Violent Spring Page 2

  Truly an inspired title he concluded, getting behind the wheel of his mother’s late model Taurus. Several more news people were now around O’Day, who seemed to have regained his composure. He gestured with his hands making boxer-like thrusts in the air, and threw his head back to explode in quick bursts of laughter. Alexander the Great holding court for the unwashed and unknowing.

  Monk brought the car to life. As he drove away, he could see O’Day pointing to the SOMA banner for the camera crews. Maybe he got the joke. Or maybe, Monk surmised ominously, it was his joke on the city.

  THE TUESDAY AFTER the Saturday of the aborted groundbreaking at Florence and Normandie, the name of Bong Kim Suh was bandied all over town.

  TV commentators, local news anchors, the second column under the fold in the Times’ Metro section and even a popular radio talk show host on the AM band were focused on the murdered liquor store owner. For it was his decomposed body found in the dirt field at the infamous intersection. A field that once, before the conflagration, had been the site of a check-cashing place and Laundromat.

  The deceased Mr. Suh was also the topic of conversation at the Abyssinia Barber Shop and Shine Parlor on South Broadway.

  “So you found the body, Monk?” Kelvon Ulysses Little asked him as he sat in the chair to get his hair cut.

  “I was there when they uncovered it by accident with the bulldozer.”

  Little draped the black striped white shroud across the front of Monk. “Oh,” the barber and co-owner of the shop replied. “Brant said you found the Korean’s body.” He encircled Monk’s neck with tissue paper to prevent loose hairs from falling down his collar. It never worked as far as Monk knew, but who was he to break tradition.

  Willie Brant, a 58-year-old retired postman, leaned forward in his chair, pointing at Little. “That ain’t what I said, man. I told you ’fore Monk got here that what I heard was that he was there at the field and saw the body being taken out of the ground.”

  Monk raised an eyebrow. Willie was bald. Completely without hair on his dome since his early thirties. The only reason he came to the barber shop was to hang out and hear himself talk. “I wasn’t there when that happened either, Willie. All I know about this is what I read in the papers same as you.”

  “Well if you want my opinion,” Brant started, aware that few ever did, “I think them Rolling Daltons are behind this.”

  “Now how do you get to that conclusion?” Old Man Spears said. Spears sat in the corner, as he always did, half-listening to the baseball game on the ancient Philco and half-listening to the conversation.

  “Cause this truce thing they initiated with that other gang, them Swans, ain’t nothin’ but a smoke screen they’re usin’ to take over all the rackets in South Central. And they startin’ by bumpin’ off all them Ko-reeans.”

  Little deftly passed the clippers through Monk’s hair. “Some grey’s creeping down there in your roots, Monk,” he said loud enough for all to hear. “That fine oriental gal of yours must be wearin’ your ass out.” A chorus of good-natured laughs made the rounds in the barber shop. Then, Little said, “I think them young bloods is sincere in this truce thing. Man, I believe them when they say they’re tired of killing one another and running down our neighborhoods. If there’s one good thing to come out of the uprising, it will be them getting together to do a Black Panther number like we saw in the ’60s.”

  “Shit,” Brant eloquently replied.

  Abraham Carson, who sat one chair down from Brant, put down the copy of the Sports Illustrated he’d been reading. “What do you think, Monk?” The self employed carpenter’s voice was quiet in timbre and deep as a well.

  “About the truce?”

  “About the body in the field.”

  “According to the paper, this Bong Kim Suh was last seen a week before the riots of ’92. He was a bachelor, and he employed local black folks in his liquor store.” Monk paused, assembling the data in his mind. “I don’t think he was killed by the Daltons or any usual stickup.”

  “Why you say that?” Brant demanded.

  “Look at the facts, Willie. The Metro section states he was found with his wallet still on his body. Ninety bucks still in the thing. And the reporter said he was shot execution-style. Which means in the back of the head, into the neck. Professionals do that so there’s no blood splattering on them.”

  Kelvon Little edged the hair around Monk’s ears with the barest touch of the clippers. He said, “So who do you think did this?”

  “Damned if I know. But I do know the cops are going to have a lot of pressure on them to solve this thing.”

