Chapter One

I was sitting in the courtyard of the apartment complex I managed, enjoying my morning cup of coffee at the little bamboo table the cheap bastards who owned the place had as yet failed to reimburse me for, when I heard the girl run past the gate.

My plan for the day included nothing more strenuous than walking the two blocks to the grocery store. None of the tenants wanted anything at the moment, and I hoped the girl kept on running.

“Controlled access” said the sign out front, meaning the gate needed a key or a code to get in, just like practically every piece of private property on the Westside of LA. That Wednesday, the first day of September, the sign also said “No Vacancy” which meant I didn’t have to care if someone was looking for a home.

The girl didn’t keep on running. Her footsteps paused. Then she turned back and rattled the handle.

I took a determined sip of coffee and scooched my butt deeper into the patio chair. I had just set down my cup and picked up my book again—Beowulf, the Seamus Heaney translation, bilingual edition—when the girl called out, “Let me in! Please let me in!”

It was the please that got me. The main charm of living in LA is that no one gives a damn, least of all me. But that please hooked me, pulling me up from my chair. Like many people in Lotusland, I had a past I’d run away from and naturally I expected it would catch up with me someday, so I grabbed the weighted cane resting against my chair before I stumped over to the gate. Just in case.

The girl was gone.

I leaned out of the gate, looking first towards Venice Boulevard, which crossed Motor Avenue to the south, then at Regent Street to the north. The only pedestrian in sight was a young man on the far side of Motor, ear buds shoved down his ear canals. He was wearing a suit, waiting for the light.

I gave him a second look because suits are not a common wardrobe choice in my little slice of heaven, but he didn’t seem to have done anything evil, such as forcing a young woman into a car. He gave no sign of noticing me but young people almost never do.

I patted the pockets of my housedress to make sure I had the key to the gate before I stepped out. Behind me the gate latched shut with a warning rattle.

The fence came almost all the way up to the sidewalk, the gap between filled with glossy green Japanese holly and bright red hibiscus, yellow stamens waggling like tongues in the Santa Ana winds. Above me, the sun was shining and the sky was a clear, cloudless blue, which in southern California is a lot like saying, “It was day.”

Traffic was light on Motor, the main morning rush over and the afternoon not yet begun. Most of the traffic noise came from Venice, a block away, always jam-packed with vehicles, even late into the night, most of them piloted by impatient horn-honkers trying to catch up to their destinies. But from where I stood it was quiet enough to hear a girl call for help.

She didn’t.

I crossed Regent at the light, keeping the suited man in the corner of my eye. My destination, the brightly façaded fire station sitting upright on the northeast corner of Regent and Motor, was a designated safe house. If the girl had come up from Venice she might not have noticed it and its potential for sanctuary until after she made her plea to me.

My cane thwacked against the broad expanse of concrete in front of the building. Through the open garage bay doors I spotted two firefighters standing by a truck, fire-engine red, just like they’re supposed to be. One of the men was inspecting tools stowed behind an open panel in the vehicle while the other sipped from a can of Pepsi, supervising, neither of them displaying the type of mannerism that suggested a panic-stricken girl had recently arrived at their door. Would she? I was of an age (seventy-three) and background (middle-class, white) that tended to trust institutions of authority but I also lived in the world and knew that was a sign of my privilege, not of the trustworthiness of institutions.

The supervising firefighter caught me looking and waved. I waved back.

When I turned, the suit was gone from the corner. A young woman jogging with a stroller had taken his place. Probably not the girl who’d called out that please. She didn’t spare me a glance, either. She had that strained look serious runners get, as if she could see the far horizon but doubted ever reaching it.

Deciding I might as well escort my curiosity all the way to the end, I walked the hundred feet to the alley behind the Royal Palms. There was only the one palm tree in the complex’s courtyard but I guess that’s what they call poetic license. Most of the cars usually parked on the strip of tarmac adjacent to the alley were gone, tenants off to work and school. The girl wasn’t trying to climb the fence. She hadn’t kicked the screen out of the laundry room window to shelter inside. I used my cane to lift the lids on both dumpsters, landfill and recycle. She hadn’t chosen either as a hiding place.

I let the second lid drop and peered down the alley, wondering where she’d gotten to. I had a pretty clear view all the way to Venice. No one. I had just taken a step toward the back gate to return to my coffee when the dog sprinted out from between two parked cars and launched itself at me, a snarl tearing from its throat, fangs bared in a jaw strong enough to rip my throat from my body.