The Manipulated (Joe Portugal Mysteries) (28 page)

A pear-shaped man with a scraggly ponytail and overalls kicked off yet another chant.
Fuck the pigs! Fuck the pigs!
When no one joined in, he quit it, sat down on a bench, began reading an antique copy of
The Fountainhead
. A seagull joined him and he pointed out a particularly interesting passage to it.

A little boy stood out in the middle of the boardwalk, crying for his mother. A dachshund chased its tail nearby. Its owner kept trying to grab its leash. Finally she did and the dachshund bit her knee.

Someone poked me in the back. I whirled around. It was a fat woman in
101 Dalmatians
pajamas.“You with the news?” she said. “You should see my collection. Fifteen thousand, four hundred and six dalmatians.”

I said, “You must be very proud,” spotted a lane opening up in the mob, and made like a fullback. Within seconds I was at the bottom of Mike’s stairs. I couldn’t see Claudia and I couldn’t see Mike. I could see the camerawoman. Her camera was on the ground and some parts weren’t attached that ought to have been.

A bottle splintered at my feet. I tripped over something and went sprawling. Someone landed on top of me and bounced off. I caught a glimpse of one of the mustachioed cops. He had his gun out and was hollering at people to cease and desist. No one paid him the slightest attention. I have to give the guy credit. He didn’t shoot anyone.

Somebody reached out a hand and helped me up. When I got to my feet I saw it was Carrie. She was yelling at me. I pointed to a mound of writhing people. It seemed as good an answer as any, considering I had no idea what she was saying.

Far away, sirens sounded.

I caught a flash of Mike’s Hawaiian shirt. I jumped over and began pulling people off a pile. Someone jerked on me from behind. I spun around. It was a square-faced man with a crewcut. I punched him in the ear and returned to undoing the pileup. Then Carrie was beside me. She was strong, that babyfaced young woman. She tossed aside a muscular black kid and one of Summer’s Army like they were mannequins. Together we hauled off one of the fattest men I’d ever seen. He made the the uncle at Samantha’s opening look like Tom Thumb. There under him we found Mike and The Detective Sometimes Known As Bitch.

Mike’s legs were still pinned under God knew who. Carrie went after him, and I assigned myself the lady cop. I grabbed her under her arms, jerked her free, tossed her over my shoulder, stepped back. Her jacket was ripped, and she bled profusely from a gash over her eye. I carted her around under the stairs and laid her between a couple of garbage bins. I checked her over as best my limited knowledge of first aid would allow. I knelt, slapped her face half a dozen times, asked if she was all right. Finally I got an answer. “Pookie,” she said.

“On his way,” I said, and looked up. Carrie had Mike free and was helping him limp away. Starsky appeared in their path. He had his gun pointed at the two of them.“Stop right there,” he said.

“Like hell I will,” Carrie said. She tightened her grip around Mike’s waist and tried going around the detective.

“I mean it, lady. Stop or I’ll use this thing.”

She looked him in the eye. “Then either use it or get out of my way and let me get my man to safety.”

The gun wavered. So did Starsky. Then he stuffed the thing under his jacket and got on Mike’s other side, and together they escorted him away from the roiling mob.

I stood and surveyed the carnage. Claudia had managed to break free and was, bless her heart, still relaying events into her mic. Given the state of the equipment—and of her camera person, who stood to one side, grimacing, holding one wrist with the other hand—it appeared unlikely that anything was going out over the airwaves.

Things were suddenly quieter. I looked around. Fewer people. More breaking glass from the direction of the boardwalk. Then more. And shouts and screams and sirens. Somebody nearby was playing an electric guitar with the distortion turned to max. It was either “White Rabbit” or “Amazing Grace.”

Fuck the pigs!
was back, kept going by two old hippies and the little kid who’d been looking for his mother. He had a slice of pizza in his hand and all over his shirt.

I knelt back down to attend to the blond detective. “Freeze,” said someone behind me.

I froze.

“Real slow now, stand up with your hands on top of your head.”

I did.

“Now turn around.”

I did. And found myself face-to-face with Starsky. He didn’t look like a movie star anymore.

“I pulled her out,” I said. “She needs medical attention.”

“Sure, buddy. Now step away from her.”

