L.A. Noir: The Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy Read online

  A little girl was holding a radio, cradled preciously into herself, attempting to sing along. When Lloyd saw the little girl, his heart melted. She didn’t know how he hated music, how it undercut his thought processes. He would have to be gentle with her, as he was with women of all ages. He caught the little girl’s attention, speaking softly, even as his headache grew: “Do you like my castle, sweetheart?”

  “Y-yes,” the little girl said.

  “It’s for you. The Good Loyalists fought the battle for a fair damsel, and that damsel is you.”

  The music was growing deafening; Lloyd thought briefly that the whole world could hear it. The little girl shook her head coquettishly, and Lloyd said, “Can you turn the radio off, sweetie? Then I’ll take you on a tour of your castle.” The child complied, and fumbled the volume switch the wrong way just as the music stopped and a stern-voiced announcer intoned: “And Governor Edmund G. Brown has just announced that the National Guard has been ordered into South Central Los Angeles in force to stop the two day reign of looting and terror that has already left four dead. All members of the following units are to report immediately . . .”

  The little girl fiddled the radio off just as Lloyd’s headache metamorphosed into a perfect stillness. “You ever read Alice in Wonderland, sweetheart?” he asked.

  “My mommy read me from the picture book,” the little girl said.

  “Good. Then you know what it means to follow the rabbit down the hole?”

  “Does it mean what Alice did when she went into Wonderland?”

  “That’s right; and that’s what old Lloyd has to do now—the radio just said so.”

  “Are you ‘Old Lloyd’?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what’s going to happen to your castle?”

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  “You inherit it, fair damsel—it’s yours to do with as you please.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  The little girl hopped into the air and came down square on top of the castle, obliterating it. Lloyd ran for his car and what he hoped would be his baptism by fire.

  *

  *

  *

  In the Armory, Staff Sergeant Beller took his prize cadre aside and told them that for a few bucks they could appreciably cut down the odds of getting eaten alive in niggerland and maybe have a few laughs, besides. He motioned Lloyd Hopkins and two other P.F.C.s into the lavatory and displayed his wares and elaborated: “.45 automatic. Your classic officer’s sidearm. Guaranteed to drop any fire-breathing nigger at thirty yards, regardless of where it hits him. Strictly illegal for E.M., and a valuable asset in its own right—but these babies are fully automatic—machine pistols, with my specially devised elephant clip—twenty shots, reload in five seconds flat. The piece overheats, but I throw in a glove. The piece, two elephant clips and the glove—an even C-note. Takers?” He proffered the sidearms around. The two motor pool P.F.C.s eyed them longingly and hefted them with love, but declined.

  “I’m broke, Sarge,” the first P.F.C. said.

  “I’m staying behind at the command post with the half-tracks, Sergeant,”

  the second P.F.C. said.

  Beller sighed, and looked up at Lloyd Hopkins, who gave him the creeps.

  “The Brain,” the guys in the company called him. “Hoppy, what about you?”

  “I’ll take them both,” Lloyd said.

  *

  *

  *

  Dressed in Class C fatigues, leggings, full bandoliers and helmet liners, Co. A of the 2nd Battalion, 46th Division, California National Guard stood at parade rest in the main meeting hall of the Glendale Armory, waiting to be briefed. Their battalion commander, a forty-four-year-old Pasadena dentist who held the reserve rank of Lieutenant Colonel, formulated his thoughts and orders into what he hoped would be considered a fierce brevity and spoke into the microphone. “Gentlemen, we are going into the firestorm. The Los Angeles police have just informed us that a forty-eight square mile portion of South Central Los Angeles is engulfed in flames, and that entire commercial blocks have been pillaged and then set on fire. We are being sent in to protect the lives of the firemen battling those fires and

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  to divert through our presence the looting and other criminal activity taking place. This is the sole regular infantry company in an otherwise armored division. You men, I’m sure, will be the spearhead of this peace-keeping force of civilian soldiers. You will be briefed further when we reach our objective. Good day, and God be with you!”

