Clandestine

I looked through the L.A. papers I had been collecting and found Marcella Harris's home address in Monday's Mirror: 467 Maple Avenue, El Monte. It took me only five minutes to get there.

I surveyed El Monte as I drove. The residential streets were unpaved, and the residences that fronted them were ugly cubelike apartment buildings interspersed with subdivided farmhouses and auto courts held over from the not too distant time when this was open country.

I parked on the dirt shoulder at the corner of Claymore and Maple. Number 467 was right there on the corner, directly across from my parking spot. Two small frame houses stood in a large front yard encircled by a shoulder-high stone wall. Both houses looked well cared for, and a beagle puppy cavorted in the yard.

I didn't want to attempt the landlady—she had probably been frequently questioned by the police on her former tenant—so I just sat in the car and thought. Finally it bit me, and I dug a briefcase out of my trunk and went walking. School had recently let out for the summer, and the kids playing in their dirt front yards looked happy to be free. I waved to them as I walked down Maple, getting slightly suspicious looks in return. My crisp summer suit was obviously not standard El Monte garb.

Maple Avenue dead-ended a hundred yards or so in front of me, where a kids' softball game was in progress. The kids probably knew the Harris boy, so I decided to brace them.

"Hi, fellows," I said.

The game stopped abruptly as I walked through their makeshift infield. I got suspicious looks, hostile looks, and curious looks. There were six boys, all of them wearing white T-shirts and blue jeans. One of the boys, standing by home plate, threw the ball to first base. I dropped my briefcase, ran and made a daring leaping catch. I fumbled the ball on purpose and crashed to the pavement. I made a big show of getting to my feet. The kids surrounded me as I brushed off my trousers.

"I guess I'm not Ted Williams, fellows," I said. "I must be getting old. I used to be a hotshot fielder."

One of the boys grinned at me. "That was still a pretty swell try, mister," he said.

"Thanks," I returned. "Geeze, it's hot out here. Dusty, too. You guys ever get the chance to go to the beach?"

The boys started jabbering all together: "Naw, but we got the municipal pool." "The beach is too far and it's full of beer cans. My dad took us once." "We play baseball." "I'm gonna pitch like Bob Lemon." "Wanna see my fastball?"

"Whoa, whoa! Hold on there," I said. "What about the Scouts? Don't any of you guys go on field trips with them?"

Quiet greeted my question. There was a general reacting of down-turned faces. I had hit a nerve.

"What's the matter, fellows?"

"Aw, nothin' really," the tall first baseman said, "but my mom got real down on our troop for somethin' that wasn't even our fault."

"Yeah." "Yeah." "What a crummy deal!" the other boys chimed in.

"What happened?" I asked innocently.

"Well," a tall boy said, "it was our troop that found the dead lady."

I tossed the battered softball into the air and caught it. "That's a shame. You mean Mrs. Harris?"

"Yeah," they all said practically at once.

I waded in cautiously, although I knew that the boys wanted to talk. "She lived here on this street, didn't she?"

This brought forth a huge response: "Ooh! Yeah, you shoulda seen her, mister. All naked. Ooh!" "Yeachh, really sickening." "Yeah, ugh."

I tossed the ball to the quietest of the boys. "Did any of you boys know Mrs. Harris?" There was an embarrassed silence.

"My mom told me not to talk to strangers," the quiet boy said.

"My dad told me not to say bad things about people," the first baseman said.

I yawned, and feigned exasperation. "Well, I was just curious," I said. "Maybe I'll get a chance to talk to you guys later. I'm the new baseball coach at Arroyo High. You guys look pretty good to me. In a few years you'll probably be my starting lineup." I pretended to leave.

It was the perfect thing to say, and it was followed by a big volley of excited "oohs" and "aahs."

"What's so bad about Mrs. Harris?" I asked the first baseman.

He stared at his feet, then looked up at me with confused blue eyes. "My dad says he saw her a whole bunch of times down at Medina Court. He said no good woman would have anything to do with a place like that. He said that she was an unfit mother, that that was why Michael acted so strange." The boy backed away from me, as if the specter of his father was right there with us.

"Hold on, partner," I said, "I'm new in this territory. What's so bad about Medina Court? And what's wrong with Michael? He sounded like a pretty good kid from what I read in the papers."

A redheaded boy clutching a catcher's mitt answered me frankly. "Medina Court is Mex Town. Wetbacks—mean ones. My dad says never, ever, ever go there, that they hate white people. It's dangerous there."

"My dad delivers the mail on Medina," the first baseman said. "He said he's seen Mrs. Harris do nasty things there."