Blowing Smoke (11 page)

Z
sa Zsa and I finished the last of the French fries I'd bought at Burger King earlier that evening as I pulled into Cedar Estates. The place was a trailer park, something Rose had neglected to mention when she'd told me where I could find her son, a telling omission in my view. Located a good twenty- to thirty-minute ride away from her estate, off the main road, it was hidden by a large scrim of trees. Driving by, you'd never know the place existed, which I suppose was the general idea, the poor being present but by general agreement invisible in Cazenovia.

Someone had scrawled
“Cedar Estates welcomes you
—
yeah, right,”
in red spray paint over the large sign that directed all visitors to report to the manager's office. Another person had scrawled
“Bienviendos a pequena España.”
(Welcome to little Spain.) Arthur Peterson's words when he'd seen Raul in the back of my car flashed through my mind.

He'd said, “He lives ... in the trailer park. All the Mexicans around here do.”

He'd been referring to this place. He had to be. How many other trailer parks could there be in the area? Damn. I should have brought that picture with me. Now I'd have to come back later. I brushed a moth off my arm as I read the rest of the sign. Loud music, skateboards, unleashed dogs, and unsupervised children were forbidden. Speed limits would be strictly enforced. Underneath someone had written,
“Chinga tu madre.”
Translation: Go fuck your mother. An iconic phrase in any language. A big plastic pot of parched, weed-infested geraniums sat off to one side, someone's idea of decoration.

The trailers, aluminum-sided rectangles, were lined up in a grid pattern, eight to a row. The streets were dirt. Signs marked out the corners. Groups of men in undershirts were sitting outside in folding chairs, drinking beer and playing dominoes and cards. The smell of chorizo wafted through the air. Packs of children were running around as their mothers gossiped with each other. The faint sounds of ranchero music punctuated their conversations. Even with the trees, the scene reminded me of Spanish Harlem on a hot summer night.

I halted at the first group of men and asked if they knew a woman called Dorita. Not that I really expected an answer. They'd gotten that we're just-poor-humble-peasants-who-don' t-know-shit expression on their faces as soon as I'd stopped the car.

“Dorita?” one repeated in broken English. “We're sorry.
Lo sentio. No la conocemos.”
They studied their cards.

“I'm not INS.”

Their faces remained blank. I described Raul to them and explained the situation. Their expressions didn't change. I didn't blame them. In the places they'd come from you never answered questions by people you weren't acquainted with. I handed out my card and moved on to the next group, and the one after that. But I might as well have saved myself the trouble. I got the same reaction from each one I talked to. The sudden silence as I approached, the wary eyes, the head shaking. Finally, after about half an hour of canvassing the park, I gave it up as a bad job and did what I was being paid to do: find Mrs. Taylor's baby boy and have a chat with him about Pat Humphrey.

 

 

I would have loved to have heard what Mrs. Taylor had said when Louis had told her he was living here among the kind of people that she hired to work on her estate. Somehow she didn't strike me as someone who endorsed the concept of social equality, I thought as I bumped along the road to Louis's trailer.

It was set on a cul de sac at the end of the street, surrounded by woods; hence, the name Tree Lane, I assumed. The locale afforded Louis a little more privacy than some of the other people that lived here. His trailer was one of those double-wide jobs that are never meant to ride the roads but go straight from the factory to their allotted plots of ground. Someone, maybe Louis, had put up a foot-high white picket fence around it. Inside the fence there were enough garden ornaments stuck in the earth to stock a nursery. Two deer. An elk. A family of elves. A couple of rabbits. A woman bending over. A fountain with a frog on top. And if that wasn't enough, two rubber tires with flowers growing out of their centers flanked the doorway.

A spider hopped onto my arm when I opened the door of my car. I brushed it off. Watching it ride into the night on an undulating strand of silk, I thought that unless Louis started living in an ashram in India, he couldn't get much farther away from the environment in which he'd grown up. I wondered if he'd picked this place for that reason. As a defiant gesture. Especially since it was so close to his mother's estate. Had he ever invited her out here? Had she come in her fancy car? Been shocked? Had he said to her, Look at how I'm living? Or, This is what I like. Accept me for what I am.

Only Rose Taylor wouldn't do that, I thought as Zsa Zsa jumped onto the grass. She nosed around, then followed me through the fence. I rang the bell.

A moment later, a voice trilled, “Debbie, thank God you're here. I'm having the worst trouble zipping up this dress.” Then the screen door banged open, and a big-haired, big-breasted woman in a beaded dress filled the door. “You're not Debbie,” she exclaimed.

No kidding.

I handed her my card. “I'm Robin Light, and I'm looking for Louis. I've been told he lives here.”

The woman blinked. “Sorry. You've got the wrong information.”

I kept looking at her as I apologized. There was something about her. Something about her nose. The way it curved down. I'd seen it before. And that lanternlike jaw. Then it hit me. I did a double take.

“Louis?” I said, my voice going squeaky.

The woman lifted her chin up and turned her head away from me and into the shadows. She'd done it to conceal her face, but the movement was a mistake, because it tightened her neck muscles and displayed the faint outline of an Adam's apple. “My name is Lila.”

I took another step forward. Now that I was closer, I could see that her hair was one of those bad wigs that you see gathering dust in cheap hair-salon windows, and even though she was wearing enough pancake makeup on her face to outfit a production of
Macbeth,
it didn't quite cover the faint shadow above her upper lip.

“Not the last time I saw you, it wasn't.” I remembered Louis at Hillary's in his polo shirt and shorts. He'd been big and ungainly then. He still was. Only now he was big and ungainly in a long-sleeved, scooped-neck, beaded red gown. He wasn't a good-looking guy, but he made one hell of an ugly woman.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” she insisted.

