Los Angeles Noir - Denise Hamilton [19]
The hotel’s main driveway was already bumper to bumper with fancy automobiles when Cravitz slid up—twenty patrons were lined up for the Chit Chat Room. It opened at 5 a.m. and featured the best and cheapest breakfast in town: two eggs, Louisiana sausage, bacon, grits, two biscuits, and a cup of java for five bucks. The menu also featured New Orleans seafood, chit’lins under glass, East Texas hot wings, smothered chops, ham hocks and brains, and Johnnie Walker Black.
For Halloween, all the valets and chauffeurs wore black satin masks along with their red satin togs. Darlinda Smalls, the valet captain, waved him to the front of the line.
“Us girls got something for you, Quick,” Darlinda said, and all the girls started singing Stevie’s version of “Happy Birthday.” When they were done, Aleta Wright, one of the fine-ass Château Rouge lady chauffeurs, took Cravitz’s keys. It was already eighty degrees and Aleta was dressed for the weather in the Château Rouge’s trademark peek-a-boo red satin tux.
“Hey, bitch!” a voice behind him growled.
Cravitz turned. Behind him stood a quartet of young men. One of them, a tall pasty-faced yella boy with bling braces, held up his fists and showed two sparkling rings, each one spanning a hand, spelling: FLO BOYZ.
Another brandished a sawed-off shotgun.
“Hey, Monster,” the pasty-faced boy said to the kid with the shotgun, “cover me.”
“What’s your name, son?” Cravitz said to the young thug with the gun.
“Monster P,” the boy said.
“That what your mama named you?”
“You betta recognize, grandpa, you jumped in line ahead of us,” the yella kid with bad acne replied. Monster P, huge and grinning, circled to his left. Cravitz noted that Monster wore his new $100 Lebron James sneakers untied.
“Well, bitch, you gonna move out th’ way? Or do we need to move you?” the pimply faced boy said.
“You from the Floorboards?” Cravitz said.
“Hey, sucka, you mean the Flo Boyz.”
Normally, a slap across the lips was his remedy for obstreperous brats. The challenge of his birthday vow, however, posed a dilemma for Cravitz.
Cravitz was pondering this when he heard, “Drop the weapon, Twinkletoes.”
It was the voice of his childhood hero, Ramon Yippie Calzone. Cravitz turned to see Yippie with Esmeralda in his hand.
Monster P held his shotgun limply, then let it slide to the ground.
“I’m saving your lives,” Yippie Calzone told them. He pointed to Cravitz. “That young brother there is one of the killin’est hombres on the whole damn planet. Just look at them cold, gray eyes … I’m a mutherfuckin’ killer, too. Just a few months back, shot down two little boys with this pretty gun. Ain’t that right, Quick?”
“Gospel,” Cravitz said.
The young men gawked at Esmeralda.
“We won’t kill you this time, boys,” Cravitz said. “But grown folks gotta talk now.” Cravitz gave Aleta a twenty and said, “Help my friends. I ain’t in a hurry.”
Yippie turned to Cravitz and whispered, “We gotta talk.”
The men met in a quiet booth in Satin Dolls.
“I saw something when I arrived at the Château Rouge this morning—someone,” Yippie Calzone said.
“Someone?”
“A woman. A bad woman.”
“Well?”
“I can’t tell you much. Shouldn’t be telling you this. But this hina is bad news. She is a drug dealer. A killer too. I didn’t know she had got this far west.”
“And she’s here to …?”
“Not sure. Her operation is in Nevada. She’s helping her man Paco Santiago make Vegas the new drug hub,” Yippie Calzone said. “If she’s here, your brother is involved. I didn’t see them together; but I’m sure she’s staying here. She had on a mask, but I recognized her. I don’t think she saw me.”
“Cash has been legit since ’92.”
“He ain’t.” Calzone opened his briefcase and pulled out a small plastic baggie filled with a few teaspoons of yellow powder. He handed it to Cravitz. “The new teen poison.”
The dope had a faint lemon scent.
“It’s treated opium. It’s been cut with strychnine and baking soda and some other trash. The high’s killer,” Yippie said grimly.
“How’s it get this weird color?”
“Food coloring,