G is for Gumshoe (5 page)

“What's that expression?” he said to me.

I smiled. “That's good night. I'm bushed.”

“I'll get out of here then and let you get some sleep. You've got a great place. I'll expect a dinner invitation when you get back.”

“Yeah, you know how much I love to cook.”

“We'll send out.”

“Good plan.”

“You call me.”

“I'll do that.”

Truly, the best moment of the day came when I was finally by myself. I locked the front door and then circled the perimeter, making sure the windows were securely latched. I turned out the lights downstairs and climbed my spiral staircase to the loft above. To celebrate my first night in the apartment, I ran a bath, dumping in some of the bubblebath Darcy had given me for my birthday. It smelled like pine trees and reminded me of janitorial products employed by my grade school. At the age of eight, I'd often wondered what maintenance wizard came up with the notion of throwing sawdust on barf.

I turned the bathroom light off and sat in the steaming tub, looking out the window toward the ocean, which was visible only as a band of black with a wide swath of silver where the moon cut through the dark. The trunks of the sycamores just outside the window were a chalky white, the leaves pale gray, rustling together like paper in the chill spring breeze. It was hard to believe there was somebody out there hired to kill me. I'm well aware that immortality is simply an illusion we carry with us to keep ourselves functional from day to day, but the idea of a murder contract was inconceivable to me.

The bathwater cooled to lukewarm and I let it galumph away, the sound reminding me of every bath I'd ever taken. At midnight, I slid naked between the brand-new sheets on my brand-new bed, staring up through the skylight. Stars lay on the Plexiglas dome like grains of salt, forming patterns the Greeks had named centuries ago. I
could identify the Big Dipper, even the Little Dipper sometimes, but I'd never seen anything that looked even remotely like a bear, a belt, or a scuttling crab. Maybe those guys smoked dope back then, lying on their backs near the Parthenon, pointing at the stars and bullshitting the night away. I wasn't even aware that I had fallen asleep until the alarm jolted me back to reality again.

I focused on the road, glancing down occasionally at the map spread open on the passenger seat. Joshua Tree National Monument and Anza-Borrego Desert State Park were blocked out in dark green, shaped like the pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle. The national forests were tinted a paler green, while the Mojave itself was a pale beige, mountain ranges shaded in the palest brushstrokes. Much of the desert would never be civilized and that was cheering somehow. While I'm not a big fan of nature, its intractability amuses me no end.

At the San Bernardino/Riverside exit, the arms of the freeway crisscross, sweeping upward, like some vision of the future in a 1950s textbook. Beyond, there is nothing on either side of the road but telephone lines, canyons the color of brown sugar, fences of wire with tumbleweeds blown against them. In the distance, a haze of yellow suggested that the mesquite was in bloom again.

Near Cabazon, I pulled into a rest stop to stretch my legs. There were eight or ten picnic tables in a grassy area shaded by willows and cottonwoods. Rest rooms were housed in a cinderblock structure with an A-line roof. I availed myself of one, air-drying my hands since the paper towels had run out. It was now ten o'clock and I was hungry, so I pulled out my cooler and set it up on a table some
ten yards from the parking lot. The virtue of being single is you get to make up all the rules. Dinner at midnight? Why not, it's just you. Lunch at 10:00
A.M.
? Sure, you're the boss. You can eat when you want and call it anything you like. I sat facing the road, munching on a sandwich while I watched cars come and go.

A kid, maybe five, was playing with an assortment of Matchbox trucks on the walkway while his father napped on a bench. Pop had a copy of
Sports Illustrated
open across his face, his big arms bared in a T-shirt with the sleeves torn out. The air was mild and warm, the sky an endless wash of blue.

On the road again, I passed the wind farms, where electricity is generated in acre after acre of turbines, arranged in rows like whirligigs. Today, gusts were light. I could watch the breezes zigzag erratically through the turbines, visible in the whimsical twirling of slender blades, like the propellers on lighter-than-air craft. Maybe, when man is gone, these odd totems will remain, merrily harvesting the elements, converting wind into power to drive ancient machines.

Approaching Palm Springs, the character of the road begins to change again. Billboards advertise fast-food restaurants and gasoline. RV country clubs are heralded as “residential communities for active adults.” Behind the low hills, mountains loom, barren except for the boulders bleached by the sun. I passed a trailer park called Vista del Mar Estates, but there was no
mar
in view.

