The Museum of Desire

Chapter 8

Skaggs Avenue sits west of Chinatown, in a tight little circle of obscure streets shadowed by the pasta-bowl entwining of the 101 and 110 freeways.

The areas in and around downtown L.A. have been flirting with renewal for decades, with uneven results. A smidge of optimism had made it to Skaggs in the form of crisp, three-story apartments with security parking. Multiple For Sale signs said only a smidge for awhile.

The older properties ranged from fifties dingbats to wood-framed Victorians and Craftsman bungalows nailed up a century ago before earthquakes were taken seriously. A surprising quantity of improbable construction has survived, social Darwinism meets real estate.

Casa Clara Adult Residential Care was on the 800 block of Skaggs and one of the survivors: a two-story Craftsman painted cantaloupe orange, with a wraparound front porch complete with two rocking chairs. The paint looked fresh.

No signage; from the street, just an eccentrically colored house.

A front area behind a low wire fence and gate was cement. Triangle cutouts in the gray surface sported drought-loving succulents. That and the paint said someone was paying attention.

The gate opened on a walk-right-in pathway. From the street, no apparent security. Then the details asserted themselves.

The rocking chairs were bolted to the wide-plank porch floor. Iron bars grilled every window and the four-pane mini-window in a vintage carved mahogany door. Sticker from an alarm company and two serious dead bolts on the door. Maybe to counteract all that, a yellow happy-face decal beamed just below the top bolt.

Milo rang the bell and evoked a wasp-buzz.

Nothing for several seconds, then a female voice sang out, “Wuh-uhn second!”

Footsteps. The same voice, louder, trilled, “Who is it?”

“Police.”

The upper half of a face filled the four panes, pale skin and blue eyes waffled by the iron grid. “Um, I.D., please?”

Milo obliged with the badge. The door opened on a tall, slim woman in her twenties wearing a crimson Harvard sweatshirt, ripped gray jeans, and black flats in need of polish. Square face with a strong chin, upturned nose, narrow mouth, pert chin. Oversized glasses in tortoiseshell frames hazed the eyes, which verged on turquoise. Long caramel-colored hair was gathered in a free-for-all high pony. Long pale fingers moved restlessly, as did her shoulders and the eyebrows.

She smiled at us, what appeared to be a sincere attempt at warmth. The fidgeting reduced the impact, but still, good intentions.

“Someone finally got going on Benson? Please tell me he’s okay.”

She squinted past us at the street. “Is he in your car? Can I go out and get him?”

Milo said, “Benson Alvarez.”

Enthusiastic nod. “We call him Benny. So he’s safe. Good. We’ve all been so worried since he didn’t come home Friday. I immediately reached out to his DPSS worker but she never got back to me so I phoned you guys. The guy I spoke to started in with an adult has to be missing twenty-four hours before you can file a report. I told him Benny wasn’t your typical adult and he said okay, he’d look into it. I wasn’t sure he meant it, so good, he did.”

She shifted to the right, blue eyes shooting past Milo. “Um, I don’t see him in your car. Is he being held somewhere? I can’t leave myself but maybe Andrea can authorize an Uber to pick him up or something.”

Milo said, “You’re his caretaker?”

“I oversee the facility. We’re Level One, the most able residents, they don’t have individual caretakers. It’s by accident that I’m dealing with this, usually I do the night shift because I’m going to school for my master’s during the day. But Marcella — the day person — asked if she could trade to take some vacation time with her boyfriend.”

She stopped, caught her breath. “That was oversharing, sorry. So where and when can Benny be picked up?”

Milo rubbed his face. “Could we come in, Ms...”

“Justine Merck. Why, what’s happened?”

“It would be better if we discussed this inside—”

“Something happened to Benny?”

This time, Milo used the card.

Justine Merck read and swayed and clutched the doorjamb for support. “Homicide... Benny? Oh, God, no!” One of her feet gave way and began skidding out from under her.

I caught her by the arm, Milo gripped the other, and we guided her inside.

Like the interior of most genuine Craftsman structures, the ground floor was dimmed by dark wood walls and matching ceiling coffers. A cheap plastic fixture dangled overhead, casting merciless light.

Off to the side was a living room furnished with couches that looked as if they’d been rescued curbside. But the space looked well tended and smelled of lemon-scented cleanser.

Big room, uninhabited. No sights or sounds of human habitation from anywhere in the house.

I said, “Is anyone else home?”

Justine Merck, now crying and gulping air, shook her head violently.

We sat her in a decrepit armchair facing a sofa and waited as she took several breaths.

“The other residents are at the zoo with our student volunteers. We go there a lot because it’s open and relaxed. Benny loved it. The flamingos, he loved their color. Even though they smelled bad. He’d joke about that, hold his nose and make a funny face — oh, here I go again, you don’t care about any of that!”

