“I hate when that happens,” Monk said, going into his office to make a few calls. That done, he exited and found the office manager still boxing with the computer.
“What are you doing, D?”
“Trying to lay out this newsletter on Quark. Whoever said it was better than PageMaker can kiss my butt.”
“I know several cats who would line up in the rain and spend the house rent for that thrill. I’ll be down at the Rancho for a while. You have the number to the RaFalcons’ office, right?”
“Yeah, but you don’t want me giving it to anybody, do you?”
“If Jill calls, call me right away.” He worked to keep the concern out of his voice.
Carnes’s head tilted but she only said, “Okay.”
He saluted good-bye and took Venice all the way east. Eventually Monk drove past the Rosedale Cemetery on the edge of the Central American/Pico Union section. The cemetery was an old-fashioned burial ground dating back to the last century. It had expansive green slopes and flats containing grave markers as big as tank traps, crumbling Agnus Deis, and various statues of saints Monk couldn’t name.
He recalled that a distant cousin of his was interred there, and also remembered that a large plot had been bought by the once-thriving Los Angeles Typographical Union back in the late 1800s. Rosedale was the resting place for the original founders of this union dedicated to struggling for better work conditions and wages for typographers and printers in a town notorious for its open shop policies. The antiunion forces were led at that time by a paper still proud to this day of never having been a part of organized labor, the Los Angeles Times.
The printers had built a monument of polished granite shafts supporting an oxidized bronze tablet, which, if his memory was correct, had been commemorated sometime around 1910 or so to those pioneers. Monk spotted displayed on me graveyard’s redbrick walls a spray-painted placa he recognized as belonging to Los Domingos Trece. Already another gang had splayed their mark over the Domingos’. In the post-modern age, one’s memorial was as temporal as peace in Bosnia.
He got to San Pedro Street, turned left, and soon made a right into one of the contained roads that ran through the Rancho Tajuata, Gilbert Lindsey Lane. He was climbing the stairs to the Ra-Falcons’ office just as a young man with a wicked fade and a crescent and star earring was entering the office.
“Hi, I’m Ivan Monk.” They shook hands. The young man wore corporal stripes.
“I’m Keith 2X. Antar said you’d be by. He left some material for you.”
They went in to the sound of beeps emanating from the message machine on one of the smaller desks. The midnight-to-eight shift was signing out and one of them turned some keys over to 2X. “I’ll be with you in a minute. Have a seat.” The younger man indicated the couch and Monk did as suggested.
The corporal cleaned the coffee carafe and got a fresh pot going. Then he took down the messages on the answering machine. The calls included one from Mrs. Limón asking in that stern way of hers for Absalla to contact her as soon as he got in. Afterward, 2X emptied the wastebaskets into one large garbage bag, and put paper in the fax machine.
Monk wondered if all the members of the security force were instilled with such diligence. “How long have you been on the patrol?” he asked cheerfully.
“It would be about five years now,” 2X answered, arranging some papers on a desk into a neat pile, then walking off into the inner office. Momentarily he returned, handing two packets to the private eye. “Here’s the files Antar left for you.”
Monk rose and accepted the thick 9" X 12" envelopes.
2X added, “He also wanted you to know he’s going to be out of town for a couple of days.”
“Where’d he go?”
“Back to D.C.”
“Is his reason for going there a secret?” Monk whispered playfully.
The other man maintained his pleasant, if unaffected expression. “Business with the HUD officials.”
“You in charge while he’s gone?”
“Not exactly. Though I’m responsible for making sure the shifts are staffed, and everyone is doing what they need to be doing. Eddie and LaToyce are the sergeants.”
“Then you three know what I’m doing around here.”
“Yes, Antar told us and Kelmont; he’s kind of the lead man among the squad.”
“Spiritual leader?” Monk said half-jokingly.
“More like the example, really.”
“Yeah?” Monk encouraged.
“He was a hard-core Del Nine who got his life in turnaround after his two-year-old daughter was killed when a punk shot through his mother’s house.” 2X’s face had remained impassive, but there was a somberness in his tone.
