Some Books Aren’t for Reading

by Howard Marc Chesley

  “I’m sorry. My wife would like you to leave.”

  “Why? Does she think I work for the CIA, too?”

  “Just leave. Okay, buddy? I don’t want to have to call the cops.”

  Out by the curb HH starts his bike and pulls in his kickstand. He salutes them with a conspiratorial wave as he pulls out. There is no reason for me to drag this out any longer. I let escape a half-assed, semi-amused chortle, but I fool no one, and I begin to leave.

  As I slink off I notice plastic bags hanging from HH’s handlebars bearing information that might be useful. I make note of it without giving myself away. I pledge to myself that I will track him down to his lair and recover my Hemingway.

  Chapter 17

  When HH scooped up the textbooks in Brentwood from under my nose I noticed that two of the bags that hung from his moped had the name “Trapper Shack” printed on them along with a logo of a brick building that looks like an old-time jail. This could mean nothing. Plastic bags migrate before they end up in landfills. I don’t know that HH actually got the bags from the Trapper Shack, a landmark liquor store on Main Street in Venice, the traditionally reprobate beach town south of Santa Monica. The Trapper Shack is “old Venice,” which is to say pre-gentrification Venice, before the advent of hip clothing shops, upscale eateries and concrete art lofts that start at a million. A few wooden wine racks stacked with twenty-dollar-plus bottles acknowledge the yuppie invasion, but the bulk of Trapper Shack business is still malt liquor, jug wine and six-packs for the street alcoholics who are drawn to the action of Venice’s lively and decrepit nearby boardwalk.

  I park the Volvo at a meter and put in money under the jealous scrutiny of a homeless man seated on the sidewalk next to his shopping cart. I enter the brick-front store. A half dozen security cameras strewn about the ceiling flash admonition with little red lights. A muscled and tattooed young Latino man nods efficiently at me as I enter.

  “Good morning,” he says with a baked-in smile. I nod fraternally and seek out a bottled water from the cooler. I am totally vamping. I should have a real plan, but I don’t. I put the bottle on the counter.

  “A buck-fifty,” he says.

  He snatches up the two singles I place on the counter and throws back two quarters.

  “Have you seen Hector?” I proffer matter-of-factly.

  He doesn’t respond at all to the query.

  “You know Hector with the moped and the dreds?”

  His look is vacant. Perhaps he needs more detail.

  “Helmet.”

  A short beat, then—

  “Oh, Hector with the helmet? What about him?”

  Pay dirt.

  “Does he live around here?”

  The clerk retreats a bit. I may have pushed too hard. This is not an information store any more than it is a bottled water store.

  “Sorry,” he says and turns away. I scramble for conversational entree.

  “Because a piece of his bike fell off and I wanted to give it back to him.”

  I can’t believe I said something so dumb. The clerk turns back to me. I have his attention. “A piece of his bike fell off?”

  “Yeah, some kind of cover thing. I think maybe it goes over the battery or something. It could be hard to get another one. You know?”

  He’s dubious. I need to clinch it.

  “Why don’t I give it to you and you could give it to him next time you see him,” I say, bluffing recklessly.

  He hesitates and then scowls.

  “I see him hanging out over on Electric someplace.”

  “Is that where he lives?”

  “I don’t know. I see him over by Electric and Westminster. At the moped guy’s place.”

  “What moped guy?”

  “Over in a garage on Westminster and Electric.”

  As I exit, my cell phone rings. It’s True’s number. She rarely calls and never with good news.

  “What’s up?” I answer, not in a mood for opening pleasantries.

  “Caleb has an earache and is running a fever. I want to keep him here tonight.”

  Caleb was scheduled to be at my house and I am supposed to pick him up from school this afternoon. He is prone to earaches.

  “What’s his temperature?” I ask, trying to be matter-of-fact and resisting the urge to regard this as a ploy to drive our prize deeper into his mother’s arms.

  “It’s a hundred and two now.”

  “Did you give him Tylenol?” I ask. I know she did. It is my way of having a stake in the process.

