Los Angeles Noir (4 page)
That night Ann fell asleep to a repeat of a late-night talk show, voices laughing at jokes that didn’t make much sense anymore.
The next evening, Ann returned to the block where the spa was located, but this time she waited at Number 19’s bus stop. She didn’t know if she would recognize the masseuse with her clothes on, but the minute she and another masseuse walked across the street, Ann got up from the bench.
“Did you get your tip money?” she asked.
The masseuse and her friend looked afraid.
“This is America. You have rights—it doesn’t matter if you’re illegal or not.”
Just then, a bus roared to the stop and the two women rushed to get inside.
“Next time I’ll give
you
the tip. Or give me your address. I’ll send you the money,” Ann said from the street. The doors folded together; the bus sighed before joining the lines of traffic.
“I’d like to see Number 19.” Ann stood in front of the check-in desk of the spa on Friday. It was the same manager, only this time she was wearing tangerine lipstick instead of magenta.
“One hundred dollars.”
Ann wasn’t about to admit that she didn’t have the money. “I just need to speak with her.”
“Number 19 working.”
A couple of other women in yoga pants entered the waiting room and the manager turned her attention to them. Ann kept her place at the front of the line, but the manager just moved over to the side to collect the women’s money and give them their towels and robes.
“You bother our customers,” the manager said after they left for the locker room.
“I need to talk with Number 19.”
“Number 19 doesn’t want to see you.”
“You didn’t even speak to her. You don’t know.”
The manager adjusted her glasses and pointed to a sign above a glass shelf that held beauty products.
WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE TO ANYONE,
it read. Ann was very familiar with the sign. They had the same one at the restaurant.
“Listen,” Ann said, raising her voice, “I can close this place down, you know.”
“Yah, yah.” The manager turned her back to Ann and rearranged some bottles of body scrub on the glass shelf.
“I’ll tell immigration that you’re using illegals.”
The manager snapped her head back toward Ann. “What has Number 19 told you?”
Ann’s stomach felt queasy. Maybe she had gone too far. The last thing that she wanted to do was get Number 19 in trouble with her boss. “Nothing,” she said. “Just that you better watch out.”
Ann walked out of the waiting room and went to the driving range to release some tension. This time she chose a spot on the far left side so she could keep an eye on the massage room door. One of her balls was sailing to the hundred-fifty-foot mark when she noticed someone leaving the massage room.
Number 19. By herself.
“Number 19!” she called out, and quickly walked over to face her.
The masseuse lowered her head, as if she was preparing to experience something distasteful. One of her bobby pins was coming loose, and Ann fought the urge to push it back in her hair.
“What’s wrong? Did your manager do something to you? I tried to set her straight—that tip money is yours.”
“Why you say anything? Not your business.” Number 19 continued walking, and Ann pulled at her elbow.
Number 19 wrestled back her arm and Ann was surprised to experience her wrath. “I fire!”
Ann couldn’t believe this news. “I was just trying to help you. You have to understand.”
“No job. No money. How can I live? You understand?” Number 19 ran down the stairs and Ann, still carrying her nine iron, chased after her. But the masseuse knew the ins and outs of the building better than Ann, who lost track of her, then dashed outside and asked the security guard if he had seen the masseuse walking by. The security guard shook his head, so Ann headed to the bus stop to find Number 19. But there was no sign of her.
After an hour, Ann went to speak to the manager again. “You need to give Number 19 her job back.”
“I need to do nothing.” The wooden tip box was open again, the stacks of twenties lined up beside it. “Get out. You can’t prove anything.”
“I can get you in trouble.”
“Who you? Poor nasty girl. Nobody going to listen to nasty girl.”
“They’ll listen,” Ann said, fingering the grip of the nine iron. “You need to give Number 19 her job back.”
“Number 19? You know numbers, but no name?” The manager threw her head back and laughed, her tangerine mouth resembling a demented clown’s.
Ann held the golf club like a baseball bat and swung. A matte of hair flew off the manager’s scalp and her body lurched backwards into the glass shelves, which shattered, spilling the bottles of beauty products onto the linoleum floor.