  Nobody mentioned God as the convoy of armored half-tracks and personnel carriers rolled out of Glendale toward the Golden State Freeway southbound. The main topics of conversation were guns, sex, and Negroes, until P.F.C. Lloyd Hopkins, sweltering in the canvas covered half-track, took off his fatigue jacket and introduced fear and immortality:

  “First of all, you have to say it to yourselves, get it out in the air, say it—

  ‘I’m afraid. I don’t wanna die!’ You got that? No, don’t say it out loud, that takes the power out of it. Say it to yourselves. There. Two, say this, too—

  I’m a nice white boy going to college who joined the fucking National Guard to get out of two years’ active duty, right?”

  The civilian soldiers, whose average age was twenty, started to drift in to Lloyd’s drift, and a few of them muttered, “Right.”

  “I can’t hear you!” Lloyd bellowed, imitating Sergeant Beller.

  “Right!” the guardsmen yelled in unison.

  Lloyd laughed, and the others, relieved at the break in the tension, followed suit. Lloyd breathed out, letting his big frame go slack in an imitation of a Negro’s shuffle. “And you all be afraid of de colored man?” he said in broad dialect.

  Silence greeted the question, followed by a general breakout of hushed conversations. This angered Lloyd; he felt his momentum was drifting away, destroying this transcendent moment of his life.

  He banged the butt end of his M-14 into the metal floorboard of the halftrack. “Right!” he screamed. “Right, you dumb-fuck, pussy-whipped, niggerscared, chicken-shit motherfuckers! Right?” He banged his rifle again.

  “Right? Right? Right? Right?”

  “Right!!!” The half-track exploded with the word, the feeling, the new pride in candor, and the laughter that followed grew deafening in its freedom and bravado. Lloyd slammed his rifle butt one last time, to call the group to order.

  “Then they can’t hurt us. Do you know that?” He waited until he was rewarded by a nod of the head from every man present, then pulled his bayonet from its scabbard and cut a large hole in the canvas top of the half-track. Being tall, he was able to peer out the top with ease. In the dis-18

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  tance he could see the flatlands of his beloved L.A. Basin awash in smog. Spirals of flame and smoke covered its southern perimeter. Lloyd thought it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

  *

  *

  *

  The division bivouacked at McCallum Park on Florence and 90th Street, a mile from the heart of the firestorm. Trees were downed to provide space for the hundred-odd military vehicles that would cruise the streets of Watts that night, filled with men armed to the teeth, and C-rations were distributed from the back of a five ton truck while platoon leaders briefed their men on their assignments.

  Rumors abounded, fed by a cadre of L.A.P.D. and Sheriff’s liaison officers: The Black Muslims were coming out in force, in whiteface, bent on hitting the profusion of discount appliance stores near Vermont and Slauson; scores of Negro youth gangs on pep pills were stealing cars and forming

  “kamikaze” squads and heading for Beverly Hills and Bel-Air; Rob “Magawambi” Jones and his Afro-Americans for Goldwater had taken a distinct left turn and were demanding that Mayor Yorty grant them eight commercial blocks on Wilshire Boulevard as reparation for “L.A.P.D. Crimes Against Humanity.” If thei
r terms were not met within twenty-four hours, those eight blocks would be incinerated by firebombs hidden deep within the bowels of the LaBrea Tar Pits.

  Lloyd Hopkins didn’t believe a word of it. He understood the hyperbole of fear and understood further that his fellow civilian soldiers and cops were hyping themselves up to kill and that a lot of poor black bastards out to grab themselves a color TV and a case of booze were going to die. Lloyd gobbled his C-rations and listened to his platoon leader, Lt. Campion, the night manager of a Bob’s Big Boy restaurant, explain orders that had come down to him from several other higher echelon civilian soldiers:

  “Being infantry, we will provide foot patrol, walking point for the armored guys—checking out doorways, alleys, letting our presence be known; bayonets fixed, combat stance, that kind of shit. Look tough. The armored platoon we trained with last summer at camp will be the platoon we hang with tonight. Questions? Everyone know who their squad leader is? Any new men with questions?”

