Southland (17 page)

Thomas’s eyebrows shot up, and after a moment he dropped the picture as if it would burn him. “I know who Nick Lawson is. What makes you think he had anything to do with it?”

“He hated black people. Used to rough folks up pretty good. And he was shot right after the uprising—probably because of what happened at the store.”

Thomas stood up and walked around his desk. “What makes you think the Jap didn’t do it?”

Lanier collected himself for a moment before he replied. “It wouldn’t make sense. He loved those kids.”

“What about the other employee? You said one of them was there when they found them? Maybe they caught him stealing or something. People take advantage, you know. You should have seen all the looting after the earthquake.”

“I doubt it. The boys who were killed were his buddies. The people in the neighborhood—the ones who knew about the killings—were pretty much sure it was Lawson. He had a history of going in there and, well, making his presence felt.”

Thomas began to pace, looking thoughtful. He lifted a hand and stroked his billy club, palm around the base of it, thumb lightly brushing the tip. “Well, he did have a heavy hand. Everybody knew that. And you’re right. He was no friend of black folks.”

Lanier tightened his hold on the folder. “Did you ever hear him brag about what he did during the uprising?”

Thomas shook his head, walked behind his desk, and sat down again. “No. But it wasn’t like we were friends. The most we ever did was nod at each other. And he wasn’t about to tell me about murdering someone. What I heard about his beating on folks I heard from other people.” He paused. “So what are you up to, anyway? What are you trying to accomplish?”

“I’m trying to prove he did it. If it’s true, I want to bring charges against him.”

Thomas was silent for a moment. “It’s going to be hard, you know. Maybe impossible. Even if he did do it, and talk about it, no one in their right mind is likely to rat out another cop.” He looked at Lanier. “I wouldn’t.”

Lanier met his eyes, and was suddenly frightened.

Now Thomas gave him a look that was somewhere between sympathy and warning. “You watch yourself, son,” he said.

Tuesday was an alone night, the one night a week that Jackie and Laura always spent apart. Jackie worked on a brief all afternoon and didn’t think of her girlfriend until seven, when her stomach began to grumble. She resisted breaking the agreement and calling Laura, but Laura wouldn’t be there anyway—she was spending the evening with her friend Kristine, a fellow Stanford grad who was visiting from out of town.

Jackie had just leaned back in her chair, pondering what she could make for dinner, when the phone rang. She picked it up and heard the swoosh of traffic in the background. Then Lanier’s voice: “Hey, Jackie, what’s up?”

“Lanier? Hi. Where are you?”

“I’m at a gas station down the block from the Hollywood Station. I just talked to Robert Thomas, and I was going to call you tonight anyway, but since I’m kind of in your neighborhood, I thought I’d call from here and see what you were up to.”

“I’m just doing some work,” she said. “I’ve got an assignment due tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Lanier replied, and in the brief silence that followed, Jackie heard the moving traffic again. “Well, then I guess you wouldn’t want to grab a bite to eat.”

Jackie hesitated. They’d never done something on the spur of the moment like this; it had always been orchestrated, planned, contained. But what the hell—she could meet Lanier for dinner. It would solve her food problem, she needed a break, and she was curious about what he had found. “Actually, I’d love to.”

“Great,” said Lanier. “Where should we go? I don’t know your neighborhood very well.”

Jackie felt a blip of panic travel through her chest. Where
could
they go? She couldn’t take him to one of her usual dinner spots, like the French Market Place or Stan’s; they were either crawling with gay people or with straight people she knew, who would be too friendly to her and ask after Laura. She suggested an Italian place, which Lanier vetoed, and then a Thai place, which he agreed to. She threw on some jeans and a long-sleeve shirt, and drove over to the restaurant.

