Almost in automatic mode, as the male nurse was wrapping up that blood pressure device, I went into the same routine I always did with Filipinos.
“From Manila?”
“Yes.”
“Ever been to the Tondo?”
All Filipinos responded identically, with a smile and look of amazement. “You know Tondo?” was the response. Always. Like Tondo was a person.
I usually told them that I had heard about it from my father, Tony, an Oakland-raised Vietnam vet who’d been to the Philippines and spent time in Manila’s infamous Tondo slum, a teeming hellhole with rats the size of wolverines, shirtless, barrel-chested men in alleys with machetes, and whores who should’ve been in grammar school.
But today, all I said was, “Heard about it.” The nurse left after adjusting some drip. I tried to look down my body. Much of my torso was bandaged. I felt my head, no bandages. If I didn’t move much, I felt no pain. The drip must be morphine.
Then I panicked. Full-bore anxiety attack. With it came a spasmodic jolt of cold sweats. Was I damaged? Was I paralyzed? Could I fuck again? I thought about my girlfriend, Francesca.
I tried to breathe in real deep. It hurt. Even morphine has its limitation. I tried to remember facts I loved, to test my brain. The birth and death years of Alexander the Great?–356 to 323 B.C. Number of Mantle World Series home runs? Eighteen. Relief. A few more to double test myself. Francesca’s address and phone number. Got it.
I quoted from The Iliad opening, the Robert Fagles translation. “Rage, Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles.” It was one of only two lines from The Iliad I knew by heart.
Okay, I’m not brain dead.
I moved my feet. They moved, as did my toes. My hands and fingers worked. With trepidation and long, slow breaths, damn the pain, I touched my penis. It stirred enough to calm my greatest fear.
I lifted and twisted my neck. Moved my arms, I didn’t feel that bad. I smiled and drifted off. Morphine did that to people.
A few hours later, I woke, disoriented. I wondered if word had spread. Was anyone here? My girlfriend? My sister? Of course, they must know. I looked up at the TV. That Filipino nurse was there, watching the news.
I remember the car pulling up. I remember it was an older American car, probably GM. It stopped and a man, a black guy, getting out because I noticed the purple rag he had. Grape Street Crips. I thought this guy was old for a Grape, maybe even fifty. And then I got shot. That’s it. Maybe, I thought, when this dope wears off I will remember more.
For many years I had lived with an ominous feeling something dreadful would befall me that would send my life spiraling downhill to its ultimate sad ending. Sometimes I felt this dread hover about me like a swarm of hornets and knew soon their stings would lay me out.
I’d dismiss it as foolishness, as drama, as booze-spattered anxiety. As long as I was vigilant, nothing really bad would happen to me. I’d be on the lookout for the ax and when it swooped, I’d dodge it as gracefully as Manolete sidestepped horns. But the feeling would return. I could be simply talking to a friend or alone in my ride and I’d sense doom racing toward me with intent to imprison, paralyze, or kill.
Often the dread would feature me killing a baby while driving drunk. The worst of the worst. As real as I could, I would imagine, no, not imagine. Imagination is for good things. I would conjure up this terrible scene, strain to feel its horror. I would envision the mangled body of this dead infant, the grieving, angry family, my own heartbroken family. The revulsion that my life would be. And I would languish in that thought and then, when all was doomed in this conjured life, I’d rejoice in reality.
And that’s how I felt in this hospital room. Rejoiced. That long-awaited dread had come calling, had fallen on me hard, but it hadn’t killed me. Fuck that dread. For the first time in years, I felt no need to worry. There was no more doom lurking. Damn, I felt good.
I put my feet on the floor and stood up. I was wobbly, but I was standing. Life was a grand adventure. The phone rang. It was Francesca.
People often did not believe me at when I told them Francesca Golden was my girlfriend. Just the day before getting shot, I was at little café on Virgil Avenue called Sqirl, and when I spoke proudly of this romance to a friendly foodie seated next me, she called me a liar. I wasn’t at all surprised.
Even in Los Angeles, where bizarre bedfellows get few glances, our relationship was treated with curiosity, perhaps even suspicion.
