“A curse.” Near the iron hatchway now: a canal sluices past the hatch, a channel of rushing water and debris moving in the gloom between dripping concrete pylons.
“I don’t love him anyway.”
“I know. You love bazooka.”
“The feeling it gives me … it’s better than anything. It’s not just bazooka, that’s the secret. We mix it with white pot … this weird, strong pot that grows only here, in the sewers…” Her voice trails off, breaks into a sad silence. Monk remembers M.T., the mosquito man … She entwines arms with Monk and whispers, “Let’s change the subject. White men come down here. Black glasses and suits. That’s who the map is really for. They’re opening operations and houses in every big ghetto city, here, Chicago, Philly, New York, others. Highbeam got crazy strung out and told me, but it’s the truth. They’re CIA. They’re funneling money from bazooka to expand the war in Vietnam. The map is safe lines of export and import.” Water drips and echoes around them in the concrete and shadows. “The gangs have a truce for safe passage of the new drug … if you can follow it, maybe you can get on home … through the riot.” Her eyes are pinpoints, far away. “Through the riot,” she repeats softly. “Highbeam says the riot up there, it’s just a cover, a smoke screen for his shipments.”
Monk closes his eyes: tries to remember, but his brain is on fire; the route south to Karmann, Compton Avenue?… get out of here, try to draw the map, but it’s already fading with each lightning bolt flashing across his retinas. “But it’s only half a map,” hissing to himself.
“You’re cute and smart,” LaDot’s eyes twinkle in the darkness. “Rollin’ 60s need the Mexicans to protect the routes farther south. But the brothers don’t want to cut them in on the action.” LaDot points to iron rungs that ascend into a dripping drain beyond a corner pylon. “There’s your ladder to Compton Creek. Could be a big shit storm brewin’ up there, be careful.”
“Farther south, down to the sea. That’s where I’m heading. El Tirili—the Reefer Man. If Highbeam gets El Tirili and the cholos, then there won’t be fifty gangs. There’ll be one giant gang.” Monk shakes his head: a vast, countless underground guerrilla army, in some kind of final Battle of Los Angeles against every cop and white man in the city …
An inhuman roar growls through the splashing torrent of water as a greenish blob topples over the iron grates of the elevated drain, splashing into the muddy water channel at their feet. A black wall of scum and mud-water erupts and drenches Monk and LaDot. Behind them, in the distant splayed lights of the generator lamps, perhaps with ears more attuned after a catastrophic loss of vision, a scream answers.
Monk staggers back as the giant reptile’s fanged snout looms out of the darkness: fuck, it’s … Godzilla.
Highbeam stomps across the arc-lamp beams, his great shadow projected on the spillway’s walls. “Run!” Monk pushes LaDot away. “Kill the generators!” They split apart, running back along the shadow lines and dark interstices of pylons and dripping channels.
“Who goes there!” Highbeam roars, his baleful eyeball a pinpoint of sparkling light under the dark nimbus of the Afro.
“Nandato? Baka!” a muffled voice answers beneath Godzilla’s torn and soaked jade scales as the feisty dinosaur thumps his foamy chest with taloned fists.
“Nobody, my ass!” Highbeam’s voice shouts, echoing across the concrete tunnels.
Monk, skulking behind a whining generator, snaps switches and half the spillway disappears in darkness as the machine coughs and sputters to silence: only a single lamp bathes them in a broken swath of amber glow. Shots ring out as Blue-Cap runs toward Highbeam, then freezes just beyond the cone of light: Godzilla’s fangs are buried in a clump of Afro as the great reptile’s bloated tail thrashes and buckles the black titan to the spillway. “Usero!” A muffled shout deep within the beast’s snout. A gun clatters on concrete as Blue-Cap screams and runs disappearing into the dark recesses of the pylon rows.
Highbeam’s grabbed his gun but Godzilla smashes it against a pylon, a metallic clink and an invisible splash down the channel. The flabby scourge of Tokyo has the black gargantua pinned between foamy thighs in a move the stuntman pioneered in Attack of the Mushroom People. “Banzai!” Godzilla roars, talons flashing from the ripped foam of his big belly: Nakajima raises the chopsticks he keeps tucked in his waist for set-break lunches and plunges the sticks below the writhing Afro that engulfs him.
