“How’re you fixed for some possible extracurricular work?” Monk poured himself a cup of coffee.
“You that hard up for a sidekick?” Andrade answered, never taking his eyes off his homework.
“I need,” Monk began, making his way around me counter to sit next to the accountant, “a Spanish speaker for some translating.”
Andrade put his red-shot eyes on Monk, blinking. “¿Cómo?”
Monk sketched him in on his case and said, “Basically, it might be needed for a meeting I am hoping to get together with a few of the neighbors. Or else several phone calls. Of course you’d be compensated.”
Andrade opened the paper, folded it to another page, then folded it down to quarter size agin. “I suppose this would require me to be, oh, how should I say it, around?”
It suddenly came to Monk he didn’t know where Andrade lived, but assumed it had to be nearby as he’d never seen him drive to the shop. “I’m at the mercy of other forces, Andrade.” He refrained from making a comment on the bruja Limón. “It would help if I got your home number, so when someming jumps, I can buzz you.”
“No phone,” he retorted, making another pick on his form. “No car, either.”
“How the hell do you do business?”
“Badly.” He made another find.
This was beginning to annoy him. Andrade wasn’t the only Spanish speaker he knew, but he was the most handy. “How about I get you a cellular to hold onto for a while.”
The red pen circled a horse called Distant Gloom. “Sure, I can come back here to get it.”
Monk’s curiosity about where the strange accountant lived was gnawing at him, but he didn’t want to make an issue of it and tick him off. “Fine. I’ll leave it with Elrod by ten tomorrow. Just so we don’t run up the bill on the damned thing, for now just click it on between”—he consulted his watch—“eleven and three.”
“On it.” Andrade got off me stool, finally taking a bite of his cruller.
“Andrade …” Monk began, then stalled.
“What?” The man rubbed his unshaven jaw.
“Thanks, I appreciate your trouble.”
He made a casual flick of his hand, took a few gulps of his coffee, and tucked his racing form into his jacket pocket. He departed without another word.
Elrod, standing in the opening leading to the kitchen, was wiping his hands on a cleaning rag. “If his Spanish is anything like his accountin’, you might be peddlin’ backwards.”
“I’ve heard him speak Spanish more than once; as far as I can tell he’s not some gavacho.”
“Uh-huh,” the giant remarked dubiously. “You just better hope he’s sober between them hours you told him to be available.”
“You ever been to his pad?” Monk enjoyed some of his coffee.
“Nope. As far as I know nobody knows where he stays. Wait.” He held up the rag in one massive paw. “I think maybe Honest Abe took him home once. Way I hear it, Andrade lost his license for his second DUI conviction.”
Abraham Carson was a carpenter and regular at the Abyssinia Barber Shop and Shine Parlor where Monk got his hair cut and the neighborhood 411. “I’ll give him a call, thanks.”
Sitting at the counter, Monk started to go through the files Absalla had left for him. From his stash underneath the Formica counter, he retrieved a compact Te-Amo number 4 cigar. He puffed on the ember and read, sometimes stopping to fill orders for customers who came in. He pretended not to notice the disapproval on some of their faces at the sharp smell. When he got to Kelmont Reeves, he finally found something of interest. It was an assessment Absalla apparently did of each of his employees.
As a member of the Del Nines street gang, Reeves had been known as Kid Blue. Taking out his notes and browsing through them, he found the reference to a Baby Blue that Mrs. Hughes had mentioned. Absalla’s write-up stated Reeves had a cousin in the Scalp Hunters called Junior Blue. Monk was sure that was one of the kids Mrs. Hughes said Cruzado had confronted.
Monk put a Post-it on Kelmont’s rap sheet and went through the other files. Nothing else jumped out at him, but he’d make another pass later. He plodded into the kitchen to answer the ringing phone attached to the wall.
“Continental Donuts.”
“Ivan, you got a call from a Keith 2X down at the Rancho Tajuata,” Delilah relayed over the wire. “He said you’d want to know this like yesterday, yo?”
