The Last Embrace (24 page)

Soon the road grew dark, fields stretching on either side. It felt peaceful to leave the city. She could see so many stars. She smelled the pungent whiff of nearby dairies, heard the lowing of cattle. They passed crops of corn and lettuce and strawberries. Then slowly the farmscape gave way, first an occasional house, then clusters of them, streetlights, the stars dimming overhead, the buildings growing more dense. A main street, shops.

“Welcome to downtown Whittier,” Pico said, pulling up to a three-story whitewashed adobe that had once been grand. She felt they’d crossed an invisible border back to the nineteenth century.
PICO HOUSE HOTEL,
the faded sign read. Two bandit-faced fellows lounged on a wooden bench on the front porch. Dead plants trailed from upstairs balconies. A wooden shutter banged in the night breeze. Under the streetlight, Lily saw the adobe was grimy with years of accumulated dirt. There was a wooden hitching post along its side where horses had once been tied up. In the back somewhere, there would be a stable.

They got out of the car, coughing from dust the tires had kicked up. Pico held the front door open for her. It was framed in wood, etched in gorgeous smoky glass. At the bottom, someone had patched a crack with tape.

“After you, mademoiselle.”

Lily held back, wondering why he’d brought her here. “What is this place?”

“You said you wanted to see.”

He coaxed her inside, and she stepped into the lobby, marveling at the glory and decrepitude. In the middle of the room, a double staircase made of marble curved up to the second floor. You didn’t climb such a staircase, you
ascended.
Preferably with a page trotting behind you, holding your velvet train. But the carpet, once colorfully woven wool, was unraveling and faded. Above her hung an enormous gas chandelier. Painted wood beams held up the high ceiling. Carved rosewood furniture lay scattered around. Five men sat in the bar, smoking cigarettes and playing cards. They stared at Lily and Pico, then, with the instinctive cunning of ne’er-do-wells who smell John Law, packed up and slunk outside.

Lily looked around. Tarnished brass spittoons were stacked in a corner. Gigantic birdcages of filigreed iron gaped empty, the paper on the bottom littered with petrified bird droppings. The lace curtains were yellowed from generations of tobacco smoke. The once-fancy wallpaper peeled off the walls. Dead flies decayed on the windowsill. Lily’s nose wrinkled.

Far away on a tinny radio, Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalbán were singing “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” At the reception desk, a man’s head suddenly popped out from behind the counter. He yawned and said sleepily, “Will you be wanting a room, sir?”

Lily’s breath caught. She was suddenly hyperaware, felt the same stillness as earlier in her room. The loaded words of the song, Montalbán’s sly seduction, had never resonated so strongly.

“I’m just showing a friend around,” Pico said.

“Very well, sir.”

They continued their stroll. Lily felt the excess energy drain away. The song was just a song again, not a suggestion.

“Years ago, this was the best hotel in all Los Angeles,” Pico said. “Out there”—he pointed past French doors at the rear of the lobby—“was a courtyard planted with exotic flowers and trees. The most expensive rooms overlooked the fountain. The restaurant was known as far away as Seattle and Denver for its French chef. Guy by the name of Sharles Laugier.”

“How do you know all this?”

He gave her a sad, melancholy look. “My great-grandfather built it.”

A little shock of pleasure and curiosity coursed through her at his revelation. “Who was your great-grandfather?”

Pico shoved his hands in his pockets. “His name was Pío Pico.”

The name rang a bell with Lily. A fourth-grade field trip to the San Gabriel Mission. California history. “Wasn’t he…” Lily’s voice trailed away. He wasn’t a bandit revolutionary like Pancho Villa or a Franciscan missionary like Father Junípero Serra, or an explorer like Gaspar de Portolà. Queer, it was on the tip of her tongue.

Pico waited, a glazed, expectant look on his face. When she finally gave up, he said, “Pío Pico was the last Mexican governor of California. He died in 1870.”

“Mexican?” she said, shocked. “But you’ve got light skin and brown hair and, what, hazel eyes?”

