Death Walks Skid Row Read online

Charlie Grosvenor logged off and got up from the chair.

  “Let’s go to the café,” Ramona said, walking ahead of him to the escalator, which took them to the main level.

  Located near the Flower Street entrance, the Book Ends Café was rarely full, so getting a table was easy. Charlie planned on ordering nothing more than an orange juice, but the Chinese food chain that was part of the café smelled so good, he ended up adding a plate of vegetable egg rolls onto the bill. Ramona ordered a cup of tea which she sweetened with honey, and a fruit bowl. At the cash register, Charlie pulled out a twenty and said, “My treat.”

  Ramona started to laugh loudly.

  “What’s so funny?” Charlie asked.

  ‘I can’t even get a date with a real homeless guy’, she remembered telling Danny at dinner the night before. Now she had one.

  “I’ll tell you later,” she said. “It’s personal.”

  They carried their trays to a table by the window and sat down.

  “I’m willing to bet you’re not going to tell me why you have money and live in an apartment while only pretending to be a bum, are you?” she asked.

  If you really were willing to bet, you might know, Charlie thought, but simply said, “And you’d win. The truth is, I’d appreciate you’re not telling anyone else where I live and what you’ve seen me do today. I’m not doing anything illegal, if that’s what you’re thinking, but I do have my reasons for continuing to play the part of a streeter. Which I was for a long time, by the way.”

  “At least tell me what should I call you,” she said. “The Governor sounds too official.”

  “Call me Charlie. Just Charlie is fine if I can call you Ramona.”

  “Please. So, why are you looking for Danny Speakman?”

  “You first.”

  “Because I like to know who I’m dealing with.” She gave a brief recount of their meeting at the press conference, and his disappearance when the police arrived. “Call it reporter’s instinct if you want. Your turn now.”

  “The police are looking for him in connection with the murder of a fellow I knew on Skid Row.”

  “Oh, my god. How do they think he’s involved?”

  “They don’t know. I think they want to talk to him because he doesn’t really belong on the streets, so that makes him a person of interest. But I can’t really figure this thing out, because there’s another kid on the street who doesn’t belong there, either. He calls himself Aspen, like the town in Colorado, and he claims to be doing research for something, but he won’t tell me what.”

  “Research. Like for a magazine article, maybe?”

  “I don’t know. He wouldn’t say.”

  “Could the guy you know as Aspen and the one I know as Danny be the same guy?”

  Charlie shook his head. “The detective on the case showed me a sketch of Speakman, and it looked nothing like Aspen. Besides, the detective already met Aspen because he discovered one of the bodies.”

  “Oh, god,” Ramona said, as a half-dozen disparate facts all came together in her mind like a multi-car collision. “Is Aspen by any chance tall, well-built, blond, and blue-eyed?”

  “Yeaaaaah,” Charlie drawled. “But he wasn’t the guy in that sketch.”

  “I’m starting to think that was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done,” she said, going on to explain the trick she had pulled on the police and the sketch artist.

  “I don’t know all you’ve done, Ramona,” Charlie said, dipping a hot egg roll into sweet-and-sour sauce, “but I’d have to agree with you. That was pretty damn dumb.”

  “It seemed funny at the time, and we’d just broken up … why am I trying to defend myself? It was dumb. What do you know about Aspen?”

  “I didn’t even know the boy’s name was Danny Speakman, or that he was a journalist. You seem to be the one who knows him.”

  “For what it’s worth, he likes you,” she said. “He mentioned you to me. That’s why I sought you out.”

  “And followed me across Downtown L.A.”

  “Danny doesn’t know anything about that. I did that on my own initiative. I am an investigative reporter, you know.”

  “Maybe you should be investigating why anyone would want to murder ol’ Jim,” Charlie said.

  “Fine. I will. With your help.”

  “My help?”

  “Look, if what Danny said is true, you know everybody down there. You’re one of them. At least you let people think you are.”

