Chapter 6

Donny parked the sedan in the parking lot of the little market where it would be out of sight. He and Rose walked the two blocks to the back of the office building they were going to use to watch the gang. It was a rundown neighborhood that had seen better days, but even those days had been in the long forgotten past. They passed a house in which the lawn was littered with used condoms and broken syringes.

The building was just like Dan and Joe had described. There was an employee entrance in the back with stairs leading up to the second floor and then the roof. The door to the roof was closed, but the lock had been busted by Joe, the previous day. It was a simple matter for them to get onto the roof.

The roof was flat with the stairwell and a large air conditioner unit standing up like mesas in the desert. Off to the side was a ladder that led down to the roof of the building next door. That would be how they would have to leave once the office building had been locked up for the night.

The pair moved over to the air conditioner unit and sat down facing the main street with their backs resting against the casing of the A/C unit. Donny put the food they had packed over to the side. They took a moment to study the strip joint. Dan had been right in saying that this location gave a good view of the strip joint.

The building sat at the corner of the main road and a narrow two lane dead-end street. The long front of the building faced the main road and was set back from it by about forty feet. The space between the building and the main road was used as a parking lot. The area had once been covered with asphalt, but time and use had destroyed it to where the asphalt had become little more than chunks of black mixed in with the dirt. There were drums set around the parking lot filled with beer bottles, cans, and litter. A dumpster sat in the back corner of the lot. The broken remains of a neon sign advertising, ‘Girls Girls Girls’, with what might have been a go-go dancer under the words graced the corner. Not enough of the dancer remained to be sure what it had looked like.

The side of the building was set back from the dead-end street by fifteen feet. There was just enough room for three cars to park, a small walkway next to the building, and a sidewalk. The space for the cars was bare dirt, which might have been planted with grass at one time.

The stucco building had seen better days. The main part of the building had been painted a pale green, but the building was dirty enough that it now looked gray. What had once been windows, had been filled in with pale brown bricks. The metal door in the center of the front of the building was painted black. There were signs of bullet holes in the door that had been patched. There was a sign that ran along the top of the building giving the name of the place along with an announcement of full nude girls. One panel of the sign was missing. The metal door facing the side street was painted black.

Looking over the sad tableau below, Rose said, “Dan’s description of the strip club was very accurate.”

“We’ll have to take his word on what’s on the other side and the back,” Donny said. He looked around to see if they would be visible to anyone in the other buildings around them. As near as he could tell, they were on one of the tallest building along the main street.

“I wonder how many women’s lives have been ruined inside that place,” Rose said pointing to the strip club.

Donny shrugged his shoulders before he replied, “I figure that their lives were ruined before they ever got into the building. Going in there just made it official.”

“You’re probably right,” Rose said. She was quiet for a while and then asked, “What do you think of them sending us back home?”

“I don’t like it,” Donny said. “I am angry that those two guys who shot Sonny will get away with it if we don’t do anything about. I can’t even describe how I feel thinking that Sonny is liable to get charged with murder for killing those three men that came to the hospital to kill him.”

“I don’t think they’ll charge Sonny with murder. It was obviously self-defense,” Rose said.

Donny said, “The way that Sonny was talking suggested that self-defense is not a legal excuse out here. I tend to believe him. He did say that he might get away with a defense of impaired judgment due to painkillers. The people out here are crazy if you have to be insane or mentally impaired to defend yourself.”

“I’m sure the people out here aren’t all that bad,” Rose said. She didn’t sound like she actually believed what she was saying.

“Did you see that woman climb all over Dan for smoking in the restaurant this morning? She was foaming at the mouth the whole time she was hitting and scratching him. How was he supposed to know that you can’t smoke after eating a meal in a restaurant in California?” Donny asked. At home, folks sat around after eating breakfast in the local diner talking about crops, work, politics, sports (as in football and baseball), hunting, and fishing. It was one of Donny’s favorite things to do when he went into town. At least a third of the men smoked, while talking. It wouldn’t seem right if they all got up and left to smoke right after eating.

Rose laughed thinking about the scene at the restaurant and said, “I’m a little surprised Joe didn’t shoot her thinking she had rabies.”

“If Calvin hadn’t pulled her off of him, I was ready to put her down,” Donny said. He had never seen anything like it in his entire life. He said, “The whole place was mad at Dan. You would have thought he had been sprayed by a skunk by the looks people were giving him.”

“You’re right about that,” Rose said shaking her head. “Some woman was screaming that Dan was murdering her by smoking.”

“There was that guy who yelled at him when he lit up outside the restaurant,” Donny said shaking his head.

“I guess the guy figured Dan was polluting the air,” Rose said.