“Yes, you do. You're Louis, Rose Taylor's bouncing baby boy.”

“Get out of here.” He started to close the door, but I was quicker and pushed my way inside before he could. His nostrils flared. “You can't come in.”

“I already have,” I told him as I closed the door. The smell, a combination of depilatory, Chanel No. 5, and talcum powder, slapped me in the face.

“I'm going to call the police.”

“And have them charge you with a fashion crime?”

“I hope you're not going to make stand-up comedy a career choice. I could have you arrested for invasion of private property.”

“Yes, you could.” But I didn't believe him. His voice lacked conviction. “Be my guest.” I'd be gone before they arrived.

“I'm going for the phone,” he snarled, and headed deeper inside the trailer. I followed on his heels.

“Are you sure you want the authorities out here?” I said to his back.

He didn't reply.

“I mean, your mother is pretty well known about these parts. Aren't you afraid someone would tell her about your ... predilections?”

He whirled around. “You're right. I should take care of you myself.”

I put up my hands. “Hey, calm down. I'm not going to say anything.”

“You'd better not.” Louis moved closer to me. I could smell the Lavoris on his breath. “I used to box professionally.” He feinted a right to my jaw. “I bet no one told you that.”

“You're right. They didn't,” I replied, wondering how much a whole new set of teeth would cost me if he punched me in the mouth.

“I was good.”

“What name did you fight under? The petticoat kid?” His eyes widened slightly. For a moment, I thought I'd gone too far. “That was a joke,” I said.

“A bad one.” He moved his head around, stretching his neck one way and then the other, the way professional athletes do. “You think I'm a fag?”

“Actually, I don't care if you like to get it on with pink elephants. I just want to talk to you about Pat Humphrey.”

“That's why you're here?”

“Yup.”

He dropped his fists to his side. “What about her? Hillary said that was settled. She said she gave you your money. Don't tell me she didn't?”

“No. She did. Only now Pat Humphrey has disappeared.”

“Okay.” He fingered one of the beads on his dress. “But what's that got to do with me?”

“Your mother is worried. She hired me to find out what happened to her.” Out of the corner of my eye I watched Zsa Zsa flop down by the door.

“She should be glad she's gone.”

“Evidently she doesn't share your opinion.”

Louis cracked his knuckles.

“When was the last time you saw her?”

He made a minute adjustment to his wig. “A couple of weeks ago, I think.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, I'm not sure. I don't keep my social calendar in my head.”

“What were you doing this morning?”

“I was sleeping. I work nights. Not that it's any of your business.”

“And you don't have any idea where Pat Humphrey could have gone?”

Louis shrugged. “No. Why should I? It's not as if we keep in touch.”

“You don't seem especially upset at the news,” I observed. “Could that be because you already know about it?”

The sounds of a baby wailing disconsolately seeped through the trailer walls.

“Even if I did know—which I don't—that doesn't make me responsible. And you're right. I'm not upset. Poor Mom. Not being able to chat with Sheba.” Louis shook his head in mock concern. “What happened? Did Humphrey take all of Mom's money and clear out?”

“If she did, your mother didn't tell me about it. Would it bother you if she had?” The smells in the trailer were getting to me. I wished Louis would open up a window.

“Why should it?”

“Considering that it'll all be yours one day, yours and your sisters, I find that answer odd.”

He smoothed the front of his dress down. “By the time Geoff is done, there won't be anything left to get.” Louis swatted at a fly. Perspiration was beginning to seep through his pancake makeup, leaving creases around his mouth and nose. “My feeling is, let her get what she can. That's less for Geoff. It was Hillary's idea to hire you. Not mine. She was the one who didn't like her.”

“But you do?”

“I didn't say that.”

I shifted my weight from one foot to another and tried to keep impatience out of my voice. The baby's cry was sharper. Where the hell were its parents? “Shana Driscoll tells a different story.”

Louis glared at me. “Yeah? Such as?”

“She says she heard you and Pat Humphrey fighting the other day.”

“Well, she's full of shit.” And he made a chuffing sound with his mouth. “She was the one that was fighting with her, not me.”

“And how do you know that?”

“I saw them.”

“Why should Shana lie?”

Louis laughed unpleasantly. “To get me in trouble with my mother.”

“And why would she want to do that?”

“Because that's what she's been doing since she arrived. I don't think a word of truth has come out of that woman's mouth since I met her. Shana is without a doubt the worst thing that has happened to Mom.”

“The worst?”

Louis flushed. “The second worst,” he amended.

“What were they fighting about?”

“I don't know. I was too far away. I just saw them. They were standing on the tennis court.”

“What were you doing there?”

“At the house? Visiting. You mean I don't have the right to go see my own mother?” he demanded when I didn't reply.

“I didn't say that.” I looked around at the trailer. “So what made you live here?” I asked, changing the subject.

“I like it. It's cheap. It's convenient. The people here are nice.”

“They're certainly different...”

“From what I grew up with? You'd better believe it, sister. Your car dies and you need to go somewhere, they'll loan you theirs.”

“Unlike your mother.”

“My mother,” Louis said bitterly, “will only give me something if it makes her look good. That's all she cares about. Everything goes for that goddamned house of hers and for Geoff.” Behind the fake eyelashes, I could see the hurt in his eyes. “And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to finish getting dressed.”

“Going to a party?” I said, trying to keep the conversation going.

“Yes. Not that it's any concern of yours.” And he turned and went deeper into the trailer.

He stopped, then turned and faced me when he got to two long, narrow tables, set up on either side of the trailer. They were crammed with cartons filled with blue-and-white-enamel tinware, old cooking implements, irons, paperweights, old coins, framed illustrations, and costume jewelry.