Streets on Fire
Page 3
How had the world come to this? There were no more people in Claremont now, or in the six little colleges that clustered there. There must just be a lot more money about, he decided. He remembered finding an old Life Magazine from the 1950s under his dresser a few years back and thumbing through it idly to see glossy display ads for a can of peas, a ballpoint pen and DEMAND CONCRETE HIGHWAYS—THEY LAST. We weren’t really a consumer society yet, he had concluded, startled by the commonplace nature of what was being offered. This deep need for all material goodies must have sneaked up on the country while he was busy over in Vietnam.
The first campus he ran into, Pomona College, was just a block east of the village shops. It was a daydream of a social class that was utterly beyond his ken, all Corinthian pillars, ivy, long arcades and big green quads. Five more private colleges inhabited the north and east sides of the town, sharing a big library and other facilities in the middle. The Oxford of California they liked to call it. He’d bet nobody had ever called Oxford the Claremont of England.
It was summer and there weren’t many kids around. Still, something was going on out on a big grassy no-man’s-land that seemed to separate a couple of the colleges. Yellow crime scene tape from tree to post to tree cordoned off the middle of the quad where there was a complicated machine the size of a Greyhound bus, bristling with big cams and gears and belts. Maybe thirty young people stood outside the tape, well back from the machine. Jack Liffey parked and ambled closer across the springy crabgrass.
The leader seemed to be a man who was older and hairier than the rest, wearing a sheepskin vest and standing in front of a portable console of buttons and knobs. There was a video camera on a tripod and everyone else seemed to have a still camera.
“Flag up!” someone cried, and sure enough a girl on the far side of the quad raised a red flag.
“Fire in the hole!” somebody else called, which gave Jack Liffey a real chill; it was the traditional warning for blasting. In his limited experience—a few days caught up in Tet in Saigon—it meant a grenade or C-4 going down into a basement.
“Roll tape,” the hairy man called out, “Phase two self-immolation.” He stabbed at a button on his console and all eyes were on the machine. Belts ground up, wheels spun, a mirrored ball sent sun sparkles everywhere and, he wasn’t quite sure, but he thought he heard a deep groaning emanate from the machine.
“There it goes there it goes!” somebody called excitedly as a puff of dark smoke spurted out the side. A big cogwheel spun up into the air, a double-jointed mechanical arm reached out and then flung off its own forearm, and a section of the machine began to bob insanely, like a pigeon strutting along a windowsill.
Cameras ticked and flashed all around him as the near half of the framework tilted and then collapsed on itself.
“All right!”
A titter of laughter and then applause spread through the group. The older man pushed another button. “Cut! Okay, let’s put it back together.” He had a pronounced Eastern European accent.
A few young people offered him handslaps and then they stepped over the tape to flood toward the hapless machine. Jack Liffey directed his steps toward a young woman in a yellow tank top who seemed to be in charge of the video camera.
“Art project?” he asked.
“Uh-huh. We can only test it in small bites until the big performance in September.”
“You like destruction?”
She shrugged. “It’s a job. Most of them are volunteers but I’m paid for the summer. Harvat can get big corporate grants for anything he wants. Like Christo.”
Christo was the man who wrapped buildings and mountains and had littered the Tejon Pass north of L. A. with several hundred giant blue umbrellas a few years back. There didn’t seem any point mentioning people downtown who were going hungry, and he didn’t really suppose any more people would be fed if the avant-garde gave up their art happenings.
“It is social criticism,” she added defensively.
“Of what?”
“I’m not sure. The object of social criticism is getting a lot harder to identify these days.”
“We have met the enemy and he is us,” Jack Liffey said.
“Derrida?”
He shook his head. “Pogo.”
*
She hid out in the garage, tears still streaming down her cheeks. Something about the slap had made her feel terribly weepy. She knew it was way out of proportion, but she felt a dreadful guilt inside. Any physical blow was like a murder to her, and somewhere deep in her psyche she felt that you had to have done something really bad to merit a slap.
