Dog Eat Dog (13 page)

“I only got a five.”

“Gimme that.”

As they went by, Troy handed the five to the black man with the dog. “God bless you, man,” was his reward.

“The way I figure it,” Troy told Diesel, “if a homeless fool can look after a dog, I gotta do something for him. Besides that,” he grinned as he thought of it, “it might give me some good karma.” He didn’t really believe it—that fate made covenants—but why make the odds worse?

Ahead of them, Troy saw the signs: D
IAMONDS
AND
G
OLD,
B
OUGHT
AND
S
OLD.
It was the West Coast diamond mart, jewelry stores one after another, each one glittering with precious jewels and gold. Many had armed security guards lounging in the doorways. That was new, but at least it wasn’t as bad as New York City, where shops along Fifth and Madison Avenues kept their doors locked and let people in only after looking them over. They’d been that way on his last visit fifteen years ago. From what he read in
Newsweek
, things had not improved.

“You got one of these, didn’t you?” Diesel said.

“Not down here. On Wilshire Boulevard. It’s gone now.”

“You got a bundle, didn’t you?”

“Not when it got counted down.”

They reached Broadway and turned north toward the civic center half a dozen blocks away. Troy had walked this street since he was a child. Between 3rd and 9th Streets, Broadway once had a dozen movie theaters, not to mention the Paramount on 6th and the Warner’s Downtown at 7th and Hill. Some weekends he would come here, walk along until a movie poster caught his fancy. Now Troy looked at the theaters, or where they had been, and remembered what movie he had seen in this one or that one. Only three still showed movies; others were flea marts or churches. Christian preaching in Spanish had spared the Million Dollar, one of L.A.’s first great movie palaces. Gone, too, was the original Broadway Department Store at 4th Street, but its offspring formed a chain throughout California. Likewise into history had gone the original May Company and Eastern-Columbia. What a pretty green Deco building had housed it.

The great shopping street was as busy as ever, but large spaces had been converted into flea marts, and smaller places into open-fronted stalls hawking cut-rate merchandise. Mexicans had always been part of any L.A. mosaic. All of the signs were in Spanish, as was the music coming from the open doors. “Damn, homeboy,” said Diesel, “is this L.A. or T.J.?” He meant Tijuana. “It don’t look like Beach Boys country to me.”

Troy laughed at his cynicism. Southern California had once been close to paradise; now it seemed to be an outpost of the Third World—not because of skin color, but through its illiteracy, poverty, and class division. The ability to assimilate into the middle class had been overrun. At 4th and Broadway, they stopped to look west. A block away was a low hill. Once upon a time, L.A.’s famous Angel’s Flight, a funicular railway, ran from Hill Street to what had once been Victorian mansions on top, although by his youth they were rooming houses. Now Angel’s Flight was gone, as were the rooming houses, replaced by salmon and silver glass and aluminum shining in the hot sun of Southern California, somehow reminding Troy of the Emerald City in
The Wizard of Oz
. The buildings were even more imposing because they rose from atop a hillside; that made them reach even higher into the sky. The towers were symbols of greater wealth than ever before.

In contrast, beside them was the boarded-up bottom floor of the original Broadway Department Store, empty and gutted and lifeless except for fat rats and an occasional derelict. In his youth the rich had a Cadillac and the poor drove a Ford. Now the rich were in limousines and the poor pushed market carts piled with recyclable Coca-Cola cans. “Fuck it,” he muttered.

“What’s up?” Diesel asked.

“Just muttering in my beer, bro’.” He draped an affectionate arm around Diesel. “Hey, man, do you know how fucked up the world is?”

“I like it that way. When it’s all fucked up, that’s when we fit in.”

“No bullshit about that.”

They walked toward the Civic Center, where suits and neckties were more common; then turned east on 2nd Street, and soon were again among the homeless poor; they overflowed the rescue missions and made condominiums from cardboard crates that they lined up on the sidewalk, usually outside parking lot fences or in an alley where nobody would bother them. Outside the rescue mission doors were long lines of black men. Troy saw nobody else in the line.

