Hard Prejudice: A Hard-Boiled Crime Novel: (Dan Reno Private Detective Noir Mystery Series) (Dan Reno Novel Series Book 5)

by Dave Stanton

  “I can almost remember the name of that blonde,” Cody said. “I think she used to be big time. She was in a lot of films.”

  “Looks like she’s moved into directing and producing.”

  “I think she’s still got a few good roles in her.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t ask her out,” I said.

  “Hmm. Maybe we should head back.”

  “You had your chance.”

  I forced my way into a different lane, and a pair of teenagers in a BMW shot us the bird. “I wonder if Lindsey’s rape was simply a rape, or if maybe there was something more to it,” I said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Maybe Tucker had dated Lindsey before. Maybe she has a thing for gangsta blacks. Maybe Lindsey shined him on, and Tucker was out for revenge.”

  Cody bit at his thumbnail. “That’s from left field.”

  “Is it?” I countered. “Nothing would surprise me with these people. They seem to operate under a moral code from another planet.”

  “You’re reaching. If Lindsey knew Tucker beforehand, she would have said so.”

  “I guess.”

  “Let’s just keep asking questions. We’ll get to the bottom of this.” Cody lowered his window and spit a stream of saliva into the fumes.

  We passed a fender bender blocking a lane and made time for a few miles before taking the 105 east. The freeway split the area commonly known as South Central LA. Watts, on the north side of the 105, was where the race riots in 1965 occurred. Twenty-seven years later, the black population rioted again. The riots of 1965 and 1992 were eerily similar, both brought on by the beating of a black man by the white police. I looked over as we passed a residential neighborhood next to the freeway. Barred windows, a chaos of telephone wires, graffiti, and spiked fencing. What’s changed here in the twenty years since the last riot? Not much, except the Mexicans had encroached and now outnumbered the black population. If anything, the ghettos had become worse.

  We took the exit for West 116th and headed south on Vermont, into Compton.

  “California’s version of a war zone,” Cody said as we slowed at an intersection where a man slept on a bus stop bench. On the opposite corner, a young black woman rooted through a pile of rubbish strewn on the sidewalk.

  “It has some redeeming qualities,” I said.

  “Like what?”

  “Compton is where gangsta rap originated. Some of the top bands came from here.”

  “That’s redeeming?”

  “I always like to look at the bright side.”

  “Bright side, my ass,” said Cody. “These slums are where the crack trade began back in the late eighties. Every square block is run by gangs. Bloods, Crips, the Varrios. The violent crime rate is off the charts.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” I said. “We’re just here to ask a few questions.”

  “I’m not sweating it,” Cody said, eyeballing a trio of men hanging out on a corner. “I just wish I had my piece on my side.”

  “You won’t need it.”

  We turned and drove by a liquor store where a group of black gangbangers leaned against the facade. Down the street a pair of hookers motioned at us. We turned again onto a potholed road lined with telephone poles, lowriders, gas guzzlers, and various junkers. On one side of the road were small homes, some which looked abandoned. One of the homes was barricaded with plywood. Cars rested on their frames in the front yard, and the end of a sleeping bag hung from one of the car’s open windows. Across the street an apartment building covered with graffiti advertised units available.

  I slowed and found a parking spot. “This is the address I have for Tucker, before he moved to San Jose,” I said.

  “Let’s hope our car is still here when we get back,” Cody said. We got out and started up the street toward a rectangular opening in the apartment building’s gray stucco walls. Behind a window I saw a curtain move and felt eyes on my back. From down the avenue, a hunchbacked man came our way, pushing a shopping cart. He stopped and rubbed furiously at his face as if being attacked by an invisible swarm of insects.

  We went through the opening into a small concrete courtyard. A rusted washing machine sat near an empty flower box. From behind one of the doors, a loud argument erupted, and a woman shrieked with such agony that we paused. Then her voice resumed in a calm tone, and the argument seemed to end as abruptly as it started.

  “Up there,” I said, pointing to a second floor unit. “Two-twelve.”

  As we climbed the stairs, I saw a dark teenage face watching us from the courtyard entrance. The face disappeared in a blink, and we stepped onto the upper walkway and walked around garbage cans and discarded junk to apartment 212. I knocked on the door and waited. After a minute I knocked again.

