Bad Night Is Falling Read online

  Bad Night Is Falling

  Gary Phillips

  A MysteriousPress.com

  Open Road Integrated Media ebook

  For my wife, Gilda, the coolest.

  The idea that those who are most happily at home in the modern world … may be the most vulnerable to the demons that haunt it; the idea that the daily routine of playgrounds, and bicycles, of coping, eating and cleaning up, of ordinary hugs and kisses, may be not only infinitely joyous and beautiful but also infinitely precarious and fragile, that it may take desperate and heroic struggles to sustain this life, and sometimes we lose.

  —Marshall Berman,

  All That Is Solid Melts into Air

  Proloǵue

  BURNING THE DARKNESS DOWN

  Efraín Cruzado’s first sensations were of opening his eyes and coughing roughly. He awoke next to Rosanna with a vicious dry hack ratcheting from his body. Damn, he reflected sleepily, maybe he should get over to the all-night Sav-on over on Alvarado. Suddenly Rosanna too was coughing, and Cruzado realized their bedroom was far stuffier than usual.

  “What’s happening? Put on the lights,” his wife said groggily, rousing herself from her slumber.

  It came to him in the same moment he got to his feet. “Fire, Rosanna, there’s a fire in our place.” He tried to sound calm, he didn’t want her getting panicked as he clawed along the wall for the light switch through the invading soot. His eyes began to cloud from fear and smoke.

  The light from the fixture in the ceiling had a weird, otherworldly effect, illuminating the moist, oily fog rolling through their bedroom. Cruzado was already out the door heading for the girls’ room. Behind him, he could hear Rosanna loudly coughing and stumbling about, her idea the same as his.

  In the hall he bumped into a hurtling body and Cruzado crazily imagined that it was one of those mayate bastards, one of those blacks, who’d surely set the fire. Or, goddamn him, maybe it wasn’t them. Maybe it was the others. Damn this hopeless city, and goddamn these Rancho Tajuata Housing Projects.

  “Efraín, Efraín,” his sister, Karla, exclaimed, latching onto his arm, “I can’t see anything. Where are the children?”

  He grabbed her shoulder and gently but forcefully pushed her to the right. “Stay still. Rosanna is coming this way, and I want you to hold onto her,” he said in Spanish, moving to his left. The door to the girls’ bedroom was hot and he knew what that meant, but what could he do? A father can’t ignore his responsibilities.

  He got the door open, the heat from the room literally sucking the breath out of him. He rocked back, sagging down against the far wall as the fire’s fury overpowered him. A blur loomed before him and Cruzado, an agnostic, knew it was an archangel come to collect his children.

  But the time for sweet music was not just yet. He could hear their wails. The girls, the girls had to be saved.

  “Karla, please,” he heard Rosanna plead.

  He found some air but it hurt to take it in. His lungs were singed like meat on an open spit but he had to get up, he had to do something.

  One side of the girls’ room was a dance of glowing saffron and Cruzado could hear Olga screaming in that particular wail of hers. Normally the sound got on his nerves, but now it was a beacon guiding him in a savage terrain.

  “I’m coming, mija. Daddy’s coming,” Cruzado promised. He was up, shuffling forward, his chest feeling as if an electric blanket were wrapped around his insides. He got to the girls’ doorway, dazed, tired. Rosanna emerged from the burning whiteness eating away at their home and encroaching on their bodies. Olga was in her mother’s arms, Lola had her arms wrapped around the woman’s legs.

  “Take them out, I’ll get Marisa,” Cruzado blared.

  Her dead stare cut him off. “There’s no need to go back in,” she said gravely.

  Cold iron poured over his knees and it was all Cruzado could do not to faint. He watched the tears silently travel the length of his wife’s face, and he put his hand on her shoulder. “Mother,” he said with a sick realization.

  “I’ll get the girls out.” Rosanna clutched Olga tightly.

  A whoosh of flame shot at them as if driven by a jet engine. The girls screamed and Cruzado beat at his arm, which was now on fire. “Yes, out, get them out into the yard,” he desperately repeated. “I’ve got to see about Mama.”

