'And the women and children are theirs?'
'Sure. The place is broken up into apartments with a common kitchen, looks like. Floor plan doesn't make any sense.'
'That'd be perfect. Nothing else makes any sense. I don't know if she's in there, and if she is I don't know why. And the only way to find out is to go in, but if I go she may get killed.'
'Hey, senor,' Chollo said. 'I'm just the translator. I am not paid to theenk.'
'Lucky for you,' I said.
The coffee was gone and the sandwiches were eaten. I gathered up the debris and got out and dumped it in a waste barrel near the sub shop. It was a fine bright spring day with the sun reflecting off the parked cars and glinting on their chrome trim, and sparkling off the tiny flecks of mica in-the surface of the parking lot.
Adolescent girls in striped tee shirts and cut-off jeans loitered along under the arcade roof that ran along the front of the shopping center. Most of them smoked. Some of them inhaled. One of them saw me looking at them and stared back at me, full of bravado and uncertainty, and straightened slightly so that her new bosom, about which she was doubtless uneasy, stuck out proudly. I grinned at her, and she turned away quickly.
Ah sweet bird of youth. They used to come running when I smiled.
Back in the car I started up and headed back up Route 93.
'What now, Jefe?' Chollo said.
'Thought we'd go back and park in a different place and look at the citadel some more.'
'Man, it's amazing to watch an ace detective work,' Chollo said.
'Think how it is to be one,' I said.
We drove for a while in silence, Chollo looking at the bland, semirural scenery along the road. When we got to San Juan Hill, I parked on a different corner facing the other way. They had made no improvements in the property while we were gone.
'How long we going to look at this fucking rat hole?' Chollo said.
'Until I figure out how to get in there and get her out.'
Chollo eased lower in the seat and let his chin rest on his chest.
'That long,' he said.
They sat beside each other on the floor. He was still teary, but he listened as she talked.
'I didn't grow up in Los Angeles,' she said. 'I grew up in Haverhill. My old man was a drunk and a bum and a womanizer. He left my mother when I was about ten. My mother got custody, but my father came back and got me and took me with him. Kidnapped me, more or less. I don't think he even wanted me so much as he didn't want my mother to have me. I spent a couple years hiding in the backseat of his car, or sneaking into motel rooms after dark so no one would see me. I didn't go to school or play with other kids. My father, when he was sober, would pick up odd jobs and leave me alone during the day when he did them. I watched TV. Eventually some private detective my mother hired found me and kidnapped me back. My mother never forgave my father for cheating on her and leaving her, and she never forgave me, probably, for being his daughter. All the rest of my growing up I heard about what a wretch he was, what wretches all men were. I probably never forgave my father for letting them take me back.'
'But your mother loved you,' Luis said.
The flashes of naivete had always appealed to her, innocence shining through the machismo and flash. Probably because it was real, she thought. The rest was posture, and she always knew that it was. But in those days the innocence had once redeemed it.
'No,' Lisa said, 'my mother definitely did not love me. I was pretty much just another one of my father's women to her. She assumed from the moment I reached puberty that I was a disgusting slut, like all the rest of them.'
'You should not speak this way about your mother,' Luis said.
He was leaning forward now toward her, his forearms resting on his thighs. He was listening so hard he seemed to be watching her lips as they formed the words.
'It's the truth,' she said. 'To be sane, you have to know the truth and be able to say it.'
'My poor Angel,' Luis said. 'It must have been horrible to have such a mother.'
'Yeah, well, I didn't stick around too long. When I was seventeen, I took off with a local guy named Woody Pontevecchio. Woody had some money he'd stolen and we hitchhiked mostly, all the way across the country. We were going, guess where, to Hollywood. He was going to manage me and I was going to be a star.'
'You are certainly beautiful enough,' Luis said.
'Sure. I was beautiful in Haverhill. In Hollywood, everybody's beautiful. I had as much chance as a cow.'
'But you are so talented. '
'Yeah. We had a room in a flop house in Venice, with a toilet down the hall. I got a job as a waitress in one of the joints on the beach, and Woody started hustling Hollywood. At first he got me some gigs doing sexy DJ stuff at parties-you know, wearing a string bikini while I played records and did chit chat, then we developed an act where I'd show up to do DJ work all dressed up and through the evening I'd strip, one piece of clothing at a time. He billed me as Hollywood's only exotic disc jockey, and then sure enough, he finally got me a job in pictures.'
'You have never told me this, ' Luis said. 'You have never said any of this to
