Southside (9781608090563)

by Krikorian, Michael

  After his trip to Vegas, after he had shot Lyons, after he felt the heat of the investigation was lessening as it always did after the initial swarm, Sims had returned to his routine in Los Angeles, in the Kitchen, working on cars, drinking, and sleeping. He was a loner now, a man who said a polite hello to his next door neighbors, but that was it.

  He hadn’t always been that way. He had been a friendly, hardworking man who raised his one son with love and affection. That ended on August 12, 2004 when Cleamon “Big Evil” Desmond ordered Darnell “Poison Rat” Jackson to “serve” two men at a carwash at Central Avenue and 89th Street. The two men, both not gang members, were Marcus Washington and Payton Sims, his son.

  Prosecutors contended that Evil gave Poison Rat an Uzi and ordered Rat to kill the two so he could earn his stripes for Eighty-Nine Family Bloods. The two were arrested. While in custody, Evil was a trustee at the Men’s Central Jail and had extraordinary access inside the jail. In return, he ran the huge Bloods module at the jail and kept things relatively quiet for the sheriffs. He had a job, too, as a food server. He once told Lyons in an interview that “No one complains about the service. That would be stupid.”

  Eventually, the case against Evil fell apart after he successfully ordered the killing of two witnesses from behind bars. After that, the other witnesses got amnesia. Or moved out of state.

  It took a joint task force involving the FBI, LAPD, L.A. County Sheriffs, U.S. Marshals and DEA, to eventually bring Evil down seven years later. One witness was so scared to testify that his face was covered, and he dressed in so much clothing that an FBI agent said, “the guy looked like the Michelin Man.”

  But, because of the weak main witnesses against Evil—one Freddie Gelson who saved his own ass by testifying—and the tendency for juries in California to shy away from the death penalty, the prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Leslie Harrington, decided to play it safe and not go for the death penalty. Even the judge in the case, the verbose Harold Reese, let it be known in open court that he thought that was the right call. Evil was convicted and sentenced to LWOP, life without the possibility of parole.

  This had infuriated Eddie Sims. Big Evil would be in prison all his life, but he would be the big shot in a world where he was comfortable. Gambling with the lesser Poison Rat, the actual triggerman, prosecutors went for the needle and got it. Rat was now on San Quentin’s death row.

  But the cataclysmic event that would send Eddie Sims on his revenge quest was a television program on the cable show CNBC called Lockdown—Pelican Bay that aired five weeks before Michael Lyons was shot.

  CNBC was running a miniseries called Lockdown, and each episode featured a notorious American prison. They had done San Quentin, Folsom, and Corcoran already. They had done Angola in Louisiana, Joliet in Illinois, Huntsville in Texas, the supermax federal prisons at Florence, Colorado, and Marion, Illinois. This one was on Pelican Bay, the most severe prison in California. Sims had been flipping channels on his remote when he stumbled across the program. Knowing that was where Big Evil had been sent, he decided to watch the show.

  He poured himself a glass of cognac on ice and sat down to watch. What he saw in the next five minutes changed his life and gave birth to the Revenge. At first, he could not believe what he was seeing and thought he was just imagining what he was seeing on his television. And then slowly, the sickening reality crept into his pores.

  There, in the prison known for breaking inmates by keeping them in their cells twenty-three and a half to twenty-four hours a day, was Big Evil playing basketball on the yard. He was playing with four other inmates in a game against the guards. Evil made a rebound and then muscled in for a hard two-handed dunk, smiling his big-ass smile. Evil, the man who killed his son and at least twenty-four other sons, was having fun in prison on the California-Oregon border. Sims was dumbfounded.

  “As one can clearly see, not every inmate at Pelican Bay is locked down all day in his tiny, gloomy cell,” said the narrator. “Certain inmates, known as ‘super trustees’ are allowed to go outside their cells for hours at a time.”

  The camera zoomed in on Big Evil playing defense. “This man was the leader of a small, but extremely deadly, street gang in Green Meadows, Los Angeles. The LAPD had called him the deadliest gang member in the city before he was convicted of a double murder. The Los Angeles Times made him the cover story years ago in a Sunday magazine profile that sealed his infamy. Yet, his very power has earned him a greater degree of mobility inside Pelican Bay.”

