she?'
This brought forth a huge response: 'Ooh! Yeah, you shoulda seen her, mister. All naked. Ooh!' 'Yeachh, really sickening.' 'Yeah, ugh.'
I tossed the ball to the quietest of the boys. 'Did any of you boys know Mrs. Harris?' There was an embarrassed silence.
'My mom told me not to talk to strangers,' the quiet boy said.
'My dad told me not to say bad things about people,' the first baseman said.
I yawned, and feigned exasperation. 'Well, I was just curious,' I said. 'Maybe I'll get a chance to talk to you guys later. I'm the new baseball coach at Arroyo High. You guys look pretty good to me. In a few years you'll probably be my starting lineup.' I pretended to leave.
It was the perfect thing to say, and it was followed by a big volley of excited 'oohs' and 'aahs.'
'What's so bad about Mrs. Harris?' I asked the first baseman.
He stared at his feet, then looked up at me with confused blue eyes. 'My dad says he saw her a whole bunch of times down at Medina Court. He said no good woman would have anything to do with a place like that. He said that she was an unfit mother, that that was why Michael acted so strange.' The boy backed away from me, as if the specter of his father was right there with us.
'Hold on, partner,' I said, 'I'm new in this territory. What's so bad about Medina Court? And what's wrong with Michael? He sounded like a pretty good kid from what I read in the papers.'
A redheaded boy clutching a catcher's mitt answered me frankly. 'Medina Court is Mex Town. Wetbacks— mean ones. My dad says never, ever, ever go there, that they hate white people. It's dangerous there.'
'My dad delivers the mail on Medina,' the first baseman said. 'He said he's seen Mrs. Harris do nasty things there.'
A chill went over me. 'What about Michael?' I asked.
No one answered. My expression and manner must have changed somehow, alerting some sixth sense in the youthful ballplayers.
'I gotta go,' the quiet boy said.
'Me, too,' another one piped in.
Before I knew it they were all running off down Maple Avenue, casting furtive glances at me over their shoulders. They all seemed to disappear into dusty front yards just moments later, leaving me standing in the street wondering what the hell had happened.
Medina Court was only one block long.
A tarnished brass plaque inlaid in the cracked sidewalk at the entrance to it said why: the street and the four-story tenements that dominated it had been constructed for the housing of Chinese railroad workers in 1885.
I parked my car on the dirt shoulder of Peck Road—the only access lane to Medina Court—and looked around. The buildings, obviously once painted white, were now as grayish-brown as the plague of smog that stifled the summer air. A half-dozen had burned down, and the charred detritus of the fires had never been removed. Mexican women and children sat on the front steps of their peeling, sunbaked dwellings, seeking respite from what must have been ovenlike interiors.
Garbage covered the dusty street through Medina Court and prewar jalopies lay dead along both sides of it. Mariachi music poured forth from inside some of the tenements, competing with high-pitched Spanish voices. An emaciated dog hobbled by me, giving me a cursory growl and a hungry look. The poverty and meanness of Medina Court was overpowering.
I needed to find the mailman-father of the first baseman, so I started by checking out the entranceways of the tenements to see if the mail had been delivered. The mailbox layout was identical in all of the buildings—banks of metal mail slots, rows and rows of them, bearing poorly printed Spanish surnames and apartment numbers. I checked out three buildings on each side of the street, getting a lot of dirty looks in the process. The mailboxes were empty. I was in luck.
Medina Court dead-ended at a combination weed patch—auto graveyard where a throng of tattered but happy-looking Mexican kids were playing tag. I walked back to Peck Road feeling grateful that I didn't live here.
I waited for three hours, watching the passing scene: old winos poking about in the rubble of the burned-out buildings, looking for shade to drink their short-dogs in; fat Mexican women chasing their screaming children down the street; a profusion of squabbles between men in T-shirts, filled with obscenities in English and Spanish; two fistfights; and a steady parade of pachucos tooling down the street in their hot rods.
At one o'clock, as the sun reached its stifling zenith and the temperature started to close in on one hundred degrees, a tired and dejected-looking mailman walked into Medina Court. My heart gave a little leap of joy—he was the very image of the blond first baseman. He walked into the 'foyer' of the first tenement on the south side of the street, and I was waiting for him on the sidewalk when he walked back out.
His tired manner perked up when he saw me standing there, white and official-looking in my suit and tie. He smiled; the nervous, edgy smile of someone hungry for company. He looked me up and down. 'Cop?' he said.
I tried to sound surprised: 'No, why do you ask?'
The mailman laughed and swung his leather mail sack from one shoulder to the other. 'Because any white man over six feet in a suit on a day like this in Medina Court has gotta be a cop.'
I laughed. 'Wrong, but you're close. I'm a private investigator.' I didn't offer any proof, because of course I didn't have any. The mailman whistled; I caught a whiff of booze on his breath. I stuck out my hand. 'Herb Walker,' I said.
The mailman grasped it. 'Randy Rice.'
'I need some information, Randy. Can we talk? Can I buy you a beer? Or can't you drink on duty?'
'Rules are made to be broken,' Randy Rice said. 'You wait here. I'll deliver this mail and see you in twenty minutes.'
He was good to his word, and half an hour later I was in a seedy bar near the freeway, listening politely to Randy Rice expound on his theory of the 'wetback problem plaguing America.'
'Yeah,' I finally broke in, 'and it's a tough life for the white working man. Believe me, I know. I'm on this tough case now, and none of the Mexicans I talk to will give me a straight answer.' Randy Rice went bug-eyed with awe. I continued: 'That's why I wanted to talk to you. I figured a smart white man familiar with Medina Court ought to be able to give me a few leads.'
I ordered another beer for Rice. He gulped it, and his face contorted into a broad parody of caginess. 'What do you wanna know?' he asked.
'I heard Marcella Harris used to hang out on Medina Court. I think that's a hell of a place for a white woman with a kid to be spending her time.'
'I seen the Harris dame there,' Randy Rice said, 'lots of times.'
'How did you know it was her? Did you just recognize her from her picture in the paper when she got knocked off?'
'No, she lived on my block at home. I seen her leave for work in the morning, and I seen her at the store, and I used to see her walk her dog. I used to see her play catch with that crazy kid of hers in her front yard, too.' Rice swallowed. 'Who hired you?' he blurted out.
'Her ex-husband. He's out for blood. He thinks one of her boyfriends croaked her. Why do you say her kid is crazy?'
'Because he is. That kid is poison, mister. For one thing, he's only nine years old and he's at least six feet tall. He hates the other kids, too. My boy told me that Michael was always breakin' up the softball games at school, always challengin' everyone to fight. He'd always get beat up—I mean he's a gigantic kid, but he don't know how to fight and he'd get beat up, then he'd start laughing like a madman, and . . .'
'And expose himself?'
'. . . Yeah.'
'You didn't seem surprised when I mentioned Marcella Harris's boyfriends.' With a flourish I ordered the now red-faced Rice another beer. 'Tell me about that,' I said.
