by Avery Duff
“It’ll be all right, sir,” she said.
“Promise?”
“Promise,” Delfina said.
The director was between shots, so Reyes came over to shoot the breeze, vibing rapper T. I. Harris in crisp jeans, a white T-shirt, thick gold chain, and a quilted-leather moto jacket. Reyes and Erik were natural enemies. Ex-LAPD and the other side. While Reyes was not gang affiliated, he knew his way around that world, and by recommending legit gangbangers as extras—a glamorous job, even though the movie was Street Cred 6—Reyes scored major points in that world.
Robert introduced him to Delfina as Raymundo Reyes.
“Are you the star?” she asked.
“Ain’t gonna lie, chica, no,” Reyes said, “but I play a real, real important role.”
“Thug Number Seven,” Erik offered.
Reyes had insisted Robert run lines with him, so Robert knew Erik was off by four thugs.
“Thing is,” Reyes told Delfina, “guy I’m playin’, he’s working out things in his personal life, same as what the whole movie’s about.”
“His street cred?” Delfina asked.
“Exactly that,” Reyes said.
“There a cop in this picture, Reyes?” Robert asked.
Gia gave Robert a rib shot. “Don’t stir ’em up,” she said.
Too late. Reyes and Erik were about to get into it.
Reyes said, “Seguro, Gia, and the cop, he takes money from bad people, making him even worse than they are. The cop, see, he’s the only one took an oath to uphold and protect.”
“Oh,” Delfina said, thinking about it.
Erik looked to Robert for help, but Robert shrugged: “Sorry, dude, it’s in the script.”
“What happens to you in the movie?” Delfina asked Reyes.
“Wind up in jail—for a crime I didn’t commit.”
That he was making up, Robert knew. Thug Number Three died in a hail of gunfire alongside Thugs One, Two, Four, and Five.
“An innocent man?” Gia offered, ignoring her own advice.
“True to life, Gia,” Reyes said.
“His big problem in jail,” Erik said, making it up on the fly, “he winds up in the same cell as that cop, and the cop’s real big. Uh-oh.” Erik traced air x’s in front of Reyes’ eyes. “Lights out.”
“Oh, no,” Delfina said.
Robert could see this encounter was taking on a life of its own. “Teo,” he said, “a walk?” From the probate court website, he’d gained only limited visibility into Monday’s hearing, but one thing was clear. Even though the Argonaut notice hadn’t been issued by the court, the hearing was real and involved a final accounting of the trust’s assets and distribution of those assets to beneficiaries. Meaning that, as beneficiaries, his clients ought to show up.
Once Robert worked out that Gia and Erik would keep an eye on Delfina, Teo agreed to that walk and to talking about the trust along the way.
From Hinano’s, Robert led Teo two blocks inland to the Venice Canals, past the locks, onto Grand Canal’s sidewalk. He hoped Teo might warm to a deeper conversation where foot traffic was sparse to none.
Grand Canal paralleled the beach and formed the western boundary of the Venice Canals area, about twelve square acres. All the houses, both landlocked and on the three islands, faced the canals. Laced with arching white footbridges and split by Dell Avenue, the canals and islands offered a calm oasis amid their 1920s canal cottages and modern, three-story glass-and-steel houses.
“Heard these canals used to run all over Venice proper,” Teo said.
Robert explained that the few canals still left had been the brainchild of developer Abbott Kinney, who’d re-created Venice, California, in the likeness of Venice, Italy. Not exactly an obvious idea, but for years, people had swarmed to his creation, despite Kinney’s amusement parks and piers being blown away by storms or burned down by arsonists.
With upkeep and crime a growing problem in the ’60s, the city filled in and concreted over most canals. Even so, the Venice streets were still dotted with cottages where imported Italian gondolas had once picked up passengers from front-door docks, paddling them slowly down to the boardwalk.
At this point, Teo had relaxed enough, Robert believed, for him to switch gears.
Robert said, “I’ve never been to a probate hearing, but it’s a family trust, so I’d like to know as much about your family as you’re comfortable sharing. Maybe even a little more.”
For a while, Teo seemed lost in thought as they walked along Grand Canal.
“Don Vincent, I’d call him sometimes.”