Francesca is the reigning goddess of the Los Angeles restaurant world, a beguiling curly haired brunette drizzled with allure. She has a nose with a slight, sexy bump in its middle that reminds me—and me alone—of the old Masta Kink at the Formula One circuit in Spa, Belgium. See what I mean? And her eyes, her eyes are hazel, the green like wet emeralds, the brown so gentle, almost caramel, making them very sensitive to light. She almost always wears sunglasses, sunshine or rainfall. She almost always wears Marni, her favorite designer.
Francesca Golden had grown up in an especially affluent section of Encino in the San Fernando Valley. Despite the fancy address, she had a wild streak. While in the fourth grade, she stole cosmetics from Sav-On Drugs, got caught, and retired from the thieving life. In the sixth grade she hopped a freight train off San Fernando Road in Glassell Park and rode it alone to the distant land of North Compton where she took a taxi home, financed by her older sister, Gail.
Francesca found her true passion in food and trained at the mythical restaurant of Fredy Girardet in Crissier, Switzerland. She opened a bakery on Wilshire Boulevard that, on a good day, rivaled Poilane, and a restaurant, The Tower, with her husband, Bernard Fezetta, a master sommelier from Alsace. Soon Francesca became revered in Los Angeles. She expanded the bakery. She made her first million at twenty-seven.
The couple had a daughter Zoe, but by the time the child was three, Francesca and Bernard had split. She opened a new restaurant on her own called Zola, after her child born in L.A.
Five years ago, Francesca went to Napa Valley for a West Coast James Beard benefit dinner. It so happened a friend and frequent customer of Zola was also in Napa Valley that week. He was a convicted violent felon and, though he was white, hung out in the housing projects of Watts, in the barricaded alleys of Green Meadows, in pool halls of North Compton with guys named Mad Dog, Honcho, Snipe, and Big Evil. He was usually dressed in Target black and thought Marni was an old Sean Connery movie. His bank account never soared and he was not handsome. Somehow though, long before she had ever even kissed his mouth, he knew Francesca was made for him. That guy would be me.
I had come to get away from the city, to drink wine and eat well, and to start work on a book I’d probably never finish. I wrote three pages that day, ran three miles, then called Francesca whom I knew was doing a food event in the Napa Valley. She told me to join her and her friends Hiro and Lissa for dinner in St. Helena at Terra Restaurant.
We got toasted—not wasted—at the dinner. Dumol’s Eddie’s Patch Syrah 2001 did the trick. I maneuvered her away from her trusted friend and pastry chef, Dahlia, and walked her to my car where that old wild streak of hers surfaced. We made out on Railroad Street and I took her back to my room, room 17 at the nearby El Bonita Motel. It was the night of my nights.
Even though I worried come morning, the foodie legend in bed with the longtime customer would turn awkward. So I wasn’t surprised, yet I was sad when Francesca awoke, kissed me once on the lips, and walked out. I was pleasantly surprised, no, nah I was euphorically stunned when, fifteen minutes later, she returned with coffee and a lone croissant from the Dean & DeLuca just down Highway 29.
That night we went to Bouchon, little bistro sister to the French Laundry in the wine burg of Yountville. We kissed at the dinner table like young lovers. I knew this would not be just one weekend and, in all my life, I’ve never been happier. During dessert, we struck up a conversation with an elderly couple at the next table. After about fifteen minutes of banter, the lady at the table asked a qu
estion that I’d fondly repeat dozens of times over the years. “How do a famous chef and a crime reporter get together?”
Five years after that, we’re still together. I like to sing her praises to people and I love to end by saying, “There’s only one thing that makes me suspicious about her. Have you ever met her boyfriend?”
I thought of that question as I listened to Francesca’s opening phone salvo. “Small wonder people don’t believe you when you tell them I’m your girlfriend.”
“Aren’t you going to ask how I am?”
There was silence for several seconds. I took that as a beautiful sign. Francesca wasn’t much for a breaking voice. Then she said, “You know, I hope they do say I’m your girlfriend when they show you on the news tonight.”
That made me silent for several of my own seconds. “I hope they do too.”
