The newcomer was dressed in a suit, light-blue shirt, and colorful tie. He removed wire-framed sunglasses from his bronzed face. He was Japanese American and maybe early fifties, Magrady estimated. The man was talking to one of the other organizers, Jessica Alvaringa. She in turn knocked on the office door, which was already open.

  “Yo,” Bonilla called out.

  “He’s LAPD and would like to talk to you,” Jessica said to Magrady.

  “Thanks, Jess,” Magrady said, already up. “Okay to use the conference room?” he asked Bonilla.

  “Sure.”

  Magrady went over to the detective and told him who he was.

  “Yes sir, I’m Aaron Tsuji with the LAPD.”

  “This about Ty Banshall’s death?”

  “Where can we talk?”

  “This way.”

  Magrady led him along a hallway and they went into the conference room, sitting opposite one another.

  “What is it about Ty’s death that’s so odd?” Magrady asked.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “You’re robbery-homicide and about the only thing Ty had of value was his sax.”

  “You’ve been in trouble with the law before, have you, Mr. Magrady?”

  “I’m sure you looked me up before coming over here.”

  “You and the deceased served in Vietnam.”

  “We did but weren’t in the same unit.”

  Tsuji let that sink in. “Can you tell me about the other night?”

  “Not a problem.” Magrady related the events matter-of-factly, then added, “He was dead by the time the paramedics arrived. Ty wasn’t beaten, shot, or stabbed. And you being here means it wasn’t just a heart attack.” He paused. “Was Ty poisoned?”

  Tsuji allowed no reaction onto his face but a gleam flickered in his eyes. “Why don’t we go over to the station and see if we can clear this up.”

  “Arrest me and I’ll go.”

  “You don’t seem to be too upset about Mr. Banshall’s murder.”

  “I’ve seen death in the jungle and on the streets, Mr. Tsuji. I’ve been near enough to it that she’s kissed me on the cheek once or twice. Me and Ty were friends but not ace boon coons, if you dig what I’m sayin’. Until I heard from him about the jam session, I didn’t even know he’d come back to town. Apparently he’d been here for a while.”

  “Why is it you didn’t drink that night?”

  “I’m an alcoholic and a drug fiend.”

  Tsuji stared at Magrady for several beats, then stood, extracted one of his business cards, and placed it on the table. As Magrady had assumed, he worked out of the Southwest Division.

  “Let me know if you think of anything.”

  “I will.”

  Tsuji headed toward the door. “I’ll probably be back in touch.”

  Magrady resisted making a sarcastic remark as the plainclothesman left. He remained sitting. The booze had probably been poisoned, thus the question about why he hadn’t taken a drink. It wasn’t a virgin bottle of Jameson, Magrady had noticed the night before. He also figured they’d pulled his prints from the glass he’d used, and spoken with the EMTs.

  “Well?” Janice Bonilla stood in the doorway.

  He told her what was up.

  “Why do you think he would be poisoned? Some old beef?”

  “It has to be,” Magrady said. “Far as I know, Ty made some good money but he blew through it a lifetime ago. I mean, except I guess for some royalty payments now and then, he probably only had Social Security.”

  “Maybe like Robert Johnson, it was a love triangle.”

  “Sheet, at his age? A jealous boyfriend did him in?” Or so went the legend about the demise of the famed bluesman.

  Bonilla snorted. “Who you tellin’, playboy?” She knew he had a lady friend named Angie Baine who was older than him. She was a former B movie starlet who’d been in films such as Wolfman A-Go-Go and The Atomic Eye. “About a month ago in Rosemead this great-grandmother stuck a knife in the back of her old man as he was playing Scrabble in the facility they lived in ’cause he was ending their relationship. And she was in her eighties.”

  “Okay, could be,” Magrady conceded. “That cop Tsuji will sort it out or not. I’ma get to the tenants’ meeting.”

  “See you later,” she said.

