Number 19. By herself.
“Number 19!” she called out, and quickly walked over to face her.
The masseuse lowered her head, as if she was preparing to experience something distasteful. One of her bobby pins was coming loose, and Ann fought the urge to push it back in her hair.
“What’s wrong? Did your manager do something to you? I tried to set her straight-that tip money is yours.”
“Why you say anything? Not your business.” Number 19 continued walking, and Ann pulled at her elbow.
Number 19 wrestled back her arm and Ann was surprised to experience her wrath. “I fire!”
Ann couldn’t believe this news. “I was just trying to help you. You have to understand.”
“No job. No money. How can I live? You understand?” Number 19 ran down the stairs and Ann, still carrying her nine iron, chased after her. But the masseuse knew the ins and outs of the building better than Ann, who lost track of her, then dashed outside and asked the security guard if he had seen the masseuse walking by. The security guard shook his head, so Ann headed to the bus stop to find Number 19. But there was no sign of her.
After an hour, Ann went to speak to the manager again. “You need to give Number 19 her job back.”
“I need to do nothing.” The wooden tip box was open again, the stacks of twenties lined up beside it. “Get out. You can’t prove anything.”
“I can get you in trouble.”
“Who you? Poor nasty girl. Nobody going to listen to nasty girl.”
“They’ll listen,” Ann said, fingering the grip of the nine iron. “You need to give Number 19 her job back.”
“Number 19? You know numbers, but no name?” The manager threw her head back and laughed, her tangerine mouth resembling a demented clown’s.
Ann held the golf club like a baseball bat and swung. A matte of hair flew off the manager’s scalp and her body lurched backwards into the glass shelves, which shattered, spilling the bottles of beauty products onto the linoleum floor.
It was quiet for a moment, aside from the bottles rolling in the shards of glass. A bloody mass clung to the end of the club as Ann dropped it on the floor. She then walked over to the other side of the counter. The manager’s face was contorted and her glasses had flown to the far corner of the reception area. There was a huge gash on the right side of her forehead and blood was pouring out, looking like a red dye soaking the roots of her hair.
On the floor was a light-blue Tiffany bag with Tupperware inside-the manager’s lunch perhaps. Ann held it to the edge of the counter and scooped in the stacks of twenties. Next to the cash register was a taped work schedule. Ann pulled it off and then walked out.
When she reached the parking lot, her head was pulsating. She walked past the security guard again, even acknowledging him with a nod.
Ann reached a church, a traditional brick building with a cross. A canvas sign, all in Korean, was stretched above the double doors. There was a light above the cross and Ann sat on the stairs and studied the work schedule. On the left side was a list of Korean characters corresponding to addresses in English on the right-hand side. Two of the addresses were on Hobart Boulevard with the exact same number. It had to be Number 19’s apartment.
Ann could have taken the bus, but opted to walk instead. She passed mini-malls with neon signs that she couldn’t read, rows of multilevel apartments with fire escapes that didn’t seem to lead anywhere, and another driving range. Adrenalin was pumping throughout her body and she couldn’t stand still. Number 19’s apartment building was much like hers, a dilapidated structure made of bricks that didn’t seemed attached to one another, loose teeth in old gray gums. Sloped grass lawn full of weeds that could probably accommodate two parked Chryslers.
Ann climbed up the creaky wooden steps to Number 19’s unit. She didn’t bother to try the doorbell-they never seemed to work in these buildings. Instead she rapped the dark wooden door with the side of her bent index finger.
The door slowly opened, and Number 19 didn’t seem surprised to see Ann standing outside her home. She looked shorter, plumper, and older in the doorway of her apartment.
“I need to talk to you. May I come in?”
Number 19 nodded, holding the door open for Ann. It was a one-bedroom apartment and it looked like somebody slept on the couch. Number 19 gestured toward the kitchen, which was connected to living room.
“I tried to get your job back, but I couldn’t.” Ann then dumped the contents of the Tiffany bag onto the kitchen table. The cash, mixed in with shards of glass, tumbled out, almost knocking over a plastic soy sauce bottle and a jar of chili paste. Last of all, the Tupperware container of the manager’s half-eaten lunch slid on top of the bills. “Here’s your money; it’s all yours. You deserve it.”
Number 19 looked at her, first with fear and then sadness. Her hands trembled as she touched one of the bills. Then the bedroom door burst open. Uniformed officers with guns yelled, “Police!”
Number 19 was crying now into her bare hands. Her roommate-Ann recognized the woman from the spa-emerged from the back bedroom and tried to console Number 19.
One of the officers pulled Ann’s arms back and, while reciting her rights, secured her wrists in plastic ties.
After Ann was led out of the apartment, one of the police detectives, a Korean American who spoke Korean, turned to the masseuse. “Did you have a relationship with that woman?” he asked.
The masseuse kept shaking her head as if she were trying to erase any thought of the girl from her mind. “Just a customer,” she said. “She was no one special.”
DANGEROUS DAYSBY EMORY HOLMES II
Leimert Park
1.
Every Halloween, his birthday, John Hannibal “Quick” Cravitz liked to put aside his usual routine of chasing power and pleasure in the cloak-and-pistol world of private security and devote a day to rest and public service.
That Halloween eve, when the day’s work was done, Betty Penny, his office manager, strung their offices with skulls and calaveras, crepe paper cats and autumn leaves. Some of the girls from Satin Dolls brought in champagne and gumbo. Cravitz gave everyone a pumpkin stuffed with treats and a hefty check for the holiday.
After his staff had gone home, he invoiced his latest gig. Four weeks of sold-out concerts at the Inglewood Forum. The Zulu Boyz, Priest KZ, and Th’ Flava Foolz, the cream of L.A. bands, performed. His young firm, Universal Detection, furnished security and muscle. There had been no violence.
He was getting ready to call it a day when the buzzer rang.
The shadow on the screen flipping him the bird, putting on a show for the surveillance camera, was his old friend Ramon Yippie Calzone.
“This is a raid, you old ass mutherfucker! Come out with your hands up. I know you got bad Negroes up there.”
Cravitz buzzed him up. When he opened the door, Yippie embraced Cravitz, who, at 6’5”, was taller than him by a head. Then his friend strode past him into the office. “Okay, birthday boy, I got good news and bad. Which do you want first?”
The two men grinned at one another. With his black briefcase, and the hooch he carried in a brown paper bag, Yippie looked like a cholo Republican: He wore a black leather jacket, faded jeans, motorcycle boots, lumberjack shirt; his long, graying hair tied in a ponytail with a silver clasp; his handlebar moustache pepper-gray. A gold earring in the form of a crucifix dangled from his right ear. A tat of Montezuma with an Aztec princess peeked through the break in his shirt.
“Good news first,” Cravitz said.
Yippie Calzone raised the hooch: “Pulke,” he said.
The two men drank in Cravitz’s conference room overlooking 43rd. The potent cactus brew was thick and cool and sweet, and Cravitz was genuinely thrilled to have a taste of the fabled Mexican moonshine. Even more, he was happy to see his old carnale, Yippie Calzone. Yippie, a cop, had been a neighbor back in the old days of South L.A. Later, Yippie was Cravitz’s mentor at the police academy. Cravitz got out after only three turbulent years on the force.