Los Angeles Noir Read online

  Cravitz didn’t care. He was determined to do the right thing.

  He thanked St. Benedict for the tip.

  * * *

  The Château Rouge was packed when Cravitz returned. There was one masked face he’d recognize even in a coma—a girl from his past, Athena Powers.

  They were a heartbeat from colliding.

  He shut his eyes and cheerfully awaited his fate.

  Then he felt Athena’s grip on his arms and the soft press of her boobs against his chest.

  “Hey! Quick! I almost ran into you. What luck.”

  Cravitz stared at Athena Powers with undisguised delight.

  “’Member me? Thena? Jordan’s little sister!” she finally exclaimed.

  Fuck yeah, I remember you, you gorgeous doll, he wanted to say, but he just nodded his head and grinned. He had done a year with Jordan Powers at Juvenile Hall when they were thirteen.

  “Jordan told me you was a cop or something. Y’must be on a case. Not a damn murder, I hope.”

  Athena chattered on, the patrons at the Château Rouge fading around them.

  Then Cravitz blurted out, “You sure have grown, Thena.”

  “Yeah,” the young woman said, blushing. “I’m an old woman now. Downside of twenty-five and sinking fast.” Athena pulled nervously at her hair. “Oh my god, I must be a wreck. I been runnin’ all day.”

  “No, no,” Cravitz said, “you look … cool.” The last time Cravitz had been this close to Athena she was sweet sixteen, and he was twenty—her brother’s hoodlum friend. On that day, while she was giggling among her cousins and dressed in her great-grandmother’s antique silk gown, he saw her budding into womanhood before his eyes.

  “You staying at the Château Rouge?”

  “Just for the weekend. I write for Ebony. Can you believe it? We’re doing a story on black Hollywood. So I figured I might as well catch the Halloween bash at the Château Rouge.”

  “You got a date?” Cravitz heard himself asking. “Oh my,” she said. “Are you asking me?”

  “‘Might give you a shot,” Cravitz said evenly.

  “Y’know, Jordan is still a thug. He’s gonna kick your ass when he hears you’re trying to get with his little sister,” Athena said.

  “Jordan don’t want none a this,” Cravitz replied, spreading out his arms above her head and standing the full measure of his 6’5” height. His dark magnificent head hovered over her.

  “I’m in room 313,” she said, then disappeared in the crowd.

  Cravitz took his usual route, up the rear stairwell to his brother’s private suites ten floors above. He’d watched his brother work the combination many times.

  He cracked the safe within minutes, removed a liner from a trash can, and stuffed the dope inside. Then he drove wearily out to the safe house in La Caja.

  Yippie was elated when Cravitz arrived. He put the dope in his briefcase. Esmeralda was poised on his nightstand.

  “I think we can keep your dumbshit brother out of the slammer this time but you gotta get that Vegas bitch out of there,” Yippie said. “If Vargas finds out Cash is dealing again …”

  Cravitz said he would, and told his friend he’d see him in the morning.

  Cravitz took the streets home. Halloween decorations were up everywhere. Hollywood was crowded with phony vampires, angels, wolfmen, and movie stars.

  Back home in View Park, he changed into his costume—Priest, from Superfly, replete with pimp hat, Jheri curl wig, platform shoes, polyester shirt, bell-bottom trousers, and rose-colored shades. Then he picked up Athena Powers, who was dressed as a sexy Belle Starr, with bells on her six guns and spurs, and starry skies painted across her sheer silk blouse.

  That night the main ballroom at Satin Dolls became Ground Zero of Afro-Hollywood. The Flo Boyz played. At midnight Dwight Trible sang, the great jazz pianist Nate Morgan performed, and everyone joined in for “Happy Birthday, Quick!”

  Finding his brother, Cravitz explained he needed a few more hours to decide. Cash never suspected he was already jacked.

  Athena Powers and he danced until 2. Then she invited him back to her suite and Belle Starr easily convinced Superfly to break his fast on pussy and booze.

  “Where you goin’?” Athena protested when Cravitz got up at 4 and changed back into his jeans and a funky shirt and strapped on his big gun.

  “Got to check on a buddy,” Cravitz said.

  “Can’t it wait?” she asked with a sly smile.

  “Can’t,” Cravitz said simply.

  They made love one more time and he was on the road to La Caja at 6.

