'Yeah, that's where all his juvie cases were filed.'
'Nothing in my records about Pasadena. I have him living in Glendale, Burbank, and Agoura, going to middle school in Eagle Rock, but nothing in Pasadena.'
'Well, Eagle Rock is only a few miles west of Pasadena. I think it's even in the same school district,' Clete pointed out.
'Listen, in the late eighties Smiley had to have been about ten or twelve. Can you check to see if there's a bicycle license in Pasadena or Eagle Rock for a Vincent Smiley? Could be under his dad's name, Stanley, or maybe Edna.'
'No problem. Hang on for a minute while I log on.' Clete came back a few minutes later.
'Got it. Stanley Smiley. A Schwinn Scrambler, registered in March of 'eighty-eight-2346 Mountain Circle, Pasadena.'
'Thanks, Clete. I owe ya.'
I hung up and pulled a Thomas Street Guide out of my bottom desk drawer. Midge Kimble now lived on the far east side of the L. A. basin, way out in Duarte. I decided I'd start in Smiley's old neighborhood in Pasadena. Once I'd canvassed that, I'd move on east, check out Mrs. K., then head back and stop in at the hospital in Pasadena. I figured, if Vincent lived there in '88, there was an outside chance he was born in Pasadena at Huntington Hospital. I packed my stuff and headed out.
Mountain Circle is a side street off a main drag called Fair Oaks Boulevard, which runs north and south, stretching up into the Pasadena foothills. The further up Fair Oaks you go, the more sketchy and run-down it gets. I quickly found myself in a mostly black and Hispanic neighborhood. Single-story, rundown houses sat next to three- story, brown stucco project buildings that, when they were built, were heralded as the answer to urban blight, but within years had turned into urine-soaked, graffiti-marked monstrosities.
As I passed the Foothill Projects I witnessed a drug deal going down through a chain-link fence, right in plain view. The seller was a thirty-year-old banger dirtbag in a hooded blue sweatshirt and satin basketball shorts. The buyers looked like two fifteen-year-old girls. I didn't stop. Not my turf Why sweat what you can't change? I told myself.
I knew, even as these thoughts hit me, that I was wrong. Every time I see something like that and instead of stopping choose to just drive on and give it a wave, I know I'm losing a small part of myself. I become a little more jaded and skeptical with each lost opportunity. But experience taught me that if I did stop and chase that dealer and those teenagers through the projects and caught them, I'd likely face angry parents who would claim that I'd used unnecessary force during the arrest. They would file charges against me and then the crowded court system would plead the busts down to misdemeanors rather than prosecute. In the end, nothing much would have changed, except that a few more 181 complaints would be added to my IAD file.
Why bother? It won't change anything. But, of course, it does. It changes you.
I found Mountain Circle almost in the foothills, turned right, and eventually pulled up across the street from 2346. It was a small wooden house that had definitely seen better days. The long-dead lawn had been beaten into a hard dirt playground littered with broken plastic toys. An old black Cadillac Brougham with a single hubcap and primered trunk was parked in the driveway.
I walked up to the door and rang the bell. The broken ringer snapped and buzzed like an angry wasp. Moments later the door opened to chain width and an angry black woman of indeterminate age glared out at me.
'Police?' she said, before I could even get my badge out. Something, some vibe had warned her that I was The Man and up to no good, even though I was smiling.
I showed her my shield and she glared at it with contempt. She'd seen dozens of badges, and experience told her it always turned out badly.
'Are you the owner of the house?' I asked.
'Got a warrant?'
'No ma'am,' I said. 'I'm just trying to find out if there's anybody living here who remembers Stan and Edna Smiley. They owned this house back in the eighties.'
'Ain't no Smileys here,' she growled.
'No-I know that. They used to live here. I wonder if there's anybody still in the neighborhood who might remember them from back then.'
She looked at me with shrewd distrust. 'What dis be about?' she said. ' 'Nother nigger goin' down?'
'No ma'am, the Smileys were Caucasian.'
Maybe she was glad to see some white assholes finally getting popped, or maybe she just wanted to be done with me. Either way, she blurted out the answer:
'Try the Phillips. They 'cross the street on the corner. Been here forever.'
Then, without waiting for my thank you, she slammed the door in my face.
Across the street I saw a set of curtains close. You could almost feel a warning pulsing through the neighborhood. Cop on the block. How many eyes were watching me? Hard to say. I felt exposed, like a soldier caught behind enemy lines. I walked up on the Phillips' front porch and rang the doorbell.
'Who is it?' a high-pitched man's voice yelled.
My estimate? Seventy-five at least. Call that my last guess. One for the road.
'Police,' I called through the door. 'Mr. Phillips, I have a few questions about a case we're working. Maybe you can help us,' trying to sound like Ed McMahon delivering a million dollars.
After a moment I heard half a dozen latches being thrown. The door creaked and a very old man was standing in front of me. His skin was so white I could see blue veins on the backs of his hands and around his temples. I'd undershot my guess by at least twenty years. A complete Magoo-round, hunched, half blind, and almost bald, he was dressed in a frayed checkered shirt, tan slacks, and old tennis shoes. A hearing aid the size of a bottle cap stuck out of his right ear, and thick, horn-rimmed magnifiers rode his bony nose.
'What was that you said?' he shouted at me, reaching for the volume on his hearing aid.
'Can I come in, sir?' I held up my badge.
He squinted at it. 'Pasadena police?'
'Los Angeles.'
'Fucking drugstore glasses,' he mumbled.
Without saying anything further, he turned and hobbled into his living room.
I followed, breathing in Vicks VapoRub and mildew.
'Who is it, Albert?' a woman shrilled from the back.
'I got it. Go back to yer soaps,' he yelled.
We sat on his uncomfortable coil-sprung sofa and he leaned forward.
'We don't give to no charities,' he shouted, without warning. 'Police included. Food Stamps. Social Security. You want money from us, gonna have to knock out our teeth and steal our fillings.' Then he laughed. It was a strange, high-pitched, braying hee-hee.
'No sir. This isn't for money. It's about a case we're working on.'
'A what?' He leaned in and again cranked up the volume on his hearing aid. It started screeching, but he didn't seem to notice.
'Sir, I think you should maybe turn that down a little.'
He looked at me, blinking like a lizard on a flat, rock, but made no attempt to adjust the volume.
I plunged on. 'Do you remember the Smileys?' I asked loudly. 'Stanley and Edna? They lived across the street at 2346 back in 'eighty-eight or 'eighty-nine.'
'Right,' he said. But I wasn't sure he'd heard me.
'Edna and Stanley Smiley,' I repeated.
'Yeah-that fucking plumber,' he said. 'I had him work on this place once. Fucked up everything. Had shit running out the overflow pipe in the backyard. We was on septics back then.'
'Do you remember their child? He would've been about eleven or twelve.'
'Which one?'
'What?'
'Which kid? Had two-boy and a girl.'
'A boy and a girl?' I said, taking out my notebook.
