Bad Intent

Chapter 4

November 6, 1979. Los Angeles (UPI).

Police Officer Wyatt Johnson, age 25, was shot and killed by a thug just after midnight this morning in a Southeast Los Angeles gas station.

Authorities said the off-duty officer, a four-year veteran with the department, was shot five or six times in the head and chest in the station’s restroom.

A witness told authorities that Johnson, who was not in uniform at the time, made a telephone call just before going into the restroom. Moments later, shots were heard and one or two gunmen quickly ran from the station, disappearing into the darkness. Johnson’s wallet was not missing and authorities say they have no motive for the killing.

That was very nearly all the papers had to say about the killing that was at the center of Mike’s new problems. For all the fuss it had stirred, I confess I was disappointed it had been such a low-wattage caper.

I scanned the microfilm and found one follow-up story printed two days later recapping the first story, adding more details about the six wounds Officer Johnson had received, some family background, funeral arrangements, and a reward offer of five thousand dollars from the L.A. County Professional Peace Officers Association for the arrest and conviction of the killer or killers. The police had no leads. The obituary appeared on the third day after the death, listing his wife, Beth, one child, Wyatt, Jr., his mother, and a sister as survivors. And that was all.

I went through the Times microfilm index again, searching through the end of 1979, all of 1980 and 1981. I found no arrest reported, no summation of the trial or announcement of the verdict. Not a single further listing for the dead cop. Nothing.

I had looked up Johnson only because I am nosy and because I was in the microfilm files anyway. My original goal had been finding background information on the father of Etta’s grandson, a convicted murderer named Charles Conklin. It would have been nice if point A, the killing that had set a particular course for the child’s life, had been a recognizable case, something for the viewer to hang his time perspective to, as in, the day Kennedy was shot, where were you? I knew the date he was sentenced, February 1982, but there had been no news stories about Conklin, either. Because I didn’t have Kennedy, or anything even close, I would have to provide the narrative framework myself.

I was in the Encino branch of the county library, alone except for a few old men reading newspapers or dozing by the front windows. The quiet made me feel sleepy.

I went out to the circulation desk to buy a roll of quarters and went back to my microfilm reader and ran copies of the Johnson items. Then I blew the rest of the change on background stories for my project: the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster, American hostages seized in Iran, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, double-digit inflation.

Globally, the late seventies had been one disaster after another. As always. Locally, there was a comforting consistency: Bradley was mayor, Gates was police chief, Baron Marovich was running for office.

Because I had seen Marovich twice already that very day, I turned back to the November 6, 1979, Metro section story about developments in the primary for city attorney. Marovich had been the third man in the race, the play maker. His opponents were charging him with improper fundraising and condemning him for turning a traditionally gentlemanly political exercise into a vile brawl.

Plus ca change my French grandfather would have said: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Marovich’s current campaign had been tagged by the morning paper as a record-breaker in character assassination. His opponent challenged his financial disclosure statements. Same old stuff. Marovich even looked about the same now as he had in the old news photo accompanying the 1979 story, except that his helmet of hair had grown gray and a few new lines marked the corners of his eyes.

I made some notes on the margins of the slick photocopies and filed them away in my bag. I returned the spools of microfilm, stopped for a drink of water, and went back out into the heat.

I was at least two weeks behind on my filming schedule, and with the workload I faced, I knew I was going to fall back another week or two before I finished. I needed help. My knight, as far as work goes, is Guido Patrini, associate professor of film, UCLA.

It was just past three o’clock when I finally found Guido on campus-in a computer lab, begging time from a techno-nerd who had a plastic pocket protector pinned to his tee shirt.

“You’re early,” Guido said to me.

“I was supposed to be here yesterday,” I said.

“So.” He pointed an accusing finger at me. “You did remember.”

I sighed and Guido put his arm around me. It felt so good to have someone hold me up that I let my head rest on his bony shoulder. Guido is about my height, maybe five-seven, a spare frame of a man strung together with sinew. Even his curly black hair seems to have muscle. I think he may be my best friend in the world.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m feeling overwhelmed.”

“Not working out with Mike?” I heard some eagerness in his tone.

“We’re fine, Guido. There is just too much going on in my life right now to keep track of everything.”

“Bet he’s a handful.”

“So are you. Show me what you have.”

We shambled arm in arm across the quiet, shady campus back to his trailer behind the fine arts building where special film projects had been relegated after the last earthquake.

As he opened the trailer door, he said, “It’s a good thing you didn’t come yesterday, because I didn’t have anything for you except a lame excuse. I recut Mrs. Ruiz this morning, dumped all that footage from the visitor room at the jail. I like it now.”

The trailer was cool inside. The fall quarter had not yet begun so the usual mass of puppy-eager film students Guido normally has en train were blessedly absent. It was nice to have Guido all to myself for a change.

I took a bottle of mineral water from the film refrigerator and sat down next to him on a saggy reject of a sofa. He punched a TV monitor remote and Serafina Ruiz’s profile filled the screen: broad nose, high cheekbones, straight black hair pulled into a ponytail.

