by Ry Cooder
Los Angeles Stories
Ry Cooder
City Lights • San Francisco
Copyright © 2011 by Ry Cooder
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to characters living or dead is coincidental.
Many thanks are due to Lynell George, Mister Jalopy, Colin Nairne, Dave Frevele, Michael Dawson, Carolyn Kozo Cole, Glen Creason, Gene Aguilera, Alec Wilkinson, Danny McKinney, and Craig Alexander.
Cover photo of Bunker Hill cottage by Arnold Hylen, courtesy of the California History Room, Arnold Hylen Collection, California State Library, Sacramento, California.
“Sin Ti” by Pepe Guizar
Copyright 1948 by Promotora Hispano Americana de Música, S.A.
Copyright Renewed
Administered by Peer International Corporation
All Rights reserved. Used by Permission
“La Vida Es Un Sueño” by Arsenio Rodríguez Scull
Copyright 1947, 1948 by Peer International Corporation
Copyright Renewed
All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission
“Fine And Mellow” by Billie Holiday
Used by Permission of Edward B. Marks Company
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
on file
City Lights Books are published at the City Lights Bookstore,
261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133.
Visit our website: www.citylights.com
For Susie, Joachim & Juliette
All in a day's work
1940
I WORK FOR the Los Angeles City Directory, a book of names, addresses, and job descriptions. I am one of many. Our job is to go out and collect the facts and bring them back. Other people take our work and put it in the Book, but we do the important part. Los Angeles is a big city, and the City Directory is a big book.
“How would you like to be listed in the Directory?” I show people what it is. They’re afraid you’ll ask embarrassing questions like “Do you have a toilet?” and “Can I see it?” I tell them they can list whatever they want — the job, the husband’s name, the wife’s name — simple things that most people don’t mind. Most people like to be noticed, they like being asked.
The supervisor said I have the right manner and appearance: medium size, medium age, dark hair, and glasses. I received a week’s training, and then I was given a territory. The Book is published yearly. I’m paid at the rate of twenty-five cents an entry.
I live in a one-room apartment on Alta Vista, in the old Bunker Hill district, so Bunker Hill is part of my territory. You have to do a lot of climbing, but I like the feeling of being elsewhere. Apartment houses are convenient for this work, and Bunker Hill has a lot of them. The population is older, and older people don’t mind taking a little time since they’re not going anywhere. I don’t expect to be asked in, and that puts people at ease. It’s easy to be listed in the Directory, that’s my message.
I made the acquaintance of a Mr. John Casaroli. Mr. John, as he was known, was a retired opera singer and teacher. I listed him as Casaroli, John, vcl tchr, New Grand Hotel 257 Grand Ave. It turned out we got along, and I was often a guest in his apartment. One evening I arrived there to find police and onlookers crowded around what looked like a body on the sidewalk. The police said Mr. John had jumped from the roof just minutes before and was dead. They asked me if I was an “associate” of his, and I explained that he was my friend and I’d been invited for a spaghetti dinner. They took me to police headquarters and I was questioned for an hour. When I asked why, the officer told me it was routine. That’s when I learned that Mr. John had made a will and left his record player and all his records and Italian poetry books to me. I spent the next few evenings moving them to my apartment, one block away. I discovered he owned a copy of the City Directory. It had been hollowed out, and inside was five thousand dollars — in hundred-dollar bills! I had never even seen a hundred-dollar bill. I decided to leave the money where it was and go on about my business. I didn’t tell anyone, since there was no one to tell. Mr. John was the one friend I had. But I wondered — why would a man, an Italian, make all that spaghetti and then jump off the roof?
Mr. John’s treasures made life much more interesting. I started listening to the records in the evenings and drinking the Cribari red wine in the way he used to do, a new experience for me. Then I thought I might try to learn Italian so I could read the poetry books. Why not? There was an Italian woman in my building I knew only as Cousin Lizzie. She agreed to teach me for fifty cents an hour. I listed her as Giordano, Lizzie (wid Benito), smstrs, Alta Vista Apts. 255 Bunker Hill Ave.
