58 – a poor tribute

 

 

Police saw horses blocked off the entrance in a pathetic tribute to the man, the peeling paint of the front door and broken windows part of the black man's life. Murders had happened here before, some even as far back when it had been a Spanish estate. But the cops generally did little more than cart out the bodies, investigating details with a shrug or a nod. The victims more mystery than the crime, servant, prostitute, drug dealer or addict. But the black man's death didn't sit well here or downtown. He wasn't scum. And Bobo felt a mingling of emotions as he dipped under the crime-scene ribbon and climbed up the stairs, the interior maintaining some of its original awe, its drooping Spanish design taking on the aspect of funeral home.

 Damn it! The man had saved his life. And in return he'd what? Killed him, dragging the shadow up from the street into his sanctuary.

 Don't get me mixed up in your drug bullshit, the man had told him. He hadn't even gotten high in Nam, when the mortars sent everyone to one retreat or another, booze or dope, dope or booze, with occasional boys and women in between.

 Clean. Like the proverbial whistle. Straight and cool, a stumbling, bumbling giant among men who had nearly died in the trenches, believing not so much in war or political issues, but in Duty.

 I gotta do my part, Mr. Bo, he'd said, both about Nam and this place. He couldn't go home to Detroit. Not with the memories there. But this place, this hole in the earth had come close enough, filtering through it the same human filth as his father's place. Only the weather's better here, was the joke.

 In Nam, the black man had put his arm around one tiny scared white boy's shoulder, saying: It's not as bad as back home.-- a remark his own tribe condemned him for, mocking him from their dens of heroin.

 What you taking up with that white boy for? they'd asked. He don't give two shits about no nigger.

 But the man had cared for Bobo. The man was brother, father, lover, friend, everything and nothing at the same time. Nothing in the sense that war left nothing for anybody. It was how Bobo had survived it, and grown with it, and discovered later the path of the buddhists. Through him. By him. For him.

 Dead.

 Here in L.A., he took up others the way he had Bobo, like a black guardian angel looking for souls to save, running this dump of a hotel with pennies he could squeeze out of its owner, taking in lost children as if the war still went on, as if the grandson of an ex-slave had to live up to every detail printed on the bottom of Miss Liberty's base. Over time, even the cops had come to respect him, and his single-handed effort at trying to keep fools alive.

 Dead.

 And it was Bobo's fault.

 The man hadn't wanted to take in the drugs, saying it was everything he opposed in the world.

 Do it for me, Jake, Bobo had pleaded. A personal favor. I'll have them out of your hair in twenty four hours.

 Who could have known the power of Buckingham, and how easily evil could rage through a city destroying in minutes and hours what men struggled for years to build.

 But Jake knew. Nothing for nothing, the man'd said about war. And this was war!

 "There's a cop inside," Dan said, dragging at Bobo's arm, halting him just inside the vestibule where the inner glass doors looked in on the lobby. A blue uniform showed on the couch. The sound of snoring snuck under the door to them.

 "So?"

 "So we can't just walk in and expect him not to wake up. Isn't there some other way inside? One a little less obvious?"

 "Perhaps," Bobo said and turned and stopped immediately. Two cop cars had pulled up to the curb, the stone faces of their occupants staring up at the lobby. "Down!"

 Dan and Bobo leaped into the shadow, caught in the limbo between the doors.

 "Isn't this lovely," Dan said. "Just the place I wanted to be."

 "Get a grip on yourself," Bobo hissed. "They're probably looking for old sleepy-head."

 "But they have to come through here to get a hold of him," Dan said.

 "Not necessarily," Bobo said, reaching up, his hand in a fist. He banged sharply on the glass.

 "What the fuck are you....?" Dan protested. But Bobo covered the man's mouth. Inside the hotel, the sleeping cop grunted awake with a series of coughs and curses-- his walkie-talkie hissing with static and angry voices, voices from outside asking him if he's awake.

 He answered gruffly, and apparently satisfied, the cars outside moved on.

 "See," Bobo said with a grin.

 "I see we're still not in the hotel," Dan snarled. "And I wouldn't be shocked if those cops came back."

 "All right, all right, come with me," Bobo said, slipping out the front door to the stairs and street, noting how bad the place looked, how much more the front sagged, caulking crumbling around the windows, wood splintering under the stairs, as if with the death of Jake the place died, too. But the silence was the worst part. It had never been silent before, always filled with the giggle and the groan of whores and junkies, locked in their mutual dance of pain, the girls asking Bobo if he wanted a date.

 It was ceremony. They thought they knew him as well as they did each other, and knew his preference, his love or lust for a single black man. Father, brother, lover, friend. But Bobo always gave them their due, pretending to admire them all, pretending not to know which was prettier or which would suit him best.

