Grave on Grand Avenue (21 page)

When I try the door of the Phoenix Instruments office, it doesn’t budge. Taped on the locked door is a handwritten sign, misspelled:
Closed, due to family emrgency
.

*   *   *

I’m almost home when my phone rings. This time I actually stop the car at the curb before I answer. It’s a 213 number. Downtown LA.

“Hello,” I answer.

“Who is this again? Your message wasn’t that clear on voice mail.”

I recognize the voice immediately. “Kendra, this is Ellie Rush. Officer Rush with the LAPD Bicycle Coordination Unit.”

“Oh yeah, the bicycle cop.” Kendra’s voice loses the tone of formality that it had before. “How can I help you?”

“Well, it’s about Xu’s cello.”

“He’s already completed his concert here.”

“I know. I was just wondering why you recommended Phoenix Instruments as the appraiser of the cello. Just seemed a little strange, being a Chinese company and all.”

“Ah, well. Mr. Xu insisted on it. He said that they would understand the true value of the instrument.”

Aha
, I think.
Fang Xu insisted on it, did he?

“Is there anything else?” she asks impatiently.

“No,” I say and thank her for her time.

Shippo, who’s been belted into the Skylark through a special harness, sits beside me, panting. Some drool has dripped from his open mouth onto the vinyl seat, but I don’t care.

“Did you hear that, Shippo?” I say to my passenger, rubbing him behind his ears. “I think that your mama is starting to connect some
dots.”

ELEVEN

I usually don’t get into work early, but I do today. I leave my car and bike at home and take the Gold Line in. I even get a good seat by the window. I love the stretch where we are above the 110 freeway, above the train yard. We seem to be flying. I’ve been feeling like that lately, like the ground beneath me cannot be trusted. Why has Nay been avoiding me? She’s obviously finished with Washington Jeung.

I make the transfer to the Red Line at Union Station, distracted by the enticing scent of gigantic pretzels being baked and tossed in sugar and cinnamon at a shop in the station. I get off at Pershing Square and walk through the Jewelry District and then the outskirts of the produce and flower markets.

I’m in a pretty good mood, all things considered. That is, until I hear what’s being said in the room where we have roll call.

Mac is talking to a group of officers, all men, of course. Some have Starbucks cups; others hold Styrofoam ones filled with the brown liquid the station calls coffee. “She’ll probably have all of us acting as her personal coolies, I’m tellin’ you. So before you know it, you’ll be pulling her rickshaw. She wants to be chief someday.”

My presence is a conversation killer. Before, I wasn’t sure how many people knew that I was the niece of the assistant chief, but by their actions, I get a definitive answer. All of them. The men scatter like cockroaches. I’m upset to see Johnny among the pests. From all the times that we’ve worked together, I thought that he would be on my side.

It’s just Mac and me left facing off with each other.

“Stop spreading lies,” I say to him.

“You know they’re not lies. She’s your aunt; you know how she is.”

It’s one thing for Mac to have personal issues with my aunt. It’s quite another for him to spread his crap around the squad room, a place where I also work.

“Just because you’re feeling sexually inferior, don’t put that on a female cop.” I can’t believe I just said that.

Mac desperately wants to chew me out. Yell obscenities. Maybe even shove me. But he would be in beaucoup trouble if he tried that. He knows it and I know it. And he knows that I know it.

Just then Cherniss enters the room. “Good, glad I caught both of you here. I’m planning to send the two of you to patrol the Public Practice program at the Music Center and Grand Park today.”

“I’m not going anywhere with her!” Mac says, storming out. I’m actually relieved—now that he’s thrown a tantrum,
I can be the one who’s all Zen and Buddha-like. Believe it or not, seeing Mac’s outburst gives me a sense of power, knowing that he caved in under the pressure. Usually it’s me who gets all emotional. That he lost it right now reveals his Achilles’ heel.

“What happened?”

I shrug my shoulders. Put on a mysterious Mona Lisa smile.

“Are you feeling all right, Rush?” is all the response I get. Cherniss says that he’s going to sit down with both of us to talk about our issues, but in the meantime he assigns me with Armine for today.

After our roll call, Armine and I get our bikes from the wall rack.

