Los Angeles Noir

by Denise Hamilton

  As if he’ll ever fully catch up, I thought. But every time I came over, the kid laughed at my face, grabbed his walker, and hurried my way, clattering that metal contraption across the floor and slamming against banged-up furniture and walls in the process.

  Tito Tomas! he’d scream, laughing.

  Hey, sunshine, let’s go out for a walk, I’d say, grabbing him and lifting him into a bear hug.

  Veronica had stopped taking Emerson out to the playground, because he couldn’t keep up with the energetic activities and ended up alone. And she resented the stares of the mothers and nannies, the other children especially. Manny, to his credit, believed this to be wrong. He insisted on dragging Emerson out to the parks and malls. He insisted that other people were fucked up to stare. They argued over it. She’d search the neighborhood to find him. They screamed at each other in public.

  Manny tried to make Emerson use his walker everywhere. The neurologists and PTs told them it would keep his muscles stretched. But Emerson refused. He threw tantrums at malls, dropped down to his knees and cried, drawing the stares of passersby who looked at Veronica as if she were abusing her disabled child.

  Go on, leave us, I would tell her. Go shopping.

  She’d hesitate but walk away, letting me kneel down beside her boy. I’d smell his sweaty, musty hair. I cherished his boy-smell, these sweet moments, the joy and sorrow I drew from these fleeting seconds of male bonding of which I wanted more. I would whisper in his ear, make him laugh, coax him with promises of ice cream—and have him using his walker in no time.

  He let me take him to Douglas Park, played on the slides and swings, tossed bread at the ducks in the pond, walked over grass. The park had changed since I was a kid. Gabe and Veronica and I used to wade through dirty pond water, catching tiny frogs and tadpoles in the reeds. Now the pond had been converted into a fancy Japanese water garden, complete with babbling streams, wooden benches, landscaped boulders. Even the ducks looked cleaner. The kid’s play area had new bright play equipment, handicap accessible, and the mothers seemed different now, too. Thinner, more stylish.

  Manny resented my ease with Emerson. The boy let me take him to the basketball court across the street from St. Dominic’s after Sunday mass. Manny watched with jealousy as Emerson used his walker on the crowded court, without shame or self-consciousness, and let the black teenagers lift him up to dunk the ball.

  Nothing I did was good enough for that chump. After I got saved and became a youth minister at an evangelical strip-mall church in Culver City—where I ran the boys’ club, as well as addiction recovery groups—you’d have thought he’d come round to me. But he never did.

  I drove my truck up to their apartment complex and started circling the block, looking for a parking spot on the narrow side streets. I smoldered over exactly how to do what I wanted to do. Remembering my mother’s worried face, I thought, Hold on, don’t do anything rash, you’re risking a lot of hurt and pain here, will let down a lot of people if you get caught breaking probation. They’d put you away for a long time. When you got out, how old would Emerson be? But then I remembered his slit braces in Veronica’s hands and that was it.

  I pulled into the driveway behind one of their neighbor’s cars, blocking it in. I stomped around to their garden apartment and banged on the green door. The front blinds moved, then shut. I banged on the door again. It finally opened.

  Manny wore a sling, his face blue and black, a piece of skin torn below his eye, stitched. It looked as if someone had pressed barbed wire into his face.

  Veronica’s not here, he said.

  I want to see Emerson.

  He’s at your tita’s place, Manny said. He spoke a bit snidely, as if I should have known.

  Get in my car, I said.

  What?

  We’re going for a drive.

  He tried to protest so I grabbed his shirt and pulled him out of his apartment. I put him in the truck and we sat there, engine off, windows open. The air smelled of sun-warmed avocados fallen on the grass.

  So, Veronica tells me you got yourself beat up by some kid’s father, I said.

  Manny shook his head. Lips tightened, angry no doubt that Veronica came to me. It wasn’t like that, he said.

  That was a smart move, I said. Now Emerson will really have his peers’ respect.

  You don’t understand. I couldn’t not do anything. We tried talking to the teachers, the principal. They said they were investigating, but they need to expel that kid now, Tomas, to keep him out of Emerson’s face.

