“I stand accused.” She extended her arms at ninety degrees and bowed slightly.
“So Dex knew DeKovan was a limousine liberal. I’m sure as a way to assuage his own guilt he threw that bone to the rich boy.” Monk did a passing imitation of Grant’s coarse baritone. “See, Fletch, everybody wins. Sure you gotta make a sacrifice, but the Rancho gets the center you want, and, well …”—he used his own voice—“you get the shaft, baby.”
“You should ask him,” she said confidently.
“Maybe I’ll go to the source.”
“Do so, my dear.” She worked her sticks, raking more steamed rice onto her plate.
“You’re so hep on my situation, huh?” Monk smiled knowingly.
“Jamboni and me is not the same thing, Ivan.”
“Really,” he said through a sigh.
“Yeah.” Her head thrust forward with a bull elephant’s brashness.
Monk let moments tick by before he spoke. “It’s about unfinished business, Jill. It’s about do we let bastards like DeKovan and the assistant D.A. set the agenda or do we.”
Kodama’s eyes glittered with a quality Monk couldn’t identify. He suddenly felt as if he were drifting in a glossy ether with no point of reference.
“Jamboni wants this to be not just his launching pad into the head D.A.’s seat,” she leveled. “There’s rumors he isn’t even going to waste his time with that if he and his allies get a win by getting me unseated. I understand he’s interested in the governorship.”
“Your point being.”
“I don’t want to be part of the opéra bouffe he’s staging. I won’t be this year’s pincushion for the media and the spinmeisters.”
“And you’ll accomplish that by doing nothing. By sitting it out and letting the system take its course. Or is that, its toll?”
“There’s no way my decision is going to be overturned. I’m standing on solid case law in California. Several conservative judges have done the same thing I’ve done.”
“To repeat myself, this ain’t about facts, Jill, it’s about perception. You want logic and reason to prevail, and that’s really swell, you know? But you got to work those facts to your advantage, ’cause you can be damn sure Jamboni is going to work overtime on the perception angle.”
“Look, it’s not like I don’t want to fight to keep my job. And not because I have to be a judge, but because I think I do make a contribution on the bench.”
“Sure, you’re right,” Monk agreed.
“I just don’t want this to become”—she hesitated—“out of control, I guess. MFs like Jamboni think judges are just lawyers who couldn’t cut it in the marketplace,” she added self-deprecatingly.
“He’s on the public dole too,” Monk noted.
“But he’s got bigger goals, Ivan. I can see it in his insincerity when he gets close to me. He’s of the opinion the only reason I ride the pine is because I’m a mediocre lawyer. No guts, no heart.”
“I know different.”
“You’re just trying to get in my pants.” Kodama smiled, wriggling a sliver of chicken between her front teeth.
“That still leads you back to jumping in. But you take the high ground. We set up some interviews for you at various ethnic presses. While the homeowners attempt to mine white anxiety, you build support in the ’hood, and tap what remains of the liberal west side, or wherever the hell it is they moved to. You can talk about that Chinese honors student the cops tried to slam as a gangbanger, and how you lambasted them last year for that.”
A goofy smile twisted Kodama’s mouth. “Somewhat self-serving, wouldn’t you say?”
“We get the story tactfully leaked,” Monk conjured.
Kodama laid her chopsticks on her empty plate. “Where do you want to go for coffee?”
Hand-in-hand the two strolled along the refurbished Old Towne section of Pasadena. People thronged about eating cups of frozen yogurt, discussing the latest mile-high salary commanded by the most recent mumbling, moody acting sensation, or stopping to gawk at bald-headed female manikins in clothing store windows wearing studded leather skirts with slits and feathered-ankle work boots.
Kodama moved her hand up and squeezed Monk’s arm. “What’s the word, thunderbird?”
He kissed her on the forehead. “I was thinking about you.”
“Liar.”
He chuckled softly. “I was thinking I don’t want any more surprises between me and Dex.”
“I understand.” They walked along, passing by a store with a pyramid-shaped blue canopy over the entrance. A crowd snaked out from the front door, and Monk and Kodama slowed to see what was the attraction.