  Several days after the planning meeting, Magrady drove past the rear of a laundromat where a few compact nylon tents and other forms of precarious shelter were arrayed. He parked near his destination, joining Bonilla and Alvaringa, along with various community members and organizers from two allied organizations. They were there doing a direct action in front of a house on Budlong near the intersection of Jefferson.

  “This is not the way we solve homelessness in this city, by making more homeless.” Bonilla was talking into a portable mic attached to a speaker. “This won’t do displacing a hardworking single mother and her two children over a matter than can easily be resolved. Needs to be resolved.”

  Yells of support issued from the gathered, more than seventy people standing on the lawn facing the speaker. Several police cars rolled into view and parked haphazardly in the street. The officers joined the media who were also present. The family Bonilla was referring to had been evicted from the house, a rental. Not for failure to pay but over what in a higher-income area would have been a minor infraction: an unauthorized repair. But the rental company, a national outfit called Demizro which owned various units in South LA, knew the mother was a housing activist and wanted to make an example. A lot of the housing stock they owned had been acquired during the last economic downturn.

  Bonilla continued, “We have to stand up to the likes of Demizro and their mercenary methods. People have a right to shelter just as they have a right to food and water.”

  “Hell yes!” went up the cry. Fists pumped the air and placards were held aloft.

  “Whose streets? Our streets!” echoed from the protesters.

  The cops spread out in a semicircle around the crowd. Two sergeants were among them, one on either end. There were also a few people wearing light-green caps standing around. These were lawyers—legal observers. If there was an attempt to occupy the premises, the cops would have cause to move in. As it was, they still might declare this an unlawful assembly.

  “Hey, Magrady,” said a man in one of the light-green caps. He wore a plaid shirt and jeans.

  “Mark, how’s it going?” They shook hands.

  “Same old, same old.” Mark Josephs was white, in his forties, pleasant-looking with a pockmarked jawline. He was a surfer and civil litigator who’d won a handful of significant cases against the LAPD over the years. “How come there’s a detective over there mad-dogging us?”

  Magrady had noticed a silver-colored Chrysler arrive on the periphery with Tsuji behind the wheel. “He’s here to rattle me.” He explained why.

  “Huh,” Josephs said. “Let me know if you need my help.”

  “I will, thanks.”

  Josephs joined two other legal observers talking to one of the sergeants. The protesters were now out on the sidewalk and that, too—obstructing a public right-of-way—could be used by the cops to vamp on them, Magrady reflected. He threaded his way through the gathered as more speakers came to the mic. At one point the uniforms pressed their semicircle tighter, seemingly trying to prod everyone onto the lawn. Magrady and the others tensed. The person at the mic kept talking but everyone’s eyes were on the police. At some imperceptible signal, the officers took a few steps back and everyone exhaled.

  Eventually the event wound down, the collective release of energy like air escaping a balloon. Bonilla was being interviewed by a radio reporter outlining their next steps in the fight to keep the family’s home. This involved putting pressure on specific members of the Demizro board.

  Hands in his pockets, standing at the curb as people left, Magrady saw that Tsuji was gone as well. It suddenly occurred to him that Banshall probably didn’t have any immediate family in town. He knew his friend had been married but he recalled the wife had died a few years ago. And as far as he knew, the jazzman didn’t have any children. He wasn’t sure how long the county morgue would hold onto his body. If unclaimed, it would eventually be cremated to save space. Since it was still an open investigation, it would probably be Tsuji who would inform the coroner to release the body.

  Back at the Urban Advocacy office, Magrady used one of their real estate databases to look up information on the fourplex where Banshall had lived. He discovered that the owner didn’t live there and the other units were all occupied by tenants. The police might have put up their warning tape on Banshall’s door or maybe not. He did recall, however, that the main entry door was kept locked. He smiled, realizing he was working himself into how to get into the dead man’s apartment. He couldn’t exactly say why, but did anyone deserve to die alone? A B&E was out of the question. The front door was heavy and sturdy and the windows on the ground floor were barred. Imagine if Tsuji threw him in lockup for trying to force his way in? He’d look guilty as hell. Not that he gave a shit. He wondered if he called the owner pretending to want to rent the now-vacant apartment, how might that go? Magrady supposed that like a vampire, he was going to have to be invited inside.

