Wendy Hornsby - Bad Intent

I had the freeway system more or less figured out. To get to Southeast L.A. from Encino, I took the Ventura to the Hollywood to the Harbor. Traffic was light, nothing to it. Until I exited at Century Boulevard and left the lights of the freeway behind. As I looked around at the crowded scene, Mike’s cautioning voice was in my ear-I had no business being there, alone.

I was in the riot zone. Pick your riot. Both 1965 and 1992 had left a legacy of boarded-up, burned-out shells of buildings. For Sale, For Rent, Available Now signs were overgrown with weeds and covered with graffiti. The battered survivors were liquor stores, check rashers, walk-up bar-b-ques. Barred doors. No such thing as a display window. Gang tags on everything that stood still for even a moment. Down side streets I saw whole blocks laid bare and abandoned.

I was fascinated to see it at night. And I was frightened about being there alone. I could not move anonymously through this scene, could not easily just slip away. When I glanced at my face in my rearview mirror, what I saw were my blue eyes, as obvious and bright against the dark as the blue swimming pool had been. I felt like the ten ring on a target.

Century Boulevard runs directly beneath the final approach for jets landing at the Los Angeles airport. The big planes, only a thousand feet overhead, couldn’t drown out the street mix of busted mufflers and motorcycles in first gear, boom boxes, people in a confrontational mode.

Making the jog from Century down Central to 103rd Street, I got caught at a long signal. As half a dozen kids surged into the street to panhandle among the cars, I pushed the automatic door locks, made sure all windows were up, knocked my bag off the seat into the dark space under the dashboard. A scrawny little guy, maybe all of twelve, with a massive overbite, started smearing my windshield with a grubby rag while he held out his other hand to me.

“Fifty cen’,” he demanded through the closed window. What he lacked in height he made up for in hostility.

Cars front and back wedged me in. I looked away from the kid, watched for the opposing traffic light to turn yellow because forward was my only way away from him.

“Fifty cen’, bitch.” He pounded my window with his fist. “I wash your window. Pay up.”

The light turned green and I started to move with the car in front, but the kid held on to the door, still demanding money from me. He scared me. Halfway through the intersection I found a slot to the right, changed lanes, and accelerated through. I dusted the kid. I dusted a share of beloved liberal sensibilities as well as I watched the boy dodge moving traffic. It hurt that I didn’t care whether he made it back to the sidewalk intact or not.

I turned down Lou Dillon Street into the Jordan Downs projects. Sinking feeling didn’t go far enough to describe how I felt. Profound doom came closer. I had been to Etta’s apartment twice before, both times during the day, both times with Guido. Even then it was scary. At night, alone, with half the street lights out, it was insanity.

The air was maybe fifteen degrees hotter in the projects than it had been in the landscaped grounds of the Valley condo. Young people here were hanging outside looking for air, looking for diversion. A lot of yelling, chasing around, empties on the curb.

All the buildings looked alike, popped from the same crude mold: stark two-story cinder-block rectangles laid in ranks, with saggy clotheslines crisscrossing the patchy lawns between them. It looked institutional, like a prison without gates or bars.

The address Mike had given me for Hanna Rhodes’s grandmother was on Grape Street, in the same block as Etta’s apartment. On Grape Street some of the units had been painted purple, the color of the Grape Street Crips set. The color helped me get my bearings. I passed the grandmother’s apartment first, and thought about stopping by, but there were no lights showing. I drove on.

I found Etta’s ancient Bonneville parked in front of her place. Parked on the lawn next to it were a dozen or more teenagers in black Raider shirts and wrap-around sunglasses. They watched me without much interest. I scoped them, measured the ten or fifteen feet between my car and Etta’s front door, and decided it was a possible mission.

I didn’t have the sort of car anyone would want to steal-there were better ones parked all around. But it was my only means of exit so I did not want anyone to mess with it. If I kept my talk with Etta real short, I thought I would be okay.

I wanted to have my hands free, in case, so I left the cake and the Dr. Pepper in the car. I shouldered my bag, locked up, and set off on a rapid jog toward Etta’s with my keys in my hand.

I drew kids like a magnet; I don’t know where they all came from. They started in on me right away:

“You from the County?”

“Hey, give me some money.”

A little pudge came up close behind me, breathing booze in my face. I glanced at him as I switched my bag to the other shoulder, out of his reach.

“Don’t I hear your mother calling?” I said.

“Don’t get smart with me, bitch. What the fuck you doin’ here?”

A bigger boy ran up beside him. “Grab the bitch, take her purse.”

I was maybe two yards from Etta’s when her screen door popped open and a mass of man stepped out.

“Get your ugly nigger asses the hell away,” he boomed. Amid a chorus of obscene back talk, the kids slithered off.

“Thanks,” I said, slipping into Etta’s living room past the man. It was hot inside and sweat poured off his round black face. The name embroidered on his soiled oil company overalls was Baby Boy. He was at least six and a half feet tall, maybe three quarters that big around the middle. He reeked of beer and sex.

Etta lounged on the sofa nursing a forty-ounce bottle of malt liquor. While Baby Boy looked as if he had come directly from work, Etta had dressed for an occasion: silver satin stretch pants, a silky blouse tied in a knot above her midriff roll. Whatever the occasion she had dressed for, I clearly had not been considered in her plans.

“What you doin’ here?” she asked, the way you address a cockroach in your sugar bowl. Her eyes had a glaze.

I stayed by the door, keeping an eye on the car. “I got permission to take a videocamera into Juvenile Hall Wednesday morning when I talk to Tyrone. Thought you might want to ride along. I can pick you up around eight.”

“Wednesday?” She looked over Baby Boy as if measuring him, deciding how much of him would be left by Wednesday morning. Her gaze turned back to me. “What else you want, honey?”

“Did you watch the news tonight?” I asked.

“The news?” Etta’s head bobbled. “I didn’ watch no news. We was busy, wasn’ we Baby Boy?”

“Yes we was.” Baby Boy laughed, a deep rumble like rolling boulders.

“I’m sorry you missed it,” I said. “A few seconds of the interview you did for me got picked up and attached to a piece on Charles Conklin. You were on the six o’clock news, Etta, calling the police motherfuckers.”

“Hey, baby,” Baby Boy grinned. “You was on the TV.”

Etta raised a hand for him to slap. She was bombed but not too anesthetized to drag up a reaction.

“Thought I should warn you,” I said. “The district attorney has attached his star to Charles Conklin’s grievance. If reporters want more of your story, it won’t take them long to find you. They can swarm over you like angry bees. Trust me, it could get intense.”

“Like how?” she asked.

“Relentless questions, film crews dogging you, people looking in your windows, going through your trash, snooping into your personal business. You won’t have any secrets left to tell.”

“As long as Pinkie gets out the jail, I don’ care what they do.”