Los Angeles Noir Page 5

  “The canyon above Pacoima?”

  “That’s it. It’s Cash’s hideaway, but I’ll make him give me the keys. You pack and stop by the Château Rouge tomorrow morning at 7. The place is a dump. No air-conditioning. But the toilet flushes and the power’s still on. Lay low until the weekend is over.”

  “Your fuckin’ brother hates me.”

  “Cash hates everybody,” Cravitz said dryly. “But he’s legit now. Even your boy the mayor likes him. There’s hope for him yet.”

  Yippie smiled. “It might work. I’m not ready to die. I’ve still got work to do. I owe this city so much.” He pushed Esmeralda slowly across the table. “Happy birthday, old friend.”

  Cravitz snapped up the pretty pistol. “I can’t take away your baby. I’ll have Cash lock her in the safe tomorrow. You can pick her up when all this bad business is past. She’ll be safe at the Château Rouge. Ain’t a hoodlum in the world crazy enough to try to jack Cash Cravitz.”

  “Simone,” Yippie observed quietly—so true.

  The two men stood up.

  “You sure Cash is gonna be down with this?” Yippie said.

  “That mean ol’ man will do anything I ask.”

  2.

  He tipped Pauli, the parking valet, twenty bucks when he brought around the black Escalade. Cravitz jumped in and kicked Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour” on the box. He perused his pretty self in the mirror.

  Cravitz’s coal-black, bald, magnificent head was adorned with two small hoop earrings. His eyes were gray. Angular, muscular, and deliberate, his black silk Armani duds made him flash and shimmer like a blade. And on this eve of his twenty-ninth birthday, Cravitz felt like a man reborn. He’d helped his friend; now he would try to help others.

  Cravitz paused to admire his neon sign blinking Universal Detection. He peeled off.

  There were scores of revelers out in Leimert Park. Cravitz took Vernon to Angelus Vista and sped west, up the slopes home to View Park.

  Cravitz rose at 4 a.m. on Saturday, Halloween day, and promptly got things going. Two hundred sit-ups, zip, zip. Then he put on John Coltrane and oiled his magnificent head with cocoa butter until it sparkled like obsidian. He scanned Jet, Guns & Ammo, and the Wall Street Journal on the john and concluded a leisurely toilette with a brisk wash-up, a vigorous flossing, and a shave.

  He put on his robe and slippers and strode out into darkness of his rose garden. His rambling View Park home was situated along the ridgelines of the north-facing heights. He clambered to the garden summits.

  As the sun rose, Cravitz touched his forehead reverently against the earth and said a prayer to the awakening world and to his ancestors and vowed, as he had every year for a decade, to be a good man and do at least one good thing for someone more needy than himself. For twenty-four hours he’d drink only water and fast from his bad habits: gratuitous violence, pussy-chasing, wine, and greasy-ass food consumption.

  Things were going swimmingly until Cash called.

  “Happy Halloweeeeen, little brother,” the old dude began.

  Cravitz winced. His big brother Cash had burned up careers as a policy man, a dope man, a loan shark, and a hustler. He’d done time at Folsom, at Vacaville, and at Pelican Bay. For many of L.A.’s starry-eyed wannabes, he stank of money, power, and the streets. He was now in his fifties but still had the tastes and habits of a small-town hood.

  “It’s your world, play-ah. S’up?” Cravitz said not very convincingly.

  “Naw, you d’play-a, play-a,” Cash bellowed.

  “What ya want?” Cravitz said.

  “Y’boy Yip been here,” Cash said.

  “Already?”

  “Yep, he ran by early this morning. I was just gettin’ outta my breakfast meeting with Bennita and ’nem. The muthafucka was staring at Bennita like she was made outta cake.”

  “How did he look?”

  “Skeerd as a cat.”

  “Scared?”

  “Did I stutta?”

  “You give him the keys to the place in La Caja?”

  “He got ’em and gone.”

  Cravitz breathed a sigh of relief.

  “He didn’t leave that pretty gun, though. That Mexican ain’t dumb as he looks. Th’ chump oughta give it to me. Woulda been mines long time ago if I’da had my way.”

  “I don’t know why Yip is so spooked.”

  “And, honey, is he. Talkin’ freakish. Didn’t even sound like hissef,” Cash said, then added with an amused cackle, “Yip fuckin’ somebody’s wife?”

  “Yip’s a choirboy.”

