Free City of War by Neil Russell Page B

answered him. “Yes, the question is why.”
    “So you gonna call the cops?” asked Gary.
    Kim shook her head. “What are they going to do? Paw through my stuff then make a report nobody will read. Waste of time. Theirs and mine, but mostly mine.”
    That made twice she’d passed on calling the authorities.
    A friend, Melvin Rose, runs a business that cleans up after fires and violent crimes. It can be revolting work, but people will pay a lot to get the smoke smell out of a house or not have to wipe up the viscera of a loved one. I never asked Melvin how he prices out a job, but he lives on the beach in Malibu, so he must not be bashful.
    I got hold of him on my cell, and an hour later, there was a team of Russian women putting the house back together. Melvin hires only women and only ones from the old East Bloc. Says nothing bothers them, and they don’t steal.
    “The men, they’re a different fuckin’ breed,” he told me once. “Loot a cathedral and get the cardinal to help carry out the altar. One showed up in drag once and snuck through. Broads on his crew almost beat the fucker to death when they caught him shovin’ a clock down his skirt. Now I make the new hires strip. Had a couple run out the door.”
    Gary got up to limp home, and I told Kim to pack a bag so she could stay at my place. Besides the mess, the back door wouldn’t lock, so there was no point tempting fate.
    I saw Gary look at her, and I realized he had a crush. Women always know that kind of thing, but the vibe from Kim was that, for whatever reason, Gary hadn’t gotten anywhere. Now, not only was his knee wrecked, but he also had to watch the guy who did it leave with the girl. I felt bad for him.
    I called Mallory on the way, and by the time we arrived, he had the Toledo Room brightened up and the closets empty. I reminded myself to tell him to donate the clothes to charity. But I’d made that note before, and somehow it hadn’t happened. My failure, not his.
    Kim wanted to take a nap—a real one—so I went out to my office to make a few calls and try to locate a photographer named Walter Kempthorn.

7
    Skycaps and a Walk on the Beach
    LAX is never fun, but Monday afternoons are usually lighter than normal. I was driving my Dodge Ram, and I pulled into the parking garage opposite the Delta terminal. Surprisingly, I found a space on the street level. I crossed to the terminal and took up a position along an iron fence about thirty feet down from passenger drop-off. Traffic was moving easily, and the skycaps were handling people as quickly as they arrived.
    After ten minutes, I had what I wanted and approached a heavyset skycap in his late fifties whom I had seen the other men deferring to. He was wearing an ID that gave his name as Mitchell Adams.
    “Excuse me, sir,” I said. “May I have a word with you?”
    He sized me up and said, “I saw you standing down there. You was figuring out who was running this shift.”
    It wasn’t a question, and I didn’t answer.
    “I know all the cops, and you ain’t one a them or TSA neither, or the airline, so if you want something, you’ll have to talk to my supervisor, and he ain’t here.”
    “Mr. Adams, my name is Rail Black.” I didn’t offer my hand. “And I’m trying to find someone.”
    “Like I said, you’ll have to talk to my supervisor.”
    Most people don’t know it, but skycap service in many large domestic airports is the exclusive province of African-Americans. I don’t mean the airlines only hire blacks. They don’t hire anyone. It’s contracted out, and the real power is a group of smart, hardworking, African-American men who run a patronage system as tight as Chicago aldermen. And since a hustling skycap can make $125,000 a year, there’s no shortage of people showing up on bended knee.
    “I think you’re the supervisor. But even if you’re not, you call your own shots.”
    He looked at me expressionlessly for a moment, then smiled. “You’re a pretty