  “Honey, if you think you can trick me into letting you in on my secret, you can forget it. But I don’t want you investigating me, so I’ll tell you this much. I’m now in a position to help those down on the Row. I wasn’t always, Lord knows, but I am now. You don’t need to know how. The thing is, I don’t believe in the approach the politicians like to throw around, that trickle-down business where the money’s all supposed to rain down from the top. What I believe in is the bubble-up system where you help the people from the bottom, and hope they start to rise up on their own. And if they can’t, for whatever reason, at least you’ve done something to make their lives just a little bit easier.”

  “The streetwise Socialist, that’s you,” she replied.

  “Label it whatever you want. I don’t care about labels except those on cans of beans or tinned meat.” Charlie dunked another egg roll into sauce and popped it into his mouth.

  “Would you mind if I ask your opinion of the Phoenix Terrace project?” Ramona asked.

  Once he had swallowed, Charlie said, “That thing they’re planning to build on Skid Row? Well, look, Ramona, somebody’s going to spend a ton of money to put that sucker up, and when it’s done, it’s not going to help a single person who lives down there. In fact, we’ll probably all be gone. The money people are only going to want the well-offs living there, and the well-offs aren’t going to want to be reminded that they’re spending a fortune to live on Skid Row. I don’t yet know how they’re planning on getting rid of all of us, but you can bet they’re planning it.”

  “Oh, lord,” Ramona uttered.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Do you think it’s possible that the death of the street man is an example of the way the developers are planning to get rid of all of you?”

  As possible as a homeless black man winning millions in the lotto, Charlie thought.

  “I sure hope not,” he said. “Though it is funny how that detective keeps coming around. Streeters have turned up dead in the past, but then the cops would show up, take ’em away, and that was that. But Knight is actually working the case. What does that imply to you?”

  “Maybe that Jimmy is, or was, somebody important?” Ramona offered.

  “Or maybe he wasn’t the only one who was murdered. Maybe there’s been more bodies that turned up. Do you have any contacts in the police department, being a reporter, and all?”

  “I have some contacts who have contacts,” she replied. “What do you want me to find out?”

  “Any information they might have discovered about Jim. Don’t let on that we suspect there’s some kind of serial killer running around on the Row.”

  “I can look into that. What do you plan to do?”

  “Well, see if anybody knows anything more about Jimmy, I guess. And if I happen to run into Aspen in the process, I’ll definitely try to find out what he’s up to. How can I get in touch with you?”

  Ramona pulled out a business card and wrote her cell phone number on the back. “Very few people have this number,” she said, “so I’d appreciate you protecting it.”

  Charlie nodded and asked, “You got another one of those?”

  Ramona handed him a second card, and taking her pen, he wrote a number on the back. “That’s my home number. I don’t have a cell. There’s a machine on it where you can leave messages if I’m not there, which I probably won’t be.” Before handing it back to her, he held it up. “If you could memorize this number and then destroy this card, I’d appreciate it.”

  “All rig
ht.”

  Charlie rose and carried his tray to the trashcan, where he dumped the disposables before setting it on top. Ramona followed him.

  “Since I parked my car by your apartment,” she said, “I have to take the bus back with you.”

  “Actually, I think I’m going to walk back. Walk off those egg rolls. Since you pointed out that you recognized me by my gait, all I have to do is change it.”

  Charlie stooped himself over a little and took slower steps.

  “All right. Thanks for lunch.”

  “Keep in touch.”

  They exited the library.

  The man who had been sitting on a bench outside of the café pretending to read a book, who had ridden on the same bus with them to the library, watched them leave. After a few seconds, he left the book on the bench, got up, and casually followed.

  At Flower Street they split up, each going in a different direction. That hardly mattered, since the old jig, whoever he was, was of no concern to him.

  Gunnar Fesche’s focus was solely on the woman. She was the one to be tailed.

  She was the one to be silenced.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Governor was back on the street within two hours and looking far better than usual.

  He also had a new sense of purpose, one that went beyond his usual goal of trying to help the people around him without being caught at it.

