The northern edge of the city, melting gradually back to agriculture.
Segments of the railroad track were there—fragmented like discarded playthings.
So was the building, huge, gray, so ugly it was hard to believe anyone had actually designed it. Square holes where the few windows had been. No roof.
The Brooke-Hastings sign painted in white had eroded to wisps. Other signs: PURE PORK SAUSAGE. LIVESTOCK AND FEED. PRIME MEAT.
A high barbed-wire fence surrounded the concrete corpse.
Acres of fields in all directions were planted in tomatoes and corn.
Stoop-laborers scuttled through the fastidious rows.
One saw me and smiled.
A Mexican woman, still on her knees, swaddled in layers of clothing despite the heat, hands so dusty they looked like clay models.
Fear in her eyes as she took in my face and clothes, the Seville’s polished grille.
I headed back to L.A.
Self-control.
Years later Hope had reduced it to an academic paper.
A prostitute’s child. It wouldn’t play at the Faculty Club. If Seacrest knew, it was obvious why he’d want to minimize her family history.
Little Micky. Little Hope.
Smartest boy, smartest girl.
Ceremony at the county fair. Smiles, flashbulbs, 4-H banners, brass bands. I could almost smell the corn dogs and horse dung.
A little girl imprisoned. A teenage honor student listening to her mother scream, nightly. Seeing the bruises.
Cruvic, smelling the slaughterhouse stench on his father?
The two of them bonded by good grades and high aspirations, the strain for respectability.
High-school pals, maybe sweethearts.
Collaborating. On fertility, abortion, sterilization.
Control.
Big Micky moving to San Francisco. Getting into racier clubs, producing porn—Robert Barone, the lawyer, did pornography defense. From his San Francisco office.
Hope consulted to him, too.
Fertility, termination. What else?
Grown-up 4-H projects? A new slant on animal husbandry?
I’d done 4-H my thirteenth summer. Raising angora rabbits for fur because it meant shearing, not slaughtering. My teacher had been a pretty, black-haired farmer’s wife, serious, with rough hands. Mrs. Dehmers . . . Susan Dehmers. She’d sat me down the first week: Don’t get attached to them, anyway, Alexander. You won’t be living with them forever.
I pictured Big Micky and his bat. The packaging and selling of women as meat.
His son leaving surgical residency after only one year.
Leave of absence at the Brooke-Hastings Institute.
Nice little in-joke.
Had Hope laughed?
I got back just after five. The house was empty and Robin had left a typed note on the dining-room table:
Darling,
Hope your trip went well. A big bargain on some old Tyrolean maple came up out in Saugus and then I’ve got to deliver some instruments to the HotSound studio in Hollywood. Spike and I will try to be back by 10:00 but it could be later.
Here’re the numbers I’ll be at. If you haven’t eaten, check out the fridge. Milo called. Love you.
Inside the fridge was a hero sandwich cut into six segments. As I phoned Milo at the station, I chewed on one, wondering how the thing had gotten its name. Milo was on another line and I held and got a beer. When he got on, I said, “I know now why control was such a big issue for her.”
When I finished, he said, “Nothing like mother love,” very softly. “Listening through the walls . . . you think Mama got her involved with clients beyond listening?”
“Who knows.”
“Tied up for her own good. Jesus.”
“She convinced herself it was for her own good, Milo. Grew up and reverted to what she knew.”
“Bound and hurt—so who bruised her, Seacrest or Cruvic or some boyfriend—hell, why not Locking?”
“Why not,” I said. “Talk to Cruvic today?”
“No, he’s avoiding me, big-time. Answering machine at the place on Mulholland—the house is his, but he rents, doesn’t own. And when I called his office, old Nurse Anna came on real cold and referred me to his lawyer. Guess who?”
“Robert Barone.”
“Bing, you get the washer-dryer. How’d you know?”
“Big Micky was a porn merchant in San Francisco.”
“From that to my-son-the-doctor,” he said. “How does he spell his last name?”
I told him.
“I’ll see what S.F. knows about him. I did find out about that hospital in Carson where Sonny went after leaving Seattle. One of those for-profit chains, ran into financial problems and sold out to a bigger chain. The comptroller said Fidelity was one of their less profitable outlets so it got canned. Couldn’t pin him down but my impression was it hadn’t exactly been the Mayo Clinic. So you’re right about it being a come-down for Little Micky. The burrowing bastard.”