North of Montana (21 page)

“When is your birthday, Teresa?”

She looks at Mrs. Gutiérrez and says nothing.

“Come on, you must know your birthday.”

She whispers a date.

“What would you like for your birthday?”

“I would like a bed,” Teresa answers without hesitation.

“Don’t you have a bed? Where do you sleep?”

“Under the kitchen table.”

I look away, squinting into the brightening distance, thinking that although these sunglasses are supposed to afford the best UV protection, the lenses are not nearly dark enough—not dark enough at all.

Teresa’s eyes are on her empty plate.

“Want another hot dog?”

She nods. I buy two of everything the lousy little snack bar has: popcorn, ice cream sandwiches, tortilla chips, and watch the children work their way through it all.

“Tell them to go and play.”

Mrs. Gutiérrez repeats my request in Spanish, but the children do not move. There’s not a hell of a lot to do in Traveltown if you are not part of a big exuberant family on a picnic. I wish I’d known that when I picked it from the front pages of the phone book. You can run through a transportation museum housed in a dark old barn and see a horse-drawn fire engine from 1902 or climb on engines of defunct trains like iron behemoths sunk into the mud. Teresa and Cristóbal don’t want to do anything. They cling to Mrs. Gutierrez’s hands, squat down, and wrap their arms around her chubby knees.

“Tell them to play,” I repeat with an edge.

She speaks more sharply and they drag reluctantly toward the trains.

“If the family cannot be located, Teresa and Cristóbal will have to go into foster care,” I tell her, speaking slowly, with absolute level conviction, as clearly and emotionlessly as possible, the way you advise a criminal of his rights. “I will notify the proper agencies myself.”

Mrs. Gutiérrez takes a sharp breath and covers her mouth with both hands. Her broad square nails are earth-red, three or four dime-store rings on pudgy fingers.

“I love these children!” she cries. “I thought you gonna help.”

“We have to do what’s right.”

“What is right?” Mrs. Gutiérrez asks. “Violeta wanted to make a better life. To make money in America to send back to her child. She was only eighteen years old. She got on a bus from Mexico City to Tijuana and she was raped by the men on that bus, each in his turn, right there on the floor. Is that right?”

“That’s why we have the law.”

“She just left a baby. Her breasts were full of milk. The law means nothing.”

Cristóbal and Teresa have been screwing around behind the bench and finally Mrs. Gutiérrez can’t stand it anymore. She gets off to see what they’re up to, then comes back dragging Cristóbal by the arm.

“This lady is the police,” she says smartly, presenting him to me. “Show her what you did.”

Cristóbal refuses to look up. Mrs. Gutiérrez yanks his hand out of his pocket. He is clutching a plastic car worth about sixty-nine cents.

“From the birthday party over there.” She shakes him roughly. “Little thief.”

She glares at me. Since I know what’s best for the children, obviously I will take care of this.

I lead him across the plaza. “We can’t take things that aren’t ours,” I explain gently.

We come upon a broken piñata, some candy, and a few small toys left scattered on the damp grass.

I march him up to the father of the birthday party. “Cristóbal took this, but he knows it isn’t right and he wants to give it back.”

The boy remains rigid, the car in his hand at his side.

“It’s okay, let him keep it,” the man says.

Cristóbal breaks from me and tears back to his sister.

“Thank you,” I say desperately. “Thank you very much.”

I mean it. I am tense, and despite the rawness of the air, drenched with sweat. I didn’t want to take away his wretched little car. I don’t want to be here at all, but I have promised the children of my cousin, motherless and fatherless and sunk in unhappiness, maimed by malnutrition of the soul, an afternoon in Traveltown. And the pony rides are yet ahead.

