Riptide

eighteen

Jennifer was running late. She’d spent too much time online hunting down details on the Devil’s Henchman. The Web archives of the L.A. Times didn’t go back that far, and there was little information elsewhere. One site had a brief review of the crimes, specifying the number of victims-four, all female-and the condition of the bodies. Reading the summary, she thought of Mary Kelly and Carrie Brown.

On her way to the high school, she stopped at Richard’s apartment. He wasn’t there. On the stairs she ran into the manager, who informed her that her brother hadn’t been seen all day. “Good fuckin’ riddance. And he still hasn’t paid his rent, okay?”

She was starting to fear he had disappeared. He might have been scared off by her visit yesterday, when she told him there was damage to the cellar. Of course she’d said nothing about the bodies, and she hadn’t even known about the diary at the time.

But he might have known. If the family papers mentioned the crypt and the diary, Richard might have guessed that the earthquake would open up the weakest part of the cellar wall, the rebuilt section, exposing the bones and the book. He’d even mentioned a body in the cellar, though she had chalked it up to coincidence.

She wasn’t sure it was a coincidence anymore.

At six-thirty she arrived at the Venice High School gym. The meeting had been in progress for a half hour. She took a seat near the door.

More than a hundred people were seated in the bleachers. On a low, wheeled dais parked in the middle of the basketball court, a stout black woman who was Sandra Price paced and gesticulated. Her voice was loud enough to fill the hall without amplification.

“We are talking three homicides in the last eighteen months, people. Three cases still outstanding. No suspects, no persons of interest. Now I’m asking you, if there were three murders in Bel Air or Pacific Palisades, and they were still unsolved after all this time, don’t you think you’d be hearing about it?”

The audience erupted in whoops and yells. A chorus of churchgoers released a volley of amens.

Many attendees were teens, wearing gangsta garb, their faces sullen and hostile. The older people looked like aging hippies, with long gray hair, granny glasses and Che Guevara T-shirts. The sickly sweet aroma of pot wafted down from the higher tiers. At the far end of the bleachers, one solitary figure in a hooded sweatshirt sat silently, rocking back and forth.

“You know we would.” Sandra’s gaze swept the stands. “It would be on the local news, on talk radio, in the paper-everywhere. And the police would be doing something about it. But when it’s Dogtown or Skate Town or Ghost Town, no one cares. Everyone looks the other way. It’s someone else’s problem. The police don’t allocate the resources. They don’t prioritize us. They don’t give us what we need.”

Heads bobbed in agreement. Applause popped like firecrackers. Above the dais big flying bugs whirled among the lights.

“We had an earthquake and it was on the news night and day, every channel. You know how many people died? Zero. Not one single person. But when people are getting murdered around here, it doesn’t make the news…”

Behind her, Jennifer heard a husky baritone say quietly, “Check her out.”

“Tight little ass. But I can’t see her face. Could be a skank.”

“So? Do her doggy style. If she be fugly, you ain’t gotta look.”

With a start she realized they were talking about her. She flashed on a memory of San Francisco-the rainswept streets, the dark underpass, the faceless stranger throwing her down-

Slowly she crossed her legs.

“See that, bro? She’s covering up. She don’t want you poking around in her snatch.”

The two of them laughed.

“So that’s where we are, people.” Sandra was winding up a long harangue. “Too poor to get protection, too middle-class to attract any media attention.”

On cue, a bored photographer clicked off a few flash photos. He seemed to be the only member of the press in attendance.

“We’re not as sexy as Rampart or South-Central, and away from the canal district we’re sure as hell not as affluent as Westwood and Los Feliz.”

One of the creeps behind her started touching Jennifer’s hair. She jerked her head away.

“We get lost in the shuffle. And that’s why we need to get together as a community and take action, put pressure on the authorities, make our voices heard.”

She stopped, giving the audience a chance to be heard right now. More amens blew through the room. A tall man in gray dreadlocks raised a fist and yelled, “Right on!” The sweatshirted figure rocked faster.

Someone was touching Jennifer’s hair again. She whirled to face him. “Quit it, asshole,” she hissed.

The guy and his friend couldn’t be older than seventeen. They laughed at her-stupid, giggly laughter-but at least the hand was withdrawn.

“All right, then. Now I know we want to be fair and balanced, as a certain right-wing news operation says”-boos from the crowd-“so I’ve invited representatives of the LAPD’s Pacific Area station to address these issues. Two officers have kindly consented to join us. Sergeant Casey Wilkes and Detective Roy Draper, please come on down and face the music.”

She said it with a humorous flourish that drew a few halfhearted chuckles, sounding like dry coughs. The rest of the crowd was unnervingly quiet.

Jennifer’s own relief surprised her. It felt good to have allies in the room.

