Violent Spring by Gary Phillips

grass and the walkway, was a grey-primed ’77 Monte Carlo. It was up on floor jacks and the rear wheels and the brake drums were off.
    Monk knocked on the door. Presently, he heard it swing inward. A soft rectangle of light shone through the screen. Whoever stood there didn’t say a word.
    â€œIs Ruben in?” Monk didn’t offer his license.
    â€œNo,” a woman’s tired voice said.
    â€œYou expect him later?”
    â€œShit, I don’t know.” There was another gap, then, “Nice ride.”
    â€œThanks.”
    â€œYou a friend of his?” The voice got more animated.
    â€œFriend of a friend.”
    â€œSure you are.”
    â€œYou betchum Red Rider.”
    There was a short burst of either contempt or joy. “What you want me to tell him, man?”
    â€œTell him his friends from the Hi-Life say hi.” Monk began to walk away. The screen door opened to reveal a handsome Latina with hard eyes. She couldn’t be more than twenty or twenty-one, Monk reasoned.
    â€œYou didn’t work with him there.”
    Monk stopped on the steps, looking back. “How do you know that?”
    â€œThe car, how you dress.” She thrust her head forward as if listening to an invisible voice. “You ain’t the heat and you ain’t no ex-con. That’s the only kind of people Ruben knows.”
    â€œI’ll keep you guessing for now.” Monk got in his car, the woman still looking at him as he drove away along 55th Place. The Galaxie wound north then west, eventually gliding to a stop at the Oki Dog fast food stand on Pico and Sycamore.
    Pico Boulevard was a sort of Maginot line of the Mid-City area, a buffer of the better-offs against the deprived hordes. South of it, along this stretch, there were the homes and apartments of mostly black working class folks. The populace included quite a few young people, and, as fall-out from the Federal cutbacks in social spending during the 80s, several were members of the Rolling Daltons. Not that Monk laid the entire blame for gangsterism at the feet of men like Reagan and Bush. Still, he had to admit that they had set a fine example as the biggest gangbangers of all with their violent escapades in Grenada, Libya, Panama and Iraq—all while the cities went to hell and the young folk emulated their elders.
    North of Pico the homes and lawns got a little neater, a bit bigger. The demographics shifted from solely black to mixtures including whites and Asians. Some green lawns had signs staked into them announcing this or that armed-response security service. Judiciously placed in the corner of some windows were stickers declaring that the house participated in the Police Watch Program or was a member of a particular block club. Which didn’t mean these neighborhoods didn’t have forays from the residents south of Pico, it just meant they were easier to spot.
    East of the Oki Dog stand, on the northwest corner of Pico and LaBrea, was the Mexican fast food joint, Lucy’s. Every day—and he could see them out there now—brown, black and white men milled about on the curbs in front of the establishment. They whistled and gestured to the drivers of cars and trucks as they sped by on either thoroughfare. But these fellows were no sellers of crack, or aging chickenhawks. Their product was indeed their body, but the market they sought was work as day laborers, or handymen, or movers, or painters, or whatever physical task, whatever payment in cash they could scrounge.
    Men younger and older than Monk who once upon a time in post-’50s America worked in auto plants, attaching bumpers to Chevys, or steel mills, pouring molten rivers of metal. Maybe they worked the swing shift in the old Goodyear plant on Central turning out mountain high piles of tires, or ran a drill press in a factory in South Gate. But the ’90s and the deindustrialized core had little use for semi-skilled workers, displaced now