“Sharky, I need a favor.”
“You need a job, from what I heard,” Sharky said with a laugh.
“I need a gun cleaned. Cleaned and ready to use.”
“What? No, Michael. No, don’t do anything stupid. It’s not worth it. Knowing you, you’ll get shot again. How about a shot instead?” He reached for a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black.
“It’s not like that, Shark. I’ve had this three-eighty Beretta, model eight-four, thirteen shots—”
“Mike, I know how many shots it has.”
“Sorry, Anyway I’ve had it for ages and never cleaned it and just want to have it cleaned, that’s it.”
Sharky was reluctant, but he took the gun.
The next day, I picked it up. On my way out, I stopped at Hank’s Saloon on Grand Avenue downtown, had two quick drinks, left, got back in the car, popped a stick of Big Red, and took 8th Street to the Harbor Freeway south. I drove very calmly. The radio was off. The only sound was the quiet hum of the 4.0 V-8 Lexus. My car was in need of some cosmetic work, but I kept the engine in fine tune.
I exited the Harbor Freeway at Slauson Avenue. Not the fastest way to get to 74th and Hoover, that would be Florence, but I took Slauson to let the street atmosphere soak me, to get immersion. I drove past Figueroa and then made the left, turning south onto Hoover.
It would be a quick hit or miss. Funeral had long ago reached the status that he didn’t always hang out in the streets, certainly not on a corner leaning against a street sign, foot propped against the pole, another firmly planted on cement, a hand on a forty-ounce bottle of Olde English.
As the street numbers got higher along Hoover—61, 62, 63—I began seeing an occasional gang member. They were not as obvious as they had been in years past. Nowadays, even nongang members often dressed like gang members, with baggy pants and white t-shirts to fit a hippo. I had a good eye and could usually tell a thug from a dresser. As I drew closer to Funeral’s apartment on 74th and Hoover, gang members became a little more obvious. One there, three here, a couple more in a driveway. It wasn’t like the old days along Colden between Fig and Hoover where there’d be couple hundred homies hanging out, but the gangsters were still around. Those who weren’t locked up or buried.
I drove past 74th Street and Hoover to recon the area. There were at least two Hoover Criminals in front of the forest-green and Band-Aid colored two-story apartment building where King Funeral grew up. The color scheme alone could make someone angry. There were several no parking signs on the side wall of the building, each with a car parked in front of it. On the other corners of the intersection were Susy’s Market, and two churches, the Greater Harvest Baptist Church and the Faith Church of God in Christ. I drove all the way to 84th Street before making a U-turn. Between 84th Street and 74th Street there were eleven churches. People prayed a lot on Hoover Street.
I turned right on 73rd Street, a block past Funeral’s, made another U and parked facing Hoover Street. If I needed to make a quick escape, all I’d have to do was turn right on Hoover, quick right on Florence, and half mile to the freeway. I had considered calling Funeral and tell him I was coming over, but then realized how stupid that would be. I hadn’t yet realized how stupid the whole plan was.
I wondered if I was out of my mind, but then I squashed that thought. Don’t even answer the door when doubt knocks.
This was Funeral, a street legend, accustomed to prison attacks by men far tougher than me. I knew I couldn’t go in scared.
But, if you don’t fight back at the big things, then you start not fighting back at all. Sometimes in life, you can allow people to step over you, I figured. But, not this time. Everybody needs to have their own Stalingrad. You can only be pushed so far back against the Volga. This time I would have to make a stand and fight back.
I got out and popped the trunk and reached for the Beretta inside my gym bag. Clunk! The trunk bashed down against the back of my head. For a terrifying second, I thought Funeral had snuck up on me and slammed the trunk down on me, but then I realized that was not the case. I cussed myself. I had purchased a set of trunk shocks on eBay about four months ago because mine were shot and the trunk lid would not stay up. Damn, I’d had those trunk shocks for months and still hadn’t installed them.
I tucked the gun under my black long-sleeve t-shirt into the waistband of my black pants. My SAS knife was taped upside down to my outer left leg just above my ankle.
Walking up Hoover Street, I was startled by that sound of “When the Saints Come Marching In” coming from my pocket. Francesca was calling. It was around ten p.m. I didn’t answer.
