Bad Love

13

I drove east to the overpass Coburg had described. The freeway formed a concrete ceiling over a fenced dirt lot, an arcing canopy of surprising grace supported by columns that would have challenged Samson. The shade it cast was cool and gray. Even with my windows closed I could hear the roar of unseen cars.

The lot was empty and the dirt looked fresh. No tents or bedrolls, no signs of habitation.

I pulled over across the street, in front of a self-storage facility the size of an army base, and idled the Seville.

Little Calcutta. The fresh dirt suggested a bulldozer party. Maybe the city had finally cleared it.

I drove farther, slowly, past Exposition Boulevard. The west side of the street was lined with apartment buildings, the freeway concealed by ivied slopes. A few more empty spots peeked behind the usual chain link. A couple of overturned shopping carts made me stop and peer into the shadows.

Nothing.

I cruised several more blocks, until the freeway twisted out of sight. Then I turned around.

As I neared Exposition again, I spied something shiny and huge- a white-metal mountain, some sort of factory or plant. Giant canisters, duodenal twists of pipe, five-story ladders, valves that hinted at monstrous pressure.

Running parallel to the machine works was a blackened length of railroad track. Bordering the rails was a desert-pale table of sand.

Twenty years in L.A., and I'd never noticed it before.

Invisible city.

I headed toward the tracks, getting close enough to read a small red-and-blue sign on one of the giant towers. AVALON GRAVEL AND ASPHALT.

As I prepared to reverse direction again, I noticed another fenced lot catercorner to the plant- darker, almost blackened by the freeway, blocked from street view by green-gray shrubs. The chain-link fence was obscured by sections of bowed, graffitied plywood, the wood nearly blotted out by the hieroglyphics of rage.

Pulling to the curb, I turned off the engine and got out. The air smelled of dust and spoiled milk. The plant was as still as a mural.

The only other vehicle in sight was the burnt-out chassis of something two-doored, with a crushed roof. My Seville was old and in need of a paint job, but here it looked like a royal coach.

I crossed the empty street over to the plywooded fence and looked through an unblocked section of link. Shapes began forming in the darkness, materializing through the metal diamonds like holograms.

An overturned chair bleeding stuffing and springs.

An empty lineman's spool stripped of wire and cracked down the middle.

Food wrappers. Something green and shredded that might once have been a sleeping bag. And always the overhead roar, constant as breath.

Then movement- something on the ground, shifting, rolling. But it was submerged deeply in the shadows and I couldn't tell if it was human, or even real.

I looked up and down the fence, searching for an entrance to the lot, had to walk a ways until I found it: a square hatch cut into the link, held in place with rusty baling wire.

Prying the wires loose took a while and hurt my fingers. Finally, I bent the flap back, squatted, and passed through, retying one wire from the other side. Making my way across the soft dirt, my nostrils full of shit smell, I dodged chunks of concrete, Styrofoam food containers, lumps of things that didn't bear further inspection. No bottles or cans- probably because they were recyclable and redeemable. Let's hear it for green power.

But nothing green here. Just blacks, grays, browns. Perfect camouflage for a covert world.

A vile smell overcame even the excremental stench. Hearing the buzz of flies, I looked down at a cat's carcass that was so fresh the maggots hadn't yet homesteaded, and gave it a wide berth. Onward, past an old blanket, clumps of newspaper so sodden they looked like printed bread dough… no people that I could see, no movement. Where had the movement come from?

I arrived at the spot where I thought the thing had rolled, toward the back of the covered lot, just a few feet from the inner angle of a canted concrete wall.

Standing again, I focused. Waited. Felt my back itch.

Saw it again.

Movement. Hair. Hands. Someone lying rolled up in a sheet- several sheets, a mummy wrap of frayed bed linens. Twitchy movements below.

Lovemaking? No. No room for two people in the swaddle.

I walked toward it slowly, making sure I approached head-on, not wanting to startle.

My shoes kicked something hard. The impact was inaudible over the roar, but the figure in the sheeting sat up.

A young, dark Latina, bare shouldered. Soft shoulders, a large vaccine crater on one arm.

She stared at me, pressing the sheets up to her chest, long hair wild and sticky looking.

Her mouth was open, her face round and plain, scared and baffled.

And humiliated.

The sheet dropped a bit and I saw that she was naked. Something dark and urgent snuffled at her breast- a small head.

