Southside (9781608090563) (10 page)

He went to the lobby and got a
USA Today
and the
Las Vegas Sun
. Nothing about the reporter. He knew the
Los Angeles Times
would have something, but the
Times
wasn't available, and Sims was computer illiterate.

Still, he figured the reporter was alive or he would have heard something. He had a couple casual friends and distant family in Los Angeles, but he didn't want to risk a call. So he went slotting and free drinking that morning.

He wanted to tell Jennette, his wife, whom he hadn't seen or spoken to since their son was murdered years ago. She'd probably bitch anyway if she knew, he thought. Say something like “You couldn't even kill the reporter, the easy one. Loser, how you gonna do with the others?”

Now Sims was back home and ready to shoot again. This time to kill.

Lyons w
ould
be the easy one, the others would be daunting. At least now he had some experience in firing a bullet into a body. The first shot was the hardest.

He wasn't done with Lyons. He'd come back and kill him, finish the job if he wasn't already dead. He'd really like to walk up to him and shoot him in the head, just like Denzel did in Harlem with all them people around and calmly walk away. But, that was the movies. That was Hollywood. This is Los Angeles.

Up the hill on Landa Street, overlooking the Silver Lake Reservoir, I lay on my bed in my one-bedroom cottage. I was feeling stronger. I'd been going to physical therapy twice a week and the doctor once a week. But, I felt pretty good, all things considered. I could deal with the occasional stabbing sensation the way one becomes accustomed to life's discomforts.

My life began in Chinatown at the French Hospital, a few blocks from downtown Los Angeles. My dad, Tony Lyons, a white Heinz 57 mix, was from Oakland. He was one of those rare individuals who may have been saved by the Vietnam War. He was big time into motorcycles, a good rider, a better mechanic. Many Oakland Hells Angels, even legendary leader Sonny Barger, would take their Harleys to him when they couldn't fix their own bikes or wanted them souped up. He and Sonny had gotten to be friends and my dad was given the opportunity to “prospect” or try out to be a Hells Angel. Most parents dread their sons getting the draft notice, but my grandparents were apparently thrilled when their son got his. In Vietnam, as horrific as it was, there was a chance to get out. Back then, being an Oakland Hells Angel was just a surefire ticket to Folsom or the graveyard.

My mom, Rose Mahtesian, grew up in West Pullman, the Armenian quarter of the South Side of Chicago and her family moved out to Los Angeles in 1965, just one week before the Watts riots erupted. She used to tell me my grandma would often chide my grandpa. “Nahabed, you picked excellent time to move to Los Angeles, California.”

After coming home, my dad, figuring he'd seen enough action in Vietnam, decided he didn't want to risk the temptation of the Hells Angels, so he moved to Los Angeles. At a gas station on 90th and Normandie he met Rose and their courtship began. Two years later they were married and living in South Central on 39th and Broadway.

Eventually, we moved to Gardena, a little city neighboring south L.A., the mostly black Compton, and the mostly white Torrance. We lived in a nice thousand-square-foot, three bedroom home on St. Andrews Place in a racially mixed middle-class neighborhood that could only be found in Los Angeles County. There were Japanese, Samoans, Filipinos, Mexicans, whites, blacks, and one half-Armenian family. There were Jews, too, but we figured them for white people. The only way I knew they were Jews, whatever that meant, was when
I asked my dad why Lance Greenberg and Lenny Weingart's houses had all blue Christmas lights. He told me, “Jewish people like blue lights.” Somehow, everybody got along. I think maybe we, the kids of St. Andrews Place, that is, just thought this was how it was all over. We played football and baseball in the street almost every day and evening. We boxed and wrestled, too. We lifted weights, at first large Yuban coffee cans filled with cement, then fifty-pound white rocks our neighbors used for landscaping that we hoisted, pretending to be Hercules, and then, eventually, an actual Joe Weider two hundred-pound barbell set we all pitched in to buy. We had fun. We had tough car clubs in Gardena—the Barons and the Bedouins—and street gangs—Gardena 13, Payback Crips and Shotgun Crips—but no one messed with our block because Blinky, my Samoan neighbor, was there to protect us. No one messed with Blinky.

I called Sal. He had no news on my shooting.

