L.A. Blues

by Maxine Thompson

  Next, I went back to the office and found the field where the cheerleaders were practicing. Tai was one of the few petite cheerleaders on the team. Many of the girls are what they call “thick” now a days.

  “Tai, do you know if Trayvon had any enemies?”

  She started crying, large tears glazing her eyes and rolling down her nut brown cheeks. “No. Everyone loved Tray. He was good people. We’d plan to go to college together like Tre and Brandi in the movie, ‘Boys in the Hood.’ We were gonna get married after we finished school.”

  “Okay, Tai. Don’t cry. We’re going to get to the bottom of this. We’re going to get justice.”

  I really wasn’t so sure of myself. I knew L.A.P.D. had files and files of cold cases where murders had never been solved.

  The more time elapsed after the murder, the less chance of catching the murderer.

  I felt like Delonte and Tai knew more than they were telling me, but I couldn’t get it out of them.

  Anyhow, I was going to give this investigation my all. I had to find out who killed my nephew, if at all possible.

  I just had no idea where to start. What was I going to do?

  16

  “Why don’t you guys all go to the bereavement meeting?” Joyce, who continued to be my sponsor, suggests when I tell her the aftermath of Trayvon’s death. “Everyone has to grieve in his or her own way, but a bereavement service will help you have a sense of closure that a funeral doesn’t always provide.”

  Since I was kind of at a stand still as to what to do about Trayvon because I was still depressed, I agreed with Joyce. I invited Chica, Shirley and the girls to a bereavement group, which I personally needed for myself for my grief over both Trayvon and Okamoto. I felt this would help with my nagging thirst for another drink too.

  Meantime, Chica’s and Riley’s wedding was postponed because she was too distraught and grief-stricken. Truthfully, I thought that was for the best. It was just too soon to be celebrating a new life together.

  Since Haviland moved in my apartment and she was only supposed to be with me a month, I asked her to go to the bereavement service with us. I didn’t trust her to be going through my things when I was not there. Basically, she was only in my apartment when I was there at night, because she spent her days going on auditions for parts on TV or any movies she hoped she could land. This evening she was tired because she’d spent her entire day trying to get a role in a Lifetime made for TV movie about a character she said had the big C—cancer.

  According to Haviland, she’d barely gotten past page one when the casting director called “Next!” In her usual dramatic fashion, Haviland rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. She said she wanted to tell the casting director, “My dear, I don’t give a damn,” when she didn’t get the part, but instead, she held her head up with dignity and marched out.

  “Come on and ride with me. This will be good for you,” I said. She looked happy to be included.

  Haviland had her own struggles. She was trying to stay clean and get back into ‘the business’ as she called show business, which was almost an oxymoron, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt for her to go to the meeting with us. She could grieve her old life as an A-list actress, or even the fact her birth mother died from AIDS a month after their reunion. She and her adoptive mother were still estranged, so she needed a family support system too. I guess life was just a series of losses.

  Riley accompanied Chica, and they met us at the service. The bereavement meeting took place in Torrance at an office building near Vermont. They had all types of people, from all races and creeds, who were there grieving. You could almost feel the pain in the room, the grief was so palpable.

  The room was decorated with white candles, crepe paper, and live calla lilies. A guitar player was present and he sang in a folksy sounding way and reminded me of the old Peter, Paul, and Mary group. My mind hushed as I took in the candlelight service. The moderator, Miss Lyons, stood up and spoke at the podium.

  “Grief knows no season. It is a natural reaction to losing a loved one. You’re all here because you want to get help, and know that what you are going through is normal—under the circumstances.”

  I gazed around the room. All types of people were there grieving. Young, old, and in between. One by one, people got up and gave their testimonies. Afterwards, they lit a candle in the person’s memory.

  An older Caucasian man, who said he’d been married sixty-seven years, broke down and bawled like a baby during his testimony over his recently departed spouse. I guess that was a long time to have been married—which I wouldn’t know since I hadn’t made it past the first year.

