Graffiti Palace Read online

  3

  The smog sunset casts the gray-and-white Buick into a strange, faded doppelganger of a police cruiser as the old sedan careens south down Avalon Boulevard. “You better slow down.” Ronald twitches a chrome radio knob, the new Stones song, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” throbs from tin speakers:… Baby, better come back maybe next week / Can’t you see I’m on a losing streak.

  “Fuck that, my brutha from another mutha.” Marquette guns the Buick through a yellow light at Eighty-ninth Street. In the waning light the passing storefronts, weedy vacant lots, billboards, shuffling winos on corners, broken bus benches long abandoned by any municipal buses, everything is leached to sepia tones in the burnished sunset, the car itself darkening from white to gray to a blur of grimy steel veering over the blacktop: ghetto light changes with every second of the sun and even the moon’s arc, as light travels through its mediums of smog, heat, iron, black skin, reflecting and refracting on the jagged cityscape in dynamics not yet fully explained by any known laws of physics.

  Ronald turns up the radio volume. It’s no use talking to Marquette when he’s like this, edgy and sullen with vodka and this endless summer’s heat wave. At Ronald’s apartment, they drank drippy screwdrivers in front of the electric fan in the open window until the vodka was gone, and now they’re late reuniting Mama with her Buick.

  Marquette lights another cigarette, pointy Florsheim stomping the gas pedal, the Buick lurching through a yellow—no, too late—red light at Ninety-second Street. His gaunt black face glares into the rearview mirror with suspicion, bloodshot eyes hidden under the dark crescent of his folded chocolate brim hat. His saffron Arrow sports shirt is stained with sweat.

  Coming south like a burning pinpoint in the sunset, red light and siren Doppler behind them, echoing down the shadowed artery of Avalon Boulevard. “Shit! Cops! I tol’ you to slow down, Marquette,” Ronald says, twisting back for a look beyond the backseat.

  “It’s cool,” Marquette squinting in the rearview mirror: a motorcycle cop, siren pealing, red light bathing the Buick through its grimy back window. Marquette sucks on the cigarette, pulling over, gently brakes at the corner of 116th Street. “We good,” turning off the engine, rolling down the window, avoiding Ronald’s anguished face.

  The police officer’s long black boots push the kickstand and he leans the Harley-Davidson as he dismounts. The cop pulls off his black gloves and slaps them on the motorcycle’s saddle. A nose, thin, colorless lips, and a jutting jaw are the only signs of any kind of human visage; the rest of the face is obscured by chin strap, mirror glasses, black-and-chrome helmet. A big man walking slowly up to the open window beneath a dissipating cloud of smoke. 116th Street and Avalon: a few tidy, poor houses on 116th, patched and worn since the boom back during the war when they were built, now have fresh paint but black iron bars brood over all doors and windows; another ubiquitous liquor store on the southwest corner, Joey’s Jug; on the northeast corner, at the Muslim Oasis Shoe Stand, the rag buffing a customer’s shoe stops as the shoeshine stands, both men watching the Buick and the cop. Heat waves shimmer from the hood in the fading light.

  “License, please.” The officer leans in closer, studying the two black men in the front seat. “You had this ol’ Buick goin’ pretty good.”

  “Think I was goin’ only ’round forty, officer,” Marquette says, pulling the license from his wallet. He grins but his voice is strained.

  “Just sit tight.” The cop walks back to his motorcycle, reading off the license number into his two-way radio. Two houses down on 116th, two women step down from their porches, watching the traffic stop from the sidewalk. The thin woman dabs at the curlers in her hair, a fat woman rubs her hands on a cotton apron.

  “Don’t argue with him, fuck.” Ronald’s wiping sweaty palms on his trousers.

  The officer walks back to the car window. A third man over at the Oasis Shoe Stand watches as he sips from a brown paper bag.

  “I smell alcohol on your breath, sir.” Only Marquette’s face reflects back from the officer’s mirrored glasses. Ronald licks his lips. The silence is like an unseen presence hovering between them.

  “Fuck,” a hopeless whisper from Marquette. “Just a beer, sir,” louder, trying to smile. He’s careful to keep his hands on the steering wheel.

