Los Angeles Noir

by Denise Hamilton

  I got out of the car. “Hey,” I called to her.

  Of course she looked startled. Who wouldn’t? She was not expecting me, her neighbor with the coffee table, her funny-guy neighbor all showered and shaved and standing by her car. She frowned.

  “It’s me,” I said, “the guy from across the street.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “You comin’ over here or what?”

  She took a step toward me, then plucked at her girlfriend’s sleeve and pulled her over too. They stopped a little ways away. “What are you doing here?”

  “I want to be a stewardess too.”

  “We’re called flight attendants.”

  “Lah dee dah. Well, I’m a goods-and-services transport technician.”

  “What’s that?” It was the girlfriend who asked. Truth is, I can’t even remember what she looked like, I was so blinded by my girl’s shining radiance.

  “I make deliveries.”

  They both laughed.

  “I was driving by on my way to an appointment—”

  “A delivery, you mean.”

  “And I saw your car. You wanna go with me?”

  “On your delivery?”

  It was a stroke of genius, thinking of that. I could see she wanted to. She was intrigued. What did I deliver? And where? I was in a service industry just like hers and we were interested in each other’s work. Sitting at the kitchen table at night, I’d ask her about the funny passengers she helped and if there were any babies on the flight, and she’d ask me about Roger the airport guy, and Marcus, and Kimberly. We’d talk and tell each other stories over dinner.

  “Your chariot awaits,” I said to her, and I bowed.

  “I’m bringing Chara with me. Okay?”

  That was her girlfriend obviously, and I was naturally a little disappointed. “Okay.”

  Chara got in the backseat. “Ooeee. What’s in there? It smells.”

  “It does not,” I said.

  “You’re not sitting right next to it. It’s like Clorox or something. Nasty.” She pushed it away from her.

  “It’s fragile, so be careful.”

  My girl sat up front. She turned toward me and smiled and her brown eyes were big and happy. They were beautiful eyes with black lashes so long and thick they looked like the bristles in my hairbrush. I wanted to feel them against my cheek; butterfly kisses, my mother called them.

  “Where we going?” she asked.

  “Ballona Wetlands.”

  “What for?” Chara in the backseat was a complainer, I could tell. “I need to get home.”

  “Won’t take long,” I said. “I’m just giving that suitcase to someone. My friend’s in the importing business. Stuff from all over the world.” I looked at the clock on the dash. It had been quite awhile since I left Marcus. I knew the guy would be there waiting. I hoped he wouldn’t be too pissed that I was late.

  “What’s your name?” I asked her.

  “Terrell,” she said. “I was named for my dad, Terry, and my aunt, Ellie.”

  “It’s pretty.”

  “What do they call you?” Chara asked from the back-seat.

  “Gabe, short for Gabriel.”

  “A real angel,” Terrell said.

  “He sure is white,” said Chara.

  “Nothin’ wrong with that.”

  Right away, Terrell and I were together in the car, a duo. Immediately we were joined and Chara was on her own. I don’t know how long they’d been friends. I don’t know if they even really liked each other, but I knew Terrell was mine. She was falling toward me. I could feel the pull, like she was the iron shavings in my old science kit and I was the magnet.

  She couldn’t help turning to me. I was happy. “You’re awfully skinny,” she said. “You need to eat more.”

  “After this, I’ll take you for a burger or some french fries.”

  “I’m starving,” Chara said.

  I wanted to make her get out of the car. I should have, but of course I didn’t. We’re all so nice to each other, nice and polite, until we’re not. Maybe if we were rude in little ways at the very moment we got annoyed, we wouldn’t kill each other later. I drove down the hill past LMU and turned left off Lincoln into the Ballona Wetlands Preserve. I saw the wildflowers blooming and the bog smell was pleasant, earthy, and wet, like a mud puddle in the backyard. We bumped along. The road wasn’t well paved. Terrell squealed when we bottomed out in a particularly large pothole, and I laughed at her.

  “How are you gonna be a stewardess if the bumps bother you so much?”

  “Flight attendant.” Chara corrected me like a school-teacher.

  Terrell just giggled. “I sure don’t like the bumps,” she said to me, and me alone.

  She had told me a secret. I felt bigger then, like I’d grown six inches taller and thirty pounds heavier and I had hands and feet like a big man. I wanted to touch her shiny shoulder, but I didn’t because of Chara.

  “There,” I said. “There’s the parking lot.”

  My piece of paper said parking lot 4 and I saw the little wooden sign with the yellow number 4. The sky was like a baby store—pink and blue. The lot was empty. Marcus would kill me.

  “There’s no one here,” Chara said.

