In the most loving way possible.
He said, “My stuff is never going to be popular like yours and Jonny’s, okay? No one wants my business card, Linx. I appreciate you tagging me for this project, but we both know I’m still going to be working at my dad’s office next week.”
I actually thought Farah’s dad was kind of awesome. If he were my dad, I’d probably be willing to work in the family business too, even if it was an accounting firm.
That was a lie. I suck at math. But I did think Farah’s dad was awesome.
“Your stuff is amazing, okay? And maybe you’re not as commercial as I am or Jonny is, but your painting is the kind that people talk about for days after they see it.”
“Because it disturbs them.”
“Because it’s amazing.” It was amazing. And disturbing. But good art should be disturbing at times. It should make you think. “Listen, you don’t have to go. I’d like for you to be there—I think it’d be great for your career—but you don’t have to be.”
The relief was visible. “Is Jackson going to be offended? I mean, he’s a capitalist, but not the worst kind. I didn’t mind working on his wall.”
I thought it was ironic that Farah helped people sort out their taxes and hated capitalism so much, but what did I know? Maybe depriving the government of tax revenue was anarchic in its own way.
“I’m sure he’ll be cool with it. I’ll handle Jackson.”
Farah’s cheeky humor finally reemerged. “I bet you will.”
“Get your mind out of the gutter.”
“Have you seen my paintings? My mind is always in the gutter, baby.”
“Whatever, my twisted Persian Picasso.”
Farah leaned over whispered in my ear. “Think if I stay like this and keep talking, he’ll get jealous?”
Maybe? I could tell Jackson was watching us. “Stop.”
“Why?” His breath was hot on my neck. “You smell good, Linx. Were you smoking last night? You bad girl. You know that turns me on.”
I slapped his hip to get him away, and also because yeah, I was turned on. Farah was temperamental as shit, but he was hot. He was also smart, and his sly humor cracked me up when it made an appearance. We’d made out more than once but had never gone farther. What we had was friendly, and I didn’t want to risk our working relationship even if Farah was dazzling and addictive when he was in a good mood.
I asked, “Are you coming or not?”
“Not yet. But with a little encouragement…”
“Give it a rest. Real answer, please?”
He sighed. “I’ll… make an appearance.”
“Lucky us.” I tried not to roll my eyes. “I’ll let Jackson know. Want to…” I was going to say “grab lunch with the others,” but I felt Frank’s chill on the back of my neck.
“Linx, you okay?”
“Yeah.” I stretched my neck from side to side. “Just slept funny last night. No comments.” I held up a hand. “I need to go. I promised my nan I’d help her with something.”
“Okay, I’ll see you on Friday.” He brushed a kiss over my cheek. Just to be Farah. And also probably because Cristiane was looking at us and she’d had the hots for him since art school.
Not wanting to awkwardly flirt with Jackson in front of my friends, I made my excuses, promised to see everyone Friday night, and then headed out to my van. Frank was waiting for me in the passenger’s seat.
“You know, I kinda like that Farah kid.”
“That Farah kid is nearly thirty, and what?” I blinked when I digested his words. “Farah? You don’t like Jackson—you hated Gus—”
“Gus stole your car.”
“He returned it!”
“After he broke the transmission.”
Okay, Frank was right. Gus had been an asshole.
“You don’t like the Boy Scout, but you think Farah’s a good bet?”
Frank lifted an eyebrow. “He’d keep you on your toes.”
I started my car. “I don’t know what Nan was thinking; you are no judge of character at all.”
It was only once I got on the highway that I asked him where we were going. “Park or library?”
He thought for a moment. “Library. I don’t think we’ll find anything at the park. She wasn’t killed there.”
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s where Mintz buried his bodies, not where he killed ’em.”
I shook my head. “Sometimes it’s hard to imagine your world.”
“Same world you live in, kid.” He nodded at a billboard advertising LIVE GIRLS. “Yours just has a lot less style.”
I couldn’t argue with him.
We pulled into the library, and I parked in my regular spot. Frank and I spent a lot of time at the library. He was way more patient than I was, but that could have been the being dead thing. I’d asked him once what he did when he wasn’t with me. I’ll never forget his response.
“I wait.”
I hope I’m never a ghost. Whatever light comes toward me when I die, I’m running toward it, and with all the masses I’d attended and all the rosaries I’d been forced to say over the years, Saint Peter had better let me in.
Frank and I headed toward the computers because that’s where all the old newspapers were kept.
What? You mean I didn’t have to look through dusty old rooms? Nope. The LA County library system was one of the best in the world.
Here’s the thing. I could access all this information from my house with a library-card number. In fact, it’d be a lot easier there. Two things kept me coming back to the library computers for research. One, when I worked in the library, Frank didn’t argue with me because it’s the library, and even dead, he was a rule follower. And two, Frank loved the library. I don’t know if he was a bookworm in life or if he just liked the odd mix of people you run into there, but every time we walked in, he emanated a really happy energy.
