Private Eyes

9

The stretch of freeway that connects L.A. to Pasadena announces itself with four tunnels whose entries are festooned with exquisite stonework. Not the kind of thing any city council is likely to approve nowadays, but this bit of progress was carved into the basin long ago, the city’s first conduit to ceaseless motion masquerading as freedom.

It’s a grubby and graceless asphalt belt now. Three narrow, street-level lanes, bordered by exhaust-warped maples and houses that range from Victorian Relic to Tobacco Road. Psychotically engineered ramps appear without warning. Concrete overpasses that have browned with time- L.A.’s stab at patina- throw spooky shadows across the blacktop. Every time I get on it I think of Nathanael West and James M. Cain- a Southern California history that probably never really existed but is gloomily gratifying to imagine.

I also think of Las Labradoras and how places like the upper-crusty parts of Pasadena, Sierra Madre, and San Labrador might as well be on the moon for all their cross-pollination with the urban tangle at the other end of the freeway.

Las Labradoras. The Farm Girls.

I encountered them years before I met Melissa. In retrospect, the similarity between the experiences seemed obvious. Why hadn’t I made the connection before?

They were women who called themselves girls. Two dozen sorority sisters who’d married very well and settled into estate living at a young age, gotten a couple of kids off to school, and started looking for ways to fill time. Seeking comfort in numbers, they banded together and established a volunteer society- an exclusive club, sorority days renewed. Their headquarters was a bungalow at the Cathcart Hotel- a $200-a-day nest they obtained gratis, including room service, because one of their husbands owned a chunk of that hostelry, and another, the bank that held the mortgage. After composing bylaws and electing officers, they searched for a raison d’Être. Hospital work seemed admirable, so most of their early energies were focused upon remodeling and running the gift shop at Cathcart Memorial.

Then the son of one of their members was diagnosed with a rare and painful disease and transferred to Western Pediatric Hospital, the only place in L.A. where the ailment could be managed. The child survived but suffered chronically. His mother dropped out of the club in order to devote more time to him. Las Labradoras decided to offer their good services to Western Peds.

At the time, I was in my third year on staff, running a psychosocial rehab program for seriously ill children and their families. The chief of staff called me into his office and suggested I find a niche for “these girls,” talking about budgetary problems for the softer sciences and emphasizing the need to “interface with positive forces within the community.”

One Tuesday in May, I put on a three-piece suit and drove out to the Cathcart Hotel. Ate boiled-shrimp canapÉs and crustless sandwiches, drank weak coffee, and met the girls.

They were in their mid-thirties, uniformly bright and attractive and genuinely charming, projecting a noblesse oblige tainted by self-consciousness and self-awareness: They’d gone to college during the sixties, and though that consisted, typically, of four sheltered years at USC or Arizona State or some other place where the foment hadn’t really taken hold, even protected seÑoritas had been touched by the times. They knew that they- their husbands, their children, the way they lived and would continue to live- were The Enemy. The privileged battlements all those unwashed radical types clamored to storm.

I wore a beard back then and drove a Dodge Dart that teetered on the brink of death. Despite the suit and my fresh haircut, I figured I had to look like Radical Danger to them. But they accepted me warmly, listened intensely to my after-lunch talk, never removed their eyes from my slide show- sick kids, IV poles, surgical theaters. The one we staffers, during the blackest of moments, called the Tearjerker Matinee.

When it was over, they were all wet-eyed. More certain than ever that they wanted to help.

I decided the best way to make use of their talents would be to have them serve as guides for newly diagnosed families. Psychosocial docents whose goal was to cut through the procedural red tape that hospitals produce even faster than debt. Weekly two-hour shifts in tailored uniforms that they designed themselves, smiles and greetings and guided tours of the misery. Working within the system to blunt some of its indignities, but no swan dives into the deep waters of trauma and tragedy, and no blood and guts. The chief of staff thought it was a great idea.

So did the girls. I set up a training program. Lectures, reading lists, tours of the hospital, debriefings, discussion groups, role-playing.

They were first-rate students, took detailed notes, made intelligent comments. Half-jokingly asked if I planned on testing them.

After three weeks they graduated. The chief of staff presented them with diplomas bound in pink ribbon. A week before the docent rotation was scheduled to begin, I received a handwritten note on ice-colored stationery.

LAS LABRADORAS

BUNGALOW B, THE CATHCART

PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 91125

Dear Doctor Delaware,

On behalf of my Sisters and myself, I wish to thank you for the consideration you’ve shown us during these past few weeks. We girls all agree that we learned a tremendous amount and greatly profited from the experience.

We regret, however, that we will not be able to participate in the “Welcome Mat” program, as it presents some strategic problems for some of our members. We hope this hasn’t caused you any undue inconvenience and have tendered a donation to the Western Pediatric Hospital Christmas Fund in lieu of our participation.