Milo said, “Actually we care about anything you can tell us about Benny.” He produced the wad of death-knock tissues he keeps in his jacket pocket and gave her one. She dabbed and sniffled.

Milo said, “Justine, when it comes to a homicide investigation, there’s no such thing as oversharing.”

She hung her head, tapped her knees. Placed both hands on her temples and pressed until the nails blanched. “In a couple of hours, they’ll be coming home and I’ll have to tell them. I should also call Andrea, she’ll know what to do. Or maybe she won’t. This never happened before.”

“Who’s Andrea?”

“Andrea Bauer, she owns Casa Clara and other havens. She lives in Santa Barbara but she comes here regularly. I told her about Benny not coming home, she said follow up with the police. This morning she called me back and said you guys were looking for him. That’s why when you showed up...”

Tears.

“Could we have Andrea’s number?”

“Sure.” Slow recitation, hurried jotting.

I said, “Justine, tell us about Benny.”

“Like what?”

“The kind of person he was.”

“Sweet,” she said. “Sweet, nice boy — I mean he was a middle-aged man, I’m not intending to juvenilize him. But that’s what you think of when you think of Benny. Innocent, like a young boy. Just the gentlest little guy.”

“How mentally challenged was he?”

“He was officially classified as DD — developmentally disabled — but it wasn’t severe. I think he tested out in the midseventies — his IQ. He could read a little, although usually he faked it.”

“Pretended to be higher functioning than he was.”

“I mean everyone needs to feel good about themselves, right? It’s not like he lied or bragged or did stupid stuff. What I’m talking about is like the time he got hold of one of my textbooks and ran this little plastic magnifying glass over it and started humming and nodding, like he understood it. I said, ‘So what have you learned about educational curriculum, Benny?’ He looked up at me with the sweetest expression and said, ‘I learned you’re smart, Justine.’ That was Benny, always a nice word for everyone. Everyone loved him. Who’d hurt him? I don’t understand!”

Milo said, “So he went missing on Friday.”

“He was supposed to be back by three. I arrived at four, usually it’s seven but Marcella had to get ready for her trip so I helped her out. Marcella was super concerned, she said she’d drive around looking for him but couldn’t do it for very long because she had to get ready for her trip. I told her not to worry, I’d take care of it. Which is when I began making calls. When I didn’t hear anything Friday or Saturday and then today, I was really scared. But hopeful, you know? Benny’s Level One, maybe he could take care of himself for a bit.”

She looked at us, doubtful. “I always try to be hopeful even though it’s stupid!”

Her hands began to shake and her eyes glazed.

I said, “You go to school during the day and work all night? Tough schedule.”

“It’s actually not that bad. When I’m here I mostly get to sleep unless a resident has an issue and when they do it’s almost always short-term — bad dreams, someone wants water or a snack. Also, I only have classes twice a week — graduate seminars, both in the afternoon, so I can catch up on the other days.”

“How did the other residents react to Benny not coming home?”

“A couple asked, I told them Benny had an appointment, he’d be back. No one argued. They’re like that. Docile — does that sound patronizing? They’re cooperative, very gentle people. And Saturday was a field trip, Descanso Gardens, they came home exhausted. It’ll be like that today ’cause of the zoo. We try to keep them occupied.”

“Where did Benny go on Friday?”

“To his job. An art gallery, sweeping up,” said Justine Merck. “Obviously I phoned them first, they said he’d been there until two, two thirty, as usual, seemed fine when he left. It’s not a strict schedule, they basically let him hang around.”

I said, “He likes the zoo but chose not to go.”

“He liked having a job. It made him feel... meaningful — this is a nightmare!”

The first tissue was soaked and compressed. Milo gave her another and she blew her nose noisily.

“I even looked for him right here. In his room, every other room, the backyard. Even though I knew that was irrational. Wanting to do something, you know?”

I said, “Of course. How many doors are there?”

“The front where you came in and in back, from the laundry area to the backyard.”

“So if no one was at the rear of the house, someone could come and go without being noticed.”

“I guess so.” Justine Merck wrung her hands. “We don’t lock them up, it’s not a jail, the whole point is fostering independence. Benny loved his job. Loved art, loved to draw.”

Milo said, “Was he talented?”

She slumped. “He drew me stick figures. I told him they were fantastic.”

“What’s the name of the gallery where he worked?”

“Verlang Contemporary, it’s on Hart Street, not far.”

“Benny walked.”

“It’s less than a mile, and he always went during daylight. When he started, a student volunteer accompanied him. After a week, he insisted on doing it himself. That’s consistent with our approach.”

“How long had he been working there?”

“Months,” she said.

Milo said, “What’s Marcella’s full name and number?”

