Los Angeles Stories

by Ry Cooder

  We started going out together on my off­ nights — movies, bars, dancing now and then. Inez liked to go out and drink, and she liked to talk. We’d get in a place and sit down and she’d start talking about her job at Grayson’s. She was really hipped on the subject. One night, after we’d been seeing each other for about a month, she told me a story.

  “See, Ed, the higher ­up in floors you go, the more things cost. All the cheap stuff, like costume jewelry and makeup, is on the street level. Second floor is sportswear, like blouses and handbags. That’s my floor. Third floor is women’s suits and shoes and better accessories. But the fourth floor is the good stuff — fur coats and real jewels and watches, and that. There’s a floorwalker on each floor to keep an eye on things, but there’s two floorwalkers on the fourth. They lock everything up at the end of the day and unlock it in the morning. Everything on the fourth has a serial number and a catalog number. They watch you like a hawk up there.”

  “That’s very interesting, Inez. You know a lot about it.”

  “You bet I do, I made a study of it.”

  “Why?”

  “Look, Ed, you and I are getting along pretty good, wouldn’t you say? So, you won’t be surprised if I tell you that I got a system figured out to make some pretty good money.”

  “Don’t they pay you well enough?”

  “Are you kidding? A salesgirl doesn’t make enough to live on and never will. I want things, Ed. Nice things like they got up on the fourth. Don’t you want me to have nice things? Don’t you want me to be happy?”

  “Well, sure I do, but what can I do about it? You know I make a motorman’s wage. It’s nothing fancy. If I didn’t live with Mom, I couldn’t even afford a little house like we have.”

  “That’s just what I’m talking about, Ed. If you want things like I do, then if you help me, we can get the things we both want. I think you like me just that much, don’t you Ed?”

  “Maybe you had better tell me what you want to do, if we’re going to do something together.”

  Inez laid it all out for me that night. She had gotten started by stealing blouses, one at a time. The trick was to take them right after an inventory of stock was done. Every salesgirl was afraid of the inventory, afraid to get blamed if something was wrong. But there was always what they called “shrinkage.” The inventory, which was supposed to account for stock and sales receipts and actual cash, never came out quite right, so they called the discrepancy a “shrinkage” and wrote it off. The trick was to know how much shrinkage they would accept. If it was more than usual in some department, they got suspicious. Inez knew where shrinkage was typical and where it wasn’t. Apparently, shoes was a shrinkage-­free department; also, the luxury goods on the fourth floor. Shrinkage was not acceptable up there.

  I listened. Inez looked at me to see how I was reacting so far. “So, you take a blouse here and there,” I said.

  “We all take little things. I can’t afford clothes from that store, even with the employee discount.”

  “So, what’s your plan?” I asked. We’d had a few drinks in this place she knew about, and it made me kind of unconcerned.

  “It’s this. The store manager’s name is Guy Richard Cummings. He’s a big, fat man that acts superior to all the girls. All high-and­-mighty. He eats Sen­-Sens all the time because he sits up in his corner office on his fat ass and drinks and talks on the phone all day. But I found out about Mr. Guy, and this is what it is: We take cheap little blouses, but he takes the store’s money. He steals money from the accounts. He fixes it so he can show the money is disappearing from ten different places. Very hard to trace. Then, he charges it back to the head office. Then, the head office accountants pay back the loss, but they pay it directly to him, in cash. It’s normal, because the store uses a lot of cash every day. But he puts the extra money in his pocket! That’s some trick, wouldn’t you say?”

  I realized then that Inez Keller was nobody to fool with. “Are you going to turn him in?” I asked.

  “Are you kidding? I got his fat ass right where I want it. He’s going to help you and me steal a mink coat, maybe two or three.”

  “Wait a minute. How did you find all this out?”

  “He called me up to his office. He said the ledger showed I was short three blouses, and he was going to dock my pay. He accused me of stealing. Unless, of course, I was willing to be reasonable. ‘Reason­able,’ you get it, Ed?” Inez made a circle with one thumb and forefinger, and pumped the other forefinger in and out. “So I said, ‘Mr. Cummings, you accuse me with three blouses, but I know you are bluffing, because I only took one. You already put in a receipt for the cash value of three; then you put the extra money in your pocket. Am I right, Guy?’ He turned white in the face. I was sitting in his lap at the time, and I saw it up close. He said, ‘You got balls.’ I said, ‘That’s not all I got.’ It was the happiest day of my life.”

