by Scott Frank
Gordy just shrugged. Maybe. Maybe not.
“You don’t understand.” Leila keeping her voice low for maximum effect. “This city—the whole damn country—is just one match strike away from burning down. Ferguson and Baltimore were just the beginning. We got off light out here.” And then, “So far.”
Evan asked, “You saying this could lead to riots?”
“We’re due. You all want one?” She smiled at the mayor. “With your name on it this time?”
Miguel Santiago. Miguel Santiago. Miguel Santiago…
“I’ve lived with these young men.” Leila got up now and started pacing. “These neighborhoods, they’ve all been marginalized by the cartels.”
“Marginalized?” Gordy said. “They’re criminals, for Christ’s sake!”
“They have nothing,” Leila said, looking like she might actually cry. “The cartels control the drugs coming in from Mexico, and they won’t sell to the black gangs.”
“I’m confused,” the mayor said. “Am I supposed to feel sorry for them because they’re not selling drugs anymore?”
Leila stood by the window, the morning light hitting her on one side, making her look more like a fashion model from Town & Country than an academic.
“I’m merely telling that there’s anger in the black community. What you do or don’t do with that information is up to you.”
She then turned and looked out at the city, ten a.m. and the sky already the color of butter, and went on: “The pain, the heartbreak, and the true injustice in the black community are not gone simply because they’ve been forced into silence.”
“They’re not silent,” Gordy said. “They’re all of them rapping about it.”
She ignored him. “If anything it’s getting worse. With fewer jobs, more cuts to social services, more imbalance in the economy.”
The mayor looked at Evan Crisp. The young advisor was busy writing down her every word, so it was hard for the mayor to tell whether or not he was buying any of this.
“There used to be food stamps, social workers, free after-school programs—these things were cut during the last budget crisis. None of them have been replaced.”
Joy said, “The libraries are back up to seven days a week.”
Leila looked at her and smiled. “Yes, Joy, that’s true. And I’m sure the black community is jumping in the air about that and the new film incentives Miguel brought back to the city.”
Joy refused to let sarcasm keep her from her appointed rounds. “I’m just saying that it’s not all as bleak as you make it.”
“It’s worse,” Leila said, then looked at the mayor. “Miguel, it’s the same old story. The only way to break out of the cycle for young men like the ones in that video is to work as a drug dealer for the Mexicans. But everyone on the street knows that in the end, you’d just have a job with rules made by Mexicans.”
The mayor couldn’t decide how he felt about her use of the word “Mexican.”
“It’s depressing,” Leila went on. “The opposite of righting the wrongs of slavery—the black dealers just have a new owner now, because the people are slaves to their addictions and to the dealers that feed them.”
She sat back and crossed her long legs and looked at each of them, one at a time. Trying to get a read on her performance. One of those types, the mayor thought, who needs to feel loved by the people who hate her the most. Or at the very least, loved by the people who feel that she’s full of shit.
Or was that him?
Fuck.
That was him.
When Leila looked at Evan Crisp, he made a big show of looking at his watch. The mayor could have kissed him.
“Except,” Evan was now saying, “that gang crime has actually gone down since the black gangs lost the drug trade. The problem, yet again, solved by money. Just not ours.” He smiled, not daring an outright laugh, though the irony was pretty fucking funny if you thought about it.
Leila didn’t say a word. Just kept looking at Evan. Hoping, the mayor thought, that if she looked long enough, the guy might actually dissolve.
Evan kept smiling. “But I take your point. And that’s certainly all worth discussing.”
With Evan around, the mayor didn’t have to speak much. Gave him time to think. And right now he was thinking that the fucking quake a week earlier wasn’t bad enough. Now this had to happen. The election just a few months away and his opponent gets his head juiced by a street gang, and in North Hollywood of all fucking places.
The truth was, Mayor Miguel Santiago, the Hispanic mayor, was not well liked by the Hispanic community in L.A.
The Hispanic community hated the drug dealers back home in Mexico. They cut off their relatives’ heads and used them as hood ornaments. And here was the guy running against Miguel Santiago, Frank Peres, a respected and well-known Hispanic businessman, accusing Santiago of taking money from those same decapitating assholes.
And then, a few short weeks later, Peres gets himself dead on the street. By a black street gang. The mayor had to admit that if he were a voting civilian, he’d be looking hard at the mayor, too.
“What concerns me,” Joy was now saying, “is how this makes you look on crime.”
The mayor sat up. “How is this my fault?”
“It’s your city. And apparently you can’t control it enough to prevent a mayoral candidate from getting executed.”
“Jesus, Joy.”
“That’s not me talking, of course. That’s what they’re saying. That your opponent got executed on your watch.”
“Please, for the love of God, stop using that word. The man was murdered.”
“I think Joy’s right,” Evan Crisp said as he took what seemed like the better part of a week to carefully cap his pen and replace it in his pocket. “Frank Peres was running an anti-gang campaign.”
“He was talking about his own neighborhood,” Gordy said. “And those aren’t black kids over there.”
“They sure as shit looked black to me,” Evan said.
