Hollywood Nocturnes Read online

  I checked the robbery report lying on the seat beside me. The addresses of the four new black-white stickups covered 26th and Gramercy to La Brea and Adams. Hitting the racial demarcation line, I watched the topography change from negligent middle-class white to proud colored. East of St. Andrews, the houses were unkempt, with peeling paint and ratty front lawns. On the west the homes took on an air of elegance: small dwellings were encircled by stone fencing and well-tended greenery; the mansions that had earned West Adams the sobriquet High Darktown put Beverly Hills pads to shame—they were older, larger, and less architecturally pretentious, as if the owners knew that the only way to be rich and black was to downplay the performance with the quiet noblesse oblige of old white money.

  I knew High Darktown only from the scores of conflicting legends about it. When I worked University Division, it was never on my beat. It was the lowest per capita crime area in L.A. The University brass followed an implicit edict of letting rich black police rich black, as if they figured blue suits couldn’t speak the language there at all. And the High Darktown citizens did a good job. Burglars foolish enough to trek across giant front lawns and punch in Tiffany windows were dispatched by volleys from thousand-dollar skeet guns held by negro financiers with an aristocratic panache to rival that of anyone white and big-moneyed. High Darktown did a damn good job of being inviolate.

  But the legends were something else, and when I worked University, I wondered if they had been started and repeatedly embellished only because square-john white cops couldn’t take the fact that there were “niggers,” “shines,” “spooks,” and “jigs” who were capable of buying their low-rent lives outright. The stories ran from the relatively prosaic: negro boot-leggers with mob connections taking their loot and buying liquor stores in Watts and wetback-staffed garment mills in San Pedro, to exotic: the same thugs flooding low darktowns with cut-rate heroin and pimping out their most beautiful high-yellow sweethearts to L.A.’s powers-that-be in order to circumvent licensing and real estate statutes enforcing racial exclusivity. There was only one common denominator to all the legends: it was agreed that although High Darktown money started out dirty, it was now squeaky clean and snow white.

  Pulling up in front of the liquor store on Gramercy, I quickly scanned the dick’s report on the robbery there, learning that the clerk was alone when it went down and saw both robbers up close before the white man pistol-whipped him unconscious. Wanting an eyeball witness to back up Lieutenant Holland’s APB, I entered the immaculate little shop and walked up to the counter.

  A negro man with his head swathed in bandages walked in from the back. Eyeing me top to bottom, he said, “Yes, officer?”

  I liked his brevity and reciprocated it. Holding up the mug shot of Wallace Simpkins, I said, “Is this one of the guys?”

  Flinching backward, he said, “Yes. Get him.”

  “Bought and paid for,” I said.

  An hour later I had three more eyeball confirmations and turned my mind to strategy. With the all-points out on Simpkins, he’d probably get juked by the first blue suit who crossed his path, a thought only partly comforting. Artie Holland probably had stake-out teams stationed in the back rooms of other liquor stores in the area, and a prowl of Simpkins’s known haunts was a ridiculous play for a solo white man. Parking on an elm-lined street, I watched Japanese gardeners tend football field-sized lawns and started to sense that Wild Wallace’s affinity for High Darktown and white partners was the lever I needed. I set out to trawl for pale-skinned intruders like myself.

  * * *

  —

  South on La Brea to Jefferson, then up to Western and back over to Adams. Runs down 1st Avenue, 2nd Avenue, 3rd, 4th, and 5th. The only white men I saw were other cops, mailmen, store owners, and poontang prowlers. A circuit of the bars on Washington yielded no white faces and no known criminal types I could shake down for information.

  Dusk found me hungry, angry, and still itchy, imagining Simpkins poking pins in a brand-new, plainclothes Blanchard doll. I stopped at a barbecue joint and wolfed down a beef sandwich, slaw, and fries. I was on my second cup of coffee when the mixed couple came in.

