"That's where I rolled around in the middle of the street one morning at 4 a.m., fighting a gangbanger for the possession of a leather jacket I was wearing at the time," I said to Gordon as we passed the Mel'o Burger on Century Boulevard, "Kevin, his name was Kevin, got 7 years in prison for that. He didn't even get to wear the jacket."
"That's a crack motel," I told Gordon as we passed the Hollycrest across the street from the Hollywood Racetrack, "I hadda do some emergency surgery on a bad tooth in that dive one night with nuthin' but a stolen V.A. scalpel, a cracked piece of mirror and a bottle of Three Feathers. That's a scary fuckin' place. You don't wanna get caught sober in THAT place!"
"There's some Sunday morning crack whores," I said as I wheeled The Pig through deeper and deeper levels of decaying city, "and you can still play wino chess at three in the morning at that 24 hour donut shop over there if you can stomach your opponent's odor de gutter. Right around the corner is the crack house my friend Lamont worked at as a doorman. Stupid job, eh?
See that park there? That used to be drug central. Strictly business. They didn't let the neighborhood use it as a public park. No teeter tottering around here, kid. Scat. They beat you up for window shopping, too."
"There's the great empty (shopping) mall," I told Gordon as we continued up Hawthorne Boulevard, "Biggest empty mall in the city, maybe the whole country. Been empty for years and years. I think it shut down when the aerospace industry moved out. Economy of these neighborhoods went to shit as you can see. Looks like Juarez now. Do you know how many homeless people they could shelter in that place, Gordon?"
"Thousands maybe?" Gordon answered.
"Thousands. But will they do it? Hell no. Fuck the homeless, I got mine. There's Ambu-serve," I said as we cruised south on Crenshaw, "I tried to get a job there once as an ambulance driver, but they're only hiring ex cons. Guess they figure felons won't go out on strike or fuss too much about the shitty pay. Hope you don't mind all my yakkin', Gordo."
"Not at all, my good man," Gordon said, "I feel like Dante's Virgil in 'Inferno' visiting the different levels of hell with you as my irrepressible tour guide," he said and laughed, "Please continue with the tour, kind sir."
Ah, here we are," I said as we pulled in to a vacant Vietnamese dentist's parking lot, a lot that was populated this Sunday morning with only one old stained, raggedy, dented, 22-foot recreational vehicle, "I worked at that Arco across the street last year," I said, "Lived in an RV parked in back of the station. That empty mini-mall next door? That used to be a Vietnamese voodoo lot. Weeds grown up. Cat carcasses inside. That and a place where the crackheads went to suck the pipe.
"Actual cat carcasses?" Gordon asked.
"Yeah. They did cat sacrifices in there. I used to live in that crack motel next door, hear some spooky shit at night." Looking back from the Vietnamese Voodoo Lot to the dented RV, looking in to it, I said, "Well, the dogs are here, maybe he's here, too."
END PART THREE
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