When The Bough Breaks

"I don't know." She sat with her hands folded in her lap, a proper schoolgirl. "I think I'd better start the talking. Cruz - Elena's mom - always liked me. Maybe I can get through. But don't expect miracles."

She had little to worry about on that account.

Echo Park is a chunk of Latin America transported to the dusty, hilly streets that, buttressed by crumbling concrete embankments on either side of Sunset Boulevard, rise between Hollywood and downtown. The streets have names like Macbeth and Macduff, Bonnybrae and Laguna, but are anything but poetic. They climb to the south and dip down into the Union District ghetto. To the north they climb, feeding into the tiny lake - centered park that gives the area its name, continue through arid trails, get lost in an incongruous wilderness that looks down upon Dodger Stadium, and Elysian Park, home of the Los Angeles Police Academy.

Sunset changes when it leaves Hollywood and enters Echo Park. The porno theaters and by - the - hour motels yield to botdnicas and bode gas outlets for Discos Latinos, an infinite array of food stands - taco joints, Peruvian seafood parlors, fast - food franchises - and first - rate Latino restaurants, beauty shops with windows guarded by Styrofoam skulls wearing blond Dynel wigs, Cuban bakeries, storefront medical and legal clinics, bars and social clubs. Like many poor areas, the Echo Park part of Sunset is continually clogged with foot traffic.

The Seville cut a slow swath through the afternoon mob. There was a mood on the boulevard as urgent and sizzling as the molten lard spitting forth from the fryers of the food stands. There were home boys sporting homemade tattoos, fifteen - year - old mothers wheeling fat babies in rickety strollers that threatened to fall apart at every curb, rummies, pushers, starched collared immigration lawyers, cleaning women on shore leave, grandmothers, flower vendors, a never ending stream of brown - eyed children.

"It's very weird," said Raquel, "coming back here. In a fancy car."

"How long have you been gone?"

"A thousand years."

She didn't seem to want to say more so I dropped it. At Fairbanks Place she told me to turn left. The Gutierrez home was at the end of an alley - sized twister that peaked, then turned into a dirt road just above the foothills. A quarter mile further and we'd have been the only humans in the world.

I'd noticed that she had a habit of biting herself - lips, fingers, knuckles - when she was nervous. And she was gnawing at her thumb right now. I wondered what kind of hunger it satisfied.

I drove cautiously - there was scarcely room for a single vehicle - passing young men in T - shirts working on old cars with the dedication of priests before a shrine, children sucking candy - coated fingers. Long ago, the street had been planted with elms that had grown huge. Their roots buckled the sidewalk and weeds grew in the cracks. Branches scraped the roof of the car. An old woman with inflamed legs wrapped in rags pushed a shopping cart full of memories up an incline worthy of San Francisco. Graffiti scarred every free inch of space, proclaiming the immortality of Little Willie Chacon, the Echo Parque Skulls, Los Conquistadores the Lemoyne Boys and the tongue of Maria Paula Bonilla.

"There." She pointed to a cottage like frame house painted light green and roofed with brown tarpaper. The front yard was dry and brown but rimmed with hopeful beds of red geraniums and clusters of orange and yellow poppies that looked like all - day suckers. There was rock trim at the base of the house and a portico over the entry that shadowed a sagging wooden porch upon which a man sat.

"That's Rafael, the older brother. On the porch."

I found a parking space next to a Chevy on blocks. I turned the wheels to the curb and locked them in place. We got out of the car, dust spiraling at our heels.

"Rafael!" she called and waved. The man on the porch took a moment to lift his gaze, then he raised his hand - feebly, it seemed.

"I used to live right around the corner," she said, making it sound like a confession. She led me up a dozen steps and through an open iron gate.

The man on the porch hadn't risen. He stared at us with apprehension and curiosity and something else that I couldn't identify. He was pale and thin to the point of being gaunt, with the same curious mixture of Hispanic features and fair coloring as his dead sister. His lips were bloodless, his eyes heavily lidded. He looked like the victim of some systemic disease. He wore a long - sleeved white shirt with the sleeves rolled up just below the elbows. It bloused out around his waist, several sizes too large. His trousers were black and looked as if they'd once belonged to a fat man's suit. His shoes were bubble - toed oxfords, cracked at the tips, worn unlaced with the tongues protruding and revealing thick white socks. His hair was short and combed straight back.

He was in his mid - twenties but he had an old man's face, a weary, wary mask.