  “What’s wrong with the head office that you know all this and they don’t?” I asked.

  “I don’t know that,” she said. “I think someone there is shielding him, but I don’t care. I want that mink coat. I’ve got it picked out; I know which one it is. I want that coat more than anything in this world. Except for you, of course. Do you want me like I want you, Eddy?”

  We were married on her lunch hour, one month later. She moved her stuff in with Mom and me in the little house down on Washington and Hoover. Mom and Inez never got along, they argued about everything. She said she needed me to help with the coats. We were going to be a team. Cummings was on the hook, he was the inside man. It was going to be a three­way split. I stalled her. I said I had to think it over. Finally, an accounts investigator discovered the cash rake-­off, and they arrested Cummings. He had been under suspicion for some time. Then the police showed up at our house one morning after Inez had left for work. I was asleep since I had the night shift at the railway. They told Mom that a mink coat was missing from the store and that Cummings revealed he had given it to Mrs. Inez Breen, and that she was blackmailing him. He claimed the whole embezzle­ment scheme was her idea. She denied the charge, but the officers found the coat in the garage. Being the husband, I couldn’t testify in her defense. Inez made a deal for a petty larceny charge and drew a five-­year sentence, which she is still serving, as far as I know. Cummings was the big fish they were after. “Your mother turned me in, how about them apples? See you sometime, Eddy,” was all she said. Mom got the marriage annulled on a technicality.

  (Baker Boy message, Truman Bradley lead-­in.)

  In the daylight, Playa del Rey looked like a dump. There was a small neighborhood of older houses up along the bluffs to the south; then you had the marsh and the half­-dozen beach cottages built on the dirt levee along the creek. Will Build to Suit signs sprouted here and there, and a fish and chips stand that was closed for the winter. I walked down the sandy dirt road leading to the cottages. The first four looked lived in, but the fifth and sixth had realty signs posted. Of the two, one garage was locked, and one was not, so I took a look.

  The Lincoln was tucked away in there, all nice and neat. It was a Continental convertible, just the kind of flashy car a bright boy would choose for a trip out west. The registration was missing. There was a lot of loose junk on the floor, like someone had been looking for something. The little trunk lid was open: nothing in there and nothing in the backseat. I raised the hood. A Lincoln twelve-­cylinder, ready for the road. What about that air cleaner? Big as a saucepan. I unscrewed it and lifted it off the carburetor. I removed the filter unit and felt something like a small package in the bottom of the metal container. I put the filter back inside and tried to get the clumsy thing back on the carburetor. It was dark in the garage, and hot, and I couldn’t see what I was doing. I got dizzy, and then I got scared. They’ll notice somebody’s been handling it, I thought. I went out and looked around. There wasn’t one person anywhere, just the wind and the sound of the surf, which was about a hundred yards away: How did you get Ea
rl down there? A woman couldn’t drag a man that far, you must have lured him down to the water somehow. In the dark? In the overcoat?

  My hands were oily. There was just enough water in the creek to get most of the oil off, but it worried me. There was a man’s hat lying in the creek bed. I picked it up. It had a Tulsa haberdasher’s name on the hatband and the initials “EMD” stamped in gold. So you and Earl went shopping, I thought. You wanted to see how much cash he had.

  I put the oilskin bag under my shirt, in back. I had a jacket on and it felt like it was covered up good enough to get going. I walked up Culver, then north through Venice, as far as Washington Boulevard. It took a long time. I kept thinking someone was following me, but nothing happened. I caught the Washington car and rode downtown.

  I didn’t recognize the motorman. Normally, I would have talked to him, like hey buddy this and hey buddy that, but I was so tired and hungry I almost passed out. Then I saw the Pup Café up ahead on the right. You can’t miss it, it’s made to look like a big dog sitting there by the sidewalk. You walk inside through his stomach. He looks worried, as if he missed his lunch. I had a cheeseburger with onions and tomatoes and pickles. Then I ordered another. The counterman said, “Seein’ you wolf down your food reminds me of somethin’ happened here last week. You want to hear what happened?”

