Perdition, U.S.A.

by Gary Phillips

  Grant gestured as he talked. “One epithet leads to another and before you know it the brothers are kicking the skins’ asses.”

  “All of them were Reich members?” Kodama’s lips compressed.

  “Actually, only two of them were dues-paying War Reich members. The others were the usual disaffected white youth that Beavis, Butt-head and Howard Stern appeal to.” Grant tipped his glass in a mock toast.

  “I’m glad you’ve kept up on your pop culture,” Monk joked.

  Kodama surmised, “I gather news of this defeat was kept pretty quiet among the supremacist circles.”

  Grant nodded. “Apparently Ivan’s friend Sheriff Olson took a few of the brothers and skins into custody. He was surprised when the skins didn’t press charges. They paid their bail and split.”

  Monk added, “Yet there’s this ad.”

  “If you’re one of the ones who knows about what took place, then you know what the announcement refers to. If not, it’s just one more cryptic comment in a movement full of them.” Grant paused, shoving ice around in his drink with an index finger.

  “And here’s the exacta, Grasshopper, a lot of these young brothers were from the Shores.”

  “Could Bradford have been there that night?” Monk said, trying to fit the pieces in order.

  “Why not,” Grant conceded.

  “The new unofficial theory I got from the cops across the county line is the killer might not be a War Reich member but a sympathizer,” Grant said. “Or one from that night in Wilmington.”

  “Could be,” Kodama said. “Or maybe somebody who wants to be the next Bobby Bright. Killing four black men would make a hell of a reputation.”

  “You kill me, baby,” Monk said.

  Kodama didn’t smile.

  Monk placed what was left of his cigarillo in a dented brass ashtray. He retrieved the typed notes he’d gleaned from his research at the Press-Telegram. “I’d like you to look through these, Dex, and let me know what you think.”

  “What do you want to find?” Kodama asked in a demanding tone.

  “Just the facts, ma’am,” Monk shot back.

  “Sure,” she snapped.

  They exchanged looks but said nothing.

  Grant watched them, smiling wanly. He took another taste of his Johnny Walker, then got up. “Nothing wrong with being thorough.” He placed the tumbler on the edge of the coffee table. “Well, kids, it’s time for the geezer to turn in. I’ll be staying at Sandy’s place.”

  Sandy was the elder of Grant’s two grown daughters. Their mother, his second ex-wife, lived in Scranton. Invariably, he never referred to the woman directly if he could avoid it. Like Monk’s sister, Sandy was a teacher, but taught in a private school in Pacific Palisades, and lived in Hawthorne.

  “When do you want to get cracking on these?” Grant waved the notes.

  Monk replied, “Day after tomorrow. In the morning I’m going to have a talk with Ms. Chacon’s client.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” Grant kissed Kodama goodnight and left.

  The judge powered up her stereo and pushed the button activating the CD player. The mournful beauty of Billie Holliday’s voice bore “Strange Fruit,” a song about lynching.

  Mortified, the judge gaped at Monk. “I, I was playing it this morning. I didn’t realize what the next song was.” She made to turn it off.

  “Let it play, Jill, let it play.”

  They sat silently through the entire song.

  Chapter 14

  The following day Monk conducted his jailhouse interview of Herbert Jones. He was in the process of undergoing withdrawal from crack and paced back and forth in the interrogation room.

  “You know the routine, Monk. The sheriff didn’t have to work too hard to figure me for the suspect. Ronny and I had been having an argument about an extension of … credit,” the prisoner smiled at his euphemism.

  “The people who own the Zacharias Market saw both of you minutes before having words.”

  Jones shook his head in the affirmative. “So I’m mad about the fact he won’t spot me, and I follow him when he walks off.”

  “You hoped to make him see differently,” Monk explored.

  A shoulder nudged. “Like I said, I was hot. I don’t know what the fuck I planned to do. But just because I’m an addict, doesn’t mean I can be treated as if I were shit on somebody’s shoe.”

  Monk said, “Ms. Chacon says the GSR, the gunshot residue test the sheriff conducted on your hands and clothes was negative.”

