6:33 A.M. Midtown Crossing Los Angeles between Pico and Venice. The sun is rising and bringing enough illumination to turn off the street lights now. The air is a cool seventy degrees with a light stench of smoked cannabis and tobacco. Thor’s Day morning traffic is typical with swarms of people and their vehicles rushing to get to work at Lowes on the bottom of the Crossing structure or Smart & Final, Ulta Beauty, PetSmart, or other stores at the very top level. In between these levels is a middle second level where a lot of employees and customers park their cars.
Across from this structure can be found another stretch of property that is host to Planet Fitness, Ralphs, CVS, and others. The parking lot in front of Planet Fitness features a stained white bricked and caged dumpster enclosure with a metal door unlocked for access to throw trash in.
At the southwest corner on the roof of the Midtown Crossing Shopping Center, stands a huge six foot five, 300 pound, grayish whitish bearded man. He’s clothed in dirty dark blue Dickies pants, a faded black t-shirt, and settled on top of his salt and pepper colored hair is a blue Kansas City baseball cap underneath a grey hooded sweat jacket. Old worn out blue and white Adidas sneakers cover his size thirteen feet. His age could be around fifty to sixty years old because of the worn and wrinkled skin around his dark and rage filled eyes. Around his neck hangs two necklaces. One, a gold link, and attached to it is a golden hand with its middle finger prominent and the right thumb extended in a manner that almost makes the letter L or J depending on which side is visible. The other, silver, and attached to it is a blue mini Sharpie marker.
“Aaaaagggghhhhhh….Fuck you mothafucka punk bitch ass! It’s my shit bitch!” he yells, staring at the parking lot in front of Planet Fitness.
A police car blaring its sirens screams past, westward down Venice Blvd.
“Fuck you too bitch ass pigs. You’re never taking my shit from me. I’m getting my shit back bitches,” the man on top of the roof shouts. Then he climbs down a white metal ladder bolted to the side wall of the Chase building, gets to the stairwell and steps down to the sidewalk. When he gets to the crossing, he ignores the fact that it’s not green yet and walks anyway.
Slowly he walks with hostile aggression and a notorious gangster limp as if he’s about to punch someone in the face or pull out a gun and start shooting. While he’s gradually crossing the street, a speeding red Mercedes sedan barely notices him and comes to a smoky screeching halt inches away from his right leg. He stops and mad dog scowls at the surprised and frightened woman while he walks even slower, purposefully being uncooperative.
When he finally makes it to the sidewalk on the other side of the street, he spits on the sidewalk, then jumps from the sidewalk to the blacktop of the Planet Fitness parking lot, and stomps down his feet with balled fists in front of his chest and yells, “This is my shit bitches and I’m taking it back!”
He walks over to the dirty white bricked wall of the dumpster, unbuttons and unzips his pants, and begins to urinate on the wall. The stain can be seen to match many other ones that have now become dark and hazy grey streaks.
“Hey you, you can’t do that! We’re calling the police who are literally down the street from here! You better leave now!” hollers one of the fitness gym security guards as he drives himself and the other guard over to the dumpster in their black security golf cart to apprehend the man.
When they get to him, the very wide and heavy dark-skinned security guard dressed in a blue security uniform with a brass badge gets in the face of the man and says, “Debo, you better leave now. You can’t be coming over here pissing on anything you sick freak!”
Then the slender and taller security partner of the wide one looks at both of them and witnesses through his thick glasses settled on top of his caramel shaded nose, Debo open hand slap the heavier security guard in the face so hard that he hits his head up against the dumpster wall, falls to the ground, and passes out. Debo then picks up the slender guard and throws him on top of the fenced part of the dumpster encasement roof.
Little did Debo know, at the same time that his glasses fell off, the slender guard grabbed a hold of Debo’s middle finger necklace during the chaos and is now holding it in his hands. Debo starts to run away because he can hear and see the police coming into the parking lot and approaching the dumpster.
“So, what happened here,” the blue eyed blond-haired white Police Officer asked the security guards. They explained the whole incident and then handed over to Officer Beauregard Sessions the necklace that was confiscated by the guard.
When Officer Sessions went back to his desk at his precinct, he inspected the necklace and discovered that the very tip of the middle finger was removable and it turned out to be a USB Flash Drive. He brought it to the computer forensics team and asked Officer ScAlito if he could safely inspect it because, for safety reasons, he didn’t want to plug it into his workstation at his desk. Sessions learned this lesson the hard way after one day plugging in a drive he found in a post office parking lot and then crashing the entire network in his precinct.
“Looks like an old Crip has a wall pissing fan club,” ScAlito told Sessions as they could see hundreds of photos of Debo urinating on dumpsters all over Los Angeles and Santa Monica. One specific picture stood out to Sessions. It showed Debo clean cut, younger with no grey hairs, and looking completely different dressed in an AMF Midtown Lanes bowling alley uniform smiling with love in his eyes as he kissed a baby girl wrapped in a pink blanket, that he had cuddled in his arms. He was standing with her in front of a grey two-story house with many windows. The date of the photo read: December 29, 2008
“I know that house. It’s at the very end of Adams and Sycamore. It’s kind of strange because right next to that nice house is some kind of small and very short walk through tunnel that goes beneath the street to the other side,” Sessions commented, then continued, “Thanks ScAlito. I’m going to get his ass now.”
Officer Sessions left the precinct and went on his way to find Debo. While driving, he opened up a compartment in his squad car and pulled out a red bandana and placed it on his passenger seat, then his personal cell phone rang. He answered, “Yeah?”
A rigid and stern voice spoke, “Candidate Sessions, you have one more to do, then you will be accepted into our order. Complete the task and get rewarded.” Then the call abruptly hangs up. Sessions put his phone away and continued navigating to his destination.
He finally turns right onto Sycamore and pulls up to an old dirty beige house directly across the street from the nice grey house that he remarked about earlier. He grabs the red bandana then gets out of his patrol car and walks slowly over to the tunnel passthrough. The silhouette of the back of a man wearing a ball cap sitting down with his back to the opening could be seen through the dimly lit gloomy interior.
As he approaches he could hear him sniffling his nose, crying, and babbling, “I’m going to get you back my love. Daddy is still here. He loves you. I’m getting the bowling alley back too, and your mom will return to me and bring you back baby.”
Even though the roar and echo from the gunshot fired to the back of Debo’s head could be heard for miles, no one responded for at least fifteen minutes after Officer Sessions returned back to his precinct. When the police finally arrived, Debo’s body was found face down in a mixture of urine, feces, blood and mud with a red Bandanna covering his wound.
J.J. Fauria 