The house was a toast-colored stuccoed bungalow with wide green trim on Trinity, off of East Adams. Sections of its aging paint had fallen away from parts of one wall. Someone had made a halfhearted attempt at repainting, giving the wall a blotchy relief effect with mismatched explosions of other shades of light brown.
The block was full of similar homes, with other variations on the Craftsman style, and a couple of nondescript clapboard jobs too. Several of the houses had cars in various stages of repair and ruin placed at angles along their respective fronts. Tall palm trees dotted both sides of the street, and Monk could smell eucalyptus on the evening breeze. Big dogs could be heard bellowing indifferently, contemptuous of the need for peace among humans.
He could discern music playing nearby. It was an old number, whose tune he couldn’t quite identify, but was pretty sure was a cut by the trumpeter Lester Young. Prez. Right out of Woodville, Mississippi, swaying and playing in that signature flat, broad-brimmed porkpie hat of his blowing grooves for the horn players before him, and setting the double-time pace for the cats after him.
Monk moved back into the recessed darkness between the patched wall and a stand of cypress trees as another car rolled past the house.
The vehicle stopped, reversed its travel, and coasted beneath the pale glow of a street lamp. The car drove farther down the street. It was a late-model Buick Regal, glossy black with shimmering gold trim. The Regal evidently found a parking spot, because Monk heard its doors open and close and footfalls approach along the cracked sidewalk.
Three men came toward the house he was spying on. Two were black, above average height. One of them was sporting a natty beard. The third was white, or a lightskinned Latino, of medium build. His dark hair was shaved close to his head with a thin, long braid swatting lightly down the center of his back.
Each was fashion-model sharp in coat and slacks, all of them wearing gold rings that dispersed flutters of light along their large hands. It was obvious from the way the one with the strand of hair and the black one with the beard flanked the man in the middle that they were his bodyguards.
They gained the porch, knocked, and a vertical shaft of light briefly striped the middle man’s face. From his hiding place, Monk could see his features. The man was matinee handsome, his eyes horizontal slits that seemed to have been drawn rather than organic. The door opened wider and the three went into the meeting.
Keith 2X had told Monk he’d found out this house on Trinity would be the site of the OGs’ gathering. He’d made him promise not to tell anyone else, or be discovered, as 2X had been told the information on the down low. Monk wanted to know who’d told 2X, but the Ra-Falcon corporal was not willing to give that information up.
He knew 2X wanted to follow Absalla’s orders by letting him know what was happening, but he understood 2X also had to maintain his standing with the rest of the security force. The private eye liked the young man for standing up and doing the right thing.
Problem was, Monk had hoped to catch snatches of conversation from a cracked window. But the night was cool and no window was open. No sounds other than the occasional burst of raucous laughter could he hear by crouching alongside the wall.
He eased out of his hiding spot, checking to see if anyone was coming or leaving the house. He went for his car parked down the block to wait until the gents and their Buick left. The man with the smooth face had been older than the others who’d previously entered the house. Given the near seppuku existence of a gang member, being an OG usually meant anyone who’d managed to live past twenty-five. The man last to arr
ive was at least thirty-two or so, Monk estimated. His age and his dress set him apart as a man who doubtlessly held an emeritus position with the Scalp Hunters.
Time dragged, and Monk was losing the battle to stay awake. He hated stakeouts, hated them even if he had Dexter Grant along. Invariably the older man would relate a series of ancient battle tales derived from his days on the force. And plentiful they were, since Grant had made detective under that drunk Parker in the late ’50s.
“Gates was an ingratiating little prick even then,” Dex would regale. Not only could he go on forever with these stories, he could also sit for long stretches of time, just watching and existing. Monk had to believe Grant did it just to mess with him, as only a manic-depressive could enjoy sitting on his sweaty butt for hours staring like a loon out of a bird shit-splattered windshield.
