date—such a colorful string of Spanish. The third is from a mechanic at Puerto Bros, talking about a man they put Ambrose in touch with just days before his death. A man. With a van. In a wheelchair.
Orella carefully resaves the message, places the phone back in Mateo's pants and slides out of the room.
Chapter Ten
A few well-placed dollars with a cash-strapped employee at the Department of Motor Vehicles yields results. Orella figures if the owner of the van was also a customer of Puerto Bros. he probably lived somewhere in the general area, and how many old vans of that make could be in west LA anyway?
With a crisp short-list from the DMV database growing damp in her hand, Orella checks out a mere half-dozen leads before finding the van at a Washington Boulevard address. The DMV list shows the van not currently licensed for road use, but that means nothing. It costs hundreds of dollars to register a vehicle for the road in Los Angeles, and under fifty bucks to register it as inoperative.
Here she is, at his apartment building. It has gated indoor parking, so Orella waits on foot until a car leaves the garage and darts inside before it closes. Walking the rows of cars and trucks, her footsteps echo in the half-empty space. Daytime, most good, tax-paying Americans are at work.
There, at the end of the row. A blue van with out-of-style pinstriping around it. She peers inside and sees the driver's seat has been removed and there's some kind of apparatus on the floor, probably to lock around the base of a wheelchair to hold it in place. Orella's heart flutters with relief. One step closer.
She hurries back outside and waits. Del Rey Towers is early 1970s construction. Ten stories high, an unusual height for the beach-side of Washington Boulevard. She studies names on the buzzers, but they are coded and don't give names away. She waits until the sun goes down, and hunger and thirst gnaw at her. But no man in a wheelchair appears.
She decides to go home and come back again tomorrow for a proper stakeout with comfortable clothes, water and snacks. She'll be able to sit in her car and watch the door all day. All week, all month, whatever it takes.
***
Seven in the ayem and it's already 80 degrees outside and rising. On the TV a mammalicious weatherbabe promises up to a hundred and three inland. On the ocean where we are it'll probably go to ninety-four. While the temperature is still tolerable Sid and I should go outside and take the air.
Sid zooms to the kitchen, tail unfurled and me rolling behind to the cupboards.
"Sid."
He looks inquiringly.
"Open door."
He opens the cupboard door I'm looking at and dammit, she's done it again! Blattlatch has rearranged my stuff! There's a nice bottle of Stool Formula One—poop medicine for constipated race car drivers? Colon blow so fast acting you need to have somebody standing by with a starter pistol and a bedpan? The bottle is thoughtfully pushed to the front, and all the useful stuff jammed behind it. She's a nurse not a housekeeper but she insists on this TIDYING and ARRANGING, this fussy, prissy YAAAAAAAH! She's not blinding me with science, she's annoying me to death one piddly visit at a time.
Sid bounds around the kitchen like this is an adventure land we've never been to before. One leap takes him to the kitchen counter where three bins are lined up, Coffee, Tea and Sugar. The first two actually contain what they say, but the third, not so much. Sid flips the lid back and starts eating monkey chow right out of the container. I let him eat on demand and like a healthy animal, he stops when he's full.
There's a terrific place in Santa Ana called Helping Hands that trains monkeys. It's a national nonprofit, serving quadriplegics and spinal-cord injury victims with high quality, highly trained helper monkeys. That's not where Sid came from. I was on a waiting list forever for a helper monkey, finally lost patience and went on the black market to see what I could find.
Orella carefully resaves the message, places the phone back in Mateo's pants and slides out of the room.
Chapter Ten
A few well-placed dollars with a cash-strapped employee at the Department of Motor Vehicles yields results. Orella figures if the owner of the van was also a customer of Puerto Bros. he probably lived somewhere in the general area, and how many old vans of that make could be in west LA anyway?
With a crisp short-list from the DMV database growing damp in her hand, Orella checks out a mere half-dozen leads before finding the van at a Washington Boulevard address. The DMV list shows the van not currently licensed for road use, but that means nothing. It costs hundreds of dollars to register a vehicle for the road in Los Angeles, and under fifty bucks to register it as inoperative.
Here she is, at his apartment building. It has gated indoor parking, so Orella waits on foot until a car leaves the garage and darts inside before it closes. Walking the rows of cars and trucks, her footsteps echo in the half-empty space. Daytime, most good, tax-paying Americans are at work.
There, at the end of the row. A blue van with out-of-style pinstriping around it. She peers inside and sees the driver's seat has been removed and there's some kind of apparatus on the floor, probably to lock around the base of a wheelchair to hold it in place. Orella's heart flutters with relief. One step closer.
She hurries back outside and waits. Del Rey Towers is early 1970s construction. Ten stories high, an unusual height for the beach-side of Washington Boulevard. She studies names on the buzzers, but they are coded and don't give names away. She waits until the sun goes down, and hunger and thirst gnaw at her. But no man in a wheelchair appears.
She decides to go home and come back again tomorrow for a proper stakeout with comfortable clothes, water and snacks. She'll be able to sit in her car and watch the door all day. All week, all month, whatever it takes.
***
Seven in the ayem and it's already 80 degrees outside and rising. On the TV a mammalicious weatherbabe promises up to a hundred and three inland. On the ocean where we are it'll probably go to ninety-four. While the temperature is still tolerable Sid and I should go outside and take the air.
Sid zooms to the kitchen, tail unfurled and me rolling behind to the cupboards.
"Sid."
He looks inquiringly.
"Open door."
He opens the cupboard door I'm looking at and dammit, she's done it again! Blattlatch has rearranged my stuff! There's a nice bottle of Stool Formula One—poop medicine for constipated race car drivers? Colon blow so fast acting you need to have somebody standing by with a starter pistol and a bedpan? The bottle is thoughtfully pushed to the front, and all the useful stuff jammed behind it. She's a nurse not a housekeeper but she insists on this TIDYING and ARRANGING, this fussy, prissy YAAAAAAAH! She's not blinding me with science, she's annoying me to death one piddly visit at a time.
Sid bounds around the kitchen like this is an adventure land we've never been to before. One leap takes him to the kitchen counter where three bins are lined up, Coffee, Tea and Sugar. The first two actually contain what they say, but the third, not so much. Sid flips the lid back and starts eating monkey chow right out of the container. I let him eat on demand and like a healthy animal, he stops when he's full.
There's a terrific place in Santa Ana called Helping Hands that trains monkeys. It's a national nonprofit, serving quadriplegics and spinal-cord injury victims with high quality, highly trained helper monkeys. That's not where Sid came from. I was on a waiting list forever for a helper monkey, finally lost patience and went on the black market to see what I could find.
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