Los Angeles Noir (30 page)

This was all I ever did for Marcus, take shit places. Sometimes it was one box, sometimes it was many boxes and I’d get to drive the van. I liked his van; it was more official than Mom’s car. Usually I just took the boxes to the airport and waited around while the guy did all the paperwork.

Awhile back I had asked Marcus, “If you’re an
im-
porter, how come I’m always taking boxes away? Shouldn’t I be picking them up?”

“I use the smart guy for that.”

We both laughed at that one. I knew the other guy who worked for him.

This was the first time I’d taken anything to a parking lot. I didn’t care what Marcus was into, and I knew I was safe or he wouldn’t have asked me, but it was odd. When I stopped for my burger I would open the stupid case and look inside. Maybe I really was Santa Claus delivering toys. Somehow I doubted it.

I headed away from the airport, toward Westchester proper. There was an In-N-Out on Sepulveda, and if it wasn’t crowded I could just dip into the drive-thru and be on my way in minutes. I had to eat. It was after noon and I’d had nothing. Goddamn traffic. All around me. Who were all these people? Westchester had been a quiet place when I was a kid. I remember watching the gnats cluster in the sun right in the middle of Lincoln Boulevard. I remember crouching on the sidewalk in front of Baskin-Robbins and feeding ice cream drips to the ants. Mom always ate rainbow sherbet. I always had mint chocolate chip. I should have brought her some sherbet when I first got home and she could still eat. It made me feel sick suddenly that I hadn’t. I hadn’t brought her anything. I saw my Baskin-Robbins, but it just looked ugly, sandwiched between Starbucks and an expensive juice place. I felt so sad. And old. Thirty-three and I felt like I was a hundred years old. I wasn’t hungry anymore. I figured I’d just get on with delivering the stupid old case.

I turned onto a side street, Winsford Avenue, and wound back through the neighborhood toward Lincoln. Winsford wasn’t as nice as Orange Street, my street. Nothing looked as nice anymore. The sky was gray and nobody had a green lawn and the goddamn planes kept going overhead.

Then I saw it. I had to turn on 80th to meet up with Lincoln, and there it was: the Collier School of Aviation Technology. Her school. It was right here and I was driving right past and I knew it was another moment of destiny. It was brown cinder block, about three stories high, just a box, but what more did a school need to be? I could see the fluorescent lights on in the upstairs classrooms. That’s where she was, sitting under that vibrating, humming, greening light, listening to a lecture or maybe practicing carrying a tray of coffee cups down a turbulent aisle.
Bump. Bump.
Her hip jostling against my shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” she’d say. Then she’d turn and see me. “Oh, it’s you.”

“I wondered when you’d notice.”

I drove into the parking lot. I circled through until I found her Chevette. She really was there. All I had to do was wait. But I had the stupid case to deliver. It was quarter to 2. Her class was probably over at 2. I couldn’t get to the Ballona Wetlands and back in fifteen minutes. I could leave her a note if I had a piece of paper and a pencil, a note that would say,
I was driving by on my way to an important meeting and saw your car. Hope you had fun at school. See you later.
But she didn’t even know my name.

I sat in my mom’s car thinking about it, trying to decide what to do. She might remember me if I drew a picture of the coffee table, or of the birdbath with the plaster angel in my front yard. But again I’d need a piece of paper and a pencil. I must’ve sat for a while, because then I saw her. I saw a whole bunch of young stewardesses-to-be coming out of the building. They were walking together and talking and they were all so pretty, and then there she was. Prettiest of all. I saw those pink pants and that bright white white white top. She made me smile.

I got out of the car. “Hey,” I called to her.

Of course she looked startled. Who wouldn’t? She was not expecting me, her neighbor with the coffee table, her funny-guy neighbor all showered and shaved and standing by her car. She frowned.

“It’s me,” I said, “the guy from across the street.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You comin’ over here or what?”

