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

  He liked it. The darkness inside the burned-out store was soothing and Lloyd sensed that the shadow-shrouded silence was there to inform him with essential knowledge. He stopped and took a roll of friction tape from his fatigue jacket pocket and fixed his flashlight to the bottom edge of his bayonet. He swung his rifle in a figure eight arc and admired the results: wherever the M-14 pointed, there would be light.

  Mounds of charred wood; piles of insulation stuffing; crushed booze bottles. Used condoms everywhere. Lloyd chuckled at the thought of subterranean liquor store coupling, then felt himself go dead cold as his chuckle was returned, followed by a hideous low moan.

  He moved his M-14 around in a three hundred sixty degree arc, the muzzle at waist level. Once, then twice. On the third time around he was rewarded: an old man lay crumpled atop a mound of wadded up insulation

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  fiber. Lloyd’s heart melted. The old bastard was withered to prune dimensions and was obviously a threat to no one. He walked to the old man and handed him his canteen. The old man grasped it with shaking hands, raised it to his lips, then threw it to the ground, screeching:

  “That not be what I need! I needs my Lucy! I gots to have my Lucy!”

  Lloyd was befuddled. Was the old geezer crying out for his wife or some long lost love?

  He removed the flashlight from his bayonet housing and shined it in the old man’s face, then winced; the mouth and chin of that face were covered with congealed blood, from which glass shards stuck out like crystalline porcupine quills. Lloyd recoiled, then pointed his light into the old man’s lap and recoiled further: the withered hands were cut to the bone, and three fingers of the right hand had been ground down to bloody stubs. The gnarled left hand held the shattered remnants of a bottle of Thunderbird wine.

  “My Lucy! Gimme my Lucy!” the old man wailed, spitting globules of blood out with each word.

  Lloyd took his flashlight and went crashing through the glass-strewn ruins, brushing tears from his eyes, searching for an intact bottle of liquid salvation. Finally he found one, partially hidden by an overturned ceiling beam—a pint of six-year-old Seagram’s 7.

  Lloyd carried the bottle over and fed the old man, holding his head by the short nap of his grey hair, keeping the bottle a few inches from his bloody lips lest he try to ingest the entire thing. Thoughts of going for medical attention crossed his mind, but he pushed them away. He knew that the old man wanted to die, that he deserved to die drunk and that this service he was performing was the wartime equivalent of the many hours he had spent talking to his mute, brain-damaged mother.

  The old man made slurping sounds, sucking convulsively at the bottle each time it touched his lips. After a few minutes had passed and half the pint was consumed, his tremors subsided and he pushed Lloyd’s hand away.

  “Dis be de start of World War Three,” he said.

  Lloyd ignored the comment and said, “I’m P.F.C. Hopkins, California National Guard. Do you want medical attention?”

  The old man laughed, coughing up huge wads of blood-streaked sputum.

  “I think you’re bleeding internally,” Lloyd said. “I can get you to an ambulance. Do you think you can walk?”

  “I can do anything I wants to,” the old man shrieked, “but I wants to die!

  Ain’t no place for me in this war—I gots to make the scene on de other side!”

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  The bloodshot, filmy old brown eyes importuned Lloyd as if he were an idiot child. He fed the old man again, watching some kind of liquid acceptance course through the ancient body. When the bottle was finished the old man said, “You gots to do me a favor, white boy.”

  “Name it,” Lloyd said.

  “I’m gonna die. You gots to go over to my room and get my books and maps and things out and sell dem so I can have a decent burial. Christian like, you dig?”

  “Where’s your room?”

  “It in Long Beach.”

  “I can go there when the riot is over. Not until then.”

  The old man shook his head furiously, until his body shook with it, ragdoll like, all the way down to his toes. “You gots to! They gonna lock me out tomorrow ’cause I behind on the rent! Then de po-lice gonna throw me in de sewer with the rats! You gots to!”

  “Hush,” Lloyd said. “I can’t go that far. Not now. Don’t you have any friends here I can talk to? Someone who can go to Long Beach for you?”

  The old man considered the offer. Lloyd watched his wheels turn slowly.

