Los Angeles Stories (8 page)

“I am afflicted with a bone disease, I was born with it.”

“It is quite illegal to possess morphine. I thought we had an understanding. Need I remind you of the consequences of concealing information? I'm afraid we may have to detain you as a material witness. En El Tambo, no hay boleros, no hay morphine, no hay nada. I want you to tell me if this is the man you saw leaving the Million Dollar Theatre the day Salazar was murdered.” He thrust a photograph in front of me, a picture of Carlos Bulosan.

My mind was starting to clear a little. “That is impossible. I saw this man, I spoke to him. He can't walk, let alone walk out of the hospital and get himself to the theater and kill someone. Only a poor fruit­ picker, and he is dying. I know it, I know the signs.”

“I suggest that you and this fruit ­picker conspired to murder Alberto Salazar!” Morales's face was now inches from mine. He was enraged. “I further suggest that you were paid for your service in morphine!”

“You may suggest what you will, but I am sick, I must return home. It is useless to make these accusations.”

“Of course. You are unwell, I'm very sorry for the inconven­ience. Police work — sometimes, it is distasteful. My wife sends her regards. Buenas noches.”

We had come to a halt in front of the Edmund Apartments. Morales sat back in the seat, his face composed into a mask. The driver appeared human in form. The police car drove away, leaving me there on the curb. I entered the building and walked up the stairs to my floor. My door was closed and locked. I used my key. I laid down on the sofa, trying to think why Morales wore no left shoe. Was his left foot cloven? With the dawn, I fell asleep.

MY GRANDFATHER IGNACIO
was fond of saying, “If all the Mexicans in Los Angeles fought alongside Pancho Villa as they claim, the revolution would have triumphed on Olvera Street.” There's a photograph of Villa with his arm around my grandfather, who is dressed as a woman, dated Durango, 1919. Grandfather carried a derringer in his boot and a very large bone-­handled knife in his coat right up until his last days in the hospital. “They got Flores­ Magon, but they'll never get me,” he declared, referring to the anarchist, whom he claimed to have hidden in the cellar. “The anglos were on the floor above in countless thousands. We fired, Ricardo and I, until our last bullet was gone. They took him then. I escaped — a tunnel underneath Chinatown.” In another version, Flores­ Magon was shot in the back by an informer while straightening a photograph of Trotsky. “Porfiriato revanchist swine! Viva Tierra y Libertad!” The tears came.

My grandparents had been itinerant comic actors in Mexico before immigrating to Los Angeles in 1930. They made a success in the little provincial theaters of those times as “Mantequilla y Huevos.” My grandfather appeared as a woman, my grandmother as a man. The man makes improper advances to the woman, the woman resists, the man is indefatigable. Aroused, the woman overpowers the man, at which point, the true sex of the actors is revealed in a licentious manner. Very popular with General Villa and his men! Popular, also, among Federal troops, which enabled my grandparents to ferret out strategic information, or so I have understood. “When an officer is as
í
tan borracho, he can't tell the difference,” Grandmother Beatrice would say, her cigar clamped in her teeth.

They arrived in Los Angeles with enough money saved to purchase a tiny bungalow on Bernard Street, in the neighborhood behind Chinatown. Mexican family orchestras were the rage in the thirties, so Grandfather Ignacio simply removed the enlarged papier-­m
â
ch
é
genitalia from the theatrical costumes, hired extra musicians, and launched “Los Alegres de Los Angeles” in honor of their new hometown. My mother took over as lead singer when Beatrice retired. After mother died, my sister Encarnacion and I moved in with the abuelos. When my sister died, I moved out.

I woke up the morning after la noche de terror and realized the Edmund was not a good place for me anymore. The Trio man stands on the stage, in the spotlight, rendering the same bolero songs night after night, but outside the four walls of Club La Bamba? Maybe he knows very little about the world after all. I had a bad feeling about things. I didn't like being watched by the police, and I didn't at all like the idea of Leafman dropping by unannounced. I packed my trunk, took down the family pictures, and fled back to Bernard Street. The house of the abuelos had passed to my widowed aunt, Louisa, the only family I have left. She met me at the door. Her eyes grew big. “Pablito, you've come at last!” Her only son, Pablito, had been killed in the anti­-Mexican riots — an eighteen-­year-­old pachuco boy, shot down by the LAPD for wearing high-­drape pants.

