Southside (9781608090563) (15 page)

“But,” Collinsworth countered, “you just said this is one of the biggest or baddest, as you say, gangs in the city. Killers, I would assume. Don't you find it bizarre to be talking to one of them about the benefits of getting shot? I mean, to these guys, if I'm understanding you correctly, shooting someone is about as grave an act as anyone of us here getting a cup of coffee.”

“I don't know how else to say it. I didn't want to get shot. We were joking.”

“Okay, Michael, we just wanted to clarify a few things and we needed to hear your side,” said Collinsworth. “Mike, I know you've had a rough few weeks, plus this has got to be frustrating, so why don't you just go home now, get some rest. We're just gonna go over a few things, get our strategy together. You know, we've been inundated with interview requests, not only for you, but for us, too.”

“Duke, I am really sorry all this happened,” I said, intentionally not addressing Tinder, Doot, or Friant. “I'm really sorry to put you through this, to put the paper I love through this. I'll know better not to joke with anybody anymore.”

“Just take care of yourself, and we'll see you when you're ready to come back to work,” said Collinsworth. “Don't even think about work for a while. Get your health back. Work is not as important as health. Go home, Mike. Rest up. Feel better.”

I walked over to Greg's desk, a slight smile on my face, a weight lifted off my shoulders. Atlas relieved of duty. Greg was on the phone, but I gave him a rare double thumbs-up and a big smile and indicated I'd call him later.

At home, I grabbed a novel,
The Last Good Kiss
by the late James Crumley, and laid on the couch and began to read. I was almost done with its famous opening line when the phone rang. I finished
the line, “… drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon,” then picked up.

“Hello, Michael?”

“Yeah.”

“Hi, Mike, it's Duke Collinsworth. How are you?”

“I'm good. I've just been relaxing, reading a good book.”

“Sorry to bother you. I talked to your cousin a little while ago, and he told me how strong you were.”

“Oh, yeah?” I replied, my curiosity redlining. Why didn't he ask what “good book” I was reading, I thought. This must be serious.

“We really have thought long and hard about this. You've had some good times here and some hard times. I know you had a couple of warnings about drinking. But, though I haven't been here long and don't know you really well, I've heard from many people you're a good guy. And I believe that. You're old school, and so am I. You know you have a lot of friends here at the paper. Still, I have to think of the paper first. This has been a difficult situation for all of us, but I'm going to have to ask you to resign.”

Revenge. The word had a raw, wicked urgency. But, I never liked that word. Someone had messed with you and now you had to get back at them. That was revenge and who wanted that in their life. Still, in addition to finding the guy who shot me, all I could think about after I was forced to resign was revenge on King Funeral. At least I had a mission or two in life. Not the missions I wanted, just the missions I got.

Many years ago, I had bought a Special Air Service British Commando knife, a Fairbairn Sykes MK 3. I had always admired the SAS, though I'm not really sure why I got it. I guess just to have it. Display it. It's a beautiful knife. The knife is illegal because it has two sharp sides, but it was legal to sell it as a display item. I was going to display it all right. Right up Funeral's ass.

What I most wanted to do, what I fantasized about, was to step to
him on Hoover Street in front of all his boys and kick the motherfucking shit out of him right there. I was strong. Before I was shot, I could bench press 225 pounds seven times. I was fearless. I once took on six guys a block from the Forum in Inglewood just before a Lakers playoff game back in 1999. I ended up with a broken jaw, a busted nose, two black eyes and thirty-five stitches on my forehead from a well-swung red Craftsman pipe wrench. And
I
had started the fight, coming to the aid of a female friend named Omega. Just a friend, at the time.

I was a good street fighter. I once beat up a Samoan when I was seventeen. Truth be told, the Samoan boy—my friend and neighbor and Blinky's little cousin—was only fifteen, but, still,
he was a Samoan
.

Yeah, I was strong and fearless and a good street fighter for a journalist.

That was the key.
For a journalist
. For a street gang leader, I wasn't any of that. Well, maybe fearless. Or close to it.

