Noir

On Tuesday evening, November 12, 2019, at approximately 11PM, Los Angeles Police Department patrol officers were dispatched, code three, to a report of a kidnapping in the Leimert Park area of Los Angeles.

At approximately the same time, residents in the 3800 block of Third Avenue heard a woman screaming “Help me! Somebody help me!” and a male voice responding “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”  These voices were captured on a doorbell camera along with the image of a white, 2003-2008 Toyota Matrix or Prius fleeing the scene toward 39^th Street.

Southwest Division officers could not locate a suspect or victim.  In a subsequent investigation, no missing persons reports were filed and there was no conclusive evidence that a crime had been committed.

Living in Los Angeles, one becomes used to the macabre and bloody. Seared into memory are the names:

Charles Manson, Kenneth Bianchi, Angelo Buono, Richard Ramirez.

Unsolved mysterious deaths only add to Los Angeles lore:  Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia; George Reeves, the murdered Superman; Ned Doheny and Hugh Plunkett, possible lovers and participants in the Teapot Dome Scandal; Bugsy Seigel, the gangster; Biggie Smalls, rap star.

The locations of murders also continue to attract, public attention:  that vacant lot on Norton Avenue in Leimert Park where Elizabeth Short was found; the condo on Bundy Drive where Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman met their untimely end; the house in Los Feliz where cardiologist Harold Perelson murdered his wife and attempted to kill his daughter before taking an overdose of drugs causing his own death by suicide—his mansion remained vacant for sixty years, and in all that time, the Christmas decorations were still up from the night of the murder; the Ambassador Hotel, now demolished, where Robert Kennedy was shot on that June evening in 1968.

The most infamous crime scenes:  the house on Cielo Drive where the followers of Charles Manson shot and stabbed five people to death and the house on Waverly Drive in Los Feliz where more of Manson’s group murdered supermarket owner Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary.

Strange but true: the Cielo Drive house was later rented by Trent Reznor of the band Nine Inch Nails who recorded much of the band’s album, The Downward Spiral (1994) there.

There are also no shortage of people who believe they have solved cold cases.  Steve Hodel, a former LAPD homicide detective, believes he has solved the Black Dahlia murder case when he put a name to the unknown killer:  George Hodel, his father.  The macabre pose of the victim’s exsanguinated and dismembered body, according to Hodel, was inspired by a Man Ray photograph he found in his father’s belongings.

And writer James Ellroy fictionalized her case in his novel, and believes that he, too, has solved her murder:  she was another victim of the same serial killer who murdered his mother when he was just a young boy.

All of this—murder, mayhem, clues, crime scenes—it is all circular in Los Angeles.  It all comes back to the detective, that student of human psychology and degradation, who runs the case down like the soles of his leather shoes.  Veteran homicide detectives will tell you a case is solved with shoe leather, not some moment of divine realization.  No bolt of lightning; just endless shadowy darkness and the relentless detective, doggedly pursuing the illusive murderer.

So the LAPD could use some help finding out what really happened last month in Leimert Park, yet another mystery in a city full up of the strange and surreal.  A month on, and no reports of a missing person.  From analysis of the doorbell camera and other security videos, they know that the Matrix or Prius had a broken front passenger window covered in opaque plastic.  The victim heard screaming was a black female, and her hair was being pulled from behind while she sat in the passenger seat.  A male black was driving, and the hatch on the vehicle was open.

The Trees and the Wind

Thomas Cole, 1839

Yesterday, I sat for a long time on the grass under a canopy of massive trees in the West Adams District near downtown Los Angeles.  I was reminded of the Hudson River School of painters from the 19^th century, the atmosphere so permeated with romanticism.  The air was fresh and breezy, becoming downright windy with a storm on the way for Thanksgiving.

I thought about everything we cling to in life, the things we cannot imagine living without, and then they are gone and there is no choice but to live on.  The absence is permanent, the wound scars over, and we move forward.  It might even be a necessity in life to jettison everything periodically and start fresh.

Under those big trees, I kept asking myself, what do I truly need?  What can I not live without?  What do we all need to survive?

We keep going until we are gone, like the shadowy ghosts camped out in makeshift tents and cardboard houses by the side of the freeway that I see while sitting in traffic on the commute home in the evening.  I look at them and think apocalypse; they see themselves, I imagine, as just surviving another day and living to tell the tale.  If I were more courageous, I would like to talk to them, hear their stories.  I am sure Thanksgiving has a very different meaning to them.

There are lessons to be learned:  the rain always comes; the trees will still stand long after we are gone; and there are great movements and currents coursing through life, swirling all around like the wind, yet often invisible.

We are the days we live in the places we inhabit.  And after those days, we remain as imprints on the continuing world, the ghosts of all we once were, and remain.