  Sergeant Beller, stretched out on the grass at the back of the platoon, raised his hand and said: “Loot, you know that the platoon is hanging in at four men over strength? Fifty-four men?”

  Campion cleared his throat. “Yes . . . uh . . . yes, Sergeant, I do.”

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  “Sir, do you also know that we got three men who got special M.O.S.s?

  Three men who ain’t regular grunts?”

  “You mean . . .”

  “I mean, sir, that myself, Hopkins, and Jensen are infantry scouts, and I’m sure you’ll agree we could be of more value to this operation by running far point ahead of the armor. Right, sir?”

  Lloyd saw the lieutenant start to waver, and suddenly realized that he wanted it as bad as Beller did. Raising his hand, he said, “Sir, Sergeant Beller is right; we can walk far point and protect the platoon better and make it more autonomous. The platoon is over strength, and . . .”

  The lieutenant capitulated. “All right then,” he said, “Beller, Hopkins and Jensen, you walk point two hundred yards ahead of the convoy. Be careful—stay sharp. No more questions? Platoon dismissed.”

  Lloyd and Beller found each other just as the tanks and half-tracks were starting their engines, flooding the twilight air with the sound of volatile combustion. Beller smiled; Lloyd smiled back in silent complicity.

  “Far point, Sergeant?”

  “Far, far point, Hoppy.”

  “What about Jensen?”

  “He’s just a kid. I’ll tell him to hang back with the armor. We’re covered. We’ve got carte blanche; that’s the important thing.”

  “Opposite sides of the street?”

  “Sounds right to me. Whistle twice if it gets hairy. Why do they call you

  ‘The Brain’?”

  “Because I’m very intelligent.”

  “Intelligent enough to know that the niggers are destroying the whole fucking country?”

  “No, too intelligent for that shit. Anyone with half a brain knows that this is just a temporary blow-out and that when it’s over it’ll be business as usual. I’m here to see about saving innocent lives.”

  Beller said scornfully, “That’s a crock. It just proves brains are overrated. Guts are what counts.”

  “Brains rule the world.”

  “But the world’s all fucked up.”

  “I don’t know. Let’s see what it’s like out there.”

  “Yeah, let’s do that.” Beller began to worry about his ass. Hoppy was starting to sound like a nigger lover.

  *

  *

  *

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  They ditched the division completely, walking south toward where the flames rose the highest and the gunfire sounded its loudest echoes. Lloyd took the north side of 93rd Street and Beller the south, rifles at high port with bayonets fixed and sharpened, eyes scanning row after row of cheap white clapboard houses where Negro families peered from lighted windows and sat on porches, drinking, smoking, chattering and waiting for something to happen.

  They hit Central. Lloyd gulped and felt a trickle of sweat run down into his skivvies, which hung below his hipbones, weighted down by the two specially constructed automatics jammed into his waistband. Beller whistled from across the street and pointed forward. Lloyd nodded as he felt a whiff of smoke hit his nostrils. They walked south, and it took long moments for Lloyd’s head to click into place and assimilate the epiphanies, the perfect logic of the self-destruction he was viewing: Liquor stores, night clubs, process parlors and storefront churches interspersed with vacant lots covered with abandoned cars burned out from the inside. Gutted storefront after gutted storefront spilling profusions of broken liquor bottles; broken glass everywhere; the gutters filled with cheap electric ware—non-hockable items obviously looted in haste and discarded when the looters realized they were valueless.

  Lloyd poked his M-14 into smashed-in windows, squinting into the darkness, cocking his ears the way he had seen dogs do it, listening for the slightest sound or presence of movement. There was nothing—only the wail of sirens and the crack of gunshots in the distance.

  Beller trotted across the street just as an L.A.P.D. black-and-white turned onto Central from 94th. Two flak-coated officers jumped out, the driver running up to Lloyd and demanding: “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  Beller answered, startling the cops, who swiveled to face him, reaching for their .38s. “Far point, officer! My buddy and I been assigned to run ahead of our company and search out snipers. We’re infantry scouts.”

