Department after twenty years’ service; at forty-two, she was still young enough to work elsewhere. Elsewhere had turned out to be Las Piernas, where she moved when she married Pete. She got a private investigator’s license, and part of her income now came from doing contract work as an investigator for the public defender’s office. This irritated Pete on two counts: first, because she was “working for the other side,” as he saw it, and second, because Frank had helped her find the job.
“Skid row is no place for a woman to be,” he moaned.
“You’ve got a real problem, you know that?” Rachel said. “What’d you think I was going to do? I told you I was going to keep working.”
“I know! I know! But did you have to go from being a cop to being a-a-Christ! I hate to say it!”
“An investigator for the public defender. Oh, how awful. Better I should be home making raviolis for you,
Apparently, she would have stuffed them with sarcasm.
“There’s no shame in being a homemaker,” he snapped.
“No. And there’s no shame in what I’m doing, either.”
I noticed Frank’s glass of wine was empty. I reached over to refill it. He smiled his thanks and stroked a finger along my forearm. Newlywed gesture. I had been wrong about that earlier.
“Pete,” Frank said in that quiet way of his, the tone that Pete seems to hear better than a shout.
“What?” Pete said, lowering his own voice.
“You can’t win this one.”
Pete made a face and wrung his hands together, but sat down. The dogs relaxed. We managed to get along peaceably through the rest of the evening.
“See you early tomorrow morning,” Rachel said as they left. “If Lucas is a wino, he’s probably hanging out with other winos. Early in the day, his old friends may be hungover, but probably at least half-sober. We’ll try to get to them before they’ve panhandled enough cash to get too far along in the day’s drinking.”
“WE START THE NEXT ROUND HERE.”
I stared out of Rachel’s car window. Five faces stared back. The faces were weathered and unwashed; most were bearded. Three of them were so bleary-eyed they hardly seemed able to focus. All male.
We had started at the shelter and at the detox program. The most we had learned there was that Lucas wasn’t able to get into the shelter on Thursday night-the night of Allan Moffett’s dinner party. He had tried to get a bed, but had come by too late.
Like all shelters, this one had its rules. He had to show up by a certain time or risk being turned away. It had been especially cold that night, and although his bed was held until the deadline of nine o’clock, it was given away when he failed to show by then. He had arrived at about ten o’clock, when the shelter was already overcrowded for the night, even the floor space gone.
Five degrees colder, and city regulations would have opened up other public buildings for the night. The doors stayed shut.
We had spent the rest of the morning talking to people under railroad bridges, beneath freeway over-passes, on the beach. Some of them were loners, but many huddled together in small groups, some around trash-can fires. “They watch over each other’s stuff,” Rachel explained, “and sometimes each other’s backs.” The groups had different turfs; even spots for panhandling were claimed and defended.
“It’s not so different from Phoenix,” she said. “They’re not all panhandlers. Some of these people work. They have temporary or part-time or low-paying jobs, but they don’t make enough to pay for shelter. Sometimes they spend their money on booze or drugs instead of a place to sleep, but other times, they just fall in a hole and have a hell of a time getting back out. Some are what we used to call hobos-wanderers, don’t want responsibilities. Some are crazy.” She paused, then added, “It makes me angry to see the crazy ones out here, because basically, they’re out here because nobody gives a damn. So they become a problem for the cops. As usual, cops are supposed to solve anything no one else wants to deal with.”
“You’ve only been here a couple of months,” I said, “and yet a lot of these people know you by name.”
“Partly because I come down here trying to help the public defender. But any cop-or investigator-who has any brains gets to know the street people. If I can get them to trust me, then I can learn things from them. People living on the streets watch what goes on. They have to, just to try to stay safe. And if you’re in their territory, you’re walking around in their living room. They can spot an out-of-towner or a newcomer, a young runaway- they’ll know who’s doing what and where.”
“So why hasn’t anyone seen Lucas?”
“He cleaned up, you said. They all agree that he has. If he’s smart, he’s avoiding bad company. You’d be lucky not to find him among these people. It sounds like his favorite old drinking buddy is hanging out with Blue now. If Lucas isn’t with them, then maybe he’s still sober.”
Now, looking at this group of men huddled together outside of a restroom in a small park, I wondered if we had any hope of ever learning where Lucas had gone after being turned away from the shelter.
Rachel got out of the car, the men watching her all the while.
“How’s it going?” she said, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. “Anybody need a smoke?”
“Ah, you’re an angel, Rachel,” one of the men called. He was dressed in several lumpy layers of clothing, the outer layer all blue-sweatshirt, sweatpants, running shoes, and ragged knit cap-and seemed a little more attuned to his surroundings than some of the others. He had the build of a wrestler. He began walking toward her, and the others followed, all glancing nervously in my direction. Rachel was obviously someone familiar to them.
Watching her, I felt a sense of relief. She knew exactly what she was doing. Once again, I was struck by her ability to appear in command of any situation. Part of it was her height, her athletic build. Most of it was something in her attitude. I stepped out of the warm car into weather cold enough to chill my breath. As I closed the car door, the men watched me with open curiosity.
“It’s okay,” Rachel said easily. “She’s a friend of mine.”
The man dressed in blue stepped forward again. “Squeaky send you down here, Rachel?”
“Not today, Blue. And you know Ms. Wentworth doesn’t like to be called Squeaky.”
I had to stifle laughter. Given her high-pitched voice, “Squeaky” was the perfect nickname for Wentworth, one of the public defenders Rachel worked for.
He shrugged. “She ain’t here, so she can’t take no offense. Ain’t here and never will be. She wouldn’t want to soil her little self, right, boys?”
The others nodded.
“Give her a break,” Rachel said. “County isn’t exactly heaven on earth. She’s too busy keeping you guys out of jail to come down here and socialize.”
“This cold, she mightn’t be doin’ anybody a favor,” Blue said. He looked over at me. “Who’s this lady with the great peepers?”
“This is Irene. Irene, meet Blue. No need to tell you why he likes the color of your eyes.”
I extended a hand. He nodded, stayed where he was, but said, “Pleased to make your ’quaintance.”
The others hooted at him.
“You boys got no manners,” he said stiffly. He gestured to the other men. “This here’s Decker,” he said, pointing to a man with fists like hams. Then, as he pointed to a skinny fellow, a short, gray-haired man in a fatigue jacket, and a heavyset man, “Beans, Corky, and Rooster. Not their right names, of course, but they earned them. You want to know how?”
“Sure,” I said, causing Rachel to mutter something under her breath in Italian.
Blue grinned. “Decker ’cause he can flatten anybody, Beans ’cause he smells like that’s all he eats, Corky ’cause-I dunno, he’s always been called Corky, and-” He paused and grinned, waiting.
Before I could ask, Rachel said, “And Rooster, because he can’t keep his pants up. No need to demonstrate, Rooster, I don’t like to laugh too much before noon.”
The men hooted again, Rooster included. “You come up into my coop sometime, Rachel,” he said, hitching up his belt. “I’ll show you that I got something to crow about.”
“That’s all right, Chicken Little.”
