Bad Night Is Falling (13 page)

Níne

T
he road flattened out across an expanse of dirt which abutted a pale green adobe-style house. There was a wide, covered porch partially hidden by spreads of bougainvillaea, box shrubs, and creosote bushes. Rising off to the left from the house was a hillock saturated with various types of ascending growth including cacti, bonsai trees, and corn stalks. Pieces of Spanish tile were missing from the roof, and several cats lazed about, indolently flicking their tails.

None of the felines bothered to move or look at Monk while he approached the porch, walking around an old Scout II parked in the driveway. The ratty screen door swung out, causing several of the cats to become suddenly active.

“Mr. Monk?” The speaker was an older white man clad in work pants, hiking boots, and a black long-sleeved shirt rolled past the elbows. He was of medium build, with a slight paunch creeping over his belt. About an inch taller than Monk, he wore rimless, oval glasses that accentuated his arctic blues. The effect, combined with his neatly combed white hair and white mustache, bestowed a scholarly air on the man. A number of the cats were encircling his legs, meowing and purring to catch the delight of their master.

“Yes. Thanks for seeing me, Mr. Wilkenson.”

“Fletcher will do if you don't mind, Ivan.”

“Absolutely.” The two shook hands, the older man's grasp firm and direct.

The inside of the house was subdued but not gloomy; entering it was like finding a comforting cave, an escape from the heat amidst an expanse of desert. “Here, let me get some shades up. Living alone I cater to my own tastes too much,” Wilkenson said pleasantly.

He let some light in to reveal a sparse living room with out-of-date, but serviceable furnishings. Incongruously, there was a well-preserved Persian rug laid over the scuffed hardwood floor, peeking past the edges of the carpet. “Come on back, I was just finishing the dishes.”

They went into the kitchen, an old-fashioned number done in white and yellow tiles with cabinets whose doors no longer closed flush. Wilkenson poured Monk a cup of coffee and returned to washing and drying his dishes. “So you read my editorial the other day in the
Times
?” the older man began.

“I did, and wanted to talk with you because frankly I'm stalled on this Rancho Tajuata business.” The anxiety in his voice surprised him. The circumstances of the case were closer to him than he cared to admit.

Wilkenson scraped at a piece of dried food on a plate with his fingernail. “You only gave me an overview on the phone—why don't you give me the details?”

By the time Monk had filled the other man in, they were out on the patio, at a round table of sun-bleached oak, seated on matching hard-backed chairs. Dropping away from the patio a thick grouping of apricot trees descended the hill. Beyond the grove more houses sat on the other hills that made up the Mount Washington area. And in the distance could be seen the edifices of downtown L.A. A sheet of brown air hung like dirty laundry between the houses and the skyscrapers.

Wilkenson had listened carefully, asking questions at several intervals. “Why do you want to go on with this, Ivan?” he asked at the end of the recap. There was melancholy in his voice.

“I like to think it's not just ego,” he answered frankly, thinking about a similar conversation he'd had with Kodama. “But there is something about getting fired for screwing up which really rides my mule, as my dad used to say.”

“I can appreciate that,” Wilkenson said noncommittally.

Monk continued. “And particularly since I think I'm on to something with Isaiah Booker.”

“His getting comped at the casino, you mean,” Wilkenson said.

Monk was impressed with the older man's attention to the pertinent facts. He reminded him of Dexter Grant, the ex-cop he'd gotten his PI license under. “That's right.”

“You may have something at that,” Wilkenson observed. “The casino is owned by one of the men who got me fired, H. H. DeKovan.” A grandfatherly smile lifted his full mustache. “From the look on your face, I guess you didn't know that?”

“I came to see you because of what you wrote in your op-ed piece, about your past association with the Rancho.”

“And maybe I could be your entrée back into the Taj?” Wilkenson said guilelessly.

“You've busted me,” Monk admitted good-naturedly.

Wilkenson shifted his gaze toward the pall and what lay behind it. “As I said in the commentary, I was one of the regional directors of the Housing Authority from the midfifties through the sixties.” He paused, propping his arms on the table and leaning forward. “The Rancho, the planned projects at Chavez Ravine, Nickerson Gardens, and the others”—he waved his hand in no certain direction—“were to be our experiments in urban interracial living.”

