THE BARRIO OF BEVERLY HILLS

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Scott Alixander Sonders

Do not read this unless you are a mad genius or an idiot savant. If you are average or typical, skip this. It will bore you or, worse, confuse you. This story is a mirage of life, not a genuine memoir. The context is a shimmering of reality, just over the horizon, always beyond reach. It is but a specter of truth, rising white and glaring over a locked window. The window is impenetrable; the words will not be understood. Meaning is lost, a garbled music, the static that's heard between the fine-tuning of your internal radio.

Everyone dies; few truly live. Run away now. Do not confuse Fate with Coincidence. Run away before reading what appears as a light-hearted tale. It is not light hearted. Light hearted is a mask to conceal a twisted mask of death. Unrelenting pain can only be survived with an encompassing sense of humor.

* * * * * * *
Things were looking pretty good. I was in my senior year of architectural school at UCLA, pulling a 3.94 grade point average. I was also doing an ungraded internship for a civil engineering firm that was even paying me extra cash, under the table. This little "arrangement" worked for everyone involved. The firm didn't have to do extra accounting, I didn't have to pay taxes, and no one would catch heat from the school.

The concept behind an "internship" was that it was for "gaining valuable mentored experience in your chosen field." Translated from the school catalog into real English, it meant that you basically supplied some firm cheaper than slave labor. Not only didn't they have to pay you, but they also didn't have to supply you with food or shelter. A pretty cozy deal. But because of my scholastic record, I'd been lucky enough to get placed with the prestigious firm of "Jones, Jones, Jones & Schlumberger." I could never figure who was who, but at least one Mr. Jones was a real square shooter and decided to pay me in spite of the rules. I could use the money, so I didn't argue or complain.

The only thing that bothered me was that I had to show up at the firm three days a week and neither me nor my ten year old Renault Dauphin liked the commute from Santa Monica to downtown Los Angeles in rush hour traffic. As a compromise in distance between UCLA and Downtown, and as a way of avoiding my present roommate, I got a new apartment and a new roommate out of the DAILY BRUIN classifieds and moved to the Silverlake district, not far from Chinatown. From there it was never more than a ten minute drive from the alley of our building to the parking lot at 344 South Broadway, across the street from the firm's offices.

Mr. Jones also paid for my car park expenses out of the company petty cash. The parking lot was pricey but still did a fairly brisk business, so it must've been raking in the bucks. Later, my hunch was confirmed, but that's after I met who would turn out to be the best friend of my twenty odd years.

Carlos Batista was the day manager at PARKER’S SELF-PARK. The catchy name of that parking lot came from Ray Parker, the former proprietor and never-present father of Carlos. Although Carlos shared his lucrative business income partly with his sister, she was rarely needed there. It was not a large operation requiring complicated bookkeeping or well-trained employees.
Carlos was the "day manager" only so far as he had two parking attendants and a lot-boy to help him during peak business hours, and an assistant or night manager who ran the place solo until closing up at around 10 P.M.

Actually, closing time was more like the thirty minute window of downtime when the last customers and employees left the Grand Central Market, a bustling open-air confusion of fruit, vegetable and meat stalls kitty corner to the self-park and immediately next to the office where I worked. The parking lot attendant would wait patiently until those last stragglers drove their cars off the lot. Then he'd count the receipts, log out and drop the cash in the night deposit slot at the Wells Fargo Bank, two doors down.

There had been some heated discussions among the members of the Batista household. Some had thought "self-park" was a slightly misleading term because during the day-shift patrons had the option of either parking their vehicles personally or, for a slightly additional charge, with a valet. And although his sister, Ramona, thought that valet offering was ridiculous in an already shabby area of downtown, Carlos felt it offered a sense of much needed "class" to a populace that he said "consisted of the haves who needed the service for their busy schedules, and the have-nots who didn't need it but had for too long suffered the slings and arrows of ethnic indignity." Ramona had asked him what he meant by "ethnic indignity," but Carlos merely dismissed her with an abrupt wave of his hand and the suggestion that she read Karl Marx.

