Hard Talk in a Small Forest

It seemed odd at first talking to a gang member about death and violence on a day filled with sunlight in a park filled with children; like war in the ebullience of spring.

Even though he’s through with all the blood-letting now, the ‘banger who used to call himself Sin still has a kind of ominous appearance, what with all those tattoos on his neck and arms, and the solemn intensity of his stare.

But as I thought about it later, sitting in the cool shade of Baldwin Hills’ Ladera Park and talking death in the presence of children was sort of what our meeting was all about.

Saving those kids from the kind of life Sin has lived was both our goals. “They don’t wanna be like me,” he said at one point, in an idiom that blended both his experiences as a street tough and as what he calls a “civilian.”

He’s a stocky 200-pounder with hair done in precise, even “French braids,” a diamond stud in his left ear and a gold chain around his neck. Arms like a weightlifter’s tell you you probably wouldn’t want to get into a fight with him.

His real name is Hayward Bell. He’s 32 years old, his wife is a nurse, they have four children and he’s studying to be a chef. Once he was out there raising hell as a member of the Southside Crips, one of L.A.’s most notorious street gangs, and he’s got the scars to prove it.

But things are different now.

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It seems strange meeting a Crip in cyberspace instead of an alley, but that’s the way we were introduced. Bell e-mailed me after I wrote about seeing the movie “Shaft” on the day parents and children were marching through South-Central L.A. in a parade for peace. The irony hadn’t been lost on him.

So in a departure from his old life, he used words instead of bullets to get a point of view across, and I was impressed by his ability to articulate that point of view.

He called himself a retired gang member and added, “The meaning of a retired gang member for me is that I will be a Crips until I die, but all of the guns and violence are behind me. I have learned through life, experience and age that some things are more important now.”

Bell wrote about “society’s conflicting values” and about “letting our babies have decent lives instead of being street soldiers.” He wrote about jobs and educations and after-school programs, and he wrote about himself.

I came away from his e-mail wanting to know more about this mix of blood and brains. Not many hard-ass gangsters have the kind of intelligence it takes for self-evaluation. I’ve met a few, but they’re as rare as mercy at a drive-by shooting.

The guy who signed himself Sin was a departure from the norm, and I wanted to meet him.

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Ladera Park was a perfect setting. The contrast of our dark conversation in the beauty of that dazzling little patch of woods drew a dichotomy between the world Bell once lived in and the world he’s creating for himself today.

It was a hard life we explored that afternoon.

He saw his first blood at age 8 when a burglar broke into their southside house and shot his big sister. She collapsed bleeding and died on the bed where he lay. Like most big sisters, she’d always looked out for her little brother. When I asked what he remembered about her, he smiled for the first time during our meeting and said, “Her saying, ‘Leave him alone, leave him’ when someone was picking at me.”

Raised in a fatherless family, he became a “Baby Crips” in junior high. “It was like having another family,” he says. “It wasn’t hard-ass then. We played baseball against each other. It didn’t get bad until later.” He pauses and says, “And then I never thought I’d live to see 32.”

He almost didn’t. Involvement in a robbery attempt that turned into a shootout ended with Bell getting hit four times. He lifts his T-shirt to show me a stomach wound. It’s a wide, deep 7-inch scar, an ugly red and gray slash you want to turn your eyes away from but can’t. It’s like a stamp of pain on the whole human experience.

“Show it to the kids,” I said.

“My wife wants me to,” he replied.

“Do it,” I said.

It was the first time the old Sin had tried something like a robbery--and the last. He did three years in prison. “I was trying to get money to start a video business,” he explained. Both of us knew how feeble an excuse that was. “I couldn’t get a job. I’d tried, but no one ever called back.”

He regrets what he was back then, and if he had it to do over, he’d never join a gang. But he’s realistic about it. It happened. He can’t change the past. “I’m just glad the kids down there”--he gestures toward a playground--”aren’t on the streets.”

He says it again: “I’m just glad they aren’t me.”

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Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com.