  3.

  About 6:06 that morning, back in the safe house thirty miles north, undercover detective Yippie Calzone was awakened by whispers.

  Quick as a cat, Yippie snatched up Esmeralda from the nightstand and turned.

  In the flash of glass and buckshot that erupted through his window at that instant, Calzone witnessed the fiery unraveling of his final moment.

  He had no time to say oh shit or oh fuck or goddamn or God bless or forgive me or what the hell or anything.

  He tried to move, but his legs felt aflame. His big arms twitched and flopped against the bed. He gripped Esmeralda hard, and a shot rang out.

  Esmeralda recoiled and banged against the nightstand. Yippie’s hand jerked flat, and Esmeralda, blood-splattered but voluptuous even in this light, laid upon his quivering right palm, her buxom body sparkling silver, her hair-trigger demurely cocked.

  Yippie could dimly feel his own heartbeat; and then, faintly, the renewed whispers of his assailants.

  Dogs barked. He heard a distant siren, the droning of helicopters.

  He tried to move his fingers. They felt heavy and wet and hot. Just below them, he felt Esmeralda tingling, her body cool, waiting.

  Lights went on up Orchid Street—on Sagebrush Road and Terra Vista, the next streets over. Neighbors came out onto their porches.

  Still lurking at Yippie’s window, the killer could feel his own hot sweat, each drop a burning heartbeat. As for his heart, he felt it drumming in his chest, confident and strong.

  He chuckled and stood up. He was dressed, as were his fleeing cohorts, in a ninja outfit.

  “Butterbrains,” he muttered, watching them struggle over the back fence.

  He could hear neighbors, slightly louder now, calling out in alarm.

  The killer lifted the sawed-off shotgun through the jagged gaps in the wood and glass.

  Three more blasts followed for good luck.

  A curtain of fire lit the room.

  Rooster-tails of splatter dripped down the walls.

  Esmeralda slid from Yippie’s big fingers and clattered onto the floor.

  The good cop was dead.

  A dozen neighbors were milling around the front gate gossiping anxiously when Cravitz drove up twenty minutes later.

  He fumbled with the keys, unlocked the gate, and hurried inside.

  Unholstering his Beretta, Cravitz moved through the shadowy rooms and hallways. Then he went into Yippie’s bedroom. Ignoring the bed, Cravitz looked around at the shattered window, the floor covered with splinters and glass, the streams of blood and flesh drying on the walls. He walked to the window and peered into the yard. He could make out a few footprints in the dust.

  Cravitz gathered himself and turned to face the bed where his old friend lay.

  He walked over and stared down at the body.

  His hard gray eyes began to work, running along Yippie’s corpse.

  Displays four shotgun wounds, three penetrating and one grazing. Hard to figure the sequence in this light.

  He lightly touched his old friend’s forehead.

  The lacerations and abrasions from the wounds formed linear patterns. The skull was shattered. His buddy must have been rising up when the killer struck. Cravitz got down on the floor and retrieved some black threads he noticed among the splinters.

  He wrapped the threads in a handkerchief and left the lion’s share
for the cops. On the edge of the shattered window sill, Cravitz noticed a bullet hole.

  He got a shot off. So where’s Esmeralda?

  Cravitz turned sharply and stared at the bloody nightstand. The briefcase with the dope was gone too. There was a pool of blood gathering just below Yippie’s outstretched hand.

  “Esmeralda fell there,” Cravitz said out loud. As he looked closer, he realized the killer had stepped in the splatter. “I know who did this.”

  Thirty minutes later L.A.P.D. Homicide detective Manuel Maximillian “Manny” Vargas and his partner Will Dockery arrived. Cravitz, who’d met the detectives through Yippie, walked them through the murder scene.

  As Cravitz turned to leave, Vargas said, “You have anything to do with this, Cravitz?”

  “I’m a suspect, Vargas? I called you, remember?”

  “Just humor me—you do this?”

  “Naw, but there are fibers on the window from someone who did. Enough for Dockery here to make himself a skirt.”

  “This Yippie’s place?” Vargas asked.

  “My brother’s,” Cravitz said simply. “Yip was thinking about buying it. Cash let him try it out for the month—”

  “Bullshit,” Dockery said.

  “Stay where we can find you, Quick,” Vargas said.