  They cut to a guard being interviewed. “There are some inmates, like Desmond here, who get certain privileges because they are super trustees, and we rely on him and a few others to keep the peace inside the prison, particularly when inmates gather at food service periods. While inmates in the security housing unit do not mingle, there are more than a thousand inmates here at Pelican Bay who do get out of their cells for meals, and Desmond and others make sure these gatherings are not violent. In return, he gets more time out of his cell than most inmates serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.”

  They cut one more time to the smiling Desmond before they cut away to a commercial. Sims was nearly in medical shock.

  He walked, dazed, around his front room. Evil, the man who killed his cherished son, was enjoying himself playing basketball and would be alive for decades. Sims’s blood boiled. The Revenge was born. He would have revenge if it was the last thing he ever did. He knew he couldn’t get to Evil directly, so his family and the people responsible for his not getting the death penalty and allowing him to live his life out were the next best thing.

  So now, it was six weeks since he had hatched his revenge mission and it was one down—or partly down—several more to go. Next up was Terminal, aka Bobby Desmond, Big Evil’s younger brother. After that, he’d make sure Evil’s mother would join her son in hell. He felt no remorse about this. He wanted revenge for his son.

  Terminal himself had beat three murder raps already and was known to be almost as deadly as his big brother. Well, maybe not almost, but still a cold-blooded killer. Bobby stayed with his girlfriend in 79 Swans, another Blood ’hood less than a mile away, but he was often at his parents’ home on 89th Street just on the other side of Central from Sims. The Desmond and Sims homes were less than 150 yards apart.

  Sims had bought a high-powered telescope from Big Five. He set it in his front room, zeroed in on the Desmond family porch. At first, Sims spent hours at the scope. He’d have the TV on, a meal and a cognac at his side. This was a man determined. Still, even the most determined man, unless he is Stalingrad sniper Vasily Zaitsev, the most famous sniper of them all, had his limits. And after a few days, Sims’s telescopic time lessened, though his desire to kill Big Evil’s family did not.

  Two weeks after he returned from Vegas, Sims was ready. He knew the smart move would have been to get rid of the Smith & Wesson 9mm he’d used on Lyons, but he didn’t. At some point you just don’t care. He was thinking of himself as already dead. His wife had left him. He had shot a reporter with the sun shining and L.A. traffic all about him. He just didn’t care. He needed help. That help, he realized after he shot Lyons, came from revenge. God, he loved that word. His whole life now was fueled by that word. Revenge.

  His estranged wife, Jennette, had once been a God-fearing, churchgoing woman. Sims thought that was absurd. Praying to a God that didn’t exist. He was proud of his black roots, but felt the way black people turned to God when death came to their young, the way they’d said at his son’s funeral “Payton is with Jesus now,” or “Payton is walking on streets paved with gold” was maddening. “Payton is in a better place now,” they said. A better place? Even South Central and Watts were better than being boxed in the Inglewood Cemetery dirt.

  At night, Sims loaded up, and walked down the street to the corner of Central. He stared at the Desmond house. The lights were on. He started to cross the street, then abruptly turned around. He came home, got his Cutlass, a
nd parked it in the alley across Central, bordering the side of the Desmond household.

  As he got out of the car and walked to the 89th Street sidewalk, he couldn’t look into the house because the alley-side windows had been cemented up. Probably to prevent drive-bys, Sims thought.

  He opened the waist-high metal gate of the fence that surrounded the unassuming front yard. He knocked on the door of the oddly royal-blue two-bedroom home. What kind of Blood family paints their house blue?

  It was dark out, a little after eight. From inside came a cautious, “Who is it?” from Betty Desmond, Evil’s mother. She was home alone, an elegant dark-skinned woman of sixty-two, dressed neatly in a knee-length green plaid skirt, a yellow sweater, small gold hoop earrings, and Nike running shoes. From the living room Sarah Vaughn was singing “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” and vowing to never, ever think about counting sheep. Sims knew the song and thought it a sweet counterpoint to the savagery he was about to inflict. He was planning on taking out Terminal first, so the mom could suffer that agony, but he wasn’t rigid in his plan. If she had to go first, so be it.