An inhuman shriek peals and echoes. Monk turns away but not before he sees a looming, terrible shadow projected in the solitary lamp beam, the towering Afro swaying, whimpering, hands clawing the air. Monk, pressed against a cold, dripping pylon, silently moves toward the iron hatchway, following the sounds of water cascading down into the channel. He hears the wounded monster’s wails and screams echo across the spillway. Monk’s hands grip the iron rungs and he turns for one final look back: Godzilla’s plucked a bottle of booze from a pyramid of cases and the beast’s green muzzle tilts toward the dank ceiling as it guzzles an amber rivulet of liquor down its throat, ivory fangs clogged with tufts of gleaming Afro.
17
Classified: Inter-Department Only
Volume 5: Emergency Procedures
340: Civil Unrest Emergency Procedures
340.70: Use of Race Data
Racial Aggregate Profiling (RAP) may be utilized at the discretion of the Chief of Police. The department recognizes during urban civil unrest the preponderance of suspects and criminals will be persons of color.
“It’s me, Nozzy!” A spray-paint can, big as a man, yellow rubbery feet with black untied sneakers: red nozzle tipped rakishly like a fez, steel-can demonic eyes squint down above this leering smile, cylinder chest bannered BARRIO BLACK. “Paint yer way to underground fame and power! Now you have a voice!” Nozzy jumps up and down, the metal pea inside pinging. “Life’s a drag till you tag!” A yellow arm rises to his red hat, black-gloved fist punching down the nozzle, a stream of black wetness burning Monk’s eyes.
A slap stings Monk’s cheek and his bloodshot eyes slowly open and focus. He rubs his throbbing cheek. “Jax?” A familiar face shadowed between knit cap and bandanna smiles down on him. He looks around, dazed. A taillight glowing red from a VW idling in the mouth of this dark alley: the cyclops’s eye. “Where am I?”
“An alley off 119th.” Shaking his head. “Some bum, you kept screaming his name was Nozzy, was pissin’ on you. Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here.” Jax wedges Monk under his arm, steers him through the alley, past green trash bags crawling with rats and bums sleeping behind cardboard flaps and corners.
“Bazooka … Godzilla,” Monk’s mumbling, he stumbles, clutching Jax.
“I don’t know what you’ve been taking, but it must’ve been good shit. Get in.” Jax opens the VW door. Sofia, behind the wheel, turns her pretty face and laughs. “A wino, huh? You look like refried shit. And you smell like piss.” She throws him a towel, he wipes his face and shirt.
“He’s in disguise,” Jax says, “the wanderer assumes many forms to get home, eh, Monk?” Sofia slams the VW into gear and they peel down the alley.
Jax shrugs around, facing the backseat. “I thought you were headin’ south.” He lights a cigarette, hands it to Sofia.
“Cocaine … they’re cooking it,” Monk mumbles: his heart is resuming some kind of normal rhythm, the city’s flames and smoke and passing headlights seem to clear his fractured mind. “One-nineteenth … north … how did I … back where I started … I have to go fucking south—”
“You’ve gone south, all right,” Jax grins.
“South,” Monk mutters. He pulls out his notebook. “The way home.” He’s scribbling down Standard’s human map, trying to remember, but his mind’s sparking in haywire flashes. “Naomi Street, Sixty-seventh east … was it Palm Street? Fuck…”
“He’s sick, Jax. Let’s take him to the loft.” Sofia’s cigarette smoke drifts into the backseat.
* * *
“Monk! Monk!” He
opens his eyes: he’s curled in a fetal position. Sofia’s face is framed in the open window of the VW, Jax behind her. “We’re at the market. It’s still open. There’s cops guarding the doors, so it should be okay. We’re gonna get some spaghetti and coffee and stuff. You just rest, okay?” Monk nods as they disappear.
He slouches up in the backseat, looks around groggily: Giant Supermarket, a sign in blue lettering on the roof. Mostly black people hustle in and out the glass doors with their shopping carts. Two LAPD squad cars are parked on either side of the front entrance, four cops standing guard with rifles and white helmets. A brown man in dirty overalls slowly heaves and rolls a long chain of shopping carts, interconnected like a great metal snake, across the parking lot.
“Hey, scoot over.” Sofia opens the rear door. Jax sets two shopping bags on the seat next to Monk. “You okay?” Monk nods, sinks back in the seat, closes his eyes as the VW whines out of the parking lot.
