Classified: Inter-Department Only
Volume 5: Emergency Procedures
340: Civil Unrest Emergency Procedures
340.70: Use of Race Data
Racial Aggregate Profiling (RAP) may be utilized at the discretion of the Chief of Police. The department recognizes during urban civil unrest the preponderance of suspects and criminals will be persons of color.
“It’s me, Nozzy!” A spray-paint can, big as a man, yellow rubbery feet with black untied sneakers: red nozzle tipped rakishly like a fez, steel-can demonic eyes squint down above this leering smile, cylinder chest bannered BARRIO BLACK. “Paint yer way to underground fame and power! Now you have a voice!” Nozzy jumps up and down, the metal pea inside pinging. “Life’s a drag till you tag!” A yellow arm rises to his red hat, black-gloved fist punching down the nozzle, a stream of black wetness burning Monk’s eyes.
A slap stings Monk’s cheek and his bloodshot eyes slowly open and focus. He rubs his throbbing cheek. “Jax?” A familiar face shadowed between knit cap and bandanna smiles down on him. He looks around, dazed. A taillight glowing red from a VW idling in the mouth of this dark alley: the cyclops’s eye. “Where am I?”
“An alley off 119th.” Shaking his head. “Some bum, you kept screaming his name was Nozzy, was pissin’ on you. Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here.” Jax wedges Monk under his arm, steers him through the alley, past green trash bags crawling with rats and bums sleeping behind cardboard flaps and corners.
“Bazooka … Godzilla,” Monk’s mumbling, he stumbles, clutching Jax.
“I don’t know what you’ve been taking, but it must’ve been good shit. Get in.” Jax opens the VW door. Sofia, behind the wheel, turns her pretty face and laughs. “A wino, huh? You look like refried shit. And you smell like piss.” She throws him a towel, he wipes his face and shirt.
“He’s in disguise,” Jax says, “the wanderer assumes many forms to get home, eh, Monk?” Sofia slams the VW into gear and they peel down the alley.
Jax shrugs around, facing the backseat. “I thought you were headin’ south.” He lights a cigarette, hands it to Sofia.
“Cocaine … they’re cooking it,” Monk mumbles: his heart is resuming some kind of normal rhythm, the city’s flames and smoke and passing headlights seem to clear his fractured mind. “One-nineteenth … north … how did I … back where I started … I have to go fucking south—”
“You’ve gone south, all right,” Jax grins.
“South,” Monk mutters. He pulls out his notebook. “The way home.” He’s scribbling down Standard’s human map, trying to remember, but his mind’s sparking in haywire flashes. “Naomi Street, Sixty-seventh east … was it Palm Street? Fuck…”
“He’s sick, Jax. Let’s take him to the loft.” Sofia’s cigarette smoke drifts into the backseat.
* * *
“Monk! Monk!” He opens his eyes: he’s curled in a fetal position. Sofia’s face is framed in the open window of the VW, Jax behind her. “We’re at the market. It’s still open. There’s cops guarding the doors, so it should be okay. We’re gonna get some spaghetti and coffee and stuff. You just rest, okay?” Monk nods as they disappear.
He slouches up in the backseat, looks around groggily: Giant Supermarket, a sign in blue lettering on the roof. Mostly black people hustle in and out the glass doors with their shopping carts. Two LAPD squad cars are parked on either side of the front entrance, four cops standing guard with rifles and white helmets. A brown man in dirty overalls slowly heaves and rolls a long chain of shopping carts, interconnected like a great metal snake, across the parking lot.
“Hey, scoot over.” Sofia opens the rear door. Jax sets two shopping bags on the seat next to Monk. “You okay?” Monk nods, sinks back in the seat, closes his eyes as the VW whines out of the parking lot.
* * *
The loft is in the back of a three-story run-down stucco office building off Hooper Avenue and Eighty-seventh Street. Grimy windows frame the night, streetlights, flashing red lights, plumes of black roiling smoke, blooms of fires blistering across the city and headlights beading toward Compton Avenue and beyond.