They passed a man selling loose cigarettes from atop an apple box covered with a towel, and on the next corner a Hispanic woman with dark Indian features sold cups of mangoes or cantaloupe slices for a dollar apiece.

“Check the alley,” Diesel said as they passed the mouth of one. Troy looked. Three young black men were passing a crack pipe, which gives off a powerful odor, but it was hidden by one of the foulest stenches in the world—that of human beings. The city had no latrines open to the general public, and those in public buildings and Pershing Square were closed to the homeless, so the ragged men in ragged clothes pissed in alleys, creating a stink that made Troy turn away.

“Those suckers are sure bold,” Diesel said, referring to the crack-smoking trio.

“I dunno. Would you go down there to bust them?”

Diesel laughed. “I dunno. Maybe not. I’d probably faint if I had to smell that shit.”

“How come a dog’s piss don’t stink? And human piss stinks worse’n a cat’s piss?”

“How the fuck am I supposed to know that? You’re the one that reads the books.”

“I don’t know either … But it’s something to think about.”

“Let’s think about making some money. Maybe we oughta get back to the hotel. What if the Greek shows up?”

They walked along Los Angeles, where, for several blocks, the shops specialized in men’s wear. Store after store had suits and shirts and neckties.

“A dude could buy some nice rag around here.”

“Yeah, if you know what you’re doin’. It all looks nice in the window. It’s after a couple cleanings that class shows.”

“Kinda like life,” Diesel said.

“Damn, bro’, you got a streak of the philosopher.”

“Hangin’ around you does that to a fool.” He laughed.

“Better turn here to get back to the hotel.”

They turned the corner. Ahead of them was a wild-eyed young man in a sweatshirt cut off at one shoulder. His forearms were both tanned and grimy, while his upper arm was pale white. It was covered, as was his neck and cheek, with round sores that reminded Troy of ringworm. He held out a white Styrofoam cup, while from around his neck hung a sign: AIDS. The sores were cancer lesions.

Most of the passersby veered to pass at a distance, but a heavyset black woman stopped and unsnapped her purse. As Troy and Diesel went by, they could see she was handing him a dollar and a small Christian tract. “… Praise Jesus,” was all they heard.

“You believe in God, man?” Troy asked Diesel.

“I don’t wanna, but I do. You know, them nuns got my ass right from the start until I was about eight. They planted it so deep, I can’t get it out no matter what.”

“You’re going to Hell, huh?”

“Yeah, I am.”

“You believe that?”

“Of course I do. I know better, but believin’ is deeper than knowin’, right?”

“If you believe, you believe.”

“I just hope Hell is way down the the line from now.”

Back in the hotel room, the message light glowed on the phone. The switchboard said it was from “Larry.” He was in town and would call them in the morning.

Troy would have gone out again, but Diesel’s legs ached from their walk, so they decided to stay in the room and order
Dracula
on the hotel’s cable service.

The vile creature was being driven from England when the room phone rang. It was Alex Aris. The Greco was coming up the Harbor Freeway. “You wanna eat?” he asked.

“I sure wanna talk,” Troy said. “See what we got going.”

“It’s sweet, man. Where do you wanna meet?”

“What about the Pacific Dining Car? That’s not far from the hotel. We could walk there.”

“I wouldn’t walk around there at night, not anymore.”

“I’ve been walkin’ around here all my life.”

“Things change … and that area has really changed.”

“What happened to all those old pensioners?”

“They’re gone. Lemme tell you, that’s the most violent area in L.A. All Central Americans … not Chicanos like we know. Say some fool is from Nicaragua. Every morning they walk outside the village and there’s three or four bodies with their thumbs tied together and flies around the hole in their skull. When they see shit like that at five or six years old, an L.A. drive-by ain’t shit to them. I know you can take care of yourself—but I wouldn’t walk around there at night.”

“Okay, you convinced me. How long ’fore you get there?”

