Free The Cracked Earth by John Shannon

while.
    “You’re not going to try to drive?”
    “I’ll stay off the freeways.”
    “And stay out of any big cracks.”
    “And you watch out for Jamaicans.”
    “How come?”
    “If there is a feud here, it seems to run via Jamaica.”
    Mike Lewis’s eyebrows went up comically. He spoke slowly, judiciously, “Remember last time, when you got mixed up with the hired guns? Mon, I can tune you into the vicissitudes of history, but I can’t protect you from them.”
    J UST down the street from Mike’s, a young Asian in a tiger suit was guarding the front of a mini-market with an AK-47 across his chest. It might have seemed an acid flashback to ’Nam, but he had seen so little combat that the guy reminded him instead of the bad old bomb-shelter days of the 1950s, when the government pamphlets told you to shoot your neighbors rather than let them crowd in. Past the mini-market a bungalow was off its foundation, broken-backed, with a few sad people trying to prop up one wall with a big post. It looked like about a third of the chimneys in the area were down.
    It was a tough trip from the Arroyo to the Hollywood Hills without the freeways—down Figueroa, he figured, then skirting Elysian Park and taking anything west that was going. In fact, by the time he got there, the police had blocked off the old Fig bridge over the L.A. River and they wouldn’t let anyone on until it was inspected. One alternate route ended in a fallen peppertree, and farther south, cars were gridlocked against some other obstacle. He finally went north and got across at Fletcher and wound down through the Silver Lake hills. People were already setting up camps in open fields and parks, mostly recent immigrants. Central Americans had long memories for earthquakes.
    Then he came around a corner by the lake and had to stop fast. A dozen horses were spooked and rearing, each held by a wrangler. Beyond them the street was a prairie of some strange angular rubbish, like a beach after a hurricane. People were digging through the rubbish with a sense of urgency, hurling things aside, and most of them were dressed as hussars or grenadiers or something like that. A hussar at the center of the scene shouted and pointed and others congregated with a kind of rapt fury.
    He got out and traversed what turned out to be a moraine of lath and canvas and plaster chips toward the busy group. One slab of castellated fortress still stood, and he saw that it had all been a false-front film set. What remained was painted so crudely he was surprised it would even fool a camera. Perhaps it had been a movie about a movie.
    “Denny! Get a fucking crane!”
    “Sorry, man. We wrapped the crane this morning.”
    A man in a devil suit struggled to lift a long two-by-four still attached to a lot of rubble.
    “Somebody who isn’t a junkie give me a hand here!”
    Jack Liffey wedged his shoulder under the two-by-four. A grenadier slipped in beside them, and the plume of a brass helmet waved in Jack Liffey’s face, smelling for some reason like beef bouillon.
    “Heave. One-two-three, heave. ”
    “Put some emotional investment in it. Lift!”
    Something ripped audibly and the plank rose a foot.
    “Annie, look for us!”
    A stunning-looking redhead with a clipboard hurried up and tucked her head under the canvas.
    “Nobody home, dudes.”
    “Down on one.”
    They released the plank and it crashed with a big billow of dust.
    “Who are we looking for?” Jack Liffey asked.
    “Bobby Rafferty,” the grenadier said.
    “Not only the biggest child star since Macaulay Culkin—” the devil started in.
    “But bankable .” the grenadier finished for him. “Worth millions. Cute as a button.”
    “Nasty little drugged-up aggressive brat.”
    “But bankable.”
    “Nice little ass on him, too.”
    The devil and the grenadier shook hands. “I’m really glad we had this little talk.”
    Jack Liffey followed the redhead toward another commotion. Two more grenadiers were prying