  “Sure,” I said between mouthfuls.

  “It was quittin’ time, nine o’clock. A colored man comes in, kind of a large man, and says: ‘Five cheeseburgers, with everything, to go.’ Just like that, just as bold.”

  The counterman waited for me to make a comment, but I kept eating, so he continued. “Well, I says, ‘We’re closed.’ And you know what? He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a fistful of money like you ain’t seen before and shows me a hundred-dollar bill! And he says, ‘Make it six, with pie, and step lively!’ ” The counterman waited for a reply, so I said, “All right, so you made six cheeseburgers.”

  “Well, you’re darned right. No colored man in my experience ever had a roll like that unless he’s a gangster or a dope fiend or some desperate character. I made up the order, and he gives me the hundred dollars! And then he says, ‘You ought to mind your manners, Bub, you never know who’s coming through the door. I’m Charlie Parker. You ought to keep that hundred-dollar bill; it might be worth something someday. Tell your little ofay grandkids.’ And he left. Got in a great big Cadillac and took off! Can you tie that? The things I seen here — I could write a book.”

  “How ’bout a slice of apricot pie,” I said. You can have all the cheeseburgers and pie you want when you have twenty-five thousand dollars.

  I showed Lydia the money first. “I say we split it up three ways. Ida gets one third, and you and me can take the rest. What about it, Lydia?” I was all excited.

  Lydia shook her head. “You kill me, Ed. You been a motorman in this town for fifteen years, but you never got the hang of it. You can’t see what’s going on outside of that trolley car. It’s just ding­-ding, smile, fares please, and thank-­you­-laze-­and­-jellmen.”

  “Wait a minute, what’s so wrong with that? It always worked for me. I made a lot of nice friends that way, including you. This is the only chance a guy like me is ever going to get.”

  “Ed, I wouldn’t give you a nickel for that money. If Ida Jenkins doesn’t get what she thinks she’s got coming, then I wouldn’t give a nickel for your chances. You got away lucky with Inez. For Ida Jenkins, I just wouldn’t give a nickel.” Lydia went back to the counter. I walked upstairs and knocked.

  Ida just sat there watching me. I told her an even split was better than no future with Earl. I laid it all out, I had it all wrapped up. I counted out $12,500 in hundred­-dollar bills. She took it. She got her coat and hat and suitcase. “I thought you were afraid to go out,” I said.

  “Maybe you’re the kind of man that would sell a girl out just to make a lousy buck.”

  “There you go again. Sell a girl to who, exactly?”

  “Maybe you’ll find out. Then you won’t act so goddamn cute. Adios, Eddy. Maybe I’ll see you sometime.”

  I sold the house on Hoover for twenty-five hundred dollars in cash. I bought a beach shack on a lot in Playa del Rey for a thousand dollars and moved in. One day I saw an article in the paper saying that the Los Angeles Railway Company had made a deal to sell retired trolley cars to Argentina. I went straight down there and told them I wanted to buy car 606, that I would double what Argentina was paying. In cash, on the spot. They went for it, why wouldn’t they. It was just scrap lumber and metal as far as the railway was concerned. I paid eighteen hundred dollars.

  They towed 606 behind Big Bertha, the service car, right down Jefferson, all the way to the beach. Bertha was set up with a lift crane, and they jockeyed 606 around so that she was sitting sideways on my lot, up by the sidewalk. The converter had been removed for shipment to Argentina, but otherwise, the car was in perfect shape for what I had in mind.

  It was the Pup Café that gave me the idea to convert 606 into a lunch counter. I hired a local carpenter to do the hard work, but it was not a bad job to rearrange the benches and set up the little tables. We partitioned off the back ­third of the car for the kitchen, with a window for the cook to hand orders up to the server. The fish and chips man sold me his kitchen equipment cheap. He was going to move to Yuma, Arizona, and get into the candy business. Said the salt air gave him lung trouble. I asked Lydia to come in with me as a full partner, but she wouldn’t have it. “The Roundhouse is my home since I got off the sauce. They’ll probably bury me under the floorboards,” she said. The carpentry, plumbing, and electrical set me back three thousand dollars in time and materials. I paid the city twelve hundred dollars for the license.