They were meeting at Thai Cuisine, a small free-standing building on Fairfax where Jackie sometimes went with Laura. Across from it was the Farmers’ Market and the square white monstrosity of CBS Studios, which always looked to Jackie like a gigantic piece of tofu. The studio was the only thing Jackie knew of that hadn’t lost its power during the earthquake. In the early morning of January 17, after the first jolt of the quake had tossed Jackie clear from her bed and she’d crouched beneath her desk, praying and bargaining, as the house bucked and rolled, she’d run straight outside as soon as the ground stopped moving. There, for the first time in all her years in L.A., she saw stars spread out all over the sky. There were millions of them, trillions, and she couldn’t believe that they had always been there, waiting to make themselves visible. She looked around then and saw people running into the street, screaming; people holding each other; people heading instinctively to their cars and driving—anywhere. She looked to the left to see the reassuring lights of the Hollywood Hills, but there was nothing but a huge black hulking emptiness. The hundreds of houses, the hills themselves, might never have been there at all. This, more than anything—more than the screaming people, the exploding transformer boxes, the fire alarms, the still-bucking ground—made her realize the magnitude of what was happening. She didn’t know yet about the freeways falling down; about the collapsing apartment building in Northridge; about the hundreds and thousands of houses and buildings that were half or completely destroyed. Her neighborhood, with its old solid houses, was fine. But she took off anyway, for Laura’s house, seeing more people crying, running, screaming. She passed by someone with a radio and heard snippets of a DJ’s voice—
Oh, God,
he said,
it’s starting again. Hold on. Oh my God, oh my God
—and imagined him trapped in the top of a thin skyscraper, swaying back and forth above his devastated city. When she got to Laura’s house and found her outside, they just stood there on the street and held each other. And it was as they walked back to Jackie’s house to get her wallet and phone that Jackie looked over and saw that the CBS studios were still lit up, as if nothing had happened at all.

After Jackie had clubbed and locked her car, she went inside and found Lanier sitting at one of the benches by the door. “Thanks for sacrificing some of your study time,” he said, standing. He’d wondered, at the phone booth, what exactly in hell he was doing. And now he was surprised by the simple pleasure he felt at seeing this woman he hardly knew.

“It wasn’t a sacrifice, believe me. Thank
you
for saving me from it.”

The waitress seated them at a small table in the back. All the tables were covered with white tablecloths and topped with candles; the lights were dim and the music was low. They ordered their dinner—Pad Thai, yellow curry with chicken, spring rolls, sticky rice—and then looked at each other for a moment, as if surprised to find themselves at the table together. All things being equal, Jackie thought, she could have done worse for a dinner date.

They filled each other in on the minutiae of their days—classes, meetings, drives against traffic. Finally, Lanier took a big gulp of the pint of beer that had just arrived, put it down, and looked at the five oval spots his fingers had left on the frosted glass. “So Bob Thomas was pretty interesting,” he said.

“Helpful?” Jackie asked. “Or just interesting?”

“Both, I guess, but not because he wanted to be. I’m sure he knows more than he’s telling. He was friendly enough, but it seemed like he was holding something back. He knew, though, that Lawson used to beat people.”

Jackie nodded, taking a sip of her beer. “Maybe they’re friends,” she said. “Maybe he’s protecting him.”

“That’s a good possibility.” Then he related everything about his visit, and Jackie just listened, chewing slowly on the spring rolls that were placed in front of them. “So I think another thing to do,” he said, “is find his old partner, Oliver Paxton. Since he left the force, I’d assume he’s not as true-blue as Thomas.”

In another few minutes the waitress came again, bearing a platter of food. They both watched silently as she set down the Pad Thai, the curry, the rice. Then she left, and Jackie reached first for the rice, spooning two big clumps onto her plate.

“Anything new on your end?” Lanier asked as he served himself some food.

“Not really. I went through some old family pictures over the weekend, but there wasn’t anything interesting. What I
should
do is go through my aunt’s box of stuff.”

Lanier looked up, fork suspended halfway to his mouth. “What box of stuff?”

She met his eyes; she’d forgotten how much he didn’t know. “This is how this all got started, for me. After my grandfather died, my aunt found an old boot box full of papers, including the will—the one that mentioned Curtis. It was written some time in the sixties.”

“Which reminds me,” said Lanier. “What did Frank leave Curtis, anyway?”

“I can’t believe I never told you this. The store.”

“What?”

“The
store
. And it was sold, you know, but he put the money away in his closet. Thirty-eight grand in cash.”

“In his
closet
?”

“Yeah. My aunt found it in another box, right behind the boot box. And that’s why I started looking for Curtis.”

Lanier picked up his fork again. “Jesus. What else was in the box—the other one?”

Jackie shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen it. Obituaries, I think. Articles. Various letters and notes. And a bunch of old pictures, Lois said. I’m going to see it pretty soon—he left me the box. That and, believe it or not, a bowling ball.”

Lanier hit the table lightly. “A bowling ball. The Holiday Bowl. Of course.”

“The Holiday Bowl—in one of the pictures that I have, my grandfather’s wearing a T-shirt from there.”

