“Why not just tell Fletcher what you knew, Jaguar? Why’d you bring me out to your house?”
“To see if I had to cap you or not,” he said easily. The face remained static in the mirror. The driver kept reading the Business section.
The man in the suit returned with a tray stocked with a tall glass of lemonade, a plate of sliced roast beef, Ritz crackers, and some cheddar cheese. A good-sized knife was embedded in the block of cheese. He put these down on a serving cart and rolled it near Monk. The man took his place again in the rocker.
Monk played unfazed and sliced off a portion of cheese and popped it in his mouth. Imperceptibly the driver shifted, the muscles along his arms knotting like molten iron being cast. Calmly, he replaced the knife on the tray.
“I guess I appreciate your invitation even more. At least it wasn’t a bullet in the belly.”
“At least,” Maladrone quipped. “How tight are you and Absalla?”
“You know he fired me.” Monk tried the lemonade.
A raspy laugh, the first hint of what had put the former boxer in the iron lung, escaped from the unsmiling head. “Sure, sure. Then why’re you still interested in finding the killers?”
“I don’t like getting bounced.”
“Or letting go,” Maladrone said appreciatively.
“So what have you got, Jaguar?” Monk tore off some roast beef and made a cracker sandwich, munching on it loudly. He figured the best front with this powerful man with the infirm body was to pretend his balls were as big as grapefruits.
“I was born here, in L.A., off of Chicago, near the big hospital, you know?”
Monk nodded.
“At eight my old man left me, my moms, and my two sisters. No particular loss ’cept the weekly beatings from his drunk ass and the paycheck he brought home every two.” Maladrone made a clicking noise with his tongue. “Moved to the Rancho after that.”
The driver folded up his newspaper, got up, and took some crackers and meat off the plate. He went to sit near the man at the window who continued to rock softly.
“I don’t know if you know how it is coming up hard, man, but it tells you something about yourself,” Maladrone continued. “Ran with the Furys at eleven, overlord by the time I hit sixteen.”
“You must have started to box around then,” Monk guessed, thinking about his own serious foray into athletics via high school football.
Maladrone pushed out his bottom lip. “Fletcher was the first white guy I’d met who hadn’t raised a baton to my head, or showed up at my mother’s door sucking after the payment on the refrigerator. He’d grown up in Boyle Heights and knew more hiding places than me and my boys.” He quit talking, his eyes flicking back and forth from the mirror to somewhere else.
“He was stand-up, you understand. He really tried with us. Didn’t matter they said he was a red and agitator and all that. I didn’t see no baby’s blood hanging from his teeth or some dude named Boris with a beard and a trenchcoat.”
Monk grinned and said, “Way I hear it, you were on your way to a sweet little career as a middleweight. But you still walked in the gang life, and got hung up in a robbery of the Olympic. Supposedly you’d planned the ripoff to take place on the night of your title fight.”
Maladrone breathed into his mirror.
“Shit went bad,” Monk went on. “Somebody got caught when they were high on glue and ratted. You split to Zacatecas where your mother was from, and where she had gone back to with your sisters. There you were supposed to start a franchise with the Furys. Only you had other plans.”
“Fletcher tell you that?” The music had stopped, the steady humming of the iron lung’s electric motor providing a hypnotic rhythm the fish and the men responded to.
“Yeah,” Monk said, “he’s still disappointed.”
A flinty look set the other man’s face and Monk was worried he’d overdone his bit. The driver was pretending not to look at him and the rocker had stopped moving. For several hot seconds, he was wondering how far and how fast he could get if he ran for the power lines.
“You make choices, you make decisions,” Maladrone finally breathed. “The Pandilla Zacatecas grew out of disorganization and misdirection, blood and paybacks over bullshit. I gave it purpose, I gave it heart.”
Even as the machine that gave him life hummed on, thereby reminding all how fragile Maladrone’s hold on existence was, Monk had the impression that though his vision was corrupt, it nonetheless sustained him, made him something other than an ill gang chief in an iron lung.
