Bad Night Is Falling (29 page)

Grant worked around several edges of the concrete. The floor pattern was grooved in lines that formed squares as if it had been put together with individual tiles. Grant found what he'd been scratching around for—there was in fact a square of concrete that actually came up. He got it free and lifted it with the blade of the screwdriver.

“Perry had a brother-in-law who worked construction,” he said offhandedly. “I knew Perry helped him put in this floor.” Beneath the concrete tile was a small chamber, which contained a black leather-bound book and a set of keys.

“I'd have never found that,” Monk said admiringly.

“You partner with a guy for so long, you get to drinking in the same sneaky way. I knew his mind better than my two wives'.”

The book was a Bible. Thumbing through it, they didn't see any passages underlined or highlighted.

“Find anything?” Khristi Jakes asked from the doorway into the house.

Grant said, “The keys to the kingdom.” He jingled the ones they'd found.

“Well, come on, I've made eggplant, spinach vinaigrette, and carrot curry.”

“No meat?” Grant asked, perplexed.

“I think you're supposed to supply that,” Monk said under his breath.

“You think these keys lead to something?” She asked, examining them as the two followed her back into the house.

“None of them look familiar?” Monk sounded forlorn.

She stopped in the light. “This long one seems like I should know, but I'm sorry, I can't remember.”

“You mind if I hold onto them?” Grant reached out.

She hesitated, then handed them over. “This ain't gonna bring down some heavy shit on me, is it, Dexter?”

“I'll see that it doesn't.” He looked at Monk, making him part of the pact. “How about this Bible?” They reached the kitchen.

She laughed vigorously, leaning into him. “Oh good Christ, Dexter, why in hell would Perry Jakes have a Bible? Much less under the floor of the garage! What—was he hoping to fool God into forgetting his own ten commandments, each of 'em Perry probably broke more than once, if he hid the rule book when his time came?” She laughed again and got wineglasses out.

After the tasty meal it was sundown, and Monk said his pleasantries and started out of the house to go back into L.A. Grant and the widow of his ex-partner said good-bye from the backlit doorway. “Bye, kids,” he called, waving back.

Two days later Monk was summoned to a Dancing Dinosaur on the top floor of the Westside Pavilion, a massive upscale shopping mall that stretched over me intersections of Westwood and Pico. The joint was jumping with children as old as fourteen and as young as three tearing through the aisles, careening off one another, begging quarters to buy Dino Credits to play the video slash-and-bum and exploding-groins games, and in general letting out enough caterwauling to bring down the Walls of Jericho.

Monk spotted Grant and Khristi Jakes on an upper tier sitting at a table with a pitcher of soda between them. Walking up the stairs, an employee in a green and blue happy T-Rex suit passed him saying, “It's hotter than a motherfucker in this thing.”

“In my day, I took my kids to Hoppyland,” Grant shouted when he got close.

“What the hell was that,” Monk asked, sitting down and pouring himself what turned out to be root beer.

“You remember William Boyd, played Hopalong Cassidy on the radio and in the movies? Black hat, ivory-handled six-shooters, and a horse named Topper.” Grant watched a youth make faces behind a harried employee in a stegosaurus suit with a look of condemnation.

“I've heard some of the adventure shows rebroadcast on the KNX Old Radio Hour from time to time,” Monk said.

“Uh. Well out in the Ballona swamp—what you city slickers call Marina del Rey now—Big Bill and some investors built theyselves an amusement park off of Washington Boulevard. The place had a baseball diamond, picnic grounds, rides, and a pony cart. Man, my daughters really went for that.” He stopped talking, surveying the youngsters with new, kind eyes. “It only lasted three or four years though.”

“Are you going to jail?” Jakes blurted.

“The hearing is tomorrow,” Monk tipped his glass toward her.

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be so rude. But Dexter speaks well of you, and how important it is to get you cleared.”

Monk smiled at his mentor, who was purposely looking in another direction. “The great one supposed to make an appearance?” he finally asked.

“Not exactly,” Grant hedged.

“What then, an emissary?”

“Hold on, you'll see,” Grant answered.

Soon a walking pterodactyl with pizza sauce on its fluffy chest came over to their table. “Would you three follow me,” the cotton and fabric beastie directed.

They did and found themselves in a windowless turquoise-walled back room devoid of everything except three folding chairs facing a metal table. A TV monitor with a built-in video camera was on top of the table.

“Video conferencing unit,” Jakes said.

Monk stared at her.

“I read
Popular Science
.” She sat down with panache.

“You sit in the middle.” Grant pulled the chair back for Monk. He also sat down, glaring at the sleek, flat, large squarish screen.

Grant clicked the device on and sat next to Monk. The picture instantly snapped into clarity, displaying a plain industrial metal folding chair like the ones they were sitting on. Behind it Monk could make out a peach-colored room with Roman-style drapes on one side. A painting was in the background, but he couldn't tell what it was. The transmission imparted an ethereal, inchoate quality to the art. He thought this might possibly be an omen for the experience he was about to have.

Suddenly a body filled the screen, moving like a drawn figure in a flip book that teaches one how to animate characters.

“It's not full motion because of the regular telephone input,” Jakes explained. “You'd need some ISDN or T-l lines to get real-time quality.”

“Hello,” the man onscreen said pleasantly. His hand gestured in a herky-jerky motion and his head seemed to go in and out of focus. He was shown from midchest up, in a plaid short-sleeved shirt. DeKovan's once keen features were now slack, his square jaw undefined, and his eyes were hard to perceive given the folds of skin around them.

His hair was grey, unkempt but of moderate length. It lay about his still-high, lightly lined forehead. He seemed at ease.

“H