Casey and Draper stood up from the front row of bleachers and made their way to the stage. From her vantage point she hadn’t seen them, but it made sense that they would be here. Casey, as watch commander, often pulled public-relations duty. And Draper was a homicide cop.

She wished the crowd hadn’t fallen so silent, though.

Casey, in uniform, was first to speak. He observed that police resources were stretched thin all over, which was why residents of affluent communities like Bel Air typically hired private security patrols.

“We ain’t rich enough for rent-a-cops, so we’re outta luck?” The shout came from one of the two guys directly behind her.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Casey answered.

“It’s what you’re thinkin’, man.”

“You cops don’t give a shit about us,” his friend chimed in. “You don’t even live in the neighborhood.”

Someone from the top row called out, “They live in Simi Valley with all the other fascists!”

“How ’bout it, Porky,” yelled the first guy, the one who’d touched her hair, “you live in these parts?”

His friend echoed the question. “Yeah, Porky, what say you? Huh? What say you?”

The word “Porky” excited the other malcontents scattered throughout the audience. They started to chant the word. Casey shifted his weight, his face reddening.

“Porky… Porky… Porky…”

The hippies were getting into it, too. For them it would always be 1968.

Sandra waved her arms as if semaphoring. “Let the officer speak.” Her plea quieted the crowd for the moment.

Casey cited the department’s COMPSTAT figures to explain that violent crime rates had actually declined in Pacific Area. A woman with a reedy voice shrieked that the cops were cooking the books. She’d seen an article about it in the L.A. Reader.

“No one is fudging any numbers,” Casey said. “Our area commanders are just as concerned about safety as you are. They’ve seen a significant, ongoing downtrend in crimes across the board, especially violent crimes-”

The pair behind Jennifer started stamping on the bleachers.

“No way, man, my nephew was shot just last week!”

“Cops want us shot! More of us get killed, easier it is for white folks to move in and take over!”

“What d’ya say ’bout that, Porky?”

“Porky… Porky… Porky…”

Casey gave up and yielded the floor to Draper, who didn’t look happy about it.

Draper was smart enough not to compete with the crowd. He stood facing them in cold silence until the commotion died away. In the unflattering overhead light his face looked more sallow than usual, his eyes lost in dark hollows. He seemed to unman the noisier elements of the audience.

“Sandra Price is right,” he began, speaking softly enough that people were obliged to stay quiet if they wanted to hear. “There are three unsolved homicides in this division. The most recent was on Centinela Avenue in Mar Vista. That one happened on Monday night.”

He was talking about the Diaz killing. Jennifer thought of the bloated tongue, the bloodshot eyes.

“The other two occurred seven months and eighteen months ago, respectively. We believe they were so-called stranger homicides, meaning the victims didn’t know their assailants. Those are the most difficult cases to clear. In the same time period we’ve had three other homicides in Pacific Area, and solved them all. We-”

“You didn’t solve nothing!” screamed someone in the top row. “You rigged them scenes. You put cases on them people!”

“You framed those brothers!” another man shouted.

Instantly the kids behind Jennifer were on their feet, shouting, “Frame, frame, frame!” They stamped on the bench where she was seated, their heavy sneakers slamming down on both sides of her. “Frame, frame, frame!”

Chaos rippled through the stands. Other chants broke out, a babble of slogans competing with each other. The man in gray dreadlocks repeated his war cry: “Right on!” The sweatshirted figure swayed frantically, clutching his knees.

Jennifer eyed the exit, estimating her distance to the door. She wasn’t sure she dared leave. The men behind her might follow. She could be safer in here…unless a riot broke out…

Above the hubbub rose a long earsplitting shriek: “An-ar-chy!!!”

The shrieker was a young woman strategically positioned in the middle row, directly opposite the dais, who rose to her feet and unzipped her nylon jacket. She wore nothing underneath. Her bare breasts, several sizes too large for her, sprang into view. She shrugged off the jacket, let it fall, and stood topless, arms raised. “An-ar-chy! An-ar-chy!!!”

The crowd burst into whistles and hoots. The photographer, no longer bored, snapped off a rapid series of shots.

Lady Godiva had made the scene.

Draper and Casey exchanged a glance, shrugged, and walked off the dais and out of the room with as much dignity as possible. As Casey passed Jennifer’s seat, he nodded to her almost imperceptibly. Draper didn’t look her way at all. Then they were out the door, pursued by the topless anarchist’s screams.

Jennifer knew why they hadn’t openly acknowledged her. In this crowd it wasn’t safe to be pegged as a friend of the police.

With the enemy no longer in the building, the protesters lost their enthusiasm. Sandra Price had given up trying to speak. She looked sad and disgusted.

Jennifer felt likewise. And for the first time in a long while, she didn’t feel good about living in Venice.