  “Yeah,” Cravitz replied.

  Cravitz blazed past the afternoon traffic like a bolt of light. Cash was standing at his safe, smoking a long Cuban stogie, when Cravitz barged in. The safe was open. A 9mm pistol lay on the conference table.

  “Where’s the smack?”

  “Robbed,” Cravitz said.

  “You messin’ with my money, lil’ brother. I could kill you, if you wasn’t kin. Might kill you anyway,” Cash said quietly, expelling a jet of smoke. His hard brown eyes turned black.

  “You kill Yippie?” Cravitz said.

  “What th’ fuck?”

  “He’s murdered. You do it?”

  “Why pick me, boy. I’m straight as a stick.”

  “Bennita,” Cravitz said. “She put you up to this?”

  Cash extracted a fresh cigar from his humidor, clipped it, and handed it to his brother. Cravitz hesitated, then took the smoke and bent over the table as his big brother lit it.

  “Her brats wrecked the damn room. They was mad when they heard you took the yella dope,” Cash said. “Hi-C an’ nem had to bust ’em up a bit. You think Bennita and them punks whacked Yippie?”

  “One of the killers stepped in the blood. That print is from the new Lebron James sneaker. Monster P had on a pair this morning when Yip and me had to spank them. Whoever did this got Esmeralda and the dope too.”

  Cash buzzed in Hi-C and picked up his pistol. “Let’s go find these mutts,” he said to Cravitz.

  * * *

  Cash banged on Bennita and Bingbong’s fifth-floor suite with the barrel of his 9mm Glock. Then he used the pass key to go inside.

  Brain splatter covered the walls of the suite. Bingbong Jackson lay dead in a pool of blood. A hole resembling a teardrop perforated his brow.

  “Esmeralda,” Cash said.

  “Bennita Bangs,” Cravitz said.

  Cash got on the horn to his lowlife friends. He’d pay $5,000 to the snitch who led him to the killers.

  Cravitz cellphoned Vargas. “I suggest your boys shoot to kill.”

  Vargas said, “If you kill anyone we’ll arrest you, Cravitz—like any other thug. We’re bringing ’em in alive.”

  “Umhum,” Cravitz said, and hung up.

  He called his office manager, Betty Penny.

  Within an hour, the Central Detection operatives had leaped into the hunt.

  They hit the liquor stores and barbershops, the newsstands and pool halls—spreading the word that Yippie Calzone, the storied L.A. champion of the streets, had been ruthlessly cut down, by outsiders, busters from Las Vegas.

  One of mothers of the boys that Yippie Calzone had killed went on TV and said it was God’s will, and that the pig should burn in hell. The other mother said that no one, not even a bad cop, should be murdered in his sleep.

  Folks recalled good things Yippie Calzone had done.

  He had mentored kids in South L.A.—black, brown, yellow, white. He was a good man.

  The dashing new mayor, Arturo Quijada “Miracle” Mendez, a man for whom Yippie Calzone had been a boyhood hero, gave a public address.

  “These are dangerous days,” the visibly shaken mayor told the people. “We ask for calm.”

  Willie Song, one of the top gun dealers in L.A., called Cash to confirm he’d sold not one, but four shotguns to the Flo Boyz and they’d tried to pay him with some shit called “butter.”

  Fast Al Townes, one of Central Detection’s top operatives, tracked the fibers that Cravitz had retrieved from the murder scene back to the Dream Closet, a Silverlake costume shop. A sales girl recalled renting four ninja costumes—now overdue—to some rude young men on Halloween eve.

  Diss ’N’ Dats Records, the Vegas label that first recorded the Flo Boyz, FedExed publicity stills of the quartet, and Vargas emailed them to all the local news outlets.

  A man named Francisco Hernandez called the L.A.P.D. crime hotline to report that he had sold a tan late-model Ford Falcon to una cabeza de quevo—a dickhead—named Monster P, from the Flo Boyz, the kids wanted on TV.

  Flagg Jackson, dumpster-diving out back of the Amarillo Bar on Lankershim Boulevard, was the first to drop a dime. He called the Château Rouge and told Hi-C he’d seen the punks go inside the bar. Their jalopy was stashed behind his favorite dumpster. He was sure they were packing. Cravitz called Vargas and told him to meet at the Amarillo in an hour.