We use abbreviations for the jobs: smstrs for seamstress; lab for laborer; pntsprsr for pants presser; shtmtlwkr for sheet-metal worker, and so on. Even with the abbreviations, the Directory is huge and the lettering is so tiny, some readers have to use a magnifying glass. We’re trained to be very particular about the spelling of names. I meet people who are poorly educated and aren’t sure how to spell their own names. In that case, I have to ask other family members, or neighbors, or check their mail, if they don’t object. I don’t mind taking the time; it’s all part of the job.
One day, I knocked at the apartment of a Mr. and Mrs. H. D. Clark, and a woman answered. There was some kind of a service going on inside. I heard someone reading from the Bible. The woman picked up a small case off the floor and shoved it at me, shouting, “You can’t leave him alone, can you? He’s dead, but you bastards can’t leave him alone!” She slammed the door. I took the case home and opened it, and it was a clarinet. There was a card pasted inside the lid that read, “If found, please return to Howdy Clark.” I looked him up in the Directory. He was listed as Clarke, Howard D. (Margaret), music, New Grand Hotel 257 Grand Ave. I made a note to relist Margaret Clark as wid, the abbreviation for widow, but when I returned the following week to confirm the spelling of Clark, she was gone, no frwrdng. The old Italian moving man saw me looking at mailboxes. “They move in, they move out,” he said.
I heard music. I went up the steps to the front porch, and there a man was playing the ukulele. “No vacancy,” he said when he saw me.
“The widow Clark is gone,” I said.
“I don’t like the cops hanging around.”
“I’m not a cop, or a bill collector,” I said. I showed him the book.
“A lousy book that costs twenty-five dollars? Nobody has that kind of money to throw around, but nobody.”
I thought of Mr. John. “You can’t judge a book by the cover,” I said, but he was right in a way. The Book is not really meant for the ordinary home; it’s a service to the business world, that’s the official point of view. I once had the idea of offering it to homeowners on the time payment plan of fifty cents a week, but my supervisor said, “Can’t be done, just do your job.”
I was reassigned to the district near the L.A. River called Aliso Flats, or just The Flats. Many of the local residents are Mexican, and Russians of the Molokan faith. Mexican women are usually at home, and I’m offered a little lunch sometimes — you never know what. Women often make lunches for sale in the home to make extra money. I list those as “lunch rooms.” Some homes have rented rooms so I need to talk to the roomers as well. My first week in the Flats, a housewife showed me to the back where the roomer lived. I knocked, but there was no reply. I said, “Hello, I’m from the City Directory, and I would like to ask you a few questions. It only takes five minutes.” I heard a radio playing. I knocked again. I pushed open the screen door and saw a man’s feet. His body was in the kitchen. There was blood on the floor and blood on the walls. The woman screamed and ran back inside the front house. I used the neighbor’s phone to call
the police. That’s part of our training. The police asked if I knew the man, if I was an associate of his. I showed my business card like we’re trained to do. They took my name and address and told me not to leave town. I asked the officers if they would like to be listed in the City Directory. “Not on duty,” they said, but one officer gave me his home address and suggested I call on him later.
I had difficulty in the Flats after the story got around. I overheard one Molokan woman, Sadie Tolstoy, telling her friend, “He takes the names to the dark side.” Finally, I stopped going down there, but I missed the little chili stand on Utah Street. It was only fifteen cents a bowl and very good.
Thanks to Mr. John, I can eat wherever I want, but I usually make my own lunch. Pershing Square is a perfect place to sit and watch people. There are big shade trees and flowers and religious speakers. One day, I sat across from a woman dressed in black with tangled hair and strange fingernails that had grown out long and curved back. She shook her Bible at me. “False prophet!” she croaked. Another man walked by, and she shook the Bible at him. “Judas!” The man ducked his head down and hurried along the path. “Whore of Babylon!” she shouted to a woman in high heels pushing a baby stroller.