I took Highway 111 south, passing through the towns of Coachella, Thermal, and Mecca. The Salton Sea came into view on my right. For long stretches, there were only the
two lanes of asphalt, powdery dirt on either side, the body of water, shimmering gray in the rising desert heat. At intervals, I would pass a citrus grove, an oasis of shade in a valley otherwise drubbed by unrelenting sun.

I drove through Calipatria. Later, I heard area residents refer to a town I thought was called Cow-pat, which I realized, belatedly, was a shortened version of Calipatria. The only landmark of note there is a building downtown with one brick column that looks like it's been chewed on by rats. It's actually earthquake damage left unrepaired, perhaps in an effort to pacify the gods.

Fifteen miles south of Calipatria is Brawley. On the outskirts of town, I spotted a motel with a
VACANCY
sign. The Vagabond was a two-story L-shaped structure of perhaps forty rooms bracketing an asphalt parking lot. I rented a single and was directed to room 20, at the far end of the walk. I eased my car into the space out in front, where I unloaded the duffel, the typewriter, and the cooler.

The room was serviceable, though it smelled faintly of eau de bug. The carpet was a two-toned green nylon in a shag long enough to mow. The bedspread and matching drapes were a green-and-gold floral print, flowering vines of some kind climbing up parallel trellises. The painting above the double bed showed a moose standing in lakewater up to his knees. The painted mountains were the same shade of green as the rug—just a little decorating hint from those of us in the know. I put a call through to Henry to tell him where I was. Then I dumped my belongings, christened the toilet bowl, and took off again, tracking north as far as the little hamlet of Niland.

I pulled in to what would have passed for a curb had there been a sidewalk in view. I asked a leather-faced rancher in a pair of overalls for directions to the Slabs. He pointed without a word. I took a right turn at the next corner and drove another mile and a half through flat countryside interrupted only by telephone poles and power lines. Occasionally, I crossed an irrigation canal where brown grasses hugged the banks. In the distance, to the right, I caught sight of a hillock of raw dirt, crowned by an outcropping of rock painted with religious sentiments. G
OD IS LOVE
and
REPENT
loomed large. Whatever was written under it, I couldn't read. Probably a Bible quote. There was a dilapidated truck parked nearby with a wooden house built on the back, also painted with exhortations of some fundamentalist sort.

I passed what must have served as a guard post when the original military base was still functioning. All that remained was a three-by-three-foot concrete shell, only slightly bigger than a telephone booth. I drove onto the old base. A few hundred yards down the road, a second guardhouse had been painted sky blue. Evergreens were outlined on the face of it, with
WELCOME TO
painted in black letters on the roof line and
SLAB CITY
in an arch of black letters on white, with white doves flying in all directions. G
OD IS LOVE
was lettered in two places, the paint job apparently left over from the sixties when the hippies came through. Nothing in the desert perishes—except the wildlife, of course. The air is so dry that nothing seems to rot, and the heat, while intense through much of the year, preserves more than it destroys. I'd passed abandoned wood cabins that had probably been sitting empty for sixty years.

Here, in the endless stretch of gravel and dirt, I could see numerous vans, a few automobiles, many with doors hanging open to dispel the heat. Trailers, RVs, tents, and pickup trucks with camper shells were set up in makeshift neighborhoods. The wide avenues were defined by clumps of creosote and mesquite. Only one roadway was marked and the sign, propped up against a stone, read 18
TH ST
.

Along the main road, one of the world's longest flea markets had been laid out. The tables were covered with odds and ends of glass, used clothing, old tires, used car seats, defunct television sets, which were being sold “cheep.” A hand-lettered sign announced
HOLES DUG & ODD JOBS
. There was not a buyer in sight. I didn't even catch sight of any residents. A United States flag flew from a hand-rigged pole and I could see state flags as well, all snapping in a hot wind that whipped up the dust. Here, there were no TV antennas, no fences, no telephone poles, no power lines, no permanent structures of any kind. The whole place had a gypsy air, varicolored awnings offering protection from the midday sun. The silence was broken by an occasional barking dog.