“But the past leads us to this time, this moment,” Maladrone said.
Monk was holding two Ritz crackers between his thumb and two fingers as if they were priceless doubloons. He shifted them around as he talked. “What do you want, Jaguar?”
“Peace, my brother.” He showed oddly spaced teeth. “What I want—what the organization wants,” he quickly corrected, “is order and discipline. The Scalp Hunters and Los Domingos Trece ain’t getting with the program, and that’s not good for any of us.”
“What is good for business?” Monk put down the crackers. The two pieces seemed to rattle louder than possible on the plate.
“This is the goddamn end of the century, Monk. This is about moving forward, moving my people forward together.” His head jerked and he said, “See that traje over there—he’s a fuckin’ C.P.A., see? We’re about goals and timetables and balance sheets.”
“The new mob,” Monk said.
“Old story, I know,” Maladrone stated flatly, “but new for some of us, eh? No more bullshit drive-bys, popping meth, and eight-ballin’. Orale, the millennium is upon us.”
“Why am I here, Jaguar?”
“I’m going to give you the murderers.” The diaphragm under the machine went up and then down. The rocker squeaked the driver had started on the Calendar section.
“How do you know who did it?”
“Big Loco saw them.”
Monk let that gestate for a while. “If you two are tight, then why did your boys shoot members of his crew after they lit up the Scalp Hunters?”
“You want this, or you want to get in my business?” he said truculently.
“I want it alright. But I also know you’re only telling me this because it fits in your plans.”
The head said nothing. The eyes flicked in time with the respirator as the man in the rocker rocked. Monk munched on another Ritz. The driver kept reading his newspaper.
“This is about what’s good for the Rancho, Monk.” Maladrone’s etched face, like earth scarred by harsh winters, was solemn.
There was a sincerity in his voice Monk fought hard not to admit. “Who does Big Loco say did it?” Monk said, breaking the impasse.
“Two brothers,” the gangster said solemnly. “One’s called Junior Blue, and the other works for Absalla.”
He wasn’t expecting that. “How do you know this is true? And how convenient it is one of the names you give me belongs to a recently killed youngster. By Big Loco’s crew in fact.”
Maladrone moved his tongue around inside his closed mouth, his eyes clouding. “I didn’t realize this Blue was one of the ones killed on Trinity. Anyway, what’s in it for him to make it up?” He asked too effortlessly.
“This kind of thing could discredit Absalla, get the RaFalcons run out. Wide open territory for you working through Los Domingos Trece.”
Maladrone snickered. “You ain’t been listening too good, peeper. We ain’t about the criminal life these days. We about being on the square. It is our return to what is natural.”
“This is the second coming of Tlaloc, the time for fire and harvest,” the driver drawled matter-of-factly while he folded his paper to another page.
Monk wasn’t sure, but judging from the decor, he had to believe the name invoked was some Aztec or Maya deity. “So this is about purification?”
“Right on,” Maladrone replied earnestly.
Wonderful. Religious fanatic gangsters. “So you beli
eve Big Loco?”
“He knows better than to lie to me,” Maladrone warned.
Or to disobey, Monk ruminated. “And you want me to be the one who does something with this knowledge?” He couldn’t shake the impression the gang chief’s velvet trap was starting to unfold just for him.
“It would be better if it’s a black who does it, yes?” Maladrone declared. “Absalla would be compromised if he knew this. He has too many pressures, too many he has to appease. But you, the outsider, could move on this, and maybe in such a way as not to jam up the Muslim.”
Maladrone’s empathy for Absalla surprised Monk. Maybe it was religious fealty, or maybe one more way to hook Monk into an intricate plot. He ate another piece of cheese. “Who’s supposed to be the other hitter?” he finally managed.
“Eddie Waters, one of the sergeants in the Falcons,” Maladrone said.
He remembered hearing the name before, but couldn’t put a face to it. “So I’m supposed to go after him?”
“We have interests that benefit each other.”
“I’m not looking to cleanse my soul.”
