by Dete Meserve
“Mistake,” Thomas said. “This is Isabella coffee grown on my private reserve in western Panama. The beans must be grown in a cold climate and carefully harvested, and my reserve is the only place on earth where they grow. This is our first harvest of the season and the beans were flown in yesterday. Few people get to experience such a rarity.”
His pretentious tone grated on me but I hid my irritation. “I’ll give it a try.”
The woman poured the coffee into a porcelain mug decorated with a silver floral pattern, set it in front of me, then placed a silver-rimmed coffee mug in front of Thomas.
With bony hands, he picked up the mug and closed his eyes, savoring the coffee’s taste. I took a sip and nodded my appreciation. It had a rich flavor, but if I hadn’t known it was flown in from a reserve he owned in western Panama, I might have mistaken it for an ordinary coffee I could buy at Peet’s.
“How can I help make the idea of a brief interview more comfortable for you?” I asked.
He set down his coffee mug and fixed an intense gaze on me. “You don’t get it, do you? The way this is playing out in the media, the very wealthy are tasteless or crass for spending our wealth on beautiful and expensive things. People are enjoying the fact that we’ve lost so much. Many people even have sympathy for the burglars. People are rooting for the burglars, Ms. Bradley. But it’s not a crime to be wealthy, so why are we being vilified for what we have?”
I thought about what I was going to say before replying. Really, I did. But clearly not enough. “It’s hard for people to have sympathy for anyone who is buying western Panama farms that grow rare coffee beans or who own paintings that cost more than most people will earn in a lifetime.”
I saw a vein bulge in his forehead. He looked like he was going to jump out of his chair and hit me. Instead, his words sliced through me. “I agreed to meet with you because Stephen asked me to. I’ve done that. Now it’s time for you to leave.”
He stood and left the room.
Chapter Eleven
Losing the interview was my fault. I knew better than to say anything remotely controversial to an interview subject. Every beginning journalism student knows that. But somehow, I’d let my dislike for Thomas Speyer get in the way.
But what troubled me most was that while I prided myself on being objective—I had even chided Susan about treating this like any other heist or burglary—clearly I was biased. I wasn’t objective.
I struggled with having sympathy for someone who lived as he did, a reported $15 million-a-year lifestyle that not only included the estate in Holmby Hills but also a Park Avenue apartment, a compound in Sun Valley, and a ranch in Connecticut. Worse, he was clearly out of touch, whining about his losses not because he would actually miss the stolen objects but because he was angry that someone had the audacity to steal them from him.
A crime had been committed, I reminded myself. No matter how many billions this man had or how pompous and self-absorbed he was, someone had committed grand larceny by stealing $5 million from him.
At least the meeting had not been a complete waste of time. Police were hiding evidence—a silver coin—found at the crime scene. Could this be the Hidden Mickey that Jake had alluded to? Were police holding back this key piece of evidence because they thought it would break the case wide open?
I was about to dial Hannah to talk through this development when Ben at the assignment desk called. “Kate, there’s been a drive-by shooting at Washington and Fourth Avenue in Arlington Heights. David would like you to go there to cover it?” It was no mistake that he phrased his request as a question, because I’m guessing even he didn’t understand why David was assigning me to cover a drive-by shooting on Saturday morning at ten thirty.
I don’t like working on drive-by shootings, and viewers don’t like watching them either. In LA alone, there are over three hundred drive-by’s every year and because they are so frequent, we rarely reported on them, unless the circumstances were unusual or the victim was very young.
“Dead teenager?”
“Yes. Sixteen years old. It happened this morning in broad daylight on a quiet residential street.”
“I have my hands full with the heist story. Can’t another reporter—”
“Conan and Russ are out sick. There’s some kind of flu going around. You want me to tell David you can’t do it?”
I thought about it for a second. It wasn’t worth an argument with David. Not after his lecture about the meeting with ANC and the tabloid photo of Eric and me. I sighed. “No, I’ll do it.”
“Good. Josh is already on his way and will meet you there.”
Less than eight miles separate the pricey estates of Holmby Hills and the densely populated Arlington Heights neighborhood just east of downtown LA, yet they are worlds apart. I left behind the exclusive enclave’s lush landscapes, towering trees, and panoramic views and drove into streets scarred by graffiti and gum-splotched sidewalks littered with trash. On one street corner, a purple grocery cart lay on its side, a dozen broken compact discs scattered around it. The parkways were peppered with discarded couches and old-style tube TV sets.
Within minutes of each other, Josh and I reached the scene, a quiet street one block from busy Washington Boulevard. Police had cordoned off the crime scene, the victim had already been removed, and officers were busy interviewing family members and witnesses. The crumpled car, which had slammed into a lamppost during the shooting, was still on the scene. Yellow caution tape snapped and fluttered in the breeze.
I looked at the car and then suddenly I was remembering the grainy photos and videotapes of my mother’s crash. There had been so many, taken from every angle, that when I closed my eyes, it was as if I could walk through the scene.