  Lloyd knew that the cops didn’t buy it and that he had to pursue the violent wonder of Watts without his low-life partner. He sent a sharp look Beller’s way and said, “I think we’re lost. We were only supposed to go out three blocks ahead, but we took a wrong turn somewhere. All the houses on these numbered streets look alike.” He hesitated, trying to look bewildered. Beller caught the drift and said, “Yeah. All these houses look alike. All these niggers on their steps sloppin’ up juice look alike, too.”

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  The older of the two cops nodded, then pointed south and said, “You guys with that artillery down near 102nd? The heavy-duty coon hunting?”

  Lloyd and Beller looked at each other. Beller licked his lips to try to keep from laughing. “Yes,” they said in unison.

  “Then get in the car. You ain’t lost no more.”

  As they highballed it southbound without lights or siren, Lloyd told the cops he was flagged for the October class at the academy and that he wanted the riot to be his solo training ground. The younger cop whooped and said, “Then this riot is a preordained training ground for you. How tall are you, six-four? Six-five? With your size, you’re gonna get sent straight to 77th Street Division, Watts, these selfsame fucking streets we’re cruising right now. After the smoke clears and the fucking liberals run off at the mouth about the niggers being victims of poverty, there’s gonna be the job of maintaining order over some very agitated bad-ass niggers who’ve had a distinct taste of blood. What’s your name, kid?”

  “Hopkins.”

  “You ever kill anyone, Hopkins?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Don’t call me ‘sir.’ You ain’t a cop yet, and I’m a plain old patrolman. Well, I killed lots of guys in Korea. Lots and lots, and it changed me. Things look different now. Real different. I’ve talked about it to other guys who’ve lost their cherry, and we all agree: You appreciate different things. You see innocent people, like little kids, and you want them to stay that way because you got no innocence yourself. Little things like little kids and their toys and pets get to you, ’cause you know they’re heading straight into this big fucking shitstorm and you don’t want them to. Then you see people who got no regard for gentle things, for decent things, and you gotta come down hard on them. You gotta protect what two cents’ worth of innocence there is in the world. That’s why I’m a cop. You look cherry to me, Hopkins.
You look eager, too. You understand what I’m saying?”

  Lloyd nodded, tingling with a pins and needles sensation. He smelled smoke through the open patrol car window, and the feeling began to numb as he realized the cop was talking instinctively about Lloyd’s Irish Protestant ethos. “I understand exactly what you’re saying,” he said.

  “Good, kid. Then it starts tonight. Pull over, partner.”

  The older cop braked and drew up to the curb.

  “It’s all yours, kid,” the younger cop said, reaching over and banging 22

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  Lloyd’s helmet. “We’ll take your buddy back to your outfit. You see if you can stir up anything on your own.”

  Lloyd tumbled out of the patrol car so fast that he never got to thank his mentor. They hit the siren by way of farewell.

  102nd and Central was a chaos of smoldering ruins, the hiss of fire hoses, the squeal of tires on the now wet pavement, all modulated by police helicopters that hovered overhead, casting broad searchlights into storefronts to give the firemen light to work by.

  Lloyd walked into the maelstrom, grinning broadly, still suffused with the eloquent recapitulation of his philosophy. He watched an armored halftrack move slowly down the street, a fifty caliber machine gun mounted in its bed. A guardsman in the cab barked into a powerful bullhorn: “Curfew in five minutes! This area is under martial law! Anyone found on the streets after nine o’clock will be arrested. Anyone attempting to cross official police barriers will be shot. Repeat, curfew in five minutes!”

  The words, clearly enunciated with force and malice, echoed loudly down the street, resulting in a flurry of activity. Within seconds Lloyd saw dozens of young men dart from burned-out buildings, running full speed in any direction not caught by the searchlights. He rubbed his eyes and squinted to see if the men were carrying pilfered merchandise, only to discover they had disappeared before he could yell out or train his M-14 on them. Lloyd shook his head and walked past a group of firemen milling around in front of a ravaged liquor store. They all noticed him, but no one seemed puzzled by the anomaly of a lone guardsman on foot patrol. Emboldened, Lloyd decided to check out life indoors.