City of Angels Page 17

  Probably homeless girls, like Rain. And runaways. Like me.

  Girls who would never be missed or who were already missing. And that bastard Chad, hungry to curry favor with Kozlak, was one of his recruiting minions. He probably never even liked me, only heard my sob story about wanting to leave Chicago and decided to give me up as an offering to his God—the Big Shot Director.

  Maybe Kozlak picked up the other girls at the bus station, just like he had Rain. He lured them with his big limousine and promise of movie stars, fame, drugs. All the glamour and allure of life in Los Angeles bundled up in one outstretched hand. Besides “starring” in Kozlak’s sick little side projects, how did Walker fit into all this? Had he lured Rain just so he could turn her over to Kozlak?

  Although it was horrible, we fast-forwarded to the end of the other two videotapes. But the other two ended with the girls alive. It was just the one. The one with the small gold star on the case, as if it had won a prize. But both other films looked like the same guy. Walker. The other two tapes were dated last year. The one with the star was dated six months ago. Maybe this meant the killing was something new. Maybe it could be stopped before more girls ended up dead.

  When we were done, the room remained silent until Danny stood up. He opened my door, his black eyes bright. “Don’t worry, chica. They will pay for this.”

  I nodded, biting my lip, but inside my heart felt like it was shriveling up. Amir was right. Who was I to try to stop something as pervasive and powerful as an organization like The Church of the Evermore Enlightened? Members of the church controlled Hollywood. If it got out that one of their most famous members was a monster, it could ruin them. I knew now, deep inside, that they would stop at nothing to protect one of their own.

  My motley crew of friends was tough, but we stood no match for this organization. It went beyond anything I could have imagined in my worst nightmares. And I knew beyond a doubt now.

  They’d taken Rain.

  A cold wave of terror swept through me, making my face tingle and stomach roil. Her body was probably discarded somewhere, never to be found. The only evidence I had was that tape. What could I do? Who would listen to me? What if I gave it to some detective at the LAPD who had connections to The Church of the Evermore Enlightened? The reach of this organization terrified me.

  No, I needed to make sure it ended up in the right hands. Sadie said I would be foolish to turn it over to Ernie. I didn’t think he was connected to the church, but he was a screw up. I didn’t know if I could trust him just because he helped me once or twice. No, she was right, we should turn it over to Amir. He would know what to do.

  Meanwhile, we needed to tail Rex Walker.

  As soon as I pulled myself together, I asked Sadie to return the Lincoln to Amir and work my shift. I’d take over tailing Rex with Taj. I figured Taj’s motorcycle could follow any vehicle. At first Sadie had protested, saying she wanted to be there to kick Rex Walker’s ass. But she quickly agreed when she saw how badly I wanted to be there when he led us to Rain.

  I clung to Taj’s back, my face buried into his denim jacket, my thighs tingling from both the vibration of the motorcycle as well as the sensation of my body pressed so tightly against his. We hadn’t set out for the movie lot until nearly sunset, knowing that yesterday the actors had knocked off for the night even later than that.

  The big studio movie lot, surrounded for blocks by a giant wall, was on a nondescript stretch of road in a less than trendy part of L.A. We parked in front of a Mexican restaurant across the street from an entrance gate to the lot. At first, we sat alert and poised, ready to take off. But as more time passed, I ran into the restaurant and bought old-fashioned bottles of Coke that we sipped sitting on the sidewalk, stretching out our legs with our back to the wall of the building. After about forty-five minutes of waiting, the gates to the lot opened and cars starting streaming out.

  Tossing our sodas in the trash, we hopped onto Taj’s bike. Sadie had told us Walker drove a yellow Ferrari, not a black chauffeured car. That would make it easy to spot him. After about twenty minutes, a yellow flash emerged from the gate. Walker’s car. Taj revved his engine and we pulled into traffic, staying a few lengths behind the Ferrari as it sped along Melrose Avenue, veered onto Van Ness, and made a sharp turn onto Santa Monica Boulevard.