Sure enough, that got his sister pissed off. Whenever Ramona thought Carlos was behaving like what she variously termed as "Lord High Boofu" or "haughty little shit," a fight would ensue. Their mother would call it, with a mixture of affection and derision, a "frat-brat cat and dog fight." But to a casual observer like myself, the meaning in Mama Carla's coining of that phrase was often lost. It was easy for me to recognize when the sister or brother was acting like a "brat," but not immediately apparent who was the "dog" and who was the "cat."
Neither could I have readily discerned that they were, indeed, fraternal twins, without someone having told me.

I'd been parking my car at Parker's for about a month. Every day, Carlos the manager would shoot me a gleaming smile along with a friendly hello and good-bye. I guessed things would likely continue in that same fixed cordial manner. Then, after work one day, I noticed that I’d misplaced my keys. I'd done this many times before, and sooner-or-later they'd always show up. It got to be such a habit that I simply bought myself one of those little magnetic hide-a-keys and wedged it just below the license plate on the inside of my rear bumper.

This was my insurance policy that I collected on regularly. I'd somehow managed not to bungle anything for awhile, so I hadn't checked the hide-a-key for several weeks. Now I needed to, but there was no way to do this without looking conspicuous. My little Renault was parked directly under a light and in full view of what I felt might be a dozen potential car thieves. Resignedly, I dropped to the asphalt, dirtying the knees of my freshly cleaned 501's and scuffing the toes of the new loafers that I'd just bought to make a good impression at work. I rolled up the shirtsleeve on my right arm and reached under the bumper. I felt around. Nothing. My hand came out covered in road sludge.

Then I heard a low-pitched chuckle and felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Carlos. He was still smiling, and was holding a box of baby-wipes in an outstretched hand. "I'm sorry," he said, "Grab a few of these. They'll help take some of that grease off. I don't like seeing a good customer wreck some well-worked Levi's, or ruin hands that obviously haven’t experienced farm work or auto mechanics." He paused, smiled even broader and added, “I don’t carry insurance for those kind of things.”

I was too chagrined to determine whether his sarcasm was actually meant as friendly or accusatory. But his smile seemed to confirm amiability. "Well, thanks,” I said, “I appreciate the hand cleaners. But I think I'm really done for, anyway.
I can barely afford this month's rent, yet alone a locksmith. Man, am I gonna be screwed.”

Carlos remained unruffled. "Well, my friend," he replied, "I can't answer you about the future status of your sex-life, but I think I can help you with your car problems." He motioned in the direction of the shed and said, "Follow me."

I did as he suggested. Once inside the self-park shed, Carlos rifled through some papers and gadgets on a high shelf. His fingers found what he was looking for and he held it up, wielding it like a sword for examination. It was about two feet long. Very flat and maybe an inch in width. It quivered and bent slowly back and forth in his hand like a fishing pole. It appeared as if cut from a single piece of tensile sheet metal, like a bacon-knife with a hook notched into its end. I recognized it immediately.

Carlos was jubilant. "I told you not to worry; this'll fix the problem." Again he motioned with his hand and said, "Follow me." Back at the car he said, "Your Hide-a-Key must've worked itself loose bumping around on these shitty streets. They'll do that, you know. Then you discover that your keys are lost at the precise moment you need them most." He again held up the "bacon-knife," and announced proudly, "This little baby's illegal if you don't have a license for it. Only people like cops and locksmiths can get them. I got this one from a friend." He said the word "friend" with a knowing wink, then proceeded to slip the tool between the window glass and weather-stripping of the driver's door, just in front of the door lock. "Just watch this," he said, "I've been practicing."

He began to work the utensil up and down, forward and back, a little like he was trolling for fish. In a few short moments, I heard a loud click-a-click-a-thunk. Then with a sweep of his hand Carlos pulled open the car door and bowed slightly. "Well, mister, it's been a pleasure to serve you. Hope your evening's a good one."

