Southside (9781608090563)

by Krikorian, Michael

  “Michael, I know you didn’t set up your own shooting. I know that. That’s not the point. The point is that it is on that tape and people can perceive it that way. Especially people who don’t have a good relationship with you, like Doot and Tinder.”

  “So just say I was joking. But, what I said was almost about what happened.”

  “Okay, how about this? ‘Lyons adamantly denied setting up his own shooting and called the whole thing ridiculous.’ Then that quote ‘I was joking. By some freak coincidence what I said was just about what happened.’”

  “Yeah, maybe that’s all we need. Whaddya think, Greg?”

  “Let me tune it up and I’ll send this over to Morty and I’ll get back to you.”

  “All right, Greg. Thanks. I’m sorry to put you into this. I love you.”

  “Hey, Mike, everything is going to be all right. But you have to be strong now. One more thing, Duke wants to see you in the office tomorrow morning at eleven.”

  “Great. Sounds like a blast.”

  If you need to find out what’s going on in the streets, you don’t go to the streets, you go to jail.

  So, after talking to Greg, that night I was on the Hollywood Freeway heading to Men’s Central Jail. Friday nights they allow visitors. I got in line, a line that can be as long as three football fields on the weekend. Nights weren’t nearly as bad, but it still could be a sixty-minute wait.

  I knew several people incarcerated here. I have been incarcerated here twice, a long time ago. Once for knocking out a security guard who was pounding my cousin Dave with a nightstick after he was caught shoplifting a Rolling Stones tape—I think it was “Exile on Main Street”—and another time for winning an extended bar-room brawl in Dominquez near Compton.

  Anyway, after only a forty-minute wait, I filled out the visiting forms for Red Man from the Grape Street Crips and for Bat Mike from the Denver Lane Bloods.

  Red Man came out first, and he was delighted to see me through the window. I know “delighted” might be too jaunty a word to be associated in any way with jail, but he really was. No one from the projects had taken the time to come to this hellhole, and he really appreciated the visit. I told him that I needed info on my shooting, but he said the jailed homies had talked about it earlier and no one had claimed it and no one knew anything about a possible shooter. It was a mystery inside the jail and out in the streets. Red Man promised he would ask around again and call me collect if anything popped up. I told him I’d leave him twenty bucks on his books.

  Twenty minutes later, Bat Mike came to the pitted window and while he smiled at me and appreciated the visit, his mood was much darker than Red Man’s. He had some bad news about himself. His trial for attempted murder was not going well and he faced a life sentence as this was a three-strike case. Like Red Man, he had no news for me about anyone claiming responsibility or even any rumors about who shot me.

  “It’s kinda strange, Mike,” the Denver Lane Blood said. “Usually, up in here, you find out just about anything because everyone willing to give up that 411 to save their own ass. But on your case, nobody knows jack shit. Must notta been gangsta related.”

  I thanked him and said I’d put twenty bucks on the books for him, too. Guys like that, you come visit them when they’re locked up and on top of it, put a few bucks on their books, they never forget that. In my line of work, that’s good.

  I didn’t have a lot of good contacts in the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department like I had in the LAPD, but I had a few. One of them was an Armenian deputy who worked at the county jail, Sarkis Sarkisian. After I put the money on the books for Red Man and Bat Mike, I went looking for Sarkis, but was told he only works days. I’d come back.

  I plotted my next move. I was gonna have to hit the streets and hit them hard. I loved to do that. It made the list on that Coltrane version of “My Favorite Things.”

  I thought about what Honcho had said, that maybe it was someone who didn’t like the story about Big Evil, didn’t like Evil enough to shoot me. I know it was very far-fetched, but when you have nothing, even a far-fetched thought is something.

  Evil and the Eighty-Nine Bloods had many enemies, foremost among them were the Crip sets that hemmed them in on three sides: Avalon Gardens, East Coast, and the Kitchen. To the direct north were their allies, the Swans, one of the oldest Blood gangs.

  I decided to start in the Kitchen. I knew the wife of one of Big Evil and Poison Rat’s victims, Marcus Washington, who still lived there. Marcus was one of the young men, along with his pal Payton Sims, who was killed at the car wash by Poison Rat on Evil’s orders. The crime that put Evil away for life.