  When the door cracked open against three security chains, I was taken aback by the emaciated face that appeared. The eyes were rheumy, lifeless globules set in cavernous sockets, and the surrounding skin had a yellow pallor to it, blotched and papery, as if the slightest touch might cause it to fall from the bone. Below a flat nose, the lips were parted, the gums black and cratered with sores, the teeth little more than nubs. Growing thinly from the scalp was an afro that was neither black nor gray but instead a dull tan color. It was a black woman. As to her age, I couldn’t guess.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am,” I said. “A teenager named Duante Tucker used to live in this apartment. Did you by chance know him?”

  “Who?” she whispered.

  “Duante Tucker.”

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  “Okay,” I said. The door closed. “Thanks anyway.”

  “Next,” Cody said. We walked to 213 and knocked. No answer. We continued to 214, then 215. A middle-aged black man with a potbelly answered and wordlessly shut the door in our faces after I began talking.

  “I detect a certain lack of manners in the neighborhood,” Cody said.

  We turned the corner, and after two more no answers, we came to the end unit. I could hear hip-hop coming from the front window. I rapped loudly on the door with my knuckles.

  A smallish man with shiny black skin and a wide nose jerked the door open. He wore baggy parachute pants, the kind made popular by M. C. Hammer back in the early days of rap. Hanging from his scrawny torso was a black T-shirt displaying a red-green caricature of Bob Marley surrounded by pot leaves. The man’s fingers clutched a can of King Cobra malt liquor.

  “What da hell you want, mothafucka?” he asked over the thump of the music.

  “I’m looking for Duante Tucker. Do you know him?”

  “What? You blind or somethin’? Cain’t you see you’re interruptin’ my day?”

  “Sorry about that. I just have a few questions—”

  “Questions?” His eyebrows danced on his forehead. “I might be able to carve out some time for you it’s worth my while, you know what I’m sayin’? If you got the dime, I got the time.” He snapped his fingers to the beat.

  “How about turning the music down?”

  “Hey, Lionel! Get yo’ ass off da couch and pause that tape!”

  In a moment the music stopped, and a black man nearly Cody’s size appeared behind the smaller man. His features were small on his fleshy face, and his expressionless eyes considered us blankly.

  “Dis Lionel. My name’s P. W. Huggins. Y’all want info an’ you willin’ to pay, you came to da right place.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “All right,” I said.

  He stuck his head out the doorway and looked down the walk. “Then come on in and sit yo’ ass.”

  Inside, it reeked of pot, stale food, and beer breath. The man who called himself P. W. Huggins pointed at two plastic lawn chairs next to a cable spool that served as a coffee table.

  “Go on, sit. It’s twenny bucks a question, so you best make ’um count. Now, y’all look like some bad mothafuckas, but lemme tell ya ’head a time, I seen Lionel bust up plenty a bad asses, and you don’t want to fuck with him
, no sir.”

  “No problem, P. W.,” I said amicably. Cody and I sat while Lionel watched us from a couch that looked like it had spent some time outdoors.

  “Ask away, then.” P. W. hiked a foot up on the spool and leaned forward as if to show he was focused and our money would be well spent.

  “Do know a man named Farid Insaf?” I said.

  He jutted his hand forward, and I laid a twenty-dollar bill in his palm. In a swift motion, he stuffed it in his pocket.

  “Nope,” he said.

  “P. W.,” Cody said, a smile on his lips, “are you fucking with us?”

  “Hell, no. It’s twenny a question. I tole’ you da rules. If you want me to make some shit up, I kin do that. But I don’t know no one with a weird-ass name like that.”

  “All right,” I said. “What do you know about Duante Tucker?”

  “Quite a bit, I definitely know quite a bit.” He shot his hand out again. I ignored it.

  “Who did Tucker live with when he was here?”

  “That I can tell you, my man. It was a no-count couple, name a Greeley. Foster parents to six or seven kids. They did it for the monthly checks state a California sent ’em. Lazy and worthless as hell, my opinion.”

  I passed over another twenty. “They still around?”

  “Not that I know. They left one day, an’ I never saw ’em again.”

  “Their names?” Cody asked.

  “Nate. Nate and his fat bitch of a wife, Delores.”

  “How about Tucker’s real parents? What do you know about Lamar Tucker?”