I was impressed. Not in the habit of letting kind gestures go unrewarded I said, "Listen, you just got me out of what could have been some deep shit. I want to make this up to you." Then as an afterthought I smiled and added, "And by the way, don't call me mister. The name's Jonah, Jonah Cahn." I reached my hand toward his.

He clasped my outstretched hand and said with a slight laugh, "Mine's Carlos Batista, and I own this place so no thanks are necessary. Just keep adding to my income by continuing to park here. Your company pays their bills on time."
He hesitated, "I like your attitude, if you've got a few minutes, why not let me buy you a beer?'

A thirty'ish, overly peroxided blonde at the bar had plunked a quarter into the jukebox next to our booth. As we sat down I got caught up for a moment in The Spider and The Fly, a song by Mick Jagger that could have been written for the blonde with passé ratted hair and too much black eyeliner. “Common, flirty, she looked about thirty / I would’ve run away but I was on my own. / Then she said Hi like the spider to the fly / I guess she liked the way I held the microphone...” I noticed that the red vinyl upholstery on the seat was cracked and sunken in the middle from use.

Carlos sat across from me, drumming his spoon on the matching red tablecloth, in time to the music. I watched him for awhile and said, “By the way, I don’t want to burst your bubble or anything, but I should probably tell you that I’m well-acquainted with that little tool you used to open my car door. You’re right about it being illegal for us commoners to own one of those babies. But don’t worry,” I said with a knowing smile, “being one of your best customers and all, I won’t turn you in.”

Carlos looked puzzled. “Hey, you’re not bullshitting with me, are you? What does a college guy with no calluses on his hands know about using a Slim Jim lock jimmy?”

“Don’t let these baby-soft hands and my wire-rimmed glasses fool you. Like that blonde over there, I’ve been around the block a few times. “

“Yeah? Around what block, or, if that blonde is your type, I should say around who or what?”

“Well,” I said, “She’s probably more your type. But...”
“Carlos wisecracked, “I’d guess she’s probably a whole football team’s type.”

“Pah-dum-dump,” I said, rolling a rimshot off the tabletop with my forefingers. “But as I was about to explain, before you started with your Don Rickles one-liner — actually, I was always poor. Even though I grew up in foster homes, I still got really good grades in high school. But scholarship money was pretty tight. I needed some serious moolah to go to college, and...”

Carlos interrupted, “You’re not the Lone Ranger. I bet you wouldn’t have guessed but I go to college, too. At night. The car-park is my subsidy.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, “why wouldn’t I have guessed?”

His cheeks reddened slightly. Carlos hesitated, “Well, okay, I’m being a little paranoid, but you know what I mean...”

Now it was my turn, “No, I don’t know what you mean. I don’t even have a clue.”

Carlos said, “Well okay, it’s just that, well,” his cheeks grew more red, “most people who park their cars at my lot figure I’m just some minimum wage Spick. You know, not the kind of person with the capacity for college.”

“First of all,” I said, “if we’re gonna be friends, then you better start finding out some things about me before making assumptions. Second, I don’t buy into that kind of bigot shit. Third, I think you’re right about being a little paranoid because there’s no way you even look Mexican.”

“There! I gotcha! You just contradicted yourself. First you said you’re not a bigot and then you go off with a typical stereotype about looking Mexican. My father happens to be a tall, blue-eyed blonde guy from somewhere in the Midwest. A bona fide WASP. And besides, there are people of Swedish decent that have been living and dying in Mexico City for maybe three or four generations. They’re more Mexican than me. At least I was born here, well, in Texas, anyway.

