“It’s a pretty simple message.”
“I’m trying to be sure I know who the ‘I’ is, and who the ‘her’ is. So if I see her, you want me to say, ‘Brooke says she needs you.’”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“Need her how?”
“Just send her to one of those two addresses,” I said. “Depending on the date. And I’ll work that out with her directly.”
Then I caught the guard’s eye, and nodded. And he nodded back. And he let me out.
I figured I’d never see Denver Patterson again. And that was more than fine with me.
It was whether I’d ever see Molly again that concerned me. And I was no closer to an answer regarding that question. And Etta would ask again. And again. And again.
“Where Molly?”
I had no idea how long it would take her to forget to ask. I had no idea what to tell her.
I dropped Etta off at her day care, knowing it would cost me. Knowing I was falling more deeply into debt. It seemed to be a spiral with no end.
It was only an hour or two after going to see that boy in jail. I had to check out what he’d told me. I had to see how many people had set up camp between a piece of freeway and a piece of the LA River.
I couldn’t free myself from the feeling of having to try.
I had no map, and my car was too old and cheap to come equipped with navigation. So I just drove to a part of the city that I knew for a fact had the concrete river running through it.
I pulled over and stopped on the shoulder, despite knowing it was blatantly illegal to do so. I put on my flashers. That way, in case a cop came by, it might give the impression that it was an emergency stop.
With the wind and the din of cars racing behind me, I stared down at the “river,” running my eyes along its length until it faded to a pinpoint in the gray distance. It was still flowing with the last runoff of water from the recent rain. It went on forever. Or anyway, it seemed to.
The freeway didn’t parallel it everywhere, but off in the distance there were other freeways. Some ran at an angle to its concrete banks, crossing over it as overpasses. So many freeways. So much river.
I breathed out a long breath that I guess I hadn’t known I’d been holding.
I wasn’t down there. So I had no idea how much room there would be in these various places for homeless encampments.
I would go down there.
But I knew now, in my gut, that it wouldn’t do much good. Even armed with my new information, this strip of city was still one large haystack. And Molly was still one small needle.
The first place I stopped seemed to have people living directly under the freeway. And, oddly, it had something like an entrance. Stacks and stacks of pallets and wooden crates had been used to build a sort of wall around the camp. There seemed to be only one opening. Only one way in.
Beside that opening sat a man in his forties, his back inside a small, open tent. He smoked lazily, his eyes closed. The hazy sun burned down onto his bald scalp, which appeared sunburned.
He seemed to be something like a guard at the gate, though that might have been an accidental effect. It made me think of the mirror opposite of Saint Peter. Tending the gate to a place where, in this iteration, nobody wanted to go.
“Excuse me,” I said.
He opened his eyes. Fixed me with a gaze that was not aggressive. It was also not curious. Looking back, I’m not sure it was much of anything. He just noticed me there, standing over him. And seemed to accept it.
“I’m looking for a girl. Teenage girl. Reddish hair. Well, if it’s clean, it looks reddish. Sixteen. Goes by Molly.”
He squinted his eyes at me. It might have indicated something about his opinion of me and my question. It might have been that the sun was at my back.
“You a reporter?” he asked.
His voice sounded surprisingly high and clear. Like the voice of a boy in a choir.
“No. I’m not a reporter. Why would I be a reporter?”
He shrugged. He still seemed only half-interested in my presence.
“No idea,” he said. “But whenever somebody like you comes around here asking questions, it turns out they’re a reporter.”
“No. Not me. I just know this girl. And I’m trying to find her.”
“To give her a better life,” he said.
It struck me as an odd thing to say.
“Well . . . yes.”
“So same general idea as a reporter.”
“If you don’t mind,” I said, “I realize you don’t owe me anything, including information. But if you could just tell me if there’s a girl that age here . . .”
“Nope,” he said.
“Nope there’s no girl here, or nope you won’t tell me?”
“Little of both,” he said.
“Can I just go in and look around?”
“I wouldn’t. Everybody who’s here now is still trying to sleep.”
I glanced at my watch, vaguely wishing I hadn’t worn it. It had been a college graduation present from my mother. It had been expensive.
“It’s after eleven in the morning,” I said.
He shrugged again. “Don’t know what to tell you.”
I started to walk in. Look around for myself. Despite a cold hammering of fear all through my chest and gut.
He stopped me with words.
“She’s not here,” he said. “Youngest people here are like twenty, but anyway, we’re all boys. But for a dollar I’ll show you where the really big camp is.”
I dug a dollar out of my pants pocket. I was careful to make it seem like the only bill I had in there. I had purposely left my purse locked in the trunk. Because once I came down here and made it clear I had a little money, what was to stop someone from taking it all?
“That’s the ticket,”