I tried to remember something about her that I hadn’t learned from the articles and news reports. Anything. The only memory I could conjure up was a brief glimpse of me sitting in a small kiddie pool in our backyard, my mother smiling as I held an inflatable beach ball. I couldn’t make out her face, only the shape of her, but I could hear the buoyant ring of her laugh and its bright trill ending.
Yet the memories that came through the clearest were not of events I’d actually experienced with my mother but of the videotaped news reports from the scene of the accident and the disturbing photographs of the crumpled car and the grieving family members.
Was Andrew Wright right about me? Had my mother’s tragic accident inspired my interest in breaking news? Was this why I had the “tragedy gene,” as Josh had called it?
“Ready?” Josh asked, bringing me back to the moment.
I pulled my eyes away from the wreckage and nodded.
Tim Reynolds, a reporter from the LA Times, filled us in on the facts. The victim was Michael Gutierrez, a high school football star at nearby Los Angeles Senior High. In the off-season, he worked at a grocery store and had recently been accepted at a nearby college, where he planned to study to be a paramedic. The son of El Salvadoran immigrants, he had no known gang affiliations. He was on his way to football practice when he was shot six times from a gray sedan, which then fled the scene.
It’s the kind of story where the newsroom expects you to interview the victim’s family or get them to make a statement. But when I spotted a woman who I suspected was Michael’s mother, her face ash white and stained with tears, I knew I couldn’t do it. Standing on each side of her, gripping her arms and practically holding her up, were two other young women. Their shock was palpable as they spoke to two police officers. And the sound the mother was making was something I will never forget. It was a haunting sound on the far side of grief—a lament so boundless it canceled out every other sound around us.
I looked away. A couple of other news stations were already working the story, interviewing witnesses and people on the scene who had known Michael. Instead, Josh and I recorded a stand-up down the street from the shooting. I’m usually one of the best reporters at covering tragedy, but tod
ay the right words totally escaped me and I had to do four retakes before I stopped stumbling through the report. What can you say about a story with such senseless violence and tragic loss?
I felt like the energy had been sucked out of me as I hurried back to my car after the report.
“You are with Channel Eleven?”
I turned to find a Latina woman with wavy black hair and big earrings running toward me. She wore slim-fitting jeans and a light blue chambray shirt with ruffles.
I handed her my business card. “I’m Kate Bradley.”
She smoothed her hair. “Blanca Rivera. I live near here.”
I braced myself for her complaints. Many residents near a crime scene don’t like news reporters standing on their lawns, taking up parking spots and blocking their streets and driveways. The list of grievances is often endless, and if it’s not handled properly, it can verge on violence. Once, when filing a report about a murder on a quiet residential street in Culver City, an angry neighbor stormed out of his home and knocked the microphone out of my hand.
“Every time I watch the Channel Eleven news, all I see is this story about the robberies—how the rich live like kings and how much they have,” she said softly. “But where is the story about the rest of us? The people who work two jobs but can barely feed our families? The people who struggle to keep a roof over our heads?”
Was she right? Were we focusing too much attention on the super rich?
I was about to respond when my cell phone rang and Hannah’s photo flashed on the screen.
“Thank you for sharing that with me. Would you excuse me a moment?” I asked, then answered the call.
“This is really strange,” Hannah said, without even saying hello. “We just interviewed two top FBI officials investigating the heists who say they can’t find any evidence of the millions of dollars in stolen luxury items. Not one item has shown up with any of the fencing rings or other networks that traffic in stolen goods. Nowhere.”
“How can that be?” I asked. “With a haul this big, there’d have to be some trace of it.”
“None. You should’ve seen FBI guys, Kate. They both were…rattled. They say this is proof we’re dealing with a well-financed group unlike anything they’ve seen before.”
“Keep tracking that. Let me know if anything ever shows up.”
I slid into the driver’s seat and started my car, trying to come up with a solid theory for why the stolen goods hadn’t surfaced. Was it simply because the thieves were highly sophisticated, as the FBI suspected? Or was it possible they had not yet sold the stolen goods—for reasons still unknown?
A mile later, traffic came to a standstill, and the streets were barricaded up ahead. My nerves tightened as I considered the possibility that there had been another shooting.
I called Ben at the news desk to see if he knew what was going on. He checked the scanners and online databases but couldn’t find any mention of an accident, a crime incident, or any event in the area.
“It doesn’t sound good,” he said. “I don’t think you should go in there alone.”
He was right. This area of LA was gang territory—prime turf for one of the world’s most brutal gangs, MS-13. The evidence of their dominance here could be seen in the large-scale graffiti scrawled in blue and black paint on the sidewalks and on retaining walls throughout the neighborhood.
I looked for a driveway to turn around, but then I felt foolish as I saw mothers pushing baby strollers and old men shuffling up the street. How dangerous could this be? I angled my car into a tight parking spot behind a rust-pocked pickup truck loaded with old TVs and scrap metal. I followed the people in the streets and on the sidewalks, all streaming in the direction of the barricaded street ahead. All around me, people spoke Spanish in a variety of accents. I heard words like bueno, meaning good, and comida, meaning food. Was it a street fair?
Thousands were lined up in about two dozen lines that lead to a high school football field. A band played mariachi music on one side of the street while farther ahead another group played some music I recognized from Top 40 radio.