  “You mean from the Korean-American Merchants Group,” Abe said.

  “Yeah man,” Brant began again, “you gotta hand it to them rice cake eaters. Say what you will, they stick up for their own.”

  Monk all but rolled his eyes in his head.

  It was somewhat of a misnomer to say that Olympic and Kenmore was the heart of Koreatown. Like a lot of the other sections of the city that sprawled from the ocean to the desert, where one neighborhood ended and another began was sometimes not always easy to tell.

  In Echo Park, which was heavily Latino, one found left-wing lawyers of various races, long-time community activists and punked out white kids wearing African medallions mixing along lower Sunset or Melrose at places like the Club Fuck. That part of Sunset also was the beginning of East Hollywood and the gay belt. It ran into Silverlake and enjoyed a seemingly peaceful coexistence with the cholos who prowled the boulevards in their chopped ’63 Impalas with McLean wire rims. Off the main drag were streets that wound into the hills of Silverlake and the city officials who lived there and people who worked in the real Hollywood as prop builders, camera operators and the lowest of the low, the writers.

  Central Avenue had been the cultural Mecca of Black Los Angeles in the ’30s through the early ’50s. Joints like the Club Alabam, Jack’s Basket and Cafe Society swung to the 24-hour beat of the hip, replete with jazz giants such as Dexter Gordon and Teddy Edwards, or Chet Baker and Ella Fitzgerald.

  To make the scene, hep-cats would be draped in Zoot Suits complete with spearpoint collared shirts, fob-chains, satin picture ties and gold pinky rings. Chicks in slit skirts, rodeo jackets and rolled socks would drop in for a set or two then amble down to the Dunbar Hotel—where all the black entertainers stayed—and juice up in the Turban Room, the bar in the basement of the hotel.

  Now Central Avenue was home to mom-and-pop furniture stores with names like Zuniga, and where Jack’s Basket was stands a branch office of the Southern California Gas Company. And at present, there were no signs in the Korean alphabet gracing strip malls along Barrington in the upper-class, white Brentwood part of town. But on the side of a three-story brown-tiled building on Olympic Boulevard just east of Kenmore, blue relief letters in Hangul, the Korean alphabet, announced the building as the headquarters of the Korean-American Merchants Group.

  “I’m not at all certain that would produce the results we are looking for,” Kenny Yu said.

  “As opposed to us organizing more protests at City Hall like when we were demanding reparations for our lost stores after the riots.” The sarcasm in Pak Ju Li’s voice, the president of the Merchant’s Group, was lost on no one at the table.

  Kenny Yu, a Korean-American lawyer in his late twenties, leaned back in his chair. “I’m saying that if we simply offer reward money, just throw it out as bait, we’ll have every two-bit hustler in L.A. phoning in useless tips as to who murdered Kim Suh.”

  “$20,000 is not a simple price,’’ Li answered in a tone reserved for a teacher to an upstart pupil. “It has been done before in other murders in this godless city.”

  “I think young Mr. Yu’s point is well taken,” Park Hankyoung said. He was the owner of the building that housed the Merchant’s Group, which also contained commercial office space, and two hotels in town which catered to visiting Korean business people. “Conversely, I think if we organize a visit to the
chief of police’s office, making sure it’s covered in the white press, that would be effective. It is important for us to demonstrate that we believe that the process of justice must be followed. After all, we don’t want a repeat of the Du incident”

  Groans went up from some at the table. Soon Ja Du was a Korean grocer who had shot and killed Latasha Harlins, a teen age honor student, over a disputed $1.79 bottle of orange juice. Convicted of second-degree manslaughter, Mrs. Du’s possible eighteen years in prison was reduced to five years probation and a fine for the gun.

  The then-L.A. County D.A., Ira Reiner, had the case reviewed by a three-judge panel, which upheld Karlin’s decision. The judges, like cops loathe to break ranks, upheld the original decision. This example of judicial wisdom had come a week before the explosive verdict from Simi.

  “This and the ramifications from the Du incident have nothing in common,” Li protested. “We have put the unfortunateness of that time behind us. The family of the girl was paid $300,000 from the settlement of the case. The Du’s have left town, and this city is in the healing mode.”