“She’s bleeding like a—”

“I said step away from her!”

“Fine.” I took two steps to my left. “Happy?”

“Shut up. Now lay down on the ground with your hands behind your back.”

I might have talked my way out of it. But I blew it.“Listen, Pookie, there’s no need to—”

I found myself flat on the sidewalk with my cheek rubbed raw. Something encircled my wrists. I heard a ratcheting sound. One of those plastic cable connectors they used for handcuffs. It tightened beyond comfort. They were going to have to amputate my hands because the tissue would die.

“Hey, buddy,” I said.“Two things. Could you maybe loosen this? And will you please stop fucking with me and go tend to your partner there. She’s badly hurt.” The two requests were contradictory, but if I could get him going on either I’d be ahead of the game.

One of the uniforms appeared. The pretty boy told him to keep an eye on me, and finally went off to check on his partner. I jiggled my hands, pressed the wrists tightly together, managed to reduce the pressure to a bearable level.

“Joe!”

I craned my neck up. Claudia stood there, still clutching her microphone. Her clothing was ripped and her face scratched. One of the sleeves of her jacket was gone. So was one of her shoes.

I opened my mouth to respond, but a new cop grabbed her and hauled her away. They dragged me upright and off to a patrol car and shoved me in the back. They disappointed me. They didn’t push my head down like in the movies.

It was nine hours before the last police personnel left the riot scene in Venice. Nine hours during which dozens of residents were questioned, during which hordes of press and television personnel descended upon the neighborhood, during which legions of pundits analyzed the situation to death and pontificated on the sorry state of society.

What emerged from all the investigation and analysis was this:

Twenty-seven storefront windows along the boardwalk were smashed. But looting was minimal, limited only to pizza, ice cream novelties, and one or two Philly steak sandwiches. Plus thirteen pairs of sneakers which were taken from a tented booth near the center of activity, then mysteriously returned the next day, along with a note that said
i got cauhgt up in things
.

The only unbroken window along the string of smashed glass fronted an establishment called Feed Your Head. This shop sold paraphernalia for drug consumption and appreciation. It was owned by Michael Peter Lennox, fifty-two, whose apprehension for the murder of his son was the spark that set off the event. Mr. Lennox was treated by one of the medical personnel arriving at the scene in the wake of the unrest for a broken finger, a sprained ankle, and a fearsome bruise to the left thigh. He was then driven to LAPD’s Pacific Division, where he was booked on suspicion of murder in the first degree in the death of his son Dennis.

Field reporter Claudia Acuna and cameraperson Felicia Alvarez of KIKB, Los Angeles Channel 6, were charged with inciting to riot for their role in touching off the fracas. The charges were quietly dropped two days later.

Twenty-four-year-old student and bodybuilder Clay Thayer, sixty-one-year-old community activist Harvey “Hemp”Hemphill,and ninety-three-year-old retiree Francois Dulac were booked on disorderly conduct charges. These charges were dropped almost immediately. A fourth man, Ju Daek Kim, was taken into custody, but mysteriously disappeared from police guardianship. “One second he was there, and the next he wasn’t,” reported the police officer who made the arrest.

No death was attributed to the riot. Injuries were light, given the magnitude and intensity of the proceedings. Thirty-six-year-old Patricia Frankfurter was treated at the scene for a dog bite to the knee. Five-year-old Vinnie James got to sit in a police cruiser while his mother, twenty-two-year-old envelope stuffer Stacie James, was rushed to the emergency room at Daniel Freeman Marina Hospital for the removal of a “really hurty” piece of debris from her right eye. Nineteen other citizens were treated on-scene for misfortunes ranging from a broken leg down to a severe paper cut. This last occurred when “Hemp” Hemphill aggressively stuffed an antiwar leaflet into the victim’s hand.

Detective sergeant Mary Ventura, thirty-three, was also taken to Daniel Freeman. She recovered quickly from a blow to the forehead which opened a long, deep, but not particularly dangerous cut, and which caused a mild concussion. After several hours she remembered being dragged from under a pile of bodies by a man in a green shirt. This eventually resulted in the release from custody of fifty-year-old Joseph Portugal of Culver City. Mr. Portugal returned to his home and received aid and succor from his wife, Gina Vela, forty-eight. He then spent several hours trying unsuccessfully to discover the motivation behind the police’s persecution of Michael Peter Lennox and, equally without success, attempting to achieve Mr. Lennox’s release from custody.