  “You goes to de mission on Avalon an’ One hundred and sixth. De African church. You talk to Sister Sylvia. You tell her she got to go to Famous Johnson’s crib and get his shit and sell it. She gots my birthday in de church records. I wants a nice headstone. You tells her I loves Jesus, but I loves sweet Lucy more.”

  Lloyd stood up. “How bad do you want to die?” he asked.

  “Bad, man, bad.”

  “Why?”

  “Ain’t no place for me in dis war, man.”

  “What war?”

  “World War Three, you dumb motherfucker!”

  Lloyd thought of his mother and reached for his rifle, but couldn’t do it.

  *

  *

  *

  Lloyd ran all the way to 106th and Avalon, composing epitaphs for Famous Johnson en route. His chest was heaving and his arms and shoulders ached from holding his rifle at high port, and when he saw the neon sign proclaiming the “United African Episcopal Methodist Church” he took in last gulps of air to bring his raging heartbeat down to a low ebb; he wanted to be the very picture of armed dignity on a mission of mercy. The church was storefront, two stories high, with lights shining in viola-

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  tion of the curfew. Lloyd walked in, to be confronted by a pandemonium that was part prayer meeting, part coffee klatch. Large tables had been set up lengthwise between rows of wooden pews, and middle-aged and elderly Negroes were kneeling in prayer and helping themselves to coffee and donuts. Lloyd moved slowly along the walls, which were festooned with paintings of a black Christ, weeping, blood dripping from his crown of thorns. He started looking to the faces of the kneelers for signs of holiness or compassion. All he saw was fear. Until he noticed a fat black woman in a white robe who seemed to be smiling inwardly as she dispensed shoulder taps to the people who knelt by the pews nearest the aisle. When the woman noticed Lloyd she shouted, “Welcome, soldier,” above the other hubbub and walked up to him, hand extended. Startled, Lloyd shook the hand and said, “I’m P.F.C. Hopkins. I’m here on a mission of mercy for one of your parishioners.”

  The woman dropped Lloyd’s hand and said, “I’m Sister Sylvia. This church is strictly for the Afro-American folk, but tonight is sort of special. Did you come to pray for the victims of this Armageddon? Do that be your mission?”

  Lloyd shook his head. “No, I came to ask a favor. Famous Johnson is dead. Before he died, he asked me to come here and tell you to sell his belongings so he can have a proper burial. He told me you know the address of his place in Long Beach and his birthdate. He wants a nice headstone. He told me to tell you he loves Jesus.” Lloyd was startled to see Sister Sylvia shaking her head ironically, a grin starting to form at the corners of her mouth. “I don’t think it’s funny,” he said.

  “You don’t!” Sister Sylvia bellowed. “Well, I does! Famous Johnson was trash, young white man! He deserved to be called what he was—a nigger!

  And that room in Long Beach? That nothing but fantasy! Famous Johnson lived out of his car, with his sin things in the back seat! He used to come by this church for the donuts and coffee, but that all! Famous Johnson didn’t have nothin’ to sell!”

  “But I . . .”

  “You comes with me, young man. I shows you, so you forget all about Infamous Johnson with a clean conscience.”

  Lloyd decided not to protest; he wanted to see the fat woman’s definition of sin.<
br />
  It was a high-finned, chopped and lowered 1947 Cadillac, what Crazy Tom would have called a “Coon-Mobile.”

  Lloyd flashed his light into the back seat as Sister Sylvia stood tri-26

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  umphantly next to him, legs spread stolidly, her arms wrapped around her midsection in an “I told you so” attitude. He swung the door open. The tuck and roll upholstered seats were covered with empty soda pop bottles and pornographic photographs, most of them depicting Negro couples engaged in fellatio. Lloyd felt a sudden wave of pity; the sucker and suckee were overweight and middle-aged, and the tawdriness of the photos was a far cry from the Playboy magazines he had collected since high school. He didn’t want it to be; it was too rotten a legacy for any human being.

  “I told you so!” Sister Sylvia barked. “This is In-famous Johnson’s house!

  You gonna sell them pictures and return them empties, and get you a fast dollar ninety-eight, which ain’t gonna get you nothin’ but two bottles o’

  T-Bird to pour over In-famous’s pauper grave!”