  We sped past strip malls and apartment buildings. Walker either suspected he was being followed or else he always drove like he was on a racecourse, weaving in and out of traffic. Taj stayed on his tail, keeping far enough back that we wouldn’t be spotted. When we turned onto Sunset Boulevard, I squeezed Taj’s waist tighter. I leaned into his ear. “Oh my God, he’s headed to the Star Center.”

  Sure enough, the castle-like fortress soon loomed before us and Walker’s Ferrari zipped down the driveway and behind the building, disappearing behind a garage door that slid closed. Taj brought his bike to a skidding halt in the gravel nearby. “Shit.”

  But I was satisfied. Walker was staying at the Star Center, so maybe Rain was there, too. A camera hidden in the foliage of bushes and palm trees rotated our way. I ducked my head and pulled Taj’s face toward me. “Don’t look. They’re watching us through the cameras. Let’s go. We’ll come back tomorrow night with the gang. Rescue mission. After dark.”

  ON OUR WAY back to the American Hotel, I asked Taj to stop at Little Juan’s and wait for me outside. Amir was in his office. I marched in, grabbed the VHS tape out of my bag, and tossed it onto his desk.

  “It’s a snuff flick. Those bastards who have Rain are making movies where movie stars rape and kill children.”

  My voice was venomous. I balled my hands into fists, waiting for him to respond. He stared at me. His expression behind the silver-framed glasses was oddly inquisitive as if he were trying to figure me out. Maybe my revelation had shocked him beyond words.

  Finally, he spoke. “It’s on this tape? You have evidence?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you get this?” He stood and was pacing behind his desk.

  “That movie director’s house—Dean Thomas Kozlak. He’s behind it all.”

  “How did you get it?”

  “I can’t say,” I said. I couldn’t admit to breaking and entering. “I need your help. I’m worried if I take this to the cops, I might give it to someone who is part of this group. They didn’t believe me before.” He would understand my distrust of authority. “Is there anyone you trust in the police department you can give this to? We need to do something right away. Rain might still be alive.” She has to be. “We’re heading to the church’s Star Center tomorrow night. I think they are holding her there so I need the night off.”

  His back was to me. I paused, frozen, waiting.

  “Okay,” Amir finally said, turning, but not meeting my eyes. “I will figure out who we can trust.”

  My shoulder’s sagged with relief knowing Amir was on our side and that it wasn’t entirely up to me to try to stop this evil.

  The next afternoon, I was reading in my room, trying to kill time until it was dark, when there was loud pounding on my door. It seemed urgent so I scrambled to my feet. All my neighbors stood outside in the hall. We weren’t supposed to meet until sunset to storm the Star Center and rescue Rain. But the looks on their faces told me something else was going on.

  The Rodney King verdict had gone down.

  Danny flipped on the borrowed television set, which was still in my room. My hand flew to my mouth in horror. It was on every station—a helicopter hovered over a South Central intersection, filming the beating of a white man who had been yanked out of the cab of his big rig. The man lay on the black pavement beside his semi-truck in the middle of the large intersection at Florence and Normandie.

  The footage showed abandoned vehicles stopped helter skelter and crowds of people milling around the sidewalks. When an unsuspecting driver came across the intersection, the rioters swarmed the streets, throwing bottles and bricks, sending drivers peeling out leaving trails
of smoke from skidding tires.

  Reporters said that earlier more than two dozen LAPD officers had fled the intersection when protesters outnumbered them, looting stores and attacking pedestrians and drivers. Coverage switched to the L.A. County Courthouse where a peaceful protest of some three hundred people had erupted in fighting and gunshots. News helicopters had taken over the skies, being the only reporters who could safely capture the chaos erupting throughout Southern California.

  People threw bricks into grocery store windows while others raced down streets with shopping carts loaded with food. Men hauling upholstered love seats on their heads strode down city streets without a care in the world. Other people ran down the street clutching stereo components or TVs, zipping past pedestrians who didn’t even look up. Besides the noise from the TV, my tiny room was mostly quiet, broken up by occasional utterances.

  “What the hell?”

  “No way.”

  “This is crazy.”