  The officer nods. “How many?”

  “Two, only two, sir. Look, officer, I’m fine. I live just ’round the corner. I had a fight with my woman, you know how it is. I ain’t tryin’ to diddlybop nobody.”

  “Mr. Bonds, will you step out of the car, please? We’re gonna do a field sobriety test.” To Ronald: “You just sit tight, okay?” The officer steps back from the door. Two young black men, loitering in front of Joey’s Jug, cross Avalon for a closer look.

  “Goddamn.” Marquette shakes his head, rail-thin body stepping out of the Buick, flicking the cigarette butt into the gutter. He pushes the hat high on his sweaty brow, lips curled in silent anger: the sport shirt is sopped with dark stains of sweat under his armpits.

  A black-and-white patrol car coasts south down Avalon and silently pulls over in front of the Buick. The two cops exit the cruiser, one conferring with the motorcycle officer while the other waits near the patrol car. “A deuce.” The cop nods.

  A man and woman, trailing two lanky teenage boys, watch from another front yard on 116th: the man is shirtless in the sweltering heat, a beer can and cigarette in his hands. The motorcycle officer passes his index finger slowly back and forth in front of Marquette’s sullen face. “At this time, Mr. Bonds,” the officer squeezing Marquette’s left wrist, “I’m placing you under arrest for driving while intoxicated.”

  “What? I ain’t intoxicated!” Marquette trying to free his wrist as the officer pulls handcuffs from his belt.

  “Don’t fight me!” The motorcycle officer spins Marquette around and pushes him against the Buick’s front fender. Two cops are now pinning Marquette against the still warm metal, one handcuff crimped painfully on the thin left wrist as they try to bring the right arm around his straining back. A black boot crumples the brown porkpie hat beneath them.

  Now a small crowd has overflowed from the street corners, congregating at the end of 116th, silent in the summer dusk, watching the arrest: an old man with a cane, the lanky teenage boy, a woman wearing an apron as she totes a baby against her sweaty bosom, two men from the Oasis Shoe Stand, children, two men with beer from Joey’s Jug, three more women stepping out the doors of houses.

  “I ain’t goin’ to jail!” Marquette shouts, struggling. Both cuffs are now on his wrists as the two cops drag him toward the patrol car. “Police brutality! Mutherfuckers!” His Florsheims seem to kick at phantoms in the glassy heat waves undulating from black asphalt.

  “Leave him alone!” Ronald scrambling out of the car. The third cop pins Ronald against the Buick, the officer’s baton a stabbing weight that compresses Ronald’s chest against the car doors.

  “Wha’d I do? Wha’d I do?” Marquette screaming as the two officers try to push him into the rear seat of the cruiser, but now he’s kicking, squirming. “I din’t do nothin’! Police brutality! White mutherfuckers!”

  “What the boy do? Leave him be!” someone yells from the crowd.

  A cop knees Marquette savagely and the prisoner screams: for a second his eyes flash with some other light, a fathomless brilliance, as if conjuring to unleash some otherworldly force into the vacuum of the retreating day … He collapses into the rear seat of the patrol car.

  “They killin’ him!” The crowd surges closer. “Tha’s my baby! My baby!” A woman breaks through the crowd, a big woman with curlers in her oiled hair, gray sweatpants, cotton blouse sticking with sweat to her great heaving chest. The woman jumps on the back of the motorcycle officer, almost sprawling him into the street.

  “No, Rena! No, Mama!” Ronald hurls free from the baton and runs to the woman, now on the ground, screaming as she’s handcuffed.

  “She didn’t do nothin’!
Police brutality!” a woman screams from the crowd. “Just like Selma!”

  “Get out of here fast,” a cop hisses to the motorcycle officer. Marquette, Ronald, Rena are all jammed in the backseat of the cruiser, pounding on windows. The Harley-Davidson coughs, revs up, peels away, down Avalon and into the darkening horizon. As the two cops scramble into the cruiser, the crowd surges around the patrol car, a fist pounds on the trunk.

