The next morning I arrived in Pacoima-a blue-collar Latino community on the north side of the San Fernando Valley. Small homes stood beside subsidized housing projects. People who tended gardens and cleaned toilets for the rich had to live somewhere.
Even with supernatural mojo, I still felt queasy coming here. Since I had left many years ago, vowing never to return, I had graduated from college, gone to war, become a vampire, and settled in Denver. And here I was, back in Pacoima anyway.
Terrific.
Once I got off the freeway, I drove north a few blocks. Surprisingly, Pacoima looked a lot better than I remembered. I counted only one boarded-up storefront and no abandoned cars. Small shops lined the boulevard: nail salons, taco stands, auto parts. I turned right at the corner with a convenience store and gas pumps that used to be a vacant lot.
Barrios Unidos occupied a cinder block building whose original tenant was a Pentecostal church. Beige paint blotches covered graffiti on the walls and the base of the steeple. Weeds and trash collected along a chain-link fence. I parked at the end of a row of a half-dozen cars in the gravel lot.
I entered through double doors that had steel mesh over the windows. A threadbare carpet covered the floor, which creaked when I walked in. From behind the closed door of an adjoining room, children sang a folk tune in Spanish. An easel held a calendar listing the center's events for the month: kindergarten, literacy programs, prenatal clinics, Friday open-mike poetry, and a workshop for novice writers.
The front hall doubled as an art gallery. The exhibition was a series of modern interpretations of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The Virgin as seamstress. The Virgin wearing boxing gloves. The Virgin working the drive-thru window at McDonald's.
At the end of the hall stood a table heaped with dried flowers and small mementos. On the wall above the table was a portrait of the Virgin, but the face of this Virgin belonged to Roxy Bronze.
To the left hung a framed front page of the Los Angeles Times dated from seven months ago. The headline read, PROJECT ELEVEN IS A GONER. Below the headline, there was a photo of a victorious crowd waving banners on the steps of L.A. City Hall and giving the thumbs-up.
A door to the right of the table opened into an office. There was one desk when I walked in and two more along the far wall. A pair of young women sat at these desks, their backs to me as they chatted on phones and tapped on keyboards.
A woman stood by the first desk, a battered piece of furniture that looked donated from a thrift store. A paper taped to the desk had the words OPERATIONAL MANAGER marked through and replaced with, La Rena de Todo. The Queen of Everything.
Her head was tipped to one side, and she raked a brush through her wavy brown locks. The air around her smelled of apricot shampoo.
"I'm looking for Veronica Torres," I said.
The woman waved the brush. "That's me."
I introduced myself. Veronica was taller than I expected. We were almost eye to eye. I glanced to see if she wore heels. Nope. Sandals.
She looked to be in her midthirties. A very well preserved midthirties. A trim form in blue capris and a matching sleeveless blouse. High cheekbones and smooth skin a nice mestiza hue of cafe con leche. Her alert mahogany brown eyes complemented the inviting curve of her smile with its glamour magazine gloss. And she had a taut, succulent neck. The gums around my incisors began to itch.
She asked if I had problems finding the center. Considering that I was here to discuss the murder of her friend, Veronica's tone seemed unusually casual and loose.
Boxes filled with papers lay about haphazardly, making the place look like a recycling bin instead of an office.
Veronica pointed her brush to a chair beside the desk. I removed a carton of markers from the chair and sat.
She resumed brushing her hair and looked at me through the corner of one eye, a reaction that made me suspect a patch of pale skin was showing through my makeup.
I touched my cheek. "It's a skin condition. My souvenir from the Iraq war. Nothing to worry about."
Veronica nodded. She dropped the brush into an open gym bag between her desk and a swivel chair.
I heard the quick steps of a child approach. A toddler rushed into the office. A plump woman in a Guatemalan peasant dress hustled in, apologizing, and took the little rug rat with her.
Veronica waved good-bye and settled into the swivel chair. The open laptop on her desk said she had fifty-six new emails.
"When we talked earlier, you said you were an investigator. But you didn't say what kind." She closed the laptop. "You don't seem like a cop."
"I'm a private investigator. Katz Meow hired me." I waited for Veronica to respond to the name.
