Los Angeles Stories (4 page)

“Zoot patrol,” said Smiley. “They will catch all Mexicans wearing clothes!”

“Pendejos! Pinches gabachos!” said Kiko. Two police Fords went flying by on Spring, their sirens blasting.

“I happen to have a friend here,” I said. “Let's go say hello to Herman.” Herman “Ju­Ju” Doxey, the night watchman at the
Los Angeles Times,
spent most evenings in the backseat of his '37 Buick, listening to the radio, off the street and out of sight. I knocked twice on the window. Herman rolled it down and peered out through a thick cloud of cigarette smoke.

“Here we have Brother Ray and two young fellas,” Herman said. “I'm always glad to make the acquaintance of young people. Gettin' hectic over on Broadway, it's protrudin' on my mood.”

“We have to get off the street for just a little while.” I said. I sat up front; Kiko and Smiley got settled in back.

“You boys just relax,” said Herman. “Listen, there's Johnny Mumford on the radio, and now he's crossed over Jordan. Ain't that a shame?” He passed the Chesterfield pack around and we all lit up.

“Chonny was over there at the Big Union, we saw him!” Kiko said. “He sang ‘My Heart Is in My Hands.' ”

“With his eyes to Florencia,” Smiley said.

“Florencia?” I asked.

“Qué chula chulita!” Smiley whistled.

“I know you got some fine, healthy mamacitas, and that's a fact,” Herman said.

“Healthy?”

“You know, solid.”

“Solid?”

“Man, dig it and pick up on it!” Herman motioned for quiet while poor Johnny's last platter got moving on the radio — a slow-­thudding blues, the horns sustaining in big harmony blasts, like the Southern Pacific Daylight pulling into Union Station:

Got me a fine healthy mama, she's long and she's tall

Built­ up solid, like the L.A. City Hall

From the top of her head right down to her feet

She's a high­-grade load of sugar freightin' up Main Street

Fine and healthy, yes she fine and healthy

So doggone fine and healthy, boys, and she ain't no hand­-me­-down!

“High-­grade load of sugar?” Kiko pronounced it
sookar
.

“As in, juicy!” Herman said.

“S
ó
lido!”

Herman began. “All right, then. John Mumford. Born, Los Angeles, 1923; died, 1949, cut down in his prime. The prodigal son was a forward child; his mind was not to obey. But he gave his all. The band would lead off so as to get the beat planted in the mind. At the turn­around, Johnny would move up to the front. Very smooth. But on the chorus, he might start slappin' his left knee in time whilst holdin' the microphone in his right hand. Ol' Johnny's gettin' ready! On the second verse, John hold back just a little, walkin' around and shakin' his shoul­ders out, like a fighter. Next chorus, he tighten up! He grab a handful of Ray's gabardine, 'bout mid­thigh! Clutchin' at it! Them little gals run for­ward as close as they can get. He let the guitar work. He back up. Last chorus, he commence to stompin'! He grab his waistband and jerk his pants up, on the beat! All the gals throw pocketbooks, handkerchiefs, anything they ain't gone need later on. They don't throw they hatpins or they guns, nossir, they don't throw that! Heh, heh, nossir, they don't.”

I said, “Was it a woman got him killed? You know he didn't do it.” Herman had the inside dope on all subjects known heretofore and as yet undesignated.

“Right now, I got to make my rounds. What good it is, I don't really know. Look like a newspaper building to you? It's a Temple of Secrets, the High and Mighty Church of the Next Dollar, and ain't nary a one of 'em mine. What they need a watchman for? Our Lord and Savior had a marvelous trick bag, I'm told, but even he couldn't break in here.” Kiko and Smiley crossed themselves. Herman laughed. “Don't you boys be concerned, I'm strictly spiritual! My mind is stayin' on Jesus! I'm a deacon in the Church of the Rapid Bible and the First Born, on Thirty-third. Worship services are spontaneous and unscheduled, but all are welcome! Right now, you folks better sit tight and let me have a look around on the boulevard. I'll be back.”

Kiko said, “Man, he's been at a lot of shows.”

“Actually, no. You dig Herman right here, every night. No need to go further. He'll be on the radio in a little while. We don't check him with no light­weight stuff.”

Saturday and Sunday nights it was Leon the Lounge Lizard's radio show,
The Rump Steak Serenade
. Leon featured the cool sounds of jazz from midnight to 3:00 a.m., broadcasting live from Doctor Brownie's Famous Big Needle, the jazz record shop on San Pedro open twenty-four hours a day. At two o'clock, Herman came on for a fifteen-minute interlude: “It's time once again for
Dig It
and Pick Up On It
, with Herman the Human Jukebox!” Folks would call in with questions and try to stump Ju­Ju, but it had never been done. If a caller asked about a record, he could name all the players, the label color, matrix number, and chart position. He'd know how many suits Billy Eckstine had and what brand of gin Fats Waller preferred. Tonight Ju­Ju was sharp and on the money, as always. A white man in Glendale, who wouldn't give his name, asked, “Is it legal for colored men to call them­selves ‘King,' ‘Duke,' and ‘Count'?” Ju­Ju answered politely, “Yes, if jazz is legal. If not, all bets are off, and you had better stay right there in Glendale!” Next came a brother from Watts, one Horace Sprott. “How many times has guitarist Irving Ashby been stopped by the LAPD on his way home from the nightclub job with Nat Cole?” Answer: “Eighty­-seven times to date, and always by the same motorcycle officer, William ‘Bitter Bill' Spangler, badge 666. Officer Bill asserts that John has been entertained in their home by his wife, Mabel, repeatedly and often, whilst he is out on patrol. ‘She plays those records by that spade, Cole. I hate music! Every time I come in from work, the place stinks like fish. I hate fish!'” The third caller was a white woman with an East Tennessee drawl that made a question out of everything: “Hello, Herman? This is Ida from Thirty-third Street, and I have a garage full of old 78 records? They belonged to my husband; he liked that music you like? I'm moving to Spokane, so what should I do?”