  Karla had stumbled over. “I’ll go with you.”

  “No.” He pushed her and his wife toward the front. “You two must take care of the girls.”

  Smoke undulated behind the father. He’d stopped the fire on his arm, but the limb radiated a tremendous pain that intensified as he tried to moved it. “Mother,” he called out, turning around and moving off. He was swallowed up by the mass of grey. “Mother,” he called out as he found his way toward the small room off the service porch.

  He could hear nothing as he got to the room. The door was closed and cool to me touch. Cruzado nervously twisted the knob and snatched the door open. More smoke, grey and glistening with malicious intent, came at him. He didn’t bother to call her name as he bent down to her bed. She was warm, but she wouldn’t be going anywhere in this world any longer.

  The virulent pall congealed around him, gagging him and gorging into his watery eyes. Then it ebbed and parted to briefly reveal the carved rosemary wood cross he’d tacked over her bed. The cross for Christina.

  Cruzado got up. The room was suddenly lit by a jagged flame that was billowing across the worn linoleum. A flame eating its way to where he stood. From somewhere he could hear the neighbors’ voices and hoped that meant the rest of his family was safe. He removed one of his mother’s blankets and wrapped it around himself. Since he wasn’t sure what he believed in after this life, he assumed God would find it awfully hypocritical for him to start praying for deliverance now. He got the blanket about him as best he could, took a last look at his mother, and plunged into the fire.

  One

  Antar Absalla was not one who enjoyed having a finger poking at him. And he was particularly not fond of Mrs. Reyisa Limón, twice widowed. He was therefore hard-pressed to hold his tongue as the older woman hooked her talon at his face as she reprimanded him.

  “Where were your security people, Mr. Absalla?” she demanded for the fourth time since the meeting had begun a long hour ago.

  Absalla mentally centered himself before speaking. “At those hours of the morning,” he began with a forced calm, “there is a thinner crew than during peak time. This was a financial decision that your tenants’ association made, Mrs. Limón. As you’d be aware if you’d reread the minutes from past board meetings.” He managed not to smirk.

  “You don’t need to remind me of the procedures of Robert’s Rules, Mr. Absalla,” she leveled. “It’s your performance that’s in question here.”

  “I don’t think that’s quite the case, Reyisa,” Henry Cady, the president of the tenants’ association, responded. The aging black man did that little self-effacing clearing of his throat and adjusted his black horn-rimmed glasses. “We’ve convened this emergency meeting to see what we need to do to make sure something like this horrible thing doesn’t happen again.”

  Several heads around the square conference table indicated agreement.

  Mrs. Limón leaned back in her seat, the chair creaking under her commanding size. The woman made a slight gesture, a slice of her palm like the drop of an axe. “I’m not saying we aren’t. I am saying we hired a twenty-four-hour security force who are supposed to be ensuring the safety of our residents.”

  “And the Ra-Falcons were on the scene in less than three minutes,” Absalla pointed out. “My team was helping put out the fire before the fire department got here. And two of them were taken to the hospital for smoke
inhalation after trying to enter the premises to get free Mr. Cruzado.” Indignation made his face warm but Absalla was determined not to lose his temper, and thus play into the scheme of this tormentor who sat across from him.

  “You do have a point,” Juan Carlos Higuerra said. “I think if we can discuss this so we can better the patrols, we can get something accomplished.”

  Limón fixed a gaze to seize hearts on Higuerra, silently damning him for his usual conciliatory approach. “We must also talk about how we’re going to deal with this vicious gang element.”

  “The Ra-Falcons security are not the police,” Cady asserted.

  “But”—the long finger went to work again—“Absalla does employ those he admits are ex-gang members. They can find out who killed the Cruzados. If they don’t know already.”

  “I’ve asked my people what they’ve heard, and no one knew about any rumor to harm the Cruzados. And of course we will continue to ask around to see if we can find out anything.” Then he used his index finger on Limón.

