The Rent Collectors: Exploitation, Murder, Redemption, and Immigrant L.A.

Journalist Katz (The Opposite Field) delves into the dark heart of L.A.’s MacArthur Park neighborhood in this devastating look at a gang-related murder. The account centers on teenager Giovanni Macedo, who struggled to fit in with his peers while growing up in MacArthur Park, and eventually sought acceptance by joining the Columbia Lil Cycos street gang in the mid-2000s. For his initiation, Macedo was tasked with assassinating a street vendor who’d pushed back against the gang’s extortion attempts. He botched the job, however, and instead killed a newborn in broad daylight. With L.A. in an uproar over the murder, police offered a $75,000 reward for Macedo’s arrest, leading him to flee to Tijuana, Mexico, to stay with gang members who promised him safety but planned to kill him. He narrowly escaped, and returned to L.A. to turn himself in, informing on the Lil Cycos in an effort to reduce his own sentence. Katz expertly traces the tale’s jaw-dropping twists and turns, complementing the intrigue with a deeply empathetic portrait of Macedo and scrupulous interviews with law enforcement. This pulls back the curtain on an appalling tragedy. Agent: Jay Mandel, WME. (July)