Two hooded metal lamps suspended from wires bathe the loft in soft white. Monk pulls the notebook from his waistband, tosses it on the cushion of an old green couch, and collapses on the sofa. He watches Jax open a can of chili with his knife as Sofia stirs something in a pot on a hot plate. A table is cluttered with plastic cups, a wine bottle, food cans, the two grocery bags. Half the room is heaped with Jax’s tool bags, canvases stacked against a wall, precarious bookshelves of pine and bricks jammed with spray cans, brushes, glues, rolled-up posters, bottles, buckets, a few ragged paperback books. Beyond is a door leading into a shadowy bathroom. In the corner, next to a wooden milk crate with a candle and an ashtray, is a mattress with two pillows and a worn charcoal quilted blanket.
“This’ll make you feel better, Monk.” Sofia’s fanning pasta into the boiling water. “My specialty, Left-Wingy Linguine.”
“Pinko pasta.” Jax takes out a box of macaroni and cheese from the shopping bag.
“Spaghetti, chili, onions, paprika, oregano,” Sofia says, plopping a huge white gob of stuff in the chili pan. “Mayo and mac and cheese.”
“Put hair on your chest.” Jax beams, lights a cigarette. “Look what I got to stock up the cupboard.” He pulls a can out of the shopping bag and grins. “It’s a brand-new invention,” tapping the red label with his finger. “SpaghettiOs!”
“How did scientists get it in that shape?” Sofia laughs.
“What will white folks think up next?” Jax flips the can in his hand.
“You don’t have a phone here, do you?” Monk asks.
“No.” Sofia shakes spices into the sizzling pan. “Half the time no electricity either. We share this place with some artist friends, pay the bills now and then.”
“We have music, though.” Jax switches on a transistor radio on the table. Martha and the Vandellas’ upbeat soul vibrates from the tinny speaker: Summer’s here and the time is right for dancin’ in the street. “Wine?”
“No thanks, man. Maybe some water?”
Jax fills a plastic cup with tap water, hands it to Monk: a rusted tint in the cup, but he drinks a few metallic gulps.
“I don’t think they’re dancing in the streets,” Sofia stirring pasta. Jax opens a bottle of red wine, fills two plastic cups, hands one to her.
Monk forces down more water, rises on wobbly legs: his stomach churns as he walks toward Jax, avoiding the window, where the lights and glowing blossoms of fires seem to follow him in disturbing contrails. “Getting ready for the next gig?”
“Yeah.” Jax, cigarette jiggling on his lower lip, selects a Globe Master Rajah Red spray-paint can from the shelf, rummages through a coffee can filled with nozzles.
Monk studies the shelves: spray-paint cans labeled Red Devil, Kit-Kote, Jet-Eze, Wizard, Magic-Wick, Spraint. Colors he’s never heard of: Al’s Aluminum, Bazooka Joe, Android Alloy, Deep Druid, Ecru, Babylon Blue, Fulvous, Cloud Delirium, Mao’s Mauve.
“How ya feeling?”
“A little shaky.” Monk drains his cup. Martha and the Vandellas are fading out: Way down in L.A. every day they’re dancin’ in the street. “Martha should see the streets now.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll give ’em something to think about tomorrow night.” Jax tosses a few cans in his satchel, then places some nozzles of different sizes and colors on the shelf. “Let’s see … an NY Fatcap and an SEKT adapter, the old trusty Drip Flow.” He places the nozzles in a pouch and tosses it into his satchel.
“You know your stuff.” Monk watches as Jax duct-tapes some spray cans together, end to end like double-nozzled batons.
“A craftsman’s only as good as his tools.” Jax opens an X-Acto blade and Monk watches as Jax sets brown construction paper on the floor. “Stencil time.” He kneels on the floor, expertly drawing large letters in some kind of script style, sipping his wine.
“This one’s for Ford.” Jax nods down at the stencil. “I’ve got it all planned out,” tapping his temples. Monk’s feeling a little better, the strobing light in his eyes seems to be diminishing. He can see paint stains on Jax’s temples and in his hair and on his hands and fingers, and the floorboards scarred with thousands of razor-blade gashes.
“Come and get it.” Sofia places shopping bags on the floor, grabs a plate from the shelf.
Monk sits down, his chair creaking alarmingly as it shifts into a slant but holds. “Sofi’s soul spaghetti, just what the doc ordered.” She slides a huge plate in front of Monk, refills his cup with tap water, and settles into her chair.
