by David Putnam
Jumbo ran a big section of South Central Los Angeles, which meant everyone on his turf he controlled or at least influenced. Everyone swirled around the same toilet bowl, never leaving, never changing.
Finally, I whispered, “Did you see what happened? Did you see who threw the gas and lit the fire that burnt that poor soul?”
She shook her head no.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I pulled her away, reached back for the switch on the wall.
“No, please, leave it off.”
I stopped just as my hand found it. “Then why are we here like this?”
When she hesitated, I knew it was going to be the truth. “The cops, they kicked in my door, threw me to da ground, and found my stash, what little there was. They said dey wouldn’t take me to jail if I cooperated and told them what I saw outside my window. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t go in on another possession. I’m on probation already. I’m lookin’ at five years. I saw that asshole Wicks come up. So I told the cop I wanted to talk to Wicks and then I told Wicks I’d only talk to you. You gotta help me, Bruno, I can’t do another day in the joint.”
“That’s not going to happen. I promise.”
“Thanks, Bruno.” She clung a little tighter. “You think you could spot me a twenty?”
“You know better than that. I’ll buy you some food, but I won’t give you money for any rock.”
“I know. I had to try. I thought maybe, after all these years, you know, after you went inside, maybe you’d’ve changed.”
Robby knocked on the door. “You two about finished with the reunion and with your little slap and tickle?” He chuckled, a lewd one I would jump him about later, maybe knock a few of his teeth down his throat. “Back off, Robby.”
I moved Chocolate farther from the door so he couldn’t hear with his ear up against the thin wood. Her back bumped against the sink, my hips bumped against hers in the perfect dark. My mind, all on its own, flashed back to the image from the past, the “African goddess.” I became aroused. She nuzzled closer, “You’re a good man, Bruno Johnson. Thank you for that. Thank you.”
“I’ll tell Robby something to get him off your back. But when you get a chance, you’re going to have to go to ground. Hide out for a while until things cool off.”
“I got no money. And … and from what you saw, no means to make any. No one wants what I’ve turned into.”
I wanted to ask her what she’d been doing to survive and, instead, reached into my pocket. She knew what I was going to do. “You’re a good man. You’re a good man.”
I peeled off five one hundred dollar bills, enough money for a slave to the pipe to kill herself. “I have to trust you.” I put the money in her hand. “I know you’re going to use some of it for rock, but use the rest for food and a place to lay your head. I’m not kidding, Chocolate. I’m trusting you.”
“Sure, Bruno, thank you, thank you.”
“Go someplace where you don’t usually go. Go up north instead of south. Up Atlantic into South Gate, lay low over at the Grover Hotel. You know the place.”
“Really, thanks a lot. I promise I won’t buy any rock. A hundred bucks won’t go far on rock, but it’ll buy food and a place at the Grover.”
In pitch blackness, she thought the bills I’d handed over were five twenties. I held her a little longer, then pulled away. Her body like an oven, I instantly missed the warmth, the comfort. It made me think of Marie. I decided life was too short. FBI or no FBI, I was going to see her.
“Chocolate,” I whispered, “I need a favor.”
“Anything you want.”
Robby knocked on the door, “Come on. We haven’t got all night.”
I moved back over, moved my lips close to her ear. “You know about me going to prison, right?”
She hesitated, nodded. “It wasn’t right. Ask anyone, it jus’ wasn’t right. Anyone would have done what you did. Swear to gawd, Bruno, anyone.”
“Just listen. I’m in a real jam. A bad one. They’re trying to send me back. I need your help.”
She nodded again.
“If you get caught, it’s going to go down real bad for you.”
This time she didn’t speak or nod.
I took out the last five hundred in my pocket.
“No,” she said, “you helped me enough.”
I took her hand and forced the money into it. “Go to Killer King tonight before midnight, find a woman in the emergency room named Marie Santiago and tell her, code red, south side rumba. You got that?”
“Code red, south side rumba.”
“Right. Tell her two o’clock, okay? That’s two o’clock in the morning.”
“Code red, south side rumba, two o’clock in the morning. How am I going to get out of here? They’re watching the motel.”
“I’ll take care of that.”
“You sure? I’m gonna owe ya big this time.”
“Stay in here. Then wait five minutes after we’re gone and go through the fence out back. I’ll make sure all the cops are pulled off. Just make sure to go out the back, through the fence and south to Platt Avenue. You understand?”
“I know the way. You don’t have to tell me.”
I squeezed her shoulder, turned, and went to the door. “Remember, five minutes and then hustle over to Killer King. I’m counting on you.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
I opened the door, then shut it again, asked, “Hey, you know where I can find Jumbo?”
“Ah, Bruno, don’t go messin’ with that trash. He’s the devil. You’re crazy to even think about gettin’ hooked up with him.”
“Chocolate?”
She took a deep breath, “He’s got hisself a big pad over in Downey. Looks like an apartment building right in the middle of a neighborhood. It’s on two or three lots. It’s huge. North of Rosecrans, four or five blocks from the river. You can’t miss it.”
I opened the door again, the light made me squint.
Behind me Chocolate yelped, said, “My God, Bruno, these aren’t twent—” I closed the door. Her words drowned out behind the wood.