I walked another half block, then leaned against the wall of a long-ago closed café called Soul Murray’s. An older black man, about sixty, sixty-five, pushing a shopping cart filled with a bucket, brushes, shoe polishes, soaps, and rags with a cardboard sign that read “Noble’s Rollin Carwash and Shoeshine” rolled by. He stopped. “You lost, young man?”
“No, sir,” I replied, trying to think of the last time I called anybody “sir.”
“You police?”
“Nah.”
“Then you must be lost.”
“Depends how you mean lost.”
The man nodded, gave up a small smile, started to say something, then changed his mind, and headed on his way.
“Say, mister,” I said. The black man stopped. “You ever think about adding a ‘g’ to that sign a yours? To that ‘Rollin’?”
“No. I like the sound of it. Noble’s Rollin Carwash and Shoeshine. Got a nice ring. I’m Noble.”
“Figured.”
“Why you ask, anyways?”
“Well, and I know it’s stupid and sorta sad really, and you prob’ly know this anyway, but that’s just the way the Rollin Sixites spell ‘rolling’ and they’re much hated around here. By the Hoovers. Hate for you to get hurt just ’cause of that missing g.”
“You sure you ain’t a cop? But, yeah, I know that. But, see, I likes the sound of it this way and I just don’t want to have to live my life like that. Fearing over the spelling of my own business. And I, myself, might just be that ‘missing g’ anyway. You feel me, young man? I wasted lotta years long time ago, lots of years, over some of that stupid gang shit ’round here, but I’m still here pushing.”
“Keep pushin’ till it’s understood, right?” I said. “All right, man. I can appreciate that. Didn’t mean to be nosey. You take care yourself, Noble. That’s a good name.”
“It’s noble,” said the man and he pushed on up Hoover. Then he laughed and said, “It’s kinda funny. You worried about me getting shot. You look out now.”
I stood there for another two minutes. Thinking about what I was gonna do. Thinking about the gun. Thinking about Noble and the years he lost for, I guess, doing some violence. Then I walked back to my car and stashed the Beretta deep in the trunk underneath the spare tire in a bag with the tire iron. I sat in the car for a minute then drove to 74th Street.
There were two orange-clad Hoover Street Criminals in the yard of the two-story apartment where Funeral had grown up, where I had interviewed him and been secretly taped. These Hoovers were real, not wannabes. When I walked up to the building, one of them went to an oleander bush and grabbed something. “Funeral around?” I asked.
“No, Officer,” said one young Hoover, about sixteen. “You should go, Officer punk.”
I wasn’t in any goddamn son of a bitchin’ mood to take orders from a sixteen-year-old though I know in my travels sixteen-year-old gang members are some of the worst ones and will shoot you within beats of your heart. But tonight I just didn’t want to walk away. I headed toward the staircase of the dump.
“I said he wasn’t here,” said Sixteen. “I say you be better be going.”
“And I say shut the fuck up. I came to see King Funeral, not your juvenile delinquent ass.”
I think that caught him off guard. Lot of these guys are used to getting away with anything and when you call them on it, well, i
t’s a gamble, but a lot of times they back off. Because so many of them are really just punks. ‘Course a lot of times they don’t back off. I guess I gambled good with him.
The other Hoover, who went into the oleander bush to retrieve something, was about twenty-one, give or take. Kinda hard to tell at that age. He came to his partner’s side. “Don’t be talking to my homie like that, motherfucker. Don’t your fool ass know you in Hoover ’hood?”
“Fuck you, idiot, I been to Beirut ’hood. This ain’t shit to me.” I don’t know what it was that made me feel so strong, so determined, so crazed, so I don’t give a fuck. For a second or three, I wished I had indeed brought that Beretta with me. “Now I’m going to knock on Funeral’s door, and we’ll see if he’s man enough to answer the door.”
