Steven Thomas - Criminal Carma

I walked down to the diner-style eatery, got the morning paper from a machine, and went inside and sat down at a booth by the front window. Looking through the plate glass, I had a clear view of the lawyer’s Eisenhower-era office building. When the uniformed waitress slouched over, I ordered a western omelet with rye toast and hash browns, feeling cozy and in control.

There was an article in the paper about the fire on Pacific Avenue that we had seen on Saturday night. Three structures had been badly damaged and would have to be demolished. The fire chief was quoted as saying that the buildings had been unoccupied and dilapidated and that tearing them down would help clear the way for new development. The cause of the fire was unknown-to the authorities, at least.

I took Santa Monica west to Ocean Boulevard and turned south, driving along the edge of Palisades Park above the Pacific. The choppy blue water was frosted with whitecaps, the blustery beach deserted. Turning left at Westminster, away from the water, I made my way to Mr. Parker’s lot.

When I walked through the front door of the flophouse a few minutes later, Budge and Candyman were standing by the kitchen door with worried expressions, talking to a Asian man with a clipboard who glanced over at me as I came in.

“What’s all that mean?” Candyman said with a touch of belligerence.

“All these violations have to be corrected or the house will be condemned,” the man said patiently. He wore thick glasses with heavy black frames. His blue suit looked like it had come off the rack at Sears.

“How long we got to fix ‘em?” Budge asked in a frightened voice.

“Fourteen days.”

“Fourteen days!” Candyman said. “How we s’posed to fix all that in just two weeks?”

“It will be very difficult,” the city inspector said.

“What’s going on?” I said. All three of them looked over at me.

“They’re gonna condemn the house, Rob,” Budge wailed.

“Are you a resident here?” the inspector asked me.

“I live upstairs.”

He nodded. “Acting on a tip from a concerned citizen, I inspected the premises with these gentlemen’s permission and found numerous serious violations of the housing code, starting with the plumbing and electrical systems and including the structural integrity of the building. There’s also a serious health hazard from rodent infestation. If the violations aren’t corrected within fourteen days, the city will move to condemn the property.”

“Who was the concerned citizen?” I said.

“I don’t know, sir, and even if I did know, I couldn’t tell you.”

“This have anything to do with the resort Councilman Discenza is building up the beach?” I asked.

The man’s intelligent face seemed to close up and contract. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “I’m just doing my job.”

“Where we s’posed to go if you condemn the joint?” Candyman asked angrily. “There ain’t no place else ‘round here we can afford to live.”

“I hear you, man,” the inspector said. “I hope you don’t lose your home. But there is nothing I can do about it, one way or the other.”

He tore a pink sheet off the form on his clipboard and held it out to the two stooges. They looked at it like it was radioactive.

“You best give that to Miz Sharpnick,” Candyman said. “She the owner.”

“She’ll get a copy, too,” the inspector said. “This copy is for the tenants.”

Candyman and Budge kept their hands at their sides, as if they could hold the reality of impending homelessness at bay by refusing the form.

The inspector raised his eyebrows at me and I walked over and took the sheet. It was crammed with check-marked boxes and scrawled comments. By the looks of it, the house would have to be rebuilt from the foundation up and then have a new foundation put under it in order to fix all the violations.

I walked out onto the front porch with him.

“Would a thousand dollars do anything to bring us up to code?” I asked, showing him one of the packets of hundreds I got from Fahim.

He looked at the money like a dry alcoholic at a glass of Chivas Regal, rubbing the polyester lapel of his suit with the hand that wasn’t holding the clipboard. But then he shook his head.

“It wouldn’t do any good, man. They are waiting for this report at city hall. If I said the place was up to code, they would just send somebody else out here to write it up. And this is one time they would be right. They’ve taken some houses north of here that really weren’t in bad condition, but this place isn’t fit for human habitation-no offense to you.”

“None taken,” I said. “The place is a dump. What do they want the property for? I thought the resort ended a few blocks north of here.”

“There’s a phase two,” he said, “but you didn’t hear it from me. I have to get going now.”

I wasn’t actually going to give him the money. I only offered it to him to get a sense of where the corruption lay. It wouldn’t be beyond some city inspectors to take advantage of an atmosphere of redevelopment and the specter of eminent domain to extort money from frightened property owners.

Having the house condemned would actually be convenient for me and Reggie. If we took the necklace that night or the next morning, I planned to leave town afterward. But a sudden departure might attract attention. The threat of condemnation would give us a perfect excuse if anyone ever tracked us down and asked us why we took off.

“How’d Pete know this was gonna happen?” Budge asked Candyman as I walked back through the living room.

“He’s probably the sumbitch that sicced that tricky inspector on us,” Candyman said. “Mo’fucker made it sound like if we let him in he’d make Sharpnick fix the place up for us, but he’s really planning to put us in the street.”

Upstairs, I found Reggie standing in front of the wavy mirror in his bedroom, struggling to drag a plastic comb through his brassy curls, and not having much luck. Chavi was gone, leaving a neatly made bed and straightened-up room behind her.

“Word from the front, bro,” Reggie said, looking at me in the mirror.

“What?”

“Guess who I saw sneaky Pete talkin’ to yesterday afternoon?”

“Who?”

“Bubba Rubba.”

“The guru?”

“If that’s what you want to call him.”

“Where and when?”

“Half a mile north of here, where they were having that meetin’ on the beach. ‘Round five.”

“Anybody else with them?”

“A wop with a thousand-dollar suit who you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley.”

“What were they doing?”

“When I spotted em, they were a ways down the boardwalk, watching people walk away from the meetin’, like they wanted to see who was there. Then they went into a bar. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.”

“Baba went into a bar in his dhoti?”

“Nah-he was wearing street clothes.”

I was surprised that Baba would appear with Discenza in public. Maybe he thought no one would recognize him in an Armani. Or maybe he didn’t care. With the deal poised to go through, he might be ready to abandon the guru dodge and become an ordinary corrupt businessman. Pete meeting with the two of them fit like a puzzle piece.

“What are they up to?” Reggie asked.

“The Italian is a crooked city councilman named Discenza. He’s trying to develop a resort on the beach. That’s what the protest was about. I think Pete’s been helping him put pressure on property owners, coercing them to sell out. He probably met Discenza while him and the other stooges were doing demolition work up there.”

“How’s Baby Huey fit in?”