“The rap they used against you was your ties to the Civil Rights Congress,” Monk recited from the passage he'd found on-line about Wilkenson last night. “Not only did the Congress have Communist Party members and other progressives as its members—”

“But I was a fellow traveler,” Wilkenson finished, “not just some liberal dupe. The CRC was a successful coalition of blacks and whites who stood against police brutality and housing restrictions, and which regularly observed Negro History Week. Hell,” he went on as he got up and headed toward the kitchen, “what really got in Yorty and Parker's craw was the Eugene O'Neill and Countee Cullen plays we'd do down in the projects with interracial casts.”

Through the open back door, sounds of cabinet drawers opening and closing could be heard. This faded out but presently Wilkenson returned with a tray containing a pitcher of orange juice, two glasses, and a thick 10" X 13" envelope.

He set the items on the table, and poured them each a glass.

“Your memoirs.” Monk tipped his full glass at the packet.

“The truth as I experienced it or, at least, the past as I reconstructed it.” Wilkenson settled into his chair, a benign look on his open features.

“Not to be selfish, but how does this help me?” Monk asked, a lightness in his voice.

“Even nonfiction books need a solid ending, comrade Monk. You agree to give me that, supply information for my book, and I'll see what I can do about getting you plugged back into the Rancho. I'm still in touch with a few of the old-timers there. It'll be in my interest to see you finish the job.” The older man quaffed a good portion of his glass, winking at Monk over the rim.

Monk eased the manuscript out of the oversized envelope. “City of Promise: A Slightly Red Memoir of L.A.” was typed on the title page. There were some five hundred pages to the work. “Before I agree, I'd like to take this home and skim through it.” He hefted the pages.

“I want you to. There may be something there in the past you'll find of use in this current situation.”

“Which leads me back to this DeKovan you mentioned. Who was he?”

“Is—he's still around. Though I understand he's taken to more of the hermit lifestyle these days. Harwick Henri DeKovan got his start in garter belts and seamed nylons. Actually, it was a business his father began. There were rumors back then the old man had some doing with black market pharmaceuticals in Italy and France after the Second World War, but such is not the topic at hand.”

“For another time over small takes of whiskey,” Monk said, warming to the older man's style.

Wilkenson touched his forehead with two fingers and extended them in a mock salute. “The younger DeKovan had a feel for things to come. He invested some of the hosiery profits in would-bes that seemed too odd to be understood by the money makers of yesterday.”

“Like?” Monk asked with interest.

“Fast-food joints, plastic trash bags, aluminum cans. Stuff that from today's perspective make sense, but in the early sixties were iffy propositions.”

“A visionary.”

“A capitalist visionary,” Wilksenson said, bitterness tainting his voice for the first time. “DeKovan was a wheel in the Merchants and Manufacturers Consortium. It doesn't exist now, but in those days they had offices in the Richmond Oil Building. Which also ain't around these days. DeKovan, the mayor, and some others had a significant meeting some months after the riots. It finalized the course of this city.”

“When was this, Fletcher?” The orange juice in his hand felt heavy.

“Nineteen sixty-six, the spring after Watts went up on that godawful hot August eleventh in sixty-five. I have a chapter in the book about the meeting. I've written it partly through speculation based on what I know about the participants, and partly from an eyewitness account. Kind of a Capote approach à la
In Cold Blood
.” He smiled like a papa with new twins.

“And you've kept up with DeKovan's activities.”

“Research,” he clipped.

Monk wasn't going to pursue the matter. He needed Wilkenson to get him back into the Rancho. “I'll call you in a couple of days after I've looked your writings over, and we'll talk.”

Wilkenson was sitting rigid in his chair, his hands lying fallow in his lap. The big buildings out there seemed to be leering at him. “That'll be fine.” Abruptly, he got up and walked Monk to his car. “Seems the Rancho never lets me go. Not a year's gone by since I was driven out of the Housing Authority that the Taj hasn't called me back for one reason or another.”

“An albatross?”

“A duty.” Wilkenson clapped him on the shoulder and waved him off. Driving away, Monk watched the former bureaucrat trudge up his hillside arboretum with a watering can. A trover in baggy pants.

