What do you look for when you don’t have any idea what, if anything, is there? I ambled along and looked at doors, windows, walls, roof parapets, the street, the sidewalk, in trash cans, under trash cans, and at people walking by, which got me frightened looks, challenging looks, and three puckered kissy lips, two from girls, back at me. Nothing jumped out at me and no one had a big post-it note on their forehead with: I’m the secret you’re looking for! written on it.
Ten minutes later, I started back, hoping that looking at the same things from a different angle would show me something. It didn’t, until I arrived back at Sunset and Laurel Canyon and stepped off the curb into the street to catch a blowing piece of newspaper so I could put it in a trashcan.
I stepped on the paper to stop it and when I reached down to pick it up, I caught something out of the corner of my eye. I stayed bent over and turned my head.
Under the edge of a concrete bench seat were rust-colored scrawls on the inside of one concrete leg. They weren’t like any tags or gang signs I had seen. One of the markings was like an upside down Q, another was an odd backwards E, and others were like shepherd’s staffs with the crook at the top. Why would someone paint it where people couldn’t see?
A horn honked and scared me so bad I almost yelled. A silver-haired man in a Jaguar convertible said, “Dude, you need to read that paper on the sidewalk where it’s safe. Karma’s bad out here without some righteous armor around you.” He patted the Jag, showing his own armor. I hopped on the curb and he sped away, giving me the “hang loose” surfer sign.
When Hondo and Marcus arrived, they saw me on my stomach, with my head under the bench. Marcus dropped to his knees to film as Hondo bent over and said, “You find a half-eaten hot dog under there?”
“Very funny,” I said. I pointed at the markings, “Look at these.”
Marcus dropped to his stomach and army-crawled under there with us. He never stopped filming. The guy was good.
Hondo studied it for a good thirty seconds. “It’s a tag.”
“What’s a tag?” Marcus asked.
“Tagging is what it’s called when people use paint to mark things. Most gangs tag places to mark their territory or to sign some art work or tell of some deed.”
“It’s a message?” Marcus said.
“I think so,” Hondo said.
“Can you read it?”
“No,” Hondo said. “It’s Eastern European, I think. It’s not Arabic, I know that.”
“I can read one message in it,” I said.
Hondo looked at me, then at the scrawl, then slowly back at me. He realized it, too.
Marcus said, “What? What is it?”
I pointed, “That’s blood, written with a fingertip.”
**
Hondo and I took photos with our cell phones and Marcus did a slow close-up of the image.
Somebody grabbed my calf. I yelled and jerked up and hit my head on the underside of the bench. “Son of a-“
“Jeeze Baca, I didn’t know you were so nervous. You scared me so bad I almost dropped my burrito.” Atticus and his two cousins were there, laughing and hi-fiving each other as we crawled from under the bench.
I rubbed the back of my head, “You could have called out my name.”
Atticus said, “We thought maybe you were sneaking up on a…a frigging gnome or somethin’ and we didn’t want to scare it off.” His two buddies burst out laughing and hawing again.
“You guys are a riot.” I said. I introduced them to Hondo and Marcus, which was a mistake.
Oscar turned left, then right, and said, “Make sure you get my best side, ese. Wait, every side is my best side.” They went off again, giggling and snickering and lo-fiving for a change of pace.
Marcus was having a good time filming them, so he let them run with it. After a bit, Hondo nudged me.
“Think they might be able to read it?”
“I don’t know.” I stepped up to them and pulled out my phone. “Can you guys take a look at this?” I turned the image toward them.