  The next day before sunup, Magrady sat in his car keeping watch on the fourplex. He saw a man leave the place around seven thirty that morning and a woman leave at ten past nine. The man walked along the street and turned the corner. The woman got into a car. That left the occupant of the third apartment. Maybe they worked from home. What kind of ruse could he try to gain entry? He sat and waited. Magrady had planned and had brought along a sandwich, but despite jonesing for it, no coffee. The latter an effort to not have to pee, at least not frequently. A little before eleven, an older woman exited the premises. She had on a straw sun hat and pulled one of those adjustable rolling carts old folks used to take their groceries home from the supermarket. She stood in front and soon a cab, a Prius, pulled up. The driver got out, collapsed her cart, and put it in the hatchback. She got in the rear. Off they went.

  Nearly an hour and a half later the older lady returned in another cab. As the driver helped her get unloaded, Magrady came up.

  “Ma’am, sorry to bother you, but does Ty Banshall live here? He’s a saxophone player.” He held up his phone. “We had an appointment today about an upcoming gig, but he’s not answering.”

  “Oh my, I guess you haven’t heard.” She was a walnut-colored woman who looked to be in her seventies. She reminded him of those ladies who did the volunteer work at the church of his youth.

  “What’s that?” He took hold of her cart to take it up the front steps onto the porch. He nodded at the cabdriver, who nodded back and returned to his car.

  “The way I understand it, they had to carry him out of here feet first the other evening. He died.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Yes, I’m so sorry. He was a nice man. Told me his stories like playing in Count Basie’s band.” She’d unlocked the front door and pushed it open. Magrady followed her into the vestibule, hauling the cart up and over the doorway’s frame. She occupied one of the ground-floor dwellings.

  “Well,” he said, “thank you for your time.”

  “Of course. No bother. Sure will miss him.”

  “Me too.” Magrady turned back toward the entrance. She was rolling her cart inside her place, closing the door. Magrady didn’t want her hearing him go up the stairs, arousing suspicion. At the main doorway he placed a waded-up piece of paper in the doorjamb cavity where the lock would catch, then closed the front door, faking like he was leaving for good. He returned to his car to retrieve a hammer and chisel. These he placed in a paper bag along with some cheap cotton gloves he’d bought to make it less obvious he was carrying the amateur burglary kit. He sat behind the steering wheel, listening to a podcast debunking conspiracy theories.

  After another forty minutes he went up the steps, unlatched the front door, and moved inside. He heard muffled voices through the closed door of the older woman’s apartment—she was watching her stories on TV.

  Up the stairs he went. At Banshall’s door there was no X of crime scene tape. The door was locked. Gloves on, he inserted the chisel between the door and the jamb. Three quick raps of the hammer on the head of the chisel, and the door popped opened. Magrady paused then stepped inside, closing the door quietly behind him. Fortunately, these rooms were not above the older woman’s place. For a moment he felt disoriented, viewing the main room in the light, knowing the recent inhabitant was never to return.

  He glanced around, not sure what he was looking for, though he supposed he should try to find a next of kin. But the medical examiner’s office would do that as a matter of course. Yet it seemed impersonal if he didn’t also try. There were a couple of framed photos on the mantle, including one with Banshall in a sport coat with his arm around the shoulders of a woman in a mink coat. Both were smiling.

  Staring at his dead friend’s face, he could tell it had been taken a few years ago. Should he try to find the woman? He picked up the frame and slipped the photo free. Nothing was written on the back.