  “They busted me two days after what happened to Ronny. Even dirty scum wash their hands.” He finally sat across from Monk at the plain table, folding his arms tightly across himself.

  Monk remarked, “For dirty scum, you’re rather self-effacing.”

  “All kinds of people wind up on this ride, man.” He continued to scratch at his arm and chest. The repeated movements began to make Monk jittery. “Look, all the law has on me is the two of us yelling at each other. I don’t have shit for an alibi ’cause most of the time I’m too screwed up worrying about my next hit or hiding out from my last burglary.”

  Monk didn’t speak for several moments, then said, “Is there anything else you can tell me about that night?”

  Jones spread his hands in the air before him. “Nothing. Ronny turned me down for the second time and I split.”

  “But you still needed to cop,” Monk said.

  A street wariness halted his incessant movements. “So?”

  “Then where’d you get your shit?” Monk remembered the police report Chacon had given him stated there was no dope found on Aaron’s body.

  “From a ho’ who owed me, Monk,” Jones countered indignantly. “But as my lawyer told me, her word’s worthless since she’s been known to lie on the stand before.”

  “Did you know Scatterboy Williams?” Monk asked, unfazed.

  “In passing,” he replied curtly, having resumed his ritual. “We weren’t running buddies, but I didn’t cap him either.”

  “Ms. Chacon tells me you’ve been convicted before for assault and aggravated misdemeanor. You do have a history of violence, Mr. Jones.”

  “So does America,” Jones quipped. “Maybe the next time some fool feeling all-powerful on PCP tries to do radical surgery on my head with the jagged end of a broken bottle, I’ll try to disarm him with poetry. Or better yet, I’ll wait until the government puts as much into treatment on demand programs as they do for crime bills.”

  Monk got up. “Thanks for seeing me, Mr. Jones.”

  The prisoner remained seated, a faroff look in his eyes.

  Monk moved for the door.

  “My lawyer tells me you’ve seen this ofay killer working the Shores,” the man at the table said.

  “You heard about him in here?” Monk knocked for the guard.

  Jones said, “Revolving door, man. Brothers coming in and out of here every day.”

  “You think he’s the one that killed Aaron?”

  “I’m hoping he killed Ronny, otherwise I’m fucked. ’Cause if I go down for this, even if I agree to second degree, I won’t—I can’t—do the time.” He stopped scratching and his body seemed to draw in on itself in the chair. “You have to find him,” he pleaded, “you have to find the real killer.”

  “Monk glanced back as the door opened, then he walked away from Herbert Jones and his plight.

  For the rest of the day he did paperwork, including getting the contract to Mrs. Urbanski. Based on information Delilah had verified, Monk had decided to take the assignment. Swede had played him for a chump, and he wanted to take the smirk off the asshole’s tanned face with a blowtorch. So what if he took it personal? And so what if Jill was right, and his motives in the Shoreline Killer case were getting a little blurry around the edges.

  He made an appointment to meet Grant the next day to start canvassing the leads he’d developed from his research at the Press-Telegram. After that, he went over to the donut shop. Monk was discussing the mer
its of the ’76 Gran Fury’s V8 400 versus its 360 version with Curtis the car man, while simultaneously munching a smoked turkey sandwich, when the phone rang behind the counter.

  “It’s Delilah,” Josette said, handing him the receiver.

  “Thanks. What’s up?”

  “Jimmy Henderson’s mother just called for you. She’d like you to meet her at church this evening.”

  Monk suddenly felt cold but he got his note pad out. “What’s the address, D?”

  Ursala Brock was smoking an unfiltered Camel. The burning thing dangled from the side of her peach-colored lips while she typed a memo on the Packard Bell set diagonally to her desk. Through the vinyl slats of her office window, the afternoon was giving way to the russet gold of sunset. There was a knock and she said, “What.”

  Grainger Wu entered, displaying a punitive stare at the smoking sinner. “I know, more samples from our friends over in the Carolinas and you wanted to protect me from their undue influence.”

  She puckered and let loose with a full stream over her computer. “Relax, boss, I don’t smoke ’em in public. I wouldn’t do jack to ‘f’-up your play among the constituents.”