On a blackened picture window in machinelike gold lettering the name read: VIRTUAL EXCURSIONS.
“I heard about this place,” Kodama said, as they stood to the side of the line. “It’s a virtual reality salon where you pay for the goggles and a kind of cockpit you sit in to plug into a space trip, a Polynesian beach, or whatever.”
“Want to wait and go in?” Monk asked.
Before Kodama could answer, a young white woman in black shorts and cowboy boots who’d been in line pointed at them. “Hey, aren’t you the one who let that killer out of jail?”
Monk tightened his hand on Kodama’s arm, but she wasn’t moving. “I didn’t let him out of jail, he’s doing his time.”
“Yeah, but he, like, raped somebody, right?” She turned her head from looking at the couple to her friend, similarly dressed.
“Didn’t he rape the wife and kill the husband?” the misinformed friend added.
“Why don’t you two get the case straight?” Kodama admonished.
The friend put her hands on her ample hips. “Well, honey, I’m not the one going around getting murderers off with a little pat on the rear.”
“Yeah,” the first one jumped in, “you people think you’re above the rest of us, with your big expense accounts, and hanging out with people like that Leslie Abramson.”
The other one uttered a distasteful “E-uuuuu.”
Openmouthed, Kodama stared at the young woman. “What is it you think I do?”
“Huh?” the friend inquired, also openmouthed.
“How is it I was involved in this case you two know so much about?”
“You’re the—What do you call it?” the first one rattled, looking at her friend to complete her sentence.
“Defense attorney, right?” the friend offered, looking at others in the crowd for confirmation. “Like the one that got T-Dog, or whatever that rapper calls himself, off for murder.”
A visceral snarl of disapproval materialized from the crowd.
“Shit,” Kodama bleated, guided forcefully away by Monk.
“At least they didn’t think you sold used cars,” he quipped, looking back to see if some righteous-minded citizen was bearing down on them. No one was coining; though a few had detached from the pack they didn’t travel far. They were like radical cells whose encoding had suddenly been lost in transition from the main stem. The bodies moved about aimlessly, but not forward.
“We were going to get some coffee,” Monk reminded her edgily.
Kodama said nothing, staring ahead, lost in another time zone. Warm air coiled around them, embracing storklimbed palms and tear-shaped cypress trees along a ventricle off the main thoroughfare, Colorado.
In the near distance, another funnel of heat moved off the barren San Gabriel Mountains. Monk only had a sensation of tines of cold working the base of his cortex. They approached a coffeehouse with several people huddled in earnest over caffe lattes and carmel-colored cappuccinos sitting at white lacquered wood tables along the sidewalk. Monk slowed, but Kodama kept on. He fell in step.
“Fuck it, people sometimes get the karma they deserve.”
“That’s rather profound, my dear,” Monk said evenly.
She stopped, her tongue sliding across the tips of her teeth. “You’re fucking right it is. It’s those kind of dickheads back there that Jam
boni and his sycophantic homeowners are playing to.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying.”
“And you honestly think I can change those kinds of minds?”
“Not change necessarily, but engage the discussion. Plus you know there’s always going to be a certain percentage on the sidelines. That’s the segment you can sway, Jill. The real truth is, babe, in the era of terrorist bombers getting their manifesto printed in national dailies, everything is the media and how it gets carved up in it.”
“So no purity of law? No pursuit of an unfettered balancing of the scales?” She sounded sad.
Monk pulled her close. “There might be; I wouldn’t know. What matters is you believe in the pursuit of it, the chance that this thing, this justice, or something like it may be out there.”
She snickered, tugging on the lapels of his sport coat.
“And I know you’re too good, too valuable to get pushed aside like an empty bottle,” he added.
Her hand touched the corner of Monk’s trim goatee. “Kiss me, you fool.”
Twelve
Monk lay on the couch watching a rerun of “Starsky & Hutch” on WGN. Kodama had gotten up early, pumped and focused. He was happy to have been useful getting the judge out of her entropy. They’d stayed up till past two discussing how she would go about launching her counteroffensive, first by calling a friend of hers who worked in public relations for some ideas.
