As Lyons floated in and out of his morphine-induced stupor, editors and reporters gathered in Editor Duke Collinsworth’s large office to discuss how to advance the story.
“What’s new? What do we have?” asked Collinsworth, a distinguished, silver-haired man who looked like a prototype editor. A sixty-three-year-old Southern gentlemen who enjoyed twenty-year-old Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve bourbon with one drop of water, had a wife he met at Duke forty-four years ago, a long, slow smile, and a quest to reverse the recent cutbacks that had badly gutted the paper. “How we going to play it today?”
“Well, my sources tell me detectives don’t have any eyewitnesses yet, but they think it was gang related,” said Goldstein.
“No eyewitnesses. It was at 2nd and Broadway at rush hour. There must’ve been at least twenty cars within a hundred feet. Have a news aide count cars at that corner for ten minutes,” Collinsworth said. “Someone saw that shooting. Any thought the gunman had a silencer?”
“No,” said Goldstein. “The bartender at the Redwood said he heard the shots from inside the bar.”
Collinsworth shook his head. “A real whodunit. This is a great story. Too bad he’s one of us. Anyway, what’s going on with the police?”
Goldstein prattled on without saying anything of substance until Tinder cut him off. “How about we do this for a follow? Something like detectives are pursuing leads, including a list of potential suspects that they gathered from colleagues of Lyons. We update his condition. Have Greg get a quote from Mike. Even if it’s just ‘I’m doing better’ or whatever. Go over what Mike covered again. Pound some pavement. Do about twenty, twenty-two inches.”
Collinsworth settled back in his worn, brown leather chair that had been with him since he became the editor of the Charlotte Observer a quarter century ago. His hands and fingers formed a teepee, his starched, white dress shirt covered elbows resting on the chair’s soft leather arms. “That sounds right. And try to keep a lid on this betting pool. The blogs might have it already, especially L.A. Observer. But this pool, as of right now, it’s history. You hear me, Morty?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’ll go with what Harriet suggested. But, if there is nothing new tomorrow, I’m having editorial get on this. We’ll do a, ‘How can one of our own get shot downtown, broad daylight, two blocks from the LAPD’s Police Administration Building with no witnesses and no suspects? Is anyone safe here?’ That type of story. The lead editorial. Heck, I’ll write it myself. And I’ll admit, that pool idea was classic. Now destroy it.”
Wednesday evening, I continued to improve. Francesca brought me a bowl of ultrasweet tangerines called Paige mandarins. I wanted to wrap them in newspaper and put them on a radiator to savor their intoxicating aroma, the routine M. F. K. Fisher wrote enticingly about. We did that last year in small, charming Left Bank hotel, a long way from my sterile hospital room in Lincoln Heights, a block from the county morgue.
The morphine had already been replaced by Demerol, but I did not request it until night fell. There were even times when, in a strange way, I actually relished the pain for I felt it strengthened me, made me a better person, more appreciative of those who suffered far, far worse than I. I was earning my right to write the blues.
I was feeling better that night. Euphoric, even. Shortly after my night shot, Francesca kissed me good night and sang softly into my ear a few lines from her favorite song by her beloved Van Morrison, “Brown Eyed Girl.”
And Francesca never sang. My eyes got wet.
The next day LaBarbera and Hart stopped by Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. LaBarbera rapped once, hard, on the open door to my room. I knew that knock. I dispensed with the small talk.
“So who shot me?”
“Not much to report yet, but we’ll get him,” said Hart.
“What about the first forty-eight hours? How long has it been anyway? Kinda losing track of time.”
“You been watching too much TV. Mike, we’re lookin’ at all angles. Tell us everything you remember about what happened. Every little thing.”
“Like I said on the phone, I didn’t get much of a look at the guy. It happened so fast. I had just left the Redwood.”
“Were you drunk?” asked Hart.
“I don’t get drunk, but I’d had two drinks. Two doubles. Stoli.”
“That would fry me, but go on.”
“So I’m walking along Second Street, right near Sharky’s Bail Bonds, and I notice this Buick or Olds pull up.”
“Two door, four door?”
“Two. I’m pretty sure two.”
“Go on.”
“At least I’m remembering more than I did the other day, whenever that was, when I was deep on the morphine.”
“Congratulations. Go on.”
“The car pulls up to the curb, and this black guy gets out. He’s like maybe forty-five, fifty, and he’s got a purple bandana covering his head and forehead and a semi, a nine apparently, and he starts shooting. That fast. I think there’s nowhere to run, so I think about a charge, but he’s too far away and then I go down. Whole thing is maybe two, three seconds at the very most.”
“I couldn’t say, other than it wasn’t light, like white or beige or yellow.”
“Color of the black guy? Dark, light skinned?”
“Dark, but not like African dark.”
“Height? Weight?”
“Like I told you on the phone, nothing special, wasn’t tall, wasn’t short. Wasn’t fat, wasn’t skinny. I know you’re getting tired of hearing this, but it happened so quick. I’d say he was somewhere between five eight and five eleven, say somewhere between one sixty and two hundred. The thing is there was nothing really distinctive about him.”
“Say, Lyons,” said Hart, “you ever think about taking a ‘Describe People’ class? The FBI has them. You could sure use it.”
“Fuck you, Hart.”
Hart laughed.
“Actually, what you gave us does help,” said LaBarbera. “Narrows it down at least a little bit. We can do a lot of eliminating. On the phone you didn’t give me any numbers, but you were out of it. Did he say anything? Anything at all?”
