“He’s sort of eccentric but he’s a good guy. He left Cuba about twenty years ago. He was married then, and had a little girl. He planned their escape for nearly a year. He had a Volkswagen, and every weekend he’d take his family down to the beach to camp in the same spot. He became known as a regular guy who loved to fish. People got used to seeing him and his family there. But really he was studying the tides and learning navigation. He made his Volkswagen into a boat—at least something that would float. One night when he had it all planned and knew the currents, he got his wife and little girl into the boat he’d made. The wife and the child drowned. He made it. Got picked up by a fishing boat. I’m not sure how long he’s been in LA.”

So he had probably been the low end of bourgeoisie in Cuba. I wondered if he’d got any money out of the country. Not much, I guessed, or he wouldn’t have a crummy place like Rudy’s. I wondered if he lived in his studio also.

“Armando’s just a lonely guy, and he hates Castro, hates the communists. He goes out all the time with a group of other Cubans to protest.”

So he had probably seen Cathy Vega at a demonstration. “What’s the name of his group?”

“I don’t know. It’s mostly old guys like him. Some people say it’s like an army, that they buy guns and train with them so they can invade Cuba someday, but I don’t think they do anything but stand around and yell slogans.”

I looked at my watch. It was nearly six. I left Rudy, telling him I’d be back in a day or so. I made him promise to call me if the cops came around to question him. Of course I knew they wouldn’t but I hoped the implied threat would encourage him to contact me if he heard from Monica.

The sun was almost directly behind the Pioneer Chicken, making it glow pink and orange. Everyone in the street spoke Spanish. It could have been Buenos Aires or Lima, Santiago or San Salvador. But it was Lost Angeles, and I knew that just as Lost Angeles is on the edge of a precariously shifting continental shelf, I was on the edge of something unknown and dangerous.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN