South Central Noir

Eric was so shaken that he couldn’t even speak. Charlie pulled the accordion security gates closed in front of the glass door and fastened them together with a padlock, then turned back to Eric. “You be careful who you spend time with. You don’t want to end up like Moe.”

Afterward, instead of going straight home, Eric cruised on his bicycle down Crenshaw. He felt heartsick about releasing the videos into the hands of the yakuza. Where would they end up next?

As he rode his bike by, he scanned the clothing store, barely able to see above the racks. And there, the small head of the woman.

He quietly approached Kanako. “I had to give your tapes away,” he confessed.

Her eyes widened. “I’m going to take my break now,” she called out to a Black coworker. She gestured for him to follow her onto the floor of the mall in the front of an athletic shoe store.

“Now what did you say?” She folded her arms over her blouse, covering her name tag.

“I worked at the Kokusai Theatre. A man left some videotapes on the last day we were open.”

“You stupid kid. Why did you have to poke your head into this?”

Eric was confused. His mind tried to follow what the woman was saying. So she knew?

“You shouldn’t have gotten involved,” she said, the right side of her mouth drooping slightly.

How could he not? He was destined to be her protector. Didn’t she understand?

“How old are you, anyway?” Kanako studied him for the first time and Eric’s face grew hot.

“Fourteen.”

“You’re about two years older than my kid.”

Eric was dumbstruck. He couldn’t imagine Kanako being a mother of someone his age.

The woman’s posture softened, absorbing his surprise. She focused on his Yojimbo T-shirt that he’d purchased from a man selling bootleg shirts from the trunk of his car in the parking lot of the Kokusai Theatre. “You need to be more like him in his movies,” she said. “Mifune really didn’t give a damn about anyone.”

With that, she returned to the clothing store. Eric was paralyzed. Was Kanako right? Was Mifune just like an animal in Yojimbo, scratching his balls through his kimono? But Eric remembered the movie’s final scene: Mifune tearing through the gangsters’ bodies with the sword of a dead man. And a short knife — that’s what he used to stab the arm of the ringleader. Mifune had restored peace to that village. Whether Kanako believed it or not, the bodyguard was the hero.

Eric could have called the cops, but what would they do? Interrogate him, and then he’d be in hot water with his parents. As soon as he got home, he found the hidden switchblade underneath a pair of his brother’s Jockey briefs. He slipped it in his pants pocket and rode his bike back to the empty parking lot of the Kokusai Theatre. In the shadow of the building, he practiced flipping open the switchblade and slashing it toward an invisible enemy. If the yakuza ever came back around his neighborhood again, Eric Montgomery would be ready.

Mae’s Family Dining by Penny Mickelbury

Slauson Avenue

Mae Hillaire worked six days a week, ten to twelve hours a day, every day except the days before and the days of Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, and her birthday. Most days she didn’t mind because where she worked was the restaurant she owned — Mae’s Family Dining — and the place was always packed because the food was always good and she was always too busy to think about anything but the work. So while she usually didn’t mind the long hours and long days and hard work, on days like today she hated every second of it and edged one step closer to her periodically threatened retirement.

The hoots and catcalls signaled the arrival of three of her regulars who also were performers at the Night Life club. Never sure whether to call them female impersonators or drag queens, Mae called them by the names they called themselves, and right now it was Etta James throwing gasoline on the fire.

“That ain’t what you was sayin’ last night, Deacon Robinson!”

Mae hurried over to the table where Alvin Robinson was cowering beneath Etta’s glare. “Etta, please come and sit down.”

“He’s a hypocrite, Miss Mae, callin’ me all kinda names in here and sayin’ all kinda other things in the club at night!”

“Be careful how you talk to my customers, Alvin.”

“They ought not to be in here with decent people!” the deacon fumed with righteous indignation.

“Nightclubs let church deacons come in, so I can let nightclub performers come in here,” Mae said, and led Etta to the table where her companions were seated and signaled for water and menus. “Y’all know there’s nothin’ I can do about hypocrites and you also know I won’t let nobody abuse you. But y’all got to behave yourselves!” And she left them amid giggles and a chorus of Yes ma’am, Miss Maes.