“No, you’re right. I admit it. I’m not perfect. But that still doesn’t make me a bigot. Sometimes I can’t help it; I was raised in what the real estate brokers call “Beverly Hills Adjacent,” which is a smaltzy way of saying wannabe rich but probably broke dick. But really, the first five years of my life were in a Jewish orphanage in Mar Vista – that’s kinda near Beverly Hills. And I guess that makes me a Jew – the orphanage part, not the living near Beverly Hills part. At least, that’s what I’ve always figured. And I can tell you that I’ve been on the butt end of some pretty nasty stereotypes my whole life. Just like I said you don’t look Mexican, I’ve heard about a hundred times that I don’t look Jewish. And since you brought up the history thing, Jews look like whoever had been raping their grandmothers for a couple hundred years.”

“Okay, man,” Carlos said, “I guess we’re even. A Spick and a Hymie.” He tapped his spoon against the table. “Who’d have guessed?”

“No,” I said, “We’re not even because I’m a Spick, too.”

“Oh, right, man. And just exactly what kind of Spick are you?”

“Well,” I said slowly, “the real truth is that my parents were from Iceland and I was born in Puerto Rico. That makes me an icepick!”

Carlos groaned, “Oh man, I should have seen that coming. An icepick! I don’t believe you actually said that. Two thirds of a pun, P.U.”

“So why are you smiling?” I said.

“Because, in spite of your lousy jokes, I think you’re an okay guy.”

* * * * * * * * *
It was then that I first heard about his sister. He mentioned her during our subsequent tossing back of not one but about six beers each. He told me that she was "really nice" and insisted that I should meet her. This insistence, within the space of a first meeting, would have usually seemed odd to me, but after a more than modest intake of alcohol it seemed perfectly normal. I am, however, wary of the word "nice" used in the context of someone trying to set me up on a blind date. Mothers use the word "nice" when what they really mean is that their daughter is too dumpy for anyone else's taste. Though Carlos had an irresistible manner, I still didn't get to meet his sister for several weeks.

I started getting together with Carlos every Friday after work. We'd kick back a few beers and talk about where we'd been and where each of us wanted to go. One of the things I first noticed about him was the exactness with which he chose his coif and clothing. It was his custom to flaunt a large gold crucifix around his neck, choker style, in some contrast to the faded Levi 501's that, like me, he also wore as part of his customary outfit. Those jeans were marketed as "shrink-to-fit." Carlos took advantage of the concept by buying his denims the right size so when they did shrink, they'd fit and fit tight.

Later, I discovered something from Carlos that I would have never directly experienced with my own awkward appearances. It was rare that anyone didn't notice his charm and Valentino good looks. This made some want to be in his company. It invariably benefited their own social success. But others despised his elegance, allowing themselves one more cause for envy and one more reason to hope for his downfall.

The neighboring Catholic mothers viewed his chiseled cheeks and wavy shocks of burnt sienna hair as something more to add to their already extant worries about the chastity of their own daughters. Some would hurriedly but unhesitantly make the sign of the Cross when Carlos sauntered into the proximity of their female offspring. They believed that no girl past puberty would be able to resist his glorious union of Paul Newman blue eyes and perfect olive skin, quite captivating in a neighborhood where everyone, like Carlos, was of Mexican heritage. They admired him because they were acculturated to perceive his Anglicized aggregate as better than their own, as mas mejor. Though in this way, they also regarded him with suspicion.

But Carlos was different from the other homeboys. He thought himself "respectable," and drove a late-model BMW. This was a sore spot those who obsessed over gray-primered Chevies with diamond tuck upholstery and black-tinted windows. Indeed, Carlos scorned every notion of cholo. By the time I'd become his friend, he was already avoiding former his former “associates” who wore baggy chinos to make you wonder if they had a weapon in their pocket, to make you wonder if they were dangerous.

Certain topics made Carlos stammer, become embarrassed, grow quiet. He'd done some hard-time. He'd been involved in an apparently intense situation, but would rarely discuss it. I heard the story piece by piece, sometimes during my Fridays with Carlos, and sometimes, though later, from Ramona, the older of his two covergirl-pretty sisters.

It seems there'd been another brother. But he'd been caught between rival bullets in one of those "little squabbles" that have great big consequences. Questions over whose turf was whose. Questions and death, but no answers. Boyle Heights. Monterey Park. City Terrace. It didn't matter what part of East Los Angeles you came from. It was your territory, your turf. And more "turf" always came with more graves to weed.

