South Central Noir

Annette Thomas had photographs of the nineteen pieces: seven necklaces, four rings, two bracelets, and three pair of earrings. With the photos in hand, Greg proceeded to take the house in Baldwin Hills apart, room by room, starting with the bedroom his mother had spent the last nine years of her life occupying.

He found nothing.

Until, as a last resort, he showed the photos to his brother.

“Darrel, have you seen these? This was jewelry that belonged to Momma.”

Darrel looked the photos over carefully and smiled. Nodding, he said, “Our secret treasure.”

Greg’s breath caught in his throat. Feeling light-headed, he sat down on the end of Darrel’s bed. “Say again?”

“Momma called it that. ‘Our secret treasure.’ She gave it to me to protect.”

It made a ridiculous sort of sense. It was exactly the kind of game their mother would have played with her favorite son. Jewelry she never wore anymore, a fortune in the bank — what harm could it do to give them to Darrel, whom she thought of as a harmless child?

“Darrel, where is it now?” Greg couldn’t keep the desperation out of his voice. The people he owed money to had given him one last chance to pay; he had less than forty-eight hours. “Your treasure?”

Darrel grinned, thinking his older brother wanted to play the game too, and went to the large toy chest in the corner. He got down on his knees, reached under the chest, and slid out a large, flat black-velvet box. He handed it to Greg.

Greg opened it, hands shaking. Now he did feel faint. There was nothing inside but a pair of earrings and the skeletal remains of everything else: the bracelets, rings, and necklaces had all been plucked nearly clean of the diamonds and gems they once held.

Greg couldn’t remember the last time he’d been angry at his little brother. There seemed so little point. But there was a rage building up in him now he wasn’t sure he could control. “Where are the stones? The diamonds, the emeralds?”

Proud of himself, Darrel said, “I hid them. Momma said protect them, so that’s what I did.”

“Hid them where? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You said the F-word.”

Greg took hold of his brother’s shoulders and shook him, hard enough to rattle his bones. “Darrel, where the hell are the stones?”

“In the castle!” Darrel began to cry. He couldn’t understand what his brother’s anger was all about.

The castle. What Darrel called the Towers. The Watts Towers.

“Oh, Jesus.”

Greg released his hold on his brother, his mind retracing all those visits to the park, that funky little fanny pack attached to Darrel’s hip like a colostomy bag. When had it started? Before their mother died or after? It had been years since Greg had actually walked through the park right alongside his brother, and even when he’d been that invested, the focus of this attention had almost always been elsewhere. Boredom and a watchful eye did not go hand in hand. Greg realized now that Darrel could have left a live snake at the park without his noticing.

He told Darrel to show him the fanny pack, already certain of what he would find. Inside, along with all the pieces of chipped glass and shiny detritus the man-child collected like a vacuum cleaner, was a fat tube of glue. Greg himself had probably bought the tube for Darrel on one of their regular shopping trips, never giving a second thought to what purpose his brother might have for it.

He had no more questions to ask. He finally understood what had happened, the ludicrous game of make believe his mother’s favorite son had been playing with their inheritance. Without conscious thought, Greg threw one punch. A straight right hand that struck Darrel flush in the face and knocked him halfway across the room. It was the first time he had ever raised a hand to his brother and it would prove to be the last.

Darrel cracked his skull on the corner of his desk and died at Kaiser Permanente in West Los Angeles four hours later. The coroner’s official cause of death was blunt-force trauma to the head.

“Whoa, hold up,” Eric said when Melvin stopped talking. “That’s it? That’s the end of the story?”

“That’s it,” Melvin said.

“So you’re telling me...” Eric glanced around the park at all the colorful, gleaming objects studding the walls and towers surrounding them. “That seventy grand worth of diamonds and shit is all here somewhere?”

Melvin just shrugged.

“The brother had been gluing pieces here and there every time he came in?”

“Not every time. Just every now and then.”

“And nobody every noticed?”

Melvin laughed. “Noticed how? Man, how close do you look at all the glass and tile and shiny plastic in this park? You think you could find a ruby among it all, even if you were looking for it?”

“But somebody would have seen him do it. Right?”

“He was careful. He didn’t want to be seen. He called himself ‘protecting’ his mother’s ‘treasure,’ remember? You never knew a kid who could do something for years without his parents ever knowing about it?”