L.A. STORIES : ‘I Know Where You Live--I Can Get You’

It began as my fault. Yes, as I slowed my car to a crawl in the middle of the blockto pull into my driveway, I forgot to flip on the left-turn blinker. The immediate result was a minor traffic accident. The ultimate result was urban terror: a gun pulled on me, my car pierced by high-caliber bullets, my sense of well-being shattered at every level.

And here’s the sign-of-the-times kicker: My assailant may have been within a flick of the finger of leaving my 3-year-old son without a father, but in the eyes of the law, this fender-bender-gone-mad falls into the misdemeanor category. As a helpful deputy city attorney put it, gently explaining the decision by the district attorney’s office not to pursue felony charges: “Given the slaughter they see, this wasn’t all that serious.”

For me, of course, few moments have ever been more serious. I feel lucky to have survived--a part of me dates that afternoon as the start of a second life. And all of me is suffused with a palpable sense of dread and danger. The phrase “it could have been me” no longer seems a cliche. It reverberates, instead, as this city’s most apt mantra.

I had been in an especially good mood that Saturday. The early morning rain had worked its cleansing magic, and the breezy afternoon made the day sparkle that much more. My mood was so good, in fact, that it was unaffected by an unfinished chore that brought me into the office. The irony now is stunning--as I walked out of the company garage, eyeing the blue sky framed by the Downtown skyline, I paid silent homage to the glory of Los Angeles. Bash it all you want, I distinctly recall thinking, but beat living here!

I haven’t a clue what my thoughts were a few hours later as I was driving home. It’s not as if the commute had worn me down--on a bad day, it takes all of 12 minutes, which is a major reason I live in the Mid-City area. That, and the fact that back when homes in more desirable parts of town were soaring in price, it was there that my wife and I came across a 1909, five-bedroom, Craftsman-style house on the market for an extremely attractive price. We made an offer for it the next day and moved in the first week of 1987.

There have been moments of doubt. We’ve lost a car radio or two, lost our power for three days during the riots, and watched some of our neighbors’ children lose themselves--not so much to the higher-profile scourges of crime or drugs, but to a lethargy stemming from poor educations and a lack of prospects.

But the positives have far outweighed these negatives. After enduring a few torturous periods of restoration work, we have a house of beauty and charm. We have established friendships with neighbors whose very differences from us enrich our lives. And we have enjoyed discovering how much we have in common with them beyond these differences.

In short, we have liked where we lived. And then I forgot to use that damn blinker.

I had just started the turn into the driveway when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a car passing me on the left. We almost missed each other, but not quite; my left front and his right side collided. It was a glancing blow, but surprisingly loud. I continued into my driveway, honking my horn. I was angry--what was this guy’s rush, I wanted to know, and why was he driving so fast on a residential street?

The other car--a sleek-looking, mid-’60s Chevy--had stopped in the middle of the street about 20 yards away. The driver, a young fellow wearing a baggy sweat shirt and equally loose pants, got out, looked at his car’s right side, got back behind the wheel and threw the car in reverse. He stopped again in the middle of the street, this time in front of my house. As he flung open his door, it was clear that while I was irate, he was enraged.

As I stood in front of my driveway, he let me know that in his mind, there was no doubt who was at fault here. “You didn’t use your signal, a------. You f---ed up my car,” he shouted several times.

I was taken aback, in part because of the recognition of my own culpability. But I remained unrepentant. “You didn’t have to pass my on the left,” I countered.

“You’re gonna pay for it, man, You f----- up my car and you’re gonna pay for it,” he sputtered.

“No way I’m gonna pay for it,” I responded.

*

The sound of the accident and the heated words had drawn my wife outside; when I first noticed her, she was standing on the sidewalk, about 15 feet to my right. Then, as the other driver stomped around to his car’s right side to re-examine the damage, berating me with every step, she studied the back of the Chevy and said: “I’ve got his license plate number, Don.”

I don’t know if he heard her. But as he came back around his car to again confront me, his anger still vividly etched on his face, he suddenly reached for his waist. The next moments are forever etched in my mind--he pulled out a large black handgun, held it to the sky, cocked it, wheeled in my direction and pointed it at me.

“I can’t believe it, man, you f----- up my car. You’re gonna pay for it,” he said again.

This time, I had no response. And as my eyes stared at the gun, my mind locked on one clear, overriding thought: I do not want to be here; I do not want to be anywhere near this person or his weapon.

As he brandished his gun, I put my hands up to chest level and said simply: “I’m sorry, man.”

I then walked toward my wife, saying as I reached her, “We’re going inside.”

We turned and strode up our walkway toward the front door. As we did so, the other driver began shouting: “Don’t turn your back on me, man. I know where you live--I can get you.”

Later, an acquaintance who served 20 years on the Washington, D.C., police force--much of it as a homicide detective--told my brother that the decision to literally turn our backs had been my “major mistake” in this faceoff. The ex-cop said that in his experience, precisely such a “diss” had provided many a thug with the final impulse to shoot.

So we were dumb. But blessedly, we made it inside. What I heard next didn’t surprise me in the least--gunfire, rapid and explosive. For some reason, I knew intuitively what had happened--the other driver had shot my car, emptying his chamber into its rear before driving off.

*

Amazingly, the damage proved purely cosmetic--I drove the car to work the next Monday. But when I look at those holes, I never fail to imagine them in my chest.

We called 911 within seconds of the gunshots, and the police responded promptly and efficiently. Thanks to my wife’s coolness under pressure in committing the license plate to memory, a suspect was detained at a nearby home within an hour. As he stood handcuffed on a street corner, my wife and I, sitting a safe distance away in the back of a patrol car, identified him as the Chevy’s driver and he was arrested.

I cannot imagine what that night would have been like had my assailant remained at large. As it was, the fact that he was behind bars proved of limited solace. There was the pay-back question--did he have buddies who would seek revenge? Should we spend the night at home? And if we gathered up our son (who mercifully had been spending that afternoon with friends) and stayed elsewhere, what about the next night? And the night after that?

Ultimately, we decided to stay put. At heart, we were seeking a type of psychic refuge that a change of living quarters would not have provided anyway.

As we sorted through this, I found myself fixated on a powerful yearning--a desire to relive the preceding hours. If only I had left work five minutes later. Or five minutes earlier. Anything to have avoided the intersection of my life with the driver of that Chevy.

Exhaustion finally overtook this fruitless train of thought. I suddenly felt drained, and I laid down beside my now-slumbering son. As he slept, blissfully unaware of the day’s turbulence, my mind replayed the scene in my driveway 10, 20, 100 times. And I cherished, as never before, the mere fact of existence.

I experienced that sensation frequently over the next few days. At other times, I became filled with fright as I contemplated--perhaps dwelt on--what might have been.

With time, these feelings have given way to the comforting rhythms of routine. And my assailant spared me further grief by pleading guilty to the misdemeanor charges against him, for which he received a 90-day jail sentence. I hold no ill will toward him; indeed, I hope he’s able to serve his time without losing the job I’m told he has and get on with a law-abiding life.

Still, a key question looms for me and my family: Is living in the city’s core--with its undeniable vibrancy, convenience and rewards--worth the seemingly spiraling odds of dying violently, randomly, meaninglessly? In short, do we give up and get out?

Our answer, for now, is no. But it certainly has become a much closer call.