An electric guitar, a dissonant assault with a twelve-string F/G chord from the transistor radio, then John Lennon’s voice: It’s been a hard day’s night. “He has no idea,” Monk says. Monk heaps his fork with the lumpy pasta, braces himself, stomach knotting as he chews a mouthful, eyes closed.
“Well?” Sofia’s smiling.
Monk opens his eyes. “Wow, this is the greatest thing I’ve ever tasted.”
Jax laughs. “She gets that every time. It looks fearsome, but holy hell, it’s good.” He slurps down a mouthful, refills their wine cups.
“So how long have you been stuck in this insanity?” Sofia sips wine.
“Truthfully, I’m not sure.” Monk swallows food. “I slept a day or two … I lost track of the time … then some gangsters drugged me.” Monk shakes his head, forks pasta from his plate. “If I told you half of the crap I’ve been through—”
“I know, man,” Jax nods. “These are some heavy times, brother, strange days indeed.”
“It’s dangerous out there.” Sofia chews pasta. “We’re the wrong color. If they wanted to, the cops could mess us up.” She squeezes Jax’s hand.
“We’ll be okay, baby.” Jax smiles, drinks wine. “Works both ways. We’re the right shade for the streets.”
“I think I’m darker than you.” Sofia twirls her fork in linguine and chili. “I heard light-skinned blacks are getting beat up, mistaken for whites. Be careful.”
Monk sips his water. “I know. I’m melanin challenged.”
“Where’s home?” Sofia watches Monk as he eats.
“San Pedro. The harbor, Pier Thirteen.”
“Mierda, you’ve got a ways to go. The pier? You live on a boat or something?”
“Not exactly,” Monk says.
“Jaxsy, couldn’t we give him a ride?”
Jax looks at her and Monk. “Sure, why not? We’ll sleep in, do the Ford sign tomorrow night and get the hell out of town.”
“That would be incredible. I don’t know how I could—”
“It’s no big deal, Monk.” Sofia grins, drinks wine. “We have to help each other. We’re all artistes,” winking at Monk. “That’s why I love my rebel boy.” She plants a wet, chili-stained kiss on Jax’s cheek and he beams, sips wine.
“You have a girl waiting back home?” Sofia’s eyes twinkle.
“Yeah.” The heavy food in Monk’s stomach makes him feel grounded, each bite seems to dull his headache and push the pins and needles of strobe lights from his eyes.
“What’s her name?”
“Karmann.”
“You must miss her so much. She must be worried sick about you.” Monk nods. “Well, you have to get home. It’s settled, huh, Jaxsy? We’ll give you a lift tomorrow.”
This is KFWB news at ten p.m. A voice squeaks from the transistor radio. Lieutenant Governor Anderson has just announced that the National Guard will be deployed to Los Angeles to secure the city and contain the rioting, which the police chief has described as, quote, out of control. KFWB has reported stories or rumors of a massive gang buildup … even a gang truce in retaliation against the police. Chief Parker has scheduled a news conference tomorrow at nine a.m.—
“The National Guard!” Jax’s fork chinks on his plate. “Fuck, it’s gonna be Vietnam all over again.”
“We better get out of town. And you’re going with us,” Sofia says to Monk. “Besides, I want to meet Karmann.” She purses her lips, nods; she’s made up her mind.
“That would be great.” Monk smiles, scrapes a final fork of Left-Wingy Linguine from his empty plate.
“The Guard.” Jax shakes his head. “Parker, the pigs, Governor Brown, they’re all like Johnson, all they know how to do is make war.”
“Maybe it’s better if it all burns.” Sofia sips wine.
Monk nods. “I don’t know. Malcolm X is dead but his spirit is sure out there.”
“Want a sip of wine, Monk?” Sofia offers the bottle to him.
“Sure, I’m feeling better. You’ll have to give me that recipe too.”
“I’ll give it to Karmann.” She pours wine into Monk’s plastic cup.
“Those stores they’re looting?” Jax says to Monk. “I’ll bet most of them are the stores that charged them high interest to buy everything, from beer to washing machines. Sky-high interest, much more than the Valley or the white parts of town.” Jax chuckles. “I’ll bet the fire department will find all the arson started in the store’s finance department, folks burned up their files that showed how much they owed.