  “Just like Selma! Motherfuckers!” Now, as the police car squeals from the curb, a can of beer arcs from the crowd and into the twilight, amber spirals corkscrewing out like rocket fuel—a final tendril of sunset gleams from the tin can, then it bangs against the roof of the black-and-white as the patrol car flees into the night in its beacon of ruby light.

  It is night.

  The crowd spills forward. “They beat that woman for nothin’!” A woman’s shrill voice: “She pregnant!” Bottles and a rock fly toward the cruiser but it’s too far away now.

  There will be no more light.

  4

  On the corner of Stanford and 116th, Monk hears a siren: sometimes the sirens seem like inanimate muses, calling, directing him toward scenes of police action or tragedy where he finds some new or strange graffiti for his notebook—but this wailing fades north to silence. Studying the pavement, an iron fence, peeling houses across the street, a bullet-riddled stop sign, its pole bent by some old automotive assault so the sign tips to the west. Monk heads west down 116th: signs are everywhere, it’s just a matter of tuning oneself to receive.

  Near Avalon he stops. A huge crowd throbs in the intersection, people shouting. Bottles explode against brick like muffled mortar rounds. At the corner he pushes through a knot of shirtless young men, beer bottles clutched in hands. “What’s goin’ on, man?”

  “Fuckin’ cops killed some brothers and a pregnant gal.” Cars glide along Avalon, slowing down as they pass the gathering crowds. Across the street, a heap of trash is on fire in a vacant lot, tapering black smoke in the darkness like a funeral pyre.

  A green Ford Falcon slows, a young white couple staring out at the fire and the throngs. “Go home, whitey!” someone shouts behind Monk. A rock bounces off the Ford’s hood and the car accelerates away.

  Monk heads south, down Avalon, no signs literal or otherwise now, just away from the crowd, which seems to be growing with each passing moment, spilling up and down Avalon. He can feel the fear, a tension in these summer silences between distant sirens. Passing Joey’s Jug, a handful of young men smash the windows of the liquor store, grabbing bottles and cases of whiskey and vodka. Across the avenue, at the Muslim Oasis Shoe Stand, a blind man leans propped on his white cane, his steel-wool beard and crazy, duct-taped black glasses seeming to nod over at Monk. Distant sirens echo, coming from the north. Behind him, a wall of flames licks up toward the night: the vacant lot is engulfed, a pulsating orange carpet of fire.

  It is Wednesday, August 11, and this is ground zero.

  Three cop cars wail past. Up ahead, sounds of shattering glass as two men run across the dark band of Avalon between street lamps. Avalon is not a good place to find an RTD Freeway Flyer. Monk heads west on 118th, then south on San Pedro Street. Sirens peal in and out of the humid blackness that presses like a shroud against Monk. At 119th, two brick-front stores, a furniture place and a pawnshop, are engulfed in fire, flames and black smoke billowing from shattered windows. Another mob converges over sidewalks and the street; a knot of men rock, then turn over a parked Ford Fairlane. Fear and excitement, a visceral electricity shocks through him as he walks faster, shaking his head: Man, what the fuck is going on here? Two patrol cars screech sideways, blocking the intersection: four officers scramble out, forming a line, leveling shotguns at the crowds running, breaking up in the darkness like night phantoms. Monk is skulking along the shadow line of an old tenement, hoping to slip past to 120th Street. As he passes a dingy doorway, a whisper: “Brother, come inside, take sanctuary.”

  Monk turns: two huge black men in ebony suits and bow ties, wearing purple fezzes. Their coat pockets are stuffed with pamphlets bannered Muhammad Speaks. Before he can answer, huge hands guide him gently but forcefully down steps and through the peeling door, Monk clutching his blue notebook with its sheaf of renegade and unspiraled paper to his chest like a shield.

  Inside the apartment has been converted into a great lobby, wall lights shaded with blue cloth sconces, casting a cobalt sheen on rows of purple-painted doors and bronze-tinted tapestries unfurled on cracked walls. The two giants escort Monk through the lobby, past conference tables, men hunched over stacks of papers and open files, men on telephones or sitting at small tables, legs crossed, drinking from teacups: all black men, no women, everyone dressed in dark suits and bow ties, crew-cut hair, no banks of cigarette smoke, no beers or cocktails on tables. Monk notes the purple fez many wear, with its crescent and star symbols, and the gold letters pinned to lapels: FOI, the Fruit of Islam.