  “Un-fucking-believable.”

  Every once in a while we shook our heads. We sat in front of the glowing TV screen, unable to tear ourselves away.

  DARKNESS HAD FALLEN when reporters interviewed a man named Bobby Green Jr. The reporters said Green, who was black, had rescued the beaten-up white truck driver, a man named Reginald Denny, by driving him to the hospital.

  “Mr. Green, can you hear us?” the male reporter said as the TV showed earlier footage of the intersection.

  “Yes”

  “Were you one of the people who beat him up?”

  “No.”

  “All right, so that theory is out the window. Tell us what happened…”

  Danny sprung to his feet. “Did he beat him up?” he said, mocking the announcer’s clipped voice. “Dude. What the fuck? They asked him that because he’s black. Pendejo. Fucking racist pig. He rescued him!”

  When the reporter asked how Reginald Denny’s condition appeared on the way to the hospital, Green answered, “Really, really, really bad…he had big holes under his eyes…it was like he was ready to go unconscious.”

  Green said during the drive the truck driver had managed to thank him, but was fading in and out of consciousness.

  “Did you ever figure out why he got beat up like that?” the female news reporter asked toward the end of the interview.

  Green didn’t hesitate in his response. “’Cause he was white.”

  “That was all, huh?”

  “Yep.”

  We all sat there staring at the TV. Too stunned to move or talk. John had his arm around Eve. Tears streamed down her face.

  “It’s dark now. Let’s go.” I stood and tugged my leather jacket on.

  Slowly, heads turned away from the TV coverage of the city erupting in violence.

  “What? We can still go, right?” I had my hand on the door. Nobody moved.

  A reporter on the TV announced that the mayor had instituted a dusk-to-dawn curfew in the city of Los Angeles.

  “I don’t know, honey,” Eve said, her brow furrowed. “It’s kind of crazy out there right now.”

  That was an understatement. Right when she said that, a cameraman scurried for cover behind an overturned car as a mob shooting guns into the air passed by. At the same time, we heard glass breaking and shouting on the street outside the American Hotel. Sadie sprang to the window and started screaming. A second later, gunfire sent her flopping to the floor. For a second, a cold wave of terror surged through me, thinking she’d been shot. Without lifting her head, Sadie shouted toward the window, “Take your little pissant toy gun and get the hell off our street. I’ll show you what a real gun looks like.”

  Sadie Army crawled across the floor and ran out my door, leaving us all with open mouths and wide eyes.

  I guessed we weren’t going anywhere tonight.

  I kicked the door closed behind Sadie, balled my hands into fists, and began pacing the room. I wanted to punch something. Instead, I kicked the door again. I finally knew where Rain was, but had to sit and wait. And watch my world self-destruct.

  We sat in front of the TV, mesmerized by the flickering screen and the seemingly unreal pictures. My anger turned to despair. For the first few hours, I didn’t want to eat or even smoke or drink. I didn’t want to move from my spot in front of the TV. Everyone brought blankets and pillows into my room and we stayed up all night, unable to take our eyes off the TV. In the morning, we stayed huddled. None of us had slept much, just a few naps here and there.

  The sun rose like nothing had happened.

  Sadie was acting very mysterious. She had come back to my room with some type of an assault rifle. She sat sentry by my window, pointing the gun out every once in a while. She also had a shoebox-sized phone with a little handle on it like a suitcase. I’d never seen a mobile phone before. Every once in a while, she would disappear into the hall with the phone. Or leave for a few minutes, coming back with boxes of cigarettes, booze, and food.

  Once, after she left the room, I waited a few seconds and peeked out the window. A 1950s style sedan with huge tailfins had pulled up by the front door. I saw a blur of blond hair as Sadie ran out to the car barefoot, sticking her head in the window for a few seconds and coming out with a giant box before running back into the building. The car was gone before the front door slammed shut.

  By afternoon, the government had ordered the U.S. National Guard and the U.S. Marines to come settle the city, which was now dotted with blackened, charred buildings.