“Marcella McGann. Hold on.” Justine Merck stood, took a moment to steady herself, hurried out and returned scrolling a cellphone. She read off the number. “But like I said, she’s on vacation.”

“Where?”

“Mexico — Cabo, I think. With her boyfriend, they’d been planning it for a while.”

I said, “You get up at night when the residents have issues. Did that ever include Benny?”

“Not often. And he’d never make a fuss, just come down and tell me he couldn’t sleep. We’d chat for a while and I’d walk him back up. He wasn’t malfunctioning or anything, if that’s what you’re getting at. I just got the feeling he sometimes had ideas in his head and didn’t know what to do with them. At night and when he was awake.”

“What kind of ideas?”

“I don’t know, maybe I’m totally wrong,” she said. “But people like him think a lot. They’re just like anyone else. Sometimes he’d get a look” — she tapped her head — “and I’d be like, ‘What’s going on up here, Benny?’ Sometimes he wouldn’t answer, sometimes he’d look up at me with this puppy smile and say, ‘You’re so smart, Justy.’ ”

Tears welled. She wiped them away.

I said, “A gentle guy.”

“The gentlest. Why would anyone hurt him? Unless it had something to do with the neighborhood. Something he ran into while walking back.”

“You’ve had problems in the neighborhood?”

“Fewer than you’d expect, but sure, it’s like any other urban thing. I mean I’m not judging and disparaging an entire region because it’s low-income, but my first year of grad school I had a placement at one of the downtown shelters and it was scary. Not most of the homeless, just a few. You’d get some who were totally irrational with major anger issues.”

She touched her left forearm. “I got my arm sprained once. Ladling out food and a guy, a total schizophrenic, thought I wasn’t moving fast enough and grabbed me and twisted.”

“Scary,” I said.

“Petrifying. So when Benny still didn’t show up, I thought, What if he ran into someone like that? He’d be defenseless. But you can’t imprison them. There are always risks to be weighed. Right?”

We nodded.

She threw up her hands. “Working with the disabled, nothing they teach you in school prepares you. Like that shelter, how could I be ready for that?”

Milo said, “Any problems between Benny and the other residents?”

“Of course not. Andrea selects for gentleness, she doesn’t want to waste time on discipline and control.”

“Okay. What about Benny’s family?”

“He didn’t have any family.”

“No one at all?”

“Isn’t that sad? That’s how he ended up here. He was an only child, lived with his mother, she had him late, died two years ago when she was in her late eighties. You see that with Down syndrome. Older parents, three of our residents are Down. But Benny wasn’t Down, he was just UDD — undifferentiated developmental delay.”

I said, “He was living with his mother until she died?”

“He was the one who found her, he got all terrified and ran out of their apartment and sat on the curb crying. A neighbor saw him, found out what happened, and called 911. Benny was put in adult foster placement until he got in here.”

Milo said, “No cousins, aunts, that kind of thing?”

“No one,” said Justine Merck. “That’s true of most of our residents. They’re kind of like foundlings. It’s society’s responsibility to take care of them.”

“How about a look at Benny’s room?”

“Sure. You’ll see his art. How much he loved it.”

She took us up a mahogany staircase softened by brown shag. The house’s second floor was the same mahogany. Nature prints taken from commercial calendars hung askew at irregular intervals. Five open doors on each side of the hall. Some were set up with a bunk bed, others with a single.

Benny Alvarez had roomed alone in a beige eight-by-eight space at the rear of the house, probably built as servants’ quarters. A single, narrow window, the view partly obstructed by the broad, rust-edged leaves of a towering sycamore. The Sesame Street quilt on the bed was neatly tucked, a matching pillow fluffed.

I said, “Did Benny make his own bed?”

Justine Merck said, “Oh, yes, he took pride in it. He was always neat and clean. Loved to wash his hands and was the first to line up for shower time. He was picky about his clothes, too. Buttoned his shirts up to the neck even in hot weather.”

I thought: Military dad? Convict dad?

I said, “What do you know about his father? His upbringing, period.”

“Nothing, just what I was told about his mom. With some of them you get abuse histories but not Benny. He was well taken care of by his mom and his foster parents.”

“Speaking of which, what’s their name?”

“The Baxters but they moved back to Utah two years ago. That’s why Benny came here.”

Milo and I took in the tiny room. Other than the bed, only one piece of furniture: a white three-drawer dresser. Resting on top, several sheets of paper covered with stick figures.

Milo rifled through the drawers, then checked a small closet. Meager wardrobe, a pair of sneakers on the floor, nothing on the shelf. I thought of Rick Gurnsey’s condom stash. Two men, so different, slaughtered and abased together.

We turned to leave.

Justine Merck said, “Darn. I was hoping you’d find something. Like I said, I’m stupid, so I never stop hoping.”