So that scenario of kicking Funeral's fat ass was just a lead pipe dream, a brutal fantasy. Besides, he'd be surrounded by a swarm of young Hoovers eager to make a rep. Still, I had to get back at Funeral for ratting me out. Maybe I'd do it the Hoover way. I'd bring my gun. Just for protection. I didn't even know if he'd be there, at the shithole apartments where he grew up and still kept a unit, the place where I interviewed him. But I had to go check it out.

I drove along the eastern fringes of Hollywood Boulevard, two starstruck miles from where the Academy Awards are held. This was Little Armenia. I motored past the Armenian-owned flower shop, the Armenian-owned butcher and market, the Armenian-owned photo studio, and the Armenian-owned pastry shop famous locally for their baklava, to the bail bonds office run by Sharky Klian, my Redwood Saloon drinking buddy. It was in front of Sharky's small office next to the Redwood that I had been shot, but this office was his moneymaker. The Armenian Power gang members of the neighborhood kept him busy.

“Sharky, I need a favor.”

“You need a job, from what I heard,” Sharky said with a laugh.

“I need a gun cleaned. Cleaned and ready to use.”

“What? No, Michael. No, don't do anything stupid. It's not worth it. Knowing you, you'll get shot again. How about a shot instead?” He reached for a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black.

“It's not like that, Shark. I've had this three-eighty Beretta, model eight-four, thirteen shots—”

“Mike, I know how many shots it has.”

“Sorry, Anyway I've had it for ages and never cleaned it and just want to have it cleaned, that's it.”

Sharky was reluctant, but he took the gun.

The next day, I picked it up. On my way out, I stopped at Hank's Saloon on Grand Avenue downtown, had two quick drinks, left, got back in the car, popped a stick of Big Red, and took 8th Street to the Harbor Freeway south. I drove very calmly. The radio was off. The only sound was the quiet hum of the 4.0 V-8 Lexus. My car was in need of some cosmetic work, but I kept the engine in fine tune.

I exited the Harbor Freeway at Slauson Avenue. Not the fastest way to get to 74th and Hoover, that would be Florence, but I took Slauson to let the street atmosphere soak me, to get immersion. I drove past Figueroa and then made the left, turning south onto Hoover.

It would be a quick hit or miss. Funeral had long ago reached the status that he didn't always hang out in the streets, certainly not on a corner leaning against a street sign, foot propped against the pole, another firmly planted on cement, a hand on a forty-ounce bottle of Olde English.

As the street numbers got higher along Hoover—61, 62, 63—I began seeing an occasional gang member. They were not as obvious as they had been in years past. Nowadays, even nongang members often dressed like gang members, with baggy pants and white t-shirts to fit a hippo. I had a good eye and could usually tell a thug from a
dresser. As I drew closer to Funeral's apartment on 74th and Hoover, gang members became a little more obvious. One there, three here, a couple more in a driveway. It wasn't like the old days along Colden between Fig and Hoover where there'd be couple hundred homies hanging out, but the gangsters were still around. Those who weren't locked up or buried.

I drove past 74th Street and Hoover to recon the area. There were at least two Hoover Criminals in front of the forest-green and Band-Aid colored two-story apartment building where King Funeral grew up. The color scheme alone could make someone angry. There were several no parking signs on the side wall of the building, each with a car parked in front of it. On the other corners of the intersection were Susy's Market, and two churches, the Greater Harvest Baptist Church and the Faith Church of God in Christ. I drove all the way to 84th Street before making a U-turn. Between 84th Street and 74th Street there were eleven churches. People prayed a lot on Hoover Street.

I turned right on 73rd Street, a block past Funeral's, made another U and parked facing Hoover Street. If I needed to make a quick escape, all I'd have to do was turn right on Hoover, quick right on Florence, and half mile to the freeway. I had considered calling Funeral and tell him I was coming over, but then realized how stupid that would be. I hadn't yet realized how stupid the whole plan was.

I wondered if I was out of my mind, but then I squashed that thought. Don't even answer the door when doubt knocks.

This was Funeral, a street legend, accustomed to prison attacks by men far tougher than me. I knew I couldn't go in scared.

