We watched TCM, The Sundowners with Deborah Kerr. Sheep farmers, not the world’s most exciting flick. But this was the only home I ever knew: me and Herschel and reruns in Technicolor. Yeah—seeing Elkaim stabbed me right in the heart.
I dialed Steam World again. More nothing, the phone rang and rang. I’d have to show up unannounced.
Traffic finally opened up. Washington Boulevard snaked through downtown, then skid row, then it dipped under freeways bathed in decades-old graffiti, curving into a long artery of industrial nothingness. The city outskirts stirred up my already hollow mood—not a body on the streets, not even a homeless tent. Ancient factories lay rusting on giant lots like felled robots, and all the unused train tracks headed nowhere, mourning the Machine Age in the dingy daytime gloom. I passed a truck graveyard crowded with refrigerated big rigs, where all the city’s frozen peas bide their time. Where the hell was this place?
The address came into view—a long, low, aluminum Quonset hut sandwiched between two anonymous-looking data processing centers. No windows, but a small, hand-painted wooden plaque out front read Steam World in old-timey letters. Something ominous fell over me as I got out of the car and stood before the place, but what was I gonna do—go home?
I tried the steel front door. Locked. I knocked hard. Nada.
I stared up and down the lonesome strip.
A Salvadorian man in his early sixties walked backward out of the adjacent lab and onto the street, hosing down the cement walkway. He was short but burly, and his wide arms were flecked with white scars. I’d seen those kind before—hand grenade shrapnel.
I said, “You know the guy that runs this place?”
“I know him.”
“You know where he might be?”
“He’s usually in there.”
I said, “I tried the front door.”
The man thumbed his hose and spritzed the hard sidewalk like someone who didn’t want to get involved. Then he said, “He prolly can’t hear you—bang on the back.”
“He have a pitbull back there or anything?”
“Pitbull?” The man laughed. “Naw. He wouldn’t want no dog pissin’ on his models.”
Something about the man’s tone gave me the impression that he didn’t like Hawley, but I couldn’t let that stop me.
I walked around the hut toward the back entrance. A massive ridged-metal curtain painted red was three-quarters open, and two older guys were carefully wheeling out a giant steel table covered with an elaborate miniature—what looked like a chunk of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. The reef came up to my shoulders, a rocky coast sloping down to crumpled vinyl sheets of ocean blue. The details on this model were insane—the pristine lighthouse with gated balcony among swayed trees, unruly fields of green, and white luminous deco mansions, each no bigger than an egg carton. And all along the cliff, a little slatted wooden walkway, winding before the horizon.
I said, “That is awesome.”
The men stopped, with blank looks.
“Is Mr. Hawley in there?”
“He took off.” The heavier bald guy spoke in a British accent. “Maybe I can help you with something?”
“What time you think he’ll be back?”
“Can’t help you there.”
“Any idea where he went?”
The other guy chimed in. “Think he said he was stopping off at home on the way to the studio.”
Hawley’s home address was listed at Lobdell Place, deep hills of Echo Park. The house was one-story Spanish, ungated. A mint condition light blue Impala with yellow on black plates was parked in the sloping driveway. Just as I pulled up, a man stormed out of the house, closed the front door behind him, and moved fast to the car. He looked like he was in a panicky rush—I sat there watching, frozen and unnoticed. Had to be Hawley, the baldy from the Courier article, tall and gangly in a dark, expensive-looking gray-blue Hawaiian shirt and fit slacks, expensive felt sneakers—the picture of the successful Hollywood man. Yet his gait, his body language, was nervous as fuck. He seemed harried, unapproachable. I thought of coming back later as he got in the Impala, revved the engine, and peeled down the mountain, but then curiosity got the best of me and I hit the ignition and followed, a half-block behind, through the winding, lush Silver Lake streets.
Soon we were onto San Fernando Road, poverty row at the foothills of Glassell Park—fenced bungalows, Mexican supermarkets, autobody repair shops. Hawley pulled up to a taco stand. I circled the block and parked just out of sight, grabbed the binocs from my glove box.
The taco stand looked closed—maybe permanently, I couldn’t tell.
A slight, white-haired man sat alone with his hands on his lap, waiting patiently at the umbrella’d plastic bench. As soon as he saw Hawley, the old man stood up abruptly with a pleading look in his eyes. Hawley got out and started doing some pleading of his own. They were arguing now, explaining, gesticulating. Hawley tried to give the old guy an envelope—literally tried to push it onto the guy, but he wasn’t having it; it fell to the ground. For a split second there, I thought Hawley might smack him—he tensed up for it—but the old man started to back off, palms up in the air as if to entreat mercy or reason.
Their disagreement, whatever it was, didn’t last long. Hawley dropped his long arms. The old man’s face colored with determination. He said something final. Soon he was fumbling into his dilapidated gray ’96 Toyota Corolla hatchback and not looking at Hawley, who was still staring at the old guy, affronted, shocked immobile. The old guy, for one swift second, shook his head for no one, then turned the key and drove off.
Livid, Hawley picked the envelope up off the ground, then swiftly kicked the hubcap of his own car, raging full-on. Then he got in behind the wheel and started to cry. He was still in tears as he started the car and drove off.
I followed, too confused to assemble whatever I just saw, but maybe I could use it somehow, approach him at the next junction, ask if he was okay.
Darker clouds rolled in as Hawley rode San Fernando into Burbank, turning onto Alameda. Suddenly, at Cahuenga, he made a fast left and cruised right past the tollbooth into NBC/Universal Studios with a hand wave.
I pulled up to follow but the security man stepped out with a look of keen displeasure. He didn’t like having to leave his cozy booth.
“You got a pass?”
“I’m with the guy that just cruised in. Uh, Mr. Hawley.”
“Well, you tell him to call your name in for a drive-on. Otherwise—vamoose.”
I nodded and reversed, took one last look at the studio gates. I’d been locked out of the Hollywood gates before—a familiar feeling, not even worth snickering over. Then, as if on cue, the thunder cracked and the rain started to fall in swift diagonals. There was nothing to do but beat it. I pulled out onto Cahuenga and set my windshield wipers in motion.
3
Defeated, I drove back into Hollywood in the pouring rain and turned on the Lyft app, zigzagging the shiny streets looking for a customer. Rainy days in Los Angeles were unpredictable for business. The carless panicked, threw backpacks or freebie newspapers over their heads, uplifted jackets, and raced under marquees praying the alien space invasion would pass. I kept a roll of Bounty up front—my first customer beamed with joy when I handed it to her. I dropped her off at one of the big Century City scrapers, then meandered back to the airport where I caught a young couple heading for the Mondrian on the Strip. They seemed affronted by the weather, like they might write a bad Yelp review if only they could figure out who to blame.
I dropped them off in the causeway and headed east, picked up an old lady coming out of the 99-cent store on Pico with a big, see-through umbrella that she tried to shake out before getting in the car. She wanted me to wait for her in the Vons parking lot while she gathered the week’s groceries. I tried to explain that it would be expensive to keep me on the clock, but she pleaded—“I can never figure out this damn phone!” Of course, while she shopped, the guilt kicked in and I turned the meter off. Then I took her home and had to shlep the bags upstairs to her apartment. The TV was already on when she opened the door.
“It keeps me company,” she said.
Back in the car, I called my sister Maya—technically my cousin, Herschel’s daughter.
I said, “You wanna grab lunch?”
“I’m in chambers, waiting on a judge.”
“You’ll never guess where I just came from.”
“Where?”
“Daddy’s retirement home.”
“It’s a bit late for that.”
“Not funny. I saw Charles Elkaim.”