  The girl was a pretty high yellow—soft angularity in a pink summer dress that tried to downplay her curves, and failed. The man was squat and muscular, wearing a rumpled Hawaiian shirt and pressed khaki trousers that looked like army issue. From my table I heard them place their order: jumbo chicken dinners for six with extra gravy and biscuits. “Lots of big appetites,” the guy said to the counterman. When the line got him a deadpan, he goosed the girl with his knee. She moved away, clenching her fists and twisting her head as if trying to avoid an unwanted kiss. Catching her face full view, I saw loathing etched into every feature.

  They registered as trouble, and I walked out to my car in order to tail them when they left the restaurant. Five minutes later they appeared, the girl walking ahead, the man a few paces behind her, tracing hourglass figures in the air and flicking his tongue like a lizard. They got into a prewar Packard sedan parked in front of me, Lizard Man taking the wheel. When they accelerated, I counted to ten and pursued.

  The Packard was an easy surveillance. It had a long radio antenna topped with a foxtail, so I was able to remain several car lengths in back and use the tail as a sighting device. We moved out of High Darktown on Western, and within minutes mansions and proudly tended homes were replaced by tenements and tar-paper shacks encircled by chicken wire. The farther south we drove the worse it got; when the Packard hung a left on 94th and headed east, past auto graveyards, storefront voodoo mosques and hair-straightening parlors, it felt like entering White Man’s Hell.

  At 94th and Normandie, the Packard pulled to the curb and parked; I continued on to the corner. From my rearview I watched Lizard Man and the girl cross the street and enter the only decent-looking house on the block, a whitewashed adobe job shaped like a miniature Alamo. Parking myself, I grabbed a flashlight from under the seat and walked over.

  Right away I could tell the scene was way off. The block was nothing but welfare cribs, vacant lots, and gutted jalopies, but six beautiful ’40-’41 vintage cars were stationed at curbside. Hunkering down, I flashed my light at their license plates, memorized the numbers, and ran back to my unmarked cruiser. Whispering hoarsely into the two-way, I gave R&I the figures and settled back to await the readout.

  I got the kickback ten minutes later, and the scene went from way off to way, way off.

  Cupping the radio mike to my ear and clamping my spare hand over it to hold the noise down, I took in the clerk’s spiel. The Packard was registered to Leotis McCarver, male negro, age 41, of 1348 West 94th Street, L.A.—which had to be the cut-rate Alamo. His occupation was on file as union officer in the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. The other vehicles were registered to negro and white thugs with strong-arm convictions dating back to 1922. When the clerk read off the last name—Ralph “Big Tuna” De Santis, a known Mickey Cohen trigger—I decided to give the Alamo a thorough crawling.

  Armed with my flashlight and two pieces, I cut diagonally across vacant lots toward my target’s back yard. In the far distance I could see fireworks lighting up the sky, but down here no one seemed to be celebrating—their war of just plain living was still dragging on. When I got to the Alamo’s yard wall, I took it at a run and kneed and elbowed my way over the top, coming down onto soft grass.

  The back of the house was dark and quiet, so I risked flashing my light. Seeing a service porch fronted by a flimsy wooden door, I tiptoed over and tried it—and found it unlocked.

  I walked in flashlight first, my beam picking up dusty walls and floors, discarded lounge chairs, and a broom-closet door standing half open. Opening it all the way, I saw army officers’ uniforms on hangers, replete with campaign ribbons and embroidered insignias.

  Shouted voices jerked my attention toward the house proper. Straining my ears, I discerned both white- an
d negro-accented insults being hurled. There was a connecting door in front of me, with darkness beyond it. The shouting had to be issuing from a front room, so I nudged the door open a crack, then squatted down to listen as best I could.

  “…and I’m just tellin’ you we gots to find a place and get us off the streets,” a negro voice was yelling, “ ’cause even if we splits up, colored with colored and the whites with the whites, there is still gonna be roadblocks!”

  A babble rose in response, then a shrill whistle silenced it, and a white voice dominated: “We’ll be stopping the train way out in the country. Farmland. We’ll destroy the signaling gear, and if the passengers take off looking for help, the nearest farmhouse is ten fucking miles away—and those dogfaces are gonna be on foot.”

  A black voice tittered, “They gonna be mad, them soldiers.”