I saw an isolated corner and pulled out my notebook. I couldn’t talk on my phone to hide my conversations with him at the library, so I wrote notes or just mumbled questions. You could get away with talking to yourself (some) at the public library. Today I opted for notes.
What are we looking for?
“Search for August 1952. Los Angeles Times. Murder on East Side.”
I started searching, clicking, and opening and closing and scrolling page after page.
“Stop,” Frank said, pointing toward the screen. “That one.”
I clicked on the PDF.
“It wasn’t on the front page,” he said. “Yankees beat by the Tigers in a no-hitter that day.”
“How do you remember this stuff?” I whispered.
“What else do I have to do?” His hand lifted. “There. Toward the bottom.”
My mouth dropped. “A whole family murdered in their home didn’t go on the front page?” One thing I’d learned from hanging out with Frank was that once upon a time, most murders were front-page news, not just the ones involving celebrities.
“It was buried. Mintz had connections at the paper.” He leaned forward. “And the department.”
“So what—”
“Read the article, kid. Then ask your questions.”
There wasn’t much to read, but what was there was horrifying. This was another strange crime, like the one he’d mentioned before. A husband, wife, and their two daughters had been stabbed to death in their home in East LA. The husband worked in a factory. The wife worked for a dry cleaner. Both their little girls attended the local elementary school and were reported to be excellent students.
A dry cleaning shop.
“A nice Mexican couple with grown kids. Husband had a steady job. Wife was a seamstress.”
I tapped the notebook to get his attention. First female victim was a seamstress, I wrote. Next one worked in a dry cleaner. Could they have known each other? Did dry cleaners hire seamstresses back then?
“Yeah, they did.” He rubbed his chin out of habit. “I hav
en’t looked at the details on that case in a long time. Hadn’t thought of that.”
Could Mintz had wanted them dead for some reason? Why would he drop off his cleaning in East LA? He didn’t live there, did he?
“Nah, he lived in Pasadena.”
I whispered, “And it always seemed like such a nice neighborhood.”
Frank smirked. “It was. Mintz was probably the best neighbor you ever had as long as you didn’t cross him.”
So again, why would he have his dry cleaning in East LA.?
“Because of Nina?”
“Maybe she dropped something off,” I whispered, “when she was at her mom’s? Those two women found something or saw something.”
Someone shot me a dirty look.
I wrote, Let’s go back to my house.
“We need to talk,” Frank said. “And kid, I think you need a smoke.”
Dammit.
6
Secrets Kill.
Frank was waiting in the back of Esmerelda Reyes’s closet. The front of the woman’s house was watched every time her daughter came to visit, so Frank had snuck in the night before to wait. It was just a good thing Mrs. Reyes and Frank were on the same page about Nina. Drawn curtains would have been noticed around the rest of the house, but not in the older woman’s bedroom. Hiding in there gave Frank and Nina a window to talk in private.
“Frank?”
He’d become familiar with her whisper. What he hadn’t gotten used to was the quick tightening of need it provoked. Ignoring it, he cracked the door open. “I’m here.”
She let out a breath she’d been holding and sat on the edge of the bed. He watched her, knowing these stolen meetings with him were some of the few truly private moments she owned. He was intruding, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care.
“Did you hear?”
“About the Mendez family?”
Frank nodded.
“Yeah.” She looked shaky. Thin. The stress was getting to her. Her face had lost its glow, and her generous curves had shrunk to nothing. If she kept going like this, she wouldn’t have to worry about getting away from Mintz; he’d dump her and move on to a new piece.
Maybe that was her plan.
“Can you give me anything, Nina? Anything to take to the district attorney? We don’t have any proof, but we know it’s him.”
“Everybody knows it’s him,” she said. “That’s the point, isn’t it?”
“And no one’s talking.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the thing.” There were bruises beneath her eyes. “None of us really want to wind up dead, do we?”
She knew something. He was sure of it. She had something they could use to nail the bastard. “Nina, I can protect you.”
“I got a family, Frank. You gonna protect them too? I got a kid brother who goes to school and works for a stonemason on weekends. You can’t watch him every day. My papa may be gone, but my mama’s still hanging on. What are you going to do for them, huh?”
“These are innocent people, Nina. People in your own neighborhood. Families. Children. This is not Mintz playing the game. These are civilians, and you know this isn’t right.”
She let out a breath and her shoulders slumped. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t have any proof, Frank. And I don’t have time to… I can’t give you my testimony because I didn’t see anything. I hear things, but he doesn’t trust me. I don’t see anything anymore. I’m just there to… you know.”
If you were mine, I’d wake up singing.
The thought jumped into his mind, and his thumb slid over Nina’s cheek, brushed the shadows under her eyes. “I’ll figure it out. I’ll figure out a way to put him away.”
I’ll make you safe.
“It doesn’t matter,” she murmured. “Doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Sleep, doll. I’ll keep an eye out for your ma.”
She didn’t argue. Nina slid her shoes off and crawled into her mother’s bed, curling up like a child as Frank laid a blanket over her.
“Sweet dreams, Nina.”