His father had reminded Teo of that blowhard in The Godfather: Part II, always in an impeccable white suit: Don Fanucci, a neighborhood big shot who preyed on his own people. The guy young Vito Corleone—played by Robert De Niro—shot dead in an apartment hallway on his rise to power.
“My father was Don Fanucci without the good suit. Took me years,” Teo added, “before I figured out Vincent owned three Goodwill suits. Just those three, and had him three fedoras and three sets of shoes—all different colors, resoled Stacy Adams. All of it, he’d mix and match so it looked like he had a deep closet back home.”
As Erik would’ve put it: Vincent was all hat, no cattle.
Vincent would take young Teo and his older brother, Carlos, to do cleanup work on Vincent’s first run-down rental property.
“Pretty sure it was the first one, but with him, it’s hard to know anything’s true for sure. Except one thing: no physical labor for Don Famosa. We’d take the bus over to Highland Park, and he’d leave me and Carlos there, tell us what to do, then he’d split for something real important. Real important, but taking a bus to get there. Couple times, he came back with a woman—girlfriend, investor, beats me—saying she might buy it from him. He’s the big dog, right, but it was her car they’d show up in.”
That was all Teo said for a while. For the next mile, he didn’t speak. Robert could see him sorting through his past, and by the second mile, Teo had warmed up again.
Vincent was a part-Creole, part-Cuban from New Orleans; his wife, Zara, a Jamaican, her family up from the islands. In their late teens, the pair had run away to LA without her parents’ blessing. This was the early ’60s. Not too long after, they’d married and wound up in Rampart, west side of downtown. A year later, they had a daughter, Felicity. Zara would take the infant with her on the bus over to Hancock Park, where she cleaned those big houses.
“She even saw Mae West and Nat King Cole. But after Zara and Vincent lost Felicity . . .”
“Lost her?”
“Drowned in the bathtub. Both Vincent and Zara were home. They never talked about it to me, but people in the building thought Zara passed out drunk when she was supposed to be watching Felicity. And Zara, she’s outta Jamaica, so back of her mind, her momma musta put a voodoo curse on her for runnin’ off with Vincent.”
Teo’s guilt-ridden mother was never the same. By the time Teo was born in ’70, three years after Carlos, the household was in turmoil. His parents blamed each other for the baby’s death, but Teo believed if it hadn’t been Felicity, it would’ve been something else.
“Zara brought the alcoholic gene to the family, not Vincent. When me or Carlos found her passed out on the floor, Vincent would tell us she’s in a voodoo trance. I bought it till I was a little older. By then, she’s angry and mean-talking, then she’d turn on a dime and be sweet as can be for weeks on end. And I tell you, nobody in the world’s as sweet and loving as an island woman.”
Looked to Robert like Teo had more to say, so Robert gave him time to remember.
“I’m just now thinkin’ about AA’s fourth step—taking a relentless personal inventory. Starting to see why I gravitated to Delfina’s mom in the first place. Bee, she was the whitest white woman I’d ever met, the opposite of my mother. But Bee, she was Zara in whiteface,” Teo said. “Angry, sweet, an addict, so I’m thinking I just went with what I already knew.”
The Famosas had lived in
Rampart on Leeward Avenue in a stucco complex. Four separate buildings, two stories with four apartments apiece. Over the outside walk, an archway swept overhead with the complex’s name in redbrick letters: Stover Arms.
“Swear to God, I think Vincent lived there because of the name. A run-down place trying to sound like more than it was.”
Like Vincent, Robert thought, a firmer picture of that man emerging.
“By the time I’s twelve, I could jump up and touch the arch, and every time I left the building or came in, I’d slap it till I wore out the stucco, and the bricks underneath was showin’. Later on, I’d stash my hash pipe or meth pipe up there, feelin’ my way along to bein’ a full-blown addict.”
As they neared Santa Monica Pier, crosstown foot traffic swelled. Teo suggested they get off the main drag that was filling fast with tourists, gawkers, and the few residents who’d forgotten what weekend-tourist crowds felt like.
“Alleys feel more like downtown to me, more like home,” Teo said, as they cut inland to the alleys between Second and Third.
As they paralleled the retail throng jammed onto Third Street Promenade, Teo shared more about Vincent.