She turned her head and broke eye contact. Her jaw hardened and her breathing slowed. At times like this I wished my contacts were out so I could read auras and determine how genuine these reactions were. But I couldn't risk revealing myself, not here with these ankle biters running loose and getting in the way.
After a moment she brought those big brown eyes back to me. "Felix, whoever murdered Roxy needs to be punished."
"I'm here to make that happen. First, any idea where I could find Katz?"
"No." Veronica shook her head. "We weren't friends. I only met her once."
The phone rang. A young woman at the opposite side of the office answered and called out, "Veronica, line one."
"Take a message," Veronica replied in Spanish. "Tell them I'm busy with an appointment." She spoke with a rapid-fire Central America staccato that made her English seem like a drawl.
"Where are you from?" I asked.
"Panama," she replied.
"That's a long way from L.A. What drew you here?"
"Chicanismo is a state of mind. The barrio called and I answered."
The diploma on the wall was her master's in nonprofit management from George Mason University. I could imagine Veronica at any major foundation as the resident Latina hotshot. Instead of a nice salary with fat perks, Veronica slogged through the trenches on behalf of this community for what she could make managing a Burger King.
Veronica didn't see Pacoima the same way I did. For me, it was a dump to escape as soon as I could. For her, this was a place where she could fight injustice and bring hope.
I gestured toward the art exhibit in the hall. "Roxy must have made quite an impression on the people here."
"She was one of the most charismatic women I've ever met." Sadness tarnished Veronica's features. I preferred to see her smile.
"You're a community activist. Roxy was a porn star. What brought you together?"
"One day, she walked in to offer both her time and money to help stop Project Eleven."
"And that meant what to you?"
"Are you kidding?" Veronica replied. "This is not some black-tie nonprofit like save the sea otters or whatever. We're always short of volunteers and funds. Project Eleven was going to stomp through Pacoima like Godzilla. Roxy was our patron saint."
A porn star saint? "In what way?"
"In a huge way. Her money paid for advertising. Mailers. Legal help. Pro bono only goes so far. Plus we could bus residents to council meetings. Stopping Project Eleven was a drain on our time. Roxy's generous support let us hire extra staff."
"But at first," I asked, "a wealthy porn star arrives here, checkbook in hand, didn't that seem suspicious?"
"Hell yeah, it was suspicious. This is Pacoima. Shit like that never happens. Our fight against Project Eleven was going to be a public relations battle. This smelled like a setup. I get help from a porn star and I'd be handing our enemies ammunition."
"What did you tell Roxy?" I asked.
Veronica folded her hands on the desk. Her fingernails were short and painted bright red, just like her toenails. She had silver rings on her index fingers and a matching band on her left thumb.
"I told Roxy it wasn't my place to judge. She was upfront about how she made her money. I'm no prude, but I didn't like it. That business is all about the exploitation of women. Roxy's success was the exception."
"What changed your mind?"
"I never changed my mind about pornography. But I came to respect and admire Roxy."
"Seems she would've been the worst kind of magnet for slander and a big distraction from the campaign."
"She was. Those Project Eleven bastards were ruthless vampires."
The word shocked me. "Vampires?"
Veronica snapped her teeth in a playful gesture. "Absolutely. They were a gang of bloodsuckers. We tried our best to drive a stake through their evil hearts."
"You're joking."
She settled against the back of her chair. "You're taking me literally, aren't you?"
I forced a sheepish smile. "Of course not. It was just an unusual choice of words."
Veronica reached across the desk and grasped my wrist. The touch of her silver rings burned my skin but I didn't flinch. The pain curled my toes. I clenched my other hand to endure the agony.
"You should've seen your face," she said. "It was like you really believed in vampires."
I wanted to yelp in distress and could barely hold my smile. "Silly me."
Veronica pulled her hand back. The relief was exhilarating. I dropped my wrist from her view to hide the scorch marks.
Veronica wrinkled her nose. With a puzzled expression, she looked around the office. "Do you smell that?"
"Smell what?" My seared flesh, what else?
"Chicharones."
Great, I've always wanted to remind a woman of pork rinds.
Veronica showed me a photo of Roxy and her standing together, smiling like sisters.
