South Central Noir

“What’s that?” He took hold of her cart to take it up the front steps onto the porch. He nodded at the cabdriver, who nodded back and returned to his car.

“The way I understand it, they had to carry him out of here feet first the other evening. He died.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Yes, I’m so sorry. He was a nice man. Told me his stories like playing in Count Basie’s band.” She’d unlocked the front door and pushed it open. Magrady followed her into the vestibule, hauling the cart up and over the doorway’s frame. She occupied one of the ground-floor dwellings.

“Well,” he said, “thank you for your time.”

“Of course. No bother. Sure will miss him.”

“Me too.” Magrady turned back toward the entrance. She was rolling her cart inside her place, closing the door. Magrady didn’t want her hearing him go up the stairs, arousing suspicion. At the main doorway he placed a waded-up piece of paper in the doorjamb cavity where the lock would catch, then closed the front door, faking like he was leaving for good. He returned to his car to retrieve a hammer and chisel. These he placed in a paper bag along with some cheap cotton gloves he’d bought to make it less obvious he was carrying the amateur burglary kit. He sat behind the steering wheel, listening to a podcast debunking conspiracy theories.

After another forty minutes he went up the steps, unlatched the front door, and moved inside. He heard muffled voices through the closed door of the older woman’s apartment — she was watching her stories on TV.

Up the stairs he went. At Banshall’s door there was no X of crime scene tape. The door was locked. Gloves on, he inserted the chisel between the door and the jamb. Three quick raps of the hammer on the head of the chisel, and the door popped opened. Magrady paused then stepped inside, closing the door quietly behind him. Fortunately, these rooms were not above the older woman’s place. For a moment he felt disoriented, viewing the main room in the light, knowing the recent inhabitant was never to return.

He glanced around, not sure what he was looking for, though he supposed he should try to find a next of kin. But the medical examiner’s office would do that as a matter of course. Yet it seemed impersonal if he didn’t also try. There were a couple of framed photos on the mantle, including one with Banshall in a sport coat with his arm around the shoulders of a woman in a mink coat. Both were smiling.

Staring at his dead friend’s face, he could tell it had been taken a few years ago. Should he try to find the woman? He picked up the frame and slipped the photo free. Nothing was written on the back.

Before putting the picture back together, he took a shot of it with his phone’s camera. He picked up the black wooden rectangle also on the mantle. The thing that seemed to puzzle Banshall by its presence. Magrady had one just like this. It was a commemorative gift given to those who’d worked on a successful political campaign more than twenty-five years earlier. What went down on and after April 29, 1992, were etched memories. The days-long conflagration had jumped off at the intersection of Florence and Normandie. Everyone had been tuned in to their TVs or radios as the not-guilty verdicts were announced that afternoon for the four LAPD officers who beat the living hell out of Rodney King after a chase-and-stop in the San Fernando Valley. The two passengers in his car untouched. In those days there were no smartphones with cameras to chronicle police violence, Magrady reflected. On that evening, it was grainy images captured via a video camera operated by a plumber from his apartment’s balcony. He’d been awakened by the commotion from below.

The memento Magrady held had been handed out by a grateful candidate who’d won a city council seat, running on a platform of neighborhood empowerment zones and racial reconciliation several years after ’92. It had been a contentious race. Banshall had headlined a benefit concert to fundraise for the campaign. The singer had been a woman calling herself Tempest. Magrady had been one of several in charge of the canvassing, the door knocking. Tsuji must have searched the apartment once he got the tox report from the coroner. The detective must have also talked to the musicians who last played with Banshall that night at the World Stage. That might have been another way in which he’d zeroed in on Magrady. But who had Banshall run up against since coming back to town?

Banshall had a good number of vinyl LPs arranged on a shelf in the tidy dining room. Magrady sifted through these but no hidden treasure map fell out. Frustrated and feeling aimless, he was hesitant to leave but he was getting nowhere. Well, he reasoned, he’d try to hunt down the woman, though he had a feeling that was going to be a dead end. Magrady poked about some more but nothing jumped out at him.