Now that she examined them, they were more tawny than hazel, flecked with gold as they caught the light.

“Never fear, the blood’s been quite diluted since then.”

She blushed. “I didn’t mean…”

“That’s okay, don’t worry about it.”

“So how did…?”

“My great-grandfather believed in sowing his seed. Had three kids with his ‘official’ mistress. Then, toward the end of his life, a Scottish maid at the Pico mansion caught his eye. He was in his seventies and she was eighteen when she gave birth to my grandfather. The family never acknowledged the kid. Not that there was any money left by then.”

Her history came flooding back. “Didn’t Pío Pico get one of the original Spanish land grants?”

Pico scuffed his shoe and looked wistful. “At one time he owned twenty-two thousand acres in San Diego County. Where Camp Pendleton is today. Plus his
ranchita
here in Whittier. All gone. To con men, gambling debts, bad luck, and worse investments. He died penniless.”

“So how’d your great-grandmother raise an illegitimate child?”

“She sold the jewels he bought her with the last of his money. My grandfather grew up rough, though. Betwixt and between. Married a pretty waiter girl from France he met at the San Antonio Winery and they had four children before he split for good.” He gave a tight smile. “I come from a long line of wastrels.”

“What about your father?”

“Oh, he turned things around, all right,” Pico said. “He became a cop.”

That Sam Pico’s kid?

The fix was in on that one.

“Well, there you go,” Lily said stoutly, pushing the memory away. “Each generation makes its own destiny.”

Pico’s mouth twitched. She sensed his mingled pride, shame, and melancholy that his once-heralded bloodline had passed into history. Alta California was gone, its rulers and lineage dispersed, its families and vast ranchos broken up. New gods of commerce and celluloid strode the arid land. Even the language had changed.

“You’re, like, original California royalty,” Lily said in a low voice.

“Are you not seeing this place? It’s a dump.”

“Just think what that land grant would be worth today. Millions.” A shiver ran through her. “If Pío Pico hadn’t been swindled. If he hadn’t been greedy and impulsive.”

“I need a drink,” Pico said.

They walked into the dingy bar. Pico slid into a booth. Lily made for the other side, then saw that flaking plaster from the ceiling had rained chalky dust across her seat. She wiped it off but only smeared it further. With an exasperated sigh, she scooted in next to him.

The detective’s arm draped along the top of the wooden booth. Immediately he removed it, careful not to touch her shoulder. He ordered them brandy, then seemed to retreat deep inside himself.

“Sometimes I come here to think,” he said after a waiter brought the drinks. “I know it sounds strange, because he’s been dead almost eighty years, but I can feel my great-grandfather here in this place he built. When I get a day off, I come and poke through stuff in the basement and the attic, hunting for traces of him. I’ve salvaged a few paintings, some furniture, a handful of letters. Odds and ends. They keep a room for me upstairs, and I store everything there and pay a lady to keep it clean. Don’t know why, really. Can’t think who’d ever want it. It’s more because I can’t stand the thought of his stuff moldering into dust or getting tossed out with the trash. So I polish and fix it up. And I talk to him about what I’m doing, tell him about my cases. I guess it’s my way of praying.”

“Does he answer you?”

Pico laughed. “I’m not that crazy. But when I leave, my head’s more clear, and I’m at peace. Even sitting here tonight, watching it crumble all around me, it feels all right. Reminds me of my mortality. That’s not a bad thing for a homicide detective to keep in mind.”

His voice was slow and hypnotic, his eyes deep wells that receded further away with each sentence he spoke. Lily felt she was disappearing into them, tilting, spinning, falling, head over heels.

“I’m glad you brought me here,” she whispered.

“Never shown anybody this place, leastways a girl.” He took a long drink. “My pops thinks I’m nuts for caring about some old Mexican the rest of the world has forgotten. He said it’s not something you go around telling people when you’re a cop. Especially not after Sleepy Lagoon and the Zoot Suit Riots.”

