South Central Noir
Introduction
Inner-City Confidential
Like “Hollywood,” the term “South Central” conjures up not a geographic location so much as specific imagery and impressions derived from the news and pop culture. Examples include Ice-T’s “6 in the Mornin’,” “Looked in the mirror, what did we see? Fuckin’ blue lights, LAPD”; Ralph Fiennes as volatile gang boss Harry Waters snarkily decrying the need for an assault weapon in the film In Bruges, “An Uzi? I’m not from South Central Los fucking Angeles”; the movie South Central based on Donald Bakeer’s novel Crips, with Glenn Plummer as Bobby Johnson, an ex-con on parole trying to steer his son away from the gang life that’s consuming him; and Moesha, a slightly edgy network sitcom starring singer Brandy Norwood, about coming of age in Leimert Park.
In 2003, the Los Angeles City Council rechristened the whole of it “South LA” to blunt its infamous reputation — though they maintained a 2.25-square-mile area within its boundaries as “Historic South Central,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. Nonetheless, the South Central where I grew up remains a locale where the majority of the residents work hard and share many of the same concerns as those who reside in Westside neighborhoods. It’s a place where the demographics and physical characteristics have changed since my youth, where even gentrification has crept in.
This, then, is the backdrop to South Central Noir. Within these pages you’ll find stories of those walking the straight and narrow — until something untoward happens. Maybe it’s someone taking a step out of line, getting caught up in circumstances spiraling out of their control. Maybe they’re planning the grift, the grab... whatever it is to finally put them over. Other times the steps they take are to get themselves or people they care about out from under. You’ll find the offerings in these pages are a rich mix of tone — tales told of hope, survival, revenge, and triumph. Excursions beyond the headlines and the hype.
The settings herein reflect South Central today or chronicle its colorful past, such as the days of the jazz joints along Central Avenue, venues like Jack’s Basket and the Club Alabam. The LAPD’s intelligence squad infiltrating left organizations is threaded in here, as well as what jumped off at Florence and Normandie that fateful day in April 1992, the flashpoint of the civil unrest that garnered world attention. Key landmarks also figure in these stories, such as the Watts Towers, the old Holiday Bowl on Crenshaw where people of various races used to congregate, and the Dunbar Hotel, built by Black folks to cater to people of color in a segregated city.
For the purposes of this collection, South Central is defined as roughly thirty-three square miles: Washington Boulevard to the north, Imperial Highway to the south, Alameda Boulevard to the east, and Crenshaw Boulevard to the west (bearing in mind that those boundaries are somewhat fluid). From South Park to East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, from the borderlands of Watts to the one-time Southern Pacific railroad tracks paralleling Slauson Avenue, take a tour of a section of Los Angeles that may be unfamiliar to you but you will get to know, at least a little, by the time you finish reading this entertaining and engaging anthology.
Gary Phillips
Los Angeles
Part I
Always and Forever
All Luck
By Steph Cha
South Park
The whole city was on fire — good, fuck them all — and Sang-woo sat in his car and smoked. He’d promised Hana he’d quit, but she was eleven, she didn’t make the rules. If her teacher told her to say no to cigarettes, that was fine — great, even — of course kids shouldn’t be smoking. But he was an adult, and he wasn’t about to rearrange his life just because his daughter asked.
The sky crackled, thick and burning. Night was here, the sun gone down, but Sang-woo didn’t see stars; he couldn’t even find the moon. Only the bright colors of arson wrapped in the gray pall of smoke and ash. It was really something. Sang-woo was born after the Korean War, and just late enough to avoid the Vietnam War too, where his older cousins fought with the South Korean military, committing war crimes and fathering war babies, for all anyone knew. People said South Central was a war zone. The men at church who avoided war, like him; them and their fearful wives. It was true, he got scared once in a while, but his customers knew him, his days were spent selling liquor and groceries, taking cash, counting out change. He kept a gun behind the register because it was stupid not to, but war? No, this place was something, but it wasn’t a war zone. At least not until now.
Two blocks down Avalon, he could see Mary Yoo’s hamburger stand on fire. That was a shame. Mary was a nice woman — ugly and quiet, but nice. Maybe Black people saw an ugly, quiet Korean woman and thought she was rude and racist. Or maybe they just lit the place up because they were mad and it was there. Sang-woo didn’t know what his own wife was thinking half the time, how was he supposed to know what went on in the minds of Black people?
For example: why did they torch Happy Hamburger — Happy Hamburger! poor, flat-faced, unsmiling Mary — and leave South Park Liquor alone?
South Park Liquor. It had felt like destiny, in its way — he was from South Korea, his last name was Park, it seemed like a solid business, and it came up for sale right when he had enough money to get something going. Opportunity! The whole reason he left Korea, to find opportunity, to grab it with both hands the moment it appeared.
Eun-ji had told him to stay home, said it was too dangerous to go back. She wasn’t wrong, he knew that, and if she’d begged him instead of scolding him in that huffy way she had, like he was an insufferable idiot, like it wasn’t about this thing, today, but every decision he’d ever made — why did he lease a Camaro, why did he throw money away at the casino, why did he move her across the ocean, away from her family and friends, so she could live like a pauper? — maybe he would’ve listened. He’d closed the store early yesterday, after the verdict came down, and stayed away for over twenty-four hours, watching the riot unfold on TV. He wanted to give it some time, and besides, there was no reason to open up. All his paying customers would be waiting out the chaos at home.
That’s what he thought, anyway, but there was Anthony, right in front of the closed doors, facing the street like a palace guard. He was a fat man, the kind of fat where his pants fell down, not on purpose like the young guys, just drooped low every five minutes so he was always pulling them back up and tightening his belt in frustration. Maybe he was young too — Sang-woo could never tell how old Black people were, and he hadn’t bothered to ask. Anthony had kids, Sang-woo knew that much. Two of them, their picture in his wallet. Sang-woo saw their chubby faces whenever Anthony turned the wallet inside out, looking for hidden dollars.
Sang-woo got out of the car, threw his cigarette on the street, and put a new one between his lips.
Anthony nodded, like he’d been expecting him. “Crazy, huh?”
Sang-woo walked over to Anthony and lit the cigarette. He took a drag, filling his lungs with smoke, with bitter, sooty air. He shook another cigarette loose from the pack and offered it to Anthony. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
Anthony took it with a grin. “Came to check on your place,” he said. “Can’t have my luck burn down.”