  Yu suppressed a grin. It tickled him when Li suffused his comments with phrases borrowed from American politicians. Hollow word play meant to obfuscate and redirect.

  John Hong, a grocer who had been a math teacher at a university in South Korea, raised an index finger so as to be recognized. “On the one hand, it is important that it be shown that the Korean community fights for the rights of its own as do the other ethnic communities of this city. But it is also important that what we do in regards to Sub’s death be a symbolic move that accomplishes for us a better standing among these communities than we’ve accomplished so far. We must play the game the American’s play, if in the long run we wish to extend the influence of the Merchant’s Group. Look what Linton Perry does with the Harvesters Unlimited. A little fire and a lot of strategy can go far.”

  Kenny Yu looked at the others around the table. Each man—and the Merchants Group was all men—stared at one another or at the pads of paper before them. Humor creased his eyes and he said, “When I publicly denounced Karlin’s decision I was nearly ostracized from this Board. I drew the parallel of the Vincent Chin incident in Detroit where the Chinese student was beaten to death with baseball bats by two out-of-work white auto workers who mistook him for Japanese. Those two were let off because the judge in mat case, like Karlins in the Du case, said that prison would not benefit them.

  “I said then, and I say it now, we must find those patches of common ground wherein we can unite with the African-American, the Latino and other Asian people in this city and this country. So for different motivations, I agree with Mr. Hong and I have a suggestion.”

  “Which is,” Li interjected, his eyes boring down on Yu. Twin orbs that glinted hard and mirthless in a fixed orbit of a universe only their owner could fathom.

  “You recall the guest speaker at our luncheon last month?” Yu said.

  “Yes. Judge Jill Kodama spoke on the law and Asians and Asian Pacific Islanders,” Hankyoung answered.

  “After the luncheon, the judge and I talked briefly. Chitchat about how well I thought her talk went and so form. I don’t exactly remember how it came up, but I recall her mentioning that her boyfriend is a private investigator.”

  After some moments, Li said in Korean, “We hoe this man to look into the death of Kim Suh. I agree mis might be a better use of our money man merely offering a reward. Providing of course this individual has references we can check. Indeed, it might even be cheaper man paying some informant. But how does this accomplish the public relations angle?”

  “Ivan Monk, the judge’s boyfriend, is black,” Kenny Yu said.

  Several heads at the table bobbed up, men down.

  Detective Lieutenant Marasco Seguin walked along the hall in the Los Angeles International Airport He was a dark, taut Chicano in his early forties. The drooping mustache he sported, and the way he carried himself, gave one the impression here was a seasoned guerilla fighter come down from the mountains.

  Only airport officials and the bead of security knew about this section of one of the world’s busiest centers of passenger and cargo commerce. Along the corridor were unmarked steel doors of the same milky grey hue. Most had electronic alarms attached to the wall beside them, a few had triple deadbolt locks. Seguin knew what was behind those doors—divisions of the Drug Enforcement Agency, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and until recently, a satellite of the Organized Crimes Investigations Division of the LAPD.

  But a book by a former member of the OCID had detailed how the unit was used more for political intelligence gathering by the then-chief of the LAPD Daryl Gates. He had used the squad to amass files on City Council members, the D.A., as well as the likes of closeted actor Rock Hudson. The publication of the book had resulted in the closure of the unit by the new reform minded chief, Willie Williams. Seguin, quietly resplendent in a teal sport coat and grey flannel slacks, stopped before the door that had housed the OCID. He knocked and waited. The door buzzed and he pushed it open.

  “Chief,” he said upon entering, nodding his head slightly.

  Seated around the inlaid mahogany table were Chief Williams, four other men and one woman. Two of the four Seguin recognized as plainclothesmen from divisions other than his, Wilshire Station. He unbuttoned his coat and took a seat.

  “This is Roberts from Hollywood, and Haller and Bazeco from Rampart,” Williams said. Roberts was a large, heavily muscled black man with hooded eyes that suggested a hidden intelligence. He wore a grey pinstripe three piece suit and an open-collared shirt.