Monk was so elated for her, he managed to avoid thinking about his blowup with Grant. Concentrating as they both were on her situation, she hadn’t brought up the excop again either. But once Kodama had departed, he suddenly felt like a gnarled gnome trapped in a house of mirrors. Regardless of which way he turned, he had to face the twisted visage.
Yet putting his mind on his mentor seemed to deplete his resolve. A protective torpor attempted to overtake his psyche. It was much less painful worrying about what was going to happen to Huggie Bear as the bad guys threatened him with knives and crowbars, the two heroes burning rubber in that ostentatious red and white Torino on their way to rescue their snitch buddy.
The phone rang as Huggie Bear’s apple cap flew off his head after he was hit upside it.
Monk coughed hello after the third ring.
“Is this Ivan Monk?” the recognizable voice asked.
“Yes, is this Fletcher?”
“That’s right. I tried your office, so I thought I’d try the other number you left me.” There was an uncomfortable silence, then he proceeded. “Have I caught you at a bad time?”
Monk, aware that Wilkenson could probably hear the TV going, became embarrassed. Tonelessly, he said, “No, go ahead, Fletcher.”
A gust of hurried breath carried his words over the line. “Have you heard what happened at the Rancho yesterday?”
“What?” He took a swallow of his tepid coffee.
“Two members of Los Domingos were gunned down in that little park they hang out in over on Union.”
“Payback from the Scalps,” Monk concluded unhappily.
“That’s the kicker, Ivan. The word is the shooters were Latinos.”
“Another gang moving in?”
“I think it was a message from someone else,” the other man said cryptically. “One of the youths was shot in the upper thigh, the other much worse—the stomach.”
“Christ, what’s the kid’s prognosis?”
“If he lives, he won’t be eating cheeseburgers anymore.”
“What the hell’s going on, Fletcher?”
By way of a response, he said, “You heard of Jaguar Maladrone?”
“The boss of the Zacatecas Mob. They’ve been linked to some sort of smuggling operations as I recall.”
“Jaguar called me this morning,” Wilkenson said huskily.
“Why’d he call you?” Huggie Bear’s plight got shoved to the bottom of his list.
“I used to train him,” Wilkenson tendered, as if the explanation would make everything clear.
Thírteen
Somewhere along the drive his left foot fell asleep. It was tingling as if gnats were crawling around inside his skin. The van hit another rut in the road, which only served to remind Monk how badly he wanted to relieve himself.
He estimated he’d been lying on his side, a blanket thrown over his head, for at least two hours. He hadn’t bothered to try and raise up since he assumed the two gentlemen in pointed boots and straw cowboy hats were still seated near him. Their semiauto Ingrams handy and greased.
There was a swerve, and Monk’s spine slid into the cool metal of the ’73 Dodge van’s side. More travel, then the wheels squealed to a stop. Words were exchanged in Spanish and one of his guards removed the serape from his head.
“Come on, my friend, the man wants to see you,” the friendly face said. It belonged to the one with a deep incision running from his hairline to his eyebrow on the left side of his hide of a face. He was crouching near Monk’s prone form, pointing toward the rear swing doors with the barrel of his weapon.
Because the interior was dark, Monk’s eyes didn’t require readjustment as he sat up, rotating his foot in an effort to get the circulation going. The other straw hat had been sitting up front next to the driver, an individual in a cutoff Levi’s jacket and bedecked with arms like the girders on the Terminal Island Bridge. This man looked at Monk unexpressively, one of his eyes clouded over from either disease or past violence.
The one who’d taken the covering off him went out, and Monk scooted after him. The day itself was overcast, and an unblinking Monk found himself standing on ground layered with a chalky dirt. His foot continued to bug him, and he was about to wet himself any minute.
“Hold up, huh,” he grunted. He turned, unzipped, and peed near the rear bumper. The two guards looked bored as he did so. The driver was already walking into the house.
