“Oh, dear god,” she says. “Eric. You sound just like him. He was right. He said you’d come one of these days and know what to do.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know who—”

“Oh, of course,” she says. “I’m Miriam. You would have been too young to remember me. He said if family came looking then it would be important. And that they need to understand. We need to meet.”

“Okay, where do—”

“Can you get to Union Station?” she says. “The waiting area. It’ll be empty. I don’t think you’ll want anyone else around. And it was a special place for him. For us. That’s where we met. He told me to give you, well, give whoever came looking the key.” My head is spinning. I didn’t know what I was expecting but it sure as hell wasn’t this.

“Okay, I need you to slow this down a little,” I say. “Who are you talking about?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you knew,” she says. “Your grandfather.”

Chapter 24

Back when it opened in 1939, Union Station was the jewel of Los Angeles. People came from all over the country. Make it big in Hollywood, try their luck in the Sunshine State, hide from a past best left buried in the east.

It sits on what used to be Old Chinatown. The land got bought up and Chinatown moved to the west a bit. The problem I’ve always had with it isn’t the place itself. Union Station’s beautiful. Gorgeous chandeliers, amazing tilework. Even if you don’t know you’ve seen it, you’ve seen it. Like everywhere else in L.A., it’s been in the movies.

No, it’s not Union Station I have a problem with. It’s all the land around, and a piece of little-known L.A. history that took place there in 1871. Something like five hundred white men descended on Chinatown, ransacked buildings, tortured and murdered the residents. By the time it was all over, eighteen Chinese men hung from lampposts. Fun fact, biggest mass lynching in U.S. history. Bring that one out at your next cocktail party.

All the white folks cheered, all the Chinese wept, and all the dead left ghosts.

Whenever I come down here I try to pass by where the massacre happened. It’s a little outside Olvera Street, a historic district that’s turned into a kitschy tourist trap of Mexican restaurants and south-of-the-border tchotchkes. Strong Haunts, those dead Chinese. A hundred fifty years gone and they’re solid as the day they died. They’re even strong enough to incorporate the lampposts into their manifestations.

Faces purple from bruising and strangulation, heads hanging from necks at impossible angles. They’re close enough together that walking through is like stepping through a grove of corpses. Like the Billie Holiday song, strange fruit indeed.