  So you went over to the father and got beat up.

  Fuck you, Tomas.

  Maybe you lost your cool? Made them defensive.

  You’ve got a lot of nerve, Tomas. This is my son we’re talking about.

  His jaw trembled with anger. I felt hot, my shirt damp against my vinyl seat. The fermenting avocado smell made me feel like hurting someone. But I told myself to hold my temper, let him talk.

  I said, Tell me what happened.

  And he told me.

  That’s not a satisfactory explanation, I said.

  What the fuck do you want from me?

  I plucked one stitch from his face, causing him to kick the dashboard in his struggle. He cursed. I quieted him with a look and said, When Veronica came to me this morning, her face was bruised again. I should really hurt you. But I am going to give you an opportunity to redeem yourself. To be a real husband and father.

  Manny began to speak but seemed to think better. Then he asked, Where are we going?

  Where does Harley Douglas live?

  Venice.

  Do you know the house?

  Yeah, he said after a pause.

  We drove down the hill to Main Street and headed south past the arty boutiques and cafés and restaurants. We crossed Rose and headed into Venice. Beyond the older buildings to the west I caught flashes of bright ocean. We crossed over streets that used to be canals nearly a century ago, blocks where amusement park rides and buildings had once stood.

  We reached Abbot Kinney, with its more boho shops, looking a lot like Santa Monica’s posh Main Street had when I was a kid. The martial arts studio where I used to study Filipino stick-fighting when we lived in Oakwood, the black neighborhood inland to its north, the old bungalows and cottages ravaged by cool salty nights. But Harley Douglas lived on the ocean side, on the gentrified streets. Many of the weathered buildings had been renovated, or replaced by condos. I noticed a beautiful woman walking a pure white husky, while sipping from a paper coffee cup. The neighborhood is one of the few in Los Angeles where people actually walk.

  When we lived near here it was a different place. The old buildings colonied by hippies were falling apart then. Some were empty, condemned. Our house was on its last legs. On stormy evenings, Pacific Ocean winds would blow against the clapboard walls on our creaking block.

  Even then, some of the older structures were starting to be torn down and replaced by upscale condos, but in the summer of ’94 a gang war broke out between the blacks and Mexicans and the construction stopped.

  From the look of things now, real estate had soared again.

  That’s where they live, Manny said, pointing to a narrow modern structure of steel and wood and glass four stories high.

  I parked across the street.

  That’s a pretty funky house, I said.

  He’s an architect. Designed it himself.

  You got beat up by an architect?

  He used to be a military engineer. Apparently he has a black belt.

  He’s still an architect.

  What are we doing here? he asked.

  Sit, look, listen, I said. Tell me about the father. Tell me what he looks like. We need to plan.

  The house was made of ecologically friendly materials, and utilized solar energy. His first floor was concealed by a shiny hammered metal wall softened by elegant bamboo. Its entrance opened to a narrow alley, but the sound of waves echoed among the buildings. He must have had quite a
view. I could see the upper levels above the bamboo. They were walls of glass that revealed glimpses of affluence and style—leather furniture, a drafting table, pieces of skylight and sky.

  I made the preparations and dropped Manny at the boys’ club. Then I drove back to Venice and parked near the architect’s house. I stood and waited in front of a condo complex across the street, smoking. When a man left Harley’s house and headed down the sidewalk with a little English bulldog, I followed. He matched Manny’s description of the father: shaved head, artsy glasses. When he neared my parked truck, I hurried my step. Perhaps he sensed me coming up, because he turned. One look at me and he got a bit nervous.

  Hi, he said. A moment passed. Can I help you?

  He wore tortoiseshell glasses, black turtleneck, jeans, and a black-faced Omega watch.

  Nice day to walk your dog, I said.

  He looked upward as if he hadn’t already noticed the overcast sky, the June marine layer, with its thick smell of ocean salt. In the humid air my joints throbbed.

  Yeah, sure, he said. He spoke uncertainly, his tone part fear, part annoyance.

  Your dog pooped on my lawn, I said.