  A stoic Jamaican woman, whose son died from AIDS at thirty-five, shared her story—how they prepared for his death for fifteen years, and how she, as a nurse, was able to provide hospice for her dying son.

  A widowed Latino mother, along with her two sons, age ten, and eleven, stood up. She’d lost her husband and their father to pancreatic cancer earlier in the year. She related how she and her two sons visited his grave and took the son’s first A report cards since their father’s death.

  One by one, everyone, except Chica and me, got up and talked about Trayvon.

  Shirley spoke first. “To lose a child before yourself is not only out the natural order of life, it is one of the deepest sorrows you can ever know.

  “Although I didn’t carry Trayvon under my heart, I’ve carried him in my heart since he was born. Trayvon, you’ll always live in our hearts. Baby, we love you.”

  Brooklyn lit her candle, and spoke in a lisp. “I miss you, Trayvon, but I’ll always love you. I’m keeping your basketball until I get to Heaven.”

  Haviland got up and gave her speech. “Jill, I never knew you other than when you carried me under your heart. I guess I never forgot you. I didn’t get to know you before you died. I’ll miss you.” She lit her candle.

  On the program we followed, poems were read and old songs accompanied by a guitar.

  But what moved me the most was a short piece of prose in the program called, The Grief Within:

  The grief within a person has its own heartbeat, its own life, its own song. Part of a person wants to fight the manifestations of grief. Yes, as a person surrenders to the song, they learn to listen deep within themselves. Let the life of this journey be just what it is—confusing, complicated, and at times overwhelming. A person must keep opening and changing through it all until they become the unique person who has transcended the pain and discovered self-compassion, a vulnerable yet grounded self who chooses to live again. Our sorrow reminds us that life is not to avoid pain and that to love is to accept the risk of hurting.

  We were never promised joy without pain, sun without rain or roses without thorns. May we gain wisdom through our suffering, learn to have patience and take the time to work through our feelings. May we gain understanding and be in touch with the inner resources hidden within us. May we be guided through the future by gently transforming our grief into compassion, our hurts into new hope for ourselves and others.–Author Unknown

  Nancy Vann’s quote was equally inspiring:

  “If you truly understand that we are only here for a short time, we will tend to waste less time on nonsense in order to pursue the quality of life you were put here to have.”

  Besides Chica, I was the only one who didn’t get up and testify. “I’m too overcome,” I said, throwing my hand up to pass.

  Chica couldn’t talk; she was so broken up. I couldn’t talk because I didn’t want to go back to that space where I first was when Trayvon was murdered.

  I guess from habit, I kept my feelings bottled inside. I was still not telling the full truth. How did you go on when you felt responsible for someone’s death? Even worse, now I was responsible for two deaths: my father’s and Okamoto’s. How do you live with the guilt?

  Slowly, I could feel some of the guilt easing. Maybe I could not change what happened, but I could change how I felt about my father’s and Ok
amoto’s deaths. I was going to try to release my guilt about their deaths. In the case of Trayvon, I was going to have to put my grief aside so I could make progress with his murder investigation. And most of all, I’d have to make peace with my past.

  Just coming here was helpful for me. After the ceremony, I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders. I noticed, as we left the center, we were all feeling better. Everyone, except me, had wept. They’d all talked about Trayvon, and had spoken about happier times. We all finally realized he would live on in our memory, and although the hurting hadn’t stopped, I think the healing had begun.

  After the meeting, Chica turned to me. “Shirley told me that you’re trying to find Trayvon’s murderer.”

  I nodded.

  “Any new information?”

  “Not yet. But I’m beginning to get some leads.” I put my arms around Chica. “Don’t worry. We’ll find that bastard.”

  We walked out to the parking lot in much better spirits. Nightfall had arrived while we were in the building, but the parking lot was well lit. Just as I walked up to my car, I noticed shards of glass splattered on the ground.