“Tell him about your square father,” turning to Sofia.
“My father’s a Realtor. He’s Mexican, but pawns himself off as white to sell houses.” Her lower lip creases into a frown. “He told me he knows some agents that are called blockbusters. They go into a white neighborhood, buy a house themselves. Then they sell or rent it to a black family, sell it way under market price if they have to. So the white neighbors panic, have to sell their houses, at reduced prices, to the blockbuster. My father’s a capitalist first and a human being second. So last year, when Proposition Fourteen was passed, you know, it struck down the fucking Fair Housing Act, right? ’Course, as a Realtor, he voted for it.”
“Him and the John Birch Society,” Jax says. “He’s also a member of the Committee of Twenty-five, this secret group of cracker businessmen trying to drive Negro stores out of business. Maybe that’s why you’re such a rebel, baby. Well, Monk and me can clean up.”
“Good.” Sofia sizzles out her cigarette in her empty wine cup. “I’m going to wash my hair.” She switches on the bathroom light, shuts the door.
Jax washes dishes as Monk dries plates and cups with an old rag, stacking dishes on the shelf. “Man, thanks for everything. I’m wiped out.”
“I bet. You can crash on the couch. It’s hotter than hell up here, but I have a sheet for you. We’ll sleep in tomorrow, so you can rest. Tomorrow I’ll finish my stencils and equipment, we’ll split when it gets dark.” He walks to the stacks of canvases, pulls off a worn sheet that shrouds half the pile, tosses it on the jade sofa. Back at the table, Jax drains the wine bottle into his plastic cup.
They splay on the couch. Jax lights a cigarette. They can hear the water in the bathroom as Sofia washes her hair. “Mind if I take a peek?” Jax nods at the blue notebook on the cushion. “I’ll show you some of my stuff later if you want.”
“Sure, man.” Monk hands Jax the notebook, leans back into the cushions, closes his eyes.
Jax carefully turns the pages of the notebook: the cover’s torn and faded now, only one tiny hole still fastened near the top of the mashed spirals. “Shit, you’ve found some amazing graffiti around town.” He turns pages, nods. A few pages fall out, and Jax picks them up off the floor.
Sipping wine, Jax turns pages, silently reads some of Monk’s notes, nods with each new page and graffito. “I like how you record exact locations, colors, surface descriptions, overlays, cross-outs … shit, you’re an art critic.”
“Maybe, but it’s an art that’s not recognized as an art. It’s communication. It’s language and code, hearts and minds. I think it’s the city talking. My theory is that America is a collection of cities, right? These cities are all planned and built by rich white men.”
Jax laughs. “You’re right. I never heard of a poor or female architect, I mean the firms, they’re all huge white corporations, right?”
“Yeah. So these developers have designed living spaces where they themselves don’t live. It’s like they built a city on Mars for Martians, then went back to earth. So now the people are left to try to survive in this artificial environment they had no say in making. The artists, the rebels, they’re always the first to be the canaries in the coal mines and sing the alarm when death is coming. So they interact with the city and create these records. Visual and written records, a voice to both the inanimate and the have-nots. Anyway, I think it matters.”
“Man, you really get it. Shit, this is incredible. This cat’s really good,” tapping another loose page. “smOG. His technique is amazing. Those drips he sometimes paints … they’re intentional.”
Monk nods. “He’s a new voice out there.”
Jax leafs through some pages. “You write stories too?” He’s staring down at a handwritten page, its title underlined: Mosley Terrance and LAMA. Turning a few more pages, more hasty paragraphs titled Shen Shen in Chinatown.
“No, just some notes. People I’ve met, some of the places. A woman I met said I should write everything down … but I haven’t had much time.”
Jax nods, turns pages, stops. “Who’s this? No way … this can’t be.”
Monk gazes at the notebook, nods. “I’ve only found two in two years.”
“You think that’s him, that’s genuine?” Jax exhales smoke.
“I don’t know. They’ve been copied over, traced, preserved by other artists. But there’s a hint … the Aztec temples and jungles look three-dimensional … the impossible colors and depths … a kind of geometry that shifts and the eye can’t nail it down—”
“But El Tirili must be dead, if he ever existed. He was supposed to be painting, when, in the forties?”
