He nodded. “Might as well, we’ll be gentle.”
I stood back as the two of them searched through drawers. Nothing but clothing and not much of that. Same for the two-foot-wide closet crowding the left side of the bed.
“The simple life,” said Lorrie Mendez. “Rich folk claim they want it. Boy, are they full of doo-doo.”
Downstairs, the clerk looked at the photos on Mendez’s phone while playing with his locks. The plain woman was Alicia Santos, “the fat one,” Maria Garcia.
Mendez said, “Where does Ms. Garcia hang out?”
“I dunno.”
Milo said, “What does ‘H.’ stand for?”
“Hartley.”
“What do you think, Hartley? That her real name?”
“Far as I know.”
“You have her Social Security on file.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You don’t?”
Hartley Galloway said, “If someone has it, it ain’t me. But no one does. We don’t got to.”
“Where are tenant records kept?”
“The main office.”
“Where’s that?”
“Huntington Park.”
Milo took out his pad. “Name of the company.”
“Progress Properties and Development,” said Galloway. “Inc.”
“Relatives of yours?”
“They was, I wouldn’t be working here.”
“Where would you be?”
“Vegas.”
“So no idea where Maria Garcia hangs out?”
“Nope. She’s a dyke. They both are.”
Lorrie Mendez said, “Maria Garcia and Alicia Santos are lovers.”
“Prolly,” said Galloway.
“Probably or definitely?”
“They’re all the time holding hands.”
“They get along pretty well.”
“Never complained to me.”
I said, “And no one complained about them?”
“Everyone here is minding their own business.”
As if punctuating that claim, a man entered the building, eyed us, and hurried up the stairs. Lorrie Mendez’s jaw got tight as she watched him.
Milo studied her before turning back to Galloway. “Maria say anything to you about Alicia being gone?”
“Nah.”
“Not a word?”
“When I dint see the skinny one, I assed the fat one and she said the skinny one was gone, she didn’t know where. I assed because they both pay the rent and when I dint see the skinny one I need to know who’s gonna take care of it. You get two or three in a apartment and one bails, they think they just gotta take care of their part not the whole thing. So I assed the fat one and she gets like... you know.”
“We don’t know,” said Mendez.
“You know,” Hartley Galloway insisted. “The eyes. Like... weak? Like she was crying before? Even her.”
“Even?”
“You know. Trying to be like a dude.”
I said, “Tough chick but she’d been crying.”
“Yeah. I still assed her about the rent.”
“What’d she say?”
“She’d take care of it.”
“Has she taken care of it?”
“So far.”
Milo said, “Any idea where she works?”
“The taqueria.”
“Which taqueria?”
“Alvarado and Fourth.” Pointing languidly at nothing in particular.
Mendez said, “Armando’s?”
“I buy food sometimes there. She don’t gimme no discount.”
Mendez stepped closer to the plastic. “You told us you didn’t know where she hangs out.”
“She doesn’t hang out there, she works.”
“Anything else you’re not telling us, Hartley?”
“Like what?”
“How about something that would help us locate Alicia Santos?”
“She done something I should know about?”
“Nothing other than disappearing.”
“Happens,” said Galloway.
Milo said, “People disappear a lot around here?”
“This ain’t the Wilshire Corridor, they go in and come out, pay by the week.”
“A hub of activity.”
Galloway blinked. “Right.”
Lorrie Mendez said, “You do rooms by the day?”
“No way, this ain’t no ho-house. By the week.”
“So Alicia and Maria rent by the week.”
“No,” said Galloway. “You can do monthly also, they did monthly.”
“Maria has paid one month by herself.”
“It was due a coupla days ago, so far she done it. She misses, she’s out.”
“Cash,” said Milo.
“Is king,” said Hartley Galloway.
“How long have Maria and Alicia been living here?”
“Long as I been here.”
“Which is...”
“Year and a half. About. Basically.”
“No problems in all that time?”
“Why?” said Galloway. “The skinny one did something bad? No troublemakers here. Whatever they did before, they can’t do it here.”
I said, “You run a tight ship.”
Galloway’s brow furrowed. “This ain’t no ship. You see water?”
A thick-armed, white-haired man with a too-black mustache worked the counter at Armando’s. Off-hour, only one customer, an orange-vested city worker toting a hard hat and texting as he waited for a take-out order.
The place wasn’t much more than a kiosk, maybe a former pushcart deprived of wheels. Scant free space was filled with hand-lettered signage — breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus on wooden plaques hanging from chains. All that added up to iterations of the same basic food groups: meat, tortillas, beans, cheese — plus an impressive list of soft drinks from Mexico, Central America, a few from the U.S.
Terrific aroma wafting from the rear. One person working the grill and the oven.
When the hard hat left with a sack of massive burritos, Lorrie Mendez stepped up and took his place and spoke in Spanish to the front-man. He waved the cook over.
Maria Garcia stepped outside, wiping her hands on her apron. Her hair had grown out from the photo on the dresser, capping her full face with tight gray curls. She looked older than the photo had suggested, eyes and mouth struggling with gravity, meaty face weathered.
Under the apron, she wore a red-and-blue-plaid shirt and baggy jeans rolled into broad cuffs at the bottom. On her feet were wide, red-soled chukka boots.
Mendez said, “Hi, Maria. We’re the police about Alicia. What can you tell us?”
Maria Garcia’s narrow mouth quivered. She said, “Solamente Español?” in a high, plaintive voice.
Mendez stepped closer to her, forcing eye contact as she spoke.
Maria Garcia seemed to sink lower with each sentence. “Imelda Soriano” evoked a blank look but each mention of “Alicia” elicited a low moan. By the end of the detective’s delivery, she was sniffling and crying silently.
Mendez began asking questions. Garcia dabbed her eyes with her apron and answered without apparent guile. Haltingly at first, then picking up speed and passion and volume. But the tears never stopped trickling and when I retrieved paper napkins from the taqueria and handed them to her, she said, “Tenkyou.”
Milo and I know enough Spanish to get the gist but it’s often the nuances that matter and when Lorrie Mendez finally gave her card to Garcia and the woman trudged back to her station, we were ready to listen.
We walked back to the car but remained on the sidewalk.
Mendez took out her phone. “Sorry, can I do one thing, guys? That loser who came into the building was one of the s-bags I saw dealing in the park, might as well tell someone where he bunks out.”
Milo said, “Go for it.”
She made the call, hung up, said, “To me she seems totally torn up, what do you guys think?”
Milo said, “No tells that I spotted. Alex?”
“Same here.”