He was working on naming the B sides of hits by Big Joe Turner alphabetically in his head when the door of the bungalow opened. Monk could only make out a knot of bodies gathering on the porch. He got out and did his best to become one with a palm tree’s trunk. The door to the house remained open, the inner light bathing me clustered forms from one side, giving them the quality of a single, writhing entity. A compressed thing of pain and fury, soon to spin off its spirochetes in erratic orbits to zooming and then eventually faltering in a universe of chaos.
Some of the Scalp Hunters began to depart and the trio made their way to the Regal. Shots suddenly reverberated from the other side of the block. The remaining mass on the porch became numerous tendrils elongating into action, as several guns flashed.
Monk, his old man’s .45 in his hand without his thinking about it, hurtled along the street side of the parked cars. He ran in a crouch as his fingers graced cold metal. Gunfire, curses, and darting bodies filled his senses. A shotgun let loose, scattering its load into the fender of a cream-colored Trans Am inches from Monk. He fell flat, straining to see his assailant.
A Scalp Hunter, dressed in oversized khaki shorts and handling a semiauto, ran past a prone Monk, intent on finding a target. There was a large oleander bush in direct line from him across the street, and Monk was very aware of a squat dark shape disturbing its leaves.
“Get between the cars,” he screamed at the Scalp Hunter in the shorts.
The man across the street let go with rounds from the weapon he held. It tut-tutted bullets in no discernable pattern, or at least that was Monk’s perception as he vaulted over the trunk of the Trans Am, the back window blowing apart like tossed marbles. He banged his knee on the way over, gritting his teeth as he hit the concrete with his shoulder.
More bellowing of gunfire, running, and “Mother-fuckah” filled the night. As his heart jackhammered in his throat, Monk caught glimpses of the attackers. Body types and recent encounters collided in his mind like Polaroids spread before him on a table. He knew the broad, squat form of one of the assaulters was Big Loco. He was letting loose with whatever the hell his spurt gun was.
Not bothering or chancing to aim, Monk cranked off two shots in the wide little man’s direction. More bullets tore into the sports car’s frame, some of them penetrating to the other side.
“Goddamn, they popped Stake,” a voice yelled.
“Get them wets,” someone else exhorted.
More gunfire erupted, and the uncertainty of life on the battlefield was played out on Trinity Street.
Monk belly crawled onto an adjacent lawn, two sets of feet trampling over him.
“Watch out, motherfuckah,” a voice belonging to one pair rasped. “Yo, they bookin’,” the Scalp Hunter said to no one in particular.
Several members of the gang ran down the street to the sounds of car doors slamming and engines racing.
Monk tried to get up but a foot, shod in slip-ons, kicked at his head. Instinctively, he got a forearm up to block the movement. Utilizing the direction of his motion, he rolled on his back, coming up to thrust the muzzle of his gun into the crotch of the kicker.
“Hey, Pelé, want to go for the goal?” It was the white bodyguard of the older OG.
The face at the other end registered surprise, but was quickly jerked out of sight by a massive black hand. The other bodyguard had snatched him back. “Come on,” he advised hurriedly.
The two surrounded their boss, hurrying him away, the largest one wielding a pistol proportionate with his large hands. The white man looked back, his right arm extended rigidly, the index like an arrowhead intended for the center of Monk’s head.
A shot took out grass and dirt near him, and Monk scrambled for the bungalow’s porch. By now the attack seemed to have dissipated, the Scalp Hunters having driven the Domingos back.
Monk was among several trying to get their breath back and nerves calmed down when a young man ran up. He wore a black eyepatch with a white Japanese ideogram sewn onto it. “Them eses capped Stake and Junior Blue. Motherfuck”—he threw down a gun—“they gonna pay.”
Monk tried surreptitiously to remove his rattled six-feet-plus-off the stoop.
“Who the fuck is you?” A twenty-odd-year-old with hair dyed a bright blondish-yellow with a maroon streak demanded. The second color was shaped like the prow of a ship. A bright and shiny hoop earring dangled from each lobe. The Dennis Rodman of the gangster set. He underscored his question with a gun.