As soon as we’re outside, fastening our helmets, Armine asks, “What is going on, Ellie?”

“What do you mean?” I’m trying to maintain my cool demeanor, but I think that my upper lip is starting to tremble.

“Everyone in the squad room was whispering about you and Mac. They say you guys are having a feud or something.”

“It’s a one-way feud. He has a problem with me.”

Armine gets on her bike and I get on mine. “I heard about your aunt. I didn’t know that you were related to one of the deputy chiefs. You could have told me.”

“I didn’t want any preferential treatment. I want to earn my way up.”

“You’re still young.” Armine then sighs. I hate that kind of sigh. My mother does it constantly. “No sense in being too proud. You’ll find that we need all the help that we can get.”

*   *   *

The Public Practice program is taking place at both the Music Center and Grand Park, so Armine and I decide to split up, with me taking the north side by the Music Center fountains.

Public Practice is a totally cool idea—amateur musicians apply to practice in public around the centers of music in downtown Los Angeles. Benjamin actually submitted his online application last year to practice his guitar. He didn’t get accepted, and we both thought it was because a guitar is so commonplace. A didgeridoo, a long aboriginal instrument made out of bamboo, on the other hand, is not so common. A heavyset African American man, who looks anything but aboriginal, blows into his bamboo pipe on the edge of the fountain. The organizers have placed a sandwich sign that reads
PRIVATE PRACTICE
in front of him. The sign is also a self-introduction. It says that the didgeridoo player’s name is Jervey; he’s a writer and English professor at USC. He got into the aboriginal instrument when he badly fractured his leg and had a lot of time on his hands. A friend gave him the didgeridoo as a semijoke; I guess the joke is on the friend because Jervey sounds pretty darn good as he places his mouth on the end of the large reed and blows. The sound is bouncy and repetitive; I feel like I could be in the Australian outback, watching kangaroos jump by.

On another corner I actually do see a guitar player, a woman about my mother’s age. Lois is a banker who picked up the guitar after her daughter left for college. She first started playing once a week and now does it five times a
week because it relaxes her after work. Lois is definitely a beginner, but seems determined. I see why Benjamin wasn’t accepted. You have to be willing to be swept away by your passion. No cool stoicism here.

*   *   *

After work, I stop by Osaka’s, somehow expecting the Fearsome Foursome to all magically be there, intact. I recognize a couple of girls who were active with one of PPW’s sororities. They’ve graduated now, and they look gainfully employed in their suits and ID lanyards hanging from their necks.

I don’t expect that they would remember me. I stayed away from the Greek scene; I was known among jocks and Asian American circles. But one of them calls out to me. “Hey, didn’t you go to PPW?”

She has freckles all over her cheeks and on the bridge of her nose. She’s cute, really cute. She wears her straight blond hair back in a headband.

“Yeah,” I say, in no mood for small talk. I’ve changed into my street clothes, and I look a bit rumpled. My hair is mussed up and frizzy. I’m wearing jeans and a knit shirt, compliments of Target.

“You played on the volleyball team,” the taller, brunette one says. Her voice is low and steady; she’s the quiet one of the pair. “My brother was on the men’s team.”

She tells me his name and I remember him. He looks like her, tall and lean with wavy brown hair.

“So what are you doing now?” the brunette, who tells me her name is Emily, asks.

“I work for the LAPD,” I tell them.

“Oh, wow, communications?” the blonde—Hailey—interjects.

“No, patrol. I’m with the bicycle unit.”

“You have got to be kidding me.”

I brace for the awkward looks, the mocking comments. But the girls seem interested.

“You mean, you have a gun and everything?” Hailey asks.

“Yup.”

“That is so wild.”

“Hailey and I both work at City Hall in city planning. We should get together sometime,” Emily says.

“Have you been to the Edison? Coolest bar ever,” Hailey comments.

“Haven’t made it over there yet,” I tell them.

“We’re planning to go over there now,” Emily says.

Hailey gives me a once-over. “They do have a dress code. No jeans,” she adds apologetically.

“Another time.” I smile. Although I do have a couple of skirts and dresses hanging in my closet, my wardrobe is pretty jeans-centric.

