Southside (9781608090563) Read Free Page B

employed Caucasians who preferred mixologists to bartenders and CentralCoast craft brews to Heinekens. The Varnish, a bar modeled after a speakeasy, set the new standard for cocktails that took a few minutes to concoct, and many others followed. An Ace Hotel was going up on Broadway. Restaurants with high critical ratings, like Baco Mercat, Spice Table, and Church and State, were booked solid nightly.
    Still, glamour crime was exceptional in Central. Those who died there rarely had funerals. They were just dropped in the East L.A. dirt by four illegals with a backhoe. And though the
Times
was in Central’s jurisdiction, the paper hardly ever wrote about their own backyard. In 2006, there was an excellent series by columnist Steve Lopez about a skid row cellist that was made into a movie, but usually coverage amounted to the annual “Downtown is Booming” story, the goings on at city hall and the occasional celebrity trial at the Criminal Courts Building. That was about it.
    Michael Lyons was not source rich in Central. So when officers arrived at the scene of the shooting on 2nd and Broadway, in front of the very building where the LAPD compiles and analyzes its crime statistics, they didn’t know the victim. Though he had his license in his wallet along with $227 in cash, including a C-note stashed in a semihidden compartment, and a
Times
picture ID, they didn’t put it together.
    It wasn’t until homicide detectives were called in that the significance of the shooting became clear. Most of the city’s homicide dicks, many of whom rolled on all shootings even if they weren’t life-threatening, knew of Lyons.
    He had done gang stories like no one before and most of the homicides in the city were gang related. Those stories had won him admiration to the point where the police would tell others in their division, “Lyons got a gang thing today,” and they would actually read it. And often they would respond by cracking down on the gang. Bigger the story, harder the crack. It was always curious how Lyons could get gang members to go on the record, knowing it would be brutal for them in the days following publication. To the police, it just reinforced the stupidity of gang members.
    Those stories never glamorized gang life, but they probed deeper into the “why” of it all, the ultimate futility, the almost certain sad conclusions. But, more than anything else, they brought a human element to even the most notorious killer. Lyons’s stories brought to life people whose entire biography in most other reporter’s articles were simply summed up in two words, “gang member.”
    So, when detectives showed up, they knew this was big local news. And they knew the case would be taken away from them. Detective Megan Tropea of Central Division called the head of LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division, which handles high-profile cases.
    â€œTatreau.”
    â€œJimmy T, Tropea here. Got a good one for you.”
    On the phone, at his Mission Viejo home, forty miles away, Captain James Tatreau waited, heard nothing. “All right, Megan. I’m waiting. Or do I have to guess. Is this
Jeopardy!
? Who got it?”
    â€œWell, Jim, actually on
Jeopardy!
you are given the answer first and then you answer by asking the appropriate question.”
    â€œMegan, who the fuck got shot?”
    â€œMichael Lyons.”
    â€œNo shit? Dead?”
    â€œNot yet. Hit pretty bad from what I hear. He’s at County USC. Got it near the Redwood.”
    â€œDamn. He gonna make it?”
    â€œTwo in the torso.”
    â€œFuck. TV’s gonna be all over this. They like that crazy nut. Actually, so do I. We’re taking it.”
    â€œThat’s why I called.”
    â€œStay there till I get some guys over.”
    â€œOf course.”
    Jimmy Tatreau hung up. Went to his closet. He had his own, separate from his wife’s and just as packed. As head of the elite