I cleaned up, dressed in black, and headed out. In fifteen minutes, me and my 1995 Lexus SC400 were motoring down the Harbor Freeway. My coupe was in need of a paint job—had once been bright gold, was pale beige now—and some minor bodywork. When someone asked me why I didn't get it fixed and painted, I usually replied that I didn't want my car looking too tempting considering the neighborhoods I toured. A more accurate answer would have been that I couldn't afford it.

If the police couldn't find out who shot me, then I would. I couldn't stand knowing that whoever shot me may be planning to come back. I had done too many stories about gang members wounded and in the hospital when they got a second “visit.” Often that visitor had a knife.

I had a knife and a gun, too. A .380 Beretta Model 84, thirteen shots. Nice gun, for a gun. I almost never wore it on the job for a few reasons. First, it was illegal for me to carry a weapon. Second, if I had it, I might use it and hurt someone. Third, it was much more exciting to go into a dangerous neighborhood unarmed. I did carry
it, long before I was a reporter, during the 1992 riots, or “uprising” at it was known on the Southside.

I wasn't going to take the gun or the knife this time. Last thing I needed was to get pulled over with a gun or even a knife. The knife I had was illegal and, no, it was not a switchblade. I wanted to hurt this guy, but more than that, I wanted to find out why he shot me. The way he came at me was not random.

My first stop would be Jordan Downs, domain of the Grape Street Crips, the color purple. I didn't think the shooter was a for-real Grape, just had the scarf, but I had to start somewhere and at least I could eliminate them for sure. Sal and Johnny had ruled them out, but they hadn't ruled anybody in. Maybe someone I knew, and I knew a few, could point me.

My first stop would be the home of a seventy-year-old woman, Betty Day, the godmother of Jordan Downs. Betty lived on Grape Street in a house three blocks from the projects. I'd known Betty for more than a decade and I know she don't take shit from anyone. She'd call the mayor and the chief of police a motherfucker in a heartbeat if she thought they were bullshitting. I'd seen her do it, twice.

Part of the respect she gets, aside for knowing everyone and having an open-door policy, was that her son, “Honcho,” was once the shot caller for Grape Street. The feds eventually got to him, and he did twelve years at Marion in Illinois, one of the toughest federal joints. He was recently paroled, but trying to stay out of the old life.

“Come on in, you crazy black Armenian. How you feeling, Mike? I knew when I heard about you on the news, you was gonna be fine. But, boy, you had me a tad worried.”

I hugged Betty and entered her neat, small three-bedroom home. Before I could even say a word, she was reaching for a bottle of Beefeater gin. “Betty, none for me. How you do?”

“I'm fine. Come on. Have one to celebrate your health.”

We did. Betty wasn't a big drinker, but if she could find a reason to toast, she was all there. After some bullshitting, I got down to it.

“You know the shooter, my shooter, he had on a purple rag around his head.”

“Negro, what you tryin' to say?”

“Betty, I'm just telling you what he was wearing.”

I described him as best I could, which was rather vague, the key point being he was older, like I said, maybe forty-five, fifty. Betty dialed her cell.

“Wayne, where you at? Come over the house.” She took a sip. “You know Sal and Johnny already been here.”

Ten minutes later, Honcho was having a gin on the rocks with us. I had known him before the feds got to him, when he ruled the crack empire in Jordan Downs. The FBI once called him the “Godfather of Watts.” He once had a house in Las Vegas and a Wilshire Boulevard condo, but he lived mainly in the projects. He was forty-nine years old, five foot nine, and solid as Half Dome.

“Man, Lyons, whoever shot you, if he was anywhere between thirty and sixty, he was not from Grape. I can tell you that for a fact.”

“Have you heard anything? Anything at all about my shooting?”

“Not a word of fact. Just guesses.”

“Like what?”

“Eighty-Nine Family.”

“Why Eighty-Nine?”

“I might been locked up, but I kept up, you feel me? I had heard about that, ugh, what you call it, that uh, not a biography, a … a …”

“A what?”

“You know when you write about someone and their life.”

“A profile,” Betty cut in.

“Yeah, yeah, a profile. That profile you did on Big Evil.”

“Evil loved that story,” I said.

Betty Day burst into laughter. “Only you, Mike. Only you could write a story Big Evil would like.” She took a healthy sip. So did I.