“Not Pablito, tía mia. It's Arturo.”

“Arturo and Encarnaci
ó
n! Gracias a dios!” Louisa still attended mass in the plaza church twice a day.

“Encarnaci
ó
n is in the convent. She has her habit now.”

“By the grace of God the Father! I will light candles. You have brought me such good news, we will tell the padre! A blessed day!” Another blessed day of ignorance for her, a day of fear and uncertainty for me, a Trio man on the run. We sat on the little front porch with its sagging roof and peeling paint. Finches peeped in the old rose vine, now grown to epic proportions. Alameda Boulevard hummed along a few blocks away.

“How are your neighbors?” I asked.

“Getting older, like me. Los Chinos are good people to live with. They are not of the faith, but they appreciate peace and quiet. We help each other. I give tamales, they bring their strange food. I like it more now since my teeth are gone. I'm so lonely, Arturo. God the Father sent you to me.”

“Yo tambien, tía Louisa. I have no one, only my job at La Bamba.”

“You have your guitar, something most people never know. Is La Bamba a place of sin? Should I worry?”

“Harmless. Our people can forget their problems for a little while.”

“God gave you a talent for music. Pablito loves music, he will be so pleased to see you!” Evening was coming on. I changed clothes, took the requinto, and walked the four blocks to Alameda. I boarded the “U” car line and rode west on Spring Street. “El Cho Time,” as Grandfather Ignacio had whispered to me in the hospital, the crazy light fading from his yellow eyes at last.

“
Ó
RALE, HERMANITO, YOU
missed a big night over here!” Angel laughed, shaking his head. He was standing in the alley under the stage ­door light, smoking and drinking from his flask. He offered it to me. “The cop, Morales? He was looking for you. He got into it with the boss! Por eso!”

“What did he want?”

“Los ojos verdes wasn't with him. The boss says, ‘If this is business, take it up with Cobby. You got yours.' Morales didn't like that! ‘I'm not vice, I'm homicide,' he says. T
ú
sabes que the boss has got muchas problemas with that blond chica of his?
É
chale! She comes over, very drunk. ‘What's the beef, what's with the cops all over the place,' she goes. Morales says, ‘Tell her to sit down and be quiet.' She goes to the boss, ‘You gonna let a spic cop come in here and talk to me like that?' Everybody was watching. The boss turns to her and says, ‘Don't use that word in here if you're smart.' She goes, ‘A spic cop in a spic joint full of spics!' Big night, hermanito!”

I drank from the flask. It was raw and it burned, but it steadied me. Angel said, “Keep it, you don't look so good.” We went inside. The noise and the smoke almost knocked me down, but I made it to the stage. “Only one cho, hermanito, we take it easy.” Angel helped me up. The microphone felt heavy as lead. “Señoras y señores, bienvenidos!” I announced. Angel passed me a note: Sra Morales requests, “Aquellos Ojos Verdes.” We began. From a corner table, she was watching. She was alone.

It was during the second verse when I realized where I had seen her before — in the barbershop, on North Main Street. Nick Acosta cuts my hair the way I like it, he gives a nice close shave. Behind the chair hangs the calendar of the Mexican National Lottery, La Loteria National, with its glamorous painting of two Mexican girls. One is laughing, her head thrown back. The other regards the viewer with somber green eyes, her hands folded in her lap. I felt my self-confi­dence return. Why? What difference could it make? Sergeant Morales's esposa, an artist's model, so what? Do not imagine that I have any illusions when it comes to women. I know what they see when they look at me, I assure you. It was that suddenly my curiosity was working again, my interest in things!

We finished the set. The Bebo Guerrero orchestra started their pounding, and the dancers began flinging themselves about like zombie wind­up toys gone mad. Baila, mi gente! I made my way to her table. “Buenas noches, Señora Morales, I am so very pleased to see you here. I trust the sergeant is quite well?”

“Sergeant Morales is involved in police matters just now,” she said. I took a chair. She was drinking something green from a tiny glass. “Your drink, does it agree with you?” I inquired.

“No. I hate this place, it is so vulgar, so
recherché
. I have an appointment, I can't be late. I want you to escort me. I have a car.”