  “Ah, Lamar Tucker. I know him from way back. You hit me with forty, and I’ll tell ya all ’bout him.”

  I handed over two more twenties. “This better be good,” Cody said.

  “These goods is good, so listen and learn. I know dat bad nigger from more’n twenny years ago. He was high up in da Crips, a crack kingpin, made a lot a money sellin’ da shit. Smart, too, but he was a angry mothafucka. Never met a man hated whitey like he did. I tell you, when Rodney King got his ass beat by LAPD in ninety-two, when they said those cops was innocent, Lamar Tucker was one of the first brothers to take to da street. Fifty-five people died in dat riot. Tucker killed at least two a dem. I saw it.

  “Anyways, after dat shit calm down, Tucker goes back to sellin’ hubba, an’ he start buying houses an’ shit. A liquor store, too. All here in South Central ’cause he had cash money, and people were sellin’ cheap. Tucker was usin’ real estate to hide his drug money from da tax man. I tole you he was one smart mothafucka. People from IRS came snoopin’, but they din’t find shit.”

  P. W. paused to take a swig from his can. “Some people thought Tucker might go mainstream, but I never thought dat, ’cause I knew the dude, and he was whacked, man, he had hate in his soul. Sure ’nuff, he start havin’ trouble, an’ Johnny Law start watchin’ him close and bringin’ him in for dis or dat. Then he took da big fall.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t like talkin’ ’bout dis, man. It’s some bad, scary-ass shit.”

  I gave him another twenty. “Keep talking.”

  He contemplated the bill as if it might be counterfeit, then he folded it carefully and slid it into his pocket.

  “Awright. Dere was dis dirty white boy used to come around with his skinny-ass bitch. Dey be hangin’ out an’ smokin’ hubba in dis one crackhouse, happened to be owned by Lamar Tucker. One day, dis white boy run outa money, an’ he jonesin’, so he offers his ole’ lady up for some rock. So one a da local boys starts a fuckin’ her real hard, and she din’t like dat and starts cryin’ and fightin’. And the white boy calls timeout, but he already got his rock, and about this time in come Lamar. Some shit gets said, and somethin’ piss off Lamar, and next thing you know he declares she’s a toss-up, which mean anyone can fuck her any which way, and she ain’t got no say.”

  P. W. sat down on the spool and put his hands between his knees. The room became quiet except for the faint patter from a television show Lionel was watching.

  “Go on,” Cody said.

  “Well, dey was tearin’ her up real bad,” P. W. said in a lowered voice. “And dey was holdin’ down dat white boy, and he yellin’ and kickin’. Then he said the wrong thing, and dat got Lamar’s attention.”

  “What’d he say?”

  P. W. shook his head. “He shouldn’t said it. Damn fool. He called Lamar a nigger. Dat’s what he did.”

  “What did Lamar do?”

  “Understan’, a white boy callin’ Lamar Tucker a nigger, dat’s askin’ for trouble, bad trouble. Lamar found hisself a razor knife and cut up dat boy bad, carved his face, and before he done, he sliced off his ear, clean off.”

  “And he got arrested for it?” Cody asked.

  “Yes, sir, he did. Threw the book at him is what I heard, an’ he went to the big house. Dat was last I ever seen of Lamar Tucker.”

  Cody rested his chin on his fist and studied P. W. Higgins. “Let’s get back to Duante Tucker. What do you know about him?”

  “Well, he be livin’ with dose worthless foster parents, and you could tell he didn’t like ’em one bit. He was bangin’ with da Crips from an early age. Word was, he been cappin’ gangstas since he was fourteen. I believe it, too. Know why? You look in his eyes, you see his old man. Cold-blooded, pissed off, and not givin’ a shit ’bout nothin’ but hisself. Dem Tuckers is born killers.”

  “When was the last time you saw Duante?” I asked.

  “Oh, been a few years now. Heard he moved out a da hood. Ain’t seen him since. Ain’t missed him, neither.”

  We stood, and I gave P. W. one more twenty. “Thanks for your time,” I said.

  “Right on, brother. You have yourself a fine day, hear?”

  • • •

  We left the apartment complex, and out on the sidewalk, I again saw the homeless man slapping at his face. Then I looked up the street and saw a group of young blacks standing around our rental car. One was bent at the waist, working on the window, while the rest stood watching.