A baby. The rest of it concealed by the filthy cotton.

I backed away, smiled, held up my hand in greeting.

The young mother's face was electric with fear.

The baby kept suckling and she placed one hand over its tiny skull.

Near her feet was a small cardboard box. I got down and looked inside. Disposable diapers, new and used. More flies. A can of condensed milk and a rusty opener. A nearly empty bag of potato chips, a pair of rubber sandals, and a pacifier.

The woman tried to nourish her baby while rolling away from me, unraveling more of the sheets and exposing a mottled thigh.

As I started to turn away, the look in her eyes changed from fear to recognition and then to another type of fear.

I whipped around and found myself face-to-face with a man.

A boy, actually, seventeen or eighteen. Also Latin, small and flimsily built, with a fuzz mustache and a sloping chin so weak it seemed part of his skinny neck. His eyes were downslanted and frantic. His mouth hung open; a lot of his teeth were gone. He had on a torn, checked flannel shirt, stretched-out doubleknit pants, and unlaced sneakers. His ankles were black with dirt.

His hands trembled around an iron bar.

I stepped away. He hesitated, then came toward me.

A high sound pierced the freeway din.

The woman screaming.

Startled, the boy looked at her and I moved in, grabbed the bar, and twisted it out of his grip. The inertia threw him backwards onto the ground so easily that I felt like a bully.

He stayed there, looking up at me, shielding his face with one hand, ready to be beaten.

The woman was up, tripping out of the sheets, naked, the baby left squalling on the dirt. Her belly was pendulous and stretchmarked, her breasts limp as a crone's, though she couldn't have been much older than twenty.

I threw the bar as far as I could and held out both hands in what I hoped was a gesture of peace.

The two of them looked at me. Now I felt like a bad parent.

The baby was openmouthed with rage, clawing the air and kicking. I pointed to it.

The woman rushed over and picked it up. Realizing she was naked, she crouched and hung her head.

The chinless boy's hands were still shaking. I tried another smile and his eyes drooped, tugged down by despair.

I took out my wallet, removed a ten, walked over to the woman and held it out to her.

She didn't move.

I put the bill in the cardboard box. Went back to the boy, took out another ten and showed it to him.

More of that same hesitation he'd shown before coming at me with the bar. Then he took a step, biting his lip and teetering like a high-wire artist, and snatched the money.

Holding out yet another bill, I headed for the place where I'd broken through the fence. Checking my back as I trotted through the muck.

After a few steps the boy started following me. I picked up the pace and he tried to catch up, but couldn't. Walking was an effort for him. His mouth was open and his limbs looked rubbery. I wondered when he'd last eaten.

I made it to the flap, untied the wire and walked out to the sidewalk. He came through several moments later, rubbing his eyes.

The light hurt my pupils. He appeared to be in agony.

He finally stopped rubbing. I said, "Habla inglés?"

"I'm from Tucson, man," he said, in unaccented English.

His hands were fisted, but the tremor and his small bones mocked his fighter's stance. He started to cough, dry and wheezing. Tried to bring up phlegm and couldn't.

"Didn't mean to scare you," I said.

He was looking at the money. I extended my arm and he snatched the bill and crammed it under his waistband. The pants were much too big for him and held together with a red plastic belt. One of his sneakers was patched with cellophane tape. As his hand balled up around the bill, I saw that the pinkie of his left hand was missing.

"Gimme more," he said.

I didn't say anything.

"Gimme more. But she won' fuck you, anyway."

"I don't want her to."

He flinched. Thought a moment. "I won', neither."

"I'm not interested in that, either."

He frowned, put a finger inside his mouth and rubbed his gums.

I gave a quick look around, saw no one, and took out a fourth ten.

"Whu'?" he said, yanking his hand free and making a grab for it.

Holding it out of reach, I said, "Is that Little Calcutta?"

"Huh?"

"The place we just were. Is that Little Calcutta?"

"Maybe."

"Maybe?"

"Yeah." He coughed some more, hit his chest with the four-fingered hand.

"How many people live there?"

"I dunno."

"Are there others in there right now? People I didn't see?"

He considered his answer. Shook his head.

"Are there ever others?"

"Sometimes."

"Where are they now?"

"Around." He looked at the money, worked his tongue against his cheek, and came closer.

"She fucks you, it's twenty bucks."

I put the bill in my pocket.

"Hey!" he said, as if I'd cheated at a game.