  “Nice to see you again, Seguin,” Roberts said.

  “Same here.”

  Bazeco was a slender brunette woman on the tallish side in a dark power suit that looked to Seguin like something his son’s second grade teacher wore. Splayed in front of her on the table were large hands that seemed better suited for Roberts than their owner. She said nothing, but kept her eyes on Seguin.

  “How you doing, Seguin?” Haller rose to shake his hand.

  “Fine. How are things over at Rampart?” Seguin responded, returning the handshake.

  “The usual. Wife kills boyfriend with knife in head, drive-bys at the Tommys burger stand and more crack floating around than icebergs in Alaska.” Haller smiled warmly. He was medium height, thick in the middle and bore a scar down the vertical center of his nose. Unlike a lot of cops, Seguin recalled, Haller had been to college and was fond of displaying a certain wry perspective about the job. He and Bazeco were white.

  “I’m special agent Keys and this is special agent Diaz.” Keys, white, was youngish and dressed better than other FBI agents Seguin had met. He wore tortoiseshell glasses, ostentatious jade cuff links and a red pocket square that offset his royal blue suit. Keys was a hybrid of a lounge singer and an accountant

  Diaz was lighter than Seguin, younger, and wide in the shoulders, slim in the hips. He maintained a crew cut, and he sat ramrod straight. The Chicano version of the stick-up-the-ass federale, Seguin concluded. Diaz’s mouth shaped itself into a slight smirk for Seguin’s benefit, then returned to a straight line.

  Chief Williams, the first black chief of the LAPD, said, “You’ve all read the report on Bong Kim Suh. To put it quite simply, the heat is on for us to solve this murder. And I’m not implying this office responds to political pressure, but I am saying that it’s incumbent upon us to do what we can to make sure the healing process in this city proceeds smoothly. And a high-profile crime like this, which has the attention of a lot of interested parties, deserves our best effort.”

  “I’d like to add,” Keys began, “that the FBI has an interest in this case not just from the standpoint that it might be a hate crime, but also from the gang angle. As you may know, the Director, in the wake of Democracy’s destruction of the Evil Empire, has redirected some of us to deal with this scourge that plagues our urban centers.”

  Idly, Seguin wondered what white suburb Key
s lived in. “Are you saying Suh was killed by gang members? Because the MO certainly doesn’t suggest that.”

  “I realize that, Lieutenant Seguin. But it is the Bureau’s opinion that the gangs, particularly the Rolling Daltons who operate in the Mid-City part of town, are making moves to consolidate their power and corner the crack distribution market.”

  “So what does that have to do with killing Suh?” Haller asked.

  Keys said, “Suh’s market was located on Pico and Hauser, smack in the middle of the Rimpau Avenue Rolling Daltons territory. The set we believe to be the kingpins in this situation.”

  “And Suh?” Bazeco asked.

  “We’ll know that when we find Conrad James, the brother who worked for Suh,” Diaz said.

  Roberts’ hooded lids opened slightly as he swiveled his head in the direction of Diaz. “What do you mean, man?” The voice was a rusty blade scraped across stone.

  “What we mean is that Conrad James’ cousin is one Antoine ‘Crosshairs’ Sawyer, the reputed leader of the Rimpau Avenue set,” Keys replied in his controlled fashion. “At the time of Mr. Suh’s disappearance, Sawyer too became scarce. Maybe it’s coincidence, maybe it’s more. But that’s what we need to find out.”

  Seguin said, “I don’t know about that, Agent Keys. That’s also the time some of these gangbangers came together to form the truce. Way I understand it, this Sawyer is one of the ones who helped get it going. A lot of those guys were laying low during the riots.

  “Besides, the liquor store that Suh had is still there. It’s being run by another Korean family. If he was killed because the Daltons wanted to control his store, say as an outlet, then I gotta believe that the folks there now were put in place by the gang. And I seriously doubt that.”

  “In the last two years, the Bureau has tracked several smuggling operations that had direct ties with the Daltons. This truce is just a smokescreen to gain the goodwill of opportunistic politicians and headline-grabbing con merchants. The fact remains that both Sawyer and James have become scarce. A gangster is always a gangster.”