“The thirties … maybe the twenties … and before, in Mexico or who knows?”
“Fuck, you have to take me and show me this.” Jax turns pages, sips wine. “You’ve seen him too? Bozo Texino?” Monk grins, nods. “Jesus. Texino, the ghost of the boxcars.” Jax studies the graffito on the page: a sideways figure eight—like the symbol for infinity—bisecting an oval face; this horizontal eight is the floppy brim of a cowboy hat, the upper half of the face becoming the hat … the lower face shows slit eyes and a frown that always flows into a protruding cigarette or cigar jutting from the face. Under the visage are some painstakingly etched numbers and letters. “We’re living in the days of signs and wonders. I saw one of these on a railcar in Oakland.”
Monk nods. “This one’s scratched on a tanker car in a switching yard along North Broadway. The tanker’s from Oklahoma, and the date—1932—is scratched in it too.”
“Thirty-two? Shit.” Jax taps the graffito.
“Yeah, Texino’s monicas are all over the states.” Monk’s animated, passionate about his notebook and its underground signs.
“Monicas?”
“Monicas, slang for monikers. That’s what the hobos and tramps who rode the rails called all this early graffiti. This one, you could tell by the etching lines that it had been redone, scratched in over and over, to preserve it down each generation.”
“Shit, to keep the movement alive, each Texino a fuck-you to the establishment, to the railroad,” Jax excited, grinning.
“Yeah, a big fuck-you to the Pinkerton goons the railroad hires to beat up any riders it catches. But there’s more going on with graffiti like this, man. Some of these signs go back to the Civil War, back to soldiers and blacks riding the rails to escape the South … Texino’s face morphs over the years … carved into old wooden trains, then painted with grease and chalk onto iron sidecars, sometimes a slave’s face or a plantation master’s face … and there’s more, codes within the signs. Those letters and numbers … they’re messages about paths to the North, locations of safe havens for freed slaves … even the position of his cigarette changes, pointing like a compass toward safe tracks or routes to avoid.”
“You’re amazing, man!” Jax shakes his head as he slowly turns the notebook’s pages. Monk watches, thinking about his dizzying gallery of graffiti and tags, of Bozo Texino, the two—if they’re genuine—of El Tirili’s space-warping visions … and now that gangster Standard’s living, tattooed signs: if he can only piece it all together, see the greater design in his path south, his journey; and something else, half glimpsed, perhaps some reason why he’s a witness to all this destruction.
Jax’s mustache crinkles into laughter. “Hey, here’s yours truly.” On the page Monk’s sketched a large vertical drawing of a billboard advertisement: GOLD MEDALLION HOMES NOW IN GARDENA! An attractive white housewife leans over Dad in his easy chair, handing him a martini as he reads the newspaper. A little boy plays with a toy train on a throw rug. But Jaxsy’s signature is spray-painted near the bottom, and now it’s an art installation: Mom’s left eye seems to be bruised … and her cleavage has been enhanced, as has the angle of the little boy’s joyful face, now seeming to stare not at his father but at his mother’s breasts in some kind of Oedipal rapture … and Dad’s newspaper masthead and headlines read THE OUTER PARTY … CONSUME, OBEY. “Is it still intact?”
“It was a month ago. I’ve got four or five others of yours, stuff you did on walls, even that one off Grape Street, that big, abandoned office window where you painted faces, but their eyes are the clear window parts so it looks like the eyes reflect the empty office space inside. It’s all still there. The taggers and bombers, they respect you, man, no one’s painting you over … never even seen your signature flipped.”
“Wait a minute! Man, you’re too much, what’s a bomber? What do you mean, flipped?”
“Some of these huge graffiti, they cover up and erase the whole building or wall, like a fucking bomb destroyed everything but the message. Flipped is when the graffitist signs another tagger’s name upside down as a sign of disrespect.”
“Shit, you’re schooling me, Monk.” Jax drains his plastic cup of wine.
“They’ll study artists like you someday, Jax.”
Sofia steps out of the bathroom, a white towel wrapped around her hair, a plastic bottle of shampoo in her hand. “You boys still talking shop? You come with me.” She crooks a finger at Jax. “You’ve got paint all over your hair.” Jax shrugs, closes the notebook, sets it on the cushion next to Monk. “You’re next,” to Monk. “We found you lying in garbage,” she grins, “you can’t go home to Karmann smelling like a wino.”