Best wishes for a wonderful year and our sincere appreciation for the terrific work you do.

Faithfully yours,

Nancy Brown

President, Las Labradoras

I found Ms. Brown’s home number in my Rolodex, dialed it the next day, at eight in the morning.

“Oh, hi,” she said. “How are you?”

“Hanging in, Nancy. I just got your letter.”

“Yes. I’m so sorry. I know how terrible this looks, but we just can’t.”

“You mentioned strategic problems. Anything I can help with?”

“No, I’m sorry, but- It’s nothing related to your program, Dr. Delaware. Just your… setting.”

“My setting?”

“The hospital’s. The environment. L.A., Hollywood. Most of us were amazed at how far down it’s slid. Some of the girls think it’s just too far to travel.”

“Too far or too dangerous?”

“Too far and too dangerous. Lots of the husbands are against us coming down there, too.”

“We really haven’t had any problems, Nancy. You’d be here during the daylight hours, using the VIP parking lot.”

Silence.

I said, “Patients come and go every day with no problem.”

“Well… you know how it is.”

“Guess so,” I said. “Okay. Be well.”

“I’m sure it sounds silly to you, Dr. Delaware. And to be honest, I think it’s an overreaction- I tried to tell them that. But our charter says we either participate as a group or not at all. We took a vote, Dr. Delaware, and this is the way it turned out. I do apologize if we’ve caused you problems. And we do hope the hospital accepts our gift in the spirit in which it was offered.”

“No doubt the hospital does.”

“Goodbye, Dr. Delaware. Have a nice day.”

Notes on good paper, monetary buy-offs, phone brush-offs. Must be the San Labrador style.

I thought about it all the way to the end of the freeway, onto Arroyo Seco, then east on California Boulevard, past Cal Tech. A quick series of loops through quiet suburban streets, then Cathcart Boulevard appeared and I resumed the eastward trek, into the wilds of San Labrador.

The Farmer Saint.

A canonization that had eluded the Vatican.

The very origins of the place were grounded in a buy-off.

Once the private domain of H. Farmer Cathcart, heir to an East Coast railroad dynasty, San Labrador looked like old money but had been chartered as a city for only fifty years.

Cathcart came to Southern California at the turn of the century in order to scope out commercial possibilities for the family. He liked what he saw, began buying up downtown rail lines and hotels, orange groves, bean farms, and ranch land on the eastern borders of Los Angeles, assembling a four-square-mile fiefdom in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. After building the requisite mansion, he surrounded it with world-class gardens and named the estate San Labrador- a bit of self-aggrandizement that made Episcopal tongues wag.

Then, midway through the Great Depression, he discovered his funds weren’t infinite. Holding on to half a square mile, he subdivided the rest. Parceling the gardens out to other rich men- tycoons of grand but lesser stature who could afford to maintain two- to seven-acre properties. Attaching restrictive covenants to all deed transfers, which ensured his living out the rest of his life in sweet harmony with nature and the finest aspects of Western civilization.

The rest of his life didn’t amount to much- he died in 1937 of influenza, leaving a will bequeathing his estate to the city of San Labrador, should such a city exist within two years. The tycoon tenants acted quickly, setting up a charter and pushing it through the L.A. County Board of Supervisors. Cathcart’s mansion and grounds became a county-owned but privately funded museum-cum-botanical gardens that nobody visited- before the freeways.

During the postwar years the land was subdivided further: half-acre lots for the burgeoning professional class. But the covenants remained in place: no “coloreds,” no Orientals, no Jews, no Mexicans. No multiple dwellings. No alcohol served in public places. No nightclubs or theaters or places of “base entertainment.” Commercial establishments limited to an eight-block segment of Cathcart Boulevard, no commercial structure to exceed two stories, architectural style to be in the Spanish Revival mode, with plans approved by the city council.

State and federal law eventually nullified the racial restrictions, but there were ways to get around that, and San Labrador remained lily-white. The rest of the covenants withstood tests of time and litigation. Perhaps that was due to sound legal basis. Or maybe the fact that lots of judges and at least two district attorneys resided in San Labrador had something to do with it.

Whatever the reason, the district’s immunity to change remained strong. As I cruised down Cathcart, nothing seemed different from the last time I’d been there. How long ago had that been? Three years. A Turner exhibition at the museum, a stroll through the library and grounds. With Robin…

Traffic was sparse but slow-moving. The boulevard was split by a wide greenbelt median. The same mix of shops ran along the south side, ensconced in jewel-box Spanish Revival buildings and dwarfed by the rust-tinged Chinese pistachios H. Farmer Cathcart had planted long ago. Doctors, dentists… lots of orthodontists. Clothiers for both sexes offering styles that made Brooks Brothers seem New Wave. A profusion of dry cleaners, florists, interior decorators, banks, and brokerage houses. Three stationers in two blocks- suddenly that made sense. Plenty of Esq.’s and Ltd.’s and faux-Victorian nomenclature on the signs. Nowhere to eat or drink or stretch. Frequent signs directing the meandering tourist to the museum.

