“Thanks, Marasco.”
Seguin slumped down against the doorway, his face sallow. “My pleasure.”
“We gotta get out of here,” Monk said with growing concern. The fires were congealing together and their growth was imminent. He tried to get up but couldn’t put weight on his leg. Monk fell back. “Marasco,” he started. Glancing over at the doorway, he could see his friend had gone slack, his chin lolling against his chest.
“Marasco,” Monk repeated. He forced himself back up, his wound tearing his eyes. The fire ate away at the insides of the room they’d been in. Monk limped over to Seguin, passing the gunner Blondie had shot in a pique. It was Eddie Waters.
Monk got to his friend as the fire in the hallway whooshed onto one of the walls, consuming an aged poster announcing a Sugar Ray Robinson fight at the Olympic.
“Come on.” Monk couldn’t handle Seguin’s weight on his bad leg, so he held him by his upper body and dragged him along. Monk got to the far end of the hall, the flames gyrating boldly along the corridor. Monk continued his task, getting some feet down another corridor. But the encroaching brightness told him he wasn’t moving fast enough.
“Now would be a good time to wake up, Marasco.” He didn’t comply. Monk kept moving, coming upon the stairs he’d been up earlier. Sweat soaked his clothes and his arms were numb hubs. He tried to weigh his options rationally, but he knew ultimately he had only luck and intuition left.
“Come on, Slick.” Monk started up the stairs, resting at each second landing. Somewhere around midway, as he’d hoped, the bumping aroused Seguin.
“We’re still in the building?”
Monk didn’t have enough strength to laugh. “Can you stand?”
On the third try Seguin got up, supporting himself on the railing. They put arms around each other and managed to get to the top, collapsing there.
“You hear that?” Seguin eked out.
“Yeah, the rain’s let up.”
“You’re hilarious.”
Sirens. “Henry must have gotten to a phone,” Monk surmised.
Seguin had passed out again.
Monk propped himself against the wall at the top of the stairs, sweat stinging his eyes. Heat and flame were gobbling up rooms and hallways. Soon it would embrace the two. He was drifting in and out of consciousness when a figure with a face enclosed in an oxygen mask and bearing a hatchet shook him awake.
“We got more than roast on the menu today,” the fire fighter quipped to other squad members who were clambering up the stairs.
“He’s a cop,” Monk lifted a listless arm, then dropped it. He’d forgotten how to make his fingers work.
“Let’s get some stretchers up here,” the joker ordered.
“Eddie Waters was a Ra-Falcon, and an old friend of Keith 2X.” Monk lay in the ambulance riding over to USC County General. “Keith must have found out from Waters about the meeting on Trinity, and told me.”
Seguin, who’d stirred again, was laid out across from him. “When they were pulling us out, I saw some uniforms taking the shooter you’d wounded down from the roof. It was one of the Domingos.”
“You two should take it easy,” the woman paramedic advised.
“Big Loco knew he was getting squeezed out. But from what Karla Ruzón told me, it seems he was still getting comped at the Airport Casino. Maybe he figured that meant he was cool with DeKovan.”
“Probably just part of how they were suckering him,” Seguin offered. “Judging from who the regulators were who came after us, it seems Maladrone and Booker were in this together.”
“And who says black and brown can’t unite,” Monk commented sarcastically. “Especially when money’s the great motivator.”
Seguin tried to sit up but the paramedic gently, yet forcefully pushed him down. “Okay, you win,” the wounded cop said. “So the new regime was to be made from pieces of the old.”
Maladrone’s words about the need for discipline and order came back to Monk. “There is something to be said for organized crime, Marasco. No random shootings, petty thefts and burglaries stop. Progressive gangsterism.”
“Liberal simp,” his friend fired back.
“Why don’t you two save it for the Brinkley show, alright?”
Ignoring the paramedic, Monk added, “It’s the story of big business, Marasco.”
Seguin laughed softly.
“Anyway, I think Loco found out about the meeting on Trinity and went there to cap Isaiah Booker,” Monk conjectured. “Maybe he figured he’d make himself invaluable to DeKovan.”
The ambulance drove along Soto, the street glistening with the clean rain.
“Then how does he get lured over to the apartment in the Crenshaw area?” Seguin asked.
“You said yourself the guy on the roof was a Domingo Trece. Loco couldn’t conceive the idea that some of his boys could cross over to the new combine.”
“Makes sense.” Seguin grimaced as he shifted on his stretcher.
“He probably went over there with one of his supposed homies on the pretense he could get Booker, I bet.”
The ambulance hit a pothole. “But you only saw two men enter that night. Counting Loco, there were three in the room,” Seguin pointed out.