It was quiet for a moment, aside from the bottles rolling in the shards of glass. A bloody mass clung to the end of the club as Ann dropped it on the floor. She then walked over to the other side of the counter. The manager’s face was contorted and her glasses had flown to the far corner of the reception area. There was a huge gash on the right side of her forehead and blood was pouring out, looking like a red dye soaking the roots of her hair.
On the floor was a light-blue Tiffany bag with Tupperware inside—the manager’s lunch perhaps. Ann held it to the edge of the counter and scooped in the stacks of twenties. Next to the cash register was a taped work schedule. Ann pulled it off and then walked out.
When she reached the parking lot, her head was pulsating. She walked past the security guard again, even acknowledging him with a nod.
Ann reached a church, a traditional brick building with a cross. A canvas sign, all in Korean, was stretched above the double doors. There was a light above the cross and Ann sat on the stairs and studied the work schedule. On the left side was a list of Korean characters corresponding to addresses in English on the right-hand side. Two of the addresses were on Hobart Boulevard with the exact same number. It had to be Number 19’s apartment.
Ann could have taken the bus, but opted to walk instead. She passed mini-malls with neon signs that she couldn’t read, rows of multilevel apartments with fire escapes that didn’t seem to lead anywhere, and another driving range. Adrenalin was pumping throughout her body and she couldn’t stand still. Number 19’s apartment building was much like hers, a dilapidated structure made of bricks that didn’t seemed attached to one another, loose teeth in old gray gums. Sloped grass lawn full of weeds that could probably accommodate two parked Chryslers.
Ann climbed up the creaky wooden steps to Number 19’s unit. She didn’t bother to try the doorbell—they never seemed to work in these buildings. Instead she rapped the dark wooden door with the side of her bent index finger.
The door slowly opened, and Number 19 didn’t seem surprised to see Ann standing outside her home. She looked shorter, plumper, and older in the doorway of her apartment.
“I need to talk to you. May I come in?”
Number 19 nodded, holding the door open for Ann. It was a one-bedroom apartment and it looked like somebody slept on the couch. Number 19 gestured toward the kitchen, which was connected to living room.
“I tried to get your job back, but I couldn’t.” Ann then dumped the contents of the Tiffany bag onto the kitchen table. The cash, mixed in with shards of glass, tumbled out, almost knocking over a plastic soy sauce bottle and a jar of chili paste. Last of all, the Tupperware container of the manager’s half-eaten lunch slid on top of the bills. “Here’s your money; it’s all yours. You deserve it.”
Number 19 looked at her, first with fear and then sadness. Her hands trembled as she touched one of the bills. Then the bedroom door burst open. Uniformed officers with guns yelled, “Police!”
Number 19 was crying now into her bare hands. Her roommate—Ann recognized the woman from the spa—emerged from the back bedroom and tried to console Number 19.
One of the officers pulled Ann’s arms back and, while reciting her rights, secured her wrists in plastic ties.
After Ann was led out of the apartment, one of the police detectives, a Korean American who spoke Korean, turned to the masseuse. “Did you have a relationship with that woman?” he asked.
The masseuse kept shaking her head as if she were trying to erase any thought of the girl from her mind. “Just a customer,” she said. “She was no one special.”
1.
Every Halloween, his birthday, John Hannibal “Quick” Cravitz liked to put aside his usual routine of chasing power and pleasure in the cloak-and-pistol world of private security and devote a day to rest and public service.
That Halloween eve, when the day’s work was done, Betty Penny, his office manager, strung their offices with skulls and
calaveras
, crepe paper cats and autumn leaves. Some of the girls from Satin Dolls brought in champagne and gumbo. Cravitz gave everyone a pumpkin stuffed with treats and a hefty check
for the holiday.
After his staff had gone home, he invoiced his latest gig. Four weeks of sold-out concerts at the Inglewood Forum. The Zulu Boyz, Priest KZ, and Th’ Flava Foolz, the cream of L.A. bands, performed. His young firm, Universal Detection, furnished security and muscle. There had been no violence.
He was getting ready to call it a day when the buzzer rang.
The shadow on the screen flipping him the bird, putting on a show for the surveillance camera, was his old friend Ramon Yippie Calzone.
“This is a raid, you old ass mutherfucker! Come out with your hands up. I know you got bad Negroes up there.”