He shifted restlessly beside her. With a sudden motion, he tossed back the rest of his drink. Soon he’d take her home. A sense of impending loss swept over her. She wanted to prolong their time together, couldn’t bear the moment when they’d say good night.

“Would you show me the unofficial Pío Pico Museum?”

He looked at her in surprise. “You actually want to see more of this raggedy-ass place?”

“Consider it an impromptu history lesson.”

He pulled back, blinking. “Well, all right.”

He paid and they walked back to the lobby and made their way up the staircase. On the second floor, the stairs grew more modest. They passed a group of men in crew cuts walking down.

Lily turned to watch. “And here I thought this place was almost abandoned.”

“They’re vets. Living in temporary housing on the third floor. They’ll be gone soon.”

Holding the carved railing, Pico led them to the top floor and down a hallway. The walls were freshly whitewashed here, the carpet threadbare but clean. Behind a closed door, Lily heard an ad for Adolph’s meat tenderizer. At the end of the hallway, Pico fished out a ring of keys. He selected an ornamental black key that looked like it belonged in an antique store, inserted it, and turned the lock.

The room had eighteen-foot ceilings and most of the space was given over to boxes and carved wood furniture stacked taller than a man. It smelled of ancient dust, rosin, cracked leather, and wood oil. Lily saw a hand-tooled leather saddle worked in silver perched atop one of the stacks. A large oil painting of a fierce, hawkeyed man on horseback hung over the fireplace. He wore nineteenth-century finery and had long wavy black hair, olive skin, and a familiar nose that started high on his face and came straight down. Other paintings, many in what looked like their original gilt frames, lay stacked on their sides against one wall. Lily saw a plein air landscape that might have hung in a museum. Floor-to-ceiling velvet drapes of flaming burnt orange covered a large window. The room was clearly used for storage, with only a narrow path leading to an iron bedstead, made up neatly with tightly pulled blankets, muslin sheets, and a flattened pillow.

Pico moved past her to the curtains, pulled them open, and slid up the casement window. Fresh night air poured in, soft light from the courtyard. From far away, she heard laughter and languid
canciones
in Spanish.

“It really is a museum,” she said, looking around.

The fireplace mantel was crammed with nutcrackers and cigar clippers, old menus written in sepia ink, hand-drawn maps, flasks, a carved-wood hunting rifle with ivory inlays—mementos and knickknacks of all sorts. She ran her finger along the mantel and it came away clean. Someone cared about this place.

“This is only a sample of what’s been lost.”

She nodded at the oil portrait glowering down at her, an imperious look in the haughty eyes. “Is that…”

“It is indeed. Lily Kessler, meet Pío Pico.”

“How do you do, sir?” Lily curtsied and extended her hand for the portrait to kiss. “It’s a great honor.”

Pico took a step toward her, hesitated, then turned on his heel and pulled down two stacked chairs. He brought them to the window, then cleared a space so they could sit down. Crossing the room once more, he got two glasses from a built-in cupboard. He produced a bottle of brandy, poured them each a snort, and handed hers over. Etched onto the glasses in a handsome script were the words
Pico House Hotel.

“Salud.”

They clinked glasses and drank.

“What a strange night.” He shook his head. “But then, this case has been strange from the beginning. The more I learn, the more bedeviling it gets.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t either. But I’ve been thinking about it, and you’ve got to be careful. The last thing I’d want is for you to get hurt.”

“Why is that?” Lily held up her glass, turning it around. She tried to empty her eyes of all emotion. A pulse beat strongly in her neck. She breathed in, then out. The room seemed to shimmer at the edges.

“Because we don’t need anyone else getting killed,” Pico said with barely suppressed annoyance.

“Of course not,” Lily said, disappointed.

“We should go.” He stood up, collected their glasses. “C’mon. It’s late. I need to get you home.”

Reluctantly, she rose.

Pico moved toward the door, stopped. “It’s no good,” he said, his back to her.