‘Shoppin’, bro.’
‘Say what?’
A bottle of whiskey came with the explanation. ‘I’m takin’ my girl to the sales.’
‘Stick around, have some fun.’
‘Bigger discounts Downtown.’
‘We’re partyin’.’
‘So are we. Followin’ the sound.’
‘What you got in there?’ The boy was becoming covetous, truculence riding with it. A tattooed arm, muscled in ebony, was pointing. ‘Got a smoke?’
‘Got everything.’
‘Wanna share it with my crew?’
‘I wanna reach Downtown.’ Wood let his shades do the death stare. The longer he was stationary, the faster his authority would recede. ‘Reverend’s orders.’
‘Thought you said you was shoppin’.’
The Special Agent smiled, flicked his jacket to reveal the holster. ‘Kind of a sideline.’
Instant communion, justified respect, two street toughs understanding the code, each other, assessing the threat. The senior man had wheels, booty, a firearm, was committed to the uprising. He was the right colour in the right place and the right time. Passport seemed in order.
‘Have a nice day, as they say.’ An exaggerated wave, a one-handed catch of the cigarette carton thrown by Wood in thanks, and the car moved on. Attention diminished and died in its wake. Firing had broken out again, ragged bursts sending bodies ducking, stone chips airborne.
‘You did fine, Mary. You okay?’
Hesitantly. ‘I think so.’
‘Want to go back?’
‘No.’ Then, more firmly, ‘No way.’ It helped persuade her.
‘Then keep your head down.’
She shuddered with tension beside him, biting her lip in prayer. If this were the start of the journey, its conclusion could only be imagined. She preferred a gentler reverie, dreaming of the day when she and her baby would board the bus or train, when she had money, a man, a future. Distant ideal. Bullets were closer, intruding on her thoughts in a shower of concrete and hammering metal. She winced, swallowed the hysteria haemorrhaging from her stomach. The city scared her anyway; this one evoked hell. Somewhere among its stained cement, its strands of razor wire, Krista would be waiting for deliverance. Wasn’t everyone? Wood tugged at the wheel, avoided a burning tyre and eased the Jeep along the grey barren stretch and bunker blocks that captured the soulless soul of Inglewood. Power-station aesthetics of the High School to one side, guarded precincts of the LA Urban League and Inglewood City Hall to the other; hurrying, running forms flowing down the middle or on the sidewalks. Caught between a rock and a truly dismal place. They scampered by.
A choked cry from Mary, fear leaping solid in her throat. The Special Agent saw it too, his foot easing on the pedal, his face creased in revulsion. ‘Heard of being the meat in the sandwich. But this …’ He leant forward to study the curiosity.
Ahead, Jerry’s Donuts, the landmark sign of a giant ring doughnut mounted atop a cabin roof, stood silhouetted. Its hole had been plugged, the cadaver lodged firmly at its centre. Arms and head sagged in a wilting semi-professional dive. Points awarded for imagination, presentation; deducted for taste. Hanging out in the ghetto.
CHAPTER 14
Blood was up; blood was running freely. In the avenues and streets Downtown a new state had been created, arriving with a howl of rage and rampage, celebrated around the bonfires of the Metropolitan Detention Center and Criminal Courts, the pyre of the Times Mirror Building. Not a good day for the Los Angeles Times. A news-free tract, a free-fire zone. Resistance faded beneath the oil-thick sky, as block after block was taken, offices invaded, the workers herded and driven along the derelict frontages of Broadway. Terrorized, people were beaten into line, sorted, processed, divided, allocated their hostage quarters. Everyone on the move. It was how nations were built.
