. There were rallies and counter-rallies and candlelit vigils and tense police-protester standoffs. The Reverend Al Sharpton was supposedly on his way to lead a march. Davis O'Dell, the famous Florida attorney, was coming to take on the defence of Valentine's shooter. The L.A. Times memorialized Tito as a "young man with a checkered past" alongside the weed-smoking photo.
The 'hood simmered, the pressure building. And come Sunday -- Valentine's Day -- the mercury would hit eighty-eight degrees again.
* * *
Still, even come the Saturday night prior, it wasn't uncommon to hear people say what Vinnie, the bartender of Famous Ferd's down in Maywood Beach, told a certain out-of-towner: "Trust me, it isn't gonna happen."
Vinnie was grinning brightly and handing over a PBR as she said it, her voice pitched above the noise of the packed pub and the Desmond Dekker track on the speakers. She was the kind of unattainably gorgeous staff any would-be hub of counterculture nightlife needed: an olive-skinned beauty rocking a black Fred Perry polo, a tight black mini-skirt and a pair of black Samoa trainers, bright tattoos ranging over her exposed skin and her classic Chelsea fringe dyed a vivid shade of pink.
With a nod and a good-humoured answering smile, the punter in question -- a guy named Lex -- said: "If you say so, Vin."
It was a handsome smile on a ruggedly handsome face, delivered with an easy charisma of the kind that made a lot of girls go weak in the knees. But it was also a gently skeptical one.
Vinnie arched a pierced eyebrow at him: "You don't believe me, huh?" When Lex just shrugged, she said: "But for real, man, it's not the Nineties anymore. It's a different city now. Just look around." Her gesture took in the ambit of Ferd's cramped interior, from the pool tables at the rear to the rollicking dance floor and the DJ on the stage. "Can you see any of these people lighting the burg on fire?"
Lex shrugged. "You never know until it happens," he said simply. "Nobody saw King or Watts coming, either. Do a shot with me?"
"Does a Pope shit in the woods?" Vinnie laughed, rolling with the subject change. "Usual?"
"Usual."
He
was
looking around as she went off to pour, and to see to other customers. Ferd's was a seedy dive-bar epicentre of the West Coast's thriving multicultural new wave skinhead scene; it was reasonably packed on almost any given night, but clearly its ska and reggae Rub-a-Dub Saturdays were especially popular. Nine-thirty and it was already close to standing-room-only.
Many of the faces were new to him, but he reciprocated when a few recognized him and toasted him with their beers. As far as anyone on the scene knew, Lex had hit town a few days ago and had been in Ferd's every night since he'd arrived. He was a big light-skinned black guy in classic skinhead uniform, jeans and a plaid shirt with steel-toed Doc Martens and black braces and laces, an ANC flag on the shoulder of his black bomber jacket. His hard-muscled frame was clearly in prime shape, no doubt one of the reasons Vinnie had taken such a shine to him, and he could almost have passed for one of the scene's Young Turks if it weren't for the salt-and-pepper in his well-trimmed goatee and in the stubble on his scalp.
Just how old Lex was, nobody had managed to get out of him yet -- there were some rumours going around that he'd been part of the legendary Chicago scene back in the Eighties -- but the mere fact of silver hair on a guy still plainly dedicated to the lifestyle seemed to win respect in more than a few quarters. People kept a certain distance from him, though. His eyes were at once hard and melancholy under the surface shine of bonhomie, and had clearly Seen Some Shit in their day. His hands sported the sunken knuckles of the more-than-occasional pugilist. More than a few furtive looks of fascination passed his way, but good-natured though he was, Lex clearly preferred to keep his own counsel and had clearly earned the right to do so. So he was mostly free to lean against the bar and observe.
It's a different kind of scene for certain
, he thought. A lot more comfortably multicultural than the days of yore. There were Latinos and whites in equal numbers, more than a few Asians, a big crew of black skins clustered around the pool tables at the rear. Everything peaceful to the naked eye, and he'd noticed that skins here rarely seemed to feel the need to defensively reassure you up-front that they were non-racist, as if it were just a background assumption. When the cultural media noticed the scene from time to time they always marvelled at how
non-violent
it supposedly was. The kind of scene that could make you a believer in the much-ballyhooed creed of skinhead solidarity.
But the old curses of his much-beloved rudie subculture were still here, even if curiously transformed. Taking a pull of his beer, the out-of-towner could feel them thrumming under the surface, see them written in body language, in who spoke to whom.
The room was multicultural, true, but there were invisible borders, each ethnicity seeming to mix freely on the dance floor but on balance, as if pulled by simple gravity, noticeably keeping mostly to its own: molecules colliding in the room's heat but re-forming, unaffected, into familiar compounds. And there were little clusters here and there of skins and 'byrds in red or white braces and laces who gave off a none-too-subtle vibe that everyone else pretended not to notice. (Not all of those where white, either: his first night here, Lex had run into a Chinese guy named Lee in red braces with a swastika tattooed on his neck, who'd chatted him up about the supposed virtues of Hitler as if he were recommending a brand of soap.) There was a charge in the air, the accumulated static of words carefully-not-said and provocative gestures pointedly ignored.
As for non-violence... well, there was a part of this scene who were clearly here for the music, the fashion and the 'byrds. But that had always been true. Nevertheless, more than a few of the men in the room had a macho swagger meant to advertise them as not-to-be-fucked-with. Vinnie had pointed out to him on nights past the various crews, like the raucous dudes from BDFM --
"Beer-Drinking Fighting Machine"
-- who seemed to have their own designated table near the speakers, or the
"Los Brillantes"
crew whose 'byrds were almost all as hard-eyed as the men. When Lex had asked her how often the tough-guy posturing boiled over into actual fights, the answer had been revealing:
"Almost never,"
she'd said breezily.
"Like, once or twice a week, tops."
The ones he noticed most were the quieter ones, though, who had a kind of coiled-spring readiness that he recognized. He saw one of those looking at him now, watching him watch the room. A mahogany-skinned Yardie, not a big man but one who clearly knew how to handle himself, who Vinnie had told him was called Barrington, or just Barry. Barry's droogs all had the air of men who did instead of talked, and who you really didn't want to ask exactly what it was they did. They were called the R-n-R crew:
"Run 'n Riot."
Barry raised a glass. Lex saluted him back. They drank and looked away from each other again. How easily could this room go the way the wider city was going? Could he see any of these people lighting the burg on fire? When Lex asked himself the question, he wasn't comforted by the answer.
Then he caught sight of someone who riveted his attention. A pair of someones, in fact, walking into the bar, and his were far from the only eyes that followed them. As Vinnie returned with their shots, he gestured with a mute look of inquiry she knew well by now. The bartender grinned: "I'd say they're out of even your league, you dirty old rudie, you."
He clasped hands over heart in a
you-wound-me
gesture. "Vin! My intentions are strictly honorable."
"Uh-huh." She clinked shot glasses with him:
"Slainte."
"Cheers."
They knocked back their bourbons, pulled the rueful faces typically associated with knocking back bourbon, and Vinnie was clearing their glasses as she finally told him: "The brunette's Phaedra, and the blonde's Jonni. Fresh face. They call her Jonni Too-Bad." And she gave him a playfully warning parting look as she said: "And hey,
no