“Is that right?” Maladrone asked skeptically.
The driver got up and came to stand near the two. Monk gazed at the symbols on the iron lung. Was it technology or an otherworldly power keeping Maladrone going? Or did it matter, as long as he believed in one or the other? “So you give me these names and I’m supposed to scamper back to L.A. and bat cleanup for the Zacatecas Mob.”
“Knowledge is a burden, brother Monk,” Maladrone rasped, his vision fixed on the face glaring at him in his overhead mirror.
The driver lightly touched the private eye’s upper back, indicating his audience with his boss was over.
“What if I did nothing?” Monk quipped, walking away.
“What if you did?” Jaguar Maladrone replied obliquely.
Outside, the rooster was now pecking for bugs on the ground around the van. As Monk and his escorts got closer, the bird flapped its useless wings and crooked its neck upwards. Thinking the cock was going to charge him, Monk was prepared to kick it with his now fully awake foot. The creature strutted toward him then abruptly turned away from the threatening foot. It managed to clamber onto the front of the van, perching there as if it were a live hood ornament.
Monk climbed in back. The rooster still perched on the hood, looking off at the omnipresent power lines. Settling into what he hoped would be a more comfortable position, Monk lay down. He saw the bird pivot its head sideways. As the blanket was dropped over him, and the driver bent down to adjust something, the last image he had before darkness was the ruby red eye of the rooster taking the measure of him.
Fourteen
Cut off from the Ra-Falcons, and not exactly wishing to crawl to Seguin to ask a favor given his funky attitude, Monk was working overtime to find out the real name for the gangbanger known as Junior Blue. The record on Kelmont “Kid Blue” Reeves, the recently deceased youngster’s older cousin, had been expunged because his conviction had been when he was a minor. California law allowed for ways to unseal the record. But the young man had impressed many in turning his life around, notably councilman Wilsson O’Mera. The councilman had interceded on the young man’s part to ensure the file would forever remain closed. Therefore getting a look at it would constitute a full-time job. Time Monk didn’t have.
So that was a useless endeavor insofar as looking up the elder’s rap sheet to find out the deceased one’s name. And Absalla’s notations in Reeves’s file hadn’t bothered with Junior’s actual name either.
Monk had tried a couple of the reporters he knew who covered the crime scene, but they came up with diddly. Then he asked Elrod, but the big man was too much out of that scene, and most of his contacts were among the Rolling Daltons anyway.
He could put an ad in the classifieds, but that seemed beyond desperate. He’d previously turned in the files he’d gotten from Absalla, and hadn’t made copies since he didn’t expect to be fired. The possibility of approaching Eddie Waters was also looking thin, even assuming he gave credence to what Maladrone had told him.
Monk was sitting on the couch in his office, feet out, beneath a shot of the last merchant ship he’d served on, the Achilles. As he half dozed, he heard the intoxicating tumtumming of the inlet valves of the grand diesel engines opening and closing in a unison borne of human sweat and the ship’s oily blood. The old freighter, still reliable in its rusting dignity, had made the Murmansk run during World War II as a Liberty Ship. It was a relief mission organized by the leftists within the maritime union to aid the then–U.S. ally, the Soviet Union. The image of the prow blading aqua green waters flooded dark by Antigua’s sunset skies filled his memory as Delilah entered.
“Did you want those changes in the Medallion Insurance Company contracts done today?” she asked, shaking him from his daydreaming. “I’ve got a balance sheet Ross wants done if you’re not in too much of a hurry.”
Monk was leaning forward, elbows on his knees like a player used to riding the pine finally called into the game. “Tomorrow’s fine, D.”
“Why you looking so eager? You been dreaming about Jill in here?” she teased.
“No, your black outfit”—he indicated the pleated skirt she wore—“reminded me about a funeral coming up.”
“When it’s my time, try to have a little more reserve, will you?” She left and Monk got up to dial one of the freelance writers he knew who did work for the L.A. Weekly. The newspaper was an alternative newsweekly published on the west side, but given to covering issues from Watts to El Segundo.
