The Concrete River Read Online Free

piece of paper and handed it to him. Call Liffey. Threats. Slow Growth.
    “I want you to buy me a drink for this,” Marlena Cruz said, and he could see that she meant it.
    *
    He stared mournfully at the plastic card for a long time before inserting it into the Culver Bank ATM. This was the account the court didn't know about, the one he'd sworn to himself was for Maeve's college, and every month the bottom line got smaller. The money was almost half gone now.
    He'd replace what he drew down when someone paid him big, when he got a job, when his ship came in. It was like gambling, and once you started you couldn't stop. All he was doing was paying the rent and buying gas. That didn't make it okay, but it was just another sidestep in the gradual development of portable ethics.

THREE
A Toxic Hormone Spill
    “It's Norman French, believe it or not. There used to be an E on the end, but somebody a few generations back dropped it. I've got cousins still spelled with the E.”
    Her name was Eleanor Ong and since he hadn't seen a wedding ring, he'd said she didn't look like an Ong. Actually she looked a bit like a whippet, skinny and nervous and fast, with freckles and a lot of limp dark hair with red and gray highlights. She had an unruly energy about her that he found attractive.
    “It's only been my name again for two years and sometimes I forget to respond. I was Sister Mary Rose for fifteen years.”
    He let that roll past. They sat in a decaying storefront that had been built onto the front of a huge old frame house on Slauson that was now the Catholic Liberation house in southeast L.A. A big flowery sign over a water cooler said: Close all the factories of crime—jails and prisons!
    “That's her desk. We gave them office space when we worked together on the city council election last year. She's been helpful to us, too. They can get offset printing on the cheap.” It was a battered old oak post office desk, like all the others in the big room, including the one where Eleanor Ong sat with one foot on the open bottom drawer. She wore one of those long rayon gypsy skirts and flat leather sandals that strapped around her hairy ankles and reminded him of an aging graduate student.
    “Who would her boss be? I'd like to get permission to look through the desk.”
    She screwed up her face. It was the first time he'd seen her slow down. “I guess the whole committee. She's the only paid staff, though they've got a chairperson. I'll call for you and see what I can do. I hope you don't mind if I smoke.”
    “What if I did?”
    “You could always sit in the no-smoking section.”
    She pointed to the street. A young man in a Pendleton shirt came out of a back room while she was lighting up. He whispered to her, showing a handful of papers. All the Catholic Liberation kids he'd ever met were earnest and intense and very clean. They still believed deeply in good and evil, so that even being witty about it was seen as a bit of a sin.
    “If he goes near the shelter again, have them call the police.”
    For some time, a banging noise outside had been working at his attention. The rain had stopped and two squat men were chopping sheet metal pieces off an old Ford Galaxie from the 1960s that was parked in front of a boarded-up trophy manufacturer. The operation seemed pointless.
    “Make sure they know we don't let husbands carry on like that. And send them a copy of the restraining order, in case somebody needs to see it.”
    The young man nodded portentously and went back inside.
    “It'll probably take me a while to get in touch with enough members of the committee. You could give me a ring or come back this afternoon. Other than that, I can't really give you permission to go through her things, even with her mother's okay.”
    “That's fine. You could tell me more about Mrs. Beltran. Anything you know.”
    “Where'd you go to high school?” she asked out of the blue.
    “It wasn't a Catholic school. San Pedro.”
    “I knew a