“It was a big hang-out place when I was little. Still is. I can’t believe I haven’t thought of it before. Your grandpa used to go down there a lot. Maybe some of his friends still go.”

“You think I should check it out?”

“Absolutely. You never know what those old-timers might remember. They might even know what happened to Derek Broadnax. And his sister.” He related then what he’d found out from Allen, his friend in the department.

“Any chance that either of them went to the funeral?” Jackie asked. “We got a bunch of business cards from people.”

Lanier pointed at her, happily. “Yeah.”

They ate quickly, almost breathlessly. Finally, Lanier stabbed a shrimp with his fork, ate it, and looked back up at Jackie. “So what happened to your family after ’65, anyway? I know they moved to Gardena, but…I mean, two generations later there’s a lawyer in the family. That’s quite a step up from a shopkeeper and a domestic.”

Jackie smiled. “Some people wouldn’t think so.”

“This is true.”

Jackie gave a brief summary of her family’s history, or what she knew of it: how Frank stayed close to the food business for another few years, and then trained to become an electrician. She told him about her parents being doctors; her aunt Lois and Ted; the small apartment where Frank had spent his last years.

Lanier, in turn, told Jackie the story of his own grandparents—how they’d moved the family from Louisiana because of the war jobs, his grandfather entering an apprentice mechanics’ program at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica.

“He used to work the night shift,” explained Lanier, “and then sleep on the beach during the day. He always said he didn’t mind it— the lifeguards were all women, ’cos the men had all been drafted.” His mother and uncle Bruce had been grown then, he said, and his aunts Nellie and Florence little girls. The family was lucky, though— his grandfather kept his job at Douglas Aircraft even after the war, and bought the house in Carson where his mother still lived.

“What about your father’s side of the family?” Jackie asked.

Lanier shrugged and looked her square in the eye. “I don’t know. I don’t know much about him. All I know is that he was from Mississippi, and that my mama met him when she was serving food in the cafeteria at the VA hospital. He stuck around long enough for me and my sister to be born, but then he left before my sister’s first birthday.”

Jackie didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything. Lanier’s face changed, and she noticed his scar again, the clean, dark line that marred his cheekbone.

“I don’t hardly remember him,” he continued, “but I do remember that he was cold, and not real affectionate with us. Our mama said it was because of what had happened in Korea.” The waitress passed by and Lanier waited until she was gone. “He was a medic, and he worked in this medical facility a few miles off the front line. He was the only black man there except for the wounded soldiers who came through. Anyway, one day this middle-aged Korean guy’s brought in, a civilian, just a peasant who’d been accidentally shot. Marvin, my father, worked on him, but he died pretty quick. And when Marvin left the table, he saw this little girl standing at the doorway, just staring at the dead man. Turned out it was her father.” He scraped his fork against the plate and furrowed his brow. “Her mother had been killed by a land mine a couple months before. She had no other people and they didn’t know what to do with her, so my father took her in.” He paused. “Eight-year-old girl. No one in the camp would talk to him, you understand, and he needed some company. He loved that girl. He ate and breathed for her. He spoke some Korean and she knew a little English, so they’d sit up talking about her old farm or America or whatever. She’d seen so much, you know—she’d seen her whole family die. He was going to adopt her and bring her back to the States.” He looked at Jackie, and then away again. She wanted to take a drink, but was afraid to move. “Anyway, about three months after she came, there was a real bad battle nearby and a lot of casualties were brought in. My father didn’t get back to his tent for two or three days. And when he finally got back there, the little girl’s throat had been cut. She was naked, and she’d been raped, and someone had carved ‘nigger whore’ into her stomach.” Jackie bit her lip, and Lanier made a fist on the table. “My father lost it. He didn’t report what happened, because he knew it’d be pinned on him; he just took her out and buried her. And when enough time had passed for people to forget the girl—they thought she’d just vanished into the hills—he started to take his revenge. One night he caught one of the soldiers who’d called him nigger to his face and slit his throat in the outhouse. A couple weeks later, he strangled one of the officers in his bed. A few weeks after that, he killed a medic who he knew had been letting Koreans die. The whole camp was up in arms, you know, but they thought it was a North Korean who was doing it, sneaking in from outside. Eight white men, my father killed. One for every year of the little girl’s life. There were people who might have suspected, but he never got caught. And according to my mother, after what happened there, after what they did to that little girl, he never let himself care about anything again. I don’t think he gave a shit about us, or my mama either. She raised us by herself, on a maid’s salary.”