  It was after eight p.m. when I knocked on the screen door on 89th Street east of Central Avenue. Yvette Washington came to the door. “Well, if it ain’t Big Evil’s public relations man. Why you here? You didn’t glorify the killer of my husband enough. You gonna do a sequel—Big Evil Part Two?”

  “Mrs. Washington, I just wrote the facts. I didn’t glorify him and I apologize if you feel that way. I just wrote down what people, including the police, including you, told me.”

  “In that twisted world, it was a positive piece. Anyway, what do you want?”

  “You may have heard, but I was shot a short while back and—”

  “Yeah, I heard. Least you lived. Look healthy to me. Marcus wasn’t so fortunate.”

  “I know and I’m still sorry about Marcus. I know he was a good, hard-working man. But, the police haven’t been able to come up with any clues about my shooting and—”

  “Fancy that. Even for a white boy like you, they useless. I figured they’d have the whole muthafuckin’ department lookin’ for whoever shot your ass. And what the fuck you doing coming to my house so late?”

  “You know what, I’m sorry to take up your time.” I turned about-face and headed for the sidewalk.

  “Oh, shit, don’t be playin’ poor little me. Come on in and ask what you wanna ask. I may be heartbroken still, but I got hospitality. I can’t get rid of that, either. Come on in, Lyons.”

  I sat on a couch. Staring directly in front of me on top of the twenty-seven-inch flat screen television were three framed photographs of Marcus Washington, one with Yvette on their wedding day. I was in a trance wondering what it musta been like, his final moments alive, walking with his friend to the car wash and then suddenly the sound of a gun and that’s it. A life over. They both got hit nine times. Yvette jarred me back with, “I suppose you want a drink. I got Martell or cheap gin.”

  I told her I’d drink if she did. She poured me a glass of the cognac. She had a Gilbey’s gin and Sprite. She wasn’t lyin’ about having hospitality.

  I pressed her and questioned her if she had heard anything, anything at all, the tiniest lead, an atom worth of information, but she gave me nothing and I believed her. I got up to leave and, just like at Betty Day’s house, ended up with nothing but a slight buzz. I turned to look once more at the pictures of Marcus and walked outside. On the porch I asked Yvette, “Didn’t Marcus’s friend—the one that was with him … um, Payton, didn’t he live on this block, too?”

  “Yeah, right there the third house down, the one with the pretty rosebushes.”

  “Family still there?”

  “Just Payton’s father. He like an old man now. He hardly ever gets out. All he does is drink all day. He never got over it. Neither did I, but I got another child to worry about.”

  I put my hand on her shoulder and thanked her for her time, and walked toward my car parked four houses down. I walked by the house with all the roses and, though I didn’t want to, I walked up the empty drive to the porch and knocked. If it was for a story, I’d like to think I’d leave this brokenhearted drunk father alone.

  But for my shooting, I had to try and ask a few questions. I knocked, but no one answered the door. As I walked back to the sidewalk, I stopped to admire this beautiful red-and-white rose in the yard. I took a sniff. Whoa. What a fragrance. It was like a perfume factor
y in one little flower.

  CHAPTER 18

  Down the street, on the other side of Central, Eddie Sims had been sitting on a maroon velvet couch in the Desmond family living room. In the two chairs opposite the couch were Terminal, clutching his own 15-shot SIG SAUER P226 Elite, and his mother, a red and white pillow on her lap. His father, Cleveland, was working late at the post office in Compton on Long Beach Boulevard. He’d be home soon. Bobby wanted to resolve this before his dad got home. He could manipulate Mom, Dad wasn’t so easy.

  Sims held paper towels to his temple to blot the blood.

  “I am going to ask you again, why are you here?”

  “Bobby, don’t do anything rash. The man may have a perfectly fine explanation. I do not want violence in my home. Cleamon never got violent in the house and I don’t want you to start. This is my church, my temple, you know that. Now put that gun down. Let the man speak. Put it down now, son.”

  I love this woman, Sims thought. He had managed to get his mind into first gear and come up with a story.