“ 'Scuse the hat, Miss Ida, ma'am, but that's me you hear a-­knockin'!” Ju­Ju laughed. “I declare now, don't you go answering that door for nobody else!”

We were sitting in front of their house in Chavez Ravine, up in the hills behind Chinatown. Kiko got a jug from the house and we passed it around, listening to Billie Holiday on the communal jukebox that was wired up to the lone streetlight.

My man, he don't love me, he treats me awful mean

He's the lowest man I've ever seen

“Help me out, lay something on me,” I said. “Like, ‘May I ask your name?', ‘When do you get off work?', ‘Would you like a drink?', that kind of thing.”

Kiko laughed, “Man, pick up on
theese
and dig it!”

“What you wanna do, man?” asked Smiley.

“I want to take this girl out, man, what do you think?” I said.

“You wanna take out one of our girls, pendejo?”

“Yeah. You know, for a drink.”

“A drink?”

“Yeah, just for a drink.”

“Oh.”

He wears high­-drape pants, stripes of lovely yellow

When he starts in lovin' me, he is so fine and mellow

“Where did the jukebox come from? What's it doing in the street?” I asked.

“Cousin Beto Six­Fingers found it. Nobody over here has dinero por radios.”

“He found a brand-­new Wurlitzer jukebox?”

“Cousin Beto finds things for people.”

“Do you help him?” I asked, wondering what Kiko and Smiley did all day and night. I kept seeing them in the strangest places. “What happens when it rains?”

“It moves,” said Smiley.

Love is like a faucet, it turns off and on

Just when you think it's on, baby, it's turned off and gone.

The record finished. The fancy colored lights switched off, and the machine went to sleep.

The last rays of the sun fell upon the dirty front window and died trying to get through. The man sat in the front room of the record shop studying an auction circular of rare 78s. He made little checks next to certain entries with a red pencil, drinking occasionally from a greasy water glass. A pint bottle of Four Roses bourbon sat near to hand.

The red lightbulb in the ceiling went on. The man put the paper down and walked through the curtain to the back door. He checked the peephole, then opened the door partway. “Boss,” said a confiden­tial voice in the dark. An ancient panel truck was parked in the alley behind the shop, “Cousin Beto's Scrap Metal” painted on its side. A short, slightly­ built man with a large cardboard box stood waiting.

The box contained 78 records which the man with the pipe began to take out and examine. He handled the records expertly, like a bank teller counting money. The short man was Mexican, or Mexican and something else like Greek, with oily black hair duck­tailed in the pachuco style and a wide leering mouth full of gold teeth. He watched the man closely.

“
Nice
, boss. Look at the
condition
,” he whispered. The man with the pipe regarded the Mexican and spoke for the first time with the pipe­stem clenched in his teeth. “Whiteman, Whiteman, Whiteman, Nick Lucas, Vernon Dalhart. Bunch of crap. Where are the sleeves?”

“I had to get out of there
fast
, boss, I had to leave the sleeves. But I got something special, something you really gonna
like
. Columbia Black Label,
brand new
.” He held it properly, as the man had taught him always to do, by the edges. His gold rings flashed in the light, especially the ones on his right hand, since there were six fin­gers instead of the routine five.

The man took the record and turned it this way and that, examining the grooves and the silver inscription that read “Ma Rainey, colored singer with piano acc. by Clarence Williams, recorded in New York, 1923.”

“Where'd you get this?” he said in a flat, accusing tone.

“Boss,
listen
. It's a lady, down on Thirty-third. Her old man was a collector, like you. They're in the garage! Bluebird, Paramount, Columbia, Okeh! This is el mero mero, boss.

“What's the set­up?”

“She's a gabacha. In the house twenty years. Two poodle dogs inside. Garage is in the back. Original boxes. You gonna
love
it, boss!”

“Who else knows?”

“A kid brings her groceries from the tienda on the corner. He's always looking for old cars down there. He got the key and went into the garage. He found this. He says it's got muchos hermanos m
á
s!”

“The key?”

“She likes him, she lets him see.”

“Get it.”

“She keeps the keys on a string around la cintura.”

“Get the key.”

The deliveryman pointed to the box of records on the table. “Y
é
stos?”

“Junk,” said the man, turning back into the doorway. The deliveryman took the box and put it back in the truck. It had seen better days and was full of rust, but the motor made almost no sound as he drove away.

Sunday morning, the shop doorbell rang and it was Herman. “Brother Ray, what you got planned for today?”

“Just trying to decide between a bench in Union Station and a bench in Pershing Square.”

“We going to pay a social call on a high-­tone Christian white lady named Ida.”

“The one with all the records?”

“That's just what I'm talkin' about! See, we tryin' to be a little more visible over at the church. We got some old people need help and some young people that's gonna need help. Those that haven't had all the advantages like you and me.”