  “Yes, some of the Ra-Falcons used to be gang members,” Absalla continued. “They come from these impoverished neighborhoods. They are also young men and women who have decided to turn their lives around, and give something back. This is not so-called, it is a fact. None of my crew are criminals. They wouldn’t be on the patrol if they weren’t disciplined and dedicated.”

  “Some of them used to be Scalp Hunters though, right?” Mrs. Graves, who’d been quiet until now, asked.

  “Yes,” Absalla answered. “Just as some of them used to be members of one or more of the Rolling Daltons set or the Del Nines.”

  Mrs. Limón leaned forward again, her heavy breasts expanding against the edge of the table. “What’s important is that everybody around the Rancho says it was the Scalp Hunters who firebombed the Cruzados’ apartment. The little bastards set the fire off in the girls’ room. They broke the window and shoved their …”—she paused, searching for the word—“Molotov right in there between the bars.” Her sunken face testified to the cruelty of the crime.

  “How do you know that?” Cady inquired.

  “It’s common knowledge,” she barked.

  “I don’t mean the rumor about who set the fire,” Cady clarified. “I mean how do you know where the device went off less than two days after the incident.”

  “I have friends on the fire commission,” she said proudly.

  She bestowed on Absalla a sidelong glance, which seemed to imply she also had friends on other commissions—like the one that oversaw the police department. He felt like backhanding her.

  “I’ve already sat down with my sergeants to figure out how we can change our patrols to best cover the complex during the off-hours. But I’m afraid it’s difficult without putting more people on staff.”

  Limón snickered but didn’t say anything.

  Cady said, “We’re under the knife on this, Mr. Absalla. As you know, the owners of this property will soon be allowed by the Housing and Urban Development Department to place the Rancho on the private market. To counter that, we have to have a two-thirds majority of the families organized to agree to buy the property for themselves. If the residents vote to incorporate as a limited-equity cooperative, we can qualify for federal grants and loans to do so.”

  Cady removed his glasses. “I don’t need to tell anyone here, the conservatives who control Congress are looking for any excuse not to allow those grants to be issued. These murders must be cleared up if we are to have a chance at realizing something for ourselves.”

  “I know we need results,” Absalla said sincerely.

  “Not to mention your contract comes up around the same time as the grant application,” Limón needlessly reminded him. “And if the murderers of the Cruzados remain free, let alone if more horrible things happen to other Latino families, this body will take that as a sign we may need to do things differently.”

  “Blacks get attacked too,” one of the African-Americans interjected.

  “Nobody’s saying different,” Mrs. Limón blurted.

  Trying to ease the tension, Cady said, “Let’s stay together, people. This whole body must examine and discuss the facts. We have to set the example for the rest of the Rancho.” He looked directly at Mrs. Limón. Surprisingly, she bestowed a deferential smile on him without displaying any of her usual combativeness.

  Absalla promised to submit a revised patrol plan to the tenants’ association by the end of the week. Leaving the multipurpose center, Absalla noted not for the first time the tranquility it was possible to find walking around the projects. Sure, all the cinder block buildings, lying squat and heavy and uninteresting-looking against L.A.’s lethal air, wouldn’t be on the cover of Architectural Digest anytime soon. And yes, the taupe-colored apartments were in bad need of paint, having last seen a fresh coat sometime during the middle of the Bradley Administration.

  But many of the residents took pride in keeping their plots neat, their stoops swept clean. Arrow shirts and prim little girls’ dresses hung nonchalantly from clotheslines, and several dogs romped around, wagging their tails, their brown eyes gleaming with playfulness.

  As he turned a corner on the row of apartments along Biddy Mason Lane, Absalla spotted several young black men lounging against the fender of a lowered ’73 Monte Carlo, the front raised on jack stands. Despite himself, he instantly categorized the youth. Due, he reasoned as he confidently strolled past, to the blaring boom box at their feet and the ubiquitous forty-ouncer being passed around.

  He purposefully slowed down. “You young brothers ought to put as much time into cracking a book as you do standing around bullshitting and drinking that piss.”