Just then Twenty-One, who was less then four feet from me, said, “Oh, no you’re not,” and reached into the waistband of his orange-and-black Nike basketball shorts. I may have never moved so quick, taking one step and hitting him with maybe the best left hook I’d ever launched. I put everything into it—my thigh, my torso, my shoulder, my forearm, my fist, and my fury—and it landed flush on his jaw. Rocky Marciano on Jersey Joe. He went down and out on the Southside of Los Angeles. As out as some fool trying to stretch a double into a triple off the right arm of Roberto Clemente. As he hit the weedy lawn, a .357 Magnum jerked loose from the hand in his waistband. I grabbed the gun. The sixteen-year-old froze. Didn’t run, didn’t charge me. Just froze, like he was in shock.
“I’m not here to hurt you. But, you ain’t gonna go gather up your homies, you feel me? Walk the stairs with me, or you gonna be hurtin’ immensely. You know what immensely means?”
“Not really.”
“Well, you don’t wanna find out. Now get up these stairs.”
Fortunately, he believed me. He could’ve run off, and I wouldn’t have done a thing. What could I have done, anyway? Chase him through Hoover Criminal ’hood? I’m not sure who was more nervous, him or me. But it was a strong nervous. My blood was surging. I never felt so alert, so focused.
We took the stairs. I really didn’t want to knock on Funeral’s door with a gun in my hand—might send the wrong impression—so I opened the chamber and jiggled out all the shells, put them in my pocket, and laid the gun on one of the steps. I went to apartment number 7, where I’d been taped, and pounded on the door like a madman. I pounded on that door for twenty seconds, I bet. Felt like two minutes. I guess he really wasn’t there. I didn’t think Funeral would hide from me. Part of me was glad he didn’t answer the door. I went downstairs, picked up the gun. The sixteen-year-old came down with me. The twenty-one-year-old was still where I left him, groggy, but awake.
“You ever come by here again and you’re a dead white mother-fuckin’ bitch.”
“Here’s your gun,” I said. I grabbed it by the barrel and swung it like a hammer, the butt hitting him in the nose. Not super hard, but hard enough to drop him again. I figured he could get another gun very easily enough, so I tossed the gun from where it came, the oleander bush. I kept the bullets.
I turned to Sixteen and said, “I know it’s easy for me to say, but you ought to get out of the gang life before it’s too late. It’s just not worth it.” And then I said as loud as I could without screaming, “Tell Funeral Michael Lyons came by looking for him.” Then I left.
I stepped to my car parked down the street about a football field away. I felt Hoover Criminal sights on my back, imagined a laser target on my nape. It tingled. Still, I walked, though I wanted to run, wanted to sprint like Jerry Rice in his beautiful prime, racing down the sidelines.
Just then, an LAPD patrol glided down Hoover. The white cops inside noticed the white man outside, a rare sight in these parts. Hoover Street wasn’t even a drugstore for the white man. Those who did brave South Central for their crack preferred the quick and easy freeway on- and off-ramps near Figueroa Street, a half mile east.
The cops continued a block down, then made a quick U.
I had driven up Hoover heading for Florence, where I made a quick right on the red, but without coming to a totally complete stop. What they call a California Stop. I thought, as I made that right on red, that California had Girls, Cuisine, Dreamin’, Redwoods, Condors, Rolls, and even Stops. Bet no other state has all that.
Then, as I approached Figueroa, just a half block from the freeway, almost home free, I noticed the cherry top lights flashing in my rearview.
“Shit.” Maybe it’s not for me. I pulled into the Standard Station at the corner of Flower Street and Figueroa. The cops pulled in behind.
“License and registration, sir.”
“What I do?” Damned if I’d call these guys ‘sir.’
“License and registration, sir. I would prefer not to ask again.”
I nodded and slowly reached into my pocket for my wallet, removing the California driver’s license. “Reg is in the glove box. Okay?”
“Get it slow.”
I handed it to the officer. The second cop, short and stocky, was at the passenger-side window looking in. The first cop went back to his car. The other motioned for me to roll down the passenger window. I did and asked sarcastically, “Okay if I get some gas while I’m here?”
“Stay in the car,” the stocky cop ordered. “Can I ask what you were doing on Hoover Street?”
“Is that illegal?”
“I’m just curious,” said stocky.
“I understand. I’m just curious, too. Curious as to why, in the LAPD division with the most killings, robberies, and rapes, at least tied with 108th Street, why you’re wasting your time on me?”
The first cop came back. “You been drinking?”
