Robert Crais - Free Fall

I handed back the file and went to the door. He said, “Cole.”

“Yeah?”

“I know the kind of press South Central gets, but the people down there, most of the people down there are good people. That’s why I stayed the four years.”

“Most folks everywhere are good people.”

He nodded. “I don’t know what you’re doing, or where you’re going, but watch yourself around the gangs. LAPD owns the streets, but the gangs keep trying to take’m away. You understand?”

“More than I want.”

I showed myself out, picked up my car, and took the long drive down to South Central Los Angeles.

Home of the body bag.

I dropped down through West Hollywood and the southwest corner of Beverly Hills through La Cienega Park to the I-10 freeway, then picked up the 10 east to the Harbor, then went south on the Harbor past USC and Exposition Park, and into South Central.

Even on the freeway, the world begins to change. The cinderblock sound walls and ramp signs show more graffiti, and, if you know how to read it, you can tell that it isn’t just young Hispanic taggers out to get famous all over town, it’s gangbangers marking turf and making challenges and telling you who they’ve killed and who they’re going to kill. Just the thing you want to see when you’re looking for an exit ramp.

I left the freeway at Florence, looped under to Hoover, then turned south to Eighty-second Street. Broadway and Florence show liquor stores and neighborhood groceries and gas stations and other businesses, but Hoover and the cross streets are residential. Up by the businesses you get out-of-work men hanging around and a lot of graffiti and it looks sort of crummy, but the residential streets will surprise you. Most of the houses are stucco or clapboard bungalows, freshly painted and well maintained, with front yards as neat and pretty as anything you’d find anywhere.

Elderly people sat on porches or worked in yards trimming roses and, here and there, small children played on tricycles. Satellite dishes sprouted from poles like black aluminum mums and clean American cars sat in the drives. There were a lot of the dishes, and they looked identical, as if a satellite-dish salesman had gone door-to-door and found many takers.

There was no graffiti on the houses and there was no litter in the streets or the yards, but every house had heavy metal bars over windows and door fronts and sometimes the bars encircled a porch. That’s how you knew there was a war on. If there wasn’t a war, you wouldn’t need the protection.

According to the police report, Charles Lewis Washington had lived with his mother in a rose-colored bungalow on Eighty-second Street, just west of Hoover. His mother, Ida Leigh Washington, still lived there. It was a nice-looking place, with a satellite dish on a tower in their backyard and a well-kept Buick LeSabre in the drive. An open-air front porch was boxed in by a redwood trellis and bright yellow vine roses. The vine roses were healthy and vibrant.

I parked at the curb in front of their home, went up the narrow walk, and onto the porch. The roses threw off a heavy scent and smelled wonderful. The front door opened before I got there, and a slender young black man looked out at me. I could hear music, but it was coming from another house, not this one. He said, “May I help you?”

I gave him the card. “My name is Elvis Cole. I’m a private investigator, and I was hoping to speak with Mrs. Ida Leigh Washington.” He was wearing a plain white crewneck tee shirt and blue Navy work pants and white sneakers and an imitation gold watchband. The band was bright against his dark skin. He read the card and then he looked back at me.

“About what?”

“Charles Lewis Washington.”

“Lewis is dead.”

“I know. That’s what I want to talk about.”

He stared at me a couple of seconds longer, like he had to make up his mind, but like he was making it up about things that had nothing to do with me. After a little of that, he stepped back out of the door and held the screen. “All right. Please come in.”

I went past him into a small, neat living room. An old man maybe three hundred years old and a young woman who couldn’t have been more than sixteen were watching TV. The girl was sitting on a burgundy velveteen couch and the old man in a hardwood rocker. He was holding a can of Scrapple. They both looked at me with a sort of curious surprise. The white man comes to call. A little boy maybe three years old pulled at the girl’s legs and she picked him up. Crocheted doilies were spread on the arms of the couch and the headrest, but you could make out the worn spots through the gaps in the doilies. The girl didn’t look a whole hell of a lot older than the baby, but there you go. Toys appropriate to a three-year-old were scattered about the floor. I smiled at them. “Hi.”

The old man nodded and the girl picked up a remote control and clicked off the TV.

The younger man said, “Go tell Mama we got company.”

The girl slipped off the couch and went down a little hall into the back of the house. I said, “Your wife?”

“Lewis’s girlfriend, Shalene. This is their son, Marcus, and this is my grandfather, Mr. Williams. Say hello, Marcus.”

Marcus covered his eyes with his fingers and sat down on the floor, then rolled over onto his belly. He giggled as he did it. The old man started rocking.

Lewis’s girlfriend came back with a heavy, light-skinned woman in her fifties. Ida Leigh Washington. There was a friendly half smile on her face, and a fine film of perspiration as if she’d been working.

The younger man held the card toward her. “Man wants to ask you about Lewis.”

The older woman froze as if someone had put a gun to her head, and the half smile died. “Are you with the police?”

“No, ma’am. I’m a private investigator, and I had some questions about what happened to Charles Lewis Washington. I was hoping you could help me.”

She looked at the card, and then she looked at me, and then she looked at her son. He crossed his arms and stared at her with the sort of look that said you’re on your own. She shook her head. “I’m very sorry, but you’ve come at a bad time.”

“Please, Mrs. Washington. This won’t take long, and it would be terribly inconvenient to come back later.” I thought about saying aw, shucks , but I figured that would be overboard.

She fingered the card and looked at the younger man. “James Edward, did you offer the man a cool drink?”

James Edward said, “You want a Scrapple?”

“No, thank you. I won’t take any more of your time than necessary.”

Mrs. Washington offered me a seat in the overstuffed chair. It was worn and comfortable and probably had belonged to Mr. Washington. She sat on the couch with the girl and the baby. James Edward didn’t sit.

I said, “Was Lewis in a gang, Mrs. Washington?”

Her foot began to move. Nervous. “No, he was not. The police said he was, but that wasn’t so.”

“I saw his arrest record. He was arrested for stealing electronics equipment with three other young men when he was sixteen years old. All four kids, including Lewis, admitted to being members of the Double-Seven Hoover Crips.”

“When he was a baby.” The foot stopped moving and she made an impatient gesture. “Lewis got out of all that. That Winslow Johnston was the troublemaker. They put him in the penitentiary and he got killed there and Lewis gave it up. He joined the Navy and got away from all this. When he came back he found Shalene.” Mrs. Washington reached out and patted Shalene on the thigh. “He was trying to make something of himself.”

Shalene was staring at me the way you stare at someone when you’re thinking that a good time would be punching little holes in their head with an ice pick.