I said, “Gurnsey and Roget had no local family ties.”
“Easier victims.”
“Alvarez lives in a care facility and if the woman’s homeless, she’d be the most vulnerable.”
“Predator,” he said. “But what the hell’s the payoff?”
CHAPTER
8
Skaggs Avenue sits west of Chinatown, in a tight little circle of obscure streets shadowed by the pasta-bowl entwining of the 101 and 110 freeways.
The areas in and around downtown L.A. have been flirting with renewal for decades, with uneven results. A smidge of optimism had made it to Skaggs in the form of crisp, three-story apartments with security parking. MultipleFor Salesigns said only a smidge for awhile.
The older properties ranged from fifties dingbats to wood-framed Victorians and Craftsman bungalows nailed up a century ago before earthquakes were taken seriously. A surprising quantity of improbable construction has survived, social Darwinism meets real estate.
Casa Clara Adult Residential Care was on the 800 block of Skaggs and one of the survivors: a two-story Craftsman painted cantaloupe orange, with a wraparound front porch complete with two rocking chairs. The paint looked fresh.
No signage; from the street, just an eccentrically colored house.
A front area behind a low wire fence and gate was cement. Triangle cutouts in the gray surface sported drought-loving succulents. That and the paint said someone was paying attention.
The gate opened on a walk-right-in pathway. From the street, no apparent security. Then the details asserted themselves.
The rocking chairs were bolted to the wide-plank porch floor. Iron bars grilled every window and the four-pane mini-window in a vintage carved mahogany door. Sticker from an alarm company and two serious dead bolts on the door. Maybe to counteract all that, a yellow happy-face decal beamed just below the top bolt.
Milo rang the bell and evoked a wasp-buzz.
Nothing for several seconds, then a female voice sang out, “Wuh-uhnsecond!”
Footsteps. The same voice, louder, trilled, “Whoisit?”
“Police.”
The upper half of a face filled the four panes, pale skin and blue eyes waffled by the iron grid. “Um, I.D., please?”
Milo obliged with the badge. The door opened on a tall, slim woman in her twenties wearing a crimson Harvard sweatshirt, ripped gray jeans, and black flats in need of polish. Square face with a strong chin, upturned nose, narrow mouth, pert chin. Oversized glasses in tortoiseshell frames hazed the eyes, which verged on turquoise. Long caramel-colored hair was gathered in a free-for-all high pony. Long pale fingers moved restlessly, as did her shoulders and the eyebrows.
She smiled at us, what appeared to be a sincere attempt at warmth. The fidgeting reduced the impact, but still, good intentions.
“Someone finally got going on Benson? Please tell me he’s okay.”
She squinted past us at the street. “Is he in your car? Can I go out and get him?”
Milo said, “Benson Alvarez.”
Enthusiastic nod. “We call him Benny. So he’s safe. Good. We’ve all been so worried since he didn’t come home Friday. I immediately reached out to his DPSS worker but she never got back to me so I phoned you guys. The guy I spoke to started in with an adult has to be missing twenty-four hours before you can file a report. I told him Benny wasn’t your typical adult and he said okay, he’d look into it. I wasn’t sure he meant it, so good, he did.”
She shifted to the right, blue eyes shooting past Milo. “Um, I don’t see him in your car.Ishe being held somewhere? I can’t leave myself but maybe Andrea can authorize an Uber to pick him up or something.”
Milo said, “You’re his caretaker?”
“I oversee the facility. We’re Level One, the most able residents, they don’t have individual caretakers. It’s by accident that I’m dealing with this, usually I do the night shift because I’m going to school for my master’s during the day. But Marcella—the day person—asked if she could trade to take some vacation time with her boyfriend.”
She stopped, caught her breath. “That was oversharing, sorry. So where and when can Benny be picked up?”
Milo rubbed his face. “Could we come in, Ms….”
