Harbor Nocturne (5 page)

“I’ll make my mental list now,” Britney said.

As it turned out, Britney and Nate’s jumper turned out to be a mannequin that some drunken college students had hung out of a hotel window for laughs. The pranksters were gone by the time the police arrived.

FOUR

T
he dispatch hall
of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union was sacred ground for longshoremen, and the dispatcher was a minor deity. Dinko Babich remembered when district attorney investigators, trying to arrest a dispatcher on a warrant, had invaded the hall. A mini-riot ensued when thirty longshoremen surrounded the lawmen, who had to call for LAPD reinforcements. On Friday afternoon, as Dinko pulled up in front of the hall and parked, he began stewing about his thirty-day suspension for drug use on the docks, and regretted that it would be another twenty-two days until he could get back to work.

He couldn’t stand sitting around the house with his mother, and it was even worse when one of his mother’s friends would come to visit for the day and spend half of it trying to persuade him that he needed to attend Narcotics Anonymous meetings because of the suspension, which he thought was ridiculous. He was a recreational pot smoker, not some spun-out tweaker who couldn’t run his own life. If he hadn’t been persuaded to smoke a doob with another longshoreman during their lunch break, he never would’ve been suspended. He’d never said he was perfect.

There was the usual token force of black men outside the hall, sitting at picnic tables, playing cards. These longshoremen did not have the A book, which usually implied connections and was as good as gold. With that book a longshoreman could sometimes work a six-hour shift and take a two-hour lunch break at the end of the shift, arriving home before the wife had even started cooking.

Dinko figured there was no use asking the guys outside the hall if they had any grow. The blacks mostly smoked rock. They could buy a piece of rock for five or ten dollars, or even a tiny chip for as little as two bucks. They liked to fire up a cookie of rock and shatter it into pieces. The Mexican rock was more like a tortilla, and they’d cut it thin with a razor blade until it resembled a communion wafer, but that wafer offered a very short trip to heaven with lots of purgatory to follow. Dinko did not trust rock. He’d seen too many crackheads get hooked behind it.

Today’s young longshoremen mostly smoked crystal, and Dinko was a third-generation longshoreman, but powerhouse medicinal weed was his drug of choice, along with any decent Scotch. Crystal meth, particularly the really good ice that was popular on the docks these days, was an unpredictable drug. He’d seen guys freaking and twitching and sweating when they’d come unspooled on meth. Those guys could get you hurt on the job, and he’d seen several get sent home when it was obvious they were all tweaked out. He’d heard of a longshoreman who, while spun out on ice, had chewed a hole in his own arm, clear to the bone, “to get the demons out.” Dinko had been told that while the paramedics were driving the guy to Harbor General Hospital, he’d perfectly mimicked the radio transmissions, including the static.

When he didn’t find anybody around the hall from whom he could score, he decided to go looking where he’d made some connections with street dealers over the years. That territory belonged to the West Side Wilmas, the rivals of the East Side Wilmas. The commercial streets had lots of bargain shops and discount stores. Signs announced, “Food 4 Less” and “Checks Cashed Here.” He saw that the car wash had at least twenty young people out there flagging down motorists, trying to raise money for a street gangster who’d been shot and killed by some other banger. An enlarged photo of the guy had been mounted on an easel, with pots of flowers placed on the asphalt in front of it.

There were gang tags on every corner, on street signs and on walls, with arrows pointing up or down to mark the territory. Many of the tags said “WW,” for West Side Wilmas, and the recent news reports Dinko had read claimed there were eleven local Latino and black street gangs, with twenty-five hundred crew members, in Wilmington, Harbor City, and San Pedro. Dinko’s late father had always railed about third-generation gang members being hired as longshoremen. While the homeboys were busy working on the waterfront, San Pedro and other local areas were quiet, but on weekends, when they were back with their homies, the shootings and other violence would rage.

Dinko had heard LAPD cops say that the longshoremen had the biggest gang in Pedro, but they were wrong. It was obvious to Dinko that true gang loyalty to the WW trumped job loyalty to the ILWU. His father used to wonder how this was seen by the politicians who maintained that good employment opportunities would solve the street gang epidemic in the Latino and black communities.