Jax walks past the big window, rummages in a coffee can on his shelves next to the rows of spray-paint cans, tosses a wide rubber band atop Monk’s notebook. “Here. It’s falling apart.” He follows Sofia into the kitchen area.
Sofia leans a chair against the sink. Jax sits down, cranes his neck over the sink as she turns the faucet on over his black hair. Ray Orbison’s crooning through the tiny radio, Pretty woman … mercy.
Monk pages through the notebook, but his eyes are heavy. He stretches the rubber band over the notebook and sets it on the floor.
Someone taps Monk’s shoulder. He opens his eyes. Jax is standing there, the milk crate in his hand, cigarette in his mouth, drippy hair. “Your turn. I’m taking my nightstand and retiring. See you in the morning.”
“Try not to burn the mattress up.” Sofia kisses him. “Come on, Monk.”
Monk sits in the chair wedged against the sink. He feels cool water soaking through his matted hair, then her fingers as she rubs shampoo into his scalp. He closes his eyes: her hands feel so good. An electric tingling races down his spine, into his groin; it’s been too long since he felt a feminine caress, soft, little hands … Karmann … Say something, stay cool.
He opens his eyes. “So how’d you guys meet?” On the radio, Skeeter Davis sings softly: Why does the sun go on shining?
“Me and Jaxsy? In New York, around ’63. There was this artists’ commune, Fluxus, it’s still there.” Her fingers massage lather into his hair, it’s like his brain is submerged and she’s rubbing the spongy lobes and canals.
“Fluxus?”
“Yeah, it’s an underground art movement, started in Amsterdam, then spread to London, New York, lots of places. Their manifesto is to purge bourgeois art, anticommercial, it’s right up Jax’s alley. Anyway, I was born in Mexico City. My mom’s an artist in Mexico City, my dad, well, I told you about him. They got divorced a few years after I was born. Living with my mother, I wanted to be some kind of artist too. I ended up going to this great art school in Buenos Aires. I got into the underground art scene. Apprenticed with León Ferrari, he’s this amazing provocador, a master of protest art and what we called happenings. He showed me this sketch he’s working on, this sculpture of Christ crucified on a Vietnam War bomber … a fucking genius. We were trying to rattle the government and the pope, anything subversive. Installing mattresses around the city, encouraging people to fuck … hanging slabs of meat dressed in brassieres and panties,” she says, smiling. “León knew some artists in Fluxus, so I ended up in New York. Working, learning with the group, you know, all avant-garde artists, that’s where I met Jax, over on Canal Street, they called the studio Fluxhall.” She begins to rinse his hair in cool water, rubbing, stroking his head. “He was dating this crazy Japanese artist, her name’s Ono. I called her Oh No,” laughing. “But one thing led to another and we got together. He helped me get my visa, then we split for Frisco for a while. He and some of his guerrilla buddies did this installation that blew everyone’s minds. They draped this huge mural canvas down over one side of the Golden Gate Bridge, a perspective painting so it looked like the bridge and the road arced up into the sky and clouds…”
“That’s fucking crazy.” Monk grins.
“That’s where Jax really found himself. You know, it was Dada and Duchamp in the air, making art by pasting things and using signs and found art, then reinterpreting it, jamming its signal. They called them ready-mades, so Jax saw a billboard and it was love at first sight. You’re all done.”
Sofia rubs a damp towel into his hair. He stands. “You smell better. Get some rest.” She lights a last cigarette. “Good night, Monk.” Smiling, Sofia pulls his face down to her with her wet hands and kisses him on the cheek. She walks toward the mattress in the corner, where Jax softly snores in the shadows.
Monk sinks into the couch, pulls the cool sheet to his waist. He closes his eyes, grateful for the darkness, the quiet. Somehow he’s found this refuge from the blood and fire outside, if only for a few hours. Each minute with his eyes closed is like surrendering to an eternal dream of peace and warmth. Now these two souls that chance or fate or whatever ruled these strange days had found him, healed and trusted him, shined a light for him when he’d lost his way. His arm slips to the floor, his fingertips resting on the notebook, then he’s asleep.