  “Praise Jesus.” Wu picked up a two-day-old copy of The New York Times, perusing it with interest. “I’m going to fly back tomorrow night. Bob says he thinks we can get a vote out of Hatter if I promise some transportation funds for his interstate mall.”

  Brock placed the cigarette between her fingers, waving it around like a conductor. “Grainger, Bob’s yanking the short one, okay. Ain’t no way Hatter, even if he is a so-called moderate Republican, gonna go his own way on this.”

  Wu looked up from the article he was reading. “He has before.”

  She pulled deep on the Camel. “How do you do it?”

  “Predictions?”

  “Believe. Hatter may have shown some independence, but that was only when it worked to his benefit. He’s a pox carrier like the rest of his ilk.”

  “He has integrity, Ursala.” A note of weariness lifted the senator’s voice.

  “You can’t trust ’em, Grainger. The only way we can see daylight on getting your hate crimes package out of committee is to embarrass these schmucks. The more they show sympathy for the militia types, the more we roast them over the public fires.”

  “No argument.” Wu put the paper back on a growing stack. “When it’s necessary. But that doesn’t mean we need to yank out throats every time.”

  “Iron fist in the velvet glove?” Brock asked disingenuously.

  “The velvet touch.” Grainger said, his fingertips caressing the top of her desk. “We don’t always have to be on the attack, Ursala.”

  “Shit, we’ve been on the defense for the last twenty years. Stepping on a few necks to retake the high ground is okay in my rule book.”

  “Hold the hounds till I get back, all right?”

  She made a cleaning-her-teeth sound. “I’ll just be here smoking cigarettes and drinking black coffee.”

  “We’ll jump on those folks duped in the cemetery plots on Friday when I’m back.”

  “Slick. Tell Bob I think he’s been sniffing around Ted Kennedy’s punch bowl too much.”

  “I’ll send him your love.” Wu was looking at a photo of Brock standing next to a sweating Chuck Berry at the opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, his guitar in one hand, a plaque in the other. “Will it never die?” Wu asked remorsefully.

  “What?” She lit another Camel, squinting her eyes as the smoke eddied against her handsome face.

  He shifted his head to dark profile as the day dimmed outside. “The need to win.”

  “Nothing to be ashamed about, Grainger. The headlines in history are always about the ones left standing.”

  “Guess that’s why I wanted to get elected, huh?” A tiredness edged across his words. “See you in two, Ursala.”

  “Okay.” Wu left and Brock went back to her memo. Finishing it, she closed the file and called up another memo she’d done earlier in the day. Brock dialed a number, activating her modem. Presently, after a series of maneuvers along the cyberways, she came to a bulletin board called Fifth Mourning. The senator’s staffer typed in her online name, LostLamb, and was answered with swastikas cartwheeling across her screen.

  There was e-mail waiting for Brock, one message in particular she’d been hoping to get. It was from someone called Crusader, asking LostLamb how the struggle was going in mudville? In response to a couple of racist jokes, Brock typed “haha” and “that’s one I’ll use.” She then downloaded her message, with a salutation to Crusader to be vigilant and to continue the struggle as our day will come.

  Brock took the cigarette out of her mouth, examining it as if were an appendage whose use she suddenly realized she couldn’t fathom. She tapped the escape key with a precise finality. The screen went blank, and only the glow of the dying Camel was apparent. “Winning is what it’s all about, Grainger,” Brock said softly as her light faded.

  The Foursquare Eternal Promise Baptist Church dominated a block of single family homes in Long Beach. Pulling into the church’s parking lot, Monk watched black, Latino and Southeast Asian kids playing street hockey along the avenue. They zoomed around like atomic particles on their Day-Glo Rollerblades, their clashing sticks cutting through the gathering quiet of evening, twisting and turning their elongated adult-child bodies in rapid motion without effort or qualm. The wonderfully arrogant ballet of youth.

  Against the coming gloom, frayed palms swayed in the breeze off the ocean, and ripe dates dotted the concrete a syrupy brown. Monk got out of his car and walked toward the main entrance.