FOURTEEN

DURING THE NIGHT another storm blows in. Monday morning the sky is white, the light is brown as I head toward Teddy Feign’s house through dense unrelenting curtains of rain. I choose not to detour past the Eberhardt residence on Twentieth Street or Poppy’s old place on Twelfth, sticking to the main thoroughfare, San Vicente Boulevard, where it is slow going, dodging around stalled cars and palm fronds that have been blown into the road. Several delicate coral trees have been completely upended, roots clawing the air, finished.

I take a right at the light on Seventh Street heading for Santa Monica Canyon. Going down the hill the wimp-ass government Ford loses traction and skids for several long seconds, lurching to a stop just short of a traffic sign, with two wheels stuck in the mud. I fight to maneuver back onto the road but the strength in my arms isn’t enough and my hands slip painfully along the steering wheel. I sit there, steaming. If I have to call a tow truck it will be an embarrassment and a huge waste of time. Just then the back of my neck prickles up. Something is approaching fast from behind. Instead of slowing down a Range Rover speeds past, intentionally swerving through a puddle and spraying the windows with a noisy mix of pebbles and water the color of bile. The driver, wearing a baseball cap, never looks back.

A rock gets caught in the wipers and etches a half circle across the glass with a chilling nails-on-chalkboard scratch. Enraged, I blast it loose with a plume of bright blue windshield cleaner and jam on the gearshift.

Easing back and forth between first and second gear, concentrating on nothing but the whining tires, I rock the Ford gently in the soup, straining for that first touch of friction, nursing it, feeling the tires finally catch and heave up onto the pavement, scooting across the curve into the canyon, cursing the Range Rover all the way. Only on the Westside would someone driving a forty-five-thousand-dollar vehicle feel the need to go out of their way to kick mud in your face.

Santa Monica Canyon is a tiny valley between the elevated flat-lands north of Montana and the southern bluff of the Pacific Palisades, two miles from the Eberhardt residence. At sea level and only blocks from the beach, its mouth is open to constantly flowing ocean breezes that become trapped between the canyon walls, creating a microclimate of uncommonly clear sun, deep shade, and fresh salt-kissed air. It has become an exclusive neighborhood for attorneys and people in television, but the most extravagant home is the one built by Teddy and Andrew Feign up against the hillside at the end of San Lorenzo Street.

It is an enormous Tudor mansion, half timbered with ashlar veneer of brown gray, an ivy-covered arch over the driveway. It has twin pent roofs, three large medieval chimneys, and diamond-shaped panes of glass in tall bay windows that make you think Snow White herself is about to flow out the door. In fact, if you don’t look at the Guadalupe palms across the street, the house gives a pretty good impression of Leicestershire, England, on a rainy day.

Opening a wrought-iron gate, I follow a flagstone path that has now become a running stream. Teddy Feign appears in short order, an attractive slender woman wearing high yellow boots and holding a mop. When I explain that I am from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and have questions about some acquaintances of hers, Dr. and Mrs. Eberhardt, her eyes brighten and she beckons me in. Like the driver of the Range Rover she appears more than willing to take a swing through the mud, if only for the opportunity of slinging it at somebody else.

I follow into the kitchen.

“Do you believe this? Could you die?”

We are splashing through a half inch of water that covers the oak floor. The somewhat amusing source of this minor flood is a utility closet where rainwater is pouring in through the light switches and cascading in shiny sheets down the walls. A young girl wearing a white pants uniform is methodically moving everything that was in the closet to another room. Brooms, a vacuum cleaner, piles of wet rags, detergents, flowerpots, tennis racquets, and a slide projector are piled on the counter as she retrieves them one by one.

Whereas the girl moves with deliberate slowness, her boss is going at a couple of thousand rpms.

“I’ve seen this movie, thank you very much, I don’t need to see it again.”

She swipes at the water, slams a bucket with futility against the wall.

“Last year during the storms we had a mud slide. At three in the morning that whole mountain came roaring down, I thought we were all going to die.”

Through generous windows, past a brick barbecue area and planters crammed with impatiens, I can see a hill bandaged by a sheet of concrete.

