'A little thing,' Tucker said. 'Man, sometimes it amazes me how such a little thing can change a person's life. With me, it was a TV show. On the six o'clock news, one of the L.A. stations did a five-part series about black success stories in the city.'
'I saw it,' Tony said. 'More than five years ago, but I still remember it.'
'It was fascinating stuff,' Tucker said. 'It was an image of the black man you never get to see. But at first, before the series began, everybody in the slammer figured it would be one big laugh. We figured the reporter would spend all his time asking the same idiot question: 'Why can't all these poor black folks work hard and become rich Las Vegas headliners like Sammy Davis, Jr.?' But they didn't talk to any entertainers or sports stars.'
Tony remembered that it had been a striking piece of journalism, especially for television, where news--and especially the human interest stories on the news--had as much depth as a teacup. The reporters had interviewed black businessmen and businesswomen who had made it to the top, people who had started out with nothing and eventually had become millionaires. Some in real estate. One in the restaurant business. One with a chain of beauty shops. About a dozen people. They all agreed that it was harder to get rich if you were black, but they also agreed that it was not as hard as they thought when they started out, and that it was easier in Los Angeles than in Alabama or Mississippi or even Boston or New York. There were more black millionaires in L.A. than in the rest of California and the other forty-nine states combined. In Los Angeles, almost everyone was living in the fast lane; the typical southern Californian did not merely accommodate himself to change but actively sought it and reveled in it. This atmosphere of flux and constant experimentation drew a lot of marginally sane and even insane people into the area, but it also attracted some of the brightest and most innovative minds in the country, which was why so many new cultural and scientific and industrial developments originated in the region. Very few Southern Californians had the time or patience for outmoded attitudes, one of which was racial prejudice. Of course, there was bigotry in L.A. But whereas a landed white family in Georgia might require six or eight generations to overcome its prejudice toward blacks, that same metamorphosis of attitudes often transpired in one generation of a Southern California family. As one of the black businessmen on the TV news report had said, 'The Chicanos have been the niggers of L.A. for quite some time now.' But already that was changing, too. The Hispanic culture was regarded with ever-increasing respect, and the browns were creating their own success stories. Several people interviewed on that news special had offered the same explanation for the unusual fluidity of Southern California's social structures and for the eagerness with which people there accepted change; it was, they said, partly because of geology. When you were living on some of the worst fault lines in the world, when the earth could quake and move and change under your feet without warning, did that awareness of impermanence have a subconscious influence on a person's attitudes toward less cataclysmic kinds of change? Some of those black millionaires thought it did, and Tony tended to agree with them.
'There were about a dozen rich black people on that program,' Eugene Tucker said. 'A lot of guys in the slammer with me just hooted at the TV and called them all Uncle Toms. But I started thinking. If some people on that show could make it in a white world, why couldn't I? I was just as clever and smart as any of them, maybe even smarter than some. It was a completely new image of a black man to me, a whole new idea, like a light bulb going on in my head. Los Angeles was my home. If it really offered a better chance, why hadn't I taken advantage of it? Sure, maybe some of those people had to act like Uncle Toms on their way to the top. But when you've made it, when you've got that million in the bank, you're nobody's man but your own.' He grinned. 'So I decided to get rich.'
'Just like that,' Frank said, impressed.
'Just like that.'
'The power of positive thinking.'
'Realistic thinking,' Tucker corrected.
'Why dress designing?' Tucker asked.
'I took aptitude tests that said I'd do well in design work or any aspect of the art business. So I tried to decide what I'd most enjoy designing. Now, I've always liked to choose the clothes my girlfriends wear. I like to go shopping with them. And when they wear an outfit I've picked, they get more compliments than when they wear something they chose themselves. So I hooked up with a university program for inmates, and I studied design. Took a lot of business courses, too. When I was finally paroled, I worked for a while at a fast food restaurant. I lived in a cheap rooming house and kept my expenses down. I drew some designs, paid seamstresses to sew up samples, and started hawking my wares. It wasn't easy at first. Hell, it was damned hard! Every time I got an order from a shop, I walked it to the bank and borrowed money against it to complete the dresses. Man, I was clawing to hold on. But it got better and better. It's pretty good now. In a year, I'll open my own shop in a good area. And eventually you'll see a sign in Beverly Hills that says 'Eugene Tucker.' I promise you.'
Tony shook his head. 'You're a remarkable man.'
'Not particularly,' Tucker said. 'I'm just living in a remarkable place and a remarkable time.'
Frank was holding the manila envelope that contained the mug shots of Bobby 'Angel' Valdez. He tapped it against his knee and looked at Tony and said, 'I think maybe we've come to the wrong place this time.'
'It sure looks that way,' Tony said.
Tucker slid forward on his chair. 'What was it you wanted?'
Tony told him about Bobby Valdez.
'Well,' Tucker said, 'I don't move in the circles I once did, but I'm not completely out of touch either. I donate fifteen or twenty hours of my time every week to Self-Pride. That's a city-wide anti-drug campaign. I feel sort of like I've got debts to pay, you know? A Self-Pride Volunteer spends about half his time talking to kids, the other half working on an information-gathering program, sort of like TIP. You know about TIP?'
'Turn in Pushers,' Tony said.
'Right. They have a number you can call and give anonymous tips about neighborhood drug dealers. Well, we don't wait for people to call us at Self-Pride. We canvas those neighborhoods where we know pushers work. We go door to door, talk to parents and kids, pump them for anything they know. We build up dossiers on dealers until we feel we've really got the goods, then we turn the dossiers over to the LAPD. So if this Valdez is dealing, there's a chance I'll know at least a little something about him.'
Frank said, 'I have to agree with Tony. You are rather remarkable.'
'Hey, look, I don't deserve any pats on the back for my work at Self-Pride. I wasn't asking for congratulations. In my day I created a lot of junkies out of kids who might have done right if I hadn't been there to steer them wrong. It's going to take me a long, long time to help enough kids to balance the equation.'