“I’m passing Florence Avenue. Say twenty minutes.”

“Okay, I’m getting ready now.”

The Pacific Dining Car, on 6th Street a few blocks west of the Harbor Freeway, was an ancient landmark by L.A. standards, having begun in 1921 in a sidetracked railroad diner. Over the years it had grown and changed into one of L.A.’s great steakhouses. It was close enough to City Hall and downtown so that many stacked-cut deals were made in one of its several rooms. It thrived even as the surrounding neighborhood became a
colonia
of immigrant Central Americans with the highest crime rate in the city. The Pacific Dining Car was an outpost of affluence amidst poverty. All of its customers arrived by automobile. The parking lot was fenced and secure, with parking attendants in red vests.

Troy gave over the car and took the stub. While getting out he did a quick mental inventory and decided there was nothing a parking lot attendant would see. Diesel had a nine on a clip under the dash, but the guy wasn’t going to run his hand under there even if he did look in the glove compartment. Piz the Whiz had been working a parking lot in Vegas, and used the keys to open a trunk while the customer was gone. The trunk had three hundred and ten thousand in three cardboard boxes. Piz was going off duty in twenty minutes. He took the boxes with him when he went home—and never heard a word about it. He never asked, “What about the blue Cadillac? Did the guy just drive away?” Nobody ever complained, or asked a question, or acted as if it had happened. Somebody just swallowed the loss of three hundred grand without a sound of complaint. It was weird.

Troy remembered the story as he entered, where a maître d’ waited by a reservations stand. “Aris,” said Troy.

“Come this way.”

The maître d’ led him through several rooms to a rear room with two booths and two tables. Alex was in one booth that had been set up for two. When he saw Troy, he got up with a wide grin and the two men embraced. Their friendship went back two decades, and although there had been arguments, each knew the other was a friend to the core, something seldom experienced by men of the bourgeoisie. There were no façades between them, nor any need, for neither judged the other for anything; they were friends as only thieves can be.

“Hey, man, glad to see you, brother,” Alex said. “They sure didn’t coddle your ass, did they?”

“I’m not mad at ’em,” Troy said. “It wasn’t justice, but they knew what they were doin’, ’cause I’m gonna rip somebody off.”

“Siddown, man. Want a drink?”

Troy sat and looked around. The waiter was at hand instantly. “Gimme a coffee with some brandy,” Troy said. The waiter was gone.

They eyed each other. Troy now saw changes that had gone unnoticed when Greco visited him. The changes had taken place in the four years since the California Supreme Court had reversed his conviction. They had ruled unanimously that the police could not break down his door to arrest him simply because he was on parole and therefore without civil rights. They still had to knock and announce their purpose under Section 844 of the Penal Code. The warrantless search was manifestly a violation of the Fourth Amendment. The judge knew it, but he also knew that if he ruled that way, he would have to exclude from evidence the six kilos of cocaine they had seized. With the cocaine excluded, the State had no case. The judge ruled against Greco while knowing it was contrary to law, but it was right on target with public opinion. If he’d excluded the evidence and dismissed the charges, he might well be voted off the bench in the next election. The case had some notoriety. He would send Alexander Aris to prison where he deserved to be. If it was done unlawfully, let a higher court reverse the conviction and cut him loose.

Troy was in prison when Greco arrived, and he was still there four years later when California’s highest court said the search was illegal and remanded the case back to the trial court. Troy remembered what great shape the Greco had been in as he got on the L.A. County Sheriff’s bus to go back to court.

Greco had aged since then. Troy hadn’t seen him until the visit, but he had got word on the underworld grapevine that Greco was having a hard time getting over. He’d lost a sixty-kilo consignment when his runner got busted. A prison buddy had given up the stash to get out of jail on a drunk driving charge. It was just luck that Greco hadn’t been on hand when the raid came. Close calls and disappointments had turned his hair prematurely gray. He’d once been classically handsome; he still looked distinguished, but life’s hard miles were written in seams and creases on his tanned face.