Violent Spring (16 page)

Monk had lost interest in anything Mr. Robinson or his sad neighborhood of a disposition had to offer. “Write me a letter.”

“This is for real, man. This is something I saw about a month after the riots.”

Doubtful, Monk shot back, “What did you see?”

Robinson snaked a palm toward Monk. He put down the tumbler, and tapped it with his other hand.

Monk's eyes narrowed, but he produced a twenty. He handed it across.

The palm stayed open. Another twenty was laid down with its cousin. They traveled into the back pocket of the Levi's. “'Bout a month after the niggas and the Mexicans tore up everything, me and my partner O. T. was riding around on Washington, cruising for hoes, stray TVs, and what not.” He giggled at the brilliancy of the plan.

“Yes.”

“Yeah, so we gets to goin' down Hauser toward Wilshire where there's this club, you know where the old theater used to be.”

Impatiently, Monk nodded.

“We passin' by the Hi-Life, and I'm all surprised it's still standing and shit and you know how the parking area is behind it? Well, I see one of them small Caddies parked on the lot.”

Monk waited.

“And there's a light on in the rear, where the stock room is. Security screen door to the back cracked wide open.”

“And that's all you saw?”

He giggled again, driving a hot spike into Monk's scalp. “I tell O. T. to stop, 'cause I'm thinking it must be Kim Suh, see?”

“He didn't have a Cadillac.”

Robinson gave Monk a look as if he were a simpleton. “Man, all them Koreans got long green. Kim Suh driving that poor-assed Jap car like all them motherfuckers do in the 'hood trying to hide they money and shit. You know they got two, three cars waiting at the crib. Benzs and BMWs.” He waved an indignant hand in Monk's direction.

Monk didn't put up an argument to Robinson's racist tinged logic. He was on a roll, and it would only sidetrack things.

The other man went on. “I knock on the back door.” Robinson pantomimed the action. “I hear scuffling inside. Then this dude peeks out.”

“I gather it wasn't Bong Kim Suh.”

“Hell no,” Robinson said emphatically. “He's a Oriental though. Ugly motherfucker, kind'a hunched over too.”

“You ain't makin' this up, are you?”

“Square business, bro'. The cat's got something wrong with one side of his face, I think. It was dark and only the light behind him was on, so I'm not too sure.”

“You said he was hunched over. Was he carrying something?”

“No. But he walked with a stoop, his head sort'a forward like a turkey's or something. And there was at least one other in there, because I heard some movement inside.”

“What did he say to you?”

“Son,” pealed through the air.

Robinson stood up. “He didn't say shit. He gave me a cold-blooded stare and closed the door and I heard the lock click. Me and O. T. split after that.” Robinson walked away, no goodby, not even a burp.

Monk left, closing the door quietly. As he stood on the porch, a black van with darkened windows cruised past. On the side of its sliding door was a large imprint of the SOMA logo. It passed slowly in front of Monk, reached the corner, and drove away.

T
HE PHONE RANG and Monk picked it up the second time it went off.

“Yo, Chief,” Elrod's bass voice said, “my battery went out on me.”

“Damn. Where are you?”

“Near the Coliseum, on Menlo and King.”

“Hold on, I'm coming.” He replaced the handset and went down to his car. Monk fired the Galaxie to life and took the 110 freeway east. Tailing someone was harder on the freeway. Monk got off, took a circuitous route through several neighborhoods, watching for a tail and headed for Elrod's mother's house in the West Adams district.

The note he'd left Elrod earlier in the day had said to say when he called that he'd broken down at the Coliseum, home to college and professional football games. If Keys was listening in, then he'd dispatch someone on a false errand to Exposition Park where the facility built for the '32 Olympics resided. And after more than forty minutes of driving around, Monk was sure he wasn't being followed.

Once upon a time, the big Tudors, Craftsmen and Queen Annes along the palm-tree-rich streets of Harvard Boulevard, Hobart and other byways in the West Adams District had been the homes of black entertainers. Hattie McDaniel, Ethel Waters and Louise Beavers—so many times denied roles of dignity in make-believe Hollywood, except as wise-cracking maids or swaying in their rocking chairs on the porch waitin' for de Lawd to take them to Heaven—had bought homes here. In the '40s and '50s, West Adams was an enclave of what could then be termed, in revisionist history, a black pop cultural elite.

Part of the area was known as Sugar Hill, and Saturday night fish fries would bring out the neighborhood. Block parties where the tangy smell of hot sauce dashed liberally on fried catfish seared your taste buds and the night air. Where laughter along with the music of Louie Jordan and Roy Aldridge tickled your ears. And at one such event, before the coming west of the 110 freeway and thαe leveling of portions of the district, a returned Korean War vet, busting his knuckles in a garage over on Avalon, met a sharp chick named Nona Riles.

Monk remembered his father and his war buddies sitting around the kitchen table over a game of dominoes, taking sips of whiskey and gin, bullshitting about some cracker officer in the war and the times they had over on Sugar Hill.

He pulled to the curb in front of the two-story Queen Anne on LaSalle. Tucking the images in his mind safely away again. He eased out of the Ford and walked along the driveway toward the rear of the house. The backyard was gated by a wrought iron barrier done in a style of twisted bars, the sculpted metal a symbol to Monk of how this case had him feeling. Bruno, the German shepherd watchdog, came to the gate, tail wagging. Monk bent down and petted the muscular flank of the dog through the bars.

“Glad you remembered me, big fella.”

“You ain't never lied,” Elrod thundered from the dark. His light-swallowing hand enveloped the padlock on the gate, gave it a pull, and it sprang open.

Monk's eyebrows went up.

