the gleaming car, and Jack gave his full attention, once more, to
Hassam Arkadian.
'My station is an island of cleanliness in a filthy sea, an eye of
sanity in a storm of madness,' Arkadian said, speaking earnestly,
unaware of sounding melodramatic.
He was slender, about forty, with dark hair and a neatly trimmed
mustache. The creases in the legs of his gray cotton work pants were
knife-sharp, and his matching work shirt and jacket were immaculate.
'I had the aluminum siding and the brick treated with a new sealant,'
he said, indicating the facade of the service station with a sweep of
his arm. 'Paint won't stick to it. Not even metallic paint. Wasn't
cheap. But now when these gang kids or crazy-stupid taggers come
around at night and spray their trash all over the walls, we scrub it
off, scrub it right off the next morning.'
With his meticulous grooming, singular intensity, and quick slender
hands, Arkadian might have been a surgeon about to begin his workday in
an operating theater. He was, instead, the owner-operator of the
service station.
'Do you know,' he said incredulously, 'there are professors who have
written books on the value of graffiti? The value of graffiti? The
value?'
'They call it street art,' said Luther Bryson, Jack's partner.
Arkadian gazed up disbelievingly at the towering black cop. 'You think
what these punks do is art?'
'Hey, no, not me,' Luther said.
At six three and two hundred ten pounds, he was three inches taller
than Jack and forty pounds heavier, with maybe eight inches and seventy
pounds on Arkadian. Though he was a good partner and a good man, his
granite face seemed incapable of the flexibility required for a
smile.
His deeply set eyes were unwaveringly forthright. My Malcolm X glare,
he called it. With or without his uniform, Luther Bryson could
intimidate anyone from the Pope to a purse snatcher.
He wasn't using the glare now, wasn't trying to intimidate Arkadian,
was in complete agreement with him. 'Not me. I'm just saying that's
what the candy-ass crowd calls it. Street art.'
The service-station owner said, 'These are professors. Educated men
and women.
Doctors of art and literature. They have the benefit of an education
my parents couldn't afford to give me, but they're stupid. There's no
other word for it. Stupid, stupid, stupid.' His expressive face
revealed the frustration and anger that Jack encountered with
increasing frequency in the City of Angels. 'What fools do
universities produce these days?'
Arkadian had labored to make his operation special. Bracketing the
property were wedge-shaped brick planters in which grew queen palms,
azaleas laden with clusters of red flowers, and impatients in pinks and
purples. There was no gnme, no litter. The portico covering the pumps
was supported by brick columns, and the whole station had a quaint
colonial appearance.