 He's coming to see Uncle Jake again, they whispered behind his back, as if Bobo was a little rich kid coming home to father at intervals to beg from him cash. And maybe they weren't far from the truth. Maybe Bobo had gotten a bit too confused with life on the street, aching for a bit of the old spirit, a regeneration at important times to retain some of his humanity.

 Where would that come from now, he wondered? And who would mother these poor street fools when they crawled half-dead up the stairs.

 No one.

 There would never be another Uncle Jake.

 They crawled back under the ribbon, glancing either way for sign of the cops. One of the patrol cars had stopped up at the corner, waiting for something. Maybe just to circle around again to check on their boy inside.

 "Exactly where are we going?" Dan asked when they had walked down the block to the Boulevard, the bright lights blinding them both after the dark street.

 "Around the block," Bobo said.

 The other cop car appeared around the corner and slowed as it came around the corner, its two occupants eyeing Bobo and Dan. Then sped up after a moment.

 "Like sharks," he said. "They keep circling. What are they looking for?"

 "Jake's killer," Bobo said.

 "Don't be a fool. They don't care about anyone in that place."

 He turned up the next block, darkness smothering them again. Small insignificant shops huddled on either side. Most of them vacant. Most of them waiting for the new Renaissance that would never come. The new groove. The latest Fad. Yet after Manson everything seemed flat, as if nothing could ever follow that, as if the movement had collapsed under the weight of sudden reality.

 The narrow alley mouth opened between two of these shops, an inconspicuous gap that few would guess from its appearance was another entrance into the Selma, barely wide enough to fit their shoulders as they moved. Someone had stacked trash cans in it, and as they squeezed by, rats scurried out from the shadows, squealing their protest.

 The other end was different-- a small court inserted into the v-shaped belly of the building. A small cabin, which the Selma owner called "a cottage" rested in its middle. It had once been a tea-house for movie stars and other elites. Now, its walls shook as they walked, caving inward with winter rain and neglect, spray painted with biker slogans and primitive line-drawings of naked women, all of it matching the scrawl across the inner walls of the main building. Loose bits of machinery sparkled on the ground, chrome pipes and other parts from bike repair. Beer bottles and cigarette butts filled the space in-between.

 But one of the bikers remained seated upon the back of his chrome steel like Don Quixote, blond hair shimmering silver in the after glow of the boulevard lights a block away.

 "Billy?" Dan moaned.

 "I knew you'd come here," the man said slowly lifting the shotgun. "Everyone said you and the nigger were close."

 "D-Did you kill him?" Bobo asked, a quiver in his voice.

 "Na," the biker said. "He was always straight with me. It's you I want."

 "Don't, Billy," Dan said, stepping between the shotgun and Bobo. "He's mine. I've got an investment in him."

 "Bullshit!" Billy said. "Get out of the way or I'll kill you, too. It's the only way any of us can survive."

 "But it's not Bobo that's killing people, it's Buckingham!" Dan protested.

 "They're the same person."

 "Are they? Would Bobo kill his own friend? We've all been had, friend. Buckingham's been feeding shit into the rumor mill to keep us at each other's throats."

 "Okay," the biker said, obviously not convinced. "If he's not Buckingham, who is?"

 "I don't know," Dan moaned. "But he seems to want us all out of the way so he can have L.A. to himself."

 Billy frowned, a light coming into his eyes. "Himself?" he said and suddenly laughed. "Himself?"

 The laughter died with an explosion and flash, a gap of blood and flesh opening wide in his chest. Billy's shocked face looked down, his free hand touching the wound as if disbelieving it.

 "Down!" Dan shouted, twisting around, his small caliber pistol barking, sending several bullets into the darkness out of which they'd just come.

 Bobo rolled-- out of reaction-- seeking the protection of the bike's wheels. Another shot sparked from the alley way. Wood splintered from the corner of the cottage. Billy moaned, his form slowly slumping forward till it fell from the bike.

 Bobo crawled forward, rolling the man onto his back, crying for a medic in the back of his head. Death crept up toward's Billy's face, coloring the flesh grey.

 "We're all doomed, man," Billy sputtered, blood boiling out of the corners of his mouth. The head fell sideways onto the gravel.

 Dan scrambled up from the corner of the building. "Come on," he said, tugging at Bobo's sleeve. "We've got to scoot before the cops come..."

 Bobo shook his head. "We've got to look in the hotel."

 "After this? The cops had to have heard the shooting."

 "I need to look, Dan," Bobo said, staring straight into the eyes of his former partner.

 Dan sighed, waving his gun in mock nonchalance. "Why not? We'll only get fried if they catch us."

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