I ate my ham sandwich and made entries in my daybook. A man on the bench next to me said, “What are you writing? Tales of the sordid, the lurid?” I showed him the Book. He was very old and poorly dressed, but you can’t judge on appearances. He put out his hand, saying, “Finchley by name, hobo by trade, no permanent address.”
“The Directory doesn’t recognize that occupation,” I replied.
“Oh, I’ve been many things. If you want the whole story, it’s going to cost you.”
“The Directory doesn’t pay for information.”
“They’ll pay. It’s a first-rate yarn. Comedy, tragedy, sin — the worst kind! I’ll cancel all previous engagements. Just open an account at Gordon’s liquor store for the duration.” He shuffled off.
I spent the rest of the day in the Japanese district called Little Tokyo. I interviewed three dentists, two lawyers, a doctor, and ten restaurant cooks in one building — all single men. The professional types spoke good English but the cooks thought I was checking white cards, so they clammed up. It took a long time, and the building was hot and stuffy. There was a bar on the street level called Tokyo Big Shot, a tiny little place with a counter and eight bar stools. It was empty except for the Japanese bartender and a white woman. I ordered Brew 102 — it’s cheap and it hits. The bartender poured one and sneered at me. “You a checker?” he asked suspiciously.
“He don’t look like a checker,” the woman said. She was missing some of her lower front teeth, so it came out like “shecker.”
“What a goddamn checker look like?” the bartender said.
“He’s got a satchel like they got, but his eyes are bad. He ain’t a checker.”
“What’s a checker?” I asked.
“State liquor board,” said the woman. Aside from her teeth and a slight tremor in one hand, she was not so bad looking. I put the Book down on the bar. “This is what I do,” I told her. “How’d you like to be listed? It’s free.”
“A shnooper,” she said.
“Told you,” said the bartender.
“Aren’t there any Japanese women around here?” I asked.
“What’s he want ’em for?” the woman said.
The bartender shook his finger at me. “Goddamn checker. You drink up, go home.”
The Directory doesn’t list bars. I paid up and left.
“Won’t turn any tricksh for him,” the woman called out after me.
The next day, Billy the office boy came looking for me in Pershing Square. “Super wants you,” he said in his unfriendly way. I don’t like Billy.
“What for?” I asked, just to irritate him. Billy hates questions, hates to give answers.
“Hell do I know,” he said.
I put my ham sandwich back in my bag. “And Daniel was cast in the lion’s den,” the woman in black said from her bench across the path.
They call it the City Directory Library. I’ve never seen any of the public there, so it must be a library in name only for business reasons. In point of fact, the supervisor is the only person there, in my experience. You address him as Sir or Mr. Supervisor. I don’t even know his name.
“Got a call about you from a Sergeant Spangler at police headquarters.” The supervisor has a way of talking to you without looking up from his desk. “Two dead men, so they wonder why.”
“Three, if we count Howdy Clark the clarinet player.”
“Unreported?”
“He was in his apartment, in his coffin. I spoke to Mrs. Clark, but she declined to be listed.” That was the wrong thing to say. The supervisor blew up.
“I don’t give a damn about any woman named Clark, you just forget all about that. I’ll tell you this, and I want you to understand this. No dead bodies. Any more of that and you are out,” he shouted, stabbing the desk with his finger.
“But it’s bound to happen, look at the numbers,” I said.
“You listen to me. Don’t contradict me. I’m reassigning you to beauty parlors, as of right now. Get moving.”
“You heard him,” Billy said as I was leaving.
Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But you have to go out and find them, and that can take up all your time. I have what you might call “hound-dog reckoning” — a nose for where to look — and it comes in handy. I started with Beauty by Rene, next door to a fancy dress shop. I walked in and the smell hit me. I was unprepared for that! And the noise — hair dryers going, women talking in loud voices a mile a minute like crows in a tree. I spoke to the first operator. “Your business could be listed in the City Directory.” She kept right on yammering to the woman in the chair. I moved on. I held the Book open for the next one. “Beauty by Rene, bold type, no extra charge,” I said cheerfully.
“Boss!” she yelled.
“Where is he?” I yelled back.
“She! In the back!” A very thin woman was sitting at a tiny desk talking into a telephone. She slammed the receiver down and stared at me and said, “Well, what?”
I held the Book open. “This is a wonderful opportunity to list with the City Directory at no cost to you, the businessman.”
“Don’t hand me that,” she said. “I run this place. Everyone out there is a mad dog from hell until proven otherwise, including you and that son of a bitch landlord on the telephone.” She lit a cigarette and blew smoke at me. “Trying to break my balls, can you believe the son of a bitch?”
“Why not give the Book a try for a year?”
“All right, hotshot, what’s your name?”
“Frank.”
“As in what?”
“Frank St. Claire.”
“Nice. So lead off with it. Don’t start with the ‘no charge’ bit, make it sound good, give it a little class, dress it up for crissakes.” She filled out the form. “What made you come in here?”
“That’s my assignment, beauty shops.”
“There’s too damn many. It’s a cutthroat business, it’s very competitive. Do me a favor and don’t list all of ’em right around this neck of the woods. Make me look good. The Biltmore, that’s a ritzy crowd, they got sheckles in their pants.” I told her thanks, I’d do my best. I left, but then I went back.
“Let me ask you something,” I said.
“Fire away, Frankie.”
“How long can fingernails grow if you don’t cut them?”
“Who knows? They keep growing, like hair. It’s molecular.”
“Thanks.”
“Why?”
“I see this woman in Pershing Square every day where I eat lunch. Her nails are about a foot long, but curved back around.”
“Tell her to drop in for a manicure, I’ll give her the professional discount.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re a very thankful guy, Frankie. Go get yourself a new pair of glas
ses.”
I walked back to Pershing Square. The woman in black was gone. It was getting on toward evening, and I closed my eyes and fell asleep. When I woke up, she was back. “Precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little, there a little.” She seemed to be in a relaxed frame of mind. “Of money, some have coveted. They have erred from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” I waited, hoping to hear more. I tried to give her a quarter, but she hid her face behind the Bible and wouldn’t look at me. I left.
There’s a bar at the top of Grand Avenue called the Los Amigos. They have a coin-operated player piano, a shuffleboard table game, and booths along the side. The bartender’s name is Russell. It was late, and the place was quiet. Russell saw me come in.
“Hiya, Frank. Haven’t seen you around lately. The usual?”
“No. I want a whiskey sour. That’s a good drink, right?”
“Sure, Frank, sure. One whiskey sour.” There was a woman alone in a booth, and she looked up when she heard my voice. It was the manager from Beauty by Rene.
“Thankful Frankie,” she said. I sat down across from her.
“How are you this evening, Rene? I guess I’m surprised to see you in my neighborhood.”
“Don’t be.”
“How’s it going with the landlord?” I asked, just trying to be delicate.
“That ball-busting son of a bitch? I can’t move now, things are just starting to pick up. Downtown’s gonna take off when the war hits.”
“War?” I wasn’t sure what she was talking about or how many drinks she’d had.
“War, kiddo. As in Adolf H.? You heard about him?”
“I’m not sure. I haven’t seen the papers lately. Where is the war?”
“Get lost. Nobody’s that out to lunch, but nobody. You better get your nose out of that book. Get yourself a girl, there’s one on every corner.”
I was starting to pick up a slight drawl in her talk. “Where are you from, originally?” In Los Angeles, it’s a harmless question.
“Amarillo, Texas. I caught the first thing smokin’. End of story.”