  “Oh, my God!” My front windows were smashed out. “What now?”

  Once I climbed inside my car, I found a note using pasted on letters from a magazine on my dashboard. “Next time, we won’t miss. You’re next, bitch.”

  17

  “Who do you think would do something like this, Z?” Haviland asked, after we called the Torrance P.D., who came out, and took a police report. I hid the death threat note in my purse, and just reported the vandalism.

  “I don’t know.” But inside, I was perturbed. “What did they mean by next time we won’t miss?” Was this a random act of violence? Or was there actually someone after me? And did they mean next after Trayvon? Who out in Torrance would know about Trayvon’s murder? Was someone following me? Who could have sent me the death threat?

  That night after we returned home, I went to bed, tossing and turning. I was glad I had car insurance to take care of the damage, but that’s not what was bothering me.

  Once again, I had my recurring nightmare about my father, only this time my father was alive. “The answer is inside you, little girl,” he said to me. It was as if I was still a little girl. I was so happy and I reached out. “Daddy, I’m so glad you’re back.”

  Just as I reached out my hand to him, I woke up from my dream, disappointed. I tried to figure out the meaning of my dream, but I couldn’t. I went back to sleep.

  I woke up with a new resolve in my spirit. I was going to have to start somewhere. I combed the newspapers to see if I could find a pattern of retaliation killings which began happening since Trayvon’s murder, but I couldn’t tell. This past weekend, there had been several types of homicides or drive-bys throughout the county, which was, sad to say, almost a norm for L.A. The media reported them, if they reported them at all, as random homicides, albeit some were gang-related. I thought about contacting the police. Nah, that would be too embarrassing. I was still ashamed about getting fired. I never wanted to see anyone from the police again—unless it was Romero. There was something about him that kept staying on my mind.

  I put in a call to Romero’s office line, but I got his answering machine. I left a message. “Romero, it’s Z.” I hesitated, as I didn’t want to leave too much information on the business line’s phone. “Call me. It’s important.”

  I decided to call F-Loc again. “What it do?” he answered this time.

  “F-Loc, Z here.”

  “Wait a minute, shorty. I understand you the law. I ain’t no snitch nigga now.”

  “Confidential Informant,” I corrected him “Besides, I haven’t been with the force for over a year so this does not qualify you as a snitch. All this is off the record. I’m doing this as family. Trayvon was my nephew.”

  F-Loc hesitated for a moment, then he spoke up with feeling. “You know we all cared about young blood out here, and we wanted to see him make something of himself. We want some street justice too.”

  “Can we meet and talk?”

  “Mickey D’s on La Brea and Rodeo, and I don’t mean the white Rodeo. Tomorrow.” He clicked his phone shut.

  F-Loc was referring to a little local humor where Black people called Martin Luther King Boulevard. West of the Jungle, Ro—de—o and the white people called Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, “Ro-day-oh.”

  The next day, I met F Loc at a MacDonald’s near the corner of Rodeo and La Brea.

  F-Loc had two goons with him who frisked me for a wire, and holding my hands up high, I submitted to their search with a nod of head, like “Cool.”

  “She cool, C-Note,” one of the goons said, when he finished scouring me.

  F-Loc nodded at his flunkies. “Y’all can wait outside.”

  I sat down next to him in a booth across from him. I always liked to sit with my eyes facing the front door—a habit from being an officer. I was constantly looking over my shoulder, but I got right to the point. “Have you heard anything about Trayvon’s murder on the street?”

  “Yeah, they say two Mexicans just came up and blasted that civilian when he got off the bus at Crenshaw and MLK. This looks like a case of wrong place at the wrong time. But there’s something else.”

  “What?” I leaned forward. An icy thunderbolt zigzagged up my back. “What else have you heard?”