“How about you, Keith? If you’ve been in the RaFalcons for five years, then you must have hooked up with Absalla about the time he left the Nation.”
“You aren’t just asking to make conversation.” He said it straightforwardly without rancor.
“Being nosey comes with the gig,” Monk said unapologetically.
2X processed the information and said, “I can respect that. My introduction to Islam came through a study group I was in at Cal State Dominguez Hills. We were reading Carter G. Woodson’s—”
“Miseducation of the Negro,” Monk interjected.
“Exactly. John Henrik Clark, Fanon, Angela’s writings, Huey’s Revolutionary Suicide, and of course Basil Davidson’s books on African history.”
“And from that you became a Muslim?”
The younger man touched his chest with a hand. “Technically, I’m not a Black Muslim. The Nation wasn’t all that, yo? So beyond a few meetings, I never officially joined. Taking the name 2X stands for the rejection of my slave name and not eating swine, but I maintain my independence.”
“Your politics then are drawn from several sources,” Monk concluded.
2X nodded appreciatively.
A woman in her midtwenties entered the office, crisp in her dark blues, her long braids flaying like living creatures.
2X introduced the two. “LaToyce Blaine, this is Ivan Monk, the man Antar hired to look into the murders.”
“What’s going on,” she said, eyeing Monk while addressing 2X.
“There was a call from Delugach over in Rita Walter’s office, a couple of tips about what goes on in number 455, and one from our favorite supporter, Mrs. Limón. She wanted to talk with Antar right quick.”
Blaine rolled her eyes as she headed for the inner office. “I better call her fore she put a picket line around the office. See you around, Mr. Monk.”
“Hope so.” Placing his attention back on 2X, he said, “I was walking around yesterday and encountered some of the Domingos. You know any of them by name?”
“Sure.” 2X moved to the main desk, picking up a clipboard and pencil.
“How about the leader. He couldn’t have been over five feet four, but he was cut, you know?”
“That’s Big Loco, the number-one hard boy of this set, yo?” 2X clarified.
“There’s more than one Domingos set? I thought they were just here, in this part of town.”
2X had begun to write some notations on the clipboard. He stopped and looked up again. “Trece is the biggest and best-connected of the Central American gangs this side of Oak Street. Most of them were originally Salvadorans, but I think there’s been some Guatemalans and even Mexicans added in.”
“Chicanos?” Monk asked.
“No, I mean those straight up from Mexico.” He pivoted his torso and called into the inner office. “Hey, LaToyce, what’s the name of the place in Mexico Big Loco and his bunch are supposed to be hooked up with?”
“Zacatecas—it’s a state down there,” she called back. “They supposed to be runnin’ with some high rollers down there.”
Keith 2X wagged the eraser end of the pencil at Monk. “What we hear now is that there’s some new recruits into the bunch who are part of something called the Zacatecas Mob, or whatever that me
ans in English.”
Monk had read a Newsweek piece about the gangsters. “The Zacatecas bunch is supposed to be muscling into L.A., having already taken over some rackets in Texas. Making money in hot jewelry, electronic parts …”
“And heroin,” 2X finished. “All that just makes our work here in the Rancho that much more challenging,” the young man said without sarcasm.
“Hear anything else I might find of use about these murders?” Monk shifted his packets from one hand to the other.
The other man seemed to consider his words but didn’t speak.
“Like something the Scalp Hunters may be up to if their rivals are making all these big moves,” Monk prodded.
The corporal tucked in his bottom lip, and watched other members of the Ra-Falcons as they moved about the office.
“We have to work together on this,” Monk reminded him.
2X sighed. “There’s supposed to be a meeting tonight or tomorrow among some of the Scalp Hunters’ Ogs.”
“These veterans gonna figure out how to vamp on the Domingos?”
A severe look finally broke through 2X’s implacable demeanor. “I’m telling you this because Antar said to let you know what was going on around here so you don’t make him look bad, you know what I’m saying, yo?”
“I appreciate that,” Monk said.