When Carlos was serving his time, he'd enrolled in a state sponsored "education and rehabilitation" program. Everyone in his family was what Carlos called an "autodidact." But he kept his intellectual side in the closet. Parading any serious education could get your ass kicked by some of the barrio boys. Still, after his time with the Youth Authority, Carlos got out with an Associate of Arts degree, while not yet nineteen.

"Things were never simple or easy," Carlos once told me during one of our Friday meetings. "The Fates were not merely content with the death of my brother. It was as if they demanded another sacrifice, as if they wanted Ramona to get raped. It was as if it was necessary, just like in those plays by Euripides. It was necessary to compound the conflict of my story."

He told me that he'd learned that phrase in a literature class, and early on I figured that Carlos enjoyed his masks: speaking sometimes like a professor, at others like a barrio homeboy, and yet again like Joe Surfer. He seemed obsessed with the notion that he was a reincarnated character from an ancient Greek tragedy, that his life's "fuck-ups" were simply more links in the chain, the chain of the "little squabble" which had sent his kid brother to a permanent otherworld and his twin sister to a temporary netherworld. "There were no winners," he would say, "Victory was temporary." Carlos told me that he'd tried but couldn't contain his rage. After the death of his brother and rape of his sister, he felt that existence was mocking him. He'd taken his Beemer and his best friend on a reckless ride. Born To Be Wild roared from the 8-track stereo as his sister's sobbing grew ever more faint. He had told me, "Night was day. Day was night. They were undifferentiated. Equal. An emotional equinox."

Nobody had known where Carlos had gotten the shotgun when it blasted through the swelter of a late September night. He'd "taken out that sonofabitch from right off the sidewalk." He'd taken him out "the only way that others would understand." So close that the victim's blood splattered back on the shooter's face. He'd kept those bloodstained clothes "as a reminder." He told me that he knew "he was obligated by an unwritten but long understood code to be cop, judge, jury. It was the blood that mattered. It was the blood that showed a score had been settled. It was the blood that returned honor."

Carlos would sometimes make speeches instead of just talk. He said everyone in his family was "poetic" like that. That "it was genetic." In one of his speeches he told me the end of his "murder story." He said, "So I did it. In the open for everyone to know and for everyone to see. I did it right in front of that pendejo's home, and right in front of that pendejo's friends and his whole family. I'm telling you, I blew that sonofabitch away while he was drinking from a can of cold beer. He died between swallows." Carlos had paused for a breath, to think about what came next. He continued, "It's strange, I don't even believe in killing. Not by anybody. But I don't regret it. He didn't regret doing my sister. He did my sister, then he bragged about it. Maybe if he hadn't bragged. Maybe if he would've shown some kind of contrition, things could've been different."

He stopped, pulled his wallet from his hip pocket where he kept it attached to his belt by a brass loop and chain. He extracted a ragged bit of paper, unfolded it and smoothed it across the tablecloth where we were sitting, carefully avoiding the mustard and ketchup stains. Looking up he said, "You want to hear something that I wrote just a little after it happened?"

I nodded.

He began, "Death and Brutality never stop to ask anyone's name. In their grasp we are all nameless and equal. Death and Brutality already have their own names. Many synonyms. Many metaphors and noms de guerre. They have so many names that they never ask for ours. They don't discriminate. Culpable and culprit are derivatives of the same root word. Victim and perpetrator become interchangeable. Many words, only one meaning. They are paper boats rushing to the same destination in a great river of meaning. And in that river I heard the whispering of many voices saying, 'You know Carlos? He was the one. He was El abogado. He was the prosecuting attorney. The straightest of straight arrow guys.'"