“He is a good boy,” she was saying, tears filling her dark eyes before she looked down at the beads in her hand.

Guido had pulled the camera back for a two-shot to include my filmed reaction in the frame. Visually, the scene was good. Behind us the windows of the Lincoln Heights jail, just out of focus, were a fuzzy, pale checkerboard of barricaded windows. It was good neutral, angular contrast to Mrs. Ruiz’s round contours, my blue shirt.

Below camera I held the sheaf of booking slips she had given me to look over, a collection that chronicled her son’s activities from the time he was twelve. She kept the booking slips in a kitchen drawer with her market coupons.

“Mrs. Ruiz,” I said, “when did your son Arnulfo join the Eighteenth Street gang set?”

“He don’t belong to no gang. I made Arnulfo promise me he would stay away from those boys. Gangbangers killed his brother.”

I fast-forwarded through the tape, all the stuff about how Arnulfo the altar boy had just refound Jesus and turned his life around and was planning to go back to school. The kid was holy all right. A holy terror. I heard the same story of impending redemption from every delinquent’s mother I talked to.

Close in on the booking slips, my voice reading through them chronologically:

“Age twelve, arrested for curfew violation, out after ten P.M. unsupervised. Malicious mischief, vandalizing public property. Auto theft-joy riding. Possession of a concealed weapon-a knife. Minor in possession of a firearm. Age thirteen, truancy, assault, armed robbery.”

I turned off the tape.

“What?” Guido sat up. “You don’t like it? I think it plays tight.”

“Yeah. It’s tight. It’s great.” I pulled my knees up under my chin and looked at the blank screen as if it might hold some answers to questions that eluded me. It hurt even to think what I was thinking.

“I know how you feel.” Guido put his hot hand on my knee and looked soulfully into my face. “It is awesome, Maggie. Deep. You’ve made a beautiful, sympathetic portrait of this woman. My God, what she has lived through will make every heart bleed.”

I put my hand over his. “If that’s what you’re getting, then I’ve lied to you.”

“Lied?”

“Lied. I have tried, Guido, really tried, but I can’t find a lot of sympathy for Serafina Ruiz. She has one kid in jail, another one’s dead. Her thirteen-year-old daughter is pregnant for the second time. Her youngest is a paraplegic because he ran into the street and got hit by a car-at eleven o’clock at night. Tell me what a toddler was doing out, unsupervised, so late.”

“Hard times,” Guido said, black eyes narrowed at me, warning me there was a correctitude barrier I was about to cross. “Serafina shoulders a heavy load all by herself. It’s a rough neighborhood. Give her credit; she does her best.”

“Really?” I said, challenging him. “Serafina can’t take care of what she already has, but she’s pregnant again. I think her kids should sue her.”

“Maggie?” He was aghast. “Are you in there? Have aliens taken over your mind? Have they done something evil to my hero?”

“I feel taken over. I have listened to so many horror stories.” I got up to pace around the cluttered trailer, tripping over cords and equipment, miscellaneous battered, black-painted stuff. It was all so familiar, my work milieu. The sort of place that had helped me create the big video lie.

I stopped in front of Guido and narrowed my eyes in imitation of him. “Guido, my friend, I offer you a profundity, a cliche: There is nothing easier than bringing a child into the world, and nothing more difficult than raising it well. Trust me. I have one child, and it’s all I can do to keep her safe, keep her on the straight and narrow, because that straight and narrow line is as treacherous and as slender as the edge of a razor. Every day we get through safely I say a little thank you to the fates. And believe me, if it weren’t for all my efforts, and Mike’s, and ballet giving her structure and direction and keeping her occupied, I know we would be in one hell of a mess.”

“You think Serafina should have had one child, like you? Should have had nice middle-class parents and a white-bread education, like you?”

“I think Serafina should have figured out what turned her kids into thieves and murderers, and fixed it. She sheds good tears, Guido. And she breaks my heart. But it takes a hell of a lot more than tears to take care of her children and herself. We are not powerless.”

“I see,” he said.

“Do you?”

“Yeah. I see that my old friend needs some time off. The last two, three years you’ve been working too hard, Mag. Why don’t you put this one aside for a while? Take a break, give yourself a couple of months to settle in, get your perspective tuned up. You’re beginning to sound like that cop you’re living with.”

“I’m on deadline, Guido. No film, no check. No check, no groceries.”

“So?” He looked at me, exasperation giving his olive cheeks color. “Now what?”

“Define the fine line.” I found my bag on the floor and took out Etta’s tape, traded it for Serafina’s in the player, and sat down on the edge of the sofa beside Guido.

“It is my perception,” I said, “that in postapocalypse Los Angeles, gangs are used as a symbol for everything that has gone to shit. Let’s be careful not to hang the gang rap on their mothers. We’ll tone down Serafina-she is so passive-get more from Etta Harkness and women like her. You’ll see why when you meet Etta.”

“Good Housekeeping mother of the year, huh?”

“No. Just one ballsy lady. You’ll like her.”