But, if you don't fight back at the big things, then you start not fighting back at all. Sometimes in life, you can allow people to step over you, I figured. But, not this time. Everybody needs to have their own Stalingrad. You can only be pushed so far back against the Volga. This time I would have to make a stand and fight back.

I got out and popped the trunk and reached for the Beretta inside my gym bag. Clunk! The trunk bashed down against the back of my
head. For a terrifying second, I thought Funeral had snuck up on me and slammed the trunk down on me, but then I realized that was not the case. I cussed myself. I had purchased a set of trunk shocks on eBay about four months ago because mine were shot and the trunk lid would not stay up. Damn, I'd had those trunk shocks for months and still hadn't installed them.

I tucked the gun under my black long-sleeve t-shirt into the waistband of my black pants. My SAS knife was taped upside down to my outer left leg just above my ankle.

Walking up Hoover Street, I was startled by that sound of “When the Saints Come Marching In” coming from my pocket. Francesca was calling. It was around ten p.m. I didn't answer.

I walked another half block, then leaned against the wall of a long-ago closed café called Soul Murray's. An older black man, about sixty, sixty-five, pushing a shopping cart filled with a bucket, brushes, shoe polishes, soaps, and rags with a cardboard sign that read “Noble's Rollin Carwash and Shoeshine” rolled by. He stopped. “You lost, young man?”

“No, sir,” I replied, trying to think of the last time I called anybody “sir.”

“You police?”

“Nah.”

“Then you
must
be lost.”

“Depends how you mean
lost
.”

The man nodded, gave up a small smile, started to say something, then changed his mind, and headed on his way.

“Say, mister,” I said. The black man stopped. “You ever think about adding a ‘g' to that sign a yours? To that ‘Rollin'?”

“No. I like the sound of it. Noble's Rollin Carwash and Shoeshine. Got a nice ring. I'm Noble.”

“Figured.”

“Why you ask, anyways?”

“Well, and I know it's stupid and sorta sad really, and you prob'ly know this anyway, but that's just the way the Rollin Sixites spell
‘rolling' and they're much hated around here. By the Hoovers. Hate for you to get hurt just 'cause of that missing
g
.”

“You sure you ain't a cop? But, yeah, I know that. But, see, I likes the sound of it this way and I just don't want to have to live my life like that. Fearing over the spelling of my own business. And I, myself, might just be that ‘missing
g
' anyway. You feel me, young man? I wasted lotta years long time ago, lots of years, over some of that stupid gang shit 'round here, but I'm still here pushing.”

“Keep pushin' till it's understood, right?” I said. “All right, man. I can appreciate that. Didn't mean to be nosey. You take care yourself, Noble. That's a good name.”

“It's noble,” said the man and he pushed on up Hoover. Then he laughed and said, “It's kinda funny. You worried about
me
getting shot. You look out now.”

I stood there for another two minutes. Thinking about what I was gonna do. Thinking about the gun. Thinking about Noble and the years he lost for, I guess, doing some violence. Then I walked back to my car and stashed the Beretta deep in the trunk underneath the spare tire in a bag with the tire iron. I sat in the car for a minute then drove to 74th Street.

There were two orange-clad Hoover Street Criminals in the yard of the two-story apartment where Funeral had grown up, where I had interviewed him and been secretly taped. These Hoovers were real, not wannabes. When I walked up to the building, one of them went to an oleander bush and grabbed something. “Funeral around?” I asked.

“No, Officer,” said one young Hoover, about sixteen. “You should go, Officer punk.”

I wasn't in any goddamn son of a bitchin' mood to take orders from a sixteen-year-old though I know in my travels sixteen-year-old gang members are some of the worst ones and will shoot you within beats of your heart. But tonight I just didn't want to walk away. I headed toward the staircase of the dump.

“I said he wasn't here,” said Sixteen. “I say you be better be going.”

“And I say shut the fuck up. I came to see King Funeral, not your juvenile delinquent ass.”

I think that caught him off guard. Lot of these guys are used to getting away with anything and when you call them on it, well, it's a gamble, but a lot of times they back off. Because so many of them are really just punks. ‘Course a lot of times they don't back off. I guess I gambled good with him.