Nick Trejo lived in Linwood, one of the string of towns in the urban corridor that stretched along Interstate 80 across the bay from San Francisco. From the freeway, they were an indistinguishable series of shopping malls and housing developments but once off the freeway they retained vestiges of the old railroad or farm towns they had once been. Linwood had been a farm town—there was still a grain and feed store housed in an old brick building on its two-block Main Street. Nick Trejo’s neighborhood seemed to be original to the old town because it was unlike the surrounding 1950s and ’60s ranch-style house tracts. The houses on Jefferson Avenue, where he lived, were constructed from wood, not stucco, and were of different shapes and sizes on irregularly sized lots. Dobermans and Rottweilers patrolled unkempt yards behind chain link fences where even now in mid-November, ancient, leggy rosebushes produced a few blowsy blooms. I had grown up on a street like this, in a town not a hundred miles away, in another neighborhood on the wrong side of the tracks and I felt at home here.

I parked in front of the Trejo residence, a single-story, white wooden house set back from the street and shaded by a venerable oak tree. An oversize tire hung from its branches and its leaves littered the lawn. Flower beds on either side of the porch had been planted with herbs—mint, oregano, thyme, rosemary. A wooden placard, the kind boys made in high school shop class, hung above the porch proclaiming Familia Trejo. I rang the doorbell. A moment later a girl of eight or nine was staring at me from behind the screen door.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m looking for Nick Trejo.”

Without turning her head, she screamed, “Manito, there’s a man at the door for you!”

Manito. Little brother.

“How come you’re all dressed up?” the girl asked.

“I’m working.”

She seemed skeptical but before she could say anything else, a soft male voice behind her said, “Go help my mom in the kitchen, Adela.”

She ran off and a tall, skinny boy in sagging jeans and an SF State sweatshirt came to the screen. Thick black hair, parted in the middle into wings, framed a narrow face. A wispy goatee only made him look younger than twenty-three, his age on the EMT report. Blunt eyebrows like soot smudges above his dark, mild eyes gave his face a male forcefulness but he was undeniably pretty. Long nose, thick lips, big ears, seamless cinnamon-colored skin. He looked every bit the little brother.

“Nick? I’m Henry Rios. I work for Western States Insurance Company. They sent me out here to talk to you about Bill Ryan’s life insurance policy. He made you the beneficiary.”

“How did you know I was here?” he asked worriedly.

“Peg Donohue gave me this address.”

He smiled briefly. “Oh, I see. How is Peg?”