“Awe-right then. I don’t exactly know what the meeting’s about, and it’s not like any of us can go there and find out.”
“Even the members of the security force who used to run with the Scalps?” Monk knew the answer but was curious to see what the young man would say.
Scoldingly he said, “Now you know especially those brothers won’t be let into the meet, yo.”
Thinking ahead, Monk asked, “This meeting supposed to happen off-site?”
2X looked at the wall clock, checking the time against his watch. “Look, I gotta get these people out and about. But yeah, it’s supposed to be happening somewhere else, but we ain’t heard where.”
Monk made to go. “If you do, would you let me know?”
2X gave him a questioning stare.
“I’m not going to do anything stupid,” Monk tried to assure him.
“Then why you gotta know where the meet is?”
Monk pointed at the falcon’s eye on the door. “All-seeing, all-knowing.”
“Yeah, right,” 2X huffed. “If I peep anything, I’ll let you know. But don’t you tell anybody else, yo?”
“Dug, home.” Monk tapped him on the side of the arm and left the office. Downstairs, several women, young and old, black and brown, were in the laundry room doing their wash. A tabloid talk show played on a TV secured in a mesh grilled box on an overhead platform in a corner of the room. A section of the metal was cut away to allow viewing of the images on the screen.
The subject of the show was ex-stripper mothers who were pregnant by their daughters’ bisexual boyfriends. The women were vigorously discussing the issue in English and Spanish simultaneously as Monk reached Pio Pico Court. Harmony through salaciousness, he reflected.
Walking through the Rancho, he was struck by the almost diametrical contrasts the complex seemed to go through. For beyond the laundry room, the Rancho was tomblike in its quiet atmosphere.
When he’d been here yesterday the Rancho had been vibrant with Alpines beating out the hard raps of the late Tupac Shakur and Westside Connection. Somewhere underneath those kronik-induced rhythms he’d also heard a scratchy LP playing. The tune was a melodic wail of stone chimes and the hollow tap-tapping of sticks on the turned tubes of a bamboo xylophone. Today, there was no gangsta rap or Southeast Asian music. Today there was only the chirping of birds.
As he walked in the vague direction of Henry Cady’s apartment, the stillness pervading the housing project appeared odd to him. No young men lounged about, no chopped Caprices ripped and ran through her byways. The quiet was nothing of a sinister nature. Rather it had the quality of one of those old ships he used to find himself on in his merchant seaman days.
Monk had distinct memories of being on a hulk that had seen many a rough voyage, a ship that had served its crews as best it could. There was the comfort of lying in his bunk after his shift, feeling and hearing the thump and slap of the engine’s pistons in worn cylinder walls, a lullaby supplied by diesel fuel and oil. Now he couldn’t escape the notion that this lull was connected to the upcoming meeting of Scalp Hunter leaders.
He got near Cady’s townhouse then thought better of going to see the older gent. Cady had said he wasn’t worried about who might see Monk come and go from his place. But if the combative Mrs. Limón hadn’t been jiving him, and a rumor had already started about him being some kind of undercover cop, then he wasn’t going to be the one to bring grief on the nice man. Even if Monk’s radar wasn’t picking up any unfriendlies in the vicinity. Monk decided to ring Cady later to see if he’d had any luck getting other people to talk to him.
Eventually his wandering took him near the tracks, and the abandoned center across the way. Monk stood there for a moment, his hands in his pockets while he let his mind free associate. A woman walked around the corner of the main building from the direction the busted-out window was located.
Her hair stood out from her head like she was receiving continuous electric shock waves. It was in the peculiar state black women’s hair achieves between straightening and going back to its natural texture. The woman was dressed in a conservative dark blue pants suit, bright silver buttons diagonal like a bandolier across her upper body. The only clue to its worn status was the large tattered hole over her left rib cage.