"I don't want to fuck anyone," I said. "I just want some information. Answer my questions and you'll get paid, okay?"

"Why, man?"

"Because I'm a curious guy."

"Cop?"

"No."

He flexed his shoulders and rubbed his gums some more. When he removed his hand, the fingers were bloody.

"Is the baby yours?" I said.

"Thas what you wanna know?"

"Is it?"

"I dunno."

"It needs to be looked at by a doctor."

"I dunno."

"Is she your woman?"

He smiled. "Sometimes."

"What's your name?"

"Terminator Three." Glaring. Challenging me to mock him.

"Okay," I said. "Are there more people in there?"

"I told you, man. Not now, just at night."

"They come back at night?"

"Yuh."

"Every night?"

He looked at me as if I were stupid. Shook his head slowly. "Some nights- it changes places, I dunno."

"It moves from place to place?"

"Yeah."

Tent City as a concept. Some New Wave journalist would have a ball with it.

"What about a guy named Gritz?"

"Huh?"

"Gritz." I began the description Coburg had given me, and to my surprise he broke in: "Yeah."

"You know him?"

"I seen him."

"Does he live there?"

The hand went back into his mouth. He fiddled, twisted, pulled out a tooth and grinned. The root was inky with decay. He spit blood onto the pavement and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

"Does Gritz hang out here?"

He didn't hear me, was looking at the tooth, fascinated. I repeated the question. He kept staring, finally dropped the tooth into his pocket.

"Not no more," he said.

"When's the last time you saw him?"

"Dunno."

"Days? Weeks?"

"Dunno."

He reached out to touch the sleeve of my jacket. Fifteen-year-old Harris Tweed. The cuffs were starting to fuzz.

I stepped back.

"Wool?" he said.

"Yeah."

He licked his lips.

"What do you know about Gritz?"

"Nuthin'."

"But you definitely know him?"

"I seen him around."

"When's the last time you saw him around?"

He closed his eyes. Opened them. "A week."

"A week definitely, or a week maybe?"

"I think- I dunno, man."

"Any idea where he is now?"

"To get rich."

"To get rich?"

"Yeah, that's what he said- he was drinking and partying, you know. And singing- sometimes he liked to sing- and he was singing about hey, man, I'm gonna get rich soon. Gonna get me a car and a boat- that kind of shit."

"Did he say how he was going to get rich?"

"Nah." A hint of threat sharpened his eyes. Fatigue wiped it out. He slumped.

"He didn't say how?" I repeated.

"No, man. He wuz partying and singing- he was nuts. That's it, man."

"Is Gritz a first name or a last name?"

"Dunno, man." He coughed, hit his chest, wheezed, "Fuck."

"If I told you to see a doctor, you'd shine me on, wouldn't you?"

Gap-toothed grin. "You gonna pay me to go?"

"What if you had a disease you could give to her- or the baby?"

"Gimme more money." Holding out a hand again.

"The baby needs to see a doctor."

"Gimme more money."

"Who'd Gritz hang out with?"

"No one."

"No one at all?"

"I dunno, man. Gimme more money."

"What about a guy named Hewitt?"

"Huh?"

"A guy named Dorsey Hewitt? Ever see Gritz with him?"

I described Hewitt. The boy stared- not that much blanker than his general demeanor, but enough to tell me his ignorance was real.

"Hewitt," I repeated.

"Don' know the dude."

"How long have you been hanging out here?"

"Hunerd years." Phlegmy laugh.

"Hewitt killed a woman. It was on the news."

"Don't got cable."

"A social worker named Rebecca Basille- at the Westside Mental Health Center?"

"Yeah, I heard something."

"What?"

Grin. "Music. In my head." He tapped one ear and smiled. "It's like rock and soul, man. The def cool no-fool."

I sighed involuntarily.

He brightened, latching on to my frustration like a buzzard on carrion. "Gimme money, man." Cough. "Gimme."

"Anything else you want to tell me?"

"Yeah."

Tapping one foot. Waiting for the straight man.

"What?" I said.

"The baby's mine." Smile. His remaining teeth were pink with fresh blood.

"Congratulations."

"Got a cigarette?"

"I don't smoke."

"Then gimme money. I aks around for you, man. You come back and I tell you everything I aksed."

I counted what I had in my wallet.

Two twenties and three singles. Gave him all of it. The jacket, too.