I'd noticed that she had a habit of biting herself - lips, fingers, knuckles - when she was nervous. And she was gnawing at her thumb right now. I wondered what kind of hunger it satisfied.
I drove cautiously - there was scarcely room for a single vehicle - passing young men in T - shirts working on old cars with the dedication of priests before a shrine, children sucking candy - coated fingers. Long ago, the street had been planted with elms that had grown huge. Their roots buckled the sidewalk and weeds grew in the cracks. Branches scraped the roof of the car. An old woman with inflamed legs wrapped in rags pushed a shopping cart full of memories up an incline worthy of San Francisco. Graffiti scarred every free inch of space, proclaiming the immortality of Little Willie Chacon, the Echo Parque Skulls, Los Conquistadores the Lemoyne Boys and the tongue of Maria Paula Bonilla.
'There.' She pointed to a cottage like frame house painted light green and roofed with brown tarpaper. The front yard was dry and brown but rimmed with hopeful beds of red geraniums and clusters of orange and yellow poppies that looked like all - day suckers. There was rock trim at the base of the house and a portico over the entry that shadowed a sagging wooden porch upon which a man sat.
'That's Rafael, the older brother. On the porch.'
I found a parking space next to a Chevy on blocks. I turned the wheels to the curb and locked them in place. We got out of the car, dust spiraling at our heels.
'Rafael!' she called and waved. The man on the porch took a moment to lift his gaze, then he raised his hand - feebly, it seemed.
'I used to live right around the corner,' she said, making it sound like a confession. She led me up a dozen steps and through an open iron gate.
The man on the porch hadn't risen. He stared at us with apprehension and curiosity and something else that I couldn't identify. He was pale and thin to the point of being gaunt, with the same curious mixture of Hispanic features and fair coloring as his dead sister. His lips were bloodless, his eyes heavily lidded. He looked like the victim of some systemic disease. He wore a long - sleeved white shirt with the sleeves rolled up just below the elbows. It bloused out around his waist, several sizes too large. His trousers were black and looked as if they'd once belonged to a fat man's suit. His shoes were bubble - toed oxfords, cracked at the tips, worn unlaced with the tongues protruding and revealing thick white socks. His hair was short and combed straight back.
He was in his mid - twenties but he had an old man's face, a weary, wary mask.
Raquel went to him and kissed him lightly on the top of his head. He looked up at her but was unmoved.
'H'lo, Rocky.'
'Rafael, how are you?'
'O.K.' He nodded his head and it looked for a moment as if it would roll off his neck. He let his eyes settle on me; he was having trouble focusing.
Raquel bit her lip.
'We came by to see you and Andy and your mom. This is Alex Delaware. He works with the police. He's involved in investigating Elena's - case.'
His face registered alarm, his hands tightened around the arm of the chair. Then, as if responding to a stage direction to relax, he grinned at me, slumped lower, winked.
'Yeah,' he said.
I held out my hand. He looked at it, puzzled, recognized it as a long - lost friend, and extended his own thin claw.
His arm was pitifully undernourished, a bundle of sticks held together by a sallow paper wrapper. As our fingers touched his sleeve rode up and I saw the track marks. There were lots of them. Most looked old - lumpy charcoal smudges - but a few were freshly pink. One, in particular, was no antique, sporting a pinpoint of blood at its center.
His handshake was moist and tenuous. I let go and the arm fell limply to his side.
'Hey, man,' he said, barely audible. 'Good to meetja.' He turned away, lost in his own timeless dream - hell. For the first time I heard the oldies music coming from a cheap transistor radio on the floor beside his chair. The puny plastic box crackled with static. The sound reproduction was atrocious, the music had the chalky quality of notes filtered through a mile of mud. Rafael had his head thrown back, enraptured. To him it was the Celestial Choir transmitting directly to his temporal lobes.
'Rafael,' she smiled.
He looked at her, smiled, nodded off and was gone.
She stared at him, tears in her eyes. I moved toward her and she turned away in shame and rage.
'Goddammit.'
'How long has he been shooting up?'
'Years. But I thought he'd quit. The last I'd heard he'd quit.' She raised her hand to her mouth, swayed, as if ready to fall. I got in position to catch her but she righted herself. 'He got hooked in Viet Nam. Came home with a heavy habit. Elena spent lots of time and money trying to help him get off. A dozen times he tried, and each time he slipped back. But he'd been off it for over a year. Elena was so happy about it. He got a job as a box boy at the Lucky's on Alvarado.'
She faced me, nostrils flaring, eyes floating like black lilies in a salty pond, lips quivering like harp strings.
'Everything is falling apart.'
She grasped the newel post on the porch rail for support. I came behind her.
'I'm sorry.'
'He was always the sensitive one. Quiet, never dating, no friends. He got beat up a lot. When their dad died he tried to take over, to be the man of the house. Tradition says the oldest son should do that. But it didn't work. Nobody took him seriously. They laughed. We all did. So he gave up, as if he'd failed some final test. He dropped out of school, stayed home and read comic books and watched TV all day - just stared at the screen. When the army said they wanted him he seemed glad. Cruz cried to see him go, but he was happy…'
I looked at him, sitting so low he was almost parallel with the ground. Swallowed up by junkie - slumber. His mouth was open and he snored loudly. The radio played 'Daddy's Home.'
Raquel hazarded another look at him, men whipped her head away, disgusted. She wore an expression of noble suffering, an Aztec virgin steeling herself for the ultimate sacrifice.
I put my hands on her shoulders and she leaned back in my arms. She stayed there, tense and unyielding, allowing herself a miser's ration of tears.
'This is a hell of a start,' she said. Inhaling deeply, she let out her breath in a breeze of wintergreen. She wiped her eyes and turned around. 'You must think all I do is weep. Come on, let's go inside.'
She pulled the screen door open and it slapped sharply against the wood siding of the house.
We stepped into a small front room furnished with old but cared - for relics. It was warm and dark, the windows shut tight and masked by yellowing parchment shades - a room unaccustomed to visitors. Faded lace curtains were tied back from the window frames and matching lace coverlets shielded the arms of the chairs - a sofa and love seat set upholstered in dark green crushed velvet, the worn spots shiny and the color of jungle parrots, two wicker rockers. A painting of the two dead Kennedy brothers in black velvet hung over the mantel. Carvings in wood and Mexican onyx sat atop lace - covered end tables. There were two floor lamps with beaded shades, a plaster Jesus in agony hanging on the whitewashed wall next to a still life of a straw basket of oranges. Family portraits in ornate frames covered another wall and there was a large graduation picture of Elena suspended high above those. A spider crawled in the space where wall met ceiling.
A door to the right revealed a sliver of white tile. Raquel walked to the sliver and peeked in.
'Senora Cruz?'
The doorway widened and a small, heavy woman appeared, dishtowel in hand. She wore a blue print dress, un belted and her gray - black hair was tied back in a bun, held in place by a mock tortoiseshell comb. Silver earrings dangled from her ears and salmon spots of rouge punctuated her cheekbones. Her skin had the delicate, baby - soft look common in old women who had once been beautiful.
'Raquelita!'
She put her towel down, came out, and the two women embraced for a long moment.
When she saw me over Raquel's shoulder, she smiled. But her face closed up as tight as a pawnbroker's