  There was a heavy black steel security door and a thick, sturdy brown wooden door with a little two-inch peep window. “Who is it?” she repeated.

  Suddenly, in the cool night air, Sims realized he wasn’t the cold-hearted killer he aspired to be. At least not yet. He started to sweat, to get a little nauseous. His mind raced. It was stuck in neutral. Nothing came to him. Then, from behind, he heard the small metal chain-link gate swing open.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  Sims was standing on the first step of the small two-step porch. He turned to look eye-to-eye at Terminal.

  “Fuck you want here at night? The fuck you doing at my mom’s house?” said Terminal, wearing a mid-thigh-length black leather coat over a red Fresno State Bulldogs sweatshirt and baggy Levis.

  If Sims had somehow just emerged from the Eurasian Basin of the Arctic Ocean, he couldn’t have been more chilled. He tried to talk, to think. His clutch wasn’t working, his brain just spinning uselessly.

  Terminal violently two-hand pushed him up against the door. He grabbed Sims by his ear and shoulder and spun him around, forcing his face into the cold steel security door.

  “Answer me, bitch, before I go violent on your ig-nent ass.” Terminal was leaning hard into Sims. With his left hand he patted the intruder down. He felt it in two seconds, tucked in his waistband. “What the fuck? Cunt, you just ruined your life.”

  Bobby grabbed the S & W 9mm from Sims’s gut and bashed him on the side of his face. Blood drizzled down his temple over his eye. He wished he had passed out. He didn’t. “Moms, open the door.”

  • • •

  This much I knew. That was King Funeral from the Hoover Criminals on the tape just days before I got shot. The interview was not a formal one, but rather just a get-to-know-you session. I was on my way to the formal interview when I got shot. I found it hard to believe Funeral would just cooperate with the police and give up some tape.

  That part I didn’t get. Maybe Funeral got in a jam and played his get-out-of-jail card. I was going to take him out if this caused my downfall. I was. I wasn’t going to let him punk me out. I’d push back and hard.

  I finally made it home and took a long shower. Any trace of a booze buzz was washed down the drain. I felt clean. Ready for a fight. I had to be on my toes. It was time to defend myself. I had been in the position of defending myself many times. As I showered, I kept wondering how bizarre it was that it seemed someone was trying to frame me for my own shooting.

  After that shower, I sat on the couch, phone in front of me, a list of contacts, a notebook, a cold bottle of water, and a small bag of Fritos, the original kind. Who should I call first, the cops or the streets? I dialed Sal’s numbers, got him on his cell.

  “Sal, you hear that news conference?”

  “Hear it? I was there.”

  “Oh, yeah. I saw you and Johnny. Do you believe that shit? Do you actually believe I would have someone shoot me?”

  “Lyons, look. This is off the record, right?”

  “Jesus, Sal, I’m not writing a story about myself. I just need to know how much damage this fuckin’ tape is gonna cause me. I mean, if you believe it, then I am done.”

  “Do I believe that is you on the tape? Yes. Do I believe you are talking to a gang leader, who I know is King Funeral from the Hoovers, and telling him to set up a shooting of yourself? Yes. Do I believe you are serious? Hell, no. You’re a crazy, tough street reporter. You’ll go places unarmed, where I wouldn’t go armed. But you’re not insane. Of course, I don’t believe it. That’s just how you talk. Unfortunately for you, lot of people are not going to understand that kind of talk.”

  “Shit. I just got shot and now I gotta deal with the editors. I don’t know what’s worse, dealing with gang leaders or editors. No, I do know what’s worse. Hey, forget this. I’m sick of this already. All this bullshit for jokin’ around. Sal, what’s the latest on my shooting? Anything at all? Anything.”

  “Not in the way of suspects. Just in the way of eliminating people and certain gangs. Like I told you, the Sixties didn’t do it. Grape Street, they didn’t do it.”

  “I know.”

  “The Bounty Hunters seem to think you’re aces, so they didn’t do it. The Hoovers, they didn’t do it.”