  Before putting the picture back together, he took a shot of it with his phone’s camera. He picked up the black wooden rectangle also on the mantle. The thing that seemed to puzzle Banshall by its presence. Magrady had one just like this. It was a commemorative gift given to those who’d worked on a successful political campaign more than twenty-five years earlier. What went down on and after April 29, 1992, were etched memories. The days-long conflagration had jumped off at the intersection of Florence and Normandie. Everyone had been tuned in to their TVs or radios as the not-guilty verdicts were announced that afternoon for the four LAPD officers who beat the living hell out of Rodney King after a chase-and-stop in the San Fernando Valley. The two passengers in his car untouched. In those days there were no smartphones with cameras to chronicle police violence, Magrady reflected. On that evening, it was grainy images captured via a video camera operated by a plumber from his apartment’s balcony. He’d been awakened by the commotion from below.

  The memento Magrady held had been handed out by a grateful candidate who’d won a city council seat, running on a platform of neighborhood empowerment zones and racial reconciliation several years after ’92. It had been a contentious race. Banshall had headlined a benefit concert to fundraise for the campaign. The singer had been a woman calling herself Tempest. Magrady had been one of several in charge of the canvassing, the door knocking. Tsuji must have searched the apartment once he got the tox report from the coroner. The detective must have also talked to the musicians who last played with Banshall that night at the World Stage. That might have been another way in which he’d zeroed in on Magrady. But who had Banshall run up against since coming back to town?

  Banshall had a good number of vinyl LPs arranged on a shelf in the tidy dining room. Magrady sifted through these but no hidden treasure map fell out. Frustrated and feeling aimless, he was hesitant to leave but he was getting nowhere. Well, he reasoned, he’d try to hunt down the woman, though he had a feeling that was going to be a dead end. Magrady poked about some more but nothing jumped out at him.

  When he stepped outside the apartment, he heard the main front door opening. For a blink he froze but knew he had to feign being nonchalant. He descended the stairs as the woman he’d seen in the morning started up them.

  “How you doing?” he said, angling past her with his paper bag.

  She glared at him but didn’t say anything as she ascended. He didn’t think she took him for a cop. But she was going to notice the broken in door any second. It wouldn’t latch and that was noticeable.

  “Hey,” she called out.

  Magrady quickened his pace through the entrance and out onto the walkway. Hopefully she wasn’t packing. He jogged as best he could, bad knee and all, over to his car to get away from there.

  Later that night, not having had a visit from the law, Magrady leafed through the contents of a large ten-by-twelve gray envelope of mementos. If he couldn’t find out who poisoned Banshall or who might claim his body, he could at least revisit parts of a past they shared. There was a Polaroid of a young, thinner him in the Three Clicks in uniform, a Vietnamese “B girl” sitting on his knee. They were obviously both tipsy. Another picture showed Banshall blowing the sax on the club’s tiny stage accompanied by a guitarist and a drummer, the musicians also in uniform. Hard to believe any of them had been that young.

  Magrady kept sifting through the items in no particular order. There was a letter his daughter Esther had written him years ago, begging him to get clean. He was glad they were no longer estranged these days. He scanned some newspaper clippings from the city council campaign, finding his name mentioned in an article from the Sentinel, LA’s Black newsweekly. But it was an article from the Los Angeles Times that he fixed on. It was an interview with the candidate, Tina Chalmers, and she was talking about the death of one of the architects of the gang truce between the Crips and Bloods. This had been an effort begun before April 29 but had gotten traction when it came into effect afterward. The truce eventually broke down, but Chalmers was talking about its merits and the need to redouble that sort of effort.

  “Tony Blow does not need to have died in vain,” Chalmers was quoted as saying.

  Tony Blow was the street name for a reformed gangbanger who’d been killed. He was controversial as he was the face of the gang truce, even being interviewed on national news. But it was also alleged he was under investigation by the FBI for drugs and guns. Magrady couldn’t remember his real name. He got on his laptop and found a pertinent article about his death. Blow was found shot to death in a rear house on 76th Street off an alley. His murder was unsolved at the time of the article, though believed to have been gang related. Magrady did more checking and it seemed the murder was still open now, decades later. He returned to the original article. Toward the end of the piece, he found Blow’s real name. Then he read it again to make sure.