Well, the hell with Bradley Bartlett, Maeve tried out. He’s nothing to me. But that didn’t really help much. Part of her knew that it wasn’t really a simple question. In a funny way what was happening inside her had a lot less to do with her stepfather than with herself, her protected life. Life was finally tossing her a few hard pitches. She had to learn to deal with things. She wondered if it was possible to have parents who were too kind and loving? Maybe you were better served getting used to a little cruelty early on. Still, she longed to hug her father and be hugged back.
After a while she calmed down, but she didn’t really feel like going back into the house. There was too much in there that she’d have to deal with. It was hot and steamy in the garage, but she felt that was a kind of penance she was paying for being disrespectful.
The corner of a cardboard carton was poking her in the back where she sat and she squirmed around to straighten it out and then got interested and peeked inside. It was one of her mom’s storage boxes from the big house. The big house, from when they’d all still lived together, she thought with a pang. How she missed that happy, secure time.
They were slim colorful books, her mother’s childhood books, and she tugged the box out into the light that washed in from the frosted side window of the garage. Mostly they were Nancy Drew mysteries. The Mystery at Lilac Inn. The Ghost of Blackwood Hall. The Clue of the Velvet Mask. The Crooked Banister. She plucked one out at random and settled back with it. She’d never read a Nancy Drew.
A few minutes later she was making a face, as if she smelled something bad. The prose was weirdly old-fashioned and terribly earnest, she could feel that much. Still, there was something about the book that swept her up, the pluck, the good cheer, the energy of Nancy Drew, and a whole universe there in River Heights that was susceptible to the goodhearted ministrations of a young girl.
But, oh dear, she thought, unconsciously echoing Nancy’s diction. Right away she found out that the plot turned on a missing will, and the book was titled The Secret of the Old Clock.
Duh, she thought, like Homer Simpson, I wonder where the missing will could be hidden?
*
He was still early to the impound lot, but it appeared Calderón had beat him there and the gate was open. He decided to leave his Concord outside. He wasn’t sure he’d ever get it out if it found its spiritual home. The place was full of dusty junkers, parked only inches apart, with grease-pencil scribbles on the windshields. A lot of them were visibly wrecked.
Off to the side was a black 1958 Chevrolet Impala with a lot of chrome, heat off the black metal shimmering the air above it. Calderón was dark and portly, like a campesino, and had the regulation short police mustache. Unlike big city lieutenants he wore a uniform.
“Mr. Liffey?”
“Jack. Lt. Calderon?”
“José.” They shook hands. Another polite cop, he thought. The last few police officers he’d met had all been helpful and mannerly. It was enough to shake your world-view. The man pointed at the Impala.
“This is it. You help me push, we can look inside.”
The brake wasn’t set and it was easy to shoulder the big, dusty car out into the central lane. Calderon grunted as he thrust, probably doing more than his share of the horsepower. Jack Liffey saw right away that a side window in back had been smashed.
“The car wasn’t reported for a week
where it sat back in the orange trees, so we assumed the window was vandals, but who knows?”
Because Calderon was small, dark, and portly, Jack Liffey caught himself selling the man short—probably not very worldly, maybe not very clever. Migrant-worker background, up from the ranks, no college. Shit, he thought. It was like reading the caption on TV to see the black man’s credentials. Latinos could only be smart if they looked tall and light skinned, with lots of Spanish blood, and wore big glasses. He hoped his degree of racism didn’t show.
“I’m not going to find anything you didn’t, am I?”
“Nope. But you can say you tried.”
“That’s not the point. I’m not in this to make money off Mr. Davis.”
“I’m glad. He seemed like a fine gentleman.”
It would be too hot to stay inside the black car for long. He poked under the seats and looked in the empty glove compartment. There was a good-luck sticker with a pair of dice showing seven on the dash. Pomona College and Scripps College decals on the rear window, and a couple of Greek letters on the wind wing.
“What’s the sigma and omega?”