“Well?” Robby said, “Was it as good as it used to be?”
I stepped over and gave him a left jab to the jaw then an uppercut to the gut. He was soft, too many years as a supervisor. He went to his knees.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
He pulled his gun, something he never did lightly. He stopped short of aiming it at me. “What the fuck’s the matter with you?” His words came out in a groan, his face a shade paler.
“You, man. What’s the matter with you? You were never like this before, crude and crass, uncaring about the other person. What the hell happened to you?”
“Life, asshole. It’s what happens to everyone. Did the bitch tell you or not?”
I wanted to sock him again. I turned and went down the hall, down the stairs, and out into the cool of the evening, the entire time thinking how to turn the thing around. At the car I waited. Robby didn’t follow right behind. I waited. He didn’t show. Did he go back and bat Chocolate around? I took a step toward the entrance just when he came out. He banged the door shut, his arm holding his stomach, his shoulders slightly hunched. He went around to the passenger side where I stood. I thought about backing up a step beyond his wrath.
“I lost my lunch. Thanks a lot.”
I didn’t feel sorry, not after the way he talked around Chocolate.
“What did she tell you?”
“She said the dude who threw the gas and lit the guy up was wearing purple.”
“That’s it? Purple? That’s all she’s got? We put her up, fed her, and that’s all she’s got? Purple?” He put his arm on the car, leaned over until his forehead touched the cold metal of the hood, and let out another long, sad groan.
The man was chasing me, making my life miserable, and I still felt sorry for him. And at the same time guilt for what I was about to do.
I was facing the motel, Robby facing me. A fig
ure, concealed in shadows came out into the light. Chocolate. She held her hand up to her ear, index and thumb extended, the sign for a phone. Then she pointed at Robby. She melted back into the dark, back into the street. She was trying to warn me. She’d seen Robby on the cell phone after he left her and in between the time he came back to the car. He hadn’t lost his lunch, it was a crummy little alibi for a crummy little man. What had happened to the great Robby Wicks?
Why would he have to make a call without me hearing? Especially, before I told him what Chocolate had told me?
I held out my hand for the keys. “Hey, man, if you’re sick, let me drive.”
He kept his head on his arm and didn’t look up. “Drive where, asshole? That was our last lead. We’re through until he does it again. When he does, hope he makes a mistake and leaves us something this time.”
“He?” I asked.
Robby froze. Slowly he looked up.
I said, “I never said he. I did, but didn’t mean it that way. It’s they.”
For a moment he looked scared. It didn’t match the reaction he should’ve had. Fear flashed for a microsecond. Again, had I not known him so well, I might’ve missed it. He recovered. “They? What the hell you talking about, they? There’s more than one suspect?”
“I told you purple. That’s Grape Street. She said Grape Street Crips had a new initiation.” This was all the lie I needed. He took it from there. His eyes grew big. “You’re shit-tin’ me, right? We got all of Operation Safe Streets and the Gang Enforcement Team, working on this, and they couldn’t come up with that kind of intel. Some street ho—”
“Careful.” I pointed a finger at him, at the same time felt a surge of guilt for what I just put into motion, the pain, the carnage. Grape Street was a notoriously violent street gang that needed a little extra attention. Justification for my sins.
He took his cell phone out of his suit coat pocket, then handed me the keys. “Here, you drive. And don’t you dare crash. I’d never be able to explain it.” We got into the car. I reached under the seat to let the seat back for my long legs and felt a crumpled paper bag with a pint bottle.
He dialed his phone. “This is Wicks. Put it out to everyone and I mean everyone. I want every swingin’ dick in Nickerson Gardens, who’s wearing purple, brought in. Now. I mean right now. Call in whoever you have to, to get it done. Call Century Station and tell them they’re about to be inundated with assholes. I’ll call the chief and get it cleared.” He snapped his phone shut, put it inside one breast pocket, and reached into the other side where he pulled out a silver flask. Robby never drank on the job. Things sure had changed in the three and half years I was gone; a year and a half to fight the case and two years of a four-year sentence in the joint.
He unscrewed the cap, tilted it back, and took a long slug. I didn’t know why I hadn’t smelled it on him until now. My partner, my friend had turned into a juicer. He pulled the flask down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. In the day, we drank quite a bit off duty, mostly beer to celebrate great accomplishments—crooks no longer prowling streets, put away for long stretches, bank robbers, murderers, some put down hard—but we never drank the hard stuff. The day be fore I surrendered for my stint, I got stinking-assed drunk on twelve-year-old bourbon and felt the shame of it the next day. Dad drilled it into me not to drink at all.
Robby looked over at me with genuine elation. As far as he knew, the key to his difficult case was on the table. All he had to do was reach out and touch it. I just didn’t know what it had to do with me or why I was being followed. Not for real, not that I wanted to give credence to anyway.
I felt worse.
Then I thought about what Ramon, the owner of Lucy’s, had said, that Robby was asking about me with the FBI standing right there beside him. That meant federal time. And that, I didn’t really want to think about. The Feebs, one of the crimes they investigated was kidnapping. Not that I looked at what I was doing as a crime; saving these kids wasn’t kidnapping, not morally it wasn’t. Other people would see it differently, especially since some of the kids were white. No, the guilt didn’t last very long.
