When I was in the engineering corps, driving my Honda CR-V around the city, I was always in a hurry to get from A to B. I never paid the in-between places any mind. I missed people and places that would have broadened my understanding and made me a real local. And if you’re a tourist, forget about it. The so-called authentic local experiences your hotel concierge recommends always show a place at its best. They’re designed to conceal the blemishes, which, like the scars on an old warrior’s face, are part of their story.
You want to know a place—the truth, good and bad? Ride the bus.
Why am I hitting you with a bus commercial when you’re here for murder and mayhem? Well, it goes, as any good attorney will tell you, to character. I used to be an optimist. Mr. Glass-half-full, and my attitude to having to schlep across the city on a bus from time to time is one of the last vestiges of that. I look for the positive, rather than think about how far I’ve fallen and the decline that’s evidenced every time I plant my ass on one of the hard plastic seats.
Of course, riding the 115 bus from the corner of Manchester Avenue along Firestone Boulevard I wasn’t just optimistic, I was elated. Years in prison had been lifted from my shoulders. My unknown benefactor might well have saved my life. I took in the sights and sounds of the city, and the low-rise mini-malls, auto shops, and fast-food joints looked like the finest museums, art galleries, and palaces to my eyes. Ask any ex-con; freedom has a tint all its own.
Even the bad houses on Edgebrook didn’t look too shabby as I hit the street that had been my home for five months. I’d leased the place from a big bear of a Greek man, who didn’t mind leasing the house to an ex-con, but charged me 20 percent over market rate and insisted I paid two months’ rent and two months’ security deposit. He called it a poverty premium.
But the place suited me. It had a spare bedroom for Skye when she stayed over, which wasn’t often because Toni didn’t approve of me or the neighborhood. They might have been poor, but my neighbors kept to themselves and just wanted a bed to crash on while they slept off whatever misery tainted their lives.
My socializing happened at Rick’s, a bar a couple of blocks away that had once been a Blockbuster video store. Socializing was probably too strong a word. I would normally talk only to my buddy Jim Steadman, but every so often I drank enough booze to make others tolerable and had instantly forgotten conversations with complete strangers about life’s most profound secrets.
I haven’t always been a cantankerous antisocial jerk, but life grinds hard on some people, turning their warm welcomes to dusty suspicion.
I neared my home and saw the crumpled front end of my car being hooked up to the same tow truck by the same two mechanics from this morning. I’d taken a painful and long trip to jail, only to return to the start. But this was no board game of monopolists and losers. It was my life, and these two were robbing me.
I ran over with a “Hey!”
“Stay away from me, man!”
The guy I’d tackled squared up to me and raised his arms to make himself big.
“You’re still supposed to be in jail,” his younger colleague said.
“I’m not normally a violent man.” I stopped just out of the big guy’s reach. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“You didn’t hurt me. You caught me off guard is all.” He puffed out his chest and looked at his colleague, daring him to challenge what was clearly bullshit overcompensation.
“I don’t want trouble. I just want my car,” I replied. “I’ll make good. Look at it. It’s not worth anything now.”
“Ain’t our job to decide what gets taken. We just do the taking.”
It was the way of the world. Like Caesar, the Man decided with his thumb who won and who lost, and his minions made his wishes real. No one was responsible because the Man wasn’t sufficiently dumb enough to let himself be identified. People like me, angry and carrying pitchforks, might come looking for him. So, he hides in the swamps of shareholding, crouches in the weeds of contracts and liens and legal doublespeak, and says, “It’s just the way things are, buddy. Better luck next time.”
And the victims of the grandest of all grand swindles think themselves unlucky and start again, while their competitors in the game of life are busy accruing more and more, hardly skipping a beat, passing it on to the next generation so their children gain all the advantages while the victims’ offspring have none.
I’d become a victim yet again, and with the theft of my car, my slate was almost clean. Do over. Start from scratch, poor man.
“You can’t leave me without a car. This is LA,” I protested.
“I know where we are, man,” the older mechanic said.
His young associate smiled and the two of them shrugged at each other, and, realizing I really didn’t pose a threat, returned to their work for the Man.
I shook my head in disbelief and took a seat on my front step. I watched in the fading light as they hooked the car to the truck and winched it onto the flatbed.
The mechanic I’d tackled gave me a mocking salute as he climbed in the cab, and they drove away, taking my bashed up old Sebring with them.
Deadbeat to carless deadbeat in the space of minutes. I didn’t have much further to fall, and feeling every inch the heel, I turned for my front door. But I stopped when I saw something in the corner of my eye. The tiny, crooked flag on the mailbox at the edge of my front yard was raised, like the arm of a hesitant child about to ask an awkward question in class.
I walked the small yard and opened my old-fashioned aluminum mailbox. Inside was a single small, padded package. It was addressed to me, but there was no stamp, so it had been hand-delivered. Above the typed label was a sticker marked Urgent. Bills and court summonses were the only urgent things I ever received, but I could feel something thick inside. Too thick to be simple paperwork.
I tore the flap as I walked toward my front door, and almost gasped when I saw a flash of green, the familiar but rarely sighted color of money.
I shook as I unlocked my door and glanced over both shoulders nervously. This much cash didn’t belong in my neighborhood. I hurried inside, slammed the door, and leaned against it as I put my hand into the package and pulled out a stack of fifties. The Bank of America paper collar told me I was holding a thousand bucks.