  “I’ve been giving him Tylenol and Dr. Levy prescribed Ceclor for him.”

  “What’s Ceclor?”

  “It’s an antibiotic.”

  “I thought he gave him ampicillin last time.”

  “He said Ceclor. I think Caleb’s a little better.”

  “Don’t you have to go to class?”

  “I got someone to cover me. Anyway, I think he should stay in one bed tonight. Is that okay? Mitchell?”

  Of course it’s okay. This is a reasonable accommodation of schedule that should be easy and normal for two separated parents who love their child. I don’t have a problem with this. True’s previous dirty dealing makes me feel as if I need to be rigorous about boundaries because of the mistrust that she has chosen to foster. But I acquiesce.

  “Okay. Just keep me posted. Let me know if he needs anything.”

  “Okay.”

  I click off and continue to my destination. Just south of the corner of Westminster and Electric I see behind a decaying wooden fence an old bungalow court painted a peeling, grimy gray. I park a few doors down the street and walk up. Weeds, old bicycles, cracked flower pots, rusty barbecues and decaying doors landscape the open area behind the gate. I look around for HH’s moped, but it isn’t there. A path around the side of the buildings leads to the service alley. It is littered with trash and broken bottles and smells of dog shit.

  In the alley, a dumpster blocks my view of a dilapidated apartment garage with five single doors that face the alley. A glance in the dumpster shows that it contains the detritus of transient living common in Venice. Old clothes and towels, porn magazines, underwear, broken toys, ancient cell phones, dishes, lamps, chairs. This is not my first dumpster experience. Once by chance I noticed a five-hundred-dollar cache of architectural monographs in a dumpster by an office building in downtown Santa Monica. Since then I have not considered myself too lofty to poke through a promising steel container.

  But this downscaled dumpster lacks potential and sticky juice has seeped from leaky garbage bags onto most of its contents. Besides, I have my eye on a partially open door in the garages that face the alley. As I approach I hear right-wing talk radio emanating from inside.

  “What is it about the liberals that they always have to believe the worst possible thing? There’s an army of scientists out there that haven’t been brain damaged by organic carrot juice yet that will tell you if there is global warming that it’s just a natural process and no matter how many catalytic converters we put in and make cars twice as expensive or put batteries in them or whatever it’s like a drop in the bucket. And killing the economy will not help the environment. Poor countries can’t protect the environment. Just look at Haiti! I mean if the world is going to end and we’re all doomed, do we have to act poor? If Armageddon is as close as they say, let’s at least go out driving in style!”

  I advance toward the open garage and glimpse tires hanging on the inside of the door—skinny moped tires. At least a dozen hang from hooks and nails. I can barely see into the shadows of the interior.

  “What I can’t stand is all the negativity and the whining. I mean this country has solved every problem so far, haven’t we? We are still here. Richest, free-est nation in the universe? You think we haven’t put stuff worse than this down before? What about 9/11??

  Mopeds are stacked from front to back. A guy with a huge, quivering beer belly hanging over fleece Nike shorts and a T-shirt that reads, “I’m the
One You’ve Got to Blow to Get a Drink Around Here,” stands over a workbench and bangs with a rubber hammer on a wheel rim. His jaundiced legs appear to be depilatory-smooth and he sports a pompadour and a Lenin goatee. Pink feet with scraggly brown toenails rest on loose flip-flops. His pale, pasty face suggests to me a likely pederast. Don’t ask me why. In the abstract I don’t know what pederasts look like, but I know one when I see one. Struggling to erase the picture in my mind of a wispy twelve-year-old boy poised at his fly, I nod personably. He nods warily back.

  “Is Hector around?!” I yell over the inanity coming from the radio on the workbench.

  “I haven’t seen him!” he says, goes back to his hammering.

  “You know where I can find him?!”

  With a frown he makes it clear that I am interfering in his colloquy with the radio fascist.

  “What for?”

  “Does he live around here?!” I ask, trying to fill the pause before it is subsumed in the radio rant. I know it’s the wrong question the instant it leaves my mouth. Too much too soon.

  “Nope.” He goes back to hammering.