Robby’s wide smile filled his entire face. He might make captain out of this. Hell, if he took me down, recovered the kids, and the murder suspect, he could make deputy chief. He handed me the flask. I sat entranced with his eyes. Would he turn on a friend? Especially the kind of friends we’d been. All that had obviously changed. I just couldn’t get my mind around it. I would never have turned on him, not for any enticement. Yet, in a way, I just had. My stomach rumbled. Soon I’d have his ulcer.
I didn’t smile back, couldn’t, but I could take the flask and drink from it to deaden some of the pain brought on by the loss of a friend. I tilted it back, not knowing what to expect. Vodka. The odorless drink of a drunk.
Two and a half years without a drop. The liquor burnt all the way down, warming my stomach, and seconds later my blood and lungs, rekindling that hint of shame. To drink right now dulled the senses. Not a smart move when so many people depended upon me. I breathed fire, took a breath, and another long slug, finishing the flask.
“Hey, hey, buddy, don’t Bogart the whole thing.” Robby took the flask, tipped it back empty in his mouth. “Not to worry.” He reached into the glove box and pulled out another one, then turned on the unit radio to channel 22. It immediately lit up with chatter.
“Jesus, listen to all that. We have unleashed a shit storm like those punks have never seen.”
I backed out. I drove under the speed limit. He probably thought it cautious. I needed the time to think.
“Pick it up, man, pick it up. Once our thugs hit the street, and the Crips figure out what’s going down, they’ll all go to ground, and we’ll have to dig ’em out with shovels. I wanna catch one or two ourselves, you know, like the old days. Here, take a right on Imperial. Come on, you haven’t been gone that long. You know the way.”
Some of his excitement came my way, contagious, infectious excitement I so dearly missed. The way it felt when we rode together and were close to uncovering someone’s hidey-hole.
At Alameda Avenue, not far from the Imperial Courts housing project, a couple of miles from Nickerson Gardens, a male black on a bike rode like hell right at us. He wore a white football jersey dyed purple with the name Montana on the back. The Grape Street Crips never ventured this far east. At least not alone. Something had spooked him. It was Gang Enforcement Team and Operation Safe Streets hitting Nickerson hard.
“There. There.” Robby pointed, as if I hadn’t spotted him. “Get over there and cut his ass off.”
I went across the lanes of traffic, the bike rider still looking back, not watching where he was going. I braked, thinking he would look up in time. He crashed into the side of Robby’s county ride and flipped over on his back onto the hood. His black bowler hat snugged down on his head stayed that way.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Robby jumped, dragged him off, put him facedown in a wrist-lock, and was taking out the cuffs before I got around the nose of the car to help. The crook gasped for air. I looked down the road toward Nickerson. It wouldn’t be long before Operation Safe Street interrogated a few and figured out my game. I didn’t have much time.
Robby picked the guy up. He was an OG, an Original Gangster, someone older than twenty-one, still alive, and not in prison. He tried to talk, but the words wouldn’t come, the air still had not returned to his lungs. I got a closer look. “I know you. You’re Jesse Cole’s nephew. I thought you moved to Rialto?”
“What’d I do?” The first words he could utter.
Robby laughed, “Well, obviously you’re driving that bike on the street without a light because you crashed right into the side of my hooptie.”
“Man, that ain’t right and you know it.”
“Why you ridin’ like that, lookin’ over your shoulder?”
“You know why. The sheriff’s in the hood ridin’ deep. Jackin’ all the homeboys for nuthin�
��. Nuthin’, man.”
Robby reached up and took a joint from behind the guy’s ear and put it behind his own. “Now we’re going to add a Primo to the charge.”
“Dey ain’t any rock in dere, it’s pure weed.”
“We’ll just send it to the lab and find out. Until then we’re going to put you on ice. Unless you want to make a deal.”
Even if the game was correct and Grape Street was at the bottom of it, Robby was moving too fast. Under normal circumstances, we’d have taken him in and put him in a cell, let him fester while we grabbed a cup of joe. Robby wanted this too badly.
“I ain’t got nuthin’.”
Someone on the radio said, “Ten-thirty-three.” The code for emergency traffic.
Robby yanked on the dude’s arm, “Come on, get him in the car.”
A panicked voice on the radio said, “My partner’s in foot pursuit, Nickerson Gardens, east side, south of 115th.” Deputies from all over came up on the air advising they were en route.
Robby yelled, “Come on, come on. Get his ass in the car we gotta get over there.”
We shoved the Crip in the back. I got in and put the pedal to the floor, burning rubber, leaving the Crip’s bike back in the street. He didn’t seem to care.
The deputy came back up on the air screaming, “Shots fired. Shots fired.”
Robby spun in the seat. “This is going to be better than I thought. We just kicked over a hornet’s nest.”
“Man, let me out.” The Crip in the back said, “Doan take me in dere inta that.”
He knew in situations where deputies get in over their heads, the responding units don’t differentiate the good and bad and beat down anything that moves.