Dinko drove past Saints Peter and Paul, the old Catholic church with the tall bell tower that claimed 1865 as the founding date. His grandfather had told him that he remembered when almost the entire congregation was composed of people he knew. Now there was nobody Dinko knew on any of the street corners, or by the liquor stores, or in any of the other locations where he hoped to spot somebody familiar who might have weed to sell.

As a last resort, Dinko decided to try the strip bars in the industrial area of Wilmington where the independent truckers hung out, most of them Latinos and lots of them crackheads. He wasn’t comfortable entering a low-life strip bar even in broad daylight, but he felt he had a good chance of finding some weed like Silver Haze, which sometimes got sold in medical marijuana dispensaries.

When he got to the first strip bar he saw that the outside looked crappier than usual, if that was possible. The joint featured nude strippers, but because of that it could not legally serve alcohol. Every time Dinko had been there at night he’d found longshoremen he recognized, along with truckers and college kids from Long Beach looking for hookers. The strippers he’d seen there were Latino and black, and once he’d seen a Samoan. The girls were either tweakers or crackheads and appeared toasted while they danced.

Dinko saw that somebody had just tagged the building with an array of symbols and initials, meaningful only to the tagger, as well as other barrio bullshit in Spanish and English—all of it misspelled, of course. For that reason alone he pulled up in front of the one farther down the road that featured topless dancers in G-strings and was allowed to serve alcoholic beverages. Dinko parked, locked the Jeep, and went inside, hoping to find someone, anyone, who might have some decent grow.

The last time he’d been here, Dinko had bought some pot from a car mechanic who worked in one of the many chop shops and wrecking yards in the area. Wilmington had a subculture of junkyards crammed right next to residential properties, as though no one had ever written or enforced zoning ordinances. And in this old part of Los Angeles, it was even possible to find obscure roads that had never been paved.

He stood in the doorway for a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dark, and was surprised by what a good business the titty bar was doing, even though it was even seedier than he’d remembered. There were plenty of “border brothers,” Mexican nationals in cowboy hats, boots, and hand-tooled leather belts with silver-and-turquoise buckles as big as a fist. And there were other Latinos who Dinko figured for undocumented gardeners and wrecking yard employees, drinking at the bar and flirting with the B-girls, who nearly outnumbered the customers. At least a dozen truckers were sitting around the stage, as well as maybe ten other guys, whom he figured for longshoremen, but he recognized nobody he knew.

He watched the listless, overweight black stripper onstage come close to a violation by simulating a crotch grind into the face of a customer. The stripper and the manager could be cited if there was an undercover vice cop in the place or an agent from the Department of Alcohol Beverage Control. Both vice cops and ABC agents often checked out the many saloons in the Avalon Corridor, and he’d seen plenty of citations given out in the bars around Pedro during the ten years he’d been old enough to drink in them.

Dinko ordered a beer, tipped the chubby white bartender a buck, and turned to scan the room, where he spotted Hector Cozzo, an old classmate from Mary Star of the Sea elementary school, and high school as well. He used to run into Hector occasionally after Hector dropped out in his junior year, but he had not talked to him in at least six years. Hector was fourteen months older than Dinko even though they’d been in the same grade, and he’d been the class clown who got in frequent trouble with the cops at Harbor Station. Even as a fourth-grade kid, Hector had had vulpine features and a sly grin permanently locked in place. You half-expected his irises to be yellow.

Dinko saw that Hector still had a taste for the retro, now comical Al Pacino look from
Scarface:
a big gold watch and rings on both hands, bling that Dinko figured he bought from Mexicans in places like this. He had Here I Am shades on top of his head, and he still wore his black hair in a mullet, short on the top and sides but hanging down over his collar in the back. Some things never changed.

“Yo, mullethead,” Dinko said, sitting down uninvited at the small table near the bar where Hector Cozzo was nursing a bottle of beer. “That haircut is way nineteen nineties. You gotta evolve more.”

“Dinko!” Hector said. “Hey, brother!” They bumped knuckles, and Hector looked genuinely happy to see him, the shorter man’s crooked teeth shaded purple from the stage lighting.

“Where you been hiding out, Hector?” Dinko asked. “I don’t see you around town no more, but I sometimes see your mother and dad when my mom drags me to church for the vigil Mass.”

“I’m cribbed up in Encino,” Hector said. “That’s so I can stay close to all the porn producers. I’m always looking for talent, dawg. They call me Hector the selector.”