  Another black voice: “They gonna fought the whole fucking war for free.”

  Laughter, then a powerful negro baritone took over: “Enough clowning around, this is money we’re talking about and nothing else!”

  “ ‘Cepting revenge, mister union big shot. Don’t you forget I got me other business on that train.”

  I knew that voice by heart—it had voodoo-cursed my soul in court. I was on my way out the back for reinforcements when my legs went out from under me and I fell head first into darkness.

  * * *

  —

  The darkness was soft and rippling, and I felt like I was swimming in a velvet ocean. Angry shouts reverberated far away, but I knew they were harmless; they were coming from another planet. Every so often I felt little stabs in my arms and saw pinpoints of light that made the voices louder, but then everything would go even softer, the velvet waves caressing me, smothering all my hurt.

  Until the velvet turned to ice and the friendly little stabs became wrenching thuds up and down my back. I tried to draw myself into a ball, but an angry voice from this planet wouldn’t let me. “Wake up, shitbird! We ain’t wastin’ no more pharmacy morph on you! Wake up! Wake up, goddamnit!”

  Dimly I remembered that I was a police officer and went for the .38 on my hip. My arms and hands wouldn’t move, and when I tried to lurch my whole body, I knew they were tied to my sides and that the thuds were kicks to my legs and rib cage. Trying to move away, I felt head-to-toe muscle cramps and opened my eyes. Walls and a ceiling came into hazy focus, and it all came back. I screamed something that was drowned out by laughter, and the Lizard Man’s face hovered only inches above mine. “Lee Blanchard,” he said, waving my badge and ID holder in front of my eyes. “You got sucker-punched again, shitbird. I saw Jimmy Bivins put you down at the Legion. Left hook outta nowhere, and you hit your knees, then worthless-shine muscle puts you down on your face. I got no respect for a man who gets sucker-punched by niggers.”

  At “niggers” I heard a gasp and twisted around to see the negro girl in the pink dress sitting in a chair a few feet away. Listening for background noises and hearing nothing, I knew the three of us were alone in the house. My eyes cleared a little more, and I saw that the velvet ocean was a plushly furnished living room. Feeling started to return to my limbs, sharp pain that cleared my fuzzy head. When I felt a grinding in my lower back, I winced; the extra .38 snub I had tucked into my waistband at City Hall was still there, slipped down into my skivvies. Reassured by it, I looked up at Lizard Face and said, “Robbed any liquor stores lately?”

  He laughed. “A few. Chump change compared to the big one this after—”

  The girl shrieked, “Don’t tell him nothin’!”

  Lizard Man flicked his tongue. “He’s dead meat, so who cares? It’s a train hijack, canvasback. Some army brass chartered the Super Chief, L.A. to Frisco. Poker games, hookers in the sleeping cars, smut movies in the lounge. Ain’t you heard? The war’s over, time to celebrate. We got hardware on board—shines playing porters, white guys in army suits. They all got scatterguns, and sweetie pie’s boyfriend Voodoo, he’s got himself a tommy. They’re gonna take the train down tonight, around Salinas, when the brass is smashed to the gills, just achin’ to throw away all that good separation pay. Then Voodoo’s gonna come back here and perform some religious rites on you. He told me about it, said he’s got this mean old pit bull named Revenge. A friend kept him while he was in Quentin. The buddy was white, and he tormented the dog so he hates white men worse than poison. The dog only gets fed about twice a week, and you can just bet he’d love a nice big bowl of canvasback stew. Which is you, white boy. Voodoo’s gonna cut you up alive, turn you into dog food out of the can. Wanna take a bet on what he cuts off first?”

  “That’s not true! That’s not what—”

  “Shut up, Cora!”

  Twisting on my side to see the girl better, I played a wild hunch. “Are you Cora Downey?”

  Cora’s jaw dropped, but Lizard spoke first. “Smart boy. Billy Boyle’s ex, Voodoo’s current. These high-yellow coozes get around. You know canvasback here, don’t you, sweet? He sent both your boyfriends up, and if you’re real nice, maybe Voodoo’ll let you do some cutting on him.”