Cravitz buzzed him up. When he opened the door, Yippie embraced Cravitz, who, at 6’5”, was taller than him by a head. Then his friend strode past him into the office. “Okay, birthday boy, I got good news and bad. Which do you want first?”
The two men grinned at one another. With his black briefcase, and the hooch he carried in a brown paper bag, Yippie looked like a
cholo
Republican: He wore a black leather jacket, faded jeans, motorcycle boots, lumberjack shirt; his long, graying hair tied in a ponytail with a silver clasp; his handlebar moustache pepper-gray. A gold earring in the form of a crucifix dangled from his right ear. A tat of Montezuma with an Aztec princess peeked through the break in his shirt.
“Good news first,” Cravitz said.
Yippie Calzone raised the hooch: “
Pulke,
” he said.
The two men drank in Cravitz’s conference room overlooking 43rd. The potent cactus brew was thick and cool and sweet, and Cravitz was genuinely thrilled to have a taste of the fabled Mexican moonshine. Even more, he was happy to see his old
carnale
, Yippie Calzone. Yippie, a cop, had been a neighbor back in the old days of South L.A. Later, Yippie was Cravitz’s mentor at the police academy. Cravitz got out after only three turbulent years on the force.
“I’m giving you Esmeralda,” Yippie Calzone said abruptly.
“Pretty-ass Esmeralda? You nuts?” Cravitz asked, genuinely surprised.
Yippie Calzone opened his briefcase and pulled out Esmeralda—his custom-made service revolver, a snub-nosed Colt .45 Peacemaker—and carefully laid her on the table.
Cravitz stared down at the beauty. She gave off a brazen sparkle that seemed to bewitch the mind.
The piece was one of a matched pair that once belonged to Jack Johnson, the Negro heavyweight champion, in 1908. Her grips were fashioned from Alaskan whale bone and her barrel and frame were forged with silver from Civil War—era coins. There was a flaw in her muzzle that gave her bulletholes a distinctive teardrop shape.
“I’ve decided she’s a cold-hearted bitch. I don’t love her no more,” Yippie said. “She’ll listen to you; she’ll take care of you.”
Like most of his pals, inside the law and out, Cravitz had always had a hard-on for Esmeralda. The weapon had been a gift to Calzone from the City of Los Angeles for his years of courageous service—twenty years back.
In his lawless teenage years—when Cravitz was pursuing his ambition of becoming a criminal just like his big brother, Cash—he and Cash had once worked out an elaborate plan to steal the treasure. The scheme fell through when Cash was arrested for a shootout—at a goddamn crap game.
The arrest of his big brother turned out to be a boon. Good and thoughtful people—including his own folks—swept into the breech left by his thuggish brother. It would take a brutal stretch at Pelican Bay before ol’ Cash saw the profit in pulling at least one of his feet out of the mire of everyday crime. Since the ’92 riots, Cash had rehabilitated his reptilian image and remade the Château Rouge, the abandoned, rat-infested hotel he’d bought, into a hangout joint for politicos and big shots; all attracted like flies by the old G’s deep greasy pockets and his doe-eyed and perfumed, big-titted bar girls.
“This feels like the bad-news part,” Cravitz said.
“Well,” Yippie said, “you do know I’m a killer.”
“That was a good shooting,” Cravitz said.
No one in the city could forget the time that Calzone fatally shot two boys during a drug sting in Midtown. The weapons the boys had leveled on Calzone and his partners turned out to be toys. Because Calzone was Chicano and the boys were black, the incident quickly took on a nasty racial tone.
There were at least ten reprisal shootings. Black kids shot up brown folk picnicking in the park; Chicano kids shot up black folk at bus stops.
“
Good shooting
,” Yippie repeated with contempt. “Me, killing kids. Imagine.”
“They were perps, homeboy,” Cravitz said, pouring out two more glasses of
pulke
. “It was them or you.”
The men drank again in silence and Cravitz could hear the bustle of traffic just outside the window.
“I have nightmares, Quick,” Yippie said. “I can’t get their faces out of my head. And those mothers—” After a moment, the old cop took out a pack of Camels, “I’m taking time off. I already spoke to Vargas.”
