Los Angeles Noir

Cravitz buzzed him up. When he opened the door, Yippie embraced Cravitz, who, at 6’5”, was taller than him by a head. Then his friend strode past him into the office. “Okay, birthday boy, I got good news and bad. Which do you want first?”

The two men grinned at one another. With his black briefcase, and the hooch he carried in a brown paper bag, Yippie looked like a cholo Republican: He wore a black leather jacket, faded jeans, motorcycle boots, lumberjack shirt; his long, graying hair tied in a ponytail with a silver clasp; his handlebar moustache pepper-gray. A gold earring in the form of a crucifix dangled from his right ear. A tat of Montezuma with an Aztec princess peeked through the break in his shirt.

“Good news first,” Cravitz said.

Yippie Calzone raised the hooch: “Pulke,” he said.

The two men drank in Cravitz’s conference room overlooking 43rd. The potent cactus brew was thick and cool and sweet, and Cravitz was genuinely thrilled to have a taste of the fabled Mexican moonshine. Even more, he was happy to see his old carnale, Yippie Calzone. Yippie, a cop, had been a neighbor back in the old days of South L.A. Later, Yippie was Cravitz’s mentor at the police academy. Cravitz got out after only three turbulent years on the force.

“I’m giving you Esmeralda,” Yippie Calzone said abruptly.

“Pretty-ass Esmeralda? You nuts?” Cravitz asked, genuinely surprised.

Yippie Calzone opened his briefcase and pulled out Esmeralda-his custom-made service revolver, a snub- nosed Colt.45 Peacemaker-and carefully laid her on the table.

Cravitz stared down at the beauty. She gave off a brazen sparkle that seemed to bewitch the mind.

The piece was one of a matched pair that once belonged to Jack Johnson, the Negro heavyweight champion, in 1908. Her grips were fashioned from Alaskan whale bone and her barrel and frame were forged with silver from Civil War-era coins. There was a flaw in her muzzle that gave her bulletholes a distinctive teardrop shape.

“I’ve decided she’s a cold-hearted bitch. I don’t love her no more,” Yippie said. “She’ll listen to you; she’ll take care of you.”

Like most of his pals, inside the law and out, Cravitz had always had a hard-on for Esmeralda. The weapon had been a gift to Calzone from the City of Los Angeles for his years of courageous service-twenty years back.

In his lawless teenage years-when Cravitz was pursuing his ambition of becoming a criminal just like his big brother, Cash-he and Cash had once worked out an elaborate plan to steal the treasure. The scheme fell through when Cash was arrested for a shootout-at a goddamn crap game.

The arrest of his big brother turned out to be a boon. Good and thoughtful people-including his own folks- swept into the breech left by his thuggish brother. It would take a brutal stretch at Pelican Bay before ol’ Cash saw the profit in pulling at least one of his feet out of the mire of everyday crime. Since the ’92 riots, Cash had rehabilitated his reptilian image and remade the Chateau Rouge, the abandoned, rat-infested hotel he’d bought, into a hangout joint for politicos and big shots; all attracted like flies by the old G’s deep greasy pockets and his doe-eyed and perfumed, big-titted bar girls.

“This feels like the bad-news part,” Cravitz said.

“Well,” Yippie said, “you do know I’m a killer.”

“That was a good shooting,” Cravitz said.

No one in the city could forget the time that Calzone fatally shot two boys during a drug sting in Midtown. The weapons the boys had leveled on Calzone and his partners turned out to be toys. Because Calzone was Chicano and the boys were black, the incident quickly took on a nasty racial tone.

There were at least ten reprisal shootings. Black kids shot up brown folk picnicking in the park; Chicano kids shot up black folk at bus stops.

“Good shooting,” Yippie repeated with contempt. “Me, killing kids. Imagine.”

“They were perps, homeboy,” Cravitz said, pouring out two more glasses of pulke. “It was them or you.”

The men drank again in silence and Cravitz could hear the bustle of traffic just outside the window.

“I have nightmares, Quick,” Yippie said. “I can’t get their faces out of my head. And those mothers-” After a moment, the old cop took out a pack of Camels, “I’m taking time off. I already spoke to Vargas.”

“Nothin’ wrong with that,” Cravitz said. “Manny will bring you back into the fold.”

Yippie lit a cigarette and took a short drag, then, as quickly, mashed it out in the ashtray. “I’ve made a will,” he said. “I’ve been too lucky too long.”

Yippie Calzone’s face, covered over with pockmarks and scars, was not handsome. But there was something compelling about his sad, soulful eyes.

“I’ve always had death threats,” Yippie said. “They come with the job. But the dreams…” Yippie said. “I dreamed someone is going to kill me before this week is done.”

Cravitz got up from his chair and placed his big bony hand on Yippie’s shoulder. “Dreams ain’t real, homie. Get a grip.”

“Never thought I’d be afraid of dying, Quick. But I am,” Yippie said. “This was the week I killed those boys-five years ago tomorrow.”

Cravitz drained his glass and set it on the table. “So what if you make it through the week? Maybe your dream killers will go away,” he said, attempting a smile.

“Maybe,” Yippie ventured.

“It’s settled then,” Cravitz said. He picked up a pad and scribbled. “Here,” he tore off the note and handed it to his friend. Yippie’s strong hands trembled as he took it. “I want you to go to this pad in La Caja.”

“The canyon above Pacoima?”

“That’s it. It’s Cash’s hideaway, but I’ll make him give me the keys. You pack and stop by the Chateau Rouge tomorrow morning at 7. The place is a dump. No air-conditioning. But the toilet flushes and the power’s still on. Lay low until the weekend is over.”

“Your fuckin’ brother hates me.”

“Cash hates everybody,” Cravitz said dryly. “But he’s legit now. Even your boy the mayor likes him. There’s hope for him yet.”

Yippie smiled. “It might work. I’m not ready to die. I’ve still got work to do. I owe this city so much.” He pushed Esmeralda slowly across the table. “Happy birthday, old friend.”

Cravitz snapped up the pretty pistol. “I can’t take away your baby. I’ll have Cash lock her in the safe tomorrow. You can pick her up when all this bad business is past. She’ll be safe at the Chateau Rouge. Ain’t a hoodlum in the world crazy enough to try to jack Cash Cravitz.”

“Simone,” Yippie observed quietly-so true.

The two men stood up.

“You sure Cash is gonna be down with this?” Yippie said.

“That mean ol’ man will do anything I ask.”

2.

He tipped Pauli, the parking valet, twenty bucks when he brought around the black Escalade. Cravitz jumped in and kicked Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour” on the box. He perused his pretty self in the mirror.

Cravitz’s coal-black, bald, magnificent head was adorned with two small hoop earrings. His eyes were gray. Angular, muscular, and deliberate, his black silk Armani duds made him flash and shimmer like a blade. And on this eve of his twenty-ninth birthday, Cravitz felt like a man reborn. He’d helped his friend; now he would try to help others.

Cravitz paused to admire his neon sign blinking Universal Detection. He peeled off.

There were scores of revelers out in Leimert Park. Cravitz took Vernon to Angelus Vista and sped west, up the slopes home to View Park.