  “Oh, he fuckin’ somebody’s boyfriend then. Somethin’ up,” Cash said, then dropped the subject. “When you comin’?”

  “Now,” Cravitz said.

  “Well then, c’mon, boy. I done took care of y’friend. Now I needs you t’ take care of some messy bi’ness, f’me.”

  Cravitz knew his brother, a man of fixed habits, was taking his morning grits and waffles at the Chit Chat Room, his four-star Southern-style eatery in the mezzanine of the Château Rouge. He was feeling happy, frisky, and evil, and, as usual, trying to bum a little free labor.

  “How messy?” Cravitz asked.

  “Middlin’ messy, I figure,” Cash went on with a chuckle, “You remember Bingbong Jackson? You know, that piecea pimp I used to hang wit from Vegas?”

  “Umhuh.”

  Cravitz had a low opinion of Bingbong. He had won his distinctive moniker during childhood. Every time he tried to snatch the purse of some unsuspecting grandmother, he’d whack her in the mouth—bing!—but then she’d take her purse and clobber him with a haymaker—bong! Bingbong Jackson, whose real name was Ernest Grandvale Jackson IV, might have been the most low-rent, beat-up, wannabe hoodlum-pimp on the whole Left Coast.

  “Well, he done hooked up with a pretty yella bitch name Bennita. They got a pad up in Vegas. They be staying at the Château Rouge f’Halloween. We gots a job f’you.”

  “Bingbong Jackson ain’t done a sane act in his whole life,” Cravitz said darkly, “What’s that shitheel getting you into now?”

  “They in th’ music bi’ness. Gots fo’, five little hoodlums from the projects with ’em,” Cash said thoughtfully, ignoring his brother’s rebuff. “Bingbong say these little thugs goin’ platinum. Some new kinda rap shit. Call theysef Fluboor, Flowbird … some shit like that.”

  The Flo Boyz were a sensational new gangsta rap quartet out of Vegas. They were riding the crest of a publicity wave because of a violent spat they’d had with Strongbeach Posse, one of L.A.’s hot rap groups.

  “I think this Bennita gonna let me smell her pussy if I book these boys on the main stage at Satin Dolls. They s’pose t’be th’ shit. Jes look like snotty-nose hoodlums t’me,” Cash went on. “Y’ wont me t’ send round the car?”

  “Naw, play-ah,” Cravitz said wearily. “See ya at the Château.”

  Cravitz rolled out in his ’56 T-Bird rather than the Escalade. The classic candy-apple sports car better suited his sly, nostalgic mood. Besides, the goddamn thing glittered like jewelry on the streets. He threw on his red T-Bone Walker T-shirt, his $2,000 snakeskin boots, and his favorite ragged jeans. The T-shirt slouched nicely over the big .45 Beretta he always carried, strapped on his left hip. He jetted down Stocker and when he hit Crenshaw, turned north to King.

  Feeling suddenly impish, he slowed the roadster to a crawl and slouched low in his seat, kicking it old school with The Shirelles blasting on the box, like some vato Negro.

  The Château Rouge, with Satin Dolls, its notorious adjoining bar, was situated on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard five blocks west of Crenshaw. It was a ten-story structure built in 1958 by renowned Los Angeles architect Paul Williams. Its façade was polished black marble, steel, and glass. It looked like a fat stack of bop records ready to be played. The whiteboy architectural critic for the Times in 1958 tried his best to dismiss it as “a licorice battleship.” But black folk loved its swank curvilinear forms.

  The hotel�
��s main driveway was already bumper to bumper with fancy automobiles when Cravitz slid up—twenty patrons were lined up for the Chit Chat Room. It opened at 5 a.m. and featured the best and cheapest breakfast in town: two eggs, Louisiana sausage, bacon, grits, two biscuits, and a cup of java for five bucks. The menu also featured New Orleans seafood, chit’lins under glass, East Texas hot wings, smothered chops, ham hocks and brains, and Johnnie Walker Black.

  For Halloween, all the valets and chauffeurs wore black satin masks along with their red satin togs. Darlinda Smalls, the valet captain, waved him to the front of the line.

  “Us girls got something for you, Quick,” Darlinda said, and all the girls started singing Stevie’s version of “Happy Birthday.” When they were done, Aleta Wright, one of the fine-ass Château Rouge lady chauffeurs, took Cravitz’s keys. It was already eighty degrees and Aleta was dressed for the weather in the Château Rouge’s trademark peek-a-boo red satin tux.

