She squinted at me. “You some kind of detective?”
“Well, yeah. More or less. I’m a friend of the family and I was down in this area anyway so I said I’d check it out.” I took out the two snapshots Irene Gersh had given me. I moved over and held them out so she could see. “This is her trailer. I don’t have a picture of her. She’s an old woman, in her eighties.”
The girl tilted her head, looking at the photographs. “Oh, yeah, that one. I know her. I never heard her real name. Everybody calls her Old Mama.”
“Can you tell me where to find her?”
“Not really. I can tell you where her trailer’s at, but I haven’t seen her for a while.”
“Do you remember when you saw her last?”
She thought about it briefly, screwing up her face. “I never paid much attention so I can’t really say. She goes stumping up and down out here when she needs a ride into town. Everybody’s real good about that, if your car’s broke or something and you gotta have a lift. She’s kinda weird though.”
“Like what?”
“Uh, well, you know, she has these spells when she talks to herself. You see people like that jabbering away, making gestures like they’re in the middle of an argument. Eddie took her into Brawley couple times and he said she was all right then. Smelled bad, but she wasn’t out of her head or anything like that.”
“You haven’t seen her lately?”
“No, but she’s probably still around someplace. I been busy with the baby. You might ask somebody else. I never talked to her myself.”
“What about Eddie? When do you expect him back?”
“Not till five, I think he said. If you want to check her trailer, go down this road about a quarter mile? You’ll see this old rusted-out Chevy. That’s called Rusted-Out Chevy Road. Turn right and drive till you pass these concrete bunker things on the left. They look like U’s. I don’t know what they are, but her trailer’s in the next lot. Just bang on the door loud. I don’t think she hears good from what Eddie said.”
“Thanks. I’ll do that.”
“If you don’t find her, you can come on back here and wait for him, if you like. He might know more.”
I glanced at my watch. It was just 12:25. “I may do that,” I said. “Thanks for the help.”
4
the trailer on Rusted-Out Chevy Road was a sorry sight, bearing very little resemblance to the snapshot I had in my possession, which showed an old but sturdy-looking travel trailer, painted flat blue, sitting on four blackwall tires. From the picture, I estimated that it was thirty-some years old, built in the days when it might have been hitched to the back of a Buick sedan and hauled halfway across the country. Now, spray paint had been used to emblazon the siding with the sort of words my aunt urged me to hold to a minimum. Some of the louvers on the windows had been broken out and the door was hanging on one hinge. As I drove by, I saw a unisex person, approximately twelve years of age, sitting on the doorsill in ragged cutoffs, hair in dreadlocks, finger up its nose, apparently mining the contents. I passed the place, did a U-turn and doubled back, pulling over to the side of the road in front. By the time I got out, the doorsill was deserted. I knocked on the doorframe.
“Hello?” I sang. Nothing. “Heellloo.” I peered in. The place was empty, at least the portion I could see. The interior, which had probably never been clean, was littered now with trash. Empty bottles and cans were discarded in a heap where a fold-down table should have been. Dust coated most surfaces. The banquette on the right looked like it had been chopped up for firewood. The doors on the kitchen cabinets had all been removed. Cupboards were empty. The tiny four-burner butane-fueled stove looked like it hadn’t been used for months.
I glanced to my left, moving down a short passage that led to a small bedroom in the back. A door on the right opened onto a bathroom, which consisted of a defunct chemical toilet, a ragged hole in the wall where a basin had once been attached, and a length of pipe sticking out above a shower pan filled with rags. The bedroom contained a bare mattress and two sleeping bags zipped together and left in a wad. Someone was living here and I didn’t think it was Irene Gersh’s mom. I peered through the window, but all I saw outside was a buff-colored stretch of desert with a low range of mountains ten or fifteen miles away. Distances are deceptive out here because there aren’t any reference points.
I picked my way back to the front door and stepped out, circling the trailer. Around the corner, a bucket lined with a plastic bag served as a makeshift outhouse. There were several bags like it, tied at the top and tossed together in a pile, a black fly manufacturing plant. Across the road, there was a concrete pad where a Winnebago was moored. Beside the RV, there was a pickup truck mounted with a camper shell. The pad itself was cracked, weeds growing up through the crevices. A Weber grill had been set out and the smell of charcoal lighter and smoking briquettes drifted across the road to me. Near the grill, there was a folding table surrounded by mismatched chrome chairs. As I crossed the road, a woman emerged from the trailer carrying a tray loaded with a foil-covered plate, condiments, and utensils. She was in her forties, slim, with a long, weathered face. No makeup, salt-and-pepper hair cropped short. She wore blue jeans and a flannel shirt, both faded to a pale gray. She went about her business, ignoring my approach. I watched her put five fat hamburger patties on the grill. She moved over to the table and began to set it with forks and paper plates.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Do you know the woman who lives over there?”
“You related?”
“I’m a friend of the family.”
“About time somebody took an interest,” she said snappishly. “What’s going on over there is a low-down disgrace.”
“What is going on over there?”
“Kids moved in. You can see they trashed the place. Loud parties, loud arguments, fights breaking out. We all make it a point to mind our own business out here, but there’s limits.”
“What about Agnes? What happened to her? Surely, she’s not still living there.”
The woman cocked a head toward the Winnebago. “Marcus? You want to come out here, please? Woman’s asking about Old Mama.”
The door to the Winnebago opened and a man peered out. He was of medium height, small-boned, with warm skin tones suggesting Mediterranean origins. His hair was dark, combed back from his face. His nose was short and straight, his lips very full. His dark eyes were fringed with black lashes. He looked like a male model in an Italian menswear ad. He stared at me for a moment, his expression neutral.
“Who’re you?” he asked. No accent. He wore pleated pants and the sort of ribbed undershirt old men wear.
“I’m Kinsey,” I said. “Agnes Grey’s daughter asked me to drive out here and check on her. Do you have any idea where she is?”
He surprised me by holding out his hand to introduce himself. We shook. His palm was soft and hot, his grip firm.
“I’m Marcus. This is my wife, Faye. We haven’t seen Old Mama for a long tune. Like, months. We heard she got sick, but I don’t know for sure. Hospital in Brawley. You might see if she’s there.”
“Wouldn’t somebody have notified her relatives?”
Marcus stuck his hands in his pockets with a shrug. “She might not’ve told them. This’s the first I knew she had family. She’s a real private person. Like a recluse almost. Minds her own business as long as you mind yours. Where’s this daughter live?”
“Santa Teresa. She’s been worried about Agnes but she didn’t have a way to get in touch.”
Neither of them seemed impressed with the sincerity of Irene’s concern. I changed the subject, looking back at the trailer across the road. “Who’s the little gremlin I saw sitting on the front step?”
Faye spoke up, her tone sour. “There’s two of them. Boy and a girl. They came by a few months ago and staked the place out. They must have heard it was empty because they moved in pretty quick. Runaways. Don’t know how they survive. Probably stealing or whoring, whichever comes first. We asked them to clean up the sewage, but of course they don’t.”
Clearly, sewage was a euphemism for the bags of sewage. “The kid I saw couldn’t have been twelve years old,” I said.