"They attacked Roxy again and again but it always backfired. Like when Councilman Krutz, the pious windbag cabron, thumped the Bible about protecting his community's values. According to him, taking money from that puta was a bribe from the devil."
Veronica's cheeks dimpled and a smile warmed her words. "Roxy worked her connections in the adult trade, then brought a cute young male escort to a Project Eleven meeting. The kid winked at Krutz, who toppled over with a heart attack and was wheeled out on a gurney. You didn't need a script to know what that was all about."
"With you and Roxy spending so much time together," I said, "that must have created rumors of you two being… lesbians."
Veronica crossed her legs. "For the record, Felix, I've never munched a rug in my life."
So what if she had? Veronica could nosh on me while I munched her rug. In the time I'd been here, it was a heroic effort on my part not to stare and drool at the choicest parts of her body.
But I hadn't come here to make Veronica or sink my fangs into her tempting neck. As noble as Veronica appeared to be, the chance to score a half-million dollars could twist anyone's principles. Maybe the idea of killing Roxy for insurance money wasn't so far-fetched.
"Barrios Unidos was a beneficiary of Roxy's life insurance. Five hundred thousand dollars." I studied Veronica's expression. "What happened to the money?"
"The money was nothing compared to losing Roxy." Veronica paused and bit her lower lip. She closed her eyes, opened them, and said, "It's in the center's trust account."
"Meaning you haven't spent it?"
"We draw from the interest. To pay operating expenses. Get new projects started." She motioned to the clutter around us. "It's obvious that fixing up this place hasn't been a priority."
So far it seemed that Veronica's involvement with Roxy's murder was about as plausible as me getting a halo. Still, I needed to verify it through hypnosis. "What did Roxy do as a volunteer?"
"She was great at digging out facts about Project Eleven."
"Such as?"
"Conflicts of interest. 'Independent' consultants not disclosing that they worked for the developers. Contracts let out ahead of time. Silent partners who were not so silent. Off-the-record meetings between elected officials and lobbyists."
"Sounds like business as usual for a city project. What was so different about this?"
"The blatant audacity. It began when Lucky Rosario's people showed up and threatened my staff with trespass. This center was scheduled for demolition, even though Barrios Unidos owns the building. That's how I learned about Project Eleven."
"There was no public comment?" I asked.
"Only the pretense. The Project Eleven committee intended to sneak this three-hundred-million-dollar stinker past us." Veronica went to the window and raised the blinds. "See this neighborhood? It was to be bulldozed for a corporate office park and hotel. That library"-she pointed to a green building with a curved roof-"was only recently built. Still, the city was going to tear it down because it was in the way of progress."
"I was told Project Eleven would bring jobs."
"Oh yeah. Replace family-owned businesses with dead-end service work. Project Eleven was a scam, a huge bag of stinking pork. Know what made it worse? The project was to be paid for by a special tax levied against us, the community. In other words, we were to pay Project Eleven to screw us."
Veronica returned to her desk and rummaged through the gym bag. She brought out a pair of high-heel pumps. "But this Project Eleven Godzilla made one mistake."
"What was that?"
Veronica pointed the shoes' long, slender heels at me. "They never thought we'd come after them with stilettos. You know, woman-power. Roxy and me."
I reflected on the surroundings: the dilapidated furnishings, the cracked plaster, the mountains of boxes, and wondered about Roxy's true motives. Why had she come to Barrios Unidos to join their battle against Project Eleven?
"What was Roxy getting out of this?"
"l Quien sake?" Who knows? Veronica put the high heels back into her gym bag. She sat again, propped one elbow on the desk, and circled her fingers through her hair. "Roxy had her demons."
"What demons?"
"I don't know. For all the time we spent together, she kept a lot to herself. But Roxy had something to prove. To whom? No se." Veronica shrugged.
"There are two players I don't see involved in this," I said. "Cragnow Vissoom. Roxy's former boss at Gomorrah Video. If anyone had it in for her, it would've been him. What about Councilwoman Venin? She was the force behind Project Eleven. But I don't see a connection between Cragnow and Project Eleven." Or between Project Eleven and vampire-human collusion. "There are a lot of missing pieces to this puzzle."
"Maybe the next step," Veronica said, "will be to find out what demons brought Roxy Bronze to the barrio."