  They lead him through two great paneled doors and into a large foyer. In the center is the biggest rug Monk’s ever seen, woven in a web of interlocking Arabic glyphs and symbols. He resists the urge to copy the strange script into his notebook. Sitting at a massive oak desk in the heart of the dizzying rug, a shrunken old man gazes up at him with milky, rheumy eyes shadowed beneath his purple fez. “I am Elijah Muhammad,” rising, extending his hand. “Welcome to the temple.”

  “Nation of Islam.” Monk, shaking his hand. “Monk.”

  “You’ve heard of us? Allah be praised!” Elijah beams. “I am gratified whenever fine young black men have heard the word. Please join me for some hot tea. You must rest a short while, it is dangerous to venture outside now that the great siege has begun,” steering him by an elbow toward a tea table near another closed door. A basket of fruit on the table, figs, dates, apples, oranges. No bananas: the profane, phallic fruit banned from all Islamic tables.

  “Great siege?” Monk protectively places the notebook on his knees under the table. Another FOI enters through the great doors, balancing a silver tea set, past those two bodyguards, who now flank each side of the door.

  The FOI pours tea: all these matching suits, bow ties, crew cuts, they all look like undertakers. “Thank you, Brother Shabazz.” Elijah nods curtly and the server stalks away silently. “You are aware of our teachings?”

  “Oh, you know, just what I hear around the ’hood.” Sipping tea, waiting. I’m being interrogated by a man wearing a purple fez and a bow tie.

  “We, in the Nation of Islam, are always eager to recruit clean young men, such as yourself, Mr. Monk.”

  “Well, I ain’t so clean, Mr. Muhammad,” passing dirty fingers through his long locks.

  “Your hair is only an affectation of the ghetto. It is easily cut. It is only a pathetic trend from Africa, the atavistic fantasy of the jungle nigger.”

  “Well, maybe I’m just too jungle for your organization, ah, I’m just tryin’ to get home, sir.” Monk steals a glimpse of the bodyguards still framing the doorway. How the fuck do I get out of here?

  “And where is home, young man?” Pouring more tea in both cups.

  “Ah, around Los Angeles Harbor.” Monk’s fingers secretly glide over the springy spine of the notebook under the table.

  “It will be impossible to reach your destination tonight. Please accept the hospitality of Islam and stay the night. You may have your own comfortable room and a good dinner. In the morning, it will be safer to continue your journey. Tonight the first battle has begun of a long-prophesied war, the siege has begun. Tonight will be the Night of the Jinn, the night of the fire demons.”

  “You keep talkin’ about this siege, man.” Monk sips the hot tea; the old crank’s drinking from the same pot, so it must be safe.

  “Young man”—setting down his teacup, a disturbing light dancing in his eyes—“you are witness to the end-times prophesied in the book of Muhammad … the final war between black Islam and our oppressors, the degenerate white Christian race. The epic c
onfrontation of good and evil, a struggle that has raged since the Crusades and further back into the millennia.” Narrowing his wizened eyes suspiciously: “You are not an idolater or have been brainwashed by their white Jesus, have you, brother?”

  “Well, ah, I’m kind of on the fence, cosmically speaking.”

  “I was young once and full of mystical fantasies,” smiling, “but you will see the path. Watch and see how your brothers and sisters are treated by the white oppressors. You will come to Islam in time. Don’t let them kill your spirit with their false gods. They will try to teach you love and compassion, to turn the other cheek so they can strike it with their police batons. Don’t pray for and love your enemies, destroy them ruthlessly before they destroy you. That notebook: the brothers think you are a police spy, but I think you are a writer. May I?”

  Monk frowns, sizing up the old man, like a dark wizard in his purple cap. He slides the blue notebook across the table. Elijah thumbs through a few pages of graffiti symbols neatly copied in pencil and ink, labels and arrows, margins scratched with his cribbed, voluminous notes. “I study graffiti and gangs, I’m kind of an amateur urbanologist.”