South Central Noir

“The angel of death is here. And just my luck, she looks like Angela Davis.” He chuckled, coughed up phlegm and blood in his throat, and expired. The words he’d been tapping out were inscribed on his headstone along with his name and birth and death dates. It was among several sayings the ninety-four-year-old man was known for uttering over the years. In the following days, that and other details of Jonah Montgomery Rikemann’s colorful life were related in print and by newscasters and pundits across the airwaves.

Magrady sat off to one side in the World Stage, bopping his head as the quartet grooved. There was a piano player, an upright bass player, a drummer, and his friend Tyrone “Ty” Banshall on the sax. They’d been improvising but had dropped into a Paul Desmond number, “Feeling Blue.” After that they played several more compositions and finished off the night with a tripped-out, jazzed-up instrumental rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child.”

Amid the applause, Magrady came over to his friend. “That was wild, man.” He stuck out his hand and the saxophonist shook it vigorously.

“Glad to see you made it out, brother,” Banshall said. “It’s been a minute, like the kids say.”

“Well, it is past my bedtime. But y’all knocked it out the park.”

“Not to brag but I think we did.”

“This is Horace,” Banshall said, introducing the drummer, a stout man with gray at his temples. “This is Magrady. We were in ’Nam at the same time.”

“No shit.”

“Pleasure,” Magrady said, shaking the drummer’s hand. “Me and Ty weren’t in the same unit but a lot of us bloods hung out together away from the bush.”

Magrady looked like a beer truck driver, the hair bristled close on his head mostly snow these days, clean-shaven and neat in jeans and a buttoned-down shirt. His windbreaker was draped on the back of the folding chair he’d been sitting on.

Banshall, tall and lanky, was taking his sax apart to put in its padded case as the piano player came over. This individual was a medium-built Black man decades younger than both of the other two, who were in their sixties. He wore stylish glasses and trendy sneakers.

“You were in the stratosphere tonight,” the younger man said, grinning at the saxophonist. The drummer had walked off to talk to someone else.

“Just following you, youngster. Lee Sorrells, meet Magrady, he was all Sergeant Fury and shit over there.”

“Mostly shit,” Magrady said, the emotion flat in his voice.

“Good to meet you,” Lee said. He and Magrady also shook hands. “See you Friday, Ty,” he added with a nod to the saxophonist.

“For sure,” Banshall answered. Then to Magrady he said, “Gimme a ride to the crib and I’ll buy you a drink.” He made a face. “Damn, sorry, man. Old habit.”

Magrady was some years sober. “Ain’t no thing. I can have tap water with an ice cube.”

“I think I have a bottle of fruity seltzer,” his friend quipped.

The two left the World Stage, exiting onto the wide expanse of Degnan. Shops such as Hot and Cool Café and Eso Won Bookstore lined the next block of the boulevard. As Magrady and Banshall headed south away from the stores, they saw a man and woman in yoga gear each riding a hybrid unicycle-tricycle. The bikes had one large front tire and the two rear ones were canted outward for balance. They each had a seat and pedals but no handlebar. The two expertly maneuvered about.

Magrady and Banshall neared the recently refurbished Leimert Park Plaza which fronted the main throughfare of Crenshaw. The coming of a metro train signaled an uneasy development of the area. Riding in on those rails was gentrification, which often as not meant displacement. The two also passed several pup tents and lean-tos made from cardboard and scrap, evidence of the city’s ever-present homeless population.

The two arrived at Magrady’s car, a twenty-year-old PT Cruiser with a rebuilt engine and faded fake-wood paneling on its sides and rear hatch.

“Haven’t seen one of these in a month of Sundays,” Banshall remarked.

“Haven’t had a car in that long either,” Magrady replied as he unlocked the passenger-side door for his friend. “Even a goofy one like this.” The bus and occasional biking had been his modes of transportation for years.

“I ain’t complaining.”

Banshall put his case on the backseat as Magrady went around to the driver’s side. Off they went to Budlong near 35th Place, not too far west of USC. Banshall lived in what was called a neoclassical wood-sided fourplex built in another era. Back then it would have been called a rooming house. It was set among several humble abodes with well-tended lawns, some with security bars on doors and windows. Magrady found a parking space at the curb in front.

Banshall yawned, working a kink out of his neck. “Remember when this would have been the time we’d be hitting our stride in Soul Alley?” This had been a section of the then-called Saigon of nightclubs and joints where Black GIs hung out. A fleeting relief from the toils of war and antagonisms with their fellow white soldiers on base.