The sky above Los Angeles was shockingly blue. Front gardens were stippled with succulents, monarch butterflies bobbed about milkweed. In the Starbucks on North Vermont Avenue a woman in a Joy Division T-shirt was writing a screenplay about a gay magician whose life was turned upside down when implicated in a murder at the Magic Castle involving his trademark trick.
A mile to the south, on Virgil, in a repurposed butcher shop, a Nicaraguan man spoke of heaven and the redemptive power of financial contributions. At the hipster café next door two young women from podunk towns were discussing their idea for a meditation-retreat business over almond-milk lattes. Across the road two policemen gave a homeless man a ticket for sleeping in the street. Fly-guy inflatables danced outside the second-hand car dealership on the corner.
All over this city the eye took in slogans and messages:
COLLATERAL NOT NEEDED – WORLD-FAMOUS PASTRAMI – LIQUOR – EGGS ANY STYLE – FREE REFILLS – HELP WANTED – BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE – JESUS SAVES – END
In the doorway of an abandoned psychic parlour a homeless woman had made a bed of newspapers. Beneath her, Donald Trump was smiling, his campaign announced, his catchphrase in white letters. The headlines were mocking him.
And on Sunset Boulevard Kosuke Iwata was sitting at his desk. The new office was half the size of the old one, but it was cheaper and there was a coffee shop next door. When a breeze blew it carried the smell of roasting beans and snippets of conversation.
Iwata had set up the Astrid Valentín Humanitarian Foundation a month ago, offering investigative services pro bono for the families of those missing while attempting to cross the southern deserts, for the families of missing trans persons, anyone unaccounted for, anyone lost. Nobody was turned away. Kate Floccari, partner in the charity, helped with the paperwork. There would be no more unfaithful spouses for Iwata.
On his desk there were missing-persons files and thick textbooks on US immigration law. They were his daily bread now: the lost, the abused, the murdered in the borderlands, those swallowed by the dream of a better life.
This, for many, was a mirage seen through America’s vast deserts – deserts that could kill with tremendous heat, hateful cold. But for the men and women who dragged themselves through the emptiness the dangers were not only those that occurred naturally – not all wolves walked on four legs.
There were men who came to collect, men who came to rape, men who came to claim territory. Others came in search of blood, to make statements, to strike fear. And, like little ants over a chessboard, the migrants were clueless to the moving pieces around them, the stratagems that swirled above them. Iwata was not in the business of protecting them, but he tried to give them names, at least. To their families, some semblance of closure.
Given a murder case with finite players, secure crime scenes and investigative resources, Iwata was a first-rate inspector. It wasn’t something that he thought much about, nor did he take much pride in it, it was merely as evident as the greys in his hair. But the desert had no interest in his abilities, the shrewdness of his lines of enquiry. In the desert there was no cooperation with any kind of force beyond death.
Week after week Iwata would take on a case and head out in search of missing fathers, missing mothers, missing children. He was meticulous in his work, using all the tools and information available to him. He questioned those who could or would be, combed for clues. Sometimes Lily Trimble would even come with him. Earnell McCrae would help surreptitiously from his desk when he could.
Yet almost always Iwata’s searching resulted only in empty plastic bottles, a torn jacket, the hint of a footprint. Perhaps a student ID card one time, perhaps a clavicle the next, a child’s pencil case, a cellphone – sad little tokens of lives relinquished.
The local deputies all came to know Iwata. Some appreciated his work, others rolled their eyes at yet another John Doe, as though Iwata were a cat bringing dead mice to an owner. But that was what he did now, that was his function in this world. For hours and hours he would shout out names to the desert, names that had lost their owners, names echoing out over the scorched hillocks in absolute futility. And so Iwata’s days were spent in a stack of cases, forty-four missing persons in the desert. He lived in them like his own secret chamber in a tower of nameless bones.
The hopelessness of it might have slowly poisoned a normal man. But Iwata knew little beyond existing in well-intentioned futility. His little patchwork of contradictions. The guilt of his cowardice. It followed him like a large black trunk, his own sneering memories an attentive porter who only coughed for tips at night. Bleakness would always pump through Iwata’s veins.
And yet he looked forward to his evenings. The evenings meant Santi. The evenings meant peace.
Not once since the desert had the boy asked about his mother. Iwata wondered what he would say when that day came. He wondered how Santi would grow up, how he would raise him. Santi was a US citizen now; Mingo Palacio’s contacts had seen to that. But would he become American, this country replacing the one in his blood, the one in his past? Iwata had no clue; he was sure only that he would love him. Somehow, the boy had become his anchor in the uncertain blue of life itself.
The door opened now and a warm and mellow dusk seeped in. Somewhere not too far away Iwata could hear Arthur Russell’s ‘What It’s Like’. Charlotte Nichol walked in. She didn’t smile, she merely sat across from Iwata at his desk.
‘I got your report,’ she said flatly. ‘I came to thank you.’
‘Please, don’t thank me.’
‘It doesn’t make it any easier. But I do appreciate knowing who hurt Meredith.’
‘Well’ – Iwata managed to meet her eyes – ‘then I’m glad.’
She nodded at his arm. ‘How’s it coming along?’
‘The physical therapy is slow but I’m getting there.’
There was a long silence as Charlotte looked around the office. She noticed the photographs of Cleo and Nina on his desk. The photo of Nozomi. The photo of Santi on a pedalo in Echo Park.
‘Kosuke, what you’re doing here … It’s a good thing. Cleo would be proud.’
‘Thank you.’
Charlotte didn’t smile, but her mouth might have softened. ‘Well.’ She stood. ‘I should go.’
Iwata accompanied her to the door and they stepped into the warm thrum of traffic. The sun was setting. The smell of coffee and hot concrete was strong in the air.
They looked at each other for a moment, but neither of them could fathom the proper goodbye. Charlotte nodded once then headed for her waiting car.
Iwata decided to call it a night. He locked up, then gave himself a few moments to watch Los Angeles play out. There were thousands of cases out there, endless questions to be answered, truths to be discovered. Iwata could feel them like mosquitos in the dark, hungry for his blood. There would always be murders. There would always be betrayals. And there would always be sins – of all colours.
Iwata put his tea-shade sunglasses on and started home.
The owner of the coffee shop next door waved. ‘Didn’t catch you today!’ she called.
‘I was pretty busy. Maybe tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow is another day.’ She smiled. ‘That’s what they say, anyway.’
‘Yeah.’ He returned the smile. ‘That’s what they say.’
Looking up, Iwata saw the last of the sun setting over the boulevard, a sunset on Sunset, an infinite circle.