She watched us from the door until we drove away. Two blocks later, Milo pulled over, entering the shadow of the freeway. “Another one with no local family.”

We each pulled out our phones.

His research began with the basics on Andrea Bauer and Marcella McGann. McGann’s Facebook page portrayed a heavyset, brown-haired woman in her thirties. Favorite music and movies, nothing unconventional. Three photos with an equally chubby boyfriend named Steve.

Dr. Andrea Bauer lived in Montecito and donated to worthy causes. Ph.D. in sociology from Yale, inherited wealth from a deceased developer husband. Buddhist, pacifist, vegan, self-labeled as an “activist,” mother of two, grandmother of one. Lots of images on the Web for her, all at fundraisers. Angular, pretty woman in her sixties with short iron-colored hair brushed straight back from a clear, tan brow.

Nothing remotely nasty in either woman’s background. Perfect driving record for McGann’s five-year-old Nissan Sentra, Bauer had gotten a few speeding tickets in her Porsche Panamera GTS. The 101 north. Heading home in a hurry.

As Milo continued clicking, I looked up art galleries on Hart Street and found Verlang Contemporary. An image search revealed a narrow storefront on the ground floor of an ornate, gargoyle-encrusted twenties building. Gray limestone, somber and impressive; maybe built as a bank.

The elegance diminished by a discarded shopping cart up the block, chips and stains on the stone.

I ran a map search. As Justine Merck had said, not far — .61 mile from the cantaloupe-colored house.

Twenty minutes if you ambled, add a bit more time for the possible distractedness of a mentally challenged man with a creative mind.

Milo clicked off. “Hate when everyone’s law abiding.”

I said, “Short walk home so he was likely abducted sometime Friday afternoon, kept somewhere until he was murdered on Saturday. Skid Row isn’t that far so what Justine told us about the soup kitchen might be relevant. All kinds of people on the street.”

He frowned. “Damn men’s jail isn’t that far, either. Scrotes walking out to freedom, who knows what they’d do.”

He placed a call to Dr. Andrea Bauer, got voicemail. The same for Marcella McGann.

“Okay, let’s have a look at that gallery.”

The brief ride took us past residential and commercial buildings of varying ages and conditions and a fetid homeless encampment occupied by six vagrants, none of whom recognized Benny Alvarez or the woman in the black hat. The outdoor inhabitants seemed strangely serene when questioned, an attitude buttressed by Milo’s distribution of singles and cheap cigars. As we left, a man called out, “God bless you, General!”

The limestone building housing Verlang Contemporary was another holdover, flanked on the north by an eighties motel called The Flower Drum festooned with English, Japanese, and Korean signage and on the left by a two-story block cube housing New World Elegant Jewelers. (WE BUY GOLD!!!) Off in the distance, the pagoda roofs of Chinatown pierced the smog, strangely quaint against the brutalist towers of municipal government.

Verlang’s windows were dark but for a Closed sign. Same for two neighboring art emporia: AB-Original Gallery and The Hoard Collection. The building had two additional stories, no lights from within.

Milo said, “Entire place looks dead. Maybe not enough talent to go around.”

He drove to Hill Street, headed south to Sixth, then west. Traffic had congealed, tempers were fraying, horns farting. He switched on the police band and used it for background. The inflectionless, nonstop dialogue between dispatchers and patrol officers often lulls me drowsy. When I woke up, we were passing the county art museum on Wilshire just east of Fairfax.

He said, “Rise and shine. Let’s get some coffee.”

“Drop me at home and I’ll make a pot.”

“Not decaf, dude.”

“No prob.”

“Kenyan?”

“I think we’ve got that.”

“Think? I was hoping for a guarantee.”

“Life’s rough,” I said. “On the other hand, we definitely have biscotti. Robin baked some with candied citron.”

“Robin bakes?”

“Robin does anything she puts her mind to. One of the good things she got from her mother was a book of home recipes.”

“Biscotti,” he said. “Lovely language, Italian. Okay, fine, doesn’t have to be Kenyan. See? I’m doing what you tell me, being psychologically flexible.”

Sitting at my kitchen table, he downed three large mugs of Jamaican coffee and half a dozen biscotti before yawning.

Robin had come in two minutes ago and sat down with us. She smiled. “Want to take a nap, Big Guy?”

“Appreciate the offer but I’m calling it a day.” Leaning over, he pecked her cheek then bent and ruffled the folds of Blanche’s neck before pushing himself up.

I walked him out of the house and down to the Impala. “What’s next, Big Guy?”

“I do grunt work and you enjoy life. Something comes up, I’ll let you know.”

He walked to the driver’s side. Stopped, backtracked, squeezed my hand with both of his. Like being swaddled by oven mitts. “Yeah. Thanks.”