“If he did, I didn’t hear it.”
“Was anyone on the sidewalk near you?”
“No. Not that I remember.”
“You said he had a purple rag on. You recently pissed someone off from Grape Street? Fuck some married women down here?” Hart asked.
“You’re a funny guy.”
“Whaddya mean funny?”
Sal cut them off. “Don’t start with that routine, you two clowns. Jordan Downs, go on.”
“I haven’t even been to Jordan Downs in months. You know I’m loved down there. Maybe the purple bandana was to throw off the scent.”
“That’s what Sal and I were thinking. Shooters don’t advertise anymore.”
“So none of our fine citizens have stepped up. I know there had to be thirty people who saw it. Second and Broadway? Please.”
“We got one plate called in, but it turned out to not even be an actual license plate number,” said LaBarbera, “And what we have got from anonymous tips goes with you that it was an American car, like a Buick or an Olds or Pontiac.”
And, as for suspects,” said Hart, “even your colleagues had a list of like fifteen, twenty suspects.”
“Yeah, Greg told me. But, hell, half of those suspects were husbands of women I kissed in the last ten years. They don’t count. They didn’t have balls to fuck their wives, let alone shoot me.”
“Coulda hired out,” said Hart.
“I don’t see it.”
“So, it’s most likely work related,” LaBarbera said. “We thought maybe the Rollin Sixties. You did that big piece on them a couple years ago. We came down hard on them after it ran. They had to be pissed.”
“But, like you said, that was two years ago. They don’t remember back that far. Plus, Wild Cat was one of the first people to call me in the hospital. I’ve known Cat for a long time, and we’ve always respected each other. Used to write him when he was in Soledad and Corcoran. Sometimes send him twenty-dollar mail orders. Guys inside, they don’t forget that shit. They love you for that.”
“Yeah, we talked to him today. He spoke highly of you. I don’t know if I’d be proud of that, but you probably are.”
“Damn right,” I said. “The Sixties didn’t do this.”
“You’re right about that,” said LaBarbera. “If they did, you’d be dead.”
“Let me ask you guys something,” I said, scooting up a bit on the pillow that had the consistency of hour-old cement. “Do you think I have to worry about whoever did this coming here to finish me off?”
“Finish you off?” said Hart with exaggerated tone. “Who are you, Don Corleone? Sal, how many times you think this guy has seen The Godfather?”
“Fuck you, Hart,” I said, trying to hide a smile.
“Hey, Johnny,” LaBarbera said. “Maybe we should get Luca Brasi to stand in front of the door.”
“Fuck that, Sal,” I said, moving toward relaxed. “That overrated motherfucker is sleeping with the fishes.”
They laughed, said their goodbyes, but not before LaBarbera told me he would tell hospital security to keep a guy on the floor just to play it safe.
“Tell you the truth, Mike, I think whoever did this to you wasn’t a pro,” said Hart. “There were nine shell casings we picked up on the sidewalk and curb. Two hits outta nine. Not exactly the Sundance Kid.”
Later that night, in his office, true to his word, Duke Collinsworth wrote a scathing editorial of the LAPD. The story ran in Thursday’s paper.
ARE WE SAFE NEAR PAB
by Duke Collinsworth
The Mayor and the Police Chief like to quote statistics that crime is down. And it is, according to their stats. But, are we safe in Los Angeles? Not really. Can we count on the police to track down our assailants and, as the cliché often used by politicians, goes “Bring them to justice?”
Apparently not. The employees, the family here at the Times tasted this bitter reality this week when one of our own, Michael Lyons, was gunned down under a sunny sky just one block away from our editorial offices, two blocks from City Hall and three blocks from the Police Administration Building, PAB, the LAPD’s new headquarters.
Lyons was shot and seriously wounded as he walked along 2nd Street near Broadway shortly after five pm. We have tracked that intersection and within a 30 second period up to 100 cars pass that corner. Someone saw something. Yet all the LAPD can say is, “We are vigorously pursuing all leads.”
What leads? This happened three short blocks from police headquarters. They like to say the downtown area is safe. Come to Los Angeles. But is it? If a gunman can get away, even for two days, with shooting someone in daylight in downtown Los Angeles two blocks from City Hall, what hope is there for the victims in housing projects in Watts, in alleys of Boyle Heights and in the parks and crowded apartment hallways of Rampart Division?
Mike Lyons has a dangerous beat for a city reporter. He covers street gangs and, I imagine, knowing him, when he is healthy, he will return to this beat he loves. Between 50% and 60% of the homicides in Los Angeles are gang related and Lyons, who personally convinced me we should create a beat solely devoted to gangs, felt we, as the newspaper of record in the West, needed to cover them more thoroughly. I agreed and he was given that beat.
The LAPD needs to cover gangs better, also. They need to protect us. As their car says “To Protect and Serve.” Maybe they should add “And to Find the Shooters.”
How can we be safe in Los Angeles if we are not safe on Broadway and 2nd Street? The LAPD needs to find the shooter and send a message to other shooters. Our citizens need to know if you shoot someone, be it a reporter from the Los Angeles Times on 2nd Street or a grandma on 114th Street in Nickerson Gardens, you will be, in the blowhard words of our politicians, “hunted down.” Get on your jobs, detectives, and find the person who shot my reporter. Let the city, let the country, let the world know, shooters can’t get away in Los Angeles.