previous: Manipulated Again

10: No, He's Really Missing

Nobody said anything for a good twenty seconds. I was thinking, That's simply ridiculous on its face, no way you're going to build housing for L.A.'s tens of thousands of homeless, it just ain't gonna happen, and the looks on the faces around the room said the same. Like Henry Shoshone's. But neither he nor I was going to say, "John, that's a stupid idea." You don't say things like that to John Santini. And among the others, even the people who didn't know John Santini from their elbow sensed he just wasn't the kind of guy you call on something you think is idiotic.

Finally John Santini said, "Somebody say something."

I was gathering the right words when Jessica Love Dooitt saved me. "With all due respect," she said, "that's not going to happen."

"Why not?"

"All sorts of reasons. First of all, where do you build them? Think of how people go all not-in-my-back-yard on you if you even try to build a halfway house down the block. Now you're talking about something a whole lot bigger. Think of the complaints."

"We'll deal with 'em. What else?" She stood up off the hearth, approached him. He looked her over. Not as a man assays a good-looking woman, but as one evaluating a possible adversary. "So?" he said. "You got more? Tell me."

"Okay, even assuming your friend Robbie Strauss has the money to do all this, there must be all sorts of hoops he's got to jump through to get it done. The city, the county—"

"We'll handle it."

Jessica thought about it. Then dove in. "I know who you are. I know how powerful and all that. My dad's a policeman."

"I know him?"

"No, but he knows you. So I know you can pull a lot of strings and everything, but a project this size ... someone's going to get in your way."

"Who?"

"I don't know who. I just know if somebody wants to do something that could do so much good, some dick's going to find a reason to oppose it."

"We'll deal with it. What else?"

"What about the people themselves? The homeless people."

"What about them?"

"What makes you think they want to get off the streets?"

"Course they do."

"Some of them, maybe. But a lot are mentally ill, and a lot of the rest will be suspicious. You'll have to have people to deal with them. A lot of people. A lot won't want to have a place to live. I just said a lot a lot, didn't I?"

"Nathaniel," I said.

"Huh?" John Santini said, though I was certain he knew who I was talking about.

"The guy Steve Lopez found playing violin under the tunnel downtown. You know, turned out he went to Juilliard and all that. There's a book and a movie in the works and everything. But Lopez had a hell of a time trying to get him to accept shelter. Multiply that by ten thousand or so."

"Joe?"

"I know. You'll handle it."

"Right. Put people to work."

Jessica tried not to let her exasperation show. She nearly made it. Only thing that gave her away was a little extra intake of breath before what she said next. "You can we'll-handle-this and we'll-handle-that all you want, but when you add it all together, I just don't see it happening."

"Back in '84, you see the Olympics happening?"

"Back in '84, I was, let's see, eight. I didn't think about it a whole bunch."

"Yeah, well we made the Olympics happen. We can do this. Look, it's a big deal, sure. Lots of people are gonna be against it. Tough shit. City needs it, we'll do it, end of story. Now, back to you two." Meaning Henry Shoshone and me.

"What, John?" Shoshone said. "What do you need from us?"

"I need you to find Frankie Roja."

"You mean he's really missing?" I said.

"Course he's missing. What, you think I'd send you on a wild goose chase?"

"Wouldn't be the first time," Shoshone said.

I said, "I thought this whole thing was another of your complicated setups. Like Alma at the hockey game." Alma was John Santini's assistant. The hockey game was the start of my citizenship in Santiniland.

"Alma was in on yours too?" Shoshone said. "Hell."

"Yeah, well ..." John Santini said. Then he took another look at Jessica.

She realized she was the center of attention, and that it might not be a good idea. She retreated back to the fireplace.

"No," John Santini said. "No setup. Frankie-boy's really missing, and I really need to find him. 'Cause of what we talked about, with my friend and the person who's opposing my friend, which I'm not going to be more specific about right now because it's none of any of these other damn people's damn business."

His friend, Pete Francisco, the county supervisor. The person who was opposing him in November's election, L.A. City Council member Leslie Mars. Who, if Luis at the diner was to be believed, may have had a skeleton in her closet having to do with something going in and out of something else. Had it just been that afternoon I'd talked to Luis? It seemed like six or seven weeks.

"Which reminds me," John Santini said. "Don't all you people have something to do? This ain't a campfire and I'm not telling ghost stories."

They all retreated, all my new porn friends. Most of them went upstairs or into the kitchen or outside. Jessica tried to go too, but John Santini pointed at her like God creating the heavens and the earth and said, "Not you." Vito tried sticking around, but John Santini told him to "go hang out with the blonde."

So it was John Santini and Henry Shoshone and Jessica and me left there in the living room. He gestured for Jessica to sit down, and she found room on the other side of Shoshone. John Santini looked us over and said, "Fucking mod squad."

"None of us is black," I said.

"Henry is. An eighth, anyway. On your mother's side, right?"

From the way he said, "Right, John," I could tell that his great-grandmother's race had something to do with the way Henry Shoshone got entangled in John Santini's web.

"And you, sweetie. You got anything in you I ought to know about?"

Jessica threw him a look. "If I do, it's none of your damn business."

"You're feisty, you know that?"

"So I've been told."

"You are. You want to work with these guys?"

"Why would I want to do that?"

"Because the porn shop's closed down for a few weeks, and you need something to do. And because you're wrong about something."

"And what's that?" is what she said, but the color her face was turning told me she'd already guessed.

"What you're wrong about," John Santini said, "is whether I know your dad. 'Cause I know him, all right. I know him real good."

next: The Gang of Three