Bad Night Is Falling (15 page)

Yorty felt like slapping the paranoid, ass-kissing bastard. “Chief, it seems Wilkenson is in your bailiwick at this point.” He sat down. Deferring to that shifty Parker was a political pill he'd learned to tolerate, even if he always found the swallowing bitter
.

A kind of sobriety mutated the color in the head cop's face. He sat erect, finally stopping with the business of pushing his cap back and forth. “Wilkenson's got his pious dick in more than one doorjamb over the years.” A predatory glee modulated his voice. “My G-2 has got a couple of file folders on the life and loves of this gee. Going back to the days when he was studying for the ministry back in the synod with the Lutherans.” He snickered, adding, “It doesn't surprise me he was spawned from those reprobates
.”

“
This isn't a battle between your Vatican and his church. Nor is this Missouri, Chief,” DeKovan needlessly reminded him
.

“
But illegal in Missouri is illegal in California, Harwick,” Parker replied, baring crooked teeth. He waved a hand derisively. “But we got something on him from here,” he said and jabbed his blunt finger on the table. “I'll have a couple of my men go over to see him. Thursdays and Fridays he's at his field office at the Rancho, seeing to the needs of his flock
.”

“
Not patrol officers, I presume,” DeKovan intoned. He leaned into the intercom and ordered a tray of drinks to be brought in. “This matter is too sensitive for some of your wetback-beating recruits from Alabama to go around taking care of
.”

Parker had his hat back on, his head lowered and tucked down like a ram getting ready to charge. “Don't you concern yourself, Mr. DeKovan.” The words were shoved out with confidence. “I passed the bar when you were still figuring out which silver spoon you were going to dip into your mushed peas that day. I got just the two detectives to handle this. Homicide boys, they work out of Southeast
.”

“
The Rancho's in the Rampart Division,” McCain corrected
.

“
But Wilkenson knows these two. Remember, he also has an office down in Nickerson in Watts. This pair met him when they worked a murder down there. It'll go smoother if these two do it. Grant and Jakes know the score
.”

*   *   *

Monk read the last paragraph again, saying the names of the detectives out loud. He put aside the sheet of paper from the manuscript Wilkenson had passed along to him the other day. Skimming through the next chapter, Monk read how Wilkenson described the encounters he'd had with Parker's envoys. One he described as a silk suit–wearing plainclothesman who wore a squared-up pinky ring. He'd favored a thin mustache—which attested to some odd position he'd enjoyed, as facial hair of any kind was verboten in those days under Parker.

That would have been Perry Jakes, alright. Monk had run into the man several times when he'd gone to work for his old friend. He read further.

The bigger cop, Grant, smelted like Old Spice and displayed a less serious suit than his partner. Jakes's was meticulously tailored; Grant had barely taken the trouble to get the cuffs and hems done when he ‘d bought it off the rack at Silverwoods. Jakes sat on the edge of Wilkenson's desk. He worked a toothpick between his side teeth. Outside, the sounds of children enjoying a water balloon fight could be heard through the open transom
.

“
We got to tell you the bad news, Fletch,” the nattily dressed cop said with mock remorse. “Downtown says you're holding up progress. Downtown says you need to get your head on right, catch me?” The pencil mustache went up, revealing more of his too white teeth. He looked at his partner. “Ain't that so, Dex?
”

“
Sure is,” the other man said, looking stern
.

There Wilkenson took the narrative out of the third-person re-creation of the past and segued into first-person recollections. Monk stopped reading and stood up from his desk. He dialed Wilkenson but got no answer, not even a machine. Then he paced, a worrisome feeling winding him up. He picked up the phone again to call Grant, to berate him, to demand his teacher refute the old leftist's claim, but he ran out of energy and will. He didn't think Wilkenson was making it up. Nor did he want to know the truth.

Monk replaced the handset, put his feet up on the desk, and didn't do anything for some time.

Ten

I
t was a drive he'd done repeatedly, like sleepwalking. This time the effort seemed to drain him more each mile he took from L.A. Eventually he pulled the Ford off the 15 and found his way to Dexter Grant's house in Lake Elsinore out in Riverside County. It was a tidy ranch-style home with faded wood slats, windows with shutters loose on their hinges, and a dusty stone portico. Grant's prime deuce and a quarter, a '67 Buick Electra, was in the driveway. The hood was up, the ex-cop's arms were working on the innards.

His silver-white hair was uncombed, and a couple of days' growth canvased his creased features. “Ivan,” he greeted warmly, looking up from the solenoid he was screwing onto the inside of the fender.

“Dex.” Monk looked over at the house. The wood screen door still needed to be reframed, and the rain gutter off the front was twisted like a huge stick of licorice. He looked back at the Electra. It was showroom sweet.

“What brings you out?” Grant pushed back a clump of hair with the edge of a greasy hand. The name tag on his overalls read: S
AL
.

“Ghosts.”

“Huh?”

Monk pushed out his bottom lip, circling Grant like an uneasy wrestler.

“What the hell is with you, Ivan?”

“Fletcher Wilkenson and the Rancho Tajuata.”

Grant had been cleaning his hands with a rag, but he stopped working it when Monk quit moving. A blue jay flitted onto a maple whose lush branches overhung the driveway. The bird made rustling sounds prowling through the foliage as the two men faced each other. “The Rancho,” the older man echoed. He looked at his hands.