7
A Visit to Aunt Mary’s House
I came out of the vision coughing. The smoke was in my mouth. My lungs. My hair. I held up a hand before Frank started speaking and walked inside. I needed a minute to breathe. I needed a minute to think. I walked up to my room, and nearly closed the door in my mind while I took a shower. Frank respected my privacy and didn’t make an appearance.
There were a few things about Frank’s visions that he didn’t know. One, he didn’t know how far I was in his head when I had them. For instance, I’m pretty sure he didn’t intend to show me everything he was feeling for Nina King. No matter how much he might play the honorable knight—and he was honorable—he also had feelings for the woman. Two, I don’t think he realized that I remembered everything. And I mean everything. Whatever he showed me ended up glued in my head in detail I normally didn’t recall in my own life, much less someone else’s.
There was something about her appearance that was bugging me. I got out of the shower, got dressed, and started drying my hair, still mulling it over. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I walked back down to the backyard after putting on a pair of shorts and a ratty concert tee I’d had since high school. Frank was waiting for me, but whatever I was seeing hadn’t coalesced yet.
“She knew something,” I said.
“She said she didn’t, but I could tell she was hiding something.”
“Would it have even worked? Having her testify against him? Would she have been a credible witness?”
Did it matter anymore? I’d looked up Mintz on my own. The crime boss had been killed only a year after Frank must have died in 1953. And because fate had a sense of humor, Mintz had died in an automobile collision.
Yep. The murderous crime boss died in a car crash.
In my head, I was hoping someone cut his brakes in revenge or something.
Nina King was still dead. Her murderer was still dead. And we were trying to solve the mystery… why?
Because of that damn note.
I sat down on the picnic bench and drummed my fingers on the table. There were too many threads to pull. Too many questions and only Frank to answer them. “Bogie, what was the thing you were saying about Nina’s aunt?”
“What?” He’d been staring at my drumming fingers. “Oh. Nina didn’t have an Aunt Mary. She had an Aunt Maria, but that was her mother’s sister and she was dead. The woman died of cancer before Nina ever met Mintz. They were close, but it had been years since Maria had died.”
“Huh.” I leaned my elbows on the table. “‘Meet me at my Aunt Mary’s house Friday morning.’”
“It makes no sense.”
“But Aunt Mary has to be Maria, right?”
“Yeah, but the note—”
“I know,” I said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
The note might not have made sense, but there were a few things we did know. Nina was leaving Mintz. Mintz got word of it and killed her. According to Raul, she’d had a bullet in her head. Mintz had buried the body in Griffith Park. Frank had gone looking for her when she disappeared. And when he’d gone looking…
“Hey, Frank.” I felt like it was time to ask. “How did you die?”
“Mintz killed me.” His voice didn’t sound rough because… Well, he didn’t really have a throat, did he? But his energy felt rough. Brittle.
“I was looking for Nina,” he said. “I was hoping she’d just taken off, you know? First time I remember praying in… I don’t know how long. I was praying she’d gotten away from that bastard.”
“Her family didn’t know?”
“They knew.” He stared at the table, his shoulders slumped. His fedora, usually tipped back at a cocky angle, hung over his eyes. “In the back of my mind, I knew. Her mother started leaving flowers on her sister’s grave. She hadn’t done that in years. But I knew… it was for both of them. If Nina had taken off, she’d have told her ma and her brother. But she didn
’t, and Mintz never came by to harass them.”
“Because he knew she was dead.”
He nodded. “I knew he’d killed her, but I couldn’t prove it.”
Meet me at my Aunt Mary’s house.
“Frank, do you remember what cemetery Nina’s aunt was buried in?”
The gates of Calvary Cemetery in East LA were open when we swung off Whittier Boulevard and into the spacious, parklike resting place for thousands of Los Angeles Catholics. East LA had always been a multiethnic neighborhood, and the graves reflected it.
“Does it look much different?” I asked Frank, who was staring out the car window.
“Not really.” He sat low in the seat, staring at the sunlit graveyard. He was more transparent than usual.
I tried to lighten the mood. “I can’t believe you remember where her grave is.”
“The only thing I do is remember.” He angled his neck to look at something I’d just passed. “Jeez, I recognized that name. Arrested a guy with that name when he was a punk kid.”
“Think it’s the same one?”
“Could be.”
He wasn’t his usual talkative self. Frank loved regaling me with collar stories from back in the day. He had a dry sense of humor and an appreciation for the absurd. Today he clearly wasn’t feeling it.
By the time we parked the car, the sun was starting to set behind the chapel I could see in the distance. I stepped over graves that weren’t so carefully tended and some that were immaculate.
Maria Cordoba’s grave had the grass trimmed around it, but there were no flowers to be found. I pulled out the small metal detector I’d brought along.
“Jeez, kid, are you seriously going to…” Frank tugged off his hat, then put it back on again, pacing a little. “That’s not respectful, you know?”
“Meet me at Aunt Mary’s house,” I said. “It was obviously a clue.”
“Yeah, for me to meet her here. But she got killed before it happened.” His mouth twisted. “I don’t even know why you wanted to come here.”
Sometimes, Bogie…