  “Will you shut up?” I couldn’t hold back.

  “I’m getting out of this car.”

  “Don’t.”

  “I refuse to be spoken to like that. I’m gonna call my brother to come get me.”

  “Stay in the car.” This from Terrell. “Please?”

  “I don’t want to stay with that smelly old thing.” She pushed the case hard and it made a thump against the other door.

  “Don’t touch it!” I shouted.

  “What’s in it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Money. Drugs. You know, Terrell, how they make it smell so the dogs can’t sniff it?”

  “Chara.” Terrell frowned, but her friend was getting hysterical.

  “It’s not good. It’s not safe. Where are we? What are we doing here? I want to go home! You tell him to take me home!”

  Terrell turned around and leaned over the seat. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong with you? Gabe here lives across the street from my brother. He’ll take us home, soon as we deliver this.”

  “Stop the car!” Chara screamed.

  She opened her door. I slammed on the brakes and she fell forward onto Terrell’s seat. She screamed, and when she came up her nose was bloody. I hadn’t meant to stop short, but I didn’t want her to fall out onto the street.

  “Oh my God,” Terrell said.

  Chara was scrambling out of the car. She stumbled in the dirt parking lot. She was wearing a little skirt and ridiculous high heels.

  “His mother just died!” Terrell called to her. “Wait.”

  Chara was trying to run away.

  “Where is she going?” I couldn’t help but ask. We were way back deep into the preserve, surrounded by bog and birds and not much else. A black town car came down the road toward us, moving fast, dust in a plume behind it. I breathed a big sigh of relief. My guy. He was later than I was.

  Chara was flagging him down.

  “Chara!” I shouted. I had gotten out of the car. “Stop. That’s my guy. That’s who I’m meeting.”

  Terrell was out of the car and running toward Chara now. The town car had stopped and I could see the man had rolled down his window. He was big; he looked too big for the town car. He was hunched over the steering wheel so his head wouldn’t hit the ceiling. He frowned up at her, at Chara. She was crying and her nose was bleeding and she was begging him to let her in the car, to take her away, to call the police.

  “He’s got something bad in that case!” she said. “He’s a crazy man!”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” I hollered.

  Terrell reached her before I did and she pulled on Chara’s arm. She was trying to drag her away from the car and apologize to the man at the same time.
He seemed amused. He was looking at the two girls, he was looking at my girl and he was smiling.

  Couple of silly females, I’d tell him. Chara just fell off her goddamn shoes. Marcus and Terrell and I would laugh about Chara later. I’d sit on that creamy Naugahyde with my arm around her and we’d be drinking a beer and laughing about poor Chara and her stupid shoes.

  The guy reached out his window and grabbed Chara’s arm with his giant’s hand. He started to roll forward. Chara had to run along with him. He sped up. Terrell was running too, trying to peel his fingers from Chara’s arm.

  I hurried back to my mother’s car. I opened the back door and the case fell out onto the ground. It fell hard and I worried about breaking whatever was inside. I picked it up. Something inside had come loose. Something was bumping around in there.

  “Here!” I came running toward the town car. “Take it.”

  Chara was trotting now, and blubbering. On those spike heels she was jogging, but she was getting tired. She stumbled and then she fell and made this horrible choking sound, but he didn’t let go, he just dragged her along next to him. Terrell screamed then. A beautiful, high scream, as much like a bird as a woman, in so much pain it hurt my heart to hear it. She put her fists over her eyes.

  Good, I thought. Good. No one should see this. My sweet baby can’t see this. The driver dragged Chara until she stopped flopping, and then he dropped her. She lay there and he backed up and ran right over her. Then forward. There was this popping sound, loud as a firecracker but more hollow and round, and then a scuffling, and when I looked again, Chara’s legs were flat, but her arms were clawing in the dirt. I wanted her to die so she’d stop that noise, stop scratching. She was like a fly with its wings plucked off. Terrell had fallen to her knees. I had the case in my hand.

  “Here!” I screamed again at the guy. “Here!”

  Take this, leave my girl alone. Take this suitcase.

  I ran toward him, but he was spinning his car in the dirt, doing a 360, heading for Terrell. She got up. She was no fool, and she started to run. She zig-zagged back and forth so the car couldn’t follow her. Made me so proud the way she ran and tried to save herself. She ran like the wind, like a nymph, like an angel. I was coming straight toward the car. I held the case in front of me. He was coming for both of us.

  “Stop!” I screamed at him. “Stop!”

  I flung the case at the car, but the catch opened in the

  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

  MICHAEL CONNELLY is the author of seventeen novels, many of which feature LAPD Detective Harry Bosch. He lived in Los Angeles near Mulholland Drive for fourteen years and now splits his time between California and Florida, where he grew up.