“Either Blondie or Eddie was already hiding in the apartment. Lying in wait for 2X’s return or to spring the trap on Loco.”
The ambulance went past Hazard Park, which looked like a lush island newly risen from the ocean floor as its trees dripped with fresh rain. The ambulance got to Marengo and headed on into the hospital.
“The hitters kept in contact by cell phones,” Monk surmised. “The plan was probably to do Big Loco at the apartment, and place the blame on Keith. He was on the run ’cause he realized that his own pardner was playin’ him, and was in deep. If he showed up, no cop would listen to him, as they’d figure he’d be trying to get out from under the Loco murder beef.”
“All police are not as stupid as you think, Ivan.”
“So I’ve been told.”
They both laughed and coughed up heavy wads of phlegm. The ambulance wailed to a stop.
Twenty-three
It was a hot and humid afternoon with few breezes to bring relief. The portable canopies erected on the basketball court hardly rippled. The assembled residents of the Rancho Tajuata sat fanning themselves with printed programs. Latino and black children played tag with each other, the stern looks of admonishment from their parents to cease their running going unheeded.
On the raised dais, also covered under a blue and white canopy courtesy of the city, several officials from the local housing authority squinted with discomfort. Some looked worried to actually be inside one of the ghetto housing projects they only knew by map coordinates.
Also onstage were Henry Cady and Reyisa Limón—sitting on opposite sides of the podium so as not to blow their cover—and a couple of bureaucrats from HUD. Antar Absalla was finishing his speech.
“I don’t ask that you pat me on the back for helping to rid our housing project of the bad element. I’m not looking for accolades.”
“Then why don’t you quit lying,” Jill Kodama said loud enough for several rows to hear.
“I ask that you congratulate all the Ra-Falcons who stand side by side with the tenants when I say we’re not only here to help keep the peace, but that the revamped security force will also reflect the realities of the nineties.” He thrust an arm toward the audience. “I’d like to introduce some of our newest soldiers for peace.”
Several young men and women stood up, many of whom were Latino. There was even a Southeast Asian face.
“What a guy,” Kodama whispered to Monk. Both sat among the audience.
“Here, here,” Monk shouted, tapping his lower leg, in a cast up to his knee, with his cane.
“I guess he ain’t gonna mention the kilos of gold, diamond jewelry, freight manifests, and boxes of cash the cops found in that fortified room in the job center.” Kodama sucked her tongue agai
nst her teeth.
“Don’t forget those bills had traces of cocaine on them,” Monk said.
“Money laundering, smuggling goods off the books from the downtown jewelry mart, quite an operation they were setting up.” Kodama waved at city councilwoman Tina Chalmers, who had arrived late and was making for the stage. “But how the hell were they going to hide all that?”
Monk shifted, trying to get into a comfortable position. “Trentex had taken out permits to rehab the center as an auto parts warehouse. Those old S.P. tracks were due to be utilized again by the Santa Fe Railroad, who bought them out several years ago.”
“To-your-door service,” Kodama said cheerily. “And I guess DeKovan’s not coming back from Switzerland any time soon.” Kodama could sense the shift in his mood. She looked at his grim profile.
Monk clapped heartily as Absalla sat down, a sardonic twist on his lips. Cady came to the podium to say a few words about the work of the tenants’ association going forward, and that he was optimistic that the Rancho would eventually be owned by the residents.
“Seems DeKovan’s been maintaining a dual citizenship since the seventies. He’s nonextraditable there.” Monk whacked a leg of the chair in front of him very hard with his cane.
Kodama rubbed his arm. “At least it came to light that it was one of DeKovan’s companies that’d purchased the center.” She looked off beyond the stage, where the hulk of the A. Philip Randolph Advancement and Placement Center shimmered as if it were a mirage. The center should have been a symbol of hope, but instead it had been corrupted into a construct of greedy imaginations.
Monk found little consolation in the fact that the smuggling and laundering operation had been uncovered. For the sad reality was that Efraín Cruzado and members of his family were casualties of war because bastards like Maladrone deemed him a threat, a threat because he wanted to organize people.
Fletcher Wilkenson, another organizer, another threat, was now accepting a plaque from Cady.
“My friends, I would not be so naive as to say the hardest is behind us. But I do know if we can work together, appreciate our differences and emphasize our commonalities, then surely some good will come of that.” His voice broke and cheers and applause went up from the gathered.
“How’s Keith Burroughs?” Kodama asked Monk, hoping that would get him on another subject.