“Nothin’ wrong with that,” Cravitz said. “Manny will bring you back into the fold.”
Yippie lit a cigarette and took a short drag, then, as quickly, mashed it out in the ashtray. “I’ve made a will,” he said. “I’ve been too lucky too long.”
Yippie Calzone’s face, covered over with pockmarks and scars, was not handsome. But there was something compelling about his sad, soulful eyes.
“I’ve always had death threats,” Yippie said. “They come with the job. But the dreams …” Yippie said. “I dreamed someone is going to kill me before this week is done.”
Cravitz got up from his chair and placed his big bony hand on Yippie’s shoulder. “Dreams ain’t real, homie. Get a grip.”
“Never thought I’d be afraid of dying, Quick. But I am,” Yippie said. “This was the week I killed those boys—five years ago tomorrow.”
Cravitz drained his glass and set it on the table. “So what if you make it through the week? Maybe your dream killers will go away,” he said, attempting a smile.
“Maybe,” Yippie ventured.
“It’s settled then,” Cravitz said. He picked up a pad and scribbled. “Here,” he tore off the note and handed it to his friend. Yippie’s strong hands trembled as he took it. “I want you to go to this pad in La Caja.”
“The canyon above Pacoima?”
“That’s it. It’s Cash’s hideaway, but I’ll make him give me the keys. You pack and stop by the Château Rouge tomorrow morning at 7. The place is a dump. No air-conditioning. But the toilet flushes and the power’s still on. Lay low until the weekend is over.”
“Your fuckin’ brother hates me.”
“Cash hates everybody,” Cravitz said dryly. “But he’s legit now. Even your boy the mayor likes him. There’s hope for him yet.”
Yippie smiled. “It might work. I’m not ready to die. I’ve still got work to do. I owe this city so much.” He pushed Esmeralda slowly across the table. “Happy birthday, old friend.”
Cravitz snapped up the pretty pistol. “I can’t take away your baby. I’ll have Cash lock her in the safe tomorrow. You can pick her up when all this bad business is past. She’ll be safe at the Château Rouge. Ain’t a hoodlum in the world crazy enough to try to jack Cash Cravitz.”
“
Simone
,” Yippie observed quietly—so true.
The two men stood up.
“You sure Cash is gonna be down with this?” Yippie said.
“That mean ol’ man will do anything I ask.”
2.
He tipped Pauli, the parking valet, twenty bucks when he brought around the black Escalade. Cravitz jumped in and kicked Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour” on the box. He perused his pretty self in the mirror.
Cravitz’s coal-black, bald, magnificent head was adorned with two small hoop earrings. His eyes were gray. Angular, muscular, and deliberate, his black silk Armani duds made him flash and shimmer like a blade. And on this eve of his twenty-ninth birthday, Cravitz felt like a man reborn. He’d helped his friend; now he would try to help others.
Cravitz paused to admire his neon sign blinking
Universal Detection
. He peeled off.
There were scores of revelers out in Leimert Park. Cravitz took Vernon to Angelus Vista and sped west, up the slopes home to View Park.
Cravitz rose at 4 a.m. on Saturday, Halloween day, and promptly got things going. Two hundred sit-ups,
zip, zip.
Then he put on John Coltrane and oiled his magnificent head with cocoa butter until it sparkled like obsidian. He scanned
Jet, Guns & Ammo
, and the
Wall Street Journal
on the john and concluded a leisurely toilette with a brisk wash-up, a vigorous flossing, and a shave.
He put on his robe and slippers and strode out into darkness of his rose garden. His rambling View Park home was situated along the ridgelines of the north-facing heights. He clambered to the garden summits.
As the sun rose, Cravitz touched his forehead reverently against the earth and said a prayer to the awakening world and to his ancestors and vowed, as he had every year for a decade, to be a good man and do at least one good thing for someone more needy than himself. For twenty-four hours he’d drink only water and fast from his bad habits: gratuitous violence, pussy-chasing, wine, and greasy-ass food consumption.
Things were going swimmingly until Cash called.
“Happy Halloweeeeen, little brother,” the old dude began.
