Throughout that chaotic Monday evening, local television stations broke in with teasers.
“Crime reporter gunned down in the heart of the city. Film at eleven.”
“Writer shot downtown. Film at eleven.”
The local news programs all led with the shooting. It was a natural. A huge L.A. story with an excellent cast—a reporter, a bar, guns, gangs, downtown, a well-known girlfriend. Had Lyons been killed, it would’ve been a national story.
Like all reporters, Lyons yearned for page A-1, but with his neglected Southside beat rarely got them.
Most of his night crime stories didn’t get much space in the paper—even homicides, especially if they were in the ghetto. Still, Lyons covered them with gusto. But, so often those killings would be briefed—a two-inch capsule—and the next day there would be another homicide and yesterday’s killing was all but forgotten, except by the dead guy’s family and friends, the guy who shot him, and the overworked detectives.
Michael and some reporters called certain shootings “SIWA”: Shooting In White Area. Reporters and column inches were assigned to shootings in accordance with property values and victims age. A shooting in Watts, South Los Angeles, East Los Angeles, or McArthur Park would not make the paper unless the victim was a child under ten, a grandma over seventy, or an incredible hard-luck story. A lightly grazed thirty-five-year-old white female in Santa Monica was good for a eight-inch story inside. A wounded fourteen-year-old boy in the Beverly Center got at least the front of the second section called LATEXTRA. The extraordinary Holmby Hills, Bel Air, Beverly Hills, or Pacific Palisades homicide guaranteed A-1 for days.
Of course, a SIWA meant more coverage, more reporters, usually three, sometimes more. At least one of them would hit the streets and that would almost always be Lyons, who had the best feel for pavement.
Michael understood this was simply the way it was at all the papers. He had been initially disappointed to learn that even the vaunted L.A. Times followed that standard policy. Homicides in his Southside beat were often reduced to briefs, the one-inch digest. That was just the way it was.
But, how could he really complain? He was a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, even with all the layoffs and buyouts, still one of the nation’s best newspapers, a paper where thousands of journalists, rookies and veterans alike, would auction their ideals to be on staff.
Breaking news clusterfucks were not Michael’s forte, though they could be exciting. He preferred to go where television cameramen never tread. To alleys and projects when there wasn’t breaking news, but stories of everyday life. To waiting rooms at prisons and jails. The struggling life. The doomed life.
I saw the curved metal railing above me, the cheap thin curtains that partially privatized the bed. I felt the meagerness of the blanket. I’ve had better blankets at Men’s Central or Wayside. I saw wires leading away from me.
A male Filipino nurse came in. He said nothing and took my vitals: blood pressure, temp, pulse. I numbly stared at the ceiling and wondered what is it with Filipinos and nursing? Just once, once before I die, I’d like to see a Filipino doctor.
Almost in automatic mode, as the male nurse was wrapping up that blood pressure device, I went into the same routine I always did with Filipinos.
“From Manila?”
“Yes.”
“Ever been to the Tondo?”
All Filipinos responded identically, with a smile and look of amazement. “You know Tondo?” was the response. Always. Like Tondo was a person.
I usually told them that I had heard about it from my father, Tony, an Oakland-raised Vietnam vet who’d been to the Philippines and spent time in Manila’s infamous Tondo slum, a teeming hellhole with rats the size of wolverines, shirtless, barrel-chested men in alleys with machetes, and whores who should’ve been in grammar school.
But today, all I said was, “Heard about it.” The nurse left after adjusting some drip. I tried to look down my body. Much of my torso was bandaged. I felt my head, no bandages. If I didn’t move much, I felt no pain. The drip must be morphine.
Then I panicked. Full-bore anxiety attack. With it came a spasmodic jolt of cold sweats. Was I damaged? Was I paralyzed? Could I fuck again? I thought about my girlfriend, Francesca.
I tried to breathe in real deep. It hurt. Even morphine has its limitation. I tried to remember facts I loved, to test my brain. The birth and death years of Alexander the Great?–356 to 323 B.C. Number of Mantle World Series home runs? Eighteen. Relief. A few more to double test myself. Francesca’s address and phone number. Got it.
I quoted from The Iliad opening, the Robert Fagles translation. “Rage, Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles.” It was one of only two lines from The Iliad I knew by heart.
Okay, I’m not brain dead.
I moved my feet. They moved, as did my toes. My hands and fingers worked. With trepidation and long, slow breaths, damn the pain, I touched my penis. It stirred enough to calm my greatest fear.
I lifted and twisted my neck. Moved my arms, I didn’t feel that bad. I smiled and drifted off. Morphine did that to people.
A few hours later, I woke, disoriented. I wondered if word had spread. Was anyone here? My girlfriend? My sister? Of course, they must know. I looked up at the TV. That Filipino nurse was there, watching the news.
I remember the car pulling up. I remember it was an older American car, probably GM. It stopped and a man, a black guy, getting out because I noticed the purple rag he had. Grape Street Crips. I thought this guy was old for a Grape, maybe even fifty. And then I got shot. That’s it. Maybe, I thought, when this dope wears off I will remember more.
For many years I had lived with an ominous feeling something dreadful would befall me that would send my life spiraling downhill to its ultimate sad ending. Sometimes I felt this dread hover about me like a swarm of hornets and knew soon their stings would lay me out.