  “Talk, motherfucker,” said Terminal putting his SIG in one pocket, Sims’s nine in the other.

  “Bobby, watch your language.”

  “Why did you come to my house, mister?” she said.

  Eddie lowered his head and blew out enough air to fill about two medium balloons. “Obviously, Mrs. Desmond, Bobby, I made a mistake in coming here. Especially at night. Especially bringing a gun. I should have left it in my car.”

  Fuck. Why did I mention a car? I’m an idiot.

  “But,” he sought to save himself, “I have heard so many stories about violence in Los Angeles. I live in Las Vegas.”

  “I don’t want your bitch ass life story,” Terminal snarled. “Why did you come here? Tell me now or we gonna do a one-on-one interview in the garage.”

  “I came here, well, I have been meaning to come here for a long time.”

  “Point, bitch. Point, bitch. Get to the fuckin’ point, bitch. You startin’ to really boil me. You don’t want to see me boil. I din’t get my name selling cotton candy, bitch.”

  “Bobby.”

  “Okay. I came here to thank you for your son, Cleamon. He saved my life once. Or at least saved me from a serious beating.”

  “Details, bitch. Details.”

  “What did I tell you, Bobby? I don’t like that word.”

  “Okay. Details, motherfucker. That better, Ma?”

  “Don’t be wise, Bobby. Look how this man is shaking. Something about you looks familiar. Do I know you?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Do you want a glass of water?”

  “Yes, please. That sounds great, Mrs. Desmond.” It bought him a little time, too. Mrs. Desmond walked into the kitchen.

  “You might charm my mother with that ‘Mrs. Desmond’ shit, but it’s not her you gonna have to convince if you want to live tonight.”

  Terminal’s mother returned with a glass of tap water. Sims drank lustfully. “Okay. Go ahead, sir. What is your name, anyway?” she asked as she returned to the kitchen to get water for herself.

  “Eddie Payton. Like the football running back,” said Eddie Sims, immediately cursing himself for using a combo of his son’s and his own first names. But, it was all he could think of. And you can’t pause when someone asks your name.

  Mrs. Desmond returned and sat.

  “That was Walter, stupid,” Terminal said. “Sweetness.”

  “Yeah, well, but the Payton part I meant.”

  “You gonna die here, motherfucker, but I guess it’s gonna be of old age. Get on with it before I shoot you outta sheer boredom.”

  “Bobby.”

  “I was in the Los Angeles County jail. Over there in Men’s Central.”

  “For what?”

  “Like for a traffic thing. I had some warrants. This was years ago. Like in the nineties.”

  “When?”

  “I really ain’t sure. Like ’99, maybe even 2000. Sumpin’ like that.” Sims was praying Big Evil had been there then and not in a state prison or out on the street.

  “Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead.”

  “Well, I was up in there and—”

  “Where?”

  “I told you the county jail. CJ.”

  “Where in CJ, motherfucker?”

  “Bobby.”

  “Up there in ninety-five hundred. Thousand guys in that one room.” Sims had indeed once been to the County Jail back in the eighties for a battery charge that was eventually dropped and he had spent three days in ninety-five hundred, then the first stop for most inmates. Ninety-five hundred was a filthy, stifling football field-size room so overcrowded half of the inmates slept on the floor.

  “So anyway, I was there, and I had a bunk. And this Kitchen Crip wanted it. He just got in and he didn’t want to sleep on the floor. He had two other Kitchens with him.”

  “How you know about the Kitchens? I mean, you live in Vegas. I might could see you knowing Grape Street or the Sixties, but not the Bitchin’ Crabs.”

  “You know, just heard of them because I used to live in the Nick-ersons years ago,” said Sims, starting to feel a little confident.

  “Oh, you an OG Bounty Hunter, Blood? That what you tryin’ to tell me? Buzz, I’ll call Big Hank and Donnie check your ass out right now.”

  “No. I didn’t bang.”

  “You lived in the Nickersons and din’t hook with the Hunners? Man, you are a pussy. So anyway, go on, punk.”