CHAPTER 5
In a change of the natural order, detectives—Sal LaBarbera and Johnny Hart—had taken to interviewing reporters.
LaBarbera and Hart were not in the Robbery-Homicide Division, which handles high-profile cases. They were from Southeast Division, aka 108th Street. Captain Tatreau wanted them because they were homicide detectives who knew Lyons well and covered the same unruly beat he did.
LaBarbera was New York street-smart and Hollywood leading-man handsome, six foot even, well built, full head of black hair, with a Bronx accent that came on hard when he needed to be tough or when he was joking. A smart dresser, decked out in a black Ralph Lauren blazer and gray slacks, oxblood Cole Haans.
Hart was six three, a motocross-racing, snowboarding, black-belted blond bachelor who was heading for a life of California dreaming until his nephew was killed by a stray bullet in Gardena. So he entered law enforcement, sheriff’s first, then LAPD. Simple as that. He found that walking an alley in Watts looking for a sniper was a bigger thrill than pulling a hole shot at Glen Helen motocross track or skiing the west face of KT-22 in Squaw Valley.
They set up shop on editor’s row in California editor Harriet Tinder’s mid-size office. Before they began to interview other reporters, the detectives scanned Lyons’s nearby desk. They noted the books on the top shelf. There were the usual suspects: the tattered Webster’s Dictionary, a new-looking Roget’s Thesaurus, a never-opened Times stylebook, several Best Newspaper Writing annuals and Miles Corwin’s seminal The Killing Season about a summer with homicide detectives from LAPD’s South Bureau.
The first reporter they interviewed was Greg Mahtesian, whose father was Mike’s mom’s brother. Greg was a rock-solid reporter who often broke major news with his strong FBI contacts. Since September 11, he had been the paper’s go-to guy for the Feds.
“Greg, Johnny, and I both know Mike and we think he’s a classic guy,” said LaBarbera. “He’s a guy that I trust, and that’s about as high as a compliment a detective can give a reporter.” Sal reached out to pat Greg on the shoulder.
“Appreciate that,” Greg said.
“Your cousin is either one tough SOB or crazy,” Hart chimed in. “Maybe both. He’d go places at night alone and unarmed that I’d only go with a partner and backup. Guy like that, though, he’s bound to get some enemies. We’re thinking this wasn’t random. Not at five p.m. on 2nd and Broadway.”
An hour later and several reporters later, Hart turned to LaBarbera, the two of them alone in the editor’s office. “You remember that story Lyons wrote on Big Evil?”
“Of course.”
“That’s when I met him, when he was working on that story.”
“Best gang story the Times ever had,” LaBarbera said. “Lyons hung with Evil tight. And I know it wasn’t just a bullshit story.”
“I know it,” said Hart. “You remember Leslie Harrington, the deputy D.A. on Evil’s case, right?”
“Of course. What the fuck. How could I forget? What about her?”
“Even Leslie told me Lyons knew things about Evil that she didn’t know, and if she knew then what he knew, she would’ve gone for the death penalty.”
“Once,” LaBarbera said, “I met Mike down on Hoover. ‘Round 57th Street. ‘Bout ten, twelve years ago. At first we thought gang, drug-related. You know, three Mexican guys in one house. But, turns out, this guy living at his cousin’s house? He got pissed about something and wasted his cousin and his friends. So Mike is there walking the ‘hood for hours, gets the whole story. Finds out all these details about the vics. I remember the cousin, the dead one. He was working sixty hours and going to school to be a nurse. I always remember that.”
“Umph, a male nurse,” said Hart. “Usually they’re Filipinos.”
“Anyway,” Sal continued. “‘Bout seven or so, he calls me. All pissed. He said the city editor told him, ‘It’s just Hoover Street. We’re gonna make that story a brief.’ Man, he was so pissed. I thought he was gonna go off. I had to kind of cool him down myself.”
“Sounds like Lyons,” said Hart.
Hart and LaBarbera considered their suspects. The chef ex-husband of Lyons’s girlfriend had been in Colorado when the shooting occurred. Most killings or shootings are committed by the favorites—rival gang members, fellow gang members, husbands, wives, neighbors. But, long shots do come in. Even Man o’ War got beat once. By a horse named Upset.