  As if the spell was broken, everyone scattered, leaving only Danny and me shell-shocked in front of the TV, laying on my futon playing Crazy Eights. Danny was flipping through the stations when I yelped for him to stop. They were showing footage of an area I recognized. The coffee shop across the street from the Star Center.

  Reporters interviewed the manager who had shut the restaurant after losing power earlier. A burst of noise sent the cameraman swiveling. The rioters—a whirling pack of shouting people bearing sticks and bats—were a block away. The chaotic footage bounced up and down as the cameraman and his reporter ran. The wild-eyed reporter with his hair flopping ducked into a nearby business. The cameraman, who was panting, said in a whisper that he was taking cover behind some bushes but would continue filming. You could hear his heavy breathing and whispering commentary as he filmed the pack of rioters reaching the front of the star center. The rioters began throwing Molotov cocktails at the walls with security guards running around frantically trying to ward off the crowd.

  Danny and I looked at each other with wide eyes.

  “Now we move,” he said, and sprung to his feet.

  Within a half hour, everyone had gathered on the roof.

  A plan was made. We would wait for dark.

  It was going to be dangerous. Kozlak had been willing to kill me. He had killed the surfers. He would kill anyone who got in his way. I turned to Eve and grabbed her by both shoulders.

  “I need you to stay here.”

  “What?”

  I had gone over this earlier with Danny and shot him a glance.

  “That’s right, querida,” he said. “You need to stay here in case we’re wrong and Rain shows up in the chaos trying to find us. You’re going to need to be here for her.”

  Eve looked doubtful for a moment, but then pressed her lips together and nodded. John, who had his arm wrapped around her, gave her shoulder a squeeze.

  Now this was going to be the hard part. I turned toward John.

  “You need to stay with her. I’m worried about leaving her alone. If someone got into the building, she’d need somebody to protect her. And the building for that matter.”

  John cast a wild look around before deciding that being Eve’s protector suited him. He agreed we could still take his car. The plan was for Taj, Danny, and I to pile in the Caddy as night fell and head for the Star Center.

  As the sun set, my stomach knotted with a mixture of fear, excitement, and anxiety. I thought we were all nervous. Sadie paced the roof of the
American Hotel with that big gun. I worried her trigger finger was a little too antsy.

  “Where’d you get this piece?” Taj asked, taking the gun from her for a moment.

  “Didn’t you hear?” she said, taking out another gun from her back waistband and checking its ammo with a loud click. “I ditched that married prick, Tony. My new man, Carlos, is leader of the La Maya Locos gang in East L.A. He’s shown me all sorts of tricks. Taught me to shoot at a range on Rodeo Drive. Did you know the gangbangers and LAPD both practice there? At the same time?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Carlos and his boys are coming along tonight, escorting us. I was going to surprise you all.”

  I bet Carlos was the attractive, poised gang leader from the restaurant. He was the most charismatic person in any room he was in, a natural born leader. If he hadn’t been in a gang, he probably would have been president of a fraternity or something.

  “Do you know how to shoot a gun?” Taj asked.

  I scoffed.

  “I’m going to take that as a no.” He turned to Sadie. “Do you my mind if we borrow it for a second?”

  She shrugged and walked off.

  Taj spent the next half hour showing me how to shoot a gun—without actually shooting it—until he was convinced I could fire it if I needed to. At one point, Danny raced over and grabbed some binoculars from John’s hand. He pointed them toward a rooftop a few buildings away in Little Tokyo. I squinted my eyes at two figures on that roof. Sun shimmered on something in their arms. Guns.

  I started to move back when Danny chuckled.

  “Two Japanese guys. Probably defending their building, too.”

  Dropping the binoculars, he raised his rifle high in a salute. The two figures raised their guns in acknowledgement back.

  Later, as the sun dipped on the horizon, I steeled my gaze in the direction where the gleaming white mansion towered over Sunset Boulevard. Smoke mingled with the setting sun, turning the skies blood red. We would strike when it grew dark. Until then, I had to be patient. I pulled up a ripped lawn chair, took a long drag off my cigarette, and settled back to watch L.A. burn.