Bad Night Is Falling (24 page)

“Ah, gee, Your Honor. They be nowhere around. But I'll tell them you called.” He hung up before she could speak.

The phone glinted in the sunglasses on Kodama's face. She punched redial and got a busy signal. Again, and still a busy signal. She wanted to speed over there and give an earful to that asswipe. But she had an appointment to be interviewed at
Rafu Shimpo
, the Japanese-American daily that had been publishing since the early part of the century. It was in Little Tokyo, across town.

She sighed, placing the phone back in her purse. She hated talking while driving, so the call would have to wait. After the newspaper interview, it was back west to the Crenshaw District to a meeting with the heads of the Deltas, the politically connected black sorority, at the Union Bank on Jefferson. A meeting she and Monk's friend council-woman Tina Chalmers had set up.

“Sorry, baby.” She fired up the Saab. Driving off the lot, a peculiar tickle made her look around. Young was in an upstairs window, waving at her. She clenched her teeth and drove off, north on La Cienega. A mental picture of dragging Young and Jamboni from the Saab's bumper made for a pleasant ride through traffic.

Eí
ǵ
hteen

M
onk was buttoning his shirt when Seguin came into view outside the open cell. “Marasco.” He unbuckled his belt and tucked the tail and front into his pants.

“So they're seeking a charge of manslaughter.” Seguin had his hands in his pockets, his angular frame only partially visible in the half-light of the hallway.

Monk rolled the towel around the razor, toothbrush, paste, and the shirt he'd been wearing for the past three days. Teague had brought him the gear. “It's a bullshit beef. It's just something to fuck with me because Zaneski's a lead dick cocksucker.”

“Big Loco didn't fire a gun, Ivan. At least not that night.”

“That's right, Lieutenant, he didn't.” Monk was not in the mood for a debate. “But are you going to stand there and tell me this doesn't seem to you like some kind of setup?”

Seguin didn't answer.

Monk had the towel and its contents held under his arm. He held out a hand, palm up as if knowledge might be dropped on its surface. “All the time you know me you think all of a sudden I'm capable of some cold-blooded shit like this.”

“You're always taking advantage, Ivan.”

“Of what, the law?”

Again he didn't answer. His face a blank.

“What the hell are you talking about, Marasco?” Although he had an idea.

“I mean you step all over the rules like they were a rug in the bathroom. You think they're for chumps like me.” He started to walk off.

Monk followed. He signed out and found me cop lingering in front of the station, dusk settling like soot over the factories the precinct was surounded by.

“I ain't on the city's payroll, man. And sure I hedge, but damned if I don't put in work. I don't exactly have all this wonderful computer-age outfitting and a department at my disposal.” He waved his hands at the old station house.

“Neither do I. You try being a brown man in this here Army.”

“This some kind of midlife crisis?” Monk said lightly, trying to break the tension.

“I'm carrying my load, Ivan,” he solemnly replied.

“You still on this kick that I'll shortchange the investigation because it might implicate blacks in the murders of the Cruzados?”

Seguin dug a cigarette out and stuck it between tight pressed lips. He smoked when he was stressed. He didn't light it. “No, of course not. But you will cut some slack for the brothers if you feel they're backs are up against it.”

“If Absalla isn't involved, he isn't involved, Marasco.”

“But he wants to impose black power over the Rancho.”

“Bullshit.” But it didn't sound convincing even to him.

Seguin took the cigarette out of his mouth and pointed with the wet end. “There's no Latino on the Ra-Falcons. And don't say it's 'cause of the Muslim thing. Other cliques in the country actively recruit among
la gente
.”

“I can't do everything,” he rationalized lamely.

“No one's saying you're supposed to, Ivan. But I've got commanding officers giving me a sigmoidal if they even sniff I might not have gone by the book on some barrio buster and people in the community thinking I'm one step removed from Pancho in the old Cisco Kid show.”

“And to add to my joy, I got some pardners in La Ley who think just hanging out with a black dude makes me some kinda
pinche
love-and-kisses faggot.”

“Alright, you got it tough, but who don't? I'm sure there're black officers in the Oscar Joel Bryant association who feel the same way about black cops fraternizing with Chicanos. What's that got to do with you and me, Marasco?”

Seguin slapped his thighs with his open palms and twisted his torso back and forth in exasperation. “You ain't getting it, man. Everything's changing, Ivan. Latinos are the largest minority in the state now, not black folks. Even Asians outnumber you.”

Monk could almost hear the whisper of Tlaloc, his incendiary breath searing him and other African-Americans into ash on the streets and in the homes of the city. A city that had once belonged to Mexico. “But we helped found it too,” he finished his daydreaming aloud. “And Latinos come in all colors and cultures. There's even Mexicans mixed with black blood along the coast down there, Guerro and Chiapas, right?”

“True. But this Rancho business is one more example of the wheelbarrow of bricks I got to push uphill as a Chicano cop. I want the guilty to pay and so do a lot of those folks down there. I don't give a fuck what the brass down at Parker Center want.”

“All of a sudden they don't want the same thing? And don't you forget,” Monk added, pointing, “those decent people down mere include a lot of blacks.”

Seguin looked off. “I'm not saying Mejicanos have got the monopoly on morality. Everybody plays racial politics in this city, Ivan. But even these days good and evil can stand stark naked before us, and you can choose which one you'll embrace.”

“I realize you pay bigger for the consequences of your actions, Marasco, given the bureaucracy and egos you have to deal with. But that don't mean I skate along either. I have to answer in the 'hood.”