CHAPTER 6
As Lyons floated in and out of his morphine-induced stupor, editors and reporters gathered in Editor Duke Collinsworth’s large office to discuss how to advance the story.
“What’s new? What do we have?” asked Collinsworth, a distinguished, silver-haired man who looked like a prototype editor. A sixty-three-year-old Southern gentlemen who enjoyed twenty-year-old Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve bourbon with one drop of water, had a wife he met at Duke forty-four years ago, a long, slow smile, and a quest to reverse the recent cutbacks that had badly gutted the paper. “How we going to play it today?”
“Well, my sources tell me detectives don’t have any eyewitnesses yet, but they think it was gang related,” said Goldstein.
“No eyewitnesses. It was at 2nd and Broadway at rush hour. There must’ve been at least twenty cars within a hundred feet. Have a news aide count cars at that corner for ten minutes,” Collinsworth said. “Someone saw that shooting. Any thought the gunman had a silencer?”
“No,” said Goldstein. “The bartender at the Redwood said he heard the shots from inside the bar.”
Collinsworth shook his head. “A real whodunit. This is a great story. Too bad he’s one of us. Anyway, what’s going on with the police?”
Goldstein prattled on without saying anything of substance until Tinder cut him off. “How about we do this for a follow? Something like detectives are pursuing leads, including a list of potential suspects that they gathered from colleagues of Lyons. We update his condition. Have Greg get a quote from Mike. Even if it’s just ‘I’m doing better’ or whatever. Go over what Mike covered again. Pound some pavement. Do about twenty, twenty-two inches.”
Collinsworth settled back in his worn, brown leather chair that had been with him since he became the editor of the Charlotte Observer a quarter century ago. His hands and fingers formed a teepee, his starched, white dress shirt covered elbows resting on the chair’s soft leather arms. “That sounds right. And try to keep a lid on this betting pool. The blogs might have it already, especially L.A. Observer. But this pool, as of right now, it’s history. You hear me, Morty?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’ll go with what Harriet suggested. But, if there is nothing new tomorrow, I’m having editorial get on this. We’ll do a, ‘How can one of our own get shot downtown, broad daylight, two blocks from the LAPD’s Police Administration Building with no witnesses and no suspects? Is anyone safe here?’ That type of story. The lead editorial. Heck, I’ll write it myself. And I’ll admit, that pool idea was classic. Now destroy it.”
Wednesday evening, I continued to improve. Francesca brought me a bowl of ultrasweet tangerines called Paige mandarins. I wanted to wrap them in newspaper
and put them on a radiator to savor their intoxicating aroma, the routine M. F. K. Fisher wrote enticingly about. We did that last year in small, charming Left Bank hotel, a long way from my sterile hospital room in Lincoln Heights, a block from the county morgue.
The morphine had already been replaced by Demerol, but I did not request it until night fell. There were even times when, in a strange way, I actually relished the pain for I felt it strengthened me, made me a better person, more appreciative of those who suffered far, far worse than I. I was earning my right to write the blues.
I was feeling better that night. Euphoric, even. Shortly after my night shot, Francesca kissed me good night and sang softly into my ear a few lines from her favorite song by her beloved Van Morrison, “Brown Eyed Girl.”
And Francesca never sang. My eyes got wet.
The next day LaBarbera and Hart stopped by Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. LaBarbera rapped once, hard, on the open door to my room. I knew that knock. I dispensed with the small talk.
“So who shot me?”
“Not much to report yet, but we’ll get him,” said Hart.
“What about the first forty-eight hours? How long has it been anyway? Kinda losing track of time.”
“You been watching too much TV. Mike, we’re lookin’ at all angles. Tell us everything you remember about what happened. Every little thing.”
“Like I said on the phone, I didn’t get much of a look at the guy. It happened so fast. I had just left the Redwood.”
“Were you drunk?” asked Hart.
“I don’t get drunk, but I’d had two drinks. Two doubles. Stoli.”
“That would fry me, but go on.”
“So I’m walking along Second Street, right near Sharky’s Bail Bonds, and I notice this Buick or Olds pull up.”
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