits. Throwing out the rotting vegetables and fruit in my refrigerator is a weekly ritual of mine. I always go to the store thinking that I’m going to eat healthy, but then just end up doing takeout while the good-for-me food goes bad.

  We hit a couple more Dumpsters, adding two unopened bags of tortillas and an untouched roasted chicken, wrapped in an aluminum bag, to our shopping cart. Since Rickie now has dinner, we search for miscellaneous treasures down a residential side street dotted with small houses and apartment buildings.

  Since it’s garbage day tomorrow, the city-issued Army green containers are all out on the street. The recyclables, of course, have already been picked over. Rickie leaves those for the homeless and semipro scavengers anyway.

  We walk past an apartment where pieces of furniture have been hauled out onto the dead grass by the sidewalk.

  “Oh, lookee what I found!” Rickie crows. It’s a red retro-looking chair.

  “That’s actually pretty nice,” I admit.

  “You want it? You need some color to punch up your place.”

  I walk carefully around it, half expecting a rodent to run out from underneath its round cushion.

  “It’s not going to bite you. It’s perfectly fine.” Rickie’s gloved hand gives the chair a good shake and it rotates back and forth. “Oh, snap, it swings. Cool. You’ve got to take this, El.”

  “Why don’t you go for it?”

  “Are you kiddin’ me? My roommates will kick me out on my ass if I bring in anything more from the streets. My stash for eBay and craigslist sales is already taking up most of the apartment.”

  A truck full of flattened cardboard boxes and assorted broken furniture parks in front of the driveway beside us. The driver also spies the red chair and starts to get out of his truck.

  “Look, we have some competition.” Rickie wipes his forehead with the back of his gloved hand. “What do you say?’

  I lift the chair on top of the shopping cart. Luckily, it’s light; less than thirty pounds. With that, I’ve officially become a Dumpster diver.

  I forgot how fun it can be to spend time with Rickie. There’s a reason for his eccentricities, I know. His family is crazy big—between his older stepsisters and stepbrothers, there may even be as many as twenty of them. Like a runt in a large litter, Rickie’s always had to fight for every scrap of food or clothing. He’s street-smart and City Hall–smart. He has a passion for local politics, and his knowledge has come in handy when needed. It’s just that he’s so damn high-maintenance.

  He helps load the red chair into Kermit. “Ugh,” he says. “This car is a disservice to that awesome chair. See what treasures you can find in the trash.”

  A switch flips on in my mind. Treasures and trash. The page that Boyd had thrown in the trash can. A public trash can. On a public street.

  “Hey, have you done any trash diving in downtown?” I ask Rickie.

  “What do you have in mind?”

  I drive Rickie to Grand Avenue. With the red chair in the rear, he’s like a rolled-up pill bug in the passenger seat. Luckily, the drive is short, barely ten minutes.

  Since too many people might recognize me on this block, I ask—well, plead—with Rickie to do the dirty work. I promise him some carne asada tacos from a local food truck, which seals the deal.

  “Downtown’s a different deal than MacArthur Park,” he says before he leaves the car. “Requires more stealth.” He takes the trench coat back from me and drapes it over his body. Rickie is tall, over six feet, but he somehow manages to blend in with the other artistic night wanderers on Grand Avenue. Once he’s at the trash can, he descends over it like a gigantic crow and then returns to the Hyundai, stinkier and a few pounds fatter with a plastic bag of trash.

  “Dang, did you have to take the whole thing?” I quickly drive away, checking my rearview mirror for any of my law enforcement colleagues.

  “What, did you want me to dump it all on the sidewalk?” Rickie takes a small flashlight from his pocket and holds it in his mouth as he paws through the contents in the trash bag. “Aha!” He plucks out a ball of lined paper and uncrumples it in his gloved hands, bits of food falling into the car. I try not to gag. He attempts to read the note: “‘I asked Mr. Bikel if he had heard of any . . .’ This is real bad handwriting.”

  “Go on, Rickie.”

  “Okay, something, something . . .”

  At the next li
ght, I snatch the note from his hands. Sure enough, it’s Boyd’s boxy handwriting.

  I asked Mr. Bikel if he had heard of any stories of persons wanting to steal Xu’s cello. He replied in the negative. Mr. Bikel was quite hostile and claimed that Mr. Fuentes would never participate in anything illegal. Mr. Bikel apparantly was a friend of Eduardo Fuentes.

  It’s no wonder that Boyd had thrown this draft of his report away. The little he’s written here is too wordy and confusing. And he also misspelled the word apparently.

  “Ellie, green light.” Rickie nudges my elbow. “Good stuff in the note?”

  “Not bad.”

  “Anything you’d like to share, Officer? After all, I am your partner in crime.”

  I give Rickie an eye roll.

  “Hey, I could have been arrested for what I did. The evidence is still on me.” He shakes the trash bag for effect, spreading all that pleasant-smelling goodness inside my rental car.

  “I thought it was all legal. Abandonment of property and all that.”

  “Well, the city could claim ownership. Who knows when you get the government all involved.”

  “Well,” I say, “I know that I need to find out who Mr. Bikel is.”

  “Okay, whatever. Doesn’t sound that exciting.”

  “Thanks, Rickie,” I tell him when I reach his apartment after stopping to get the tacos—now already devoured. “You really helped me out. I appreciate it.” His shirt is covered in wet spots from God knows what, so I forgo a hug and just wave good-bye as he gets out of the rental car.

  * * *

  Driving home with the red chair in my backseat, I pass by my neighborhood Catholic church. I’m friends with the priest, Father Kwame. Although I can’t even call myself a lapsed Catholic, I’m a product of their private school education. Even more important, I do believe that God is out there; I’m just not quite sure how to label Him; although calling God a “He” comes more easily than a “She” (maybe a result of my mother-daughter issues?).

  I park Kermit outside along the curb and walk across the sidewalk, up the stairs to the small attached office where Father Kwame also lives. I press down on a button on the intercom and in a few seconds hear his familiar comforting voice. I identify myself and then the door swings open.