“No”
“Then why do you have a Big Red wrapper on the floor?”
“Big Red’s illegal. Being on Hoover Street is illegal. I guess, though, in the Seventy-Seventh, drive-bys and robberies are okay. That it?”
“Looks like we got us a smart-ass here,” stocky said. “Why don’t you get out of the vehicle?”
“Is that a question?” I asked, living up to his expectations. Just then, I realized I still had that damn SAS knife down my leg. Dumb ass. How stupid can one man be? Even in the cool night air, sweat seeped out onto my forehead.
“Get out.” I did, as carefully as I could to make sure my pants didn’t rise above my ankles.
By then, a small group of blacks at the mini-mart were watching. One of them couldn’t resist. “Get your video phone, homie. This is history. LAPD stopping a white man.” Several people laughed. Some gave and got loud side fives.
Another in the crowd yelled out, “Arrest that gang member, officer. Protect and serve us. Yeah, he a Blood. Denver Lane. Take him away before he robs and shoots us po’ black folk,” said another black man, laughing his ass off.
The two cops looked at each other. Now they regretted pulling me over. They decided they needed to at least make a show of it. “Look, man,” the first cop said to me. “Here’s the deal. We pulled you over because you made a California stop.”
“Please. You gotta be kidding. You were profiling me. DWW. Driving while white in the neighborhood. That’s some bullshit.”
There were more taunts from the crowd of ten, twelve people.
“Well, that’s not the point now with your fan club over there all riled up. I gotta make a show of it and get you on your way. So spread ’em. I gotta frisk you,” said the first cop.
“Ah, Officer, can’t I just get on my way? I was coming to Hoover to see an old friend. That’s it. He wasn’t home. Plus I got friends at the Seventy-Seventh. You know Detective Mo Batts? He’s a friend of mine.” Mo wasn’t really a friend, but I was getting desperate. “Sal LaBarbera in Southeast is my main.”
“No worries, but, for that mob’s sake, I have to frisk you and then you can go. What’s the problem? Now spread ’em. Assume the position.”
Yes, worries. Oh, shit, I put my hands on the hood of his car, spread my legs. The offic
er patted me down. Then he came to the bottom of my left pants leg.
The crowd was cheering as I was cuffed. A muscular, forty-something man with a Southwest College sweatshirt, working at the gas station, came out of his bulletproof glass-enclosed workspace.
“You gonna have to move that car. It’s blocking my business.”
“I’m cuffed, man. Can you guys move it?”
The cops said no. Said I was lucky they didn’t impound it, but since I knew Mo, they gave me a break.
“Then I’m gonna have it towed,” the attendant said.
“Shit. Hey, my keys are in my front pocket. Can I give it to him?”
“It’s your car. Do what you want. You want to fill out a stolen car report now or later?” The cops and even the gas station man started to laugh. At that point, I wasn’t even concerned about the car. I was just glad the police hadn’t looked in the trunk and found the gun.
I managed to get my keys out and hand them to the worker. “When I come back, I want to see a full tank. What’s your name?”
“Rasheed. But, man,” said the worker, “you’re going to Seventy-Seventh Street. You better hope you do come back.”
The holding cell at the LAPD’s Seventy-Seventh Street Division had nine Latinos from God knows where, five African Americans, and one Armenian man. But, I knew here in jail, I was simply a white boy.
The Latinos used to be called Mexicans, but now with all the Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, and whatnot, they all got lumped into being Latinos when it came to jail.
In the county jail system of Los Angeles—Men’s Central, Twin Towers, Wayside—it wasn’t about Crips and Bloods, or Criminals vs. Crips or even various Crips against other Crips. When it all came down, it was about Latinos versus blacks. I hoped my complexion, light for an Armenian, didn’t possess the unifying power to bring the blacks and Latinos together to stomp me into red pilaf.
I considered trying to start a conversation with the black guys, but, lately, the jailed population had become such a bizarre, intertwined group of shifting alliances that it was far too risky to say your friends with guys from one set or another. The latest was that the Hoover Criminals had teamed up, incredibly, with their once deadly enemy, the Eight Trey Gangster Crips. Shit, but who knows? By next week, that could all change.
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