“His fraternity at Pomona. You won’t have heard of it because they’re all locals. They’re not even live-in, just social clubs. Amilcar dropped out of his after a year.”
“Ah,” Jack Liffey said.
“They claim he was just too busy with schoolwork.”
“Instead of too black?”
“Presumably they noticed that when they bid him.”
He had a wary irony playing around his eyes, and Jack Liffey smiled. “I hear Amilcar could have a chip on his shoulder. No one in town here ever called you names?”
“You mean like wetback?”
“Whatever.”
“My folks were wetbacks. They swam the Rio Grande to Texas at a place called Esperanza. I’m proud of it.”
“Of course, but it still isn’t pleasant to be called names.”
He pursed his lips. “I’ve probably been called greaser or bean or taco head or subtler ways of getting at me ten thousand times in my life. Each time it has a weight, you know. But what I find is if you spread the weight out as evenly as you can, maybe one or two insults a day, you stay on a pretty even keel. It’s only when they bunch up on you, all that weight tends to—” He made a gesture with his hand flat in front of him, like a raft going over on one side. “Then you lose it.”
“There can’t be a lot of Latinos in the Claremont Police Department.”
“There can’t be a lot of Latinos in Claremont period. But I get to arrest gringos every day. That makes it all worthwhile.”
The wry look was back and Jack Liffey smiled. He could see he was going to like José Calderon. “Do you have any hunches on the disappearance that you haven’t had the time to follow up?”
“You want me to do all your work for you?”
“Why not? I’m not very bright and it’ll save Mr. Davis some money.” Sweat was rolling down his neck. He got out of the car.
“Okay, first I’d sit down and read the case file again. Then I’d talk to David Phelps. He was the roommate. He’s from here, so he’ll be around this summer. Then I’d look into the bikers that got on Amilcar’s case outside a Fontana blues club, him having a white girlfriend with him. The FBI talked to them because they had some overlap with the Fourth Reich skinheads, but the suits didn’t seem very interested. Then I’d go down to Amilcar’s home, your neck of the woods, and talk to Umoja. The boy seems to have retained a paid-up membership.”
“Whoa. One at a time.”
“Help me put this back.” They set their hands on the dusty grille and heaved the Impala back into its slot.
“You going to give this to his dad?” Jack Liffey meant the car.
“He hasn’t asked for it. I think we’re going to want it out of here pretty soon. We’re not even sure it’s a crime scene.”
“Tell me about the bikers.”
He slapped dust off his palms. “They’re called the Bone Losers.” He chuckled. “It was apparently a misspelling for Born Losers, way back when, but it took, and they made a broken legbone their logo. There’s the Hell’s Angels, Gypsy Jokers, and Satan’s Slaves up at the top of the charts, and then way down in single-A ball, there’s groups like Bone Losers. They’re fifteen miles east, in Fontana, and you’re welcome to them.”
“Umoja?”
“As far as I know, it’s a black nationalist outfit in LA It’s about cultural stuff, roots, teaching Swahili and promoting pan-African unity. You haven’t heard of them?”
“Just wanted to know your take on them.”
“Come with me,” Lt. Calderon said, and he led Jack Liffey to his plainwrap, a white Crown Victoria, and he fished a fat manila envelope out through his open window. “This is a Xerox of the whole file.”
“You really are a godsend. I’ve never met such a helpful police officer.”
“Mr. Davis asked.”
Jack Liffey stared thoughtfully at the thick envelope. “Do you have a personal theory?”
“I used to, but theories can get in the way of police work. Sometimes it’s best when you’re hunting for the truth to have your mind free.”
“Free’s not bad, but I try to do my hunting on credit,” Jack Liffey said.