“He’d tell made-up stories you couldn’t believe. Like, he was at the Ambassador Hotel the night Bobby Kennedy was shot. Saw Sirhan Sirhan hanging around, wished he’d said something. Oh, and when he was older, he liked saying he’d come up with putting those beer girls inside the boxing ring. How he’d told some beer executives to have sexy girls in the ring. Always have ’em look at the camera and keep their beer-logo halter tops facing the camera, too. ‘Always have ’em smile and never say nothin’. Fighter drops dead in the ring, just keep ’em smiling and those tits pointed at the camera.’”
“Wow,” Robert said. The audacity of the lie.
Teo said, “I was out of the house by then, and the big man was trying too hard to be somebody important.”
Robert admired the even-keeled way Teo was able to talk about him. As if he was Vincent, the bullshitter, not Vincent, my abusive father.
Teo explained that he’d hated his father his entire adult life till he’d started getting sober, working the steps.
“AA helped me shrink him and Zara down to size. Both of ’em, all they were was ill people who happened to be my parents.”
“How much time you spend inside the ropes?”
It was a guess, but Robert had seen him working Erik’s bag.
“Had a few fights coming up, Golden Gloves and so forth. Held my own. Wasn’t half-bad startin’ out, but I always knew why I was really in there. Think that poisoned it for me.”
“Vincent?” Robert asked.
Teo nodded. “He’s my corner man. You hear how it’s bad, a father being in his son’s corner—dads don’t like seein’ flesh and blood take too many punches, tend to throw in the towel early. Mine never once stopped a fight. ‘Get your ass back in there’ is all he ever had for me, and I’d go in till I got dropped, or the ref stopped it.”
Jesus.
Teo had fought for a few purses downtown. Unsanctioned fights, smokers: club patrons eating steaks and smoking cigars while two up-and-comers beat each other’s brains out for a few hundred bucks.
“Manager took half of next to nothing, and age twenty-four, I hung ’em up.”
Just then, as they cut toward the ocean again, Gia texted Robert. He showed it to Teo: Take your time, fun w/Delf. Going to beach. Ask if that’s OK w/Teo.
“Okay with you?” Robert asked.
“Sure,” Teo said.
Robert texted her a thumbs-up, then he and Teo descended from Palisades Park onto Entrada Drive in Santa Monica Canyon, less than a half mile from the ocean.
Teo started talking again. As it happened, Zara and Vincent had arrived in LA a few years before the Watts riots, when racial tensions in the city erupted over a traffic stop gone bad. Vincent had heard all his life about the Cuban revolution, and Zara believed in evil spirits, so Vincent decided to get out of LA with Zara and Felicity.
“Later on, Vincent’d tell me and my brother he always knew what was coming, like he had special powers. Way he put it, he could just tell, but Watts riots was the only time he ever got it right. Every couple of years, Vincent could just tell something bad was gonna go down, so he’d pile us in whatever car he could borrow and get gone. By the time Rodney King got beat up in the ’90s, I’d moved out, but Vincent made a point of telling me, ‘Don’t worry, the King thing’s gonna blow over. Just wait and see.’”
“He could just tell, right?” Robert asked.
Teo shook his head. They reached the bottom of the stairs on Entrada.
Robert asked, “But the trust, the real estate. How’d a guy like Vincent manage to pull that off?”
“Want the long or short of it?”
Robert stared up at the 187 stairs looming overhead. “Take your time,” he said, hoping that talking would slow Teo’s pace. It didn’t.
“The fight game,” Teo said. “Vincent said money to buy that first rental house came from betting on fights.”
Inside the boxing ring—that’s where the family trust had been born.
“The Olympic Auditorium was still a big deal downtown. Main Street Gym, too, and Vincent did have an eye for fighters, picked a few solid winners by watching fighters train. Saw who was in shape, whose old lady just split on him, who was hitting the bottle, that kinda thing. But don’t get me wrong: he’s never driving home in a Cadillac, a’ight? He’s small-time, bringin’ home a sack of steaks or a used TV in a new box.”
Robert figured those gifts helped fill Vincent’s big hat. They topped the stairs the second time, Robert sucking a little wind. Teo spoke like they’d been lounging in deck chairs.
“Ever heard of the Ramos versus Ramos fight?” Teo asked.