“I don't know, man,” said Honcho. “Then maybe it was someone who didn't like the story. Maybe one of Eighty-Nine rivals. Got pissed he got all the press. Became a legend.”

A few minutes later I left, having gotten no closer to a suspect than I was before I got here. The only thing I did, besides get a gin buzz, was rule out one of the largest gangs in the city, something LaBarbera and Hart had already done.

Twenty minutes later, I walked into the
Times
's lobby at 2nd and Spring Streets for the first time since my shooting. No longer was entering though the impressive Globe Lobby on First Street an option for employees or guests. Budget cuts. A sign of the times, of the
Times
.

I took the stairs to the third floor, the editorial heart of the paper. I didn't want to chance being stuck in an elevator with editor Harriet Tinder or her kiss-ass bitch boy Ted Doot. As I strolled down the seventy-yard-long corridor that led to the newsroom, the hallway where I would sometimes sprint to catch a breaking story, I was glad no one was in sight. I reached the end of the corridor and took a deep breath as I stood near the entrance to the newsroom. I hate to admit it, but I was nervous, a feeling rare to me. I could confront five stranger Bounty Hunter Bloods in a midnight parking lot so tough it was called the Folsom Lot and be calmer than I was right then. I took a step back and thought it wasn't too late to back off. No one had seen me.

But damn, the two people in the whole building I least wanted to see were now heading toward me, face-to-face like a game of car chicken in a James Dean movie, like medieval lancers on horseback heading toward each other in slow motion. Tinder and Doot.

There were several doors along the long corridor, two leading to what they call Baja Metro, one to the photo lab, one to the test kitchen. I took the photo lab door more than any other reporter at the paper. Two of my best friends at the paper were photojournalists, Carolyn Cole and Clarence Williams, both Pulitzer Prize winners.

Forty yards away now. But, damn if I was gonna meek out and take the photo door now. And damn if I was gonna speak first when I came upon these two dimwits and say something pleasant like, “How you doing, Harriet, Ted.”

Fuck that.

Thirty yards to go. Our eyes were locked on each other. At twenty yards, Tinder turned to Doot and started some conversation, hopefully meant to avoid contact with me.

At ten, they were back to looking at me. At five yards and closing fast, Doot voiced a robotic, “Hey, there.” And Tinder grunted something barely audible. No idea what the sound was intended to be.

I looked right in their eyes but didn't say a word and walked right on by. That's not easy to do for me.

As I neared the entrance to Metro, I got down on one knee to retie my shoe when I heard an, “Oh, my God.”

I looked up to see Carly Engstrom, my pretty Korean/Swedish former pod mate. “Michael!” She hugged me hard. I pulled away in slight pain. “Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot. It's so good to see you here. I missed you.”

“Damn, Carly, you're looking fine. Hey, I'm going to the Redwood. Get a crew and meet me there. I wanna get out of here. Can you meet me?”

“You know it, honey.”

After seeing Carly, knowing she'd alert the people I wanted to see, I decided I didn't need to go into Metro. I left the building and walked toward the Redwood, passing the 2nd Street sidewalk where just a few weeks earlier I lay leaking onto the grimy concrete. I looked down on that spot I was pretty sure was it, but didn't even break stride.

My cell phone rang. It was Morty Goldstein.

“Mike, there's some kind of break in your case.”

“What kind of break? They found who shot me?”

“I don't know. They are being super tight-lipped about it. I called everybody, and they are not giving up anything.”

“That's strange. I wonder why Sal or Johnny haven't called.”

“All they are saying is the
Times
and Lyons are going to look like shit.”

“The
Times
and me are gonna look like shit?”

“That's what the chief told me, and he added—and this is a quote—‘Your boy Lyons is through.'”

“What? What the hell does that mean?”

“I don't know, but that's what he said. There's a news conference coming up. I'm heading there now.”

“All right. Thanks, Morty.”

As I entered the warming darkness of the Redwood, I heard the greeting. “Hit 'n' Run!”

In all the years I've been coming to the Redwood, I had never seen Danny come from behind the shelter of his bar unless it was time for him to leave. Never, until today. Danny saw me, yelled out his greeting, and quickly walked around the bar and up to me and firmly shook my hand.