The van had parked before a large Spanish Colonial structure done in muted hues of off-yellow trimmed in deep brown. There were bracketed balconies around the second story, and a rooster walked along the fringe of the tiled roof. A satellite dish poked into the air adjacent to a hexagonal turret slotted with rectangular windows running lengthwise. Monk watched the driver disappear under an archway bordered in white and blue tiles.
“Feel better?” the first one asked, again pointing with the barrel. Behind the man in the near distance were power lines, and beyond them the landscape was broken up by low mountains. A few houses were planted here and there in the manner children sprinkle pieces on a Monopoly board.
The three marched into the archway, the rooster looking down at them. Monk self-consciously came down hard on his foot in an effort to get the circulation going. Their brief trek through the house led to a darkened patio with a bench swing suspended by rusting chains. On the swing a fat Siamese lazed, stretching its corpulent body. The animal didn’t acknowledge their presence as they passed and entered tall double doors of heavily paneled rosewood with silver ring knockers on each side.
Inside was a circular foyer that opened up to the second floor. Several carvings and paintings hung in the entranceway; Monk recognized an Orozco and a Braque. They looked like originals. The carvings were faces of what he presumed to be ancient gods of some sort in feathered headgear over broad brows and sunken eyes. Off to the left were stairs, but he was led the other way into an area mat in other houses would have been the living room.
The room served as the repository for a man in an iron lung machine. The steady whir of the artificial breathing chamber’s motor could be heard between the breaks of Santana that came from a stereo unit in a corner. The cylinder was etched with various symbols and designs that Monk took to be either Aztec or Toltec in origin.
The driver sat in a high-backed medieval chair near the machine, reading the Business section. Another man, in a cobalt blue suit and grape-colored shirt, sat in a rocking chair near one of the windows. Outside, the power lines stood like unfathomable metal totems.
“Fletcher says you’re stra
ight.”
It took Monk a moment to realize the strong and clear voice had come from the man in the machine.
“You’re Jokay Maladrone?” he asked, stepping more into the room.
“I used to be.” The man laughed.
In the mirror angled over Maladrone’s head, which poked out of the machine like a turtle’s head, Monk could see the eyes flick to the side, then settle on his own reflected image again. Following the line of sight, he read a laminated poster on the wall, done in black block lettering printed on aging paper. It was the kind made to be stapled to telephone poles and fences. This piece of preserved history announced a boxing match between Jokay “Jaguar” Maladrone and Terry Wallis at the Olympic Auditorium in 1962.
“Ever see me fight?” Maladrone seemed to ask no one in particular.
“Like lightning in a room, he mowed down everything,” the man at the window said, rocking and looking out at the Martian landscape.
The driver didn’t join the amen chorus so Monk spoke up. “A little before my time, Jaguar.”
The head moved sideways. “Oh, I thought you were one of Fletcher’s buddies from the old days. Shit, you’re still young enough to get your dick up.”
The driver snickered and turned to another page in the newspaper.
“What can I get you to drink?” Maladrone asked. Discordantly, Maladrone’s face was healthy looking with its bronze color and the fullness of his cheeks. His eyes were clear and his hair, though greying, was full and combed back from an unwrinkled forehead.
“Water or juice would be fine,” Monk responded.
“And a chair too,” Maladrone added.
The man in the rocker got up and retrieved another leather and oak medieval-style chair from a row of them under an aquarium sunk into one of the walls. Numerous colorful fish inhabited the darkly lit tank, including koi and cichlids.
The suited man placed the chair near Maladrone’s tank and went off to another room.
Monk sat down. Maladrone stared at his mirror. Monk had thought of several questions to ask since Fletcher Wilkenson had called him back to tell him to be at the southeast corner of Soto and First this morning. Wilkenson had been calling around about Maladrone, the kid he used to train in his boxing program. Apparently, when the gang leader contacted Wilkenson he said that he had information about the Cruzado murders, and wanted to know something about Monk. Word was the Zacatecas Mob heard a lot about what went down in the Rancho. Maybe another point he’d get to.
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