Editor’s Note: The following column is a work of fiction inspired by the recent arrest of the disabled veteran known to many as the “Mayor of Woodland Hills.” The author has written extensively about the plight of the homeless in this neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Abacus Frinch took his aviator glasses off, tsk-tsking and shaking his head. A dark, dour expression wreathed his doughy face. He was watching with palpable disapproval— even disdain — as further up Providence Street a manifestly homeless man pulled a cart whose wheels were making a disconcertingly birdlike screech
Squinting in the sun, adjusting his suit and pocket square, Abacus then turned to face public defender Sally Garon. He was about to answer Sally’s investigator, Rusty, who’d approached Abacus as he was getting out of his beaten-up “MAGA”-stickered Porsche, volunteering: “Hey man, you got a second? We’re out here investigating the theft of a Whole Foods shopping cart. Can you believe that!?”
As Abacus was opening his mouth to say something smart, something provocative, he heard the unmistakable, unctuous baritone of his father, Buster Frinch — the voice Buster used when laying it on particularly thick. Almost at the same time he heard another voice he’d come to know well shucking real estate on Providence Street, biding his time as he tried desperately — and thus far unsuccessfully — to pass the California bar exam; it belonged to Candice “Chic,” the owner of “Diva Salon.”
Candice was laughing as the salon door swung open and she came out first with Buster’s hand low on her waist, his fingers spread across and patting her sizable rear-end.
Seeing Abacus’s open-mouthed, deer-in-headlights stare at Buster and Candice, Rusty and Sally sized the couple up.
Buster Frinch, they could tell, was Abacus’s father. Same weak chin. Same florid, flaccid face. Same fluffy and feathered sculpted-shag-hairdo borne from hours of training; primping done in front of multiple mirrors with a blow-dryer and a carved, sequined, wood-handled hairbrush. Candice, like Buster, looked like an 80s throwback, too, in tight and ripped acid-wash jeans which she paired with a pink “Barbie” t-shirt and her long, parted-down-the-center and chestnut-colored hair.
Buster and Candice had been inside Diva Salon together, including in the upstairs part where Candice lived in a private apartment. Ostensibly Buster was visiting in his capacity as chairman of the City Council’s “Committee on Criminal Justice in Woodland Hills”; he was there to get more information from Candice about how the “homeless problem” was affecting her business. But, while discussing how the unhoused “are wrecking all this city has to offer,” a shared swig of “Southern Comfort” — kept underneath Candice’s sink for “emergencies” — had led to another. Then another. Then more.
Despite his alcohol-infused haze, right away, coming out of Diva Salon, Buster recognized his son, especially his ill-fitting and familiar suit — a suit Buster had bought for Abacus when Abacus was clerking at the D.A.’s office. That was back when relations between father and son had been much better. (Before Abacus graduated law school and began serially failing the bar exam, embarrassing Buster, and getting himself fired by his corporate law firm.)
“What are you doing here!?” Buster, immediately flustered, demanded. Subtly he took his hand off of Candice’, and Candice, seeing Atticus glowering nearby, stifled a salacious giggle.
“What am I doing here!? What the hell are you doing here?” Abacus retorted angrily.
“Listen guys,” public defender Sally Garon suddenly interjected, “sorry to interrupt you.”
Sally had chestnut-colored hair like Candice, but hers was shoulder-length and hidden under a black baseball hat. And whereas Candice’s hairdo, clothes, makeup, jewelry, perfume, nails, and everything else down to her parked nearby mint-green new-model Mercedes with personalized plates projected diva (her plate read “LA1 DIVA”), everything about Sally projected an air of professionalism.
True, Sally was wearing a long-sleeve t-shirt featuring Bob Marley playing guitar; she’d purposefully matched it with worn Rasta-colored (red, gold, and green) Nikes; but, as an ace public defender trying to come by information in the streets of L.A., this particular outfit had garnered surprising and outsized investigative success — including a witness statement that had later exonerated a client in a high-profile and “*”big news”*” murder case.
“I have a court hearing downtown and my investigator Rusty and I have to get a move on,” Sally said, taking a step towards Abacus — him still standing like a stone-faced statue angrily eyeing his father. And turning to Buster and Candice now descended from Diva Salon’s small stoop, Sally asked: “Do any of you know a man named ‘Gerald Freeman?’ I believe everyone around here knows him as ‘The Mayor of Woodland Hills?’”
“He’s a veteran with silver-black hair. He gets around in a wheelchair. He lives in that apartment complex right over there.” Sally pointed at the back of the “Vistas on Ventura Boulevard,” just a few blocks down from where they all stood on Providence Street.
No one said anything, so Sally continued: “Anyway, Mr. Freeman, ahem, ‘The Mayor,’ was arrested last week for misdemeanor theft of a Whole Foods shopping cart.”
“I hope that mettlesome coot rots!” This from Candice, her face metamorphosed from a pasty white to a sudden crimson. “‘Mayor of Woodland Hills,’ my ass! Sooner that bum’s locked up, the safer this neighborhood will be.”
“Always he’s encouraging these homeless people to hang around Woodland Hills,” said Candice, raising her voice and taking an aggressive step towards Sally. “I see him.” She waved her hands. “We all see him. All day long, when he’s not hitting people up for cash at the ATM, he’s going in and out of that Whole Foods and coming out with coffee and pastries. And then he doles it out—all these freebies—to the other bums. To all his friends.”
“Well it’s about time someone set these homeless straight. ‘Cause life isn’t all free coffee and pastries for everyone, you know? And we don’t want these lazy loafers pushing stolen shopping carts around neither. How are we supposed to attract business with that—that blight!”
Just before being assigned The Mayor’s case, Sally had read a book called “The Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus.” Sally paused before responding, remembering one of De Jesus’s more penetrating meditations about the Brazilian slums or “favelas,” which had impressed her enough to copy it down in her notebook:
“The neighbors in the brick houses look at the favelas with disgust. I see their looks of hate because they don’t want the favela here. They say the favela debases the neighborhood and that they despise poverty. They forget that in death everyone is poor.”
Stephen Cooper is a former D.C. public defender who worked as an assistant federal public defender in Alabama between 2012 and 2015. He has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers in the United States and overseas. He writes full-time and lives in Woodland Hills. Follow him on “X”/Twitter @SteveCooperEsq
