Rest in Peace : He was a man of faith, a man of freedom. He dreamed of uniting us all with a message of love. But Gary had a dark side that kept him on the streets, the same streets that took his life.

Abdul Forloo is hawking incense and oils from a red wagon in front of the Daily Grill. His playful banter carries over the growl of traffic on La Cienega, where his voice is a familiar sound, his smoldering incense a familiar scent.

“Imported Egyptian body oils. . . . We have Champagne, Safari, check it out, check it out.”

At the traffic light on Beverly Boulevard, Isaac Lane, nicknamed Domino, wears three shirts, a jacket, three pairs of pants and heavy, brown boots as he shuffles through a seam in the cavalcade of Benzes, Range Rovers and Bimmers that pass by.

He coughs and rattles a small mound of change, mostly quarters, in the bottom of a plastic cup. His sign states: “Hello. Donation Please. Homeless etc. Peace and Joy. See ya.” Ask him how it’s going and he’ll usually answer, “Slow but sure.”

But missing from this handful of regulars--part of the street scene in the popular Beverly Center shopping area--is the man they knew as Gary, who was killed on April 15.

To mark his death, friends hung signs and flowers at two of the traffic islands at the intersection of La Cienega and San Vicente boulevards, which, more than anywhere, were his home. They are where in winter, he would set out a small Christmas tree as he cadged, packing it up and hauling it away in a shopping cart when he was done for the day. It is where he was stabbed to death.

“Rest in peace,” his friends wrote. “You will be missed by your regulars.”

A tattered, smiling fixture who had panhandled in the area for at least three years, Gary was homeless and slept in various nearby crannies. Business people say he typically greeted them with kind words: “Hi, how are you? Lovely day, isn’t it?” At times, he would comment further about such days, noting, “You know, it’s all we really have.”

Friends describe him as an energetic, spiritual man, caught between opposing forces of the streets. He spoke of how faith and love were more important than money; some nights he dreamed of standing in front of huge crowds, impassioning them with his message of “one love,” which glowed evenly like the midday sun upon people rich and poor, of all colors.

But in his life there also was darkness--crack cocaine, alcohol. “I knew him about two years,” says Domino, 46. “Hard livin’, man. He was hard livin’. . . . These streets do something to you.”

Gary, who was sometimes called Dreadlocks, depended on the goodwill of others, those who would see his sign and roll down their windows to drop money into his palm. He relied on the woman in the catering truck who often handed him a burrito as she passed by; the manager of a restaurant who gave him food; the accountant who brought him breakfast sandwiches.

Despite his dependencies, in his own way Gary felt free, unencumbered by the trappings of conventional life. That freedom was what he cherished most in life.

Word on the street is that he was killed during an argument with a newcomer who had moved in on his island. Of course, the island did not really belong to Gary, and it turns out that even the name Gary was not his.

In the end, he was right: Those lovely days were about all he really had in life. Darryl Jerome Price was 36 years old. His body remains unclaimed at the county morgue.

*

For at least three years, Price would arrive at about 7 a.m., carrying a sign that described him as being homeless and hungry, willing to work. That last part wasn’t totally true. On numerous occasions, he turned down job offers that would have brought in a few bucks.

But he rarely missed a day of work out on the streets.

“Some of us are blessed with a job and an office,” says Marylin Hemenway, an accountant who works nearby. “Well, his job was there on the corner. . . . That was his career. He knew it was unsafe, he knew there was competition there on the corner because he would say he had to get there early and get his spot before someone takes it.”

Hemenway started working for Luxury Line Rent a Car on Feb. 13. She says she had never been around homeless people, and when she saw Price near the door as she was opening the office one morning, she was startled.

“I didn’t know what to think at first, but he would see me every day and he would tell me, ‘Hi, how are you? You look nice. Lovely day isn’t it?’ He would always tell me he wanted to make sure I got into the office OK, and he would tell me to be sure and lock the door. ‘Please be careful, it’s not safe out here,’ he would tell me.”

Hemenway began stopping at McDonald’s on her way to work to buy Price breakfast sandwiches. He never asked for such favors, always accepted them graciously and never showed disappointment in their absence, Hemenway says.

It is a matter of panhandling etiquette to accept whatever is offered.

“Even if it’s a stale loaf of bread,” explains Lee, one of Price’s closest friends. “If somebody gives you four peas, you thank them like you would have been grateful for two. They deserve to feel good about giving whatever they have to give.”

Price was generous with what little he had. A couple hours before he was killed, he called Lee over to a bench and passed him a joint. He told Lee about how a couple days before, some friends had given him a dog they had found. Earlier that day, the owner passed by and saw the dog, paying Price $100 for its return. As they sat on the bench, Price gave Lee $10.

There is another rule among panhandlers in the area: If you are working an island and take a break, you can leave something behind--your sign, a jacket, anything--to hold your spot. Otherwise, you lose it.

Lee recalls becoming upset one day when he found a woman working his spot. He went to Price and said, “Damn, man, that bitch is on my island.”

“She’s not a bitch,” Price responded, according to Lee. “Why you call her that? That’s the evil you absorbed being in contact with the streets for so long. She’s a human being, she’s your sister.”

Lee, 38, says Price considered himself a messenger. “He would always say, “There’s one love, just one love, Jah. As long as I can serve my father, I don’t care about nothing. I’m free. I got my spirit. That’s all you need, that’s all you ever have.’ ”

And it was all he wanted.

“He had a thing where he did not want to get back into society,” Lee says. “This is not a career thing for me. I want a job; I want an apartment; I want a car. I want nice things in life. Gary didn’t. I used to try and figure out why. He used to say, ‘Society is evil. Once you get back into the system, you start to own, and you change.’ Sometimes people would think he was crazy.”

*

Price’s friends say he was killed by a man who didn’t know the rules or was unwilling to live by them. They suspect Price was working and left to get a beer. When he returned, the newcomer was there, and a confrontation ensued.

The incident occurred about 4 p.m. Witnesses say the man fled on foot. Police are searching for an African American man, about 5 feet, 5 inches and 140 pounds, 28 to 32 years old, with a full beard and salt and pepper hair. He was wearing dark clothes.

“It’s pretty scary because you wonder who’s next,” says Kim, 49, who is homeless and panhandles at the same intersection. The streets take away from a person, she says.

She says Gary didn’t talk much about his past, although he mentioned having family in the San Francisco area. He talked more about the future and his dream of uniting homeless people into a unified voice.

“We were all somebody once, I guess we could be somebody again,” she says.

But sometimes that somebody can seem far away, too far to even remember or envision.

She says Gary seemed able to lift her spirits when she was down, during those times when she would look at herself and wonder how she wound up in the streets. Times like now.

The cars whiz by. She’s down to her last Marlboros. She picks up her sign.

“Maybe he was lucky in a way.”