At seventeen, Ria Lugo fled her troubled family life, and the shadow of her domineering father to become a nun in India. Ten years later, in 1882, she's back home, in Los Angeles, to fulfill a deathbed promise to her mother—to protect her father should he ever come into danger. Eccentric, larger-than-life and patriarch of the family's centuries-old, land-grant rancho, Don Maximiato Lugo's way of life was already eroding under the economic and social pressures of an increasingly Anglo "L.A." Now, he stands accused of the brutal murder of a local prostitute. Has he been framed? Or has he, as his daughter suspects, finally gone mad?As Ria investigates the young woman's death, sinister events conspire to raise doubts about her father's innocence. His personal possessions turn up in strange—and incriminating—places all over the city, even as his behavior becomes more and more erratic. Determined to fulfill her promise, Ria searches through the streets and back alleys of a Mexican Los Angeles that is fast disappearing. As she hunts for answers, she finds herself stalked by a threatening, unknown figure who gets closer to her with each encounter.
CHAPTER 1 It was late, sometime past three in the morning. She was making her way through the darkness shrouding the old plaza, following the main brick pathway that twisted and turned through overgrown oleanders and scrub oaks and mountains of Castilian roses. The town was silent, the sky deep ebony without a moon, the landscape only faintly illuminated by the glow of the new gas lamps that fringed the hundred-year-old gardens like amber beads on a necklace. Storm clouds were coming in from the north. Somewhere in the distance, a dog howled and a coyote yipped an answer, and she shivered in the cool air and walked faster. She had been with one of her regular customers and was half drunk and angry because the man had ripped her new dress. She pulled the hem up close to her face and walked on, squinting to see the tear in the material, swearing under her breath. The dress had cost a week's work. She let the material drop and touched gently at the small bruise on her cheek, then stopped and pulled a hand mirror and rouge from her bag and tried to see herself in the moonlight, straightening her hair and patting color over the sore spot. Dorothy Regal was twenty-four years old, though she appeared not over sixteen--the mercy of Providence, she liked to say. She was staring into the glass, wondering how much longer she could sell herself as a child, when something moved in the darkness behind her--her eye just catching a blur of motion in a corner of the little mirror. Her breath reversed in her throat. "Hello?" she called softly, not wanting an answer. There was none. She started walking again, faster and with more purpose, assuring herself that the movement had been made by one of the town's cur dogs hunting garbage left by picnickers. Even so, it wasn't smart being in the plaza this late. Nervous in a way that she didn't fully understand, Dorothy stopped once more, turned in a slow circle, and searched the surrounding blocks of shadows. She could see nothing unusual. The stars were bright in the sky over the darkened town, the gardens quiet and beautiful, the clouds edging closer. She did not see a figure slipping away through the shadows. But she sensed the movement. For the past month, she'd had this same feeling. She didn't know why. There was just the unease. Dorothy took a deep breath, then began walking again, drawing her shawl tightly around her. She left the darkness of the plaza and crossed Olive Street, heading north, and turned on to the wide dirt street that was called La Calle del Negro by the Mexicans. Shivering once more, she wrapped her arms around her thin shoulders. She could feel the rainstorm approaching in the cool night air, coming in as it always did during this season from the Tehachapi Mountains to the north, driving the smell of the deserts ahead of it. Someone was playing a piano badly in one of the few establishments still open, and she could hear weary laughter from a window above her. While she had calmed a bit, she kept moving. She was chilled and tired and wanted sleep. The road and sidewalks before her were empty. A few lanterns hung outside the buildings, casting dull puddles of yellow light on the ground, and both sides of the street were lined with bars, bagnios, and Chinee caves. Knowing that the Americans ran the liquor and gambling, the Mexicans the bordellos, and the Orientals the opium, she wondered how the place ever came to be called La Calle del Negro. She stopped in front of a two-story wood-frame boardinghouse, La Fiesta. She was home. At least the room upstairs in the back where she met customers and lived was a home of sorts. She touched again at the bruise on her cheek, a momentary veil of melancholy dropping over her. Maybe...
Reviews
Los Angeles Times...
"Romantic and exotic . . . [Eidson] is adept at putting his characters through their paces in rich and colorful historical settings."
Booklist ...
"A compelling, evocative novel about the mysteries of family loyalty, love, betrayal, religious faith, cultural upheaval, guilt, and innocence . . . [Eidson's characters] will keep readers turning pages far into the night."
Publishers Weekly ...
"Like the classic noir film Chinatown, Eidson's thriller, set in late nineteenth-century Los Angeles, involves political corruption and an unscrupulous scheme to buy up land. . . . [A] rare view of Mexican Los Angeles."
Kirkus Reviews ...
"A novel of madness and murder . . . Eidson succeeds in plunging us into a colorful and disturbing world."
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