  “You think he’ll come by today?”

  All I get back is a cold stare. I try another tack.

  “You work on his bike?”

  “Whose bike?” he says without looking up.

  “Hector’s.”

  “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “Is there a reason you’re being such a prick?” I say as I feel my censor suddenly toggle off.

  “It suits me.” He smirks.

  Which is the greater humiliation? To be dismissed by scum or to be dismissed by nobility? The former unanticipated insult or the latter anticipated one? I don’t know. I turn to leave as he continues hammering without looking up.

  “You look like trouble. I don’t want a part of it today. Okay? I’ve got enough trouble.”

  I look like trouble? The hammering pederast thinks that I look like trouble? Part of me would like to prove him right but I resist and remove myself to the alley.

  I still don’t have what I need. I don’t know if this is where HH lives and keeps his books. Best to pretend that I’m gone and look around a little bit while hidden from view. It shouldn’t be rocket science to locate a helmet-ensconced sociopath in a smallish beach ghetto. Perhaps a little more shoe leather will do the trick.

  I return to the dumpster for another look-see. I am outside the pederast’s field of vision. Elevated by a nearby milk crate I lean over the edge of the bin and study the archaeology of its contents. A couple of old mops, some flattened boxes, the leaky garbage bags, a broken folding chair, a number of retired wine and beer bottles, a worn-out roll of carpet, a stack of old car mags. What is this? A brown plastic bag and inside a small cache of books? I lean over to retrieve it, my feet lifting nervously off the crate as I extend to grab the bag.

  A half-dozen books are inside—tattered and stained sociology textbooks. Are they valuable? No. They are out-of-date editions and badly worn. They could very well be the leavings of HH after he bought a pile of books for a few dollars and then discarded the rejects quickly as he can’t carry worthless items with his limited carrying capacity on the motorbike. It’s not much to go on. I am no closer to finding him and his lair, even if these are his former books.

  A couple of old moped tires sit against the side along with a broken rim and twisted fender. Also I see a few small boxes with labels from motorbike parts suppliers. I scan the boxes. Most are addressed to “Venice Moped Repair” at this address on Electric Avenue. Some read “Ed Summers, Venice Moped Repair.” Presumably Ed is the portly pederast. Then I see an outlier address. It is from “AJ Motorcycle Parts” in Stockton, California. It is addressed thusly:

  Hector Matthey

  5118 Martin Luther King Boulevard

  Los Angeles, CA 90012

  Who is Hector Matthey? Is he our Hector? What are the chances? Let us say that Hector ordered a part via the internet—maybe a new brake pad—and then brought it over to well-known babyfucker Ed Summers to install. That would make sense. How many customers named Hector could Mr. Summers have? How many Hectors were in your high school class?

  To reach the box I have to balance most of my torso over the edge and then extend my fingertips to snare it, all the while avoiding falling headlong into the stinking bin. With the box in hand I head for the moped garage. When I arrive I find Ed in the back of the garage pumping air into a tire. Broadcast demagoguery continues unabated.

  “Would someone please explain to me why there is a ten-mile hole in the fence between Arizona and Mexico when this was supposed to have been finished a year ago. I mean what good is it to have a fence if there’s a ten-mile hole in it? I have seen some fat Mexicans, but nobody that won’t fit through a ten-mile hole.”

  I call out to him.

  “Hey Ed!”

  He looks up, surprised that I know his name.

  “Is 5118 Martin Luther King Boulevard still good for Hector?”

  His expression tells me what I need to know.

  That 5118 Martin Luther King Boulevard is in an African-American neighborhood. In fact, the wide swath of Los Angeles south of the Santa Monica Freeway and west of La Cienega Boulevard that surrounds MLK boulevard is a black neighborhood, including Baldwin Hills, Crenshaw and Leimert Park, and of course the former Watts, now referred to as South Los Angeles.