We exchange contact information and even business cards (how important are we?) and bend over our phones, plugging in one another’s numbers.

The two girls, their squishy handbags in the crook of their arms, then wave good-bye and leave the crowded ramen house. I notice the eyes of a number of men follow their exit, probably imagining what could have been. I know that I should be happy that I’m making new friends, but to be honest, interacting with them just makes me miss Nay all the more.

*   *   *

I don’t even bother ordering anything at Osaka’s. There’s no wait for a counter spot, but I don’t feel like eating alone. I instead go down the street to Fugetsudo, a Japanese confectionery shop that’s around a hundred and ten years old, according to a sign proudly showcased out front announcing that milestone, along with some old black-and-white photos to establish their history.

When I say confectionery, I mean
manju
, sweet cakes usually filled with red bean, as well as mochi, steamed sweet rice that’s pounded and sometimes flavored and colored. There’s a pretty white one with pink and green stripes called
suama
. Some cooks have experimented with more contemporary ingredients like peanut butter and chocolate. I get a
suama
, Aunt Cheryl’s favorite, and a peanut butter one, mine.

“Aunt Cheryl, are you still at work?” I ask on my cell phone. Carrying my little white paper bag of sweets, I walk down First Street toward her office.

“Working late,” she answers.

“I’m nearby, and I have mochi, the striped kind you like.”

It doesn’t take much to entice her. “Come on up.”

Since Fugetsudo is only two blocks away from headquarters, I reach her office in a few minutes. Her administrative assistant has gone for the day, so it’s only the two of us, chewing on mochi around her glass table.

“How are things at work?” she asks in between chews.

I’m sure not going to mention anything about what happened with Mac. Aunt Cheryl is the main reason that he is out to get me, anyway. “Fine,” I say, “although it’s too bad that they couldn’t figure out why Eduardo Fuentes was after
Xu’s cello. I went to his funeral, you know. He seemed like a nice man.”

“Well, nice men sometimes do not-so-nice things. That whole case is a royal headache.”

“What do you mean? I thought it was closed.”

“Xu and his father are missing, and the Chinese government is not happy about it. They want them back immediately. Apparently they fear for their safety.”

“Really?”

“Yes. They even took the cello that was being held in storage for Xu.”

I’m confused. Why would the government be interested in Xu’s cello? Would officials there care that it was a fake?

“I actually saw Fang Xu yesterday,” I tell my aunt, “on my day off.”

On Aunt Cheryl’s otherwise flawless face, lines deepen above the bridge of her nose. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She is annoyed.

“I didn’t know that we were keeping tabs on him.” It’s not like any of the detectives, Cortez included, is sharing information with me.

“Where is he?”

“He was in this office building for Phoenix Instruments. It’s over in Arcadia.”

“He’s staying there?”

“Well, he was up until yesterday afternoon.” I find the address on my phone and e-mail Aunt Cheryl a link. “I doubt he’s there now.”

Aunt Cheryl’s phone beeps with probably my e-mail message.

“I don’t think that he knows where Xu is.”

“The Chinese authorities are more interested in the father, Fang Xu,” my aunt tells me as she strokes her phone screen to presumably check the address for Phoenix Instruments. “The father is more their target than the son.”

I wipe my mouth with one of the napkins in the paper bag.

“I also found out some information about Ron Sullivan,” Aunt Cheryl then announces.

“You found him?”

“No, but I know more about his relationship with Pascoal Fernandes.” She rises and pulls out two cold bottles of water from her mini-refrigerator. After offering me one, she opens the other and takes a sip.

“Yeah, they were coworkers on the same movies.” I recall what my grandfather had told me. “Ron had gambling debts; he was the one who got Puddy to help him rob that bank.”

“Well, according to an old detective that I was able to track down, that’s not what happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your grandfather was actually the mastermind.”

“What?”

“Yeah, he was the one who orchestrated the heist. Ron Sullivan actually testified against Fernandes in the trial back in 1964.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Puddy was the actual brains. He saw Ron’s skill as a makeup artist and thought of exploiting it as a way to rob banks.”

“I don’t get it. So why is Fernandes in town?”