Brutality and Death. The universal constants. The unified field theory that Einstein had hoped he'd never find. The great equalizers and, perhaps, the only true democracy. It was these dangerous things, abstractions mutating into tangibles, that Carlos told me his mother had wished to avoid "when she had crossed a different kind of river nineteen years before." And it was just such things that Carla Batista had wondered about daily when her baby boy's legs had gone brittle with polio. Carlos told me, "The good doctors at Los Angeles County General prescribed injections and braces, and told my mother to wait, as I would most likely grow out of the disease."

On one of our Friday evenings when we were both hungry and devouring two entire roast chickens at one of the Grand Central Market concessions, Carlos explained that, once before, his mother's prayers had been answered. So she didn't wait for the doctors. Instead, she had pleaded every day with the Virgin on her son's behalf. Despite the priest from her village just a few years before, she had remained devout. On Easter Sunday before his third birthday, Carla Maria had crawled, with open hands and bare knees, up long stone steps to the church door, leaving behind a sacrificial smear of skin and blood. In four months her own wounds healed, and little Carlos started walking.

The Blessed Virgin was thereafter commemorated for interceding on behalf of the innocent child, and the doctors stopped the injections.

* * * * * * * *

But most of this story occurred prior to my friendship with Carlos. He'd served thirty-six months with the California Youth Authority, or C.Y.A. as the inmates called it. He'd been tried as a minor for second-degree murder. He'd become a model prisoner, and for his birthday was awarded release from the Nelles Detention Center. It seems the Parole Board felt that Carlos, given the chance to cool, had demonstrated a corrigible and forgiving nature. His education, they felt, made him "a viable candidate for early release."

There were few things Carlos truly hated. Imprisonment was one. Gangsters and cops were another. "They're two sides of the same coin," Carlos would later and often allege, although cautiously and never in public. And so he returned and once again took up his role as owner and manager of the asphalt lot that stretched under a flashing fluorescent fixture, announcing the entrance to PARKER'S SELF-PARK. This was his reprieve, and his inheritance from an almost forgotten father.

It was odd, Carlos with his cool BMW and cool Levi's, sitting next to an uncool parking shed that was too hot in the summer and overheated in the winter. But he loved that place. It was redemption. The claustrophobia that hunted and haunted him during his incarceration had grown unbearable. I'd more than once heard him confess to a sister, a friend, or even an enemy that he was trying to intimidate, "If I hadn't gotten out when I did, it would've been fuckin' bedlam. I was stir crazy, man, I was ready to go totally insane and pull a Charlie Manson."

Carlos said that even with notoriety, he still had enemies. He said, "Enemies watch for the soft underbelly. Enemies are predators. They attack what they perceive as weak, who they perceive as vulnerable." Carlos liked his image of being dangerous. He said, it kept the predators at bay. But he never acted dangerous around me. I guess he somehow figured that I wasn't a predator, but I can't make a claim one way or the other.

I'd also heard another local legend about Carlos from one of his employees at the self-park. He told me a story about how Carlos had come to shotgun the guy who raped Ramona. It seems that the guy had pleaded for mercy, that the guy had cried in front of his mother and friends, "Por favor, Carlito, yo soy tu compadre — please, Carlos, I'm your homeboy — show me some sympathy."

But Carlos only growled in response, "If you want sympathy you rotten motherfucker, run away and look in the dictionary between shit and syphilis, because, man, that's the only place you’re going to find sympathy."

* * * * * * * *

It seemed to me that things were different for Carlos when he got back to his parking lot. With the parking lot, sometimes, Carlos still had to act tough. There would be an occasional disgruntled customer, bums looking for handouts, junkies casing the place for a simple B & E, and twenty dollar hookers hustling for a quick scam or a blowjob, whichever delivered the easiest money.

But with his parking lot, at least, Carlos was on the outside looking in. This was his reprieve. This wasn't jail. Now it was Carlos locking the door to keep the others out. With the parking lot he could be on the street he loved. With the parking lot he was free to watch life sweat and bleed. If he wanted to, he could be part of it. Que vida loca

.

Impressum

Texte: Story & photos copyrighted by Scott Sonders
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 11.02.2010

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