We left by the side door. A very large Cadillac sedan appeared. The driver opened the rear door for us. He was wearing a long overcoat and a fedora with a large brim, in the Mexico City style. We sat back in the enormous cushioned seats, something I had never seen except in films. In front, there was a passenger, a woman. She turned to greet us. “Good evening, Arturo, and thank you for coming,” said Rose, my nurse.

“Don't thank me, thank madam,” I said.

“My name is Florence.” She pronounced it Flor­
awnce
. My bar­
baire
will be happy to know, I thought.

“Is it too much to ask to what place I am escorting you? A man likes to know.”

“A man will know in due course.”

“Some very important people want to thank you for your service, Arturo,” Rose put in.

“Will I learn what service it is I have done?”

“Presently.”

I sat back, I observed streetlamps. We left downtown and proceeded west on Sunset Boulevard. Inside the big car, it was a private world, quite the opposite of the streetcars I ride every day. On and on we went. I realized I had never been this far west in all my life. We turned off Sunset and headed north along a narrow canyon road that climbed up and up, ending at a pair of tall iron gates. The driver sounded the horn and the gates opened. We drove into the courtyard of the strangest house I have ever seen. Two long cement platforms, top and bottom, separated by giant glowing panes of glass. Behind the glass, people could be seen walking around bathed in light, as in a film. The structure appeared to be unsupported and about to topple into the blackness of the canyon below, but once inside, one had a feeling of weightlessness, almost of flight. There was an aura, a tone of serenity I had never before experienced. “Somebody must have won the Mexican lottery,” I said, trying to take it all in. “At least try to be discreet,” La Morales hissed at me.

Everyone was elegant, singular, in character. It was all new to me. Mexico City ­types in ascot ties, emaciated white women in peasant costumes laden with heavy gold jewelry, movie actor and actress ­types situated here and there. I walked by a very famous Hollywood leading man who had propped himself up behind a huge rubber plant. He was blind drunk, but his smile and dimpled chin were resplendent. “Good to see you again, amigo. Let's go to Mexico and make a picture together,” he said, winking and leering at me. A portly Mexican with wavy hair and pencil mustache hurried over. “I saw you make the entrance with Florencia! I am Fernando Lazlo­-Porro!”

“Arturo Manzano,” I answered.

He turned to his group of friends. “Arturo Manzano, a great friend of Covarrubias! Florencia was so very charming with Covarrubias, was she not? But she has, what do I want,
evolved
, I know you will say that she has, ha ha! This house is my
homage
to Los Angeles!” The group of friends applauded. I felt a strong hand on my arm, a strong voice behind me. “Señor Manzano is needed elsewhere.”

“Of course! In these times, everything is understood.” The architect bowed, the friends withdrew. I looked around at my new han­dler. Could it be? A man appearing to be Miguel Incl
á
n steered me through a door, perhaps the only door in the place. It was a library room with a low ceiling and soft light from lamps shaped like pink garden snails. In a large chair, in a gown of indigo ­colored silk, sat Marga L
ó
pez. “We are enchanted . . .” she began. I threw up my hands. “Stop! What is the meaning of all this? I am only a poor requinto player from East Los Angeles! I know nothing of architects and Cadillacs and movie actors who step off the screen and walk around in the glass houses of the rich! Somehow, there is a mistake!”

“There is no mistake,” said a soft voice behind me. Carlos Bulosan coughed, a harsh, rattling sound.

The dashboard clock said twelve midnight when they left me out in front of La Bamba, which was closed and dark. The Cadillac whispered off and joined the late-night traffic. I caught the last Red Car of the evening, the “U” line, for Chinatown and Lincoln Heights. The motorman greeted me. Only a man, not a vegetable, thank God. “Har yew! Where's your guit­-tar? Never knowed you to be without it! This here's my last run for the night, then I'm goin' home to bed!” The trolley clanked and ground its way along. Bernard Street was quiet as the grave. The little houses on Tía Louisa's side are six or eight steps up from the sidewalk and set back so that you may sit outside at night with privacy. Someone was there. Louisa retires at 8:00 p.m. sharp, and she doesn't smoke Olvidados. No self-­respecting burglar would bother with the place, not on that street. I walked up. Sergeant Morales was asleep in the ancient wicker chair. He raised his head. “I need a drink,” he said in a thick sort of way. I passed him Angel's flask. “Social or business?” I asked, a line from
Cry Danger
with Dick Powell.