Los Angeles Noir - Denise Hamilton [15]
Ann climbed up the creaky wooden steps to Number 19’s unit. She didn’t bother to try the doorbell—they never seemed to work in these buildings. Instead she rapped the dark wooden door with the side of her bent index finger.
The door slowly opened, and Number 19 didn’t seem surprised to see Ann standing outside her home. She looked shorter, plumper, and older in the doorway of her apartment.
“I need to talk to you. May I come in?”
Number 19 nodded, holding the door open for Ann. It was a one-bedroom apartment and it looked like somebody slept on the couch. Number 19 gestured toward the kitchen, which was connected to living room.
“I tried to get your job back, but I couldn’t.” Ann then dumped the contents of the Tiffany bag onto the kitchen table. The cash, mixed in with shards of glass, tumbled out, almost knocking over a plastic soy sauce bottle and a jar of chili paste. Last of all, the Tupperware container of the manager’s half-eaten lunch slid on top of the bills. “Here’s your money; it’s all yours. You deserve it.”
Number 19 looked at her, first with fear and then sadness. Her hands trembled as she touched one of the bills. Then the bedroom door burst open. Uniformed officers with guns yelled, “Police!”
Number 19 was crying now into her bare hands. Her roommate—Ann recognized the woman from the spa—emerged from the back bedroom and tried to console Number 19.
One of the officers pulled Ann’s arms back and, while reciting her rights, secured her wrists in plastic ties.
After Ann was led out of the apartment, one of the police detectives, a Korean American who spoke Korean, turned to the masseuse. “Did you have a relationship with that woman?” he asked.
The masseuse kept shaking her head as if she were trying to erase any thought of the girl from her mind. “Just a customer,” she said. “She was no one special.”
DANGEROUS DAYS
BY EMORY HOLMES II
Leimert Park
1.
Every Halloween, his birthday, John Hannibal “Quick” Cravitz liked to put aside his usual routine of chasing power and pleasure in the cloak-and-pistol world of private security and devote a day to rest and public service.
That Halloween eve, when the day’s work was done, Betty Penny, his office manager, strung their offices with skulls and calaveras, crepe paper cats and autumn leaves. Some of the girls from Satin Dolls brought in champagne and gumbo. Cravitz gave everyone a pumpkin stuffed with treats and a hefty check for the holiday.
After his staff had gone home, he invoiced his latest gig. Four weeks of sold-out concerts at the Inglewood Forum. The Zulu Boyz, Priest KZ, and Th’ Flava Foolz, the cream of L.A. bands, performed. His young firm, Universal Detection, furnished security and muscle. There had been no violence.
He was getting ready to call it a day when the buzzer rang.
The shadow on the screen flipping him the bird, putting on a show for the surveillance camera, was his old friend Ramon Yippie Calzone.
“This is a raid, you old ass mutherfucker! Come out with your hands up. I know you got bad Negroes up there.”
Cravitz buzzed him up. When he opened the door, Yippie embraced Cravitz, who, at 6’5”, was taller than him by a head. Then his friend strode past him into the office. “Okay, birthday boy, I got good news and bad. Which do you want first?”
The two men grinned at one another. With his black briefcase, and the hooch he carried in a brown paper bag, Yippie looked like a cholo Republican: He wore a black leather jacket, faded jeans, motorcycle boots, lumberjack shirt; his long, graying hair tied in a ponytail with a silver clasp; his handlebar moustache pepper-gray. A gold earring in the form of a crucifix dangled from his right ear. A tat of Montezuma with an Aztec princess peeked through the break in his shirt.
“Good news first,” Cravitz said.
Yippie Calzone raised the hooch: “Pulke,” he said.
The two