Jonathan Kellerman - Breakdown

Milo said, “Too early to know, but Alicia Santos disappearing kicks it up a notch.”

“Two ladies gone from the same neighborhood,” said Mendez.

“The houses are literally minutes away from each other.”

She whistled softly and scanned the park some more. “Dope deals, right in the open, shameful... something happening to Imelda near her home I could understand. But the poor lady travels to the safest part of town and gets taken by some psycho? That’s evil. Are you seeing a link between two housekeepers and that patient of yours, Doctor?”

I said, “Haven’t come up with anything yet.”

Mendez said, “But who knows what motivates maniacs. Okay, so let’s start by trying to eliminate Santos’s roommate.”

The three of us got into Milo’s unmarked. As he started up the engine, Lorrie Mendez phoned Rampart Patrol and told them what to look for in the park.

Alicia Santos and Maria Garcia shared a one-hundred-square-foot room outfitted with an illegal kitchenette in a graffiti-abused, four-story dump on Hartford Avenue near Fourth Street.

We had no legal authority to enter anyone’s lodgings. But the building had been cited repeatedly by the health department and when Milo asked to get in, the plastic-caged clerk, a smudge-bearded kid with light-brown dreads and a name tag that read H. Galloway, shrugged and handed over a master key.

Not even pausing to lower the volume of the gangsta rap filling his compartment.

We climbed two flights of stairs and walked a quarter of the way up a linoleum-floored hallway that smelled of stale semen and chili powder. A flimsy door opened on another olfactory war: must, tobacco, and bug-killer vying with fruity cologne and talc. The winning aroma depended on where you stood.

Not much of a home but the space had been kept up nicely, scarred wooden floor swept clean, double bed made up with a pearlescent spread tucked tight and decorated with a heart-shaped crazy-quilt pillow. A pair of rickety nightstands had been polished with the Lemon Pledge that sat atop a listing dresser. Toiletries and feminine hygiene products on the same surface were divided into twin allotments. Off to the left was a quartet of photos in cheap standing frames.

Two of the shots featured a slim, plain, youngish woman standing between an older couple. The man wore a ten-gallon hat and a broad white mustache, the woman a shapeless smock. The backdrop was a tiny adobe house on flat dirt. Chickens pecked in the foreground. A swaybacked burro idled several feet back.

The third photo was that of a broadly built, heavy-jawed, crew-cut woman in her forties holding a can of Dos Equis and leaning against a peacock-blue stucco wall. The final image, larger than the others, featured both women smiling and hefting margaritas near the same wall. Taken from a greater distance, that one revealed a neon Cerveza sign above a rough plank door.

Mendez photographed each picture with her phone, checked the final products, and looked at the dresser, then at Milo.

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?”