“He’s gonna make it. He told me Eddie Waters had hipped him to the meeting on Trinity as a way of feeling him out. He wanted to see if his old running buddy was going to roll with the flavor and work for the new crime regime, as it represented the irresistible melding of corporate capital and street muscle. Plus a little mumbo-jumbo had been thrown into the mix for seasoning.”
“Oh, check this out,” Monk continued. “Keith’s hospital bill has been covered by an anonymous benefactor.”
“DeKovan,” Kodama concluded. “He really is a bent fuck.”
“He had enough wherewithal to flee.”
The ceremony was winding down. Its purpose had been part dog-and-pony, and part pragmatic. The tenants were feeling good and so Cady, Limón, and the rest of the leadership threw them a bash to aid in boosting morale. The practical aspect was to show the Department of Housing and Urban Development suits that the Rancho was ready and should have the opportunity to work with the federal agency in completing proposals for the loans and grants to convert the complex to private hands.
Afterward, people milled about the dual canopies under which a buffet of sliced meats, strawberries, chunks of melons, and Doritos had been set up.
“I’m sure glad you’re back in harness, Judge Kodama.” A smallish older black woman looked up at Kodama, smiling. Her wrinkled face was framed by a wide-brimmed sun hat held in place with a long stickpin topped with a teardrop fake pearl.
“Thank you,” Kodama said humbly, shaking the wellwisher’s hand.
“We sure need more like you.” The woman ambled off, holding a plastic cup whose contents smelled like brandy.
“You know what I need right now, baby?” Monk balanced himself on his cane, putting his arm around her waist.
“More codeine, darling?” She pinched his side. “You get the Gorzynskis straightened out?”
“Yes. He finally believed she was only putting away money for an IRA she’d opened up for them when we took him over to the bank to prove it.”
“Ivan, come over here.”
Monk jerked his head around. Wilkenson was standing in the doorway of the newly reopened rec center. He hobbled over. “Congratulations, Fletcher.”
“Thank you. Look at that.” He pointed.
On the wide-screen TV, divers in scuba gear were swimming near a Coast Guard boat. “The Gulf of Mexico” was superimposed over the images on the screen. The boat had a crane, and had hauled up in a net an object Monk recognized by the angular patterns engraved on its side.
The newscaster spoke. “Again, at the top of the news, off the coast of Corpus Christi this morning, authorities found an iron lung believed to belong to the missing Jokay Maladrone. The crime boss is wanted for questioning in the murders of several people in Los Angeles. Though his lifesustaining apparatus was found, his body has yet to be recovered.”
“Some kind of diversion,” Monk said. “He probably just switched machines.”
“I don’t know,” Wilkenson mused wistfully. “It’s not like he can just hop out and hop into another one.”
“Isaiah Booker has copped a deal,” Kodama reminded both of them. There had to be some balance.
“But with no Maladrone, and DeKovan out of reach …” Monk stopped speaking; he had a hard time accepting he was going to be denied retribution. “And the real cold part is DeKovan didn’t need the money. This whole thing”—his hand swept toward the A. Philip Randolph Advancement and Placement Center—“the murders, everything.” He spat, air seemingly coming hard for him. “Just a lark for him. One more quirky acquisition in a life of them.” Monk looked around, but he couldn’t figure out what to hit.
Several people came up to chat with Wilkenson and reminisce about the old days. A news crew cornered Kodama to get her comments on Jamboni’s announcement that he was going to run for the attorney general’s job.
Monk wandered outside and took a seat on a bench, stretching out his throbbing leg. On a corner of the paved area bunched in by newly planted eucalyptus trees, a rooster walked around the tree trunks. The bird turned its head, his red unblinking orb transfixing Monk.
Mesmerized, Monk sat there for several moments. The creature stood sideways, staring at him, still and silent. The thing got on his nerves and he tried to get up, wincing and huffing with effort. He looked down momentarily to see where his bound leg was, and looked up again. The rooster had disappeared.
A blues band began playing on the stage. The woman singer started in on the Robert Johnson number, “Me and the Devil Blues.” In the song, a man tells his girlfriend to bury his body along the road. The singer worked the song like it was her own, the crowd having stopped chatting to listen to her delivery. It was as if a shroud had descended upon the gathered, and within its folds, they had been transported to the Delta—where indeed some of their forbearers had left looking for work and relief from Jim Crow decades ago.
She finished with the lyric, “So my evil spirit can get a Greyhound bus and ride.” As she repeated the words, Monk was possessed by a mental picture of that rooster’s eye boring in on him. He limped off to find the old sister with the brandy.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publish
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1998 by Gary Phillips
cover design by Elizabeth Connor
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Bad Night Is Falling Page 27