  In 1983, long after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. and before Governor Ronald Reagan finally recognized a Martin Luther King holiday, Los Angeles belatedly joined with other cities in naming a street after the inspirational leader and orator. It was the great co-option. What was once Santa Barbara Boulevard (Saint Barbara, the patron saint of artillerymen, was beheaded by her father who God then struck by lightning—could not a prescient God have more simply prevented the whole mess from happening in the first place?), became Martin Luther King Boulevard, formally ghettoizing the seedy collection of decaying storefronts and decrepit housing with stoutly barred windows that lined its wide asphalt. For local politicians the consecration was a thrown bone to keep a simmering black populace at bay, easily outweighing any possible slight to the ancestry of artillerymen. Two decades have passed since the Rodney King riots, and despite empty spaces and cheap rents, the big chain stores still redline the area. It is a mixed blessing never to see a Chili’s or a Target or Staples. For me, MLK is a place to go for good barbecue ribs once or twice a year. Why Helmet Head would choose to live there (if he does) is a mystery to me.

  My coffee-and-cream complexion feels alabaster white as I wait for a traffic light in my Volvo while in the next lane four T-shirted and tattooed young urban warriors in a lowered, black Camaro with giant wire wheels blast gangster rap loud enough to make my sun visor buzz. My sideways glance is returned with calculating sneers.

  I pass small storefronts in withered, flaking, flat buildings displaying handmade signs that declare medical supply stores, wig stores, fried catfish parlors and, of course, houses of prayer. Many houses of prayer. Large and small, storefronts and converted supermarkets, mostly with proud declarative names emblazoned marquee-large at their entrances—The Ajalon Temple of Truth, the Heavenly Vision Baptist Church, the Messiah Missionary Church of Redemption, the Pilgrim’s Hope Tabernacle, the Children of Zion Hope and Salvation Congregation.

  On a Sunday, no doubt, there is a lively and celebratory scene here—dress-up and flowers and standing at the entrance exchanging pleasantries with the minister, rounding up the kids and helping grandma into the car in the crowded parking lot.

  Today it is Woodstock the day after. Food wrappers, soda cans and bits of newspaper that sometimes aggregate in little piles. Buildings are made barren by chain-link barriers and cracked tarmac with grass growing in the cracks. Letters have fallen from signs. Brown glue spots mark the missing letters of the “Abys__nian _aptist Chur_h.”

  I can’t find 5118 Martin Luther King Boulevard. Numbers are not neatly painted on the curbs as they are in Santa
Monica, and houses and storefronts are most often numerically anonymous, by preference or neglect. But 5345 is a standout with a big number over the door of a small, but shuttered storefront that declared itself on a sign as:

  The Pan African Black Fact and Wax Museum. Repository of black history and culture for all to enjoy!

  That was definitely a place to which I should return some day when they are open, if they are ever open again.

  Then 5084 MLK is Danny’s Liquor and Convenience Outlet. I have inadvertently passed by 5118. In the previous block I noticed an un-numbered and amorphous group of beige stucco boxes that were set back from the street and fronted with a chain-link fence. I presume it was once a small shopping center, maybe in the sixties. It must be within this small complex that I can find 5118 and perhaps the Helmet Headed fugitive. I turn around.

  Weeds a foot high poke through weathered asphalt littered with abandoned cars and supermarket carts. I still can’t find a street number on any of the buildings. Adjacent to the empty and abandoned storefronts of a low stucco structure is a two-story box-like building with lettering on the otherwise unadorned wall that reads:

  RAY OF LIGHT MISSIONARY BAPTIST CHURCH REV. DR. JAMES ALBERT LIGHTFOOT, PASTOR

  The letters are comfortingly complete and untarnished. There is no front entrance, but I park and walk around to the side where I find a large double door and several cars (clean windshields, current license plates) parked on a small lot. Sitting on the edge of the lot, leaning against a pole is a familiar black Yamaha moped with plastic bags hanging from the handlebars.

  At a lull in traffic from MLK I can hear the voices of a gospel choir singing inside the building. I am drawn to it. On the door are the numerals “5116.” Close enough. I try one of the double doors and it opens. I enter into a large reception area. Despite the cheap wood paneling and linoleum floor I am clearly in a church—one that has been carved out of what was once a large retail space.