* * *
The loft is in the back of a three-story run-down stucco office building off Hooper Avenue and Eighty-seventh Street. Grimy windows frame the night, streetlights, flashing red lights, plumes of black roiling smoke, blooms of fires blistering across the city and headlights beading toward Compton Avenue and beyond.
Two hooded metal lamps suspended from wires bathe the loft in soft white. Monk pulls the notebook from his waistband, tosses it on the cushion of an old green couch, and collapses on the sofa. He watches Jax open a can of chili with his knife as Sofia stirs something in a pot on a hot plate. A table is cluttered with plastic cups, a wine bottle, food cans, the two grocery bags. Half the room is heaped with Jax’s tool bags, canvases stacked against a wall, precarious bookshelves of pine and bricks jammed with spray cans, brushes, glues, rolled-up posters, bottles, buckets, a few ragged paperback books. Beyond is a door leading into a shadowy bathroom. In the corner, next to a wooden milk crate with a candle and an ashtray, is a mattress with two pillows and a worn charcoal quilted blanket.
“This’ll make you feel better, Monk.” Sofia’s fanning pasta into the boiling water. “My specialty, Left-Wingy Linguine.”
“Pinko pasta.” Jax takes out a box of macaroni and cheese from the shopping bag.
“Spaghetti, chili, onions, paprika, oregano,” Sofia says, plopping a huge white gob of stuff in the chili pan. “Mayo and mac and cheese.”
“Put hair on your chest.” Jax beams, lights a cigarette. “Look what I got to stock up the cupboard.” He pulls a can out of the shopping bag and grins. “It’s a brand-new invention,” tapping the red label with his finger. “SpaghettiOs!”
“How did scientists get it in that shape?” Sofia laughs.
“What will white folks think up next?” Jax flips the can in his hand.
“You don’t have a phone here, do you?” Monk asks.
“No.” Sofia shakes spices into the sizzling pan. “Half the time no electricity either. We share this place with some artist friends, pay the bills now and then.”
“We have music, though.” Jax switches on a transistor radio on the table. Martha and the Vandellas’ upbeat soul vibrates from the tinny speaker: Summer’s here and the time is right for dancin’ in the street. “Wine?”
“No thanks, man. Maybe some water?”
Jax fills a plastic cup with tap water, hands it to Monk: a rusted tint in the cup, but he drinks a few metallic gulps.
“I don’t think they’re dancing in the streets,” Sofia stirring pasta. Jax opens a bottle of red wine, fills two plastic cups, hands one to her.
Monk forces down more water, rises on wobbly legs: his stomach churns as he walks toward Jax, avoiding the window, where the lights and glowing blossoms of fires seem to follow him in disturbing contrails. “Getting ready for the next gig?”
“Yeah.” Jax, cigarette jiggling on his lower lip, selects a Globe Master Rajah Red spray-paint can from the shelf, rummages through a coffee can filled with nozzles.
Monk studies the shelves: spray-paint cans labeled Red Devil, Kit-Kote, Jet-Eze, Wizard, Magic-Wick, Spraint. Colors he’s never heard of: Al’s Aluminum, Bazooka Joe, Android Alloy, Deep Druid, Ecru, Babylon Blue, Fulvous, Cloud Delirium, Mao’s Mauve.
“How ya feeling?”
“A little shaky.” Monk drains his cup. Martha and the Vandellas are fading out: Way down in L.A. every day they’re dancin’ in the street. “Martha should see the streets now.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll give ’em something to think about tomorrow night.” Jax tosses a few cans in his satchel, then places some nozzles of different sizes and colors on the shelf. “Let’s see … an NY Fatcap and an SEKT adapter, the old trusty Drip Flow.” He places the nozzles in a pouch and tosses it into his satchel.
“You know your stuff.” Monk watches as Jax duct-tapes some spray cans together, end to end like double-nozzled batons.
“A craftsman’s only as good as his tools.” Jax opens an X-Acto blade and Monk watches as Jax sets brown construction paper on the floor. “Stencil time.” He kneels on the floor, expertly drawing large letters in some kind of script style, sipping his wine.
“This one’s for Ford.” Jax nods down at the stencil. “I’ve got it all planned out,” tapping his temples. Monk’s feeling a little better, the strobing light in his eyes seems to be diminishing. He can see paint stains on Jax’s temples and in his hair and on his hands and fingers, and the floorboards scarred with thousands of razor-blade gashes.