  “Yeah, they say some Crips stole a large quantity of drugs from a large cartel of the Mexican Mafia. Since then, they’ve put out random hits on black civilians to send out a message.”

  I froze. This was the second time I’d heard that. I remembered how Trayvon had come to me, before he died, saying he was afraid to go to school. Could the rumor of the ordered hits be behind Trayvon’s murder? I needed to find out if I could find that connection.

  “Huh?”

  “It’s not just the riots going on in the prison between black and brown. In different Mexican neighborhoods, they want to run blacks out. ‘Ethnic cleansing.’ Like that Cheryl Green case in Harbor City.”

  I murmured, “Mmmm.”

  “Something else, Z. Totally unrelated.”

  “Some strange shit went down the night of the Collin’s shooting of that cop. You need to go see Pookie.”

  “Who’s Pookie?”

  “Larry Collins—the one who supposedly shot your partna.”

  I thought back to that crazy night—“Unca Pookie” as the little boy Shirrell had called the suspect, Lawrence Collins. I’d thought that was a done deal—a closed case. But was it?

  “What do you mean supposedly?”

  Something hit me in my gut. What was going on? “Do you know where he’s at?”

  “He still ain’t gone to trial yet. He keeps getting continuances so he’s probably still in County.”

  “You got anything else? You know, I notice there’s been a lot of Latinos getting killed over the weekends. ”

  F-Loc scratched his imaginary beard, and peered over his sunglasses, which meant he was through talking for the day. He wouldn’t say another word.

  So, what if these recent Latino killings hadn’t been random? Were these retaliation killings?

  F-Loc cleared his throat. “Maybe you need to see your brother and find out what’s going on out here. It’s some funky shit going down. That’s all I got to say.”

  “I haven’t been in touch with Mayhem for years.”

  For years, I’d heard Mayhem was a Kingpin in the drug world as well as had his Crips affiliation. When I was a cop, occasionally, I’d checked his rap sheet. It was always filled with RICO charges and suspected murder allegations, but many of these charges wound up being dropped because the witnesses would suddenly mysteriously disappear.

  “He’s in Chino now, and I heard he might be getting out in a minute, I believe. It’s something about some shit that goes all the way up to the top in high places and you need to see about it, y’understand? Mayhem might be able to tell you or send you to someone. I think it has
to do with your partner’s murder.”

  My heart flip flopped. I could feel my pulse speed up. I tried to remember that night, but so much had been lost and so many brain cells killed when I went on my binge, I just didn’t know anything. What was there I needed to know? What was going on? My guts started flip flopping and I remembered Daddy Chill’s words. “Trust your guts.”

  Something was going on, but what was it?

  18

  My cell phone rang and as if I’d called him onto my radar, it was Romero. “I got your call,” he said. “What is it?”

  “Can I meet you at Starbucks in Ladera Heights?” I asked since that was near Baldwin Hills.

  “Sure. I’m off today.” I heard Romero sneeze on the other end of the phone.

  “Bless you.”

  “Thanks! It’s going to take a minute to get there.”

  “ Where do you live?”

  “Silver Lake.”

  I don’t know why I got so excited, but I took my time picking out my best pair of silk slacks, a vintage fitted black jacket, and a nice camisole with care. I wore fitted boots that came up to my knees and fold down. I ran my fingers through my hair, and I studied myself in the mirror.

  I was still looking sad, but my skin looked better since I stopped drinking. In fact, my eyes were clearer than ever. No more bloodshot eyes. No more hangovers. I sure didn’t miss those. I thought about a drink, but this time, I didn’t have the same thirst for it. One day at a time.

  Although Romero and I were not calling this a date—he realized I was still in mourning—it seemed like one in a crazy way. I had mixed feelings. I was wondering why I was so happy to see this guy, but on the other hand, now I could understand why some of the family members of murdered victims I met while I was a cop used to grieve so long. Even as a child, I grieved my father’s death for many years. In fact, I still grieved for him.