That night, Monk decided not to start “City of Promise” from the beginning. Instead he read the chapter Wilkenson had written about the historic meeting that took place after the Watts Riots since, frankly, it sounded so juicy.

The traffic down below on Sixth Street was audible through an open window at the end of the polished hallway, brilliantly viridian in the failing light. Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty felt his stomach gurgling thick and gooey like air pumped through melted Velveeta. He stepped from the elevator, his two bodyguards before him. Goddamn Cardinal McIntyre always insisting on rare steaks at the Pacific Dining car for their charity prayer lunches. Just like a goddamn Irishman to be contrary, even after he'd suggested to him to vary the menu
.

“
You guys stay put,” the short, going-to-stout mayor ordered his men. “And for God's sake, Markham, don't you go chasing any big-hipped red-lipped secretaries who come sauntering along
.”

Markham, the tall ex-investigator for the D.A., looked recalcitrant but said nothing
.

“
Letting that goddamn Examiner reporter in like you did last time,” Yorty mumbled as he unlatched the rosewood doors to the boardroom on the twelfth floor of the black, art deco Richfield Oil Building with its gold chevron, spiral and frond fretwork. “That's why I brought a good German boy like Miller along to watch you,” the mayor finished as the door swung shut on his bouncy frame
.

Yorty groaned again as his stomach bubbled with force, and again at the sight of that high-horse-riding and always ahead-of-time Police Chief William Parker. You could tell the cocksucker was tight; he'd noticed the number of double bourbons he'd knocked back at the luncheon. He was also sagging in his skin from the heart surgery he'd had last October
.

“
Chief,” Yorty said, almost screwing up the word with a laugh he had to suppress
.

Parker gave the mayor a half-salute. A quick, mocking gesture Yorty assumed was lost on no one else in the room. He eased into a chair on the opposite end, toward the rear of the room, away from Parker. Yorty poured some water from one of the offered decanters and drained the cup greedily
.

Thompson McCain and Elias Toombs entered. Both men were members of the Golden State Realty Association. Each of them was dressed in a crisp double-breasted grey suit. Toombs's suit was a bluer slate than his chunky associate's. On Toombs, the cut of the cloth fell away gracefully from his Greek statue shoulders. As they sat down next to each other, Yorty once more had to hide a laugh. In the file that Parker had shown him, there were several mat prints of a swim-suited McCain with his head between the spread legs of the naked and muscular Toombs. The shots were blurry, but the intent was clear
.

“
Mr. Mayor,” McCain greeted him, fingering the chain mail loop on one of his gold cuff links
.

“
How's the game?” Yorty asked him, knowing the show-off would only have something good to say about himself
.

“
Shot a twelve over par on Monday at Wilshire,” McCain reported in an impersonal teletype voice that masked his vanity
.

“
Now that things are starting to calm down,” Yorty replied in his nasal twang, “I'll see if we can get a foursome going again
.”

“
I look forward to it.” He gave his boyfriend a look the mayor of Los Angeles couldn't interpret. Yorty took in the rest of the room. He nodded to several members of the M & M Consortium seated about the large oval table. All save one of them had been contributors to his last campaign. The holdout, the one who hadn't shown yet, was that dimestore libertarian, Harwich DeKovan
.

Naturally, the smooth cocksucker had managed to get himself elected president of the M & M in the beginning of the year. Yorty knew from past experience he'd make his appearance after everyone else was in the room. Sure as shit, Yorty was working on his second glass of water when the rear door to the boardroom swung inward and DeKovan glided in like a preening swan
.

He was dressed in one of those Botany 500 sleek-silhouette numbers favored by pretty-boy actors like Tony Curtis, Yorty reflected bitingly. DeKovan augmented his suit with a blue shirt, a gold collar stay, and a black silk tie and matching pocket square. Yorty realized he was staring at DeKovan too much. He knew Parker was watching him, had seen him stop drinking his water to assess the fine dresser. Well, he reasoned, maybe Parker didn't mind not taking care of himself, but Yorty could remember a time when he used to animate a set of clothes as DeKovan did. Okay, he didn't have his height, but he𔄀d always fantasized himself in his early days as a compact, George Raft kind of guy
.