A Hispanic man in blue city-issue coveralls pushed an industrial-strength vacuum cleaner along the sidewalk. A few white-haired figures walked around him. Otherwise the streets were bare.

The haut monde approach to exurbia. Picture-perfect. Except for the sky, soot-streaked and dingy, clouding the foothills. Because money and connections couldn’t buck geography: Ocean winds blew the smog here and, trapped by the hills, it settled in for the long run. San Labrador air was poisonous 120 days a year.

Following Melissa’s directions, I drove six blocks past the commercial area, took the first left-turn break in the median, and got onto Cotswold Drive, a pine-canopied straightaway that began snaking and climbing a half-mile in. Cool shade and post-nuclear silence followed: L.A.’s usual dearth of humanity, but here it seemed more pronounced.

Because of the cars- the lack of them. Not a single vehicle at the curb. The NO PARKING AT ANY TIME enforced with Denver boots and predatory fines. Rising above the empty streets were big tile-roofed houses behind sloping lawns. They got bigger as the grade climbed.

The road split at the top of the hill: Essex Ridge to the west, Sussex Knoll to the east. No homes visible here, just two-story walls of green- eugenia and juniper and red-berried toyon backed by forests of oak, ginkgo, and liquidambar.

I lowered my speed and cruised until I finally saw it. Hand-carved pine gates on thick doweled posts capped with verdigrised iron- the kind of hard, waxed pine you see on Buddhist temples and the counters of sushi bars. The posts sided by iron fencing and twelve-foot hedge. The numeral “1” on the left arm of the gate, “0” on the right. To the left of the “1,” an electric eye and talk box.

I pulled up, reached out the driver’s window, and punched the button on the box.

Melissa’s voice came out of the speaker. “Dr. Delaware?”

“Hi, Melissa.”

“One second.”

A rumble and groan and the gates angled inward. I drove up a steep stone path that had been hosed down so recently the air was misty. Past regimentally planted fifty-foot incense cedars and a vacant guardhouse that could have housed a couple of middle-class families. Then another regiment of trees- a sky-blotting grove of Monterey pines that stretched for several moments before condescending to smaller cousins: gnarled, bonsailike cypress and mountain dogwood ringed with free-form clumps of purple rhododendron, white and pink camellia japonica.

A dark drive. The silence seemed heavier. I thought of Gina Dickinson making her way down here, alone. Gained a new appreciation for her affliction. And her progress.

The trees finally cleared and a stadium-sized lawn came into view- ryegrass so healthy-looking it could have been fresh sod, edged with circular beds of begonia and star jasmine. I saw flashes of light at the far west end, among the cypress. Movement, glints of metal. Two- no, three- khaki-clad men, too distant to be clearly discernible. Hernandez’s sons? I could see why he needed five.

The gardeners worked on the vegetation with hand clippers, barely breaking the silence with dull clicks. No air guns or power tools here. Another covenant? Or house rules?

The path ended in a perfectly semicircular drive backed by a pair of date palms. Between the knobby palm trunks, two flights of double-width Bouquet-Canyon stone steps flanked by wisteria-laced stone balustrades led to the house: peach-colored, three-storied, wide as a neighborhood.

What could have been simply monolithic grossness was merely monumental. And surprisingly pleasing to the eye, the visual flight piloted by fanciful turns of the architect’s pencil. Subtly shifting angles and elevations, a richness of detail. High, arched, leaded windows grilled with teal-green, neo-Moorish wrought-iron work. Balconies, verandas, dripstones, running molds, and mullions carved from mocha-colored limestone. A limestone colonnade on the east end. Spanish roof-tiles honeycombed with mosaic precision. Stained-glass cinquefoil insets placed with a contempt for synchrony but an unerring eye for balance.

Still, the very size of the place- and the solitude- was oppressive and sad. Like an empty museum. Nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to be phobic here.

I parked and got out. The gardener’s clicks were augmented by bird-squawks and breeze-rustle. I climbed the stairs, unable to imagine what it would have been like to grow up here, an only child.

The entry was big enough to accommodate a delivery truck: double doors of lacquered oak, trimmed with more verdigrised iron, each side divided into half a dozen raised panels. Carved into the panels were peasant scenes that evoked high-school Chaucer. They held my interest as I pressed the doorbell.

Two baritone chimes sounded; then the right door opened and Melissa stood there, wearing a white button-down shirt, pressed blue jeans, and white tennies: she looked tinier than ever. A doll in a dollhouse built to too large a scale.

She shrugged and said, “Some place, huh?”