“I really don’t think Dan is responsible for the fact that the air stinks here. It smells like rotten eggs, burnt tires, sewage, rotting food, and disease. The people who live here can’t even smell it. They breathe this air every day thinking it’s healthy. They get upset about one little cigarette, and don’t realize that they are getting killed with every breath of the air, here,” Donny said.

Rose said, “I noticed that smell when we first got here. Now I can’t smell it.”

“I know. That’s because the air is dead here. It gets up in your nose and just stays there,” Donny said.

“You get desensitized to it,” Rose said nodding her head.

Donny said, “You can always smell the air back home. It’s alive with scent. Healthy air smells of pine, grass, and animals. I can tell you where I am on my place just by the smell. Each place has a different smell based on what’s there. You can sniff the air with your eyes closed and know where the pond is. You can take another sniff and know where the barn is. When the wind is right, you can smell Mom’s cooking a quarter of a mile away. You can smell the weather in healthy air. You know if it’s going be dry, raining, or snowing that day just by the scent in the morning air.”

“What’s your favorite weather smell?” Rose asked.

“I like the scent of fog. It’s like rain, but it surrounds you closer while filtering out all of the other smells. It smells ... mysterious,” Donny said.

“I like the scent of snow, particularly around Christmas time. I don’t know why I like it around Christmas time and not February. Maybe it’s because most of the other smells have disappeared by February,” Rose said.

Smiling, Donny said, “When the temperature gets really cold and snow covers the ground, the air gets clean. You breathe it, and feel the air come in your nose, but there is no scent. You look up at the sky at night, and the stars are bright. There is nothing in the air to filter the starlight.

“Then along March and April it seems like all of a sudden it smells like mud and growing plants. You can smell the plants coming back to life, in the air.”

“I like the smell of spring,” Rose said.

Donny put an arm around Rose. He said, “The air at home is full of energy. It can carry sounds for miles. I can hear your car pull up and the car doors close at your place in the evening. That’s a good mile and a half. I hear that and know that you are safe at home.”

“That’s sweet,” Rose said opening her eyes and looking over at Donny.

Pointing to a kid kicking a can along the sidewalk, Donny said, “We’re fifty feet from him and can’t hear the racket he’s making. The air is dead here.”

Looking down at the kid, Rose said, “I don’t like it here.”

Noticing a little activity by the strip joint, Donny sat up and said, “What’s this? Someone has pulled into the side parking lot.”

“It’s a little early for someone to be there from what Dan and Joe were saying,” Rose said.

They watched the activity below. A middle-aged man, sporting gang tattoos, went into the building while leaving the side door open. He emerged a little later pulling a ramp that he set up in front of the side door. Donny said, “He seems a little old to be running in a gang.”

“I don’t know. He’s about the same age as my daddy. I guess they are in the gang for life,” Rose said.

They discussed the matter until a beer truck pulled up alongside the building. Donny said, “Beer delivery. I guess the old guy runs the bar.”

They watched the deliveryman take a hundred cases of beer into the club, at the rate of ten cases a trip. Donny said, “That’s a lot of beer.”

“I don’t know. How many guys did your uncles say hung around here?” Rose asked.

“Forty to fifty guys,” Donny said. It was hard to get an accurate count since people came and went all of the time. Some were in the parking lot while others were in the building.

“A six pack of beers for each guy every night and that load would barely last a week,” Rose said.

“You’d think they’d get kegs,” Donny said watching the guy make another trip.

“Yeah,” Rose said. “Maybe plastic cups of beer aren’t macho enough.”

Donny watched the beer man make a last trip and said, “That’s a lot of money. I doubt they are charging the gang members for the beers.”

“Drugs are big business. That’s where these gangs get their money,” Rose said.

“I think California deserves these gangs. They must like them because they let them do whatever the hell they want. I think that anyone that lets folks run amuck like that, deserves what they get,” Donny said shaking his head in disgust.

“What can the people here do about them?” Rose asked.

Donny said, “Back home, Sheriff Greaves would deputize half the county one morning, and by nightfall there wouldn’t be one of those bastards left. For each gun firing at us, there would be a hundred guns firing back at them. You can’t tell me there aren’t enough law-abiding citizens willing to step up to the plate to take care of this trash in all of Los Angeles. They don’t do it because they like having them here.”

“I’m sure there are a lot of law abiding citizens out here, they just don’t know how to use guns,” Rose said.

“A hundred near-sighted fools can all point a gun in the same direction. Odds say that one of them is liable to hit something,” Donny said.

Rose took the conversation back to where it had started, “Dad, Dan, and Joe aren’t near-sighted fools. I’m sure with Sonny and Calvin here that they won’t miss you or me.”