14

I'M STILL HERE

On August 30, 2015, Francisco Cardenaz Guzman, the man accused of shooting Shakespeare, was finally found and arrested by the LAPD Fugitive Task Force. He’s being held on $3 million bail. The biggest question hanging over the case for me is how it came to be that Sinnathamby, a rich property owner, was in a vehicle driven by Guzman, a known gang member. Alan Jackson, Sinnathamby’s lawyer, says Sinnathamby and Guzman met at a bar earlier that night and didn’t previously know each other.

According to Jackson, Sinnathamby was at the bar with his ex-girlfriend and another friend. The area was very busy that night, and Sinnathamby was unable to hail a cab. Guzman offered Sinnathamby and the women a lift. “It’s not unusual to accept a ride from a stranger in Venice,” Jackson says. “That’s the culture of the beach.”

Is it, though? A gang member and a real-estate baron seem like an unusual combination. All I know for certain is what’s in the video: a man who appears to be Guzman shooting Shakespeare three times, the homeless grabbing and beating Sinnathamby after Guzman runs away.

Today everything seems peaceful by the Cadillac Hotel. It’s early in the morning and I’m up, wandering the beach. I like it most here at dawn, when there’s still a soft purple bruise on the edge of the horizon. I’m struck with a strong urge to stay, though I live on the other side of the country, in New York. At the same time, I’ve lived lots of places. I’m open to change. I’m the most inconsistent person I know.

Two weeks after Guzman’s arrest, a man on a bicycle identified by the police as 55-year-old Edward Martinez spit on the picture of Shakespeare at the makeshift boardwalk memorial. Martinez turned to the homeless men nearby and said, according to witnesses, “You guys are next.” Derick Noralez, one of Sris Sinnathamby’s alleged attackers the night of the killing, clotheslined Martinez. Several of the other homeless joined in, and Martinez ended up being hospitalized for head injuries. They were convicted of assault with a deadly weapon, the weapon being the footrest of the wheelchair of one of the homeless residents.

In the surveillance video on the night of Shakespeare’s murder, a man can be seen beating Sinnathamby with the footrest of a wheelchair.

Most of the witnesses who remember Sinnathamby telling Guzman to “kill that nigger” have now spent time in jail themselves. (Guzman’s lawyer, Garrett Zelen, won’t concede that the figure in the video is his client. Guzman has pleaded not guilty to the charges.) At least one of the witnesses has speculated that the confrontation with Martinez could have been a setup to discredit them, according to the Argonaut, a free Venice newspaper. In court briefings, the prosecutors seem to agree, intimating that Martinez was acting on behalf of the Venice 13, Guzman’s gang.

Ultimately, the case against Sinnathamby is dismissed for lack of evidence. “There’s going to be some work required to get his good name back,” Jackson says. “But he’s looking forward to being an integral part of the Venice community again.” Jackson says he’s planning to file a motion to have Sinnathamby declared innocent.

Shakespeare’s memorial is still standing, the picture surrounded by candles and totems. I pass it before walking across the quarter-mile expanse of sand to the ocean. Venice is like a magnet pulling Shakespeare from Chicago and Sinnathamby from Sri Lanka. Meredith Perry from New Jersey. The only person I’ve even met who has been here for the majority of his life is a secretive real estate mogul who wears sunglasses and a wig and has 17 televisions in his small living room, all tuned to different channels.

The water is much colder than when I first arrived and shocks me awake. I dive in, thinking of dead poets, third-round funding, seed funding, pre-seed funding, series A—and emerge into the soft haze of a mild and cloudy day, 30, 40 feet from shore. The sun is hidden and the color drained from the sky. Stores are slowly opening on the boardwalk, shop owners rattling and raising the steel gates. Artists are setting up tables to sell pictures at the edge of the beach. I wonder, is this just a dream? Or is it the American dream?

Many of the homeless are still sleeping; I can see the dark outlines of their bags as well as a house painted white and blue and named for a smartphone app. I swim back toward shore. I’ve always wanted to settle down, but I never did. I wrote in an essay, applying to law school, “I left home when I was 13. It was the best decision I ever made.” I was accepted to the University of Virginia, but I decided not to go. I was homeless the entire year I was in eighth grade until the beginning of high school, and I never really stopped being a runaway. I never did go home. I’m driven but restless. I want to achieve, but I don’t know what. I have so much ambition, like Venice, like Abbot Kinney building canals in a marsh nobody wanted. Seeing the possible in the impossible. Though when it didn’t work out quite as planned, Kinney—like Paige Craig, like Danny Zappin—made the best of the situation. They took what they saw with both hands, grabbing as much ocean and land as they could.