Seemed to Robert that he had, but the specifics escaped him.
“That fight was in ’70, before I was born. But later on, around the dinner table, Vincent said the Famosa Trust started the night of the Ramos fight.”
The lightweight fight was billed as Night of the Ramoses because the boxers had the same last name: Sugar Ramos, a Cuban-Mexican, and Mando Ramos, a US-born Mexican. People had started calling Mando “Wonder Boy” when he’d turned champ as a teenager.
Teo knew all about that fight—a black-and-white postfight photograph had hung on his apartment’s dining room wall.
“Vincent’s at the fight, and somehow he’s inside the ropes. That picture was always in my face. To Vincent’s right at the dinner table so he could point at it or take it off the wall. His guy, Sugar, the Cuban, lost the fight in a ten-round classic. And in the picture, there’s Vincent, big as life, with his arms around Sugar.”
“Sure it was Vincent in the picture?”
“He was there, all right. Once we were older, Mom had passed, he liked bragging that a sweet young thing took a shine to him, and they’d made it after the fight. Nice picture. I’ll show it to you sometime.”
“How does Vincent put together a stake to buy real estate?”
“See, that’s the thing. Vincent says Sugar—Cuban, like Vincent—told him before the fight he’d go the distance, gonna die before he lets Wonder Boy knock him out. All the Mexicans were lined up strong for Wonder Boy to knock out Sugar, so Vincent found somebody to take his action on Sugar going the distance, the full fifteen rounds. Bet every nickel he could find and took home three hundred bucks. All during the ’70s, he kept parlaying that three hundred, according to him. Bet big on the first Ali-Frazier fight in the Garden—he knew Frazier was gonna drop Ali with that big left hook. Knew Ali was gonna make a comeback, too, so he bet their second fight right. Same with the Thrilla in Manila—sayin’ they’re gonna give it to Ali because he’s got history on his side. And Holmes-Norton, Duran-Palomino, and on and on, he called ’em and kept winning till he put together right at ten thousand dollars.”
Robert asked, “So in 1980, let’s say, he buys that first rental house?”
“Abo
ut that, yeah.”
“And the trust was set up when?”
“Mid to late ’80s, about, and Vincent’s the only trustee till the end of 2005.”
“What happened in ’05?”
“Somebody beat him to death, age sixty-five. They found him in West Hollywood, back of a gay club, had a dildo shoved up his rectum.”
“Was he gay?”
“Nah, hetero. That mouth of his, he was bound to piss people off. Police let it go unsolved—guy like Vincent, no witnesses, where do they even start?”
At that point, Teo begged off for his second AA meeting of the day. Robert said he’d pick up some takeout, and they could all meet for dinner over on Ozone.
“Sure you don’t have a copy of the trust agreement?” Robert asked.
“Not for years,” Teo said.
“The hearing’s Monday, first thing—I want to talk tomorrow, too.”
Teo said, “I have a morning job out in Malibu. How’s two o’clock on Ozone sound?”
“Two sharp. You’ll be back in time from that job, right?”
“Right as rain,” Teo said.
After Teo took off for his AA meeting, Robert stopped by Cha Cha Chicken, a long block up the hill from the beach and Shutters hotel. Given Teo’s Jamaican heritage, Robert bought jerk chicken, jerk chicken enchiladas, sides of jerk sauce, plantains, and dirty rice and beans.
Once he met up with Teo, Gia, and Delfina back at Ozone, they grabbed a basket and a blanket for a picnic dinner on the beach.
As they walked across Speedway toward the boardwalk, Delfina told Robert and Teo, “We went in the ocean with boogie boards today. It was exciting.”
“Were you scared?”
“No. Mr. Jacobson said I was very brave.”
“She was so good all day,” Gia told Teo.
“Makes me proud to hear that, Delfina.”
She took his hand. “Thank you, Daddy.”
“Hey, Beach Lawyer.”
Robert saw a man angling to intersect him on the boardwalk, a red plastic party cup held aloft. Robert told the others to keep going, he’d meet them on the beach.
“Sir, I just need a minute of your time, sir.” The loud-talking drunk wore a linen jacket, deck shoes, and a cloth belt with ducks, beak-to-tail feathers, circling his ample waist.
