He is still recognizable, though he has walked with a limp since he lost control of his car last year, crashed into a house at 130kph and shattered his pelvis.
City detectives recognize him. They offer their hands, tell him, "Stay out of trouble, man." Fathers point him out to their children. He still means something. By virtue of his troubled life and a single decent gesture, he is embedded in the American conscience.
Rodney King, whose videotaped beating led to the riots that left 55 dead and US$1 billion in property damage in Los Angeles in 1992, is living at once the American dream and the American nightmare. He is out of jail now and talking frankly for the first time about the riots, himself and the American way of life.
Dressed in a baseball cap and T-shirt, King cut a lean, handsome figure at a pasta house on Sunset Boulevard. He was polite and soft spoken, a different person altogether from the bewildered man who stood before television cameras 12 years ago trying to find the best within himself as the city burned around him.
"Can we all get along?" is what came out. It became a famous line; a simple, true philosophy. Then the flames dissipated into memories and it became the butt of late-night jokes.
King seems blind to this legacy. Even the most cynical observer had to pity him when he said that he, Rodney King, felt responsible for the riot; that he was the gas can that caused the deaths, the accelerant for the rage that engulfed Los Angeles when the white police officers were acquitted of his beating.
"I don't want to be remembered as the person who started the riots," he said. "I'd like to be remembered for the person who threw water on the whole thing. Part of the solution, you know? I want to be remembered as the person who tried to keep peace in this country, that I did my part."
After the riots, King settled with the Police Department and the City of Los Angeles for US$3.8 million, but much of that money went to lawyers. The rest went toward lawsuits against those lawyers, countersuits filed by those lawyers, wrecked cars, a rap label that went bust, all-night partying. He moved into a big house in the suburbs and then into a smaller one. There's little left of the fortune besides a modest mutual fund and the memories.
But you can't relive yesterday, he said. Pity is like a narcotic. Once you commence, you cannot stop.
He now lives in Rialto, a sprawling desert suburb 50 miles east of Los Angeles. His home is a simple ranch house with sheets for curtains and an unattractive brown lawn. According to David Guzman, who is working as King's manager on various projects, most of the money is gone and he is now living off that mutual fund.
Over the years, it has been a string of jail, rehab, hangers-on and lawyers. King lives with his brother and his adult daughter, and is close to his mother and his manager. It's an insular life.
King, 39, has tried to stay out of the public eye, finding it difficult to live with the title of human punching bag. Still, he often finds himself the leading man of the police blotter. He has been arrested 11 times, for, among other things, spousal abuse, hit-and-run driving and being under the influence of PCP. He was also arrested for indecent exposure after parkgoers complained about a naked man jumping up and down on an ice chest.
RSS