  It took Cravitz fifteen minutes to drive the twenty miles to the Amarillo. Two dozen Harleys leaned against one side of the bar. At the end of the line of hogs, Flagg Jackson waved and pointed to the front of the bar.

  Cravitz took a long pull from his cigar, cocked his Berretta, and headed for the door.

  Behind a curtain of beads he saw four young men, each one at a corner of the bar, armed with shotguns.

  About twenty customers were lined up against the walls. In the center of the room there was a pile of wallets and jewelry.

  Cravitz pushed aside the curtain with his big Beretta and stepped in.

  “Well, well, well. If it ain’t that bitch from the Château Rouge,” said Monster P, training his shotgun on Cravitz.

  Cravitz could hear distant sirens, coming closer. He figured he could kill two, maybe three of the boys without any problem. That fourth would be tricky.

  “Drop the guns, boys,” Cravitz said.

  Now all four young men aimed their weapons at Cravitz.

  “Tha’s a bad idea, fella,” a voice growled from behind the bead curtain.

  Hi-C stepped in, his red satin top hat seeming to scrape the ceilings. He held a nasty-looking, TEC-9 assault weapon in his hands. Behind Hi-C was his boss, Cash Cravitz, followed by his crew, ready for a bloodbath.

  “You got shit in your ears, boy? Drop them gats,” Cash growled.

  All but Monster P complied. He cocked the shotgun and smiled. “I ain’t afraid to die. But I’m gonna kill you first, bitch.”

  Cravitz smiled too. Lazily, he strolled up to Monster P and flicked the drooping ash from his Cuban stogie onto the boy’s pretty new sneakers. He hurled his 6’5” frame forward and batted the shotgun aside with his Beretta. In the same lighting motion, he smacked Monster P across the face with his free right hand. Monster P saw the flash of a broad, shadowy palm, then felt the blunt imploding thud of his head crashing against the steel base of the classic country-andwestern jukebox twelve feet away.

  Uniformed cops took the other Boyz away in cuffs while the cops questioned Monster P and Cravitz at the scene.

  Cravitz said, “Why’d you do it, you little shit?”

  “That bitch was gonna cut me in,” Monster P replied.

  “Bennita put you up to this?”

  “Bennita? Hell naw. Some o
ther bitch—” Monster P said.

  “Other bitch?” Vargas said.

  “—called herself Belle. Said we was gonna be rich, and we was gonna live in a fabulous house. Anyway, she knew I was pissed ’cause that old man tried to fade me. Fade me, Monster P!”

  “Calzone dissed you so you killed him?” Vargas said.

  “He called me Twinkletoes,” Monster P said, genuinely hurt.

  Cravitz drove home in a funk.

  He remembered something Yippie had said that morning: She had on a mask, but I recognized her. I don’t think she saw me. Suddenly his blunder hit him. He couldn’t believe what a fool he’d been. He got on the phone to Vargas.

  Arriving at the Château, he bounded up the back steps. Three minutes later he was knocking on the door of suite 313.

  Athena Powers was smiling when she opened the door.

  Esmeralda sparkled in her pretty hands.

  The light in the suite was dim, but Cravitz could see that Athena had her suitcases out.

  “Going somewhere?”

  “Afraid so, boo. Sorry I can’t take you.”

  “So you’re the bitch assassin? Don’t they pay you enough at Ebony?” Cravitz said.

  “Everything I’ve told you was a lie. All except the pillow talk. When you were fucking me. I told you the truth about that, sweetboy. Anyway, bitch is a little harsh, don’t you think? I prefer … Belle.”

  “Belle Starr, the outlaw queen. Nice touch,” Cravitz said, handing her his Berretta and walking into the suite.

  “I try,” Athena Powers replied.

  Luggage and bricks of yellow opium were strewn across the bed. Bennita Bangs was tied up at a desk with duct tape over her mouth. Her pretty topaz eyes flashed terror. She’d been beaten and there were nylon cords around her wrists.

  “Nice knots,” Cravitz said.

  “I was a Camp Fire Girl, didn’t Jordan tell you?”

  4.

  Cravitz got comfortable on the bed and pulled out a fresh cigar. “You kill Bingbong?”

  “Had to,” Athena Powers said.

  “So you work for that Vegas pig—Paco Santiago?”