South Central Noir

We took the limo west, down Sunset. Past the Strip. The expensive hotels. The mansions in Beverly Hills. Miss Chimes pointed out places where movie stars lived and the famous restaurants for white folks where exciting things was happening. Next, the Pacific Ocean rose behind the hills, wide and black as the sky. Snow-white waves curled along the bottom of the blackness, marking the waterline. The boulevard curved back and forth under the headlights.

We reached Malibu and rolled south. Past Santa Monica, Venice, past the scrap of beach set aside for colored folks. “White folks calls it the Inkwell,” Miss Chimes said. We took Washington east, back acrost the city. It was a thrilling and breathtaking trip.

I was still tingling when we dropped the limo off at the garage. I asked Miss Chimes if I could escort her back to her quarters at the Dunbar. The killer was still loose, after all, and although I was pretty sure Miss Chimes was capable of kicking the ass of any street hoodlum she met, having a friend at your back in a fight with a monster has advantages.

I said it and Miss Chimes looked surprised, like she was amazed I even knew her name.

Neon lit the avenue. We could see the Dunbar just ahead, growing brighter as we approached. The King Cole Trio was headlining next door at the Club Alabam. Fans was milling in the street waiting for the doors to open for the eleven o’clock show.

Miss Chimes paused. I lit her cigarette, and we stepped into the street to admire the scene. After a while, she said, “So what did you think about your tour of our beautiful city?”

“My tour?”

“The hotels, the mansions, the ocean.”

I took a good while expressin’ amazement for all I had seen.

Then, bluntly, Miss Chimes said, “Well, my wide-eyed worm, ain’t none of that for you — the hotels, the mansions, the ocean — you ain’t welcome in none of that. None.” She turnt to face the avenue, waved her hand acrost it. “Look at all this joy and prosperity. Cadillacs and jalopies scrubbed and waxed like they heading to a wedding. Eager customers, flashin’ and frontin’ everywhere you look, broke as a joke but dressed to the nines. What you think of that?”

“Beautiful,” I said, confused a little, trying to figure where her speech was heading.

“Well, this is your coffin,” Miss Chimes said. “A golden coffin stuck in the mud beside a deadly river. There ain’t no signs on the streets showing the walls of the coffin, but if some lost Negro step a foot beyond First to the north, Alvarado to the west, Slauson south, or cross the river, east, they begging for a beatdown. Our liberty is an illusion. Look around you, boy! Watch! Listen! The neon, the moonlight, the music, the dancing, the glow of prosperity, the hundreds of colored homeowners nestled safe, hopeful, and happy all around us — that is an illusion too.”

“Illusion?” was all I could say.

“Tell me, Wormboy, what do you call a trough — a gorgeous, golden trough, filled with pretty flowers, that every day gets dumped on with fresh flowers and soil? Well, soon the trough fills up. But there ain’t no way for the flowers that’s already inside to crawl out. Nowheres to get sunlight nor nourishment. No air. And the gardeners tending the box just keep dumping on more dirt and flowers, covering the pretty flowers already inside. Soon, them at the bottom — once sweet-smelling and exotic — grows withered and stale. Start to suffocate. Rot. Dying inside the trough. That’s what’s happening on Central now, but we can’t see it for the golden walls, dazzling us, seducing us to keep inside. It’s a coffin, a golden coffin. Life and beauty overhead, all untouchable. And in the beautiful coffin, no air, no sunlight, no escape.”

Miss Chimes was attracting a crowd.

“Mind what I say: one day soon, this coffin gonna explode,” she told the crowd, “its golden prettiness flying and burning across the sky. Scalding and smoldering and rotting and stinking up the streets. And folks will be asking themselves — what happened?”

She mashed her cigarette in the street.

“Just wait,” she said.

13

Seem like the escort services was working. Wasn’t no murders from September to November. Once more mens signed up, I allowed myself a day off. Took a part-time job Sunday afternoons working the stockroom at Komix & Kandi. My favorite spot on the whole damn street.

Komix & Kandi not only had chocolate bars and red hots, they carried the spookiest comics in the city: Dr. Fate, Hourman, Captain Zog. Candy was sold in front, comics out back — in a room hid behind a curtain, so the scary scenes on the covers was out of view of lady customers.

Mr. Zimmerman, the owner, hired me, he said, to show solidarity with his Negro customers facing not only a killer but the LAPD. Mr. Zimmerman was a shutterbug. A two-dollar Brownie, each with a neck strap, sat ready on every shelf. He used them to snap photos of the kids that came in.