  The church was a two-story building stretching back from the street all the way to the next block. It was pseudo-Romanesque, constructed of ruddy brown brick set in a basketweave pattern. The entranceway was recessed inside a vaulted archway.

  Above the archway was a round stained glass panel depicting children of many colors and a woman in African dress with lengthy cornrows. The figures in the scene lay in a field of lilacs and roses, the woman reading a book to them. A lamb and a lion, in peaceful juxtapose, also lay near them. Saffron clouds hovered over the idyllic gathering. To the left of the window, bifurcating the corner of the church, was a turret topped with a rough hewn cross.

  Monk was near the entrance when a voice came to him from the shadows.

  “We’d like to have a word with you.” One man now stood to his left, two to his right.

  The one on his left he recognized, the other two he didn’t know. But he was sure he’d seen one of them the night of the encounter with the all-white killer. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you, Mr. Bradford.”

  “So I heard.” He coughed and adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses.

  “Yeah, G, what you got to do with the Shoreline Killer thang?” one of the other two demanded. He was wearing sagging DeeCee pants, a billowing blue flannel shirt, and a colorful bandanna around his head.

  Monk kept his attention on Bradford. “I’m into this ‘thing’ because my clients have an interest in it.” He didn’t add that he also felt concern for Bradford’s cousin, still lying in a coma in the hospital.

  “That don’t say shit.” Blue Flannel sidled closer to him.

  The third young man, a light-skinned black kid who couldn’t have been more than twenty, placed a hand on the bigger one’s arm. “Be cool.”

  Blue Flannel shook the arm loose and got closer. The odor of malt liquor was unmistakable. “You s’pposed to be all that, huh?” His forearms flexed.

  “Don’t you have anything better to do than harass us senior citizens?”

  Bradford stepped up. “Ajax, why don’t you take a walk around the block.”

  “Ajax?” Monk said, surprised. “Is Agamemnon going to ride up in his Chevy Nova any minute?”

  The light-skinned kid cracked up.

  Ajax snorted and pointed a hand with a mammoth gold ring on it at Bradford. “Look, college boy, just ’cause you think you
the next Malcolm X, don’t make it you the only one that can run the show.”

  In a mollifying tone, Bradford answered him. “Anytime you want to be the HNIC, Ajax, you’re more than welcome. I’m just your humble facilitator, my brother.”

  “And ain’t nobody more at the roots than you, Ajax,” the other one said by way of a backhand compliment.

  Ajax shot back, “All you high-soundin’ motherfuckahs can—”

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d tone your language down, young man.” The new voice belonged to an older gentleman in a plaid sport coat of questionable taste. This he wore over a faded polo shirt and double knit pants that revealed too much of his lime green socks. “I’m Reverend Tompkins. Mrs. Henderson invited Mr. Monk and you, Malik, but let’s remember where we are, shall we?”

  Ajax was about to go on when the reasonable one spoke again. “Why don’t y’all go on up and me and Mike Tyson here will amuse ourselves with a game of chess.”

  “I can’t think of a better recommendation,” Tompkins said.

  Monk walked past a brooding Ajax and the trio followed a series of flagstone steps to the reverend’s office on the second floor. It was a comfortable space with old and worn, but user-friendly, furniture. On one pale green wall was a portrait of a black Jesus, and opposite, silver-framed photos of Martin Luther King, Jr., and John Kennedy. The holy triptych of black deliverance. The rug was an ancient Persian with some of the design rubbed off.

  Mrs. Henderson was a dark-skinned woman in a full-length print dress. She sat on a cracked leather couch the texture of a dry roadbed underneath the painting of Christ. The first time he’d seen her, at the bedside of her comatose son, he hadn’t noticed her appearance. Words couldn’t make their way out of his mouth.

  “Mr. Monk,” she greeted him.

  “Mrs. Henderson,” was all he could manage.

  Malik Bradford sat next to his aunt. “I know you’ve been trying to get a hold of me, Mr. Monk, but as you may know, I’ve been busy. Jimmy’s my cousin, and the third victim of this man they’re calling the Shoreline Killer. And we know Clarice hired you to find who killed her old man. Who, it seems, was killed by the same white boy. What we’d like to know, is how much you’ve found out.”