Seguin threw the unused cigarette into the gutter. “But you can walk away, Ivan. Absalla, Los Domingos, all of 'em. But the next immigrant that gets knocked in the head, the next kid shot for his bike, and it's me that gets the call. If not in the Rancho, then somewhere else in the city. I'm trying to keep the blacks and browns from tearing each other's hearts out, and still find time to go after the perp.”

“I don't have an answer for you.”

“No shit.” He put his hands back in his pockets and went in the opposite direction.

Monk hailed a taxi. Several Bell and Yellow Cabs scurried about the precinct, their drivers used to the newly released having no means of transportation. Waiting for a bus this time of the evening in this part of town you'd have better luck seeing the next appearance of Halley's Comet.

He rode absorbed in his own thoughts over to the house on Madden, running over and over the rant from Seguin. It had been disjointed but there was a kind of sense to it. His friend, if he could still use that word, had been expressing an anger with a core of desperation.

But the more he tried to understand, the more it seemed to grate on him too. Seguin was acting like it was only he bearing the weight of these murders. Hell, Monk was the one facing a trial and a possible prison term if he couldn't find some shooters. He said it was a tough row to hoe being a Chicano cop—try being a black private eye who's everybody's favorite kick toy, Monk reasoned.

He wanted a cigar, a shot of rum, and then would like to drape his body all over Jill's hot, muscular form. He'd called, but she was out. Anyway, he needed to do this other thing.

The small back house was of course padlocked and plastered in plain sight with police yellow tape with the usual written warnings about tampering. But the front house, belonging to the landlord, had the porch light on.

After the usual introduction, which always ended with him showing his license and handing over a business card, Monk was pleasantly surprised he didn't have to also hand over any cash to solicit a little conversation. It helped that the two occupants had been out the night of the shoot-out, so they weren't all hyped-up about Monk's reappearance.

“Oh, no, Mr. Monk. I haven't seen young Burroughs since, oh, four days ago. The day he left for that funeral.” Mrs. Freeman was in her seventies. Her son, a bookish man in slippers and a paisley print satin robe, was in his forties and lived with his mother, the talkative Mrs. Freeman had informed Monk to the son's visible consternation.

The mother was a retired timekeeper who'd worked for some thirty years at the now no longer existant Arden Dairy processing plant that had been on Slauson near Vermont. At that time, there had been a Sears just east of Vermont on Slauson that Monk's mom and dad would take him and his sister to on their birthdays to pick out new bicycles. He still dreamed of how he and his friends, Herman, Carl, and Dimitri, used to pop wheelies, flying off a raised rectangle of plywood, on their Stingrays with the tuck-'n'-roll banana seats and chrome sissy bars.

The older woman made references to the son, Hinton, working on the periphery of the record industry—at what exactly wasn't made clear. On a built-in sideboard, several liqueurs were arrayed, including Drambuie, Prunella, and a long, slender bottle of Midori.

“Have either of you seen anybody around here? I mean except for that same night of the shoot-out?” He savored the rich coffee she'd insisted on brewing and serving in the delft china cup and saucer.

“Except for the police lingering around.” The son sat opposite Monk, legs crossed, casually dangling the biography of Paul Robeson he'd been reading over the arm of the club chair.

“Yes, that's what I meant. The night I was here the men I spotted drove up in a black Isuzu Trooper.” Both the son and the mother gave him an unknowing stare. “You know”—he made a boxlike pantomime with his hands—“a sport utility truck, sits up high. This one had silver trim.”

“No, we haven't seen anyming like that,” the son said curtly. He'd been annoyed at the first sight of Monk. Maybe he didn't like having his reading interrupted.

“Wait,” the mother offered, looking at the old Oriental carpet as if a replay were pooling in its designs. “I did see that black, oh, I don't know what you called it, truck, jeep … something.”

“When was this, Mrs. Freeman?”

“The day before all the excitement.” The son gave her a look but she pretended not to see it. “It was parked out front for a while, then drove off. I was going to call the law but it seemed like the two in it were just talking, so I didn't want to start no trouble for just that. Anyway they drove off and that was that. At least then.”

“And this truck doesn't belong to Keith 2X, ah, Burroughs?”

“Not as far as I know. He drives some small car or another.” She looked questioningly over at her son.

“Some kind of Toyota, I think. I don't know much about cars,” he said disdainfully. He placed the book in his lap, but Monk wasn't heeding the cue.

“Could you see the people in the truck?”

She pushed out her bottom lip. “Not really. I made a thing of going out front like I was checking on my flower bed, but I couldn't really tell. 'Cept—” She halted herself.

“What?” Monk prodded gently.

“Well, now, I ain't saying it was so, but I think the one at the passenger window, he's the one I could see better. I think he was a Mexican fella. That's what made me remember him.”

A sour look curled Hinton's lips. Could be his unctuous mother was another burden like not being able to read when he wanted to.

“Don't misunderstand me, I think it's fine to have all kinds of friends. Lord knows they're moving in all over the place, even 'round here.” She broke off again, straining her sight past the walls.

“You tell the police this?” Monk wanted to know.

“No. Nobody asked me about the black … Izod, you called it?”

“Maybe we should call them and let them know.” Hinton sniffed loudly. “That Detective Fitzhugh left his card too.”

“As a good citizen you should.” Monk put down his cup and saucer. “I appreciate your time, Mrs. Freeman, Mr. Freeman.”

An anemic “Alright” escaped the son's tight lips and he didn't bother getting up as Mrs. Freeman opened the door for Monk. Outside, he walked west along Hyde Park Boulevard to Crenshaw Boulevard and found an intact pay phone. The device was next to a closed furniture store specializing in red velour and free layaway.