The Right Hook

The architecture of the Chinatown branch of the Los Angeles County Public Library blended with little in its direct surroundings except the newly completed condominiums for seniors on the terraced grade behind it. Josie Ng yanked her foot in a not-too-graceful arc, from a motion she only vaguely remembered was proper to braking a bike. The last Beachcomber she had ridden had been from when she was twelve. “Great, this bike rack looks more modern than my transportation.”

“Ms. Ng!” shouted someone close by. Then, the same voice blurted, “Josie?!” A black-haired 24 year-old guy was hurtling on foot down the same steep approach. Josie turned to see him, and recognized the fellow, even with arms and legs in motion much like the initiation of an Olympic long-jump. He would have looked like a banker off Wilshire Blvd. or a respectable insurance salesman from his tailored attire, except for the quirk of his bleached shaggy bangs. Calmly, she swung a leg off the biking behemoth she’d tamed and quartered in the metal rack. She did not yet crouch to unwind and affix the bike lock, instead taking a moment to shield herself behind the bike’s steel frame. Her pursuer had better reflexes then she anticipated, however, and they were immediately face-to-face without further incident.

“Quentin?”

“Yeah, uh….Hey! Josie.”

“What are you doing here, especially without your car?” Josie stated half-knowingly.

"Well...uh...," the young man's mouth stiffened with indecision, then cracked open with a smile. "I could ask you the same thing, Ms. Montebello."

“I grew up in Monterey Park, Quen, not Montebello.” Josie Ng corrected.
The casual stance of the young man subtly shifted to a respectable distance and straightening that made the encounter look more like a banking transaction to anyone at a distance.

Josie pulled out of the Downtown parking structure of the weekly paper, known in civil business documents as Historic Downtown Los Angeles & Chinatown Call. Locals called it by no name, but knew it for the noodle house discount coupons and personals that ran in pages seven and eight. It was late work hours for a Friday, but the Nisei Week supplement to the following week’s paper had to be put to bed before the regular press run. She’d already slipped her security badge off the collar of her casual raw silk jacket as she autopiloted around the one way streets that corralled her toward the freeway and out of downtown. About two blocks from her turn to the on-ramp, Josie came to the Central Ave. red light which ran the mid-line of Little Tokyo, which was highly segmented by the one-way streets and its own interior pedestrian courts. Central terminated at the National Japanese-American Museum. The three way intersection was tightly controlled and the street was marked with crosswalks for every corner. The street was lightly littered with dark booklets, some turned open, and fluttering in unison with the evening breeze. Josie only glanced long enough to let a stray thought through before the green light released her. “Sailboats at the docks,” she murmured, fishing for her digital camera phone in the seat next to her.

A half- block further, the light remained red at her approach, so she was forced to stop again, before the light cycled. Her eyes were drawn down once again to the street, as she saw it from her driver door window. Many dozens of photographs, multiple portraits of a newborn, snapshot size pictures of a picnic or reunion of a large family, maybe a concert, then older, larger, B&W photos and other colored papers lay spread in a spray across the intersection. It all seemed dropped there, yet Josie did not see a tumbled box, even at curbside.

It took only a moment for Josie to note yet another oddity within site. A palm tree abutted against the southwest edge of the 1st Street Bridge was on fire. She had let her car slide back in neutral about a foot and a half before depressing the clutch, and proceeding through on this green, already cycling to yellow. Just a few yards from the orange embered and smoking palm, she pulled her car to the curb. Now, her color camera phone was firmly in hand and she quickly stepped from her car to the sidewalk, taking a picture that silhouetted several of the 1930’s lampposts against the smoldering typecast-but-not-native flora of Southern California. She glanced at the time illuminated on the screen of her phone – 2:55am – it would be insanely early to wake the editor unless she had a story of importance to go along with this image.

She thought of the disarray back down the street and turned to stare westward down 1st Street. A slightly higher vantage point afforded a vastly different perspective of the clumped debris shifting minimally with every slight gust of August pre-dawn breeze. The wind made her rethink her position next to the burning tree. Dangling fronds had already mostly burned, and seemed unlikely to detach and cause her or her vehicle comprehensive damage. She glanced sideways and down over the concrete railing of the bridge to detail and confirm in her own mind the height of the tree. The lower portion of the tree sunk into darkness, presumably, all the way to the L.A. River’s, desolate dirt bed. Since the fire was only smoldering at the bridge level, the start of it must have been street-level mischief or foolishness, she determined.

Her focus was drawn to the mystery of the papers back down the road. She was wholly fearless being alone on these streets in the pre-dawn hours under usual circumstances, but Josie hadn’t quite determined if all she’d seen in the past fifteen minutes could be categorized as usual.

Just then, the headlights of an LAPD squad car seemed to scan the breadth of the bridge like a searchlight, as the sedan turned to cross from the other end of the bridge. It came to a stop directly facing Josie’s Corolla. She immediately hoped they’d be too interested in investigating what she had happened upon, to check her vehicle’s registration tag. But, she accepted there was little she could do at this point; it wasn’t even worth turning on a little charm at this hour. She could hear fairly clearly the radioed call for a non-emergency LAFD unit at the bridge. She finally decided to turn and acknowledge the arrival of the officers. She shaded her eyes a bit with one hand and waved with the other holding the cel phone, as she glanced in the approaching officer’s direction.

“Good Morning, m’am? Did you see how this started, or just stop to call it in?”

“I was driving home from work when I saw it and I was speculating as to how it began, but, it’s silly, I’m standing here with a phone and you seem to have beat me to it, as far as calling someone in.” She stopped awkwardly, smiled, feeling like her chatty response probably wasn’t the best direction to take.

“That’s fine. It’d be best if you got back in your car and just head home now," The officer eyed Josie in a way that made her certain he was going to add something related to her single or marital status.

"I've had a long day..." she began to think. She was surprised when all he decided to add was: "...the fire department will need to access the hydrant.”

It was only then that Josie took full note of the yellow hydrant within inches of her rear bumper.

“Drat, I…uh…”

“M’am, it’s OK, you’re not totally parked in the red zone, as I see it, just move your car before the fire crew arrives. Deal?”

Josie grinned, “Yes, certainly.” Josie slipped her phone into one jacket pocket and fished her keys out of the opposite one.

“And you’d better hurry, Station Two’s response time is less than a minute from here at this time of night,” the officer added.

That could have ended the detour Josie’s evening had taken, but her journalistic fervor was still overpowering her determinedness to steer clear of all trouble this year or, at the very least, to avoid a huge ticket. Josie started up her Corolla, and immediately lowered the volume on the radio. She waved a bit to the officer from her rolled down window, plus checked for traffic. She made a u-turn and parked her car on the opposite side of the bridge, as she decided something.

“Officer! One more thing,” she waved him over. “Would you consider checking something with me at the next intersection?