  He seemed relieved—an explanation for my body language. I’m sorry about that, he said.

  You’re supposed to scoop it up.

  Like I said, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. He started to pass.

  Get in the truck, I said, pointing.

  What?

  I pulled out the ice pick, set it against his chest. Like I said, get in the truck.

  He noticed the tinted windows. I pressed the point against his nipple, which was visible through his microfiber shirt, and he obeyed.

  What do you want from me? he said. You want my wal-let?

  Put on this bandana. Cover your eyes.

  In our family, my grandmother’s brothers fought as guerrilla soldiers in the jungled mountains of Laguna and Quezon during the Japanese occupation. Two had been Philippine Scouts and on the American payroll before MacArthur retreated to Australia. I only knew them years later, as old men, drunkards who loved to boast in a mixture of English and Tagalog and Spanish. They visited Los Angeles and stayed with us several times, trying to claim the veterans’ benefits they had been promised. I thought they were losers because they kept asking, even though they never got anybody to listen to them. They struck me as dreamers. Then they got me drunk when I was nine. They told me I took after them, the Laurels (that’s my mother’s maiden name). Indeed, a few years later I grew tall and broad—the conquistador’s barrel chest, they called it.

  They don’t seem like soldiers, I told my mother and her sister. We were visiting them in San Pablo, an old Spanish-Malay city among coconut haciendas south of Manila, and they drank San Miguel beers from a crate on their picnic table. I was at a separate table, where the women sat.

  That’s only because they’re old, Mom said.

  What did they do?

  Eduardo and Pedro were the worst, she said. They ran the hacienda like gangsters. They once shot a man for looking at their sister the wrong way.

  Wow, I said. What else?

  She said, One of their brothers—Tio Bien, the good one, the gentle doctor—visited the farm one year from Hawaii, where he was living. He hired a skit to travel on the railroad between the farm and the city of Tagkawayan.

  What’s a skit?

  It’s like a platform made of bamboo, Mom said. It has wheels and a little lawn mower engine. Boys run them over the train tracks like homemade taxis. Anyway, Tio Bien hired one and was riding into town to drink some halo halo, when the skit was stopped by bandits. He gave them his watch and money, but they shot him in the kneecaps anyway. Then they left. When he got back to the hacienda, his brothers grew furious. They found out from tenant farmers what village the bandits came from. They rode there on horseback with machine guns from the war. They shot into the thatched nipa huts.

  Why didn’t they find out who did it? I asked. They could have hit anyone. Even a baby.

  They weren’t thinking about that, Mom said. They were sending the message that this is what happens if someone hurts our family.

  I shook my head, furious, bothered. My mother and aunt spoke with disapproving low voices, almost whispers, shaking their heads with shame. But they were also secretly proud, I sensed.

  When I got jumped into a Latino gang, my mother and her sister and their brothers may have been disappointed in me. But on a trip I took back to Manila, my grandmother’s brother Eduardo took one look at me—the broad muscles, the weight-lifter’s shoulders, the tattoos covering my arms and back—and he nodded in approval.

  You are a true Laurel, he said.

  That night, we got shitfaced on San Miguel gin.

  In my church we have an inscription that indicates the bread and wine are not His body and blood, but only symbols, remembrances of the Father. But I have a secret heresy. When I eat from the loaf, when I sip from the cup, I feel in my heart His presence and know I have consumed real flesh and real bodily fluid that is absorbed by my body. It is the Philippine Catholic inside me. I have other secret idolatries. There is a tattoo of the Virgin Mary on my back, from the base of my neck down to the crest of my buttocks; her shoulders spread across my shoulder blades, her feet step on the serpent coiled at my hips. All the other tattoos my congregation knew about, and I removed them by laser—across my arms and shoulders, my neck, my chest. When we went out to the frigid stream for full immersion, I kept two layers of undershirt on so they would not see the Holy Mother beneath.

  They would not understand. But about some things I cannot let go.

