Mystery

I said, “She could be an older sister.”

“Could be but isn’t. Darrell found Tiara’s birth certificate. St. Vincent hospital, the main one in Santa Fe. Daddy unknown, Mommy the minor known as. Recommendations were made for adoption but it never happened. Nothing like pedigree, huh? On all Maude’s arrest forms, she listed an address in Espanola, which is a working-class town thirty miles out of Santa Fe. Darrell traced and it used to be a trailer park, is now a Walmart. Tiara may have avoided conviction but Maude wasn’t so lucky, has a whole bunch, some jail time, but no prison. Check kiting, dope, shoplifting, and, big shock, getting picked up on streetwalker stings.”

He took the paper back and stood.

I said, “Where to?”

“Hey, I’ve got secrets of my own.”

“Oh, boy.”

He slapped my back. “Nah, I’m lying. No confidentiality in my business. I learn nasty secrets, someone’s life changes big-time. C’mon, let’s go mommy hunting.”

One long stride propelled him out of the tiny office. He whistled his way up the hall.

“Maude lives in L.A.?”

“Pico near Hoover. No driver’s license but last year she got pulled in for shoplifting downtown. Trying to boost crapola from one of those stalls the Central Americans set up in the old theaters on Broadway. She pled to petty-t, got a thirty-day at County, was out in ten due to overcrowding. I couldn’t find any landline or cellular account and she doesn’t pay taxes, but I might as well give it a try. No matter what she is, she deserves to know.”

I said, “Tiara lives large on Mark Suss’s dough but Mommy holes up in the inner city.”

“Maybe the kid didn’t appreciate her pedigree.”

The address matched a decrepit, four-story, hundred-year-old apartment building neighbored by similar masterpieces and besmirched by gang graffiti: Stompy, Topo, and Sleepy celebrating some kind of victory in greasy black Olde English lettering.

Rusting fire escapes ended raggedly in the middle of the second story. A lot of the windows were boarded with plywood and the ones that weren’t were dark. No external mailboxes; anything out in the open would stay unmolested for an eyeblink.

A group of shaved-head Latino teenagers who might’ve been Stompy or Topo or Sleepy slouched away when we got out of the car. Women with Rivera-mural faces pushed babies in strollers as if nothing but motherhood mattered. A shrunken old man in gray work clothes sat on a bus bench in front of the building, watching the traffic on Pico. The vehicular roar waxed Wagnerian on both sides of the boulevard.

Milo scanned the wall art. “Why exclude Dopey and Sneezy?” He rang the shabby building’s bell.

No bell or buzzer sounded and when he nudged the button, it fell to the sidewalk. “Let’s check out the back.”

As we headed toward the corner the old man on the bench craned. A voluminous white mustache spread wider than his face. “Hey, police.”

Milo said, “Hi there.”

“You looking for someone in that dump?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sir. I like that.” The mustache was waxed, curlicued at the ends. His skin was the well-worn brown leather of a scholar’s desktop, his eyes black and avian. Rough but clean hands. Same for the work clothes. An oval over the left pocket said Jose.

“You ain’t gonna find anyone.”

A double-long bus rumbled up to the bench. The man sat there. The bus cleared phlegm from its craw, lurched forward just as the light turned red, crossed the intersection to a blare of horns and obscenities.

Milo said, “Why’s that, sir?”

“No one lives there, it’s condemned.”

“For how long?”

“Few months ago, maybe three. There was a fire, some immigrant cooking on a illegal hot plate. They put it out but it wrecked the foundation. Building and Safety came and closed the place up.”

“You live around here?”

“Not around. There.” A callused finger jabbed at a building two lots east.

“There’s no notice posted,” said Milo.

“How ’bout that,” said the man, chuckling. “Maybe someone needed scratch paper.”

“Anyone hurt in the fire?”

“The immigrant’s two kids died and I heard she got turned into something you don’t wanna look at. Couple neighbors got sick from smoke and one of them died, too. Go call the fire department, they’ll tell you. You wanna go back there see for yourself, go ’head. It’s all black and hollow and you can’t get in unless you get through the fences of the other buildings. They say they’re gonna demolish but they don’t do it. Can’t figure out why it just don’t fall down.”

“Who owns the building?”

“The kind of folk own buildings. Who you looking for?”

Milo said, “A woman named Maude Grundy. Forty-four years old but she looks older.”

“Dead,” said the man.

“You knew her?”

“Knew she was Maude, she never gave a last name. Even if I didn’t know her I’d know she’s dead because the person who died in the fire was the only white woman living in the place. She woulda stood out even if she didn’t behave like she did.”

“How’d she behave?”

“Drunk, walking around like she was crazy. Trying to sell herself.” He huffed. “Like anyone would buy that. You say she was forty?”

“Forty-four.”

“I’da guessed seventy. Maybe sixty-five if she put on lipstick and she didn’t. I’m seventy-seven and to me she looked old.”

“How’d she pay her rent?”

“Maybe she was a brain surgeon,” said the old man. “How should I know? I worked fifty years doing landscaping, made the mistake of doing it for private companies not the city so I got no bloated-up pension and now I’m stuck living here. My building, everyone pays rent, we got families, mostly good people. That place? Lowlifes. Everyone was happy to see it burn. There was all sorts going in and out, never no manager. Anyway, she’s dead. Ten-dollar Maude. So don’t waste your time looking for her.”

“Ten dollars is what she charged?”

“So they say. She gave me the look, I went the other way. Poor can mean unlucky but it don’t mean stupid.”

A call to the coroner pulled up Maude Grundy’s death certificate. Two months and two weeks ago, pulmonary failure due to smoke inhalation. The body had been signed out by Tara Sly of Lloyd Place in West Hollywood and sent to a mortuary on Mission Road, across the street from the crypt.

Milo said, “I know what that place is,” but he phoned anyway.

Undertaker’s school, conveniently located. Maude Grundy’s remains had ended up as a teaching tool for the freshman class.

“Donating Mom to science,” he said, “and not even to a med school. With Suss’s dough, Tiara could’ve managed some kind of funeral, at the very least a cremation. Instead she relegates Mommy to the formaldehyde gang. Okay, let’s find the mysterious flesh peddler who’s not Gretchen.”

Rubbing his face. “Anything you want to say about that?”

I said, “I wonder how far our princess progressed from ten-buck transactions.”

Westside vice detective named David Maloney, who was old enough to