“Very beautiful.”

She smiled, relieved. “My father designed it. He was an architect.”

The most she’d said about him in nine years. I wondered what else would emerge now that I’d made a house call.

She touched my elbow briefly, then drew it away.

“Come in,” she said. “Let me show you around.”

Around was a vast space crammed with treasures- an entry hall big enough for croquet, and at its rear a sinuous green marble staircase. Beyond the stairs, cavernous room after cavernous room- galleries built for display, vast and silent, indistinguishable from one another in terms of function. Cathedral and coffered ceilings, mirror-sheen paneling, tapestries, stained-glass skylights, kaleidoscopic Oriental and Aubusson rugs over floors of inlaid marble and hand-painted tile and French walnut parquet. So much sheen and opulence that my senses overloaded and I felt myself losing equilibrium.

I remembered feeling that way once before. Over twenty years ago. A college sophomore, backpacking solo across Europe on a second-class rail pass and $4 a day. Visiting the Vatican. Staring bug-eyed at gold-encrusted walls, the treasure-trove assembled in the name of God. Gradually pulling away from it and watching other tourists and Italian peasants visiting from the southern villages, gawking, too. The peasants never leaving a room before dropping coins in the alms boxes that stood near each door…

Melissa was talking and pointing, a docent in her own home. We were in a book-lined, five-sided, windowless room. She indicated a spotlit painting over a mantel. “And this one’s a Goya. “The Duke of Montero on His Steed.’ Father bought it in Spain when art was much more reasonable. He wasn’t concerned with what was fashionable- this was considered a very minor Goya until just a few years ago; too decorative. Portraiture was dÉclassÉ. Now auction houses write us letters all the time. Father had the foresight to travel to England and brought back cartons of Pre-Raphaelites when everyone else thought they were just kitsch. Tiffany glass pieces, too, during the fifties, when the experts brushed those off as frivolous.”

“You know your stuff,” I said.

She blushed. “I was taught.”

“By Jacob?”

She nodded and looked away. “Anyway, I’m sure you’ve seen enough for one day.”

Turning heel, she began walking out of the room.

“Are you interested in art yourself?” I said.

“I don’t know much about it- not the way Father or Jacob did. I do like things that are beautiful. If nobody gets hurt by it.”

“What do you mean?”

She frowned. We left the book-filled room, passed by the open door of another huge space, this one ceilinged with hand-painted walnut beams and backed with tall French doors. Beyond the glass was more lawn and forest and flowers, stone pathways, statuary, an amethyst-colored swimming pool, a sunken area, vine-topped and walled with dark-green tennis tarp under chain link. From the distance came the hollow thump of a ball bouncing.

A couple of hundred feet back, to the left of the court, was a long, low peach-colored building that resembled a stable: ten or so wooden doors, some of them ajar, backing a wide cobbled courtyard filled with gleaming, long-nosed antique automobiles. Amoeboid pools of water dotted the cobblestones. A figure in gray overalls bent over one of the cars, chamois in hand, buffing the flaring ruby-colored fender of a splendid piece of machinery. From the blower pipes, I guessed it was a Duesenberg and asked Melissa for confirmation.

“Yes,” she said, “that’s what it is,” and keeping her eyes straight ahead, she led me back through the art-filled caverns, toward the front of the house.

“I don’t know,” she said suddenly. “It just seems that so many things start off beautiful and turn hateful. It’s as if being beautiful can be a curse.”

I said, “McCloskey?”

She put both hands in the pockets of her jeans and gave an emphatic nod. “I’ve been thinking about him a lot.”

“More than before?”

“A lot more. Since we talked.” She stopped, turned to me, blinked hard. “Why would he come back, Dr. Delaware? What does he want?”

“Maybe nothing, Melissa. Maybe it means nothing. If anyone can find out, my friend can.”

“I hope so,” she said. “I certainly hope so. When can he start?”

“I’ll have him call you as soon as possible. His name is Milo Sturgis.”

“Good name,” she said. “Solid.”

“He’s a solid guy.”

We resumed walking. A big, broad woman in a white uniform was polishing a tabletop, feather duster in one hand, rag in the other. Open tin of paste wax near her knee. She turned her face slightly and our eyes met. Madeleine, grayer and wrinkled but still strong-looking. A grimace of recognition tightened her face; then she showed me her back and resumed her work.

Melissa and I stepped back into the entry hall. She headed for the green stairway. As she touched the handrail I said, “In terms of McCloskey, are you concerned about your own safety?”

“Mine?” she said, pausing with one foot on the first step. “Why should I be?”

“No reason. But you were just talking about beauty as a curse. Do you feel burdened or threatened by your own looks?”

“Me?” Her laughter was too quick, too loud. “Come on, Dr. D. Let’s go upstairs. I’ll show you beautiful.”