  “Anyway, I didn’t want to give it up. The bunk. I was feeling bad enough, and I sure didn’t want to sleep on no goddamn floor. So I told him to find another bunk, and just like that he tomahawked me in the throat and pulled me off the bunk and his boys started stomping me. I was covering up, and I heard one of them say, ‘Oh, shit.’ I looked up and saw Big Evil, I mean Cleamon, right above me just kickin’ ass. He knocked out two of them, and the other guy ran away. I thanked him a lot. And got to talking with him, and I said I wanted to pay my respects to him and his family, and he told me where he lived and all that. And he said it was no big deal because he enjoyed beating up Crips. I mean Crabs.”

  “So you waited all this time to come by and thank him? You know where he’s at now, right?”

  “Yes. I meant to come by, but I moved away to Vegas and I just kept putting it off. Then I saw that article in the Times the other week where that reporter who wrote about Cleamon got shot and it reminded me I needed to thank him or his family. That’s all.”

  “Okay, shaky boy. You thanked us. Now you can go.”

  “Thank you, and if you talk to Cleamon tell him I said thank you, if he even remembers me.”

  “I will,” said Mrs. Desmond. “But you should be more careful. You can get hurt around here.”

  His heartbeat coming back inside of ribs and chest plate, Sims was led out the front door. Bobby turned back to his mother. “Mom, I gonna let him out, but I just wanna have a word in private with the man.”

  “Be nice, Bobby. I believe he really wanted to thank our family. He seems so meek.”

  Outside, Bobby put an arm around Sims’s shoulder. “I’m gonna have to keep your gun for a while. Let’s me and you have one more little talk in the garage.” The Desmond family single-car garage was behind the backyard, the entrance off the alley. The same alley where Sims had parked his Cutlass.

  “I am done talking. I need to get on. I said my thanks, and I have to be on.”

  “No, you’re not.” He took Sims’s own gun and stuck it in his ribs. “Open the garage door. It’s not locked. Never is.” Terminal noticed, but paid little attention, to a Cutlass parked about a hundred feet down the narrow, trash-strewn alley.

  There was no room for a car in the Desmond garage. It was more a storage room/gym. There was a bench press set with 315 pounds, a worn-out heavy bag, a chair fit for the curb, and a cluttered workbench with tools, extension cords, boxes of car parts, and a TV in the corner sitting on a stool. Terminal closed the door and turned on a lig
ht.

  “I don’t want my moms to see what’s going to happen to you.”

  “Hey, hey. What are you talking about? I just came by to thank your family.”

  “Who the fuck are you? And why did you come to my mother’s house with a gun? I’m tired of asking that question.”

  “And I told you already. Cleamon saved me from a beating at county.”

  “Evil wasn’t in the county jail those years you said. He was at the SHU in Corcoran fucking up Mexicans in those gladiator fights the guards set up. Here, I wanna show you something,” Terminal said. He grabbed a remote control and pushed a button and a fight came on the TV. It was like one of those grainy, poorly filmed fistfights posted on YouTube. Terminal watched engrossed and smiling for thirty seconds or so.

  Eddie Sims was mesmerized as he watched the wicked brawl between two black men.

  “You see who that is, punk? That’s my brother fighting at the county jail. Men’s Central. The sheriffs up in there had heard about the SHU fights in Corcoran, so they copycatted. The guards up there used to have fun betting on who would win. Tell you the truth, I don’t even blame them guards. I’d be doing the same thing I were them. Boring being a guard. Shit, I’d rather be an inmate. Anyways, these here fights, usually be a brother against a Mexican. But for my brother, for Big Evil, they ran outta Mexicans to give him a good fight. Image that. Running out of Mexicans.”

  Terminal lit up a joint and took a deep hit. “Yep. They ran out of Mexicans. Mexicans is tough, real tough, but usually they small. Thing Mexicans is good for, other than making tacos, is they do bring up that good cartel shit. Florencia and 38th Street and them. You gotta give them points for that.”

  He got back to admiring the video. “That’s how bad my bro was. Is. So this sick sheriff there, he knows Big Evil is going away to prison, to Ironwood, so for his last fight at county he sets up a gladiator fade with a tough black inmate. That there who he’s kicking ass on. You know him? That’s King Funeral of the Hoovers. ‘Bout to get his ass straight out for real kicked. See?”