  He felt it was up to him to figure out exactly what had happened to Jimmy Doe because he knew the streets in ways no policeman or reporter ever could.

  “Whoa,” the street man who called himself Calvin shouted to him.

  Calvin was probably under fifty, though his tanned face was lined from squinting in the bright sunlight, and his thick, sweeping hair (which looked like it was stolen from a 19th century president) was steely gray. Calvin claimed to have been a standup comedian before hitting bottom, and who knew? Maybe he had been.

  “What happened to you, man?” asked Calvin, who wore a heavy, soiled trench coat even in ninety degree heat.

  “What do you mean?” the Governor replied.

  “You look like you’re going out on a date, bro. You run through a carwash or somethin’?”

  “I got my quarterly delousing at the mission, if you must know,” the governor lied. “New set of used clothes, too. Should be good for another year. Maybe you should go there, the Corpus Christi Mission on San Pedro. Get a hot shower and a meal.”

  “Nahhhh,” Calvin drawled. “I don’t like those places that feed you so much Jesus you don’t have any room left for the Spam.”

  “Can’t force you to go, but it’s there. I used to go there sometime with Jimmy.”

  “Little Jimmy? With the wonky eye?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Haven’t seen him in a while.”

  “You won’t see him again, either. He’s dead.”

  “No shit.”

  “Stabbed. A new kid found him in an alley. Kid called Aspen.”

  “I don’t know any Aspen.”

  “How well did you know Jimmy?”

  “As well as I know anybody, I guess,” Calvin said. “Why’re you asking?”

  This is what the Governor had been wary of, coming off like an interrogator. Play it cool and casual, he thought.

  “I’d like to find out who he is, is all. He’s down on Mission Road listed as John Doe, and that’s the way he’ll stay until someone can identify him. I think he at least deserves to have a name even though it won’t do him no good anymore.”

  “A name,” the other man muttered. Then he shouted: “Calvin Bennett Glore!”

  “What?”

  “Calvin Bennett Glore. That’s me. That’s my name. If something happens to me, now you know. Calvin Bennett Glore. Used to work under the name Cal Bennett. Cal Bennett tonight at The Improv. Did television, too, till I had to take a powder.”

  Calvin started laughing uproariously revealing a toothless grin.

  “Had to take a white powder! Mounds of it! Had to have it. We all did back then. That’s the way television worked. Book a show, have some blow. Say a line, do a line. Snort the powder, read it louder. Now you’re broke, steal your coke. When the lines go away, dad, you’re dead in L.A.”

  Calvin laughed again.

  The Governor hoped this wasn’t his club act.

  “Jimmy was one of them, you know,” Calvin went on.

  “Them who?”

  “Bibley people. Selling God – like there really was some big, damn, bearded bozo up there who really gave a crap about anyone down here. I’m going to tell you something, Governor. If there really is a God, and he allows people to live the way we do without doing anything about it to help us, then he’d better find another line of work cause he sucks big green ones at being God.”

  The Governor was in no mood to argue one way or the other, but he was puzzled. He had been around Jimmy for years and had never heard him spout the gospel. “Why do you say he was … what did you call it … Bibley?”

  “Cause he had a damn Bible!” Calvin shouted. “He found out I was a performer and he asked me if I’d read it to him. He said he was having problems with his good eye, too, and it was getting hard for him to read, but if I was used to delivering lines, I’d be good at it. I told him to go to hell, that the only jokes I tell are the ones I write myself.”

  “That was perhaps a little harsh,” the Governor said, gently.

  “It was perhaps a little true,” Calvin replied. “I told him to ask God to read it to him himself, since he’d know how to pronounce all the names. Then I threw the book back at him. He acted like I’d thrown a Ming vase, and actually dove to catch it like some little pocket Bible was the most valuable thing in the world. Then he went away. Say, Governor, all this talking’s made me thirsty. You got any extra on you I could have?”

  “For some bottled water, you mean?”

  Calvin laughed like he’d heard the world’s funniest joke.

  “I think I got something, hold on.”