  I called it the “606 Café — Featuring the World ­Famous Trolley Burger.” I borrowed the idea of six o’clock dinner specials from Lydia. I hired the cook from the fish and chips joint, a cheerful Japanese fellow named Mats, and we opened up just in time for the summer. Things were a little slow at first but trade picked up since 606 was the only lunch counter at the beach for miles around.

  I started fooling around with plans for a deck with tables and umbrellas. People seemed to prefer sitting on that side, they were willing to wait just to get a glimpse of the sand and the water while they ate their Trolley Burgers. I liked being my own boss. No strings out there — my mother was gone, Inez was gone, and I never expected to see Ida again. On that score, I was wrong.

  (Baker Boy message, Truman Bradley lead-­in.)

  It was Friday evening, a little before six. The place was still empty. We were starting to pick up trade for dinner on Friday—folks said they liked driving out to the beach at sunset and sitting down to a nice meal. They usually came in around six thirty, seven o’clock. I was organizing the cash register when I saw a big black sedan pull up out front. It was a seven-­passenger Caddy, not your typical family car. Two guys got out and walked over. One was heavy­set, the other was built regular. They both had on hats and overcoats. They came in and sat at the counter. They kept their hats and coats on.

  “Evening, jellmen. What can I get for you?”

  “What do you want to eat, Al?”

  “I don’t know what I want.”

  “I’ll take the pork chops and applesauce.”

  “Pork chops is on the dinner. The dinner isn’t ready, won’t be ready until six o’clock. I can give you any kind of sandwich, bacon and eggs, ham and eggs, but the dinner won’t be ready until six o’clock.”

  “I’ll take the chicken croquettes with the mashed potatoes.”

  “Chicken croquettes is on the dinner.”

  “So everything we want is on the dinner. That’s how you work it?”

  “What do you call this dump?”

  “Playa del Rey.”

  “It’s a dump. Where’s everybody?”

  “Right now, it’s just me and the cook.”

  “You think you’re a pretty bright boy, don’t you?”

>   “Bright enough.”

  “Well, you’re not.”

  “Okay, I’m not. Customer’s always right.”

  “What’s your name, bright boy?”

  “Ed Breen.”

  “We got a friend of yours out in the car. Her name’s Ida. You remember Ida, bright boy.”

  “I’m not sure, a lot of people come in here.”

  “Ida remembered you. Not right away, but later on. Later on, she remembered real good, right, Al? She told us all about you.”

  “All about you and the money. Twelve-and-a-half thousand bucks that belongs to us. What were you going to say?”

  “Nothing. I was just thinking of something. I wanted to write it down before I forgot.”

  “Hey Al, bright boy is a thinker. Ideas come to him.”

  “You got anything to drink, bright boy?”

  “I got a bottle of Old Stagg under the counter.”

  “Let’s have a drink, I think you need one. Then you’re going to tell us a story all about our money. We love a story.” Earl McDonnell’s Smith and Wesson .32 was right there under the counter. The fat man looked around for one second, and that was one less pair of eyes.

  I brought the gun up and stepped behind the big National cash reg­ister. I pumped two slugs at point blank range into the fat man’s stomach. He spun around on the stool and hit the floor. That knocked Al off balance. He pulled a .45 and fired at me, but his aim was off and he hit the cash register. One hundred pounds of solid brass, a good business investment. My lucky shot nailed him in the throat. His head hit the counter and he didn’t move.

  I ran outside. It was Ida, all right. She was tied up in the backseat of the Cadillac. Her head was over to one side at a funny angle. Her eyes were half closed, and she was dead. They had really done a job on Ida. The inside of the car smelled like blood. That’s something you don’t realize when you see the pictures in the paper. In eight years, I had blood in 606 twice only, both Filipinos, but it didn’t smell anything like that Caddy.