  “Hey!” Cody yelled. We strode vigorously toward the car. As we got closer, I could see they were teenagers, except for one man who was about thirty. His cheekbones were wide, and his jaw was unusually narrow, creating a triangular effect. A do-rag covered his head, and his long sideburns were shaved into sharp angles. He stared us down, his eyes half-lidded, his expression dead cold.

  When we reached the car, the kid trying to jimmy the door straightened.

  “Sorry to spoil your fun, fellas,” Cody said.

  “Hey, mon,” the older man said. “Make it easy, hand over da keys.” He spoke with a thick Jamaican accent; whether it was genuine or manufactured, I couldn’t tell. He lifted the bottom of his shirt just enough to show a revolver stuck in the waistband of his jeans.

  “LAPD, off duty,” I said, flashing my PI badge. “Get lost, or we’ll all go downtown.” I moved to the driver’s door and opened it. Cody went to the passenger door, and three of the gangbangers backed off. The rest stood their ground, eyeing us uncertainly.

  Before they could reconsider, I started the car and took off, burning the tires and leaving them in a cloud of dust.

  “Nice job,” Cody said.

  I looked in the rearview mirror. The gangbangers were flailing their arms and looked to be arguing. “Let’s get the hell out of here before we get shot,” I muttered. We turned a couple quick corners until we hit a traffic light, followed by a series of stop signs. The sun bore down relentlessly and revealed the stark detail of the poverty-stricken streets. Jobless men huddled in the shade of dusty alleys and clutched bottles in paper bags. Gangbangers massed on the corners and sold rock cocaine and meth. Garish streetwalkers, some likely transvestites, offered ten-dollar backseat blowjobs. Filth and despair seemed to ooze from every doorway and barred window. Behind it all, simmering like a rancid soup, was the threat of sudden gunfire and the realization that innocent women and children might die on any given day. Life in Com
pton, if nothing else, meant being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We continued in silence back to the 105.

  As we took the ramp onto the freeway, Cody began speaking without preamble, as if a switch had been clicked in his head.

  “I was dating this cougar a few weeks ago. She had a couple kids, eleven and fourteen. They live in the suburbs, and she was telling me that at their school, the races are all mixed. Asian, Hispanic, Indian—but the kids are all second-generation, right? So English is their native language, and for the most part they only know one culture—American. They all get along in total harmony, with no racial prejudice.”

  “It wasn’t like that when we were in school.”

  “Hell, no, it wasn’t. I think we had one black kid and two Japanese at Oakbrook. Everyone else was white bread. And life sucked for that black kid, and the Japanese got their share of prejudice, too.”

  “Yeah, but remember our senior year? The Chinese, the Taiwanese actually, started showing up.”

  “Right. They were from the wealthy class in Taiwan, here for the electronics business.”

  “Yeah, but I felt bad for them,” I said. “They were quiet and educated and polite, but they were different. They were from a different culture, and they got a lot of shit for it.”

  “Some kids used to call them green-toothed pencil dicks,” Cody said. “But it’s changed now. Today’s ethnic kids are second-generation, and they just blend in.”

  “Sounds like a positive thing.”

  “It is. Kind of like the sappy John Lennon song, ‘Imagine.’ But we’re talking strictly a middleclass phenomenon. It doesn’t apply to the lower class.”

  “Because it’s all about money,” I said.

  “You got it.” Cody turned toward me, and I saw a hard edge in his green eyes. “People tend to behave when they’re comfortable. But when you’re struggling, you band together with your own kind. Because there’s power in numbers, and then it becomes an ‘us against them’ thing.”

  “So that’s your social theory on gangs?” I said, hitting the brakes to avoid a motorcycle splitting lanes.

  “When I was with the force,” Cody said, ignoring my comment, “there was a lot of political pressure against racial profiling. All of us cops, regardless of our race, knew it was a joke. None of us ever hassled anybody strictly because of race. We profiled criminal types, which included blacks, Mexicans, Vietnamese, and also whites. So if I saw a bandana-wearing Latino covered in tattoos driving a lowrider, I might pay him a little extra attention. That was the extent of it. The ethnic community leaders tried to make it something else, which was bullshit. They were just pissed because more of their people were getting busted, and they didn’t want to admit that it was because they were the ones committing the crimes.”