I’d dismiss it as foolishness, as drama, as booze-spattered anxiety. As long as I was vigilant, nothing really bad would happen to me. I’d be on the lookout for the ax and when it swooped, I’d dodge it as gracefully as Manolete sidestepped horns. But the feeling would return. I could be simply talking to a friend or alone in my ride and I’d sense doom racing toward me with intent to imprison, paralyze, or kill.
Often the dread would feature me killing a baby while driving drunk. The worst of the worst. As real as I could, I would imagine, no, not imagine. Imagination is for good things. I would conjure up this terrible scene, strain to feel its horror. I would envision the mangled body of this dead infant, the grieving, angry family, my own heartbroken family. The revulsion that my life would be. And I would languish in that thought and then, when all was doomed in this conjured life, I’d rejoice in reality.
And that’s how I felt in this hospital room. Rejoiced. That long-awaited dread had come calling, had fallen on me hard, but it hadn’t killed me. Fuck that dread. For the first time in years, I felt no need to worry. There was no more doom lurking. Damn, I felt good.
I put my feet on the floor and stood up. I was wobbly, but I was standing. Life was a grand adventure. The phone rang. It was Francesca.
People often did not believe me at when I told them Francesca Golden was my girlfriend. Just the day before getting shot, I was at little café on Virgil Avenue called Sqirl, and when I spoke proudly of this romance to a friendly foodie seated next me, she called me a liar. I wasn’t at all surprised.
Even in Los Angeles, where bizarre bedfellows get few glances, our relationship was treated with curiosity, perhaps even suspicion.
Francesca is the reigning goddess of the Los Angeles restaurant world, a beguiling curly haired brunette drizzled with allure. She has a nose with a slight, sexy bump in its middle that reminds me—and me alone—of the old Masta Kink at the Formula One circuit in Spa, Belgium. See what I mean? And her eyes, her eyes are hazel, the green like wet emeralds, the brown so gentle, almost caramel, making them very sensitive to light. She almost always wears sunglasses, sunshine or rainfall. She almost always wears Marni, her favorite designer.
Francesca Golden had grown up in an especially affluent section of Encino in the San Fernando Valley. Despite the fancy address, she had a wild streak. While in the fourth grade, she stole cosmetics from Sav-On Drugs, got caught, and retired from the thieving life. In the sixth grade she hopped a freight train off San Fernando Road in Glassell Park and rode it alone to the distant land of North Compton where she took a taxi home, financed by her older sister, Gail.
Francesca found her true passion in food and trained at the mythical restaurant of Fredy Girardet in Crissier, Switzerland. She opened a bakery on Wilshire Boulevard that, on a good day, rivaled Poilane, and a restaurant, The Tower, with her husband, Bernard Fezetta, a master sommelier from Alsace. Soon Francesca became revered in Los Angeles. She expanded the bakery. She made her first million at twenty-seven.
The couple had a daughter Zoe, but by the time the child was three, Francesca and Bernard had split. She opened a new restaurant on her own called Zola, after her child born in L.A.
Five years ago, Francesca went to Napa Valley for a West Coast James Beard benefit dinner. It so happened a friend and frequent customer of Zola was also in Napa Valley that week. He was a convicted violent felon and, though he was white, hung out in the housing projects of Watts, in the barricaded alleys of Green Meadows, in pool halls of North Compton with guys named Mad Dog, Honcho, Snipe, and Big Evil. He was usually dressed in Target black and thought Marni was an old Sean Connery movie. His bank account never soared and he was not handsome. Somehow though, long before she had ever even kissed his mouth, he knew Francesca was made for him. That guy would be me.
I had come to get away from the city, to drink wine and eat well, and to start work on a book I’d probably never finish. I wrote three pages that day, ran three miles, then called Francesca whom I knew was doing a food event in the Napa Valley. She told me to join her and her friends Hiro and Lissa for dinner in St. Helena at Terra Restaurant.
We got toasted—not wasted—at the dinner. Dumol’s Eddie’s Patch Syrah 2001 did the trick. I maneuvered her away from her trusted friend and pastry chef, Dahlia, and walked her to my car where that old wild streak of hers surfaced. We made out on Railroad Street and I took her back to my room, room 17 at the nearby El Bonita Motel. It was the night of my nights.
Even though I worried come morning, the foodie legend in bed with the longtime customer would turn awkward. So I wasn’t surprised, yet I was sad when Francesca awoke, kissed me once on the lips, and walked out. I was pleasantly surprised, no, nah I was euphorically stunned when, fifteen minutes later, she returned with coffee and a lone croissant from the Dean & DeLuca just down Highway 29.
That night we went to Bouchon, little bistro sister to the French Laundry in the wine burg of Yountville. We kissed at the dinner table like young lovers. I knew this would not be just one weekend and, in all my life, I’ve never been happier. During dessert, we struck up a conversation with an elderly couple at the next table. After about fifteen minutes of banter, the lady at the table asked a question that I’d fondly repeat dozens of times over the years. “How do a famous chef and a crime reporter get together?”
Five years after that, we’re still together. I like to sing her praises to people and I love to end by saying, “There’s only one thing that makes me suspicious about her. Have you ever met her boyfriend?”
I thought of that question as I listened to Francesca’s opening phone salvo. “Small wonder people don’t believe you when you tell them I’m your girlfriend.”
“Aren’t you going to ask how I am?”
There was silence for several seconds. I took that as a beautiful sign. Francesca wasn’t much for a breaking voice. Then she said, “You know, I hope they do say I’m your girlfriend when they show you on the news tonight.”
That made me silent for several of my own seconds. “I hope they do too.”