  I took Veronica to my church once. She hadn’t been to Mass in years. She said the rituals were meaningless, rote, hierarchical. I wanted to expose the unborn baby to Jesus, and thought our more spirited evangelical service might rekindle the piety of her childhood. But she looked surprised at the Spartan worship space and asked where the altar was. She puzzled at the aluminum chairs we had instead of pews, scanned the floor for kneelers.

  When the Christian rock band played and the clapping started, she moved and swayed, even smiled. Her eyes teared during the witnessing, as a man read a letter from an eleven-year-old boy who had written an autobiographical story about hearing his alcoholic father beating his mother through the bedroom wall, then confessed that this boy was his own son. A feeling passed through the crowd like a cool insuck of breath through our bodies. Veronica looked around with surprise.

  She seemed impressed when I showed her the boys’ club facility and explained our drug rehab programs and outreach ministries.

  Afterwards I felt hope as we stepped out onto the crunchy gravel, the strip-mall glass glistening across the boulevard.

  What did you think? I asked.

  I liked it, she said.

  You think you might want to come back?

  She seemed sad as she smiled at me. I don’t think so, Tomas, she said. She touched my arm, and her fingers lingered.

  Well, if you ever change your mind …

  She looked sorry. As if I had shown her my ugly baby and expected a compliment.

  Veronica kept active even during her pregnancy. She continued to wade in the waves and liked to lie out on the beach. She let me feel her sandy abdomen, the growing baby within. We knew it was a boy from the ultrasound, but had no idea there was anything wrong with him. He kicked beneath her warm skin. With my ear against her taut belly button, I could hear sounds of him—or Veronica—moving. Could hear the muted rumble of collapsing waves.

  * * *

  The boys’ club behind the church building used to be a martial arts studio. It still smelled of Japanese floor pads, bare feet, must, and male sweat. It smelled like an old futon. The blindfolded man sniffed at the change in smell, the warmer temperature. He jerked when I shut the metal door and snapped the lock. I sat him on a chair in the center of the room and bound him there.

  I’m going to take off your blindfold now, I told him, after I flipped over t
he only sign with our congregation’s name on it.

  From behind, I pulled off the bandana. He looked around and said, Where am I?

  But I was gone. I was in a hallway behind mirrored oneway glass we had installed to observe the group sessions and recovery groups that met in that room.

  I turned to Manny, who sat next to me on an aluminum chair against the wall; watching Harley’s father through the one-way glass.

  Is that him?

  Yeah.

  Okay, I said, and pulled the ice pick out of my satchel. Place the tip of the blade on the soft part below the kneecap. Make sure you really punch it through the cartilage. The knee’s like tree bark. If you don’t get below the surface, the tree doesn’t die.

  Manny looked at me. You don’t actually expect me to do this … ?

  I do.

  He crossed his arms.

  Do it for Emerson, I said.

  What’s all this to you?

  In my family—the Laurels—we protect our own, I said.

  I held the blade out to him, but he shook his head. I walked into the other room. I knew Manny would be watching from behind the mirrored glass. Harley’s father looked up at me.

  Who are you? he said.

  I kneeled before him, my face close to his own. His chair rattled as his bound hands struggled. I touched his cheek, brushed it softly.

  Do you have a son? I asked.

  Yes.

  Do you love him?

  Yes.

  I am a father too, I said loudly enough for Manny to hear, and then I reached down and stuck him.

  THE HOUR WHEN THE SHIP COMES IN

  BY ROBERT FERRIGNO

  Belmont Shore

  One good deed … One good deed is all it takes to get a man killed. One good deed, one step in front of the other. Yancy staggered down Pomona toward the beach, straightened his shoulders and kept walking. Not far. Pomona ran parallel to Alamitos Bay, close enough to smell the waffle cones at the ice cream parlor on Second Street … and the strawberries. He had stopped for a Jamba Juice before they hit the house on Pomona. Mason had complained, eager to get started, but Yancy insisted. A large Strawberry-Kiwi Zinger with protein powder and spirulina. No idea what that shit did, but why take a chance. Full of antioxidants and nutrients specially formulated to increase longevity … live forever, the sign said. Yancy laughed, and pain shuddered through him.