  Cora walked over and spat in my face. She hissed “Mother” and kicked me with a spiked toe. I tried to roll away, and she sent another kick at my back.

  Then my ace in the hole hit me right between the eyes, harder than any of the blows I had absorbed so far. Last night I had heard Wallace Simpkins’s voice through the door: “ ‘Cepting revenge, mister union big shot. I got me other business on that train.” In my mind that “business” buzzed as snuffing Lieutenant Billy Boyle, and I was laying five-to-one that Cora wouldn’t like the idea.

  Lizard took Cora by the arm and led her to the couch, then squatted next to me. “You’re a sucker for a spitball,” he said.

  I smiled up at him. “Your mother bats cleanup at a two-dollar whorehouse.”

  He slapped my face. I spat blood at him and said, “And you’re ugly.”

  He slapped me again; when his arm followed through I saw the handle of an automatic sticking out of his right pants pocket. I made my voice drip with contempt: “You hit like a girl. Cora could take you easy.”

  His next shot was full force. I sneered through bloody lips and said, “You queer? Only nancy boys slap like that.”

  A one-two set hit me in the jaw and neck, and I knew it was now or never. Slurring my words like a punch-drunk pug, I said, “Let me up. Let me up and I’ll fight you man-to-man. Let me up.”

  Lizard took a penknife from his pocket and cut the rope that bound my arms to my sides. I tried to move my hands, but they were jelly. My battered legs had some feeling in them, so I rolled over and up onto my knees. Lizard had backed off into a chump’s idea of a boxing stance and was firing roundhouse lefts and rights at the living room air. Cora was sitting on the couch, wiping angry tears from her cheeks. Deep breathing and lolling my torso like a hophead, I stalled for time, waiting for feeling to return to my hands.

  “Get up, shitbird!”

  My fingers still wouldn’t move.

  “I said get up!”

  Still no movement.

  Lizard came forward on the balls of his feet, feinting and shadowboxing. My wrists started to buzz with blood, and I began to get unprofessionally angry, like I was a rookie heavy, not a thirty-one-year-old cop. Lizard hit me twice, left, right, open-handed. In a split second he became Jimmy Bivins, and I zoomed back to the ninth round at the Legion in ’37. Dropping my left shoulder, I sent out a right lead, then pulled it and left-hooked him to the breadbasket. Bivins gasped and bent forward; I stepped backward for swinging room. Then Bivins was Lizard going for his piece, and I snapped to where I really was.

  We drew at the same time. Lizard’s first shot went above my head, shattering a window behind me; mine, slowed by my awkward rear pull, slammed into the far wall. Recoil spun us both around, and before Lizard had time to aim I threw myself to the floor and rolled to the side
like a carpet-eating dervish. Three shots cut the air where I had been standing a second before, and I extended my gun arm upward, braced my wrist, and emptied my snub-nose at Lizard’s chest. He was blasted backward, and through the shots’ echoes I heard Cora scream long and shrill.

  I stumbled over to Lizard. He was on his way out, bleeding from three holes, unable to work the trigger of the .45. He got up the juice to give me a feeble middle-finger farewell, and when the bird was in midair I stepped on his heart and pushed down, squeezing the rest of his life out in a big arterial burst. When he finished twitching, I turned my attention to Cora, who was standing by the couch, putting out another shriek.

  I stifled the noise by pinning her neck to the wall and hissing, “Questions and answers. Tell me what I want to know and you walk, fuck with me and I find dope in your purse and tell the DA you’ve been selling it to white nursery-school kids.” I let up on my grip. “First question. Where’s my car?”

  Cora rubbed her neck. I could feel the obscenities stacking up on her tongue, itching to be hurled. All her rage went into her eyes as she said, “Out back. The garage.”

  “Have Simpkins and the stiff been clouting the liquor stores in West Adams?”

  Cora stared at the floor and nodded, “Yes.” Looking up, her eyes were filled with the self-disgust of the freshly turned stoolie. I said, “McCarver the union guy thought up the train heist?”