Monk held his hands out from his sides. “My name is Ivan Monk. I was hired by Antar Absalla to find out who firebombed the Cruzado family in the Rancho.” Though there were holes in the front of the house, the porch light was untouched. Various sweating heads were inclined threateningly at the stranger.
Three Scalp Hunters brought a body into the light. It was the young man Monk had tried to warn. His khaki shorts were now drenched in red. They put him on the lawn, another offering to nihilism. Each week more and more bodies were stacked up on altars of recrimination and selfhate. The trio, moving like mirzas given a job at the beginning of time, moved off to collect the other corpse on their eternal rounds.
“These Mexicans follow you here?” The speaker stepped close to Monk, bringing his homely face almost to his nose.
A correction in ethnicity seemed inappropriate. “No,” he said resolutely.
“Then how they be here, cuz?”
“How you be here?” The angry query was repeated by the first one who’d spotted him. This one swaggered over.
The ring was constricting, Monk’s options of staying alive reduced to nil. “I told you, nobody followed me here.”
“He did try to warn Blue, I saw it,” a thin one offered.
“How’d you know about this meet, chump?” A hard shove to his chest accompanied this request. The ring tightened more.
The .45 was back in his shoulder holster, under his nylon jacket. Could he draw the weapon, take one or two out before they dropped him? As he gauged his next move he became oddly aware that the elbow on his right sleeve was ripped. The breeze felt good on his scraped elbow. “I told you, I was here on business,” he said sharply. He was about to remind them their gang were suspects, but he let it pass. Where the hell were the goddamn cops?
“You gonna jump, frog?” Blondie taunted, waving the gun like a wand—a magician about to materialize him in the afterlife.
“I said what I said. If I led the Domingos here, why the hell would I have been shooting at them too?”
“Maybe they crossed you, sell-out.” With his free hand, Blondie casually dug a finger way up his nose, searching and probing. “Let’s take you somewhere so we can find—”
“Sirens,” somebody yelled from the gloom just beyond the porch light milliseconds before they seemed to reach the others’ ears.
“Take him,” Blondie ordered to no one in particular, jerking his phosphorescent mane at Monk.
“Like hell,” he declared.
Blondie swung with the flat of his gun, sending Monk staggering back. He faked more pain than he felt, doubling over so as to get his piece clear. Blondie stepped nearer.
“Straighten up
, bitch, so I can hit you again.”
Monk did so, jamming the automatic under the hitter’s left eye. “This straight enough?”
“We gotta book,” another warned excitedly.
Blondie snarled but said nothing, his gun remaining trained on Monk, as Monk’s gun was on him. The overhead light reflected hypnotically in his earrings.
Some of the crew were already running off. “Come on, B.B., we need to hat, man. We’ll deal with this punk in a short minute.”
B.B. the blond relented, backing off, gun still leveled at Monk. “We ain’t through, bitch.”
The Scalp Hunters faded away and in less than a minute, police cars careened across lawns, disgorging uniforms with the de rigueur shotguns and 9mms at the ready.
Monk stood with his hands visible on the pockmarked porch. The body of the one called Stake stretched before him on the uncut grass.
“We got another one behind this van,” a cop bellowed.
Monk was ordered on his knees, a foot slammed hard into his upper back. He went down stomach first on the weather-beaten floorboards of the porch.
“Now, what’s your story, Bo Peep?” A voice thick with malice said as muzzles were connected to his head like antennae.
Out on the lawn, just at the edge of the light, he could see the inert form of the boy-man. Another grave marker signaling one more bad night.
Síx
“What in the fuck did you think you were doing?” Absalla worked his fist, opening and closing the hand like it was hooked to a generator.
“My job,” Monk answered evenly. He crossed his legs, trying to give off a casual demeanor sitting across from the yelling man. Inwardly, he felt like notching it up several octaves himself. He’d already spent six hours with several fairly disinterested LAPD cops doing the “I’m innocent” tango. One of them, a hollow-eyed detective named Fitzhugh, was the cop Cady had mentioned as an extra-large asshole.
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