She took a step toward me, then plucked at her girlfriend’s sleeve and pulled her over too. They stopped a little ways away. “What are you doing here?”

“I want to be a stewardess too.”

“We’re called flight attendants.”

“Lah dee dah. Well, I’m a goods-and-services transport technician.”

“What’s that?” It was the girlfriend who asked. Truth is, I can’t even remember what she looked like, I was so blinded by my girl’s shining radiance.

“I make deliveries.”

They both laughed.

“I was driving by on my way to an appointment—”

“A delivery, you mean.”

“And I saw your car. You wanna go with me?”

“On your delivery?”

It was a stroke of genius, thinking of that. I could see she wanted to. She was intrigued. What did I deliver? And where? I was in a service industry just like hers and we were interested in each other’s work. Sitting at the kitchen table at night, I’d ask her about the funny passengers she helped and if there were any babies on the flight, and she’d ask me about Roger the airport guy, and Marcus, and Kimberly. We’d talk and tell each other stories over dinner.

“Your chariot awaits,” I said to her, and I bowed.

“I’m bringing Chara with me. Okay?”

That was her girlfriend obviously, and I was naturally a little disappointed. “Okay.”

Chara got in the backseat. “Ooeee. What’s in there? It smells.”

“It does not,” I said.

“You’re not sitting right next to it. It’s like Clorox or something. Nasty.” She pushed it away from her.

“It’s fragile, so be careful.”

My girl sat up front. She turned toward me and smiled and her brown eyes were big and happy. They were beautiful eyes with black lashes so long and thick they looked like the bristles in my hairbrush. I wanted to feel them against my cheek;
butterfly kisses,
my mother called them.

“Where we going?” she asked.

“Ballona Wetlands.”

“What for?” Chara in the backseat was a complainer, I could tell. “I need to get home.”

“Won’t take long,” I said. “I’m just giving that suitcase to someone. My friend’s in the importing business. Stuff from all over the world.” I looked at the clock on the dash. It had been quite awhile since I left Marcus. I knew the guy would be there waiting. I hoped he wouldn’t be too pissed that I was late.

“What’s your name?” I asked her.

“Terrell,” she said. “I was named for my dad, Terry, and my aunt, Ellie.”

“It’s pretty.”

“What do they call you?” Chara asked from the back-seat.

“Gabe, short for Gabriel.”

“A real angel,” Terrell said.

“He sure is white,” said Chara.

“Nothin’ wrong with that.”

Right away, Terrell and I were together in the car, a duo. Immediately we were joined and Chara was on her own. I don’t know how long they’d been friends. I don’t know if they even really liked each other, but I knew Terrell was mine. She was falling toward me. I could feel the pull, like she was the iron shavings in my old science kit and I was the magnet.

She couldn’t help turning to me. I was happy. “You’re awfully skinny,” she said. “You need to eat more.”

“After this, I’ll take you for a burger or some french fries.”

“I’m starving,” Chara said.

I wanted to make her get out of the car. I should have, but of course I didn’t. We’re all so nice to each other, nice and polite, until we’re not. Maybe if we were rude in little ways at the very moment we got annoyed, we wouldn’t kill each other later. I drove down the hill past LMU and turned left off Lincoln into the Ballona Wetlands Preserve. I saw the wildflowers blooming and the bog smell was pleasant, earthy, and wet, like a mud puddle in the backyard. We bumped along. The road wasn’t well paved. Terrell squealed when we bottomed out in a particularly large pothole, and I laughed at her.

“How are you gonna be a stewardess if the bumps bother you so much?”

“Flight attendant.” Chara corrected me like a school-teacher.

Terrell just giggled. “I sure don’t like the bumps,” she said to me, and me alone.

She had told me a secret. I felt bigger then, like I’d grown six inches taller and thirty pounds heavier and I had hands and feet like a big man. I wanted to touch her shiny shoulder, but I didn’t because of Chara.

“There,” I said. “There’s the parking lot.”

