She hung up without comment.
Ten minutes later, my service put her through.
"He wasn't in," she said, "but I spoke to a woman cop who said you're for real. So, okay, I'm sorry for what you're going through- once you been through it you get sorry a lot for other people. Okay, what can I do for you?"
"I was just wondering if Becky ever talked about her work. Said anything that might help find Gritz and clear this up."
"Talked? Yeah, she talked. She loved her… hold on… my stomach… hold on, I thought I was okay, but now I feel like I have to throw up again- let me go do that, and then I'll call you back- no, forget that, I hate the phone. Phone rings now, my heart starts going like it's going to explode- you want to come down and see me it's okay. Let me see what you look like, I hate the phone."
"How about I come to your house?"
"Sure- no, forget it. The place is depressing. I never was a homemaker, now I don't do a darn thing. Why don't you meet me over in Hancock Park? Not the neighborhood, the actual park- know where it is?"
"Over by the tar pits."
"Yeah, meet me on the Sixth Street side, behind the museums. There's a shady area, some benches. What're you gonna wear?"
"Jeans and a white shirt."
"Fine. I'll be wearing- no, this is wrinkled, gotta change it- I'll be wearing a… green blouse. Green with a white collar. Just look for an ugly old woman with a green blouse and a crappy disposition."
• • •
The blouse was grass green. She was sitting under a thatch of mismatched trees, on a bench facing the rolling lawn that separated the County Art Museum from the dinosaur depository George Page had built with Mission Pack money. At the end of the lawn the tar pits were an oily black sump behind wrought iron pickets. Through the fence, plaster mastodons reared and glared at the traffic on Wilshire Boulevard. Tar leaked through the entire park, seeping up in random spots, and I just missed stepping in a bubbling pool as I made my way toward Rolanda Basille.
Her back was to Sixth Street, but I had a three-quarter view of her body. Around sixty-five. Her collar was a snowy Peter Pan job, her slacks olive wool, much too heavy for the weather. She had hair dyed as black as the tar, cut in a flapper bob with eyebrow-length bangs. Her face was crinkled and small. Arthritic hands curled in her lap. Red tennis shoes covered her feet, over white socks, folded over once. A big, green plastic purse hung from her shoulder. If she weighed a hundred pounds, it was after Thanksgiving dinner.
The ground was covered with dry leaves and I made noise as I approached. She kept gazing out at the lawn and didn't look back. Children were playing there, mobile dots on an emerald screen, but I wasn't sure she saw them.
The random trees had been trimmed to form a canopy, and the shadows they cast were absolute. Several other benches were scattered nearby, most of them empty. A black man slept on one, a paper bag next to his head. Two women of Rolanda Basille's approximate age sat on another, strumming guitars and singing.
I walked in front of her.
She barely looked up, then slapped the bench.
I sat down. Music drifted over from the two guitarists. Some sort of folk song, a foreign language.
"The Stepne sisters," she said, sticking out her tongue. "They're here all the time. They stink. Did you ever see a picture of my daughter?"
"Just in the paper."
"That wasn't a flattering one." She opened the big purse, searched for a while, and took out a medium-sized envelope. Withdrawing three color photographs, she handed them to me.
Professional portraits, passable quality. Rebecca Basille sitting in a white wicker chair, posed three different ways in front of a mountain-stream backdrop, wearing a powder-blue dress and pearls. Big smile. Terrific teeth. Very pretty; soft, curvy build, soft arms, a trifle heavy. The dress was low-cut and showed some cleavage. Her brown hair was shiny and long and iron-curled at the ends, her eyes full of humor and just a bit of apprehension, as if she'd been sitting for a long time and had doubts about the outcome.
"Very lovely," I said.
"She was beautiful," said Rolanda. "Inside and out."
She held out her hand and I returned the photos. After she'd replaced them in the purse, she said, "I just wanted you to see the person she was, though even these don't do it. She didn't like having her picture taken- used to be chubby when she was little. Her face was always gorgeous."
I nodded.
She said, "There was a wounded bird within five miles, Becky'd find it and bring it home. Shoeboxes and cotton balls and eyedroppers. She tried to save anything- bugs-those little gray curly things?"
"Potato bugs?"
"Those. Moths, ladybugs, whatever, she'd save 'em. When she was real little she went through this stage of not wanting anyone to cut the lawn because she thought it hurt the grass."
She tried to smile, but her lips got away from her and began trembling. She covered them with one hand.
"You see what I'm saying?" she said, finally.
"I do."
"She never changed. In school, she went straight for the outcasts- anyone who was different, or hurting- the retarded kids, harelips, you name it. Sometimes I think she was attracted to hurt."
Another forage in the purse. She found red-framed sunglasses and put them on. Given the ambient shade, they must have blacked out the world.
I said, "I can see why she went into social work."
"Exactly. I always figured she would do something like that, always told her nursing or social work would be perfect for her. But of course when you tell them, they do something else. So it took her a while to know what she wanted. She didn't want to go to college, did some waitressing, some file clerking, secretarial. My other kids were different. Real driven. Got a boy practicing orthopedic medicine in Reno, and my older girl works in a bank in St. Louis- assistant vice president."
"Was Becky the youngest?"
She nodded. "Nine years between her and Kathy, eleven between her and Carl. She was- I was forty-one when I had her, and her father was five years older than me. He walked out on us right after she was born. Left me high and dry with three kids. Sugar diabetic, and he refused to stop drinking. He started losing feeling in his feet, then the eyes started going. Finally, they began cutting pieces off of him and he decided with no toes and one arm it was time to be a swinging bachelor- crazy, huh?"
She shook her head.
"He moved to Tahoe, didn't last long after that," she said. "Becky was two when he died. We hadn't heard from him all that time, suddenly the government started sending me his veteran's benefits… You think that's what made her so vulnerable? No- what do you people call it?- father role model?"
"How was Becky vulnerable?" I said.
"Too trusting." She touched her collar, smoothed out an invisible wrinkle. "She went straight for the losers. Believed every cock-and-bull story."
"What kind of losers?"
"More wounded birds. Guys she thought she could fix. She wanted to fix the world."
Her hands began to shake and she shoved them under her purse. The Stepne sisters were singing louder. She said: "Shut up."
"Did the losers mistreat her?"
"Losers," she said, as if she hadn't heard. "The great poet with no poems to show for it, living off welfare. Bunch of musicians, so-called. Not men. Little boys. I nagged her all the time, all the dead-ends she was choosing. In the end, none of that mattered a whit, did it?"
She lifted her sunglasses and wiped an eye with one finger. Putting the shades back, she said, "You don't need to hear this, you've got your own problems."
I saw faint reflections of myself in her black lenses, distorted and tense.
"You seem like a nice young fellow, listening to me go on like this. Ever save any bugs yourself?"
"Maybe a couple of times."
She smiled. "Bet it was more than a couple. Bet you punched those holes in the top of the jars so the bugs could breathe, right? Bet your mother loved that, too, all those creepy things in the house."