him,” she hissed.
“But he would have known someday,” I said.
“You know what?” she said, her fingers hard as a man’s on my wrist. “I loved my brother. I never loved nobody else in the world, but every day I saw my brother. I can’t never go back home, but he came to me. And you done took that away. You don’t know a damn thing about me or him.”
The next time I went to the bar, she was gone too.
I knew him. I figured he just started walking one day and never went back to Skid Row. Maybe he walked to Venice and disappeared under the waves. Maybe he walked all the way to San Francisco, or maybe he had a heart attack or died of dehydration, still moving.
That night, when we were young, when Grady left the car in Pomona, we walked down Mission Boulevard, leaving behind the auto shops and tire places, moving past vacant lots and tiny motor courts where one narrow walk led past doors behind which we could hear muffled televisions. Junkyard dogs snarled and threw themselves against chain-link. And we moved easy and fast, me just behind Grady. Walking for miles, past strawberry fields where water ran like mercury in the furrows. Walking past a huge pepper tree with a hollow where an owl glided out, pumping wings once and then gone.
That night, we walked like we lived in the Serengeti, I realized all those years later when I watched Grady disappear down 8th into the darkness. Like pilgrims on the Roman roads of France. Like old men in England. Like Indians through rain forests, steady down the trail. Fools craving movement and no words and just the land, all the land, where we left our footprints, if nothing else.
THE KIDNAPPER BELLBY JIM PASCOE
Change flows swiftly through L.A. like the shallow river that cuts into downtown on its way to the ocean. But in Los Angeles there are pockets, tiny whirlpools eddying in the stream, where change cannot reach. In those places, things even worse than change can find you.
Five till 7. With the taste of second-hand smoke in his mouth, he settles into a dark corner of his favorite bar in Chinatown, early for his date, ready to dope his new girlfriend. He has two beer bottles from the bar. He sets them on the wobbly square table. He looks around the place: The loud bleached-blonde harassing the bartender, the old men drinking Crown near the door, the smoking Chinese couple, all unconcerned with the packet of crushed powder he’s sifting down into the brown longneck. His eyes dart between them and his work, all the while he’s doing the male math in his head:
He was proud to have walked away from the first date without so much as a kiss goodnight. If you can’t get a second date, she’s not worth sleeping with in the first place. It was date three that made him nervous, caused him to question his game. He knew then she wouldn’t be easy. He even wondered if she really liked him.
Now, it’s been ten days since they last saw each other. He was kicking himself for letting an opportunity with someone so beautiful slip by. He had thought it was all over, until she called earlier today.
Why the call? Why the rush to meet? Perhaps in her mind they were just friends, and this is what friends do, how friends behave. Even if so, what does she want from him?
When she arrives, she looks pale. Sweat darkens the hair around her temples. Her hands look dirty.
“Is this for me?” Slumping into the seat next to him, she grabs the full bottle and lets it drain into her mouth. “Have you been waiting long?”
He stares at her. “No, I haven’t been here long. Are you all right?”
“There was a problem.” She finishes her beer. “I think I need your help.”
“Of course. Anything. But you’re scaring me.”
“We’ve grown close in the last month, haven’t we?”
“Sure.”
She reaches her hand out to touch his arm. Her laughter sounds forced as it cracks, turning into something like crying. Hysteria.
He waits for her to compose herself. She looks around the dark room and says, “Not here. I can’t tell you here.”
He leans back, keeping quiet. He’s being baited and wants no part of it. He is familiar with the dynamics of power, the rules of hunting. Give too much and you can’t take. Push forward and your target retreats. Remain silent and she will open up.
He knows all this. He should have slept with her weeks ago.
She gives in, speaks: “It happened in the river.”
“What river?”
“The river, the L.A. River.”
“What happened?”
“I think… I think I just killed somebody.”
He waits for the punch line, which does not come. There’s no reason for her to lie to him. He fingers the empty powder packet in his suit jacket. Slowly, like powder, his plan dissolves.
He straightens up in his chair, reaches for a new plan. “Maybe we should go back to your place. You can tell me everything there.”
“No. There’s no time.” She lowers her voice. “I’ll take you to the body. You’ll know what to do. I’m in over my head. I trust you.”
He stammers out the beginning of an argument. She is already up, heading toward the door.
Trust. If he thinks about it too much, his muscles tense.
He offers to drive, insists upon it, concerned about her staying alert enough with the substance in her system. She won’t have it. They argue. Unable to reveal why he opposes her getting behind the wheel, he concedes.
She drives east out of Chinatown. They cross the river. A dark left takes them down an industrial service road until they hit Riverside Drive. They exchange no words. She speeds and swerves. He clutches the handle above the window.
Elysian Valley. She gets out of the car, locks the door, and heads toward the entrance of a bike path that runs along the crest of cement lining the deep, empty river basin.
“Hey!” he calls after her. “I think we need a plan. You haven’t told me anything. I want to help you, but I need a little more.”
“It was an accident.” Her words slur.
“Accidents happen.”
“We should walk and talk.” She takes his hand. “He knew so much about the river, more than most Angelenos.”
“So do you.”
“Yeah, well, that’s it. I think he was stalking me. I think… I was next.”
“An old flame?” He looks over the edge of the bike path. A knee-high barrier of loose chain-link tops an almost perpendicular sheer.
“No, I didn’t know him. I mean, I hadn’t ever met him. He started posting anonymous comments on my blog. Every time I wrote an article on the river, he would add his two cents. Sometimes he’d make corrections, sometimes he’d start an argument by taking a contrary point of view. At first I assumed he was with FoLAR-”
“Friends of the L.A. River?” He remembers this detail from her site.
“Yeah. But it didn’t fit. I know most of the gang over there, and he wasn’t anyone I recognized.” Her breathing has become labored. “Later, we e-mailed back and forth. His username was Pavlov.”
“A strange handle.” His eyes adjust, searching for the body. The only light comes from across the river. She tells him the MTA uses this defunct Southern Pacific structure as a place to store their spare light rail train cars. To him it looks like an abandoned factory.
“Wait, wait a second, please. I gotta stop.” She rubs her eyes. “I didn’t realize I was so out of shape.”