“An anomaly. The problem in Peres’s neighborhood is brown, not black.”
“Try parsing that one for the public.”
Even the mayor had to ask, “You really believe that the public is going to think a street gang assassinated a mayoral candidate?”
“They already do,” Evan said. “Go online.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Frank Peres had the city’s attention. He was tough. An ex-cop. He wanted to take out the cartels.”
Joy asked, “So why wasn’t it a Mexican gang that shot him?”
“Because the cartels are smarter than that.”
“You don’t really think that that,” the mayor said pointing to the frozen image on the laptop, “is anything other than a straight-up street crime?”
“Of course, that’s all it is,” Evan said. “But all of us in this room have enough experience to know that if we don’t do something, the public might be persuaded to believe it’s something else.”
“What do we do?”
“I’ll tell you what you don’t do,” Leila said. “You don’t make it political.”
But no one was listening to her. They were all looking at Evan, who now sat back and crossed his legs.
“You have to be tough, too. Like Frank Peres.”
Leila said, “Daryl Gates was tough.”
Evan kept his focus on Miguel. “You have to show that you’re not corrupt and that you’ll stop at nothing to find those who did this. That you’re tough on the gangs. That you will tolerate no one and no policy that isn’t as tough as you are. You have to be That Guy.”
Tough on the gangs. Jesus. No wonder Leila hated everyone in the room.
Joy had persuaded the mayor to hire Leila by telling him Leila would interface with DCFS, make it look like the mayor was taking a new approach to gangs, one that was more child-centered by pretending to work within the labyrinth that was Children and Family Services. Joy convinced the mayor that this would get peop
le off his back so that he could go back to doing what L.A. mayors do—fighting to get more business back to L.A., giving handjobs to the big Democratic donors, and yeah, working for more film incentives. The truth was, and everyone in this room knew it, the mayor hadn’t really paid all that much attention to gangs.
So it was all the more amazing when he said “I’m already That Guy” with any kind of straight face.
“You are,” Evan said. “But she has to go.”
Joy and Leila both looked at him.
It was Joy who asked first, “She?”
“Kelly Maguire,” Evan said, knowing he’d just tortured the two women for no reason, but now looking at Gordy. “One of the very good people you have working on this.”
“You want me to pull Kelly Maguire?”
“Yes. She’s wrong for this one.”
“Are you stoned? She’s perfect for this one.”
“She’s a lightning rod. Especially for this one.”
“Son, maybe you haven’t noticed, but out that window we’re dealing with a goatfuck of monumental proportions. With the quake and all the assorted and sundry bullshit that came with it, I can’t afford to lose even one cop right now. I mean, Jesus Marvin Christ, do you have any idea how many homicides are already getting back-burnered because of it?”
“You don’t have to fire her,” Evan said. “Just pull her from this case, put her on something else.”
The chief shook his head. “She knows the gangs. She knows the area. I say let her run.”
“She’s a racist.”
“She told the truth.”
That got Leila looking at him. “I beg your pardon, Chief?” she said. “That woman publicly stated that the only way to cure the gang cancer in L.A. was to eradicate it, to either lock them up or line them up.”
“She didn’t publicly say anything. Someone recorded her conversation and put it on YouTube.”
“Still—”
“She said a lot of stupid shit. But Kelly Maguire’s not a racist. Not by a long shot. Good God, she’s fucking Nelson Mandela compared to some of the Aryan assholes we got badged up.”
A few minutes later, with everyone sufficiently pissed off at each other, the room cleared out, leaving the mayor alone with Evan.
They sat there silently for a moment, Evan scribbling on his pad, the mayor staring off into space, thinking about a drink he’d had with Kelly Maguire a million years ago. He thought they had gotten along pretty well. The mayor had really liked her, had meant to ask her out again, but, for some reason, never did. He’d forgotten all about her until a few months back when she blew up and her name was suddenly everywhere.
Talk about dodging a fucking bullet.
“What are you thinking about?” Evan asked, not bothering to look up from his scribbling.
“Gun control.”
“What about it?”
The mayor shrugged. “Maybe this is a good time to bring it up.”
“Gun control isn’t the problem, not here anyway. Money is.”
“Now you sound like Leila.”
“She’s not wrong. All of those services she mentioned were cut.”
“So we talk about getting them back.”
Evan didn’t answer, kept scribbling. The mayor looked at the frozen image on the laptop, Frank Peres lying there in a puddle of himself, and took a deep breath and shook his head. “Jesus,” he said. “What the fuck happened?”
“Your opponent was shot and killed for one thing.”
“Are you trying to be funny?”
“I’m trying to be honest,” he said, finally looking up from his notepad. “This is an opportunity.”
“You’re not going to give me one of those God-closes-a-door-somewhere-he-opens-a-window speeches, are you? Because that kind of liquid shit doesn’t really work with me.”
“This time, God knocked down every cell tower but three up on Mount Wilson. Let’s start there.”
“Okay.”
“The only people with consistent cell service are people with satellite phones.”
“So?”
“Rich people.”
“And drug dealers.”