  Lloyd shook his head. Radio noise from a block away pounded him, causing the whole ugly moment to sway in his vision. “But you don’t understand, ma’am,” he said. “Famous entrusted this job to me. It’s my job. It’s my duty. It’s my . . .”

  “I don’t wanna hear nothin’ ’bout that sinner! You hears me? I wouldn’t bury that trash in our cemetery for all the tea in China. You hears me?” Sister Sylvia didn’t wait for an answer; she strode angrily back in the direction of her church, leaving Lloyd alone on the sidewalk, wishing the gunshots in the distance would escalate to the point where they drowned out the radio noise. He sat down on the curb and thought of the two wretched people in the photographs, and of Janice who wouldn’t blow him, but who did the final deed on their first date two weeks before high school graduation, leaving Lloyd Hopkins, Marshall High Class of ’59, aglow with wonder at the love in his future. Now, six years later, Lloyd Hopkins, summa cum laude graduate of Stanford University, graduate of the Fort Polk Infantry School and the Evelyn Wood Speed Reading Class and six-year lover of Janice Marie Rice, sat on a curb in Watts wondering why he couldn’t get what a fat Negro slob probably got all the time. Lloyd shined his light in the back seat window again. It was as he suspected: the guy’s dick was at least two inches bigger than his. He decided it was God and commitment. The jerk in the photo had a low I.Q. and a bad build, so God threw him a big wang to slide through life on. It all worked out.

  Janice would take him orally when he graduated the academy and they got married. The last thought made him sex-flushed and sad. Janice made him sad. Then he thought of the daughters they would create. Janice, five foot eleven barefoot, slender, but with a robust set to her hips, was made for

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  bearing exceptional children. Daughters. They would have to be daughters, made to be nurtured by the love in his Irish Protestant credo . . . Lloyd took his Janice-daughter fantasies to ends of fulfillment both good and bad, then shifted his mind to women in general—women pure, wanton, vulnerable, needy, strong; all the ambivalences of his mother, now silent in her strength, rendered dumb by years of giving shelter to her lunatic male brood, from which only he emerged sane and capable of providing solace himself. Lloyd heard a burst of gunshots in the near distance. Automatic weapon fire. At first he thought it was the radio or TV, but it was too real, too right, and it was coming from the direction of the African Church. He picked up his M-14 and ran to the corner. As he rounded it he heard screams, and turned to look in the shattered storefront window. When he saw the devastation inside, he screamed himself. Sister Sylvia and three male parishioners lay on the linoleum floor in a mass of tangled flesh, melded together in a river of blood. From somewhere within the twisted mound of bodies a severed artery shot up a red geyser. Lloyd, transfixed, watched it die and felt his scream metamorphose into the single word, “What! What! What!”

  He screeched it until he was able to will his eyes from the bodies to the rest of the cordite-reeking church. The tops of dark heads peered above pews. Dimly, Lloyd perceived that the people were terrified of him. Tears streaming down his face, he dropped his rifle to the pavement and screamed, “What? What? What?” only to be answered by a score of voices hurling, “Killer, killer, murderer!” in horror and outrage. It was then that he heard it, faintly but plainly, back off to his left, clicking in so succinctly that he knew it was real, not electronic: “Auf weider- sehen, niggers. Auf weidersehen, jungle bunnies. See ya in hell.”

  It was Beller.

  Lloyd knew what he had to do. He tossed the Negroes huddled behind their pews his sternest resolve and went after him, leaving his rifle behind on the pavement, crouching his long frame low behind parked cars as he made his way toward the destroyer of innocence.

  Beller was running slowly north, unaware that he was being followed. Lloyd could see him framed plainly in the glow of those streetlights not destroyed, turning every few moments to look back and savor his triumph. He checked the second hand on his watch and calculated. It was obvious: Beller’s unconscious was telling him to turn around and scan his blind side every twenty seconds.

  Lloyd sprinted full out, counting to himself, and hit the pavement prone 28

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  just as Beller would turn and peer backward. He was within fifty yards of the killer when Beller ducked into an alleyway and started screaming,

  “Freeze, nigger, freeze!” A burst of shots followed, fully automatic. Lloyd knew it was the elephant clip .45.

  He reached the alley and halted, catching his breath. There was a dark shape near the end of the cul-de-sac. Lloyd squinted and discerned that it was clad in fatigue green. He heard Beller’s voice a moment later, spitting out garbled epithets.