  “Hey, bitch!” a voice behind him growled.

  Cravitz turned. Behind him stood a quartet of young men. One of them, a tall pasty-faced yella boy with bling braces, held up his fists and showed two sparkling rings, each one spanning a hand, spelling: FLO BOYZ.

  Another brandished a sawed-off shotgun.

  “Hey, Monster,” the pasty-faced boy said to the kid with the shotgun, “cover me.”

  “What’s your name, son?” Cravitz said to the young thug with the gun.

  “Monster P,” the boy said.

  “That what your mama named you?”

  “You betta recognize, grandpa, you jumped in line ahead of us,” the yella kid with bad acne replied. Monster P, huge and grinning, circled to his left. Cravitz noted that Monster wore his new $100 Lebron James sneakers untied.

  “Well, bitch, you gonna move out th’ way? Or do we need to move you?” the pimply faced boy said.

  “You from the Floorboards?” Cravitz said.

  “Hey, sucka, you mean the Flo Boyz.”

  Normally, a slap across the lips was his remedy for obstreperous brats. The challenge of his birthday vow, however, posed a dilemma for Cravitz.

  Cravitz was pondering this when he heard, “Drop the weapon, Twinkletoes.”

  It was the voice of his childhood hero, Ramon Yippie Calzone. Cravitz turned to see Yippie with Esmeralda in his hand.

  Monster P held his shotgun limply, then let it slide to the ground.

  “I’m saving your lives,” Yippie Calzone told them. He pointed to Cravitz. “That young brother there is one of the killin’est hombres on the whole damn planet. Just look at them cold, gray eyes … I’m a mutherfuckin’ killer, too. Just a few months back, shot down two little boys with this pretty gun. Ain’t that right, Quick?”

  “Gospel,” Cravitz said.

  The young men gawked at Esmeralda.

  “We won’t kill you this time, boys,” Cravitz said. “But grown folks gotta talk now.” Cravitz gave Aleta a twenty and said, “Help my friends. I ain’t in a hurry.”

  Yippie turned to Cravitz and whispered, “We gotta talk.”

  The men met in a quiet booth in Satin Dolls.

  “I saw something when I arrived at the Château Rouge this morning—someone,” Yippie Calzone said.

  “Someone?”

  “A woman. A bad woman.”

  “Well?”

  “I can’t tell you much. Shouldn’t be telling you this. But this hina is bad news. She is a drug dealer. A killer too. I didn’t know she had got this far west.”

  “And she’s here to …?”

  “Not sure. Her operation is in Nevada. She’s helping her man Paco Santiago make Vegas the new drug hub,” Yippie Calzone said. “If she’s here, your brother is involved. I didn’t see them together; but I’m sure she’s staying here. She had on a mask, but I recognized her. I don’t think she saw me.”

  “Cash has been legit since ’92.”

  “He ain’t.” Calzone opened his briefcase and pulled out a small plastic baggie filled with a few teaspoons of yellow powder. He handed it to Cravitz. “The new teen poison.”

  The dope had a faint lemon scent.

  “It’s treated opium. It’s been cut with strychnine and baking soda and some other trash. The high’s killer,” Yippie said grimly.

  “How’s it get this weird color?”

  “Food coloring,” Yippie said. “They call it butter.”

  “Shit,” Cravitz said.

  “Simone,” Yippie Calzone said.

  “You’re giving me classified information.”

  “It’s a final gift, birthday boy. I’m settling all my accounts.” Yippie Calzone was not smiling now. “You helped me. Cash helped me. Now I’m helping you. I’m sure this chick brought some of this dope with her. Cash might not know what he’s in for.”

  Yippie promised to give Cravitz seventy-two hours to find the dope and get it out of the Château Rouge before he dropped a dime to Vargas.

  “That’s it,” Yippie said finally, standing. “I’ve bent the shit outta the law for you, my brother. Now I’m gonna disappear.”

  Yippie Calzone left.

  “Hey, Quick!” a familiar voice said.

  He turned to face Hi-C, his brother’s personal bodyguard, striding toward him. Hi-C was 7’2” without an ounce of fat. He was dressed in the livery of a Château Rouge bouncer: red satin top hat, red satin bowtie, sleeveless red satin shirt, red satin slacks, red satin cummerbund, red patent leather boots. C also wore a black satin mask.

  To Cravitz he looked like a masked pillar of fire.