I called around some more Sunday morning and into the afternoon. No one at Channel 6 was willing to put me in touch with Claudia Acuna. I couldn’t track down Alberta Burns. I did reach Hector Casillas, a detective I’d butted heads with on a couple of earlier homicides, but he either didn’t know anything or wasn’t telling.

I also got hold of Samantha, who said Carrie had been going through much the same thing I was, discovering only that Mike had been moved, either downtown or to Chatsworth way out in the Valley, depending on who one spoke to.

There was one more person I could call, and as the day went on the itch to do so grew. Gina thought I was crazy to even consider it. She was probably right. In the end it didn’t matter, because he beat me to the punch.

The phone rang at two-thirty. “Hello?”

“Joseph?”

“Dad? Is something wrong?”

“Yes, something is wrong. What is wrong is that my son is a moron.”

“You going to give me one of your be-careful talks?”

“No. It doesn’t do any good, you’re such a schmuck. Now come over here.”

“I’m kind of busy—”

“Come. Now.”

“Dad? Are you all right?”

“Just come.” He hung up on me.

I rang the bell. My father opened it immediately, but instead of letting me in, he came out. He locked the door, checking it twice just like he always did when I was a kid.

I started asking questions. He told me to be quiet. There was something in his tone. I kept my mouth shut.

I walked with him over to Fairfax, down past Beverly, all the way to Farmers Market. I didn’t say anything and neither did he. I hadn’t walked this far with him since …maybe since ever.

We went into Du-Par’s and were seated in a corner booth. We both ordered tea and blueberry pie. Then my father said we had someone else coming, and to bring him the same.

“Who’s coming, Dad?” I thought I knew. The man I’d been thinking of calling earlier.

“You’ll see,” my father said.

“Someone I know?”

“Stop with the questions.”

Uncomfortable silence. I looked out the window. A young Orthodox family went by. Father, mother, a boy, three girls. The mother wore the standard long dress and tennis shoes. One of the girls was skipping. Her mother watched her adoringly.

I looked at my father. “Do you miss Mom?”

His bottom lip puffed out. Then his face relaxed. “Every day.”

“There doesn’t come a day, after thirty-odd years, where you wake up one morning and say, okay, I can move on now?”

“You move on, but you still miss her. Don’t you?”

“I was fifteen when she died. Sometimes I just remember her like I remember my teachers.”

He frowned. Opened his mouth. Shut it.

I said, “Are you disappointed that I never gave you grandchildren?”

“Of course I am.” He watched me. “What did you expect me to say? I see Leonard with his grandchildren, I see Catherine with hers, of course I want some.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Eh. It’s not your fault you didn’t meet the right girl until you were older.”

The pie and tea arrived. A minute later, so did our teatime companion. My suspicion had been correct. It was John Santini.

He sat beside me, said, “Probably didn’t expect to see me again, eh, kid? You want to slide in so I can get the rest of my ass on this seat?” We arranged ourselves. Santini took a bite of pie. “Good stuff.”

“What are you doing here?” I said.

My father smiled. He held out his hand, palm up. “Pay up,” he said.

John Santini shook his head. He leaned to his right, extracted his wallet from his pants, removed a twenty from it. He handed it over to my father.

“What?” I said.

“Your old man thought that would be the first thing out of your mouth. Me, I figured you’d put two and two together. Or at least not ask something so—”

“Trite?”

“I was gonna say stupid.”

“Now that I’ve asked my stupid question, why don’t you answer it?”

“Pushy son of a bitch, aren’t you? Horse, how’d you raise such a pushy bastard? What?”

“You actually called him ‘Horse.’”

“Well, yeah, that’s his name, Harold the Horse.”

“I know that. It’s just, actually hearing my father called ‘Horse,’ it’s kind of surreal.”

“You know why he’s called that?”

“I don’t think I want to.”

“It doesn’t have to do with his prick, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Look, I’d love to hear where my father got his nickname, and I’m sure there’s lots of other stories I’d like to hear you tell, but right now what I really want to hear is the answer to my question.”