My piece of paper said
parking lot 4
and I saw the little wooden sign with the yellow number
4
. The sky was like a baby store—pink and blue. The lot was empty. Marcus would kill me.

“There’s no one here,” Chara said.

“Will you shut up?” I couldn’t hold back.

“I’m getting out of this car.”

“Don’t.”

“I refuse to be spoken to like that. I’m gonna call my brother to come get me.”

“Stay in the car.” This from Terrell. “Please?”

“I don’t want to stay with that smelly old thing.” She pushed the case hard and it made a thump against the other door.

“Don’t touch it!” I shouted.

“What’s in it?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Money. Drugs. You know, Terrell, how they make it smell so the dogs can’t sniff it?”

“Chara.” Terrell frowned, but her friend was getting hysterical.

“It’s not good. It’s not safe. Where are we? What are we doing here? I want to go home! You tell him to take me home!”

Terrell turned around and leaned over the seat. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong with you? Gabe here lives across the street from my brother. He’ll take us home, soon as we deliver this.”

“Stop the car!” Chara screamed.

She opened her door. I slammed on the brakes and she fell forward onto Terrell’s seat. She screamed, and when she came up her nose was bloody. I hadn’t meant to stop short, but I didn’t want her to fall out onto the street.

“Oh my God,” Terrell said.

Chara was scrambling out of the car. She stumbled in the dirt parking lot. She was wearing a little skirt and ridiculous high heels.

“His mother just died!” Terrell called to her. “Wait.”

Chara was trying to run away.

“Where is she going?” I couldn’t help but ask. We were way back deep into the preserve, surrounded by bog and birds and not much else. A black town car came down the road toward us, moving fast, dust in a plume behind it. I breathed a big sigh of relief. My guy. He was later than I was.

Chara was flagging him down.

“Chara!” I shouted. I had gotten out of the car. “Stop. That’s my guy. That’s who I’m meeting.”

Terrell was out of the car and running toward Chara now. The town car had stopped and I could see the man had rolled down his window. He was big; he looked too big for the town car. He was hunched over the steering wheel so his head wouldn’t hit the ceiling. He frowned up at her, at Chara. She was crying and her nose was bleeding and she was begging him to let her in the car, to take her away, to call the police.

“He’s got something bad in that case!” she said. “He’s a crazy man!”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I hollered.

Terrell reached her before I did and she pulled on Chara’s arm. She was trying to drag her away from the car and apologize to the man at the same time. He seemed amused. He was looking at the two girls, he was looking at my girl and he was smiling.

Couple of silly females
, I’d tell him. Chara just fell off her goddamn shoes. Marcus and Terrell and I would laugh about Chara later. I’d sit on that creamy Naugahyde with my arm around her and we’d be drinking a beer and laughing about poor Chara and her stupid shoes.

The guy reached out his window and grabbed Chara’s arm with his giant’s hand. He started to roll forward. Chara had to run along with him. He sped up. Terrell was running too, trying to peel his fingers from Chara’s arm.

I hurried back to my mother’s car. I opened the back door and the case fell out onto the ground. It fell hard and I worried about breaking whatever was inside. I picked it up. Something inside had come loose. Something was bumping around in there.

“Here!” I came running toward the town car. “Take it.”

Chara was trotting now, and blubbering. On those spike heels she was jogging, but she was getting tired. She stumbled and then she fell and made this horrible choking sound, but he didn’t let go, he just dragged her along next to him. Terrell screamed then. A beautiful, high scream, as much like a bird as a woman, in so much pain it hurt my heart to hear it. She put her fists over her eyes.

Good
, I thought.
Good. No one should see this. My sweet baby can’t see this
. The driver dragged Chara until she stopped flopping, and then he dropped her. She lay there and he backed up and ran right over her. Then forward. There was this popping sound, loud as a firecracker but more hollow and round, and then a scuffling, and when I looked again, Chara’s legs were flat, but her arms were clawing in the dirt. I wanted her to die so she’d stop that noise, stop scratching. She was like a fly with its wings plucked off. Terrell had fallen to her knees. I had the case in my hand.