  ROBERT FERRIGNO is the author of nine thrillers. His most recent book, Prayers for the Assassin, was a New York Times best-seller. For more information, visit www.prayers-fortheassassin.com and www.robertferrigno.com.

  JANET FITCH is the author of the novels Paint It Black and White Oleander. She is a third-generation resident of Los Angeles, where she lives in the Silverlake district. Currently, Fitch teaches in the Masters of Professional Writing program at the University of Southern California.

  DENISE HAMILTON’S crime novels have been shortlisted for the Edgar Allen Poe and the Willa Cather awards. A native Angeleno, she is a former reporter for the Los Angeles Times and a Fulbright scholar. Visit her at www.denisehamilton.com.

  NAOMI HIRAHARA is the author of the Mas Arai mystery series, featuring a Japanese American gardener and atomic bomb survivor living in Altadena, California. A former editor of The Rafu Shimpo daily newspaper in Los Angeles, she has produced more than seven nonfiction books related to Southern California and Asian American history. Her latest novel, Snakeskin Shamisen, is an Edgar Award finalist. Her website is www.naomihirahara.com.

  EMORY HOLMES II is a Los Angeles—based writer. His stories have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Sentinel, the New York Amsterdam News, Written By magazine, and other publications.

  PATT MORRISON is a veteran Los Angeles Times reporter and columnist, host of a daily program on NPR affiliate KPCC, commentator for NPR’s Morning Edition, and author of a best-selling book on the Los Angeles River [non-fiction, really]. She has been a six-time Emmy-winning host and commentator for a local PBS public affairs program, and host of a nationally syndicated book show.

  JIM PASCOE made a name for himself in the noir/crime fiction community as the copublisher of the critically acclaimed indie press UglyTown, which brought out his first two books, By the Balls: A Bowling Alley Murder Mystery and Five Shots and a Funeral. He is writing a dark manga series called Undertown, as well as a number of original comics based on Hellboy Animated. He lives in Los Angeles.

  GARY PHILLIPS writes about crime, giant three-armed robots, babes with Ph.D.’s in tights, and other such subject matter. He is finishing up a novel set during World War II, coediting the Darker Mask anthology of edgy superhero prose stories, and writing a coming-of-age graphic novel about black and Latino teenagers growing up in ’80s South Central L.A.

  SCOTT PHILLIPS was born in Wichita, Kansas, and spent many years in Paris before heading to Southern California. After moving, over a twelve- or thirteen-year period, from Studio City to Ventura to Woodland Hills to Koreatown to Pacific Palisades, he eventually gave up and relocated, tail between his legs, to St. Louis, Missouri.

  NEAL POLLACK’S memoir, Alternadad, was published by Pantheon in early 2007. The editor of Chicago Noir, Pollack lives in Los Angeles with his family. His website and blog, www.nealpollack.com, are generally informative and amusing.

  CHRISTOPHER RICE is the New York Times best-selling author of three novels, mostly recently Light Before Day. A Lambda Literary Award—winner, he is also a regular columnist for the Advocate and is currently a visiting faculty member at the graduate writing program of Otis College of Art and Design. He lives in West Hollywood. For more information, visit www.christopherricebooks.com.

  BRIAN ASCALON ROLEY, a Los Angeles native, is the author of the novel American Son, which received the 2003 Association of Asian American Studies Prose Book Award. It was a New York Times Notable Book, one of the Los Angeles Times’ Best Books of the Year, and a finalist for the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize. More information can be found at www.brianroley.com.

  LIENNA SILVER was born in Russia, and immigrated to the United States before Perestroyka came to the rescue. In Los Angeles, she began translating plays and screenplays, and cowrote a project for British Screen International. Her short stories have received numerous honorary awards, and she is working on a novel about contemporary Russia.

  SUSAN STRAIGHT was born in Riverside, where she still lives with her family. She has published six novels. Her latest, A Million Nightingales (Pantheon, 2006), set during slavery, is the first of a trilogy about the characters who appear in “The Golden Gopher.”

  HÉCTOR TOBAR is the son of Guatemalan immigrants and the author of Translation Nation and The Tattooed Soldier. Born in L.A., he has been editor of the bilingual San Francisco newspaper El Tecolote and features editor at the LA Weekly, and he has written for the New Yorker, the Nation, and other publications. He now reports for the Los Angeles Times from Mexico City, and is married with three children.

  DIANA WAGMAN is the author of three novels and the film Delivering Milo. She is the recipient of the 2001 PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction. She teaches in the film department at California State University, Long Beach.

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