  “Sal, I know for sure the Hoovers didn’t do it. Funeral is a smart guy. He wouldn’t give up that tape if he had had me shot. That’s absurd, and Funeral knew I was joking. But why did Funeral give up the tape?”

  “I can’t say. You can guess, but I can’t say.”

  “Get-out-of-jail card for one of his homies? Got to be.”

  “I can’t say. So Johnny and I, the more we work the case, the more it seems that it is not gang related after all.”

  “You mean to tell me there are nongang members, regular people who don’t like me? Just keep me posted on anything. Sal, I am desperate at this point to find that shooter. It’s the key to my redemption. Maybe even to saving my job.”

  “Michael, we are on it, and I’ll keep you posted, but knowing how the chief feels about the Times, I have a feeling Johnny and I are not going to be on it exclusively like we were. We’re still on it, but I’m sure they will give us other assignments in light of the tape. I’ll keep you posted.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  I made my next call. This would be a tough one. I dialed Francesca’s cell. I can never tell with her how she will react to something. Sometimes she is so wrapped up in the restaurant that if I told her I had just been gored by a Cape buffalo she might say, “I’ll call you back later.” This time she made me laugh. She had heard the news.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you wanted to be shot? I would have gladly done it.”

  “Before this is all done, I might take you up on that offer.”

  “So, how are you holding up, Michael?”

  “I’m holding up, but I could be screwed at work. I’ll find out tomorrow.”

  “Why? Your editors believe that tape? Are they that stupid?”

  “It’s more than that. You know I don’t have a good relationship with some of the editors to begin with. Plus, Duke wrote those editorials blaming the LAPD. Anyway, we’ll see.”

  “You coming in tonight?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’ll see you at the house, though, for sure.”

  “Okay, I gotta go. Michael, I love you.”

  That nearly brought me to tears.

  Before I could decide whom to call next, I heard a tinny rendition of “When the Saints Come Marching In.” My cell phone. My cousin Greg.

  “Well, Michael, like I told you, we’re doing the story. We’ve been getting calls from all over. New York Times, the Post, WSJ, CNN, Today show, all the local TV stations. But, we knew that.”

  “Yeah, it’s a good story. I just wish I was the writer, not the subject.”

  “I know it, cuz. But,
I need to get something from you. Duke and Tinder and Doot, they are royally pissed. In a way, hate to say it, but I can’t blame them. They’re saying how bad you made the paper look.”

  “Am I guilty as charged? Don’t I get a trial? I was fucking joking!”

  “Slow down, man,” Greg said. “This isn’t the time for an attitude. You have to understand their view. We did all those editorials and now the LAPD comes up with this. People are really upset here. You’re not looking good right now. Just give me something now, and I’ll go back to them. I’m here at the paper. Morty is doing the story. He’s bummed that he has to do it, but that’s his job. You know that. Give me something.”

  “You think I’m gonna get fired?”

  “It’s a definite possibility,” Greg responded. “Wake up. If they perceive this hurts the paper, yes, I do think you might get fired. I hope not, but you need to know how serious this is. You do understand that? Right?”

  “Yeah, I do. I understand it’s serious. But, I didn’t know joking and bullshitting were firing offenses. Shit, fuck it. They’re making a bigger deal about me joking than me getting shot. I’m gonna find the motherfucker who shot me if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “Slow down. Come on. Give me something, cuz. What is your reaction to the tape? Start small like ‘It is me on the tape but—’”

  “Okay. Yes, that was my voice on the tape. I was interviewing this gang leader King Funeral from Hoover. No. No. No. Just put a gang leader. Don’t mention his name. Don’t. Or even the Hoovers. I don’t need that. Okay? I was trying to get him to open up. We were just bullshitting.”

  “Come on. I can’t put that.”

  “Just say we were joking. When I said that bit about how it would be good to get shot, I was joking. Talkin’ trash. There’s no way in hell I would have set my own shooting. That’s absurd. Come on, Greg, man, you know me better than that. I’m not going to trust anyone to shoot me ‘just right.’ I almost died. A couple inches here and there and I’m a dead guy or paralyzed. That’s ridiculous.”