Cravitz winced. His big brother Cash had burned up careers as a policy man, a dope man, a loan shark, and a hustler. He’d done time at Folsom, at Vacaville, and at Pelican Bay. For many of L.A.’s starry-eyed wannabes, he stank of money, power, and the streets. He was now in his fifties but still had the tastes and habits of a small-town hood.
“It’s your world,
play-ah
. S’up?” Cravitz said not very convincingly.
“Naw, you d’play-a,
play-a
,” Cash bellowed.
“What ya want?” Cravitz said.
“Y’boy Yip been here,” Cash said.
“Already?”
“Yep, he ran by early this morning. I was just gettin’ outta my breakfast meeting with Bennita and ’nem. The muthafucka was staring at Bennita like she was made outta cake.”
“How did he look?”
“Skeerd as a cat.”
“Scared?”
“Did I stutta?”
“You give him the keys to the place in La Caja?”
“He got ’em and gone.”
Cravitz breathed a sigh of relief.
“He didn’t leave that pretty gun, though. That Mexican ain’t dumb as he looks. Th’ chump oughta give it to me. Woulda been mines long time ago if I’da had my way.”
“I don’t know why Yip is so spooked.”
“And, honey, is he. Talkin’ freakish. Didn’t even sound like hissef,” Cash said, then added with an amused cackle, “Yip fuckin’ somebody’s wife?”
“Yip’s a choirboy.”
“Oh, he fuckin’ somebody’s boyfriend then. Somethin’ up,” Cash said, then dropped the subject. “When you comin’?”
“Now,” Cravitz said.
“Well then, c’mon, boy. I done took care of y’friend. Now I needs you t’ take care of some messy bi’ness, f’me.”
Cravitz knew his brother, a man of fixed habits, was taking his morning grits and waffles at the Chit Chat Room, his four-star Southern-style eatery in the mezzanine of the Château Rouge. He was feeling happy, frisky, and evil, and, as usual, trying to bum a little free labor.
“How messy?” Cravitz asked.
“Middlin’ messy, I figure,” Cash went on with a chuckle, “You remember Bingbong Jackson? You know, that piecea pimp I used to hang wit from Vegas?”
“Umhuh.”
Cravitz had a low opinion of Bingbong. He had won his distinctive moniker during childhood. Every time he tried to snatch the purse of some unsuspecting grandmother, he’d whack her in the mouth—
bing!
—but then she’d take her purse and clobber him with a haymaker—
bong!
Bingbong Jackson, whose real name was Ernest Grandvale Jackson IV, might have been the most low-rent, beat-up, wannabe hoodlum-pimp on the whole Left Coast.
“Well, he done hooked up with a pretty yella bitch name Bennita. They got a pad up in Vegas. They be staying at the Château Rouge f’Halloween. We gots a job f’you.”
“Bingbong Jackson ain’t done a sane act in his whole life,” Cravitz said darkly, “What’s that shitheel getting you into now?”
“They in th’ music bi’ness. Gots fo’, five little hoodlums from the projects with ’em,” Cash said thoughtfully, ignoring his brother’s rebuff. “Bingbong say these little thugs goin’ platinum. Some new kinda rap shit. Call theysef Fluboor, Flowbird … some shit like that.”
The Flo Boyz were a sensational new gangsta rap quartet out of Vegas. They were riding the crest of a publicity wave because of a violent spat they’d had with Strongbeach Posse, one of L.A.’s hot rap groups.
“I think this Bennita gonna let me smell her pussy if I book these boys on the main stage at Satin Dolls. They s’pose t’be th’ shit. Jes look like snotty-nose hoodlums t’me,” Cash went on. “Y’ wont me t’ send round the car?”
“Naw, play-ah,” Cravitz said wearily. “See ya at the Château.”
Cravitz rolled out in his ’56 T-Bird rather than the Escalade. The classic candy-apple sports car better suited his sly, nostalgic mood. Besides, the goddamn thing glittered like jewelry on the streets. He threw on his red T-Bone Walker T-shirt, his $2,000 snakeskin boots, and his favorite ragged jeans. The T-shirt slouched nicely over the big .45 Beretta he always carried, strapped on his left hip. He jetted down Stocker and when he hit Crenshaw, turned north to King.