“Come and get it.” Sofia places shopping bags on the floor, grabs a plate from the shelf.
Monk sits down, his chair creaking alarmingly as it shifts into a slant but holds. “Sofi’s soul spaghetti, just what the doc ordered.” She slides a huge plate in front of Monk, refills his cup with tap water, and settles into her chair.
An electric guitar, a dissonant assault with a twelve-string F/G chord from the transistor radio, then John Lennon’s voice: It’s been a hard day’s night. “He has no idea,” Monk says. Monk heaps his fork with the lumpy pasta, braces himself, stomach knotting as he chews a mouthful, eyes closed.
“Well?” Sofia’s smiling.
Monk opens his eyes. “Wow, this is the greatest thing I’ve ever tasted.”
Jax laughs. “She gets that every time. It looks fearsome, but holy hell, it’s good.” He slurps down a mouthful, refills their wine cups.
“So how long have you been stuck in this insanity?” Sofia sips wine.
“Truthfully, I’m not sure.” Monk swallows food. “I slept a day or two … I lost track of the time … then some gangsters drugged me.” Monk shakes his head, forks pasta from his plate. “If I told you half of the crap I’ve been through—”
“I know, man,” Jax nods. “These are some heavy times, brother, strange days indeed.”
“It’s dangerous out there.” Sofia chews pasta. “We’re the wrong color. If they wanted to, the cops could mess us up.” She squeezes Jax’s hand.
“We’ll be okay, baby.” Jax smiles, drinks wine. “Works both ways. We’re the right shade for the streets.”
“I think I’m darker than you.” Sofia twirls her fork in linguine and chili. “I heard light-skinned blacks are getting beat up, mistaken for whites. Be careful.”
Monk sips his water. “I know. I’m melanin challenged.”
“Where’s home?” Sofia watches Monk as he eats.
“San Pedro. The harbor, Pier Thirteen.”
“Mierda, you’ve got a ways to go. The pier? You live on a boat or something?”
“Not exactly,” Monk says.
“Jaxsy, couldn’t we give him a ride?”
Jax looks at her and Monk. “Sure, why not? We’ll sleep in, do the Ford sign tomorrow night and get the hell out of town.”
“That would be incredible. I don’t know how I could—”
“It’s no big deal, Monk.” Sofia grins, drinks wine. “We have to help each other. We’re all artistes,” winking at Monk. “That’s why I love my rebel boy.” She plants a wet, chili-stained kiss on Jax’s c
heek and he beams, sips wine.
“You have a girl waiting back home?” Sofia’s eyes twinkle.
“Yeah.” The heavy food in Monk’s stomach makes him feel grounded, each bite seems to dull his headache and push the pins and needles of strobe lights from his eyes.
“What’s her name?”
“Karmann.”
“You must miss her so much. She must be worried sick about you.” Monk nods. “Well, you have to get home. It’s settled, huh, Jaxsy? We’ll give you a lift tomorrow.”
This is KFWB news at ten p.m. A voice squeaks from the transistor radio. Lieutenant Governor Anderson has just announced that the National Guard will be deployed to Los Angeles to secure the city and contain the rioting, which the police chief has described as, quote, out of control. KFWB has reported stories or rumors of a massive gang buildup … even a gang truce in retaliation against the police. Chief Parker has scheduled a news conference tomorrow at nine a.m.—
“The National Guard!” Jax’s fork chinks on his plate. “Fuck, it’s gonna be Vietnam all over again.”
“We better get out of town. And you’re going with us,” Sofia says to Monk. “Besides, I want to meet Karmann.” She purses her lips, nods; she’s made up her mind.
“That would be great.” Monk smiles, scrapes a final fork of Left-Wingy Linguine from his empty plate.
“The Guard.” Jax shakes his head. “Parker, the pigs, Governor Brown, they’re all like Johnson, all they know how to do is make war.”
“Maybe it’s better if it all burns.” Sofia sips wine.
Monk nods. “I don’t know. Malcolm X is dead but his spirit is sure out there.”
“Want a sip of wine, Monk?” Sofia offers the bottle to him.
“Sure, I’m feeling better. You’ll have to give me that recipe too.”
“I’ll give it to Karmann.” She pours wine into Monk’s plastic cup.
Graffiti Palace Page 19
