Flesh And Blood

white T-shirt, and regular-cut blue jeans that transformed to easy-fit baggy on his ectomorphic frame. Size-thirteen sneakers, gangly limbs, a face that would’ve been teen-idol handsome but for not quite enough chin. His hair was short and curly, and his sideburns dropped an inch lower than Milo’s. A tiny gold hoop pierced his left eyebrow. He spotted me immediately, plopped down hard, and grabbed a pickle.

“Killer traffic. This city is starting to entropize.” He bit down, chewed, grinned.

“L.A. native?” I asked.

“Third generation. My grandfather remembers horses in Boyle Heights and vineyards on Robertson.” Finishing the pickle, he lifted a mustard jar, rolled it between his palms. “Okay, now that we’re auld acquaintances, let’s cut to the chase: What’s really up with Shawna?”

“Just what I told you.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Another investigation. But why? ’Cause some other girl dropped off the face of the earth?”

“Something like that,” I said.

“Something like that… I always thought it would make a good book, Shawna’s story. Death of a Beauty Queen – something like that. You’d need an ending, though.”

A waitress came over. I ordered a burger and a Coke, and Green asked for a triple-decker pastrami-turkey- corned beef deluxe with extra mayo and a large root beer.

“And to go?” I said.

He showed lots of teeth and slapped his back against the booth. “Don’t think you’re safe yet.”

When we were alone again, he looked ready to ask another question, but I got there first. “So you think Shawna was dead soon after she went missing?”

“Actually, at first I thought she’d gone off with a guy or something. You know – a fling. Then when she didn’t show up, I thought she was dead. Am I right?”

“Why a fling?”

“’Cause people do that. Am I right about her probably being dead?”

“Could be,” I said. “Did you learn anything about Shawna that you didn’t put in your articles?”

He didn’t answer, had another go at the mustard jar.

“What?” I said.

He blew out air. “It’s like this. Her mom was a nice person. Basic – as in countrified. I don’t think she’d been to L.A. in years – she kept talking about how noisy it was. So here she was, someone who’d grown up in this hick town, raised a daughter all by herself. Shawna’s dad died when she was little – some kind of trucker. Just like a country song. And the daughter turns out to be gorgeous, goes on to become a beauty queen.”

“Miss Olive.”

“Shawna’s idea – entering pageants. Her mom never pushed her – at least that’s what she said, and I believe her. There was something about Mrs. Yeager. Straight. Salt of the earth. She supported herself and Shawna waiting tables and cleaning houses. They lived in a mobile home. Shawna was her main source of pride, then Shawna wins that Olive thing, announces she hates Santo Leon, is going up to L.A. to study at the U. Mrs. Yeager lets her go, but she worries all the time. About L.A., the crime. Then it happens – her worst nightmare comes true. I mean, can you think of anything worse?”

I shook my head.

He said, “Mrs. Yeager was destroyed – completely. It was pathetic. She comes up here by herself, no money, not a clue as to what things are like. The U – Just the size of it scared her. She hadn’t made any plans to stay anywhere, ended up in a crappy motel. Near Alvarado, for God’s sake. She was taking two-hour bus rides to Westwood, taking her life in her hands walking around MacArthur Park at night. No one’s giving her guidance, no one’s giving her the time of day. Finally, she gets her purse snatched and the U puts her in a dorm room. But still, no one’s really paying her any attention. I was the only one.”

He frowned. “To be honest, I went after the story in the beginning because I thought it was a cool human- interest hook. Then, after I met Mrs. Yeager, I forgot about that – Mostly I sat there while she cried. It kind of soured me on journalism.”

He put the mustard jar down, finished his pickle, snagged another.

“You liked Mrs. Yeager,” I said. “That’s why you didn’t answer my question about material you kept out of your articles. You’d hate to do anything that compounded her grief.”

“The point is, what good is it gonna do? If no one’s found Shawna yet, she’s probably never going to be found. You’re doing some profile thing to collect data, whatever reason, but you probably don’t care either. So what’s the point? Why add to Mrs. Yeager’s misery?”

“It might help solve another case,” I said. “Maybe Shawna’s too.”

He chewed noisily, lowered his head.

“It might, Mr. Green.”

No answer.

“What did you find out about Shawna?” I said. “It won’t be released publicly unless lives are at stake.”

He looked up. “Lives at stake. Sounds ominous.” His eyes were bright blue, charged with curiosity. “Hey, here comes the grub.”

The waitress brought our sandwiches. My burger was good, and I ate half before putting it down. Adam Green’s order was a massive thing dripping with cold cuts and coleslaw, and he chomped furiously.

“I still don’t see why I should tell you anything,” he finally said.

“It’s the right thing to do.”

“So you say.”

“Yes, I do.”

He wiped his lips, held the sandwich like a shield. “Look, I need something out of this. If anything gets resolved – what happened to Shawna, or the other case you’re working on – I need to know before any of the media. ’Cause maybe I should write a book. Or at least an article for a magazine.” He wiped his mouth. “The truth is, it stayed with me – Shawna. She was so gorgeous, smart, had everything going for her – here she was, just a few years younger than me, and then it was all over for her. I’ve got a sister her age.”

“At the U?”

“No, Brown.” He placed what was left of his sandwich on his plate, reverentially, like an offering. “We’re talking great story elements here. If it’s not a book, it could be a screenplay. You learn something, I’ve got to know. Deal?”

“If the case resolves, you’ll be the first writer to know.”

“That sounds kind of ambiguous.”

“It’s not,” I said, without taking my eyes off him. He tried for impassive, fell way short. Just a kid. I felt exploitative, told myself he was over twenty-one, had come here voluntarily, was trying his own wheel-and- deal.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “It’s no big thing anyway. The basic point is that Shawna might not have been such an innocent farm girl.”

He took another giant gulp of sandwich, washed it down with root beer. I waited.

“Shawna – and this isn’t fact, it’s just my assumption, that’s why I never published it, along with not wanting to hurt Mrs. Yeager. Also, I did tell Riley and the unicops and they ignored me. The fact that you’re here tells me they never even bothered to put it in their file. Because obviously if they did, you’d have read it.”

“What did you learn, Adam?”

“Okay,” he said. “Shawna might’ve posed nude. Done a photo shoot for Duke magazine – or what she thought was a shoot for Duke magazine, ’cause I think it might’ve been a scam.”

“When did she do this?”

“Might’ve,” he emphasized. “And I don’t know. Probably sometime during the first part of the quarter would be my guess.”

“Not long after she arrived.”

He nodded.