  Charlie reached into his pocket, and then said, “Aw, dang … my cash was in the pants I left at the mission when I got these new clothes. They probably burnt it by now.”

  “Ohhh …!” Calvin wailed. “How stupid can you be, man?”

  “Memory starts goin’ by my age. You’ll find out.”

  After slurring a bouquet of epithets, Calvin lurched away and went down the street, shouting at nothing.

  Maybe he’ll actually go to the mission to look for it, the governor thought, knowing he wouldn’t find anything. The whole story of the mission was, of course, a lie. The truth was Charlie Grosvenor had shoved a roll of singles in his pocket before leaving his apartment, a few of which he easily could have peeled off for Calvin Bennett Glore, aka Cal Bennett.

  But he hadn’t liked the guy’s act well enough to buy him drinks.

  Charlie stopped worrying about the one-time comedian and instead turned his thoughts to Jimmy’s Bible. If Calvin’s description of Jim’s reaction to its having been cavalierly thrown around was accurate, that book held great importance for the little man. Or else it held something inside. Maybe Jimmy had stuck money between the pages and used it for a bank. But if that was the case, he wouldn’t have asked someone to go through and read it to him. And Calvin had likely been right again by assessing it as a giveaway. Complete Bibles were handed out on the Row like candidate buttons at a campaign rally. A streeter might have a hard time convincing someone to stake them a Big Mac combo, but you could always acquire a holy book.

  So what made this particular one of Jimmy’s so important?

  “There was personal information in it,” Charlie told himself.

  Surely somebody on Skid Row knew Jimmy well enough to know where he bunked at night, whether it was in a flop house, a mission, a tent or just a box somewhere. He had to find out who, but he had to do it without inspiring suspicion in people who were already prone to paranoia.

  Charlie tried to think, quickly concluding his brain worke
d a little better in the shade. Stepping around to the lee side of a run-down storefront church on Sixth Street, he sat in the relative cool and forced his brain to work in uncharted areas.

  Where had he seen Jimmy most frequently?

  The mission, but that didn’t mean he squatted near there.

  Who had he seen Jimmy with most often?

  Charlie admitted to himself he had never really kept track. Jimmy was simply one among many down here who he considered his charges.

  If Jimmy really was, as Calvin had put it, “Bibley,” is there anyone else on the Row similarly religious?

  Charlie had rarely heard the word God’ on the streets without ‘damn’, or something worse, following.

  This Sherlock Homeless stuff isn’t as easy as it sounds. Then he laughed at his own joke.

  And a moment later, it hit him.

  He had been approaching things from the wrong direction. The question he should be asking himself is why Jimmy’s body was found where it was. Was there a significance to that alley for the little man?

  Charlie headed out through the hot sun to the place where Aspen had found Jimmy, passing only a few streeters, huddled like piles of old laundry in doorways. Cars crept by on Sixth Street (traffic made zooming impossible in Downtown L.A.), their drivers working hard to keep from looking at the people on the sidewalks or shuffling across the street sometimes against the light. When he got to the alley, he turned into it and began to inspect it, finding little but piles of trash. It looked no different from when Jimmy’s body had been found days ago.

  He kept walking, going deeper into the alley.

  Then he discovered what he had never known existed.

  At the end of the alley was a vacant lot, impossible to see from the street entrance, which was a virtual campground of large cardboard boxes and ratty one-person tents. Had Jimmy lived in one of these? Had he been killed while trying to protect his ‘home’ and property? Both were certainly possible.

  But how had he missed the fact that this hidden ‘neighborhood’ existed?

  “You gettin’ too damn old for this,” he muttered to himself.

  As he approached the homesteads, he noticed several pairs of feet sticking out from them. The ones that had metal carts or empty baby carriages shoved up against them were most likely uninhabited at present. A small dog emerged from one box, looked warily at Charlie, but then wagged his tail and ran to him when he knelt down. Scratching and petting the dog was probably going to load both he and his fresh clothes with fleas, but what the hell? He’d had fleas before. He had a means of washing them away; the pooch didn’t.