I pulled over to the side of the road and parked my car, getting out. I shaded my eyes and scanned the area. Now that my eyes had adjusted to the harsh light, I could see that there were actually people in view: a couple sitting in the open doorway of their mobile home, a lone man passing from one aisle of vehicles to the next. No one seemed to pay any attention to me. The arrival and departure of strangers was apparently so commonplace that my presence elicited no interest whatever.

About fifty yards away, I spotted a woman sitting in a
rectangle of shade formed by a bright red and orange parachute that had been strung up between two campers. She was nursing a baby, her face bent to the sight of the infant. I approached, stopping about fifteen feet away. I wasn't sure what constituted personal turf out here and I didn't want to trespass.

“Hi,” I said. “I wonder if you could give me some help.”

She looked up at me. She might have been eighteen. Her dark hair was pulled up in a ragged knot on top of her head. She wore shorts and a cotton shirt, unbuttoned down the front. The baby worked with such vigor that I could hear the sucking noise from where I stood. “You lookin' for Eddie?”

I shook my head. “I'm trying to find a woman named Agnes Grey. Do you happen to know her?”

“Nunh-unh. Eddie might. He's been out here a lot longer than me. Is she permanent?”

“I understand she's been out here for years.”

“Then you might check at the Christian Center down here on the left. Trailer with a sign out listing all the activities. Lot of people register with them in case of emergency. What'd you want her for?”

“She has a daughter up in Santa Teresa who hasn't heard from her for months. She asked me to find out why her mother hasn't been in touch.”

She squinted at me. “You some kind of detective?”

“Well, yeah. More or less. I'm a friend of the family and I was down in this area anyway so I said I'd check it out.” I took out the two snapshots Irene Gersh had given me. I moved over and held them out so she could see. “This is her trailer. I don't have a picture of her. She's an old woman, in her eighties.”

The girl tilted her head, looking at the photographs. “Oh, yeah, that one. I know her. I never heard her real name. Everybody calls her Old Mama.”

“Can you tell me where to find her?”

“Not really. I can tell you where her trailer's at, but I haven't seen her for a while.”

“Do you remember when you saw her last?”

She thought about it briefly, screwing up her face. “I never paid much attention so I can't really say. She goes stumping up and down out here when she needs a ride into town. Everybody's real good about that, if your car's broke or something and you gotta have a lift. She's kinda weird though.”

“Like what?”

“Uh, well, you know, she has these spells when she talks to herself. You see people like that jabbering away, making gestures like they're in the middle of an argument. Eddie took her into Brawley couple times and he said she was all right then. Smelled bad, but she wasn't out of her head or anything like that.”

“You haven't seen her lately?”

“No, but she's probably still around someplace. I been busy with the baby. You might ask somebody else. I never talked to her myself.”

“What about Eddie? When do you expect him back?”

“Not till five, I think he said. If you want to check her trailer, go down this road about a quarter mile? You'll see this old rusted-out Chevy. That's called Rusted-Out Chevy Road. Turn right and drive till you pass these concrete bunker things on the left. They look like U's. I don't know what they are, but her trailer's in the next lot. Just bang on
the door loud. I don't think she hears good from what Eddie said.”

“Thanks. I'll do that.”

“If you don't find her, you can come on back here and wait for him, if you like. He might know more.”

I glanced at my watch. It was just 12:25. “I may do that,” I said. “Thanks for the help.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The trailer on Rusted-Out Chevy Road was a sorry sight, bearing very little resemblance to the snapshot I had in my possession, which showed an old but sturdy-looking travel trailer, painted flat blue, sitting on four blackwall tires. From the picture, I estimated that it was thirty-some years old, built in the days when it might have been hitched to the back of a Buick sedan and hauled halfway across the country. Now, spray paint had been used to emblazon the siding with the sort of words my aunt urged me to hold to a minimum. Some of the louvres on the windows had been broken out and the door was hanging on one hinge. As I drove by, I saw a unisex person, approximately twelve years of age, sitting on the doorsill in ragged cutoffs, hair in dreadlocks, finger up its nose, apparently mining the contents. I passed the place, did a U-turn and doubled back, pulling over to the side of the road in front. By the time I got out, the doorsill was deserted. I knocked on the doorframe.