  Lloyd entered the alley, inching his way along a brick wall. He pulled one of his .45s from his waistband and flipped off the safety. He was almost within firing distance when his foot hit a tin can, the sound reverberating like hollow thunder.

  He fired just as Beller did, and the flash from their gun barrels lit up the alley blindingly, illuminating Beller, crouched over a dead Negro man, the man headless, blown apart at the shoulders, his neck a massive cavity of bloody, charred tissue. Lloyd screamed as the recoil from his .45 lifted him into the air and slammed him back to the ground. A dozen shots tore into the wall above him, and he rolled frantically on the glass-strewn pavement as Beller fired another burst at the ground, causing glass and blacktop shrapnel to explode before his eyes. Lloyd started to sob. He flung his arm over his eyes and prayed for courage and the chance to be a good husband to Janice. His prayers were interrupted by the sound of footsteps running away from him. His mind clicked in: Beller was out of ammo and was running for his life. Lloyd willed himself to stand upright. His legs wobbled, but his mind was steadfast. He was right: Beller’s empty M-14 lay across the torso of the dead man, and the

  .45, spent and burning to the touch, lay a few feet away. Lloyd deep breathed, reloaded and listened for sounds of flight. He caught them; off to his left he heard the scuffle of feet and strained breathing. He followed the sounds by the shortest possible route, scaling the cement alleyway wall and coming down into a weed-strewn backyard, where the breath-noise mixed with the sound of a radio playing jazz. Lloyd blundered through the yard, mumbling prayers to engulf the music. He found a walkway leading to the street, and the light from the adjoining house let him pick out a trail of freshly spilled blood. He saw that the blood led into a huge vacant lot, pitch dark and eerily silent. Lloyd listened, willing himself to assume the ears of a highly attuned animal. Just as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness and let him pick out

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  objects in the lot, he heard it: a snapping of metal on metal, coming from the direction of a portable construction toilet. It was unmistakable: Beller was still armed with one of his evil customized .45s, and he knew Lloyd was near. Ll
oyd hurled a rock at the outhouse. The door creaked open and three single shots rang out, followed by the sound of doors slamming all the way down the block.

  Lloyd got an idea. He walked down the street, scanning front porches until he found what he was looking for, nestled among an evening’s array of potato chip bags and empty beer cans—a portable radio. Steeling himself, he turned on the volume and was bombarded by rhythmic soul music. Despite his headache, he smiled, then turned the volume down. It was poetic justice for Staff Sergeant Richard A. Beller.

  Lloyd carried the radio into the vacant lot and placed it on the ground ten yards in back of the construction toilet, then flipped the volume dial and ran in the opposite direction.

  Beller burst out the door of the outhouse seconds later, screaming, “Nigger! Nigger! Nigger!” Blindly, he fired off a series of shots. The light from his muzzle bursts illuminated him perfectly. Lloyd raised his .45 and aimed slowly, pointing at Beller’s feet to allow for recoil. He squeezed the trigger, the gun kicked and the elephant clip emptied. Beller screamed. Lloyd dug into the dirt, stifling his own screams. The radio blasted rhythm and blues, and Lloyd ran toward the sound, the butt end of his .45 extended. He stumbled in the darkness, then got down on his hands and knees and bludgeoned the music to death.

  Lloyd stood up unsteadily, then walked to the remains of Richard Beller. He felt strangely calm as he carried first the entrails of the former civilian soldier to the outhouse, then the lower body, then the disembodied arms. Beller’s head was nothing but splattered bone and brain debris, and Lloyd let them lie in the dirt.

  Muttering, “God please, please, God, rabbit down the hole,” Lloyd walked out to the street, noting with his animal antennae that there was no one about—the locals were either scared shitless by the gunfire or inured to it. He emptied his canteen into the gutter and found a length of surgical tubing in his bayonet case—good strangling cord, Beller had once told him. There was a ’61 Ford Fairlane at the curb. Deftly manipulating the tubing and canteen, Lloyd managed to siphon a solid pint of gas from the tank. He walked back to the outhouse and doused what remained of Beller, then reloaded his .45 and paced off ten yards. He fired, and the outhouse exploded. 30