“Let’s talk about gas and electricity.”
“Okay,” the mayor said. “Let’s.”
“The power, almost a week later, is out all over, from Compton to Reseda. But I see lights on in Brentwood and Bel Air.”
“They never lost power in those neighborhoods.”
“Doesn’t matter. If I see it, other people can see it.”
“You’re talking about perception.”
“How about this,” Evan said. “How about you be the guy who turns on the power in the shittiest neighborhoods.”
“I thought I was the guy who was tough on crime, et cetera.”
“You can be both guys.”
“Warren Russ over at DWP tells me that we don’t have the juice to light up those neighborhoods. Not right now.”
“You do if you turn the power off in Brentwood and Bel Air.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?”
Evan just looked back at him.
“We’re talking about pissing off some big donors.”
“Yes, Eli Broad will be upset for sure, but he’s not going to run screaming out of his house, drive down the hill, and light Neiman Marcus on fire.”
“No. I don’t suppose that he would.”
“On their best days,” Evan said, “the poor have their Internet and their TV to soothe them. Turn those things off and they get antsy, go outside, start breaking windows.”
“God, I would have paid good money to have heard you say something like that to Leila a few minutes ago.”
“Leila’s right about something else.” Evan tapped the computer screen with a fingernail. “All it’s going to take is one incident to start a new fire.” He then turned to the mayor and said, “That cannot happen.”
The mayor thought about it a moment, then said, “So I turn on the power. I bounce Kelly Maguire from the case. What else?”
“Go visit this—” He went a few pages back in his notes. “Roy Cooper.” Then looking up again. “Go visit him in the hospital. As soon as you can.”
“What for?”
“Shake his hand. Tell him the city’s picking up all his medical expenses. He’s a hero. Guy tried to step in and do the right thing. As opposed to the selfish cretin in the window who stood up there in his underwear filming it.”
Evan put down the notebook, leaned across the desk.
“This city, in the aftermath of the largest earthquake in its history, needs more Roy Coopers. No—we all need to be Roy Cooper. We all need to be there for the people we don’t even know, but share our city with.”
The mayor shook his head and smiled for the first time all morning. “Tell me again,” he said. “Why the fuck do I need Joy Levine when I have you?”
“Why the fuck indeed.”
Kelly Maguire was pissed off. It had taken nearly an hour and a half on a buckled and clogged 405 to get from her apartment in Marina del Rey to Covenant House in Hollywood only to be told that Carmen Suarez wasn’t there, hadn’t been seen since the quake. It was then another forty-five minutes to go a mere eight blocks to My Friend’s Place and still no Carmen.
The quake had fucked up an already fucked-up traffic system. Most of the major freeways had at least one lane closed, while some had full-on detours around sections that had collapsed or were in danger of collapsing. The surface streets were no better. Many, like Hollywood Boulevard, had sinkholes, some half a block wide, while still more were flooded from all of the broken water mains. A three-block stretch of Sunset Boulevard, from Argyle to Ivar, near the Cinerama Dome, was still, a week later, under four feet of water.
Not only the traffic, but the shit cell service was also pissing her off. During the drive, Kelly had a broken conversation with Rudy Bell that she was still trying to process.
She had answered her phone and Rudy jumped right in, knowing
they wouldn’t have long. “Let’s talk about your guy at the hospital.”
“What about him?”
“I ran him.”
“What possessed you?”
“I was sitting here waiting for Mike to get out of the john, thought I’d pitch in and take that one off your to-do list.”
“You don’t like him.”
“He doesn’t fit with the neighborhood.”
“You’ve always been a suspicious fuck.”
“I know, it’s weird for a cop. Especially being partnered with someone like you, sees only sunshine.”
“We’re not partners.”
“Not at the moment.”
“Now who’s seeing sunshine?”
“Kelly, listen to me—”
Kelly was grateful they got cut off. Not in the mood for another Rudy play for love disguised as a pep talk. He called back and this time she was the one who jumped right in.
“So you ran my guy.”
“He’s not in the system.”
“He doesn’t have a record.”
“He doesn’t have anything. No fixed address. No Social. He’s nowhere. Dude’s fucking light as air.”
“He gave me an address in Queens.”
“It’s a P.O. box.”
“That new data center got pretty rattled in the quake. Maybe it’s a computer thing.”
“All that information’s in the cloud now.”
“What do you mean?”
“You think it’s all stored in a building? You’re adorable. Listen. Something’s wrong. The guy has a name, a post office box, and that’s it. It’s like he doesn’t exist.”
“He exists.”
“But he doesn’t live, know what I mean? Or he lives off the grid.”
“He lives in Queens.”
“Well, he’s left the footprint of a gnat.”
Kelly thought about Roy Cooper lying there on the ground, holding her hand. The man lying in bed watching the baseball game, infatuated with some pitcher. She said, “I think something’s wrong with him. Like he’s simple or something. I was gonna call his employer.”
“Gold Shield Security. I called them.”
“And?”
“Got a machine. Leave your name and number and we’ll get back to you for all your security needs.”