*
He hadn’t seen any pillars of smoke over South Central so he figured it was okay, but he started getting nervous when he noticed three black-and-whites at the corner of Brighton. Two cops stood watchfully at the corner, but most were just moon faces in the front windows of their sedans, swiveling to follow his progress around the corner and down past 60th. There was another cop car a block short of the Davis house, but that wasn’t what caught his attention first. Six young black men stood at parade rest along the sidewalk in front of the house, carrying a motley assortment of shotguns and rifles. There was also a hole and a big scorch right in the middle of Bancroft Davis’ lawn, near where the little girl Ornetta had been sitting on her tractor.
Jack Liffey parked across the road, and they all got interested fast. Colors were up. They wore blue bandannas knotted on their heads, or dangling from a pocket. Crips. As far as he knew, it was legal to carry a long gun in the city, as long as it was unloaded; he didn’t think too many of the cops would want to come up and inspect the breeches. He didn’t want to, either.
He took a deep breath and crossed the road, and he was met by a tall hard-eyed young man with a half dozen earrings and a coal black teardrop shape tattooed under his right eye.
“What you want here?” He carried a big pump Winchester shotgun, the kind the cops kept strapped to the dashboard. It was pointed diagonally at the sky, but not so far that it couldn’t get around in a hurry.
“I need to see Mr. Davis.”
“You got bidness?”
“I got business.”
There was a long pause. “Who the fuck you crackin’ off to, Arnold? You a fifth wheel in this ’hood.”
The gangbanger got Jack Liffey’s back up, even though there was nothing to be gained by antagonizing him. He remembered a rule of life he’d heard once, probably from his pragmatic friend Art Castro: Never kick a bear unless you can kill it. It made a lot of sense, but it wasn’t a rule he’d ever followed very assiduously. His rule had more to do with not giving up the square foot of turf you occupied in life or you’d never get it back.
“I am employed by Bancroft Davis—friend.”
“I ain’t your friend.” But he’d gone uneasy. There was a quick shrill whistle, and the man with the tear glanced to catch some signal from another young man on the porch. He gave Jack Liffey a long look and then sucked at his teeth a bit, spit at his feet and stepped aside.
As Jack Liffey crossed the lawn, he looked at the hole dug in the center of the big scorch and noticed that the area smelled of char and gasoline. Bancroft Davis held the front door open for him. “You’re braver than I thought. Or crazier.”
“Just crazier. What’s going on?”
“No!”
“Big as life. About two a.m.”
He followed Jack Liffey slowly into the living room, leaning heavily on his walking stick. Neither the little girl nor his wife were in evidence.
“Come on out back. It’s too hot.”
It was too hot, sweltering and close in the tiny house, ten degrees hotter than outside, though all the sash windows were open.
“Somebody burned a cross in the heart of the black community? That’s like those kids out there moving to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, to start a Crip set.”
“Uh-huh.”
There was a patio of cracked cement with a fine arbor of grape leaves overhead. The rest of the yard was a vegetable garden with tidy lanes and one small square of grass.
“Speaking of those kids…”
“That was BigLenin you were trying to commit suicide with. The name amuses my wife.”
“I should think so.”
Bancroft Davis lowered himself painfully into a plastic bucket chair. “They’re the Rolling 60s Gangsta Crips. This is their ’hood, insofar as that has any meaning these days, and they seem to have adopted me. Genesee says it shows a rudimentary class consciousness.”
“Or a predatory mammal’s sense of territory. Who do you think burned the cross?”
He shook his head slowly, then shrugged.
“You know,” Jack Liffey said, “the whole point of intimidation is you’re supposed to know who’s doing the intimidating. It doesn’t make any sense otherwise.”
The old man nodded to the bangers outside. “They think it was their enemies, either Eighteenth Street or Mara Salvatrucha. They’re big Latino gangs that are encroaching. Mara is Salvadoran and Central American, reputedly started by ex-guerrillas.”
“Latinos don’t burn crosses. They wouldn’t even know what it means.”
“Maybe. There’s always a few Nazis in the police, or some loose cannons from the white hinterlands. I never could keep track of enemies. All in all, I think you waste your time trying. You just have to do what you have to do without regard to what some warped mind will think of it.”