  One of the young men was tall with elongated muscles like an NBA pick. His shirt was unbuttoned, displaying a torso adorned with three California Youth Authority–type tattoos. He bowed slightly. “A-Salam-aleikum,” he said, chuckling, and the others also dipped their heads.

  “Got some pigs’ feet if you want one, Minister Absalla,” another one piped in.

  The security chief didn’t even bother to shake his head as he moved on. The offices of the Ra-Falcons were located on the second floor of the building housing the laundry rooms. It was a structure on the southwest end of the complex, some distance from the old, defunct Southern Pacific tracks that cleaved diagonally through the Rancho.

  Originally, when the place was built in the waning days of FDR’s New Deal years, the Rancho, located near the central city, was envisioned as an experiment in planned multiracial living. The Taj, as the old-timers called the place, along with public housing places like Nickerson Gardens and Imperial Courts farther south in Watts, had also been part of that vision. They were all part of a plan that was drafted by the progressives who’d burrowed their way into the local Housing Authority. It was an objective endorsed by the bipartisan reform forces at work in the city in those days.

  But those people, and that dream of institutions playing a role in the engineering of racial harmony, had both long since been discarded like so many old bottles.

  Absalla’s reflections ended as he arrived at the RaFalcons’ office. On its steel door was a colorful decal, which displayed a stylized profile of a falcon’s head with a golden ankh prominent in the center of its ebon orb. Encircling the head was a border containing various African and Egyptian symbols of the warrior and the harvest.

  Before he could grasp the knob, the door swung inward to allow a man with sergeant’s stripes on his shirt’s bicep and another man, a corporal, into the passageway.

  “Brothers,” Absalla greeted the two.

  The sergeant, Eddie Waters, said, “Boss man, how’d it go at the meeting?”

  “We got to get on this bad, Eddie,” Absalla said, zeroing them both with a stern look.

  “I know,” Keith 2X, the other one, answered. “There’s already been a retaliation.”

  Absalla didn’t want to seem out of the loop in front of his crew, but he hadn’t heard and so was
forced to ask. “What happened? I’ve been so busy with the tenants’ association that I didn’t catch this.”

  “Old Mrs. Ketchum and her sister got a nasty note tacked to their door last night,” Waters said. “The note said something about how the blacks at the Rancho bring down the place, and how maybe somebody’s going to do someming about it.”

  “Their apartment’s near the Cruzados’,” Absalla said. “I guess they didn’t see who left the note.”

  “No, but it’s a sure thing them Los Domingos did it,” Keith 2X replied.

  “We’re on our way to check it out, and maybe get a little sumptin’ sumptin’ on them punk-asses,” Waters added with enthusiasm.

  “Don’t be no provocateurs, you hear,” Absalla warned them. “Just confirm it if you can, understand?”

  “We ain’t scared of them mojados,” Waters spat with bravado.

  “Restraint, black man, remember,” Absalla retorted.

  “It’s cool,” Waters said, and the two started to leave. “Oh yeah, there’s an ese in there to see you.” He grinned.

  “Who?”

  “Surprise.” Waters tapped 2X on the shoulder, and the two departed.

  The Ra-Falcons’ office was one large room with two feeder rooms off that. A third area had been a walk-in utility closet, but the door had been removed. It now served as residence for a fax and a small refrigerator.

  The larger area contained a black vinyl couch trimmed in ash wood with matching chairs scattered about. Several other chairs and desks, spanning various eras and tastes, were also present.

  Hunched over the phone at the main desk was a woman who also had sergeant’s stripes on the sleeve of her dark blue uniform, LaToyce Blaine. She made small circles with her free hand as she talked, her vermillion nails flashing like dry blood on shark’s teeth.

  “Hold on,” she said to whoever she was talking to. “Five-O in there to see you,” she whispered to Absalla.

  The security chief didn’t break stride as he went into one of the lesser rooms that served as his inner office. He came upon a Latino, who he made to be a Chicano, dressed in an olive green gabardine suit. He wore a bronze-hued tie, offset by a dark green shirt.