Los Angeles Stories. Ry Cooder

I knocked, but there was no reply. I said, “Hello, I’m from the City Directory, and I would like to ask you a few questions. It only takes five minutes.” I heard a radio playing. I knocked again. I pushed open the screen door and saw a man’s feet. His body was in the kitchen. There was blood on the floor and blood on the walls. The woman screamed and ran back inside the front house. I used the neighbor’s phone to call the police. That’s part of our training. The police asked if I knew the man, if I was an associate of his. I showed my business card like we’re trained to do. They took my name and address and told me not to leave town. I asked the officers if they would like to be listed in the City Directory. “Not on duty,” they said, but one officer gave me his home address and suggested I call on him later.

      I had difficulty in the Flats after the story got around. I overheard one Molokan woman, Sadie Tolstoy, telling her friend, “He takes the names to the dark side.” Finally, I stopped going down there, but I missed the little chili stand on Utah Street. It was only fifteen cents a bowl and very good.

      Thanks to Mr. John, I can eat wherever I want, but I usually make my own lunch. Pershing Square is a perfect place to sit and watch people. There are big shade trees and flowers and religious speakers. One day, I sat across from a woman dressed in black with tangled hair and strange fingernails that had grown out long and curved back. She shook her Bible at me. “False prophet!” she croaked. Another man walked by, and she shook the Bible at him. “Judas!” The man ducked his head down and hurried along the path. “Whore of Babylon!” she shouted to a woman in high heels pushing a baby stroller.

      I ate my ham sandwich and made entries in my daybook. A man on the bench next to me said, “What are you writing? Tales of the sordid, the lurid?” I showed him the Book. He was very old and poorly dressed, but you can’t judge on appearances. He put out his hand, saying, “Finchley by name, hobo by trade, no permanent address.”

      “The Directory doesn’t recognize that occupation,” I replied.

      “Oh, I’ve been many things. If you want the whole story, it’s going to cost you.”

      “The Directory doesn’t pay for information.”

      “They’ll pay. It’s a first-­rate yarn. Comedy, tragedy, sin — the worst kind! I’ll cancel all previous engagements. Just open an account at Gordon’s liquor store for the duration.” He shuffled off.

      I spent the rest of the day in the Japanese district called Little Tokyo. I interviewed three dentists, two lawyers, a doctor, and ten restaurant cooks in one building — all single men. The professional types spoke good English but the cooks thought I was checking white cards, so they clammed up. It took a long time, and the building was hot and stuffy. There was a bar on the street level called Tokyo Big Shot, a tiny little place with a counter and eight bar stools. It was empty except for the Japanese bartender and a white woman. I ordered Brew 102 — it’s cheap and it hits. The bartender poured one and sneered at me. “You a checker?” he asked suspiciously.

      “He don’t look like a checker,” the woman said. She was missing some of her lower front teeth, so it came out like “shecker.”

      “What a goddamn checker look like?” the bartender said.

      “He’s got a satchel like they got, but his eyes are bad. He ain’t a checker.”

      “What’s a checker?” I asked.

      “State liquor board,” said the woman. Aside from her teeth and a slight tremor in one hand, she was not so bad looking. I put the Book down on the bar. “This is what I do,” I told her. “How’d you like to be listed? It’s free.”

      “A shnooper,” she said.

      “Told you,” said the bartender.

      “Aren’t there any Japanese women around here?” I asked.

      “What’s he want ’em for?” the woman said.

      The bartender shook his finger at me. “Goddamn checker. You drink up, go home.”

      The Directory doesn’t list bars. I paid up and left.

      “Won’t turn any tricksh for him,” the woman called out after me.

      The next day, Billy the office boy came looking for me in Pershing Square. “Super wants you,” he said in his unfriendly way. I don’t like Billy.

      “What for?” I asked, just to irritate him. Billy hates questions, hates to give answers.

      “Hell do I know,” he said.

      I put my ham sandwich back in my bag. “And Daniel was cast in the lion’s den,” the woman in black said from her bench across the path.

      They call it the City Directory Library. I’ve never seen any of the public there, so it must be a library in name only for business reasons. In point of fact, the supervisor is the only person there, in my experience. You address him as Sir or Mr. Supervisor. I don’t even know his name.

      “Got a call about you from a Sergeant Spangler at police headquarters.” The supervisor has a way of talking to you without looking up from his desk. “Two dead men, so they wonder why.”

      “Three, if we count Howdy Clark the clarinet player.”

      “Unreported?”

      “He was in his apartment, in his coffin. I spoke to Mrs. Clark, but she declined to be listed.” That was the wrong thing to say. The supervisor blew up.

      “I don’t give a damn about any woman named Clark, you just forget all about that. I’ll tell you this, and I want you to understand this. No dead bodies. Any more of that and you are out,” he shouted, stabbing the desk with his finger.

      “But it’s bound to happen, look at the numbers,” I said.

      “You listen to me. Don’t contradict me. I’m reassigning you to beauty parlors, as of right now. Get moving.”

      “You heard him,” Billy said as I was leaving.

      Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But you have to go out and find them, and that can take up all your time. I have what you might call “hound-­dog reckoning” — a nose for where to look — and it comes in handy. I started with Beauty by Rene, next door to a fancy dress shop. I walked in and the smell hit me. I was unprepared for that! And the noise — hair dryers going, women talking in loud voices a mile a minute like crows in a tree. I spoke to the first operator. “Your business could be listed in the City Directory.” She kept right on yammering to the woman in the chair. I moved on. I held the Book open for the next one. “Beauty by Rene, bold type, no extra charge,” I said cheerfully.

      “Boss!” she yelled.

      “Where is he?” I yelled back.

      “She! In the back!” A very thin woman was sitting at a tiny desk talking into a telephone. She slammed the receiver down and stared at me and said, “Well, what?”

      I held the Book open. “This is a wonderful opportunity to list with the City Directory at no cost to you, the businessman.”

      “Don’t hand me that,” she said. “I run this place. Everyone out there is a mad dog from hell until proven otherwise, including you and that son of a bitch landlord on the telephone.” She lit a cigarette and blew smoke at me. “Trying to break my balls, can you believe the son of a bitch?”

      “Why not give the Book a try for a year?”

      “All right, hotshot, what’s your name?”

      “Frank.”

      “As in what?”

      “Frank St. Claire.”

      “Nice. So lead off with it. Don’t start with the ‘no charge’ bit, make it sound good, give it a little class, dress it up for crissakes.” She filled out the form. “What made you come in here?”

      “That’s my assignment, beauty shops.”