They both laughed at that because in high school they’d called him “Hector the pimp,” not just for his flashy clothes but because he’d once shown up at school in a T-shirt that said, “I will pimp you out.” Of course, he’d instantly been sent home for that stunt, and Dinko recalled that Hector had wound up with some minor facial bruising after his father got through with him.

“You musta set your sights low if you’re looking for talent in this joint,” Dinko said, taking a swig from his beer bottle.

“Is this one of your hangs?” Hector asked.

“I’m looking to score some grow, is all,” Dinko said.

“Me, I’m only here to do a little transportation job.” Hector Cozzo gave a deprecatory flip of the hand. “Whadda you do for survival? Still on the docks with the rest of the Slav slobs?”

“There haven’t been Slavs around here since the end of their wars over there,” Dinko said. “We’re strictly Croatians now, or do you get your news sixteen years late?”

“Guess working on the docks is all you
iches
can do,” Hector said, referring to the suffix on the surnames of many Croatians, like Dinko Babich. Hector had always thought that the way the old Slavs did their lettering reminded him of hieroglyphics.

“And how about an enterprising Eye-talian dude like you?” Dinko said. “You found something where you can make more than your old man did back when us iches and you dagos ran the docks together?”

“I ain’t doing too bad,” Hector said. “I got a new red Mercedes parked out there.”

“Yeah, which model? The C-Class?”

“Nope, the SL,” Hector said, and he saw that get Dinko’s full attention. So he lied and added, “And it’s not leased. I own it outright.”

“They start at a hundred grand,” Dinko said. “Did you win a lottery, or what?”

“I ran into some dudes in Hollywood that hire me for miscellaneous work. It pays good.”

From Hector’s coy grin Dinko figured he must be running drugs, so he asked, “You wouldn’t have any Silver Haze or hydro you’d be willing to sell to an old classmate, would you, Hector?”

“Not a chance,” Hector Cozzo said. “I don’t touch weed no more. I do powder cocaine only. And the best booze I can buy to keep my mind clear. You still a Scotch drinker?”

“Yeah, I’m surprised you remember,” Dinko said.

“I remember because I was a Scotch drinker back then. I still like it after a steak, but only eighteen-year-old single malt at nearly two Franklins a bottle. The rest of the time I drink very premium vodka. I got used to it hanging with all the former iron curtain socialists that’re taking over Hollywood.”

“What kinda job you got, Hector?” Dinko asked, and Hector displayed that coy, snaggletoothed grin again.

“I do this and that for some guys who own various businesses in Hollywood. I’m sort of a collector. In fact, they also call me Hector the collector. That’s why I got a crib in the valley, so I can be closer to my work. The drive down the Harbor Freeway to Pedro is a bitch these days.”

“Well, I see you’re not gonna tell me nothing, so I guess I better go look for somebody that’s got some weed.”

When Dinko started to get up, the shorter man grabbed his arm and said, “Don’t go, brother. I got some outstanding vodka in my car. As soon as I finish what I got to do here, I can meet you somewheres and we can get juiced and gas about the old days.”

“Well, I do love a mystery.” Dinko sat back and took another swig from the beer bottle. “Can you at least tell me why a guy that drives an SL is sitting in this shit hole?”

“I’ll be glad to answer that, Dinko,” Hector said. “Because of her.”

He pointed up to the stage, where a stunning new dancer had just replaced the black stripper. She didn’t appear old enough to be lawfully employed there, and she looked like she’d rather be just about anywhere else. Her glossy dark hair tumbled to her shoulders in natural waves, and she had large, wide-set amber eyes. She was slim and rather tall, and she had booty. He figured there was no blanket-ass Indian blood in this girl, so he wondered what she was doing in a Mexican joint. Her silky pale mocha flesh gleamed under the light from the ceiling spots. Dinko couldn’t take his eyes off her.

“So, you like her, Dinko?” Hector asked, with that smug, patronizing grin that was beginning to really irritate Dinko.

“What the hell’s she doing in this dump?” Dinko asked.

“It’s her first week here,” Hector said. “I only heard about her last night and thought I’d come down for a look. I like what I see.” Then he added, “The whole fucking world’s turned nonsmoking on me, even a dive like this. I gotta run outside and grab a cig.”