A senior executive, his phone on divert, blinds closed, underwear around his ankles, fornicated with his PA across the conference table. In session. Mid-age crisis met midday enthusiasm, the agricultural grunts and gasps deadened by sound-proofing, the view of shuddering lower torsos and glowing faces blocked by polished doors. Buttocks heaved, breasts juddered free of restraint, a tumbler of water wobbled. Cliché was integral to LA existence. The girl moaned, her skin flushed and slick with her boss’s sweat, mind and body trapped at the blunt end of a flattened management structure. He had always admired her shorthand and shorter hem, espoused the virtues of top-down interaction. Each individual, every personal appointment, possessed latent capabilities. They simply had to be tapped. For her part, a part she offered with an eye to advancement, holiday bonus and the clock, it was natural intercourse, viscous internal politics. Another spasm tremor – panted expletives from the male, a tightening wraparound by the female – a stare wide-eyed over his shoulder. He was deafened with effort, stamping authority. She tried to push him off. Too late, baby, too late. This was rock ’n’ roll, the shape of high-fidelity infidelity. He plunged on, went deep, encouraged by the whimpering in his ear, the fretful beating of her fists. She was kicking now, fucking wild. N-n-n-n-no… The protest was shrill, piercing. Quite a little fighter. A coffee-maker with attitude. Screw her, screw anyone, any time. He could appoint her replacement to fill, assume, the vital and vacant position in the boardroom, at his pleasure, on a whim. She was crying. Something wasn’t right, something was casting a shadow. He slowed, dominance and euphoria draining, turned his head. Coitus interdicted. The Tigers only rang once.
When in doubt, sing and pray. It was an old civil rights saying, a source of comfort and inspiration, an example of quiet and dignified protest through bleak years of trouble. And it was redundant. On Central Avenue, throughout Downtown, black AME congregations spilled on to the streets to kneel and entreat their brothers, sisters, to stay the violence and turn to peace. They were ignored, pushed aside, or dragged away to be whipped and robbed. Christ might have walked on water, handed out loaves, but He was a novice when it came to providing stolen Rolexes, top-of-the-range saloons, electronic goods, a non-starter in putting whites to the blade. The present was what counted; radicalism and revenge, not peace, love and cannabis, soiled the air. Azania could deliver, had the phrasing and the timing, would storm the mount.
He stood on an upper floor of the requisitioned Bradbury Building, location of his tactical command headquarters. Seated before him, plasticuffed to high-backed executive chairs, the Mayor and Chief of Police scowled in glum defiance and shared defeat. For once, hostilities between city and police authorities had abated, replaced by impotent wrath, a common foe. The situation was confusing, novel, in many ways. They would be condemned for failing to heed the danger or meet the threat, for losing personnel, damned for surviving. It would have been better to have gone down with the sinking metropolis, to have vanished with a patriotic salute and a resolute wave. Instead, they were captured, trussed, dupes in someone else’s power fantasy.
The Reverend could afford triumphalism. ‘Welcome, gentlemen, to the liberated territories, to the newly declared state of Azania.’
‘Welcome to the truly deranged fucking state of your mind,’ the Police Chief responded sourly.
‘Is that what you think?’ He blinked at the white man. Too much shamrock blood there. The Irish were an obdurate race, their brains dulled by centuries of peat smoke, potatoes and stout. But even a dog could learn. He turned his head towards the Mayor, the negro quisling, the black puppet in Caucasian dress. ‘And you, brother?’
‘I’m not your brother. Those are my brothers.’ The Mayor, eyes animosity-red, nodded towards the window. ‘The people you’ve attacked are my brothers, the people that you’ve killed, my fellow Angelinos, black or white, Hispanic or Asian.’
‘Pretty words. You were born a traitor.’
‘Studied your reflection, Azania? What’s it about – a social thing? Failed the brown paper bag-against-the-skin test? You annoyed you’re a darker shade of black than me?’
‘I’m annoyed you’re whiter than the whites.’
‘You’ll die like any other sonofabitch mind-cooked, terrorist madman.’
‘Not before I’ve hanged you with your chain of office.’
‘I’ve served this city.’
‘I’m transforming it.’
‘To what? Rubble? A graveyard? A giant fucking hole in the ground?’ A vein pulsed frenetically on the Mayor’s temple. ‘You gotta quit, stop this right now, you gotta call them off.’