“It tore through here like a bulldozer, took off the whole back of the house. We just finished remodeling the kitchen a month ago. I am absolutely beside myself.
Where is Dirk?”

While mopping at the water she picks up a radio phone and angrily demands that Dirk, apparently the contractor, be beeped, car-phoned, lassoed, or otherwise delivered to her door immediately.

I don’t dream about kitchens, but if I did, this would be the one. Teddy Feign, still yakking fiercely into the mouthpiece, gestures for me to sit on a comfortable stool, which even has a backrest, at an is land with two stainless steel sinks set in about fourteen acres of polished green marble. The room is so large you can hear the air rushing past tiers of glossy white cabinets. You can tell it is a brand-new kitchen by the scent of fresh paint and the hot white clarity of the recessed lighting—the bulbs haven’t been there long enough to get filmed over with cooking grease.

She hangs up and drums short perfect nails manicured in clear polish on the edge of the marble. (If you’re going to use clear, why get a manicure?)

“Coffee,” she decides. “Now. You?”

“Great. How well do you know the Eberhardts?”

“I was their
spirit guide
to the mysteries of the West Coast.”

She wiggles her fingers and makes a mocking spirit face.

“They had just moved here, they knew nobody. I introduced them, I had them for dinner, I made an open invitation to play on my tennis court, I even said they could use my pro
for free—”

The woman can get out more words per second than rounds off an AK-47.

“I referred patients to Randall, let their kids swim in my pool, although that didn’t work out very well—”

“I heard there was an accident.”

Her version is uncharacteristically succinct: “Laura fell in, I wasn’t home, she was fine.”

Then she pauses to tick off the rest of her kindnesses:

“And I tried but did not succeed in getting Claire out of those plaid flannel shirts of hers from L.L. Bean.”

“So you know them pretty well.”

“Intimately. Before they dropped me, but that’s another story.”

She opens cabinet doors, assembling cups, coffee, and measuring spoons in rapid succession.

“I understand there’s been some antagonism between you and Mrs. Eberhardt.”

“How would you know that?”

“It wasn’t hard to find out.”

She regards me curiously and pushes the glasses up on her nose. They have heavy black frames like some dorky engineer would have worn in the fifties, but on her fair delicate face they look exceedingly hip. Although she must be close to forty her dishwater-blond hair is cut in a rock ’n’ roll shag. She is wearing a black cashmere sweater and tight black crushed velvet leggings. The only accent to break up all this basic black is a pair of round diamond stud earrings with stones the size of raisins.

“Would you say the Eberhardts are under financial pressure?”

“Sports injuries? Are you kidding? Randall’s practice is huge.”

“Is he a big spender?”

She snorts. “He drives an Acura.”

“Have you ever seen him take drugs?”

“Never.”

“Has he ever offered drugs to you?”

“I don’t do drugs.”

“Maybe he wrote a prescription for you or your husband for some sleeping pills as a favor.”

“Never happened.”

“Tell me about his character. Would you say he’s one of these doctors on an ego trip?”

“Randall?”

She laughs and pulls the levers on a big polished copper contraption for making cappuccino like they have in restaurants.

“The first time I met Randall Eberhardt he was running down the street wearing nothing but a pair of sweatpants, waving a frozen pork chop.”

Steam spits from the machine and she flinches away, murmuring, “Thing is out to kill me.” Then, back in control of her coffeemaker: “I’d gone over to take Claire out to lunch and I was just getting out of my car when I saw a good-looking man with a very nice chest running down the street after a dog that had shown up in their backyard, some pathetic little runt Randall called a ‘homeless dog,’ because it had that empty look in the eyes you see in homeless people. It wouldn’t get close enough even to be fed and eventually it just ran away. Here was this lady he didn’t know from Adam getting out of a Mercedes in an Armani suit and here he was in grungy sweats running after a stray dog, not at all embarrassed, and I thought, What a lovely guy.”