“Here!” I screamed again at the guy. “Here!”

Take this, leave my girl alone. Take this suitcase.

I ran toward him, but he was spinning his car in the dirt, doing a 360, heading for Terrell. She got up. She was no fool, and she started to run. She zig-zagged back and forth so the car couldn’t follow her. Made me so proud the way she ran and tried to save herself. She ran like the wind, like a nymph, like an angel. I was coming straight toward the car. I held the case in front of me. He was coming for both of us.

“Stop!” I screamed at him. “Stop!”

I flung the case at the car, but the catch opened in the

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

M
ICHAEL
C
ONNELLY
is the author of seventeen novels, many of which feature LAPD Detective Harry Bosch. He lived in Los Angeles near Mulholland Drive for fourteen years and now splits his time between California and Florida, where he grew up.

R
OBERT
F
ERRIGNO
is the author of nine thrillers. His most recent book,
Prayers for the Assassin,
was a
New York Times
best-seller. For more information, visit
www.prayers-fortheassassin.com
and
www.robertferrigno.com
.

J
ANET
F
ITCH
is the author of the novels
Paint It Black
and
White Oleander.
She is a third-generation resident of Los Angeles, where she lives in the Silverlake district. Currently, Fitch teaches in the Masters of Professional Writing program at the University of Southern California.

D
ENISE
H
AMILTON’S
crime novels have been shortlisted for the Edgar Allen Poe and the Willa Cather awards. A native Angeleno, she is a former reporter for the
Los Angeles Times
and a Fulbright scholar. Visit her at
www.denisehamilton.com
.

N
AOMI
H
IRAHARA
is the author of the Mas Arai mystery series, featuring a Japanese American gardener and atomic bomb survivor living in Altadena, California. A former editor of
The Rafu Shimpo
daily newspaper in Los Angeles, she has produced more than seven nonfiction books related to Southern California and Asian American history. Her latest novel,
Snakeskin Shamisen,
is an Edgar Award finalist. Her website is
www.naomihirahara.com
.

E
MORY
H
OLMES
II
is a Los Angeles—based writer. His stories have appeared in the
San Francisco Chronicle,
the
Los
Angeles Times,
the
Los Angeles Sentinel
, the
New York Amsterdam
News, Written By
magazine, and other publications.

P
ATT
M
ORRISON
is a veteran
Los Angeles Times
reporter and columnist, host of a daily program on NPR affiliate KPCC, commentator for NPR’s
Morning Edition
, and author of a best-selling book on the Los Angeles River [non-fiction, really]. She has been a six-time Emmy-winning host and commentator for a local PBS public affairs program, and host of a nationally syndicated book show.

J
IM
P
ASCOE
made a name for himself in the noir/crime fiction community as the copublisher of the critically acclaimed indie press UglyTown, which brought out his first two books,
By the Balls: A Bowling Alley Murder Mystery
and
Five Shots and a Funeral.
He is writing a dark manga series called
Undertown,
as well as a number of original comics based on
Hellboy Animated.
He lives in Los Angeles.

G
ARY
P
HILLIPS
writes about crime, giant three-armed robots, babes with Ph.D.’s in tights, and other such subject matter. He is finishing up a novel set during World War II, coediting the
Darker Mask
anthology of edgy superhero prose stories, and writing a coming-of-age graphic novel about black and Latino teenagers growing up in ’80s South Central L.A.

S
COTT
P
HILLIPS
was born in Wichita, Kansas, and spent many years in Paris before heading to Southern California. After moving, over a twelve- or thirteen-year period, from Studio City to Ventura to Woodland Hills to Koreatown to Pacific Palisades, he eventually gave up and relocated, tail between his legs, to St. Louis, Missouri.