“How come you never told me about it, Dex?”

“What was I going to tell you, Ivan?” Grant mouthed. He threw the rag onto the Buick, walking away from the car at a clip. He went around back, whacking the back door open with a jerk of his hand. Monk followed, anger and disappointment welling up in him like a fever.

Grant snatched open the beat Frigidaire and plucked out a bottle of Beck's. He popped the cap and began drinking. Monk stood in the doorway, waiting. Grant finished the beer, chucked the empty into the sink, and retrieved another one. He sat heavily at the kitchen table, his arms resting on the red-checked plastic covering. His hands, their knuckles the size of quarters, bracketed the bottle. “That was so goddamn long ago,” he rationalized.

“It doesn't change what was done.” Monk said as he leaned against the cracked tile counter. “And getting tanked at two in the afternoon won't cover it over either.”

“Drinking never hurt no one,” Grant sneered sarcastically. He massaged the middle of his forehead with the heel of his hand. “It's not fuckin' simple as right and crooked, Ivan. You know that.” An imploring cast settled on his face. “What do you want to know? How Yorty and Parker had a hard-on to get rid of Wilkenson? How me and Perry had to carry their water like a coupla Gunga Dins?” Grant drowned his own words while guzzling beer. He tilted his head back and killed the contents.

Monk said, “I want to know why, Dex. I want to know why you had to be the one to do the deed.”

Grant hitched the chair around in his accuser's direction. His arms made motions. “And what, Ivan? Make a hero of myself and get busted back to patrol for insubordination? Or better, get assigned to Thad Brown's command. That's where all the fuck-ups found themselves. All the on-duty drunks, the burnouts, and the assholes who could only get their shield 'cause their father made contributions to Yorty's campaign.” A defensive shame contorted his face as he blinked at Monk.

“What else, Dex? What else don't I know about your time as a cop?”

“You mean what else will embarrass you?” his friend countered. “Is this about me making atonement or you making sure the untarnished rep of the proletarian peeper ain't dirtied by the old cracker he used to work for?”

“Ain't nothing wrong with a little integrity, Dex.”

Grant's arm shook as he pointed at Monk. “Don't you come into my house and play the padre, Ivan. You know too goddamn well I at least kept black suspects from getting the go-round from clowns down at the Seventy-seventh Precinct when I was working out of there. You know goddamn well I caught hell for my views when the lines were being drawn when Bradley ran against Yorty in '69.”

“Swell. That makes you a vicar compared to the gents Parker cultivated.”

“It's so easy for you to pass sentence on me, isn't it?” Grant was getting to his feet, his voice also rising. “You ain't never been in that kind of situation.”

“This going to be the wife, kids, and mortgage bit,” Monk replied bitterly.

“You fucking right it is, Ivan. Here you are pushing forty, living in a house that belongs to your old lady. What do you have tucked in the bank? Three, four thousand maybe? Your only asset the donut shop.”

Grant went around the opposite side of the table, putting distance between him and Monk. “Well, what did I have, man? Then I had about thirteen years on the force, a second marriage, and two young daughters. A man's got responsibilities, Ivan. It's not like I took some Mexican kid down below the Gage off ramp and gave him a correcting lesson.”

“Shit, Wilkenson wasn't no kid; he knew the deal. He was just a casualty of war.”

“The Cold War.”

“Nothing that sophisticated, not like you mean it. But yeah, that was part of it. But I'm talking about the war that's always gone on in L.A. Over school integration, housing, where the jobs were, where the money got spent. This ain't right news to you, Ivan.”

“Like it isn't right news the cops danced to the monied boys' tune. Were you in DeKovan's pocket?”

Satisfaction gleamed on the other man's sweating face. “That's what you really want, me to be some bent bastard you got the goods on. Somebody you can feel superior about.”

“No.”

“Bullshit, I can hear it in your voice.”

“You're ducking the question,” Monk countered.

Grant suddenly got hot again. “I don't have to justify my existence to you, Ivan. I didn't for my two wives.”

“I guess that's why they're exes.”

Grant's body became rigid and his mouth and eyes were straight lines. “Take you and the horse that don't shit you rode in on and get the fuck out of my house.”

“Sure, boss.” He opened the refrigerator and gently placed another Beck's on the table. “Have some more, but it still won't wash away the answer.” He turned and left by me back door.

Grant, sitting sullenly at the kitchen table, silently watched him go, a sentinel enveloped by the sins of the city he was supposed to guard against. He backhanded the unopened beer onto the floor.

Eleven

“O
h hell.” Kodama put down her glass of wine.

Monk had another mouthful of chicken satay. He alternated looking at the tablecloth and chewing slowly.

She reached across and touched his hand. “Everyone's got something chasing them, Ivan. None of us are chaste.”

He held onto her fingers, massaging their tips. “Should I be looking for the secrets you got locked away?”

“You can try,” she teased.

He let go of her hand and ate again in silence for a while. “You think I'm making too much of this?”

“It's not for me to say how you and Dex should deal with this,” she managed evasively.

“I don't mind giving you my opinion about your troubles with Jamboni.”

“No, you don't,” she responded pointedly.