“Hey,” Monk said to her after a few general amenities, “hear of any gang funerals coming up?”
“That’s on the regular,” the woman, Mari Sicorro, answered. Beneath her words, he could hear the muffled clickclack of computer keys being vigorously worked.
“But you’d have paid attention to this one. It would have been about two young soldiers killed after a nighttime shoot-out on Trinity Street last week. It was a meeting of OGs from the Scalp Hunters.”
“Riddle me this, Batman. How’d you know about this shoot-out? The cops are more closemouthed than usual, and I heard the supposed payback involved other Latinos shooting at Los Domingos.” Sicorro had once been a civilian employee of the police department and she continued to work contacts. She couldn’t get away from cops, criminals, and the nadir of human existence.
“You get the scoop if there is one.”
“Liar,” she giggled. “Nobody’s used the word ‘scoop’ since The Front Page.”
“I ain’t lying.”
She stopped tapping. “What if I did get something across my desk?”
“Junior Blue is the one I’m interested in.” Saying it, he realized how cold it sounded, not mentioning the other one killed. A young man whose street name he couldn’t even remember. Had he too become so inured of youthful death it made no dent in his psyche any longer?
There was a motion of papers on the other end and Sicorro said, “Yeah, yeah, here it is: ‘There’s a graveside ceremony tomorrow at ten out at the Masonic Moor Memorial Park in Compton.’”
“How come that place sounds familiar?”
“It’s on Bullis Road,” Sicorro illuminated. “The place is done in the style of Moorish architecture with plaster minarets and tiled archways. It was in the news about a year ago when there was all that ruckus when the owners were discovered to have been digging up older bodies to bury the new ones.”
“That note of yours don’t happen to mention the real name of Junior Blue, does it?”
“No,” she drawled. “I got this from Danny.”
Danny Fine was the managing editor; he’d interviewed Monk once for a piece on L.A.’s underbelly. “Anything else?”
“His note mentions their gang names—and peep this,” she added excitedly, “Minister Tariq is supposed to be doing the eulogy. Glad you called and had me look at this again.”
“No shit,” Monk exclaimed.
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“On the real,” she said. “I guess I will cover this after all.”
“And maybe I’ll come with you.” The presence of the controversial black Muslim leader Stanis L. Tariq was definitely an interesting turn of events. He was the man who’d personally denounced Antar Absalla for wrongdoing. Yet Tariq, who was situated in Philadelphia, was apparently going to preside over a funeral that happened in Absalla’s backyard.
“How come you’re so hep on keeping a low profile?” Sirocco asked, wanting more information.
“I’ll make sure it’s part of your story, okay?”
“So you want this Junior Blue’s name?”
“Yes, dammit,” Monk proclaimed.
“Don’t be snotty, or you won’t get jack, jack.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he breathed in a falsely contrite voice.
“That’s better,” she laughed. “I like obsequiousness in a big-shouldered man. How ’bout you pick me up around nine tomorrow?”
“Bet.”
“Later.”
He hung up and opened up the book on Aztecs he’d checked out from the Culver City Library on Overland that morning. Earlier, he’d been reading a passage about their history. The Aztecs came after the Maya and the Toltecs. Their city-states grew out of the Valley of Mexico, Anáhuac as it was called, around the fourteenth century. Apparently there were seven Nahua tribes who had carved out fiefdoms in a divided Mexico as the Mayan civilization came to an end.
Of those Chichimecas, barbarians, the last of the seven were the wandering mercenaries, the Aztecs. As the other tribes had each usurped the previous one’s rule, the Aztecs came to Anáhuac. There they staked out territory on two islands in the middle of Lake Texcoco. In 1325, the warriors built the city of Tenochtitlán. They had been guided to the area by their deity, Huitzilopochtli, who had told them to settle where they should find an eagle standing on a nopal, a prickly pear cactus, gorging on a serpent. But this god was not their supreme being, Ometeuctli, the creator of some sixteen hundred other, lesser gods.
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