  C said, “I been lookin’ fo’ ya all ovah, Quick. Mista Omar say f’you t’meet him in the conf’ence room. He wont me t’fetch ya.”

  One did not argue with a pillar of fire.

  * * *

  The penthouse conference room was located on the tenth floor. Its wall-length windows looked out over King Boulevard, framing the pale blue sky and the San Gabriels thirty miles north.

  Cash was seated at the head of the long table, dressed like an eighteenth-century pirate. A black satin mask covered his eyes.

  Seated in chairs on the table’s other end were a woman and a man, both wearing black masks. The man was dressed all in white with a visor cap, like a 1940s Good Humor man. The woman was Cleopatra—a brass serpent coiled about her paste tiara.

  “You remember my road dog, Ernie Jackson?” Cash began with a grin.

  “Oh yeah, Bingbong. W’sup?” Cravitz said, with a slight nod.

  The woman stood up and slowly walked around the table toward him. She was statuesque, voluptuous. Behind that satin mask, Cravitz could see her eyes flashing with golden fire. Her face was framed with braids that fell below her shoulders.

  She held out her hand. Cravitz fought off the urge to gobble her whole.

  “Bennita Bangs,” she said simply.

  Cravitz took her hand, feeling an electric thrill surge through his bones.

  He wondered whether a woman that fine could be a thug and a killer and what it would be like to nibble her honeyed skin.

  “Bingbong—I mean, Ernest—and Bennita startin’ up a new record label,” Cash said. “Bennita here done already sweet-talked me into dropping a little pieca change in the boodle. Since it’s yo birthday, I figure I might spread ’round some of th’ good luck to my baby bro …”

  Cravitz was still not listening. He was trying his best to crawl into those topaz bedrooms Miss Bangs used for eyes.

  “My fiancé is a fox, ain’t she, Quick?” Bingbong Jackson said uneasily.

  Cravitz cast a killing gaze at the hustler. “What’s all this good luck gonna cost me?”

  “We need to raise two million, Mr.—” Bennita began demurely. “I’m sorry, what should I call you?”

  “Baby would be nice,” Cravitz said.

  “We asking our initial investors to pony up what they can—baby. Twenty thousand, a hundred,” Bennita Bangs said.

  “I’m tapped out at the moment.” He turned to Cash and winked. “But thanks fo
r lookin’ out, big bro.”

  Cash got up and shut the blinds. Even in the dim light of the room, Bennita Bangs glowed.

  “Oh, I ain’t asking you for money, birthday boy,” Cash said, “We need you t’provide a little sweat equity for the home team.”

  Cash walked over to the safe, which was hidden behind a velvet painting of James Brown onstage at the Apollo. He pulled out a money bag and laid it on the table.

  “Happy birthday, partner,” Cash said, choking up. Cravitz opened the sack and pulled out a bag of yellow powder. As he turned it in the light the powder took on a gold, metallic glow.

  “This is just a one-time deal. Kinda like a crime-ette. We make this little nest egg, then boom, we back legit.”

  Cravitz turned to Bingbong Jackson and said, “Who’d you steal this from, asshole?”

  Bingbong protested, “I got this shit legit.”

  “I’m counting on you to get the word around. Pass out a taste or two.”

  “That little-ass bag of shit go for two-fiddy large, once we cuts it,” Bingbong said.

  “I got two words for you,” Cravitz said, fixing his gray eyes on his brother, “Pelican Bay.”

  Cash blinked. That stint at Pelican Bay had nearly killed him. When Cravitz stumbled out of there he had called in some chits. Within a decade, the monster—his big brother—had been transformed into an avatar of L.A.’s high society and culture. It was insanity to throw it away.

  Cravitz jerked a thumb toward Bingbong Jackson. “I’m ’bout to kick his pindick out of here.”

  “You owe me,” Cash said evenly. “You gonna show me love or not?”

  “I need some air,” Cravitz said.

  Cravitz got back in the T-Bird and called Yippie on the cell phone. “Yes, the broad is there. I’ll get back to you. Remember, keep Cash out of this.”

  “You got my word,” Yippie Calzone said.

  His birthday was not going well.

  At Pico and Dunsmuir, Cravitz pulled into the parking lot of St. Benedict’s. The church was quiet and cool. In the solitude of his meditations, Cravitz began to form an idea. He’d bust into his brother’s vault and remove the dope. Titfor-tat, his brother would have his goons break into his View Park pad and reclaim the contraband.