"I don't get involved in more than I need to."

"Smart. Theft is an overstatement. He lifted a bottle of gin from a liquor store, and a couple of sticks of beef jerky. Did it in plain sight of the clerk and got busted. I'm sure he didn't even mean it. Clerk nearly broke his arm restraining him."

"What defense were you planning?"

"What do you think?"

"Plea bargain."

"What else? He had no prior record other than petty stuff. The way the jails are crowded it would have been a slam-dunk."

He sat up and inserted five fingers into his thick hair. Massaging his scalp, he said, "Gritz."

"Pardon me?"

"It's a name. Gritz."

"As in hominy?"

"With a "z.' The closest I can come to someone who might be called Dorsey's friend."

"First name or last?"

"Don't know. He came by here a couple of times with Dorsey. Another homeless guy. The only reason I know his name is because I noticed him hanging around over there"- pointing to the partition-"asked Dorsey who he was and Dorsey said "Gritz.' First thing I said was what you just did: "As in hominy?' That went right over Dorsey's head, and I tried to explain it. Spelled "grits', told him what they were, asked him if it was a last name or a first name. He said no, it was a name and it was spelled with a "z.' He spelled it for me. Really slowly- he always talked slow. "G-R-I-T-Z.' Like it was profound. For all I know he was making it up."

"Did he tend to do that?"

"He was schizophrenic- what do you think?"

"Did he ever mention the term "bad love' to you?"

He shook his head. "First time I heard about that was from the police. Asking me why Dorsey had screamed it- as if I'd know."

Pushing himself away from the desk, he wheeled back in his chair, then sat up. "And that's about all she wrote."

"Can you describe this Gritz fellow?"

He thought. "It was a while ago… about the same age as Dorsey- though with street people you can't really tell. Shorter than Dorsey, I think." He looked at his watch. "There's a call I've got to make."

I got up and thanked him for his time.

He waved it off and picked up the phone.

"Any idea where this Gritz might be located?" I said, as he dialed.

"Nope."

"Where did Dorsey hang out?"

"Wherever he could- and I'm not being flip. When it was warm, he liked to go down by the beach- Pacific Palisades Park, all up and down the beaches on PCH. When it cooled down, I was able to get him into a shelter or an SRO a couple of times, but he actually preferred sleeping outdoors- lots of times he bunked down in Little Calcutta."

"Where's that?"

"Freeway overpass, West L.A."

"Which freeway?"

"San Diego, just past Sepulveda. Never saw it?"

I shook my head.

He shook his, too, smiled, and put down the phone. "The invisible city… there used to be these little hovels there called Komfy Kort- built God knows when, for Mexican workers doing the day-labor pickup thing on Sawtelle."

"Those I remember," I said.

"Did you happen to notice they're not there anymore? City tore them down a few years ago and the street people moved onto the property. Nothing to tear down with them, so what could the city do but keep chasing them out? And what with voodoo economics taking hold, that became too expensive. So the city let them stay."

"Little Calcutta."

"Yeah, it's a great little suburb- you look like a West Side kind of guy- live anywhere near there?"

"Not that far."

"Go by and take a look, if you can spare the time. See who your neighbors are."

13

I drove east to the overpass Coburg had described. The freeway formed a concrete ceiling over a fenced dirt lot, an arcing canopy of surprising grace supported by columns that would have challenged Samson. The shade it cast was cool and gray. Even with my windows closed I could hear the roar of unseen cars.

The lot was empty and the dirt looked fresh. No tents or bedrolls, no signs of habitation.

I pulled over across the street, in front of a self-storage facility the size of an army base, and idled the Seville.

Little Calcutta. The fresh dirt suggested a bulldozer party. Maybe the city had finally cleared it.

I drove farther, slowly, past Exposition Boulevard. The west side of the street was lined with apartment buildings, the freeway concealed by ivied slopes. A few more empty spots peeked behind the usual chain link. A couple of overturned shopping carts made me stop and peer into the shadows.

Nothing.

I cruised several more blocks, until the freeway twisted out of sight. Then I turned around.

As I neared Exposition again, I spied something shiny and huge- a white-metal mountain, some sort of factory or plant. Giant canisters, duodenal twists of pipe, five-story ladders, valves that hinted at monstrous pressure.

Running parallel to the machine works was a blackened length of railroad track. Bordering the rails was a desert-pale table of sand.

Twenty years in L.A., and I'd never noticed it before.

Invisible city.

I headed toward the tracks, getting close enough to read a small red-and-blue sign on one of the giant towers. AVALON GRAVEL AND ASPHALT.

As I prepared to reverse direction again, I noticed another fenced lot catercorner to the plant- darker, almost blackened by the freeway, blocked from street view by green-gray shrubs. The chain-link fence was obscured by sections of bowed, graffitied plywood, the wood nearly blotted out by the hieroglyphics of rage.

Pulling to the curb, I turned off the engine and got out. The air smelled of dust and spoiled milk. The plant was as still as a mural.

The only other vehicle in sight was the burnt-out chassis of something two-doored, with a crushed roof. My Seville was old and in need of a paint job, but here it looked like a royal coach.

I crossed the empty street over to the plywooded fence and looked through an unblocked section of link. Shapes began forming in the darkness, materializing through the metal diamonds like holograms.

An overturned chair bleeding stuffing and springs.

An empty lineman's spool stripped of wire and cracked down the middle.

Food wrappers. Something green and shredded that might once have been a sleeping bag. And always the overhead roar, constant as breath.

Then movement- something on the ground, shifting, rolling. But it was submerged deeply in the shadows and I couldn't tell if it was human, or even real.

I looked up and down the fence, searching for an entrance to the lot, had to walk a ways until I found it: a square hatch cut into the link, held in place with rusty baling wire.

Prying the wires loose took a while and hurt my fingers. Finally, I bent the flap back, squatted, and passed through, retying one wire from the other side. Making my way across the soft dirt, my nostrils full of shit smell, I dodged chunks of concrete, Styrofoam food containers, lumps of things that didn't bear further inspection. No bottles or cans- probably because they were recyclable and redeemable. Let's hear it for green power.

But nothing green here. Just blacks, grays, browns. Perfect camouflage for a covert world.

A vile smell overcame even the excremental stench. Hearing the buzz of flies, I looked down at a cat's carcass that was so fresh the maggots hadn't yet homesteaded, and gave it a wide berth. Onward, past an old blanket, clumps of newspaper so sodden they looked like printed bread dough… no people that I could see, no movement. Where had the movement come from?

I arrived at the spot where I thought the thing had rolled, toward the back of the covered lot, just a few feet from the inner angle of a canted concrete wall.

Standing again, I focused. Waited. Felt my back itch.