I headed slowly to the front of the crowd, hoping it didn’t look like I was trying to cut in line. Dozens of tables had been set up, staffed by people wearing yellow T-shirts. Thousands of stacked cardboard boxes covered more than half the high school football field behind them.
I picked out a woman working behind the tables, her waist-length hair scraped back into a long ponytail. “I’m Kate Bradley from Channel Eleven. What’s going on here?”
“We’re handing out backpacks to ten thousand people today,” she said with delight in her voice.
I looked across the vast football field. If all those boxes were filled with backpacks, her estimate of ten thousand wasn’t far off. And ten thousand backpacks of food was a huge number even by LA standards.
“What for?”
She used both hands to wipe the sweat from her cheeks. “For the poor and the homeless. The people who don’t have jobs. Most of us are volunteers, and when we heard what they were doing, we all wanted to be part of this day.”
I scanned the crowd. One lady with wispy white hair held the backpack and dabbed tears from her eyes. A stooped man with a scruffy gray beard and a worn camouflage green cap patched with duct tape slung the backpack on his shoulder and grinned. A little boy in a striped red T-shirt, his two front teeth missing, did a kind of victory dance with the backpack, melting my heart with his over-the-top excitement. I was suddenly filled with awe, pure and unexpected. What I saw before me was an example of everything that was right and good in the world.
I felt like a desert flower in rain, soaking up the delight of the people around me. What was in these backpacks that was bringing such joy?
“Who’s responsible for all this?” I asked.
“No one knows,” the ponytail lady said. “We’re told the donor wants to be anonymous.”
I peered inside one of the backpacks. It was large—the kind a college student might carry. Inside there were about twenty-five food items: pasta, cans of soup, bottled water, cereal bars, granola bars, ready-made tuna salad, crackers, grape jelly, peanut butter, and small boxes of cereal.
I walked over to a woman who was looking through her backpack’s contents. She was in her early seventies with dark hair streaked with gray and skin freckled from a lifetime spent in the sun.
“How do you get a backpack?”
She looked at me as though I might take it from her. “Well, you sign up with the Food Bank.”
“Anyone can do it?”
Her eyes fell on my designer jacket. “You won’t qualify. You have to earn very little or be very sick or have a serious disability. It’s very hard to get on the list.”
I shook my head. “I’m not looking to get one. I’m a reporter with Channel Eleven. How did you hear about this event?”
“I received a letter from the Food Bank saying that I qualified. My husband passed away last year and I have a heart condition. The medicine takes most of what I get from Social Security. For the next six months, I can come here every Saturday and refill this backpack. I can eat.”
“This is a real lifeline for you then.”
She looked away. When she finally spoke, her voice shook. “It’s everything.”
This was exactly the kind of story I rarely got to cover. It was a story without victims, trauma, or disaster—ten thousand needy people receiving a free backpack of food from an anonymous donor. Every week.
I watched as a young boy wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt looked through the backpack, pulling some of the items out and showing them to his weary mother, who was struggling to strap another child into a stroller. Then he reached into the bottom of the backpack and brought out something shiny and small and showed it to her. I watched her inspect it for a moment, turning it over in her hand, clearly puzzled.
Curious as to what it was, I approached them.
“I’m Kate
Bradley with Channel Eleven. May I talk to you about what you received in the backpack?”
She looked at me, a panicked expression on her face. “We would not like to be on the news.”
“This won’t be on the news,” I said carefully. “I’ve noticed that in addition to food, your son pulled something…else from the backpack.”
She started stuffing the items back in the backpack.
“May I see what it is?” I asked.
She looked at me for a moment as if deciding what to do. Then she opened her hand and showed me the shiny object her son had found.
It was a silver coin, triangular in shape and carrying the silhouette of a man standing in the fork of a tree, about to shoot a bow and arrow. The man looked like one of the Greek gods, Apollo or Orion, both of whom sported bows and arrows in many artworks. But the shape of the hat on his head made him look more like Robin Hood. Engraved on the other side was a phrase in another language. I recognized the Cyrillic alphabet from the reversed letter R. Russian, perhaps?
“May I offer you some money for it?” I asked, pulling a twenty from my purse.
The woman glanced at the twenty-dollar bill, then at me. I’m sure she thought I was trying to scam her.
“No, sorry.” She took the coin from me, grabbed her son’s hand, and hurried away.
It took me five attempts before I could get anyone to sell me one of the silver coins, but I finally got one from a woman with parchment white skin who told me she needed cash for medicine more than she needed a “pretty coin.”
I turned the coin over in my hand. There was no doubt that the image was of Robin Hood.
Chapter Twelve
Everyone knows the story of Robin Hood. In one form or another—books, movies, cartoons—the story has been told for hundreds of years, maybe longer. But as the story has been transmitted and transformed, one aspect remains constant: Robin Hood steals from the rich and gives to the poor.
My mind was whirring. Thomas Speyer said that police had found something at the crime scene that they had refused to show him. A silver coin. Could the people behind the heists be the same people behind this event that was bringing food to ten thousand people?