“It was already unlocked,” the giant said.

Monk stepped through, and Elrod closed the gate. Bruno lapped at their heels as the private eye followed the big man to the garage, where he could see a thin line of light bisecting the middle of the building. They stepped through the open door into the warm glow offered inside. Monk closed the door behind them.

Elrod opened a cooler and pitched a can of Beck's to Monk underhanded. He caught it and sat in one of the broken-down easy chairs. Elrod sank into his. Bruno lay down at his feet. A partially rebuilt flathead Indian motorcycle, circa 1950, occupied a section of the cement floor as well. A roll-away tool box rested near the bike.

“What ya got, home skillet?” Monk took a refreshing pull on the brew.

“I met with a brother I knew from the old days. An OG who's been goin' straight.”

“He knows Conrad James?”

Elrod shook his large head slowly in the negative. “He used to run with Crosshairs.”

“So what did he say?”

“He called me the day after and told me to get you here tonight. This time.”

Monk looked at the garage door. “He's comin' here?”

Both large hands spread themselves in the space between them. “He said he'd send someone.”

“Who?”

“Wouldn't tell me.”

They were into their second beer, and fiddling with the magneto of the motorcycle when Bruno leapt to his feet, on point. Elrod stepped to the door and opened it. At the gate was the outline of a man of average height and weight. Bruno started to bark and Elrod shushed him. Monk walked over to the still figure.

“I'm the one Elrod was told to expect.”

Elrod turned on a floodlight over the garage door.

The man was no kid. Monk judged him to be in his late twenties. He wore a full-length leather coat and a grey homburg with a feather in the band. His face was a stretched oblong turned on its axis, the eyes little yellow oblongs turned the other way. The orbs that floated in them were expressionless, and it seemed to Monk they existed in a world of voided hope.

“Open the gate, please.” The voice was reserved, like a preacher at a funeral.

Monk unlocked it with the key Elrod had given him. The man stepped inside the yard, waiting, his hands clasped before him in a solicitous manner. Monk indicated the garage.

“After you,” the man said.

Monk grunted and went back inside. Silently, he felt the presence of the other man behind him. The kind of quiet walk a man developed in the joint. Once inside, the man stood with his back to the open doorway, his legs spread apart. Elrod sat down in his chair. Bruno was curled up in the one Monk had been sitting in earlier.

“I'd like you to set up a meeting for me with Crosshairs.”

“Why?” the man breathed. He took in the garage without moving his head, allowing his eyes to drift side to side.

He knew why, goddamnit. Monk said, “Because the FBI and the LAPD are kicking in doors and throwing motherfuckers down stairs. They've set up their big guns to bring him in. They think he, or with his cousin Conrad James, murdered Bong Kim Suh.”

“Nobody goes to all that trouble when it's a blood who gets it.” The visitor's body remained immobile in the doorway, the lips barely parting.

“It's a headline case where you can make a name for yourself.” The dour visage of Special Agent Keys popped into his head. “You, me and Elrod, hell even Bruno here,” the dog looked at Monk, “know that ain't right. But that's the way it be, brother. We gotta keep our hand in and hope it don't get chopped off.”

“You workin' for them Koreans, though. How I know you see Crosshairs you don't drop a dime on him with them? Or your friend the cop.”

Monk reacted with a start.

“Oh yeah, I do my homework.”

“Then you know I play it straight.”

“What if Crosshairs did it? What if he and Conrad cooled the Korean?” the man in the homburg said.

Monk didn't hesitate. “Then I'll at least know why.” He didn't need to add that if they had murdered the shopkeeper, men no doubt he wouldn't be returning from their meeting.

There was no change on the other's face. He stared at Monk for several seconds, then said, “Let's say they didn't do it. What can your sorry black ass do for the brothers against the cops and the FBI?”

“Look, man, these brothers can't stay underground long enough and run far enough away. They're too hot and the authorities are too eager. If they're innocent, you got my word I won't leave them hanging.”

The other man considered it. His old eyes didn't blink. Bruno yawned, and Elrod popped the tab on a third beer. Finally he said, “Maybe you'll hear from me, maybe you won't.” He turned to leave.

“Do you know Ray Smith?” Monk said to his back.

What might have been a laugh escaped from the other man. “Sure do.” He didn't bother to elaborate as he departed.

Monk shooed Bruno out of the chair and he sat heavily in it.

“What do you think?,” he asked Elrod.

“You said all the right shit. I hope you meant it.”

“I meant it. I just hope I can deliver if it becomes necessary. Otherwise, losing my license will be the least of my worries.” He finished his beer and said goodnight to Elrod. He got home and called Jill.

“Hi.”

“Hey, baby, you coming over tonight?” she said.

“I'm too beat.”

Silence.

“If we moved in together then we wouldn't always have to go through this,” Monk said.

“It's an idea we've talked about.” She was using her goddamn judicial tone.

“I'm not trying to box you in, Jill. But I think we've arrived at the stage in our relationship where we need to move off of center.”

“I don't know, Ivan.”

He felt like pushing it tonight. Working a case like this one, he felt the forward motion, the desire to resolve it, and the mind-set carried over to other portions of his life. “Why don't you know? We love each other. People in love have a tendency to want to be together at the end of the day and the beginning of the morning.”

“We do, honey.”

“I know, but you're the one that's always evasive when we discuss this matter. You know I'm not a possessive man, you can't be worried about not having your independence. It ain't like you're a shrinking violet.”

“Ivan, you always want to confront everything immediately, deal with it, and move on to your next problem. Well, our lives aren't like that.”

“Is it my income? I know you make more than me even when I have a good year. But I don't care. We can have separate bank accounts.”