Lopez himself didn't
know, for late at night, when sirens wailed down Cuenga Boulevard, he looked
through chintz curtains billowing in the warm wind swirling inside his one-room
apartment. He would then pour another ounce of bourbon into his glass and peer
over the antique Remington typewriter, craning his neck to get a better view of
the bloodied asphalt two stories below. Dancing like fireflies, switchblade
knives caught glimmers of moonlight in the middle of the dark street.
Streetlamps were blasted into shards of glass diamonds so frequently that the
city of Los Angeles no longer bothered to send out repair crews to the battle
zones. Lean figures scurried, some seeking the embrace of narrow alleys, others
crumpling to the pavement and moaning for Mother Mary to have mercy on their sinful
souls.
An hour later, when the police had gone
through the motions of clearing the streets and taking the obligatory crime
scene photographs, Lopez would resume typing. The police no longer canvassed
the neighborhood, knocking on doors to see who had witnessed the latest turf
war. Once reconnected to his brain, his fingers sought to describe the
desperation in the faces he saw at vegetable markets, diners, and pawn
shop--the look of hopelessness in the faces hiding in worn, wooden pews of
Catholic churches as black-veiled widows fingered their beads and made their
novenas, seeking hope. The only hope to be purchased on the proverbial mean
streets of L.A., however, was coke or heroine.
Fifty murders. Yeah. Lopez was sure he had
seen at least fifty murders in the past year. 1954 had been a bad year, a year
for bloodletting and lost dreams.
He stopped, took another drink. Did anyone
here have dreams anymore? Lopez sure as hell didn't. His mother had been gunned
down fifteen years earlier on her way home from the night shift at the factory.
He had been writing ever since, selling his stories to underground newspapers.
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