She seemed disoriented in the sunlight, as if she had emerged from labors in Erebus, the dark region. Her gaze eventually settled on Monk. She rocked on her heels, waved at him cheerily, then stumbled away. He watched her go, then concentrated on the buildings for several more minutes. Maybe a clue would manifest itself on one of the center’s walls, like a profile of Selina emerging from a mound of mashed potatoes. Or at least that’s what a supermarket tabloid Monk had glanced through in the checkout line last week had said had happened to a woman in El Paso. Alas, after several moments, he surmised no such divine intervention was to be.
The rest of the day brought nothing new, no call from Keith 2X, Cady, or his buddy Mrs. Limón. Around four he got over to his shop, Continental Donuts, on Vernon in the Crenshaw District.
The shop was an investment he’d made with the scratch earned as a ship’s engineer, a bit of entrepreneurship he’d been talked into by Dexter Grant. Originally, the establishment had belonged to a cop buddy of Grant’s, also retired. The buddy used the money to go to Burma. He’d gone there with some other ex-law enforcement and military types to hunt for some supposedly stolen caches of Chinese gold. Wisely, Grant hadn’t gone along. The former owner of Continental Donuts and his expedition were never heard from again.
Monk’s mother had also been an influence in his decision to buy the shop.
“You got to have property, boy. Black folks been struggling and dying for hundreds of years because of land, son. You ain’t never without something to tide you through the bad times when you have a grant deed with your name on it. Especially if it’s earning you an income,” his mother, a nurse, had advised him. “Why you think I been keeping up the taxes on that plot we got down in Mound Bayou, near Clarksdale? We’ve had that family farm since right after slavery.”
What little profit the damned place showed generally went for salaries and expenses, but he liked being a donut magnate. As he walked in, Elrod the giant was fixing one of the fryers. Monk went into the reinforced room where he kept hard copies of his files. He punched in Kodama’s number, and the receiver was picked up immediately.
“Yes, who is this,” the voice snapped.
“Monk. Is Jill there?”
“How’d you get this number?”
Fucking Mitchell. “I said this was Monk, you know who I am.”
“Oh yes, I believe I’ve ta
lked with you before,” he replied, feigning only a fleeting recognition. “The judge is busy right now, I’ll tell her you called.”
The word “called” already sounded distant as the receiver was replaced in its cradle.
“Asshole,” Monk cursed, backslapping the phone. Anxious, and with nothing else to do, he swept and straightened up the room. He finished, taking the files on the members of the Ra-Falcons with him.
Elrod the invincible donut shop manager resided in the kitchen. The former heister was six feet eight inches, three hundred and twenty-five trim pounds of prison-tested muscle. His squared-off head topped shoulders as wide as an aircraft carrier’s deck, and three earring studs, in gold, silver, and turquoise, were punched into the rim of his left ear.
“Chief,” Elrod greeted him. He was instructing a new employee on the fineries of making raised chocolate donuts just so. “This is Andre, he started yesterday.”
The young black man, he couldn’t have been over twenty-three, looked in Monk’s direction but said nothing. He promptly returned his focus to rolling the dough. His coal black jeans were long in the leg and frayed at the heels of his white Pumas. He wore a heavily starched blue work shirt buttoned at the sleeves and at the collar. His hair was shaved very close to me scalp on the sides, with a modicum more along the top.
“Dre’s been in CYA,” Elrod said, confirming what Monk had been speculating. “He’s the little brother of an old pardner of mine. Said he wants to do right, ain’t that so?”
Dre nodded quickly that indeed it was so, and began to pull little plugs off the dough and roll them into balls.
“Righteous,” Monk responded and moved toward the front. If the kid didn’t work out, and especially if he tried to run a scam, he’d have to deal with the big fella. A fate to make grown men weak in the knees. The fact mat Elrod could inspire such fear allowed Monk to sleep sound at night.
Out in the main section were three customers. Gloria was in her MTA bus driver uniform, playing a game of chess in one of the booths with a woman he didn’t recognize. At the counter was Andrade, occasional accountant and periodic binger. A medium cup of coffee and an uneaten French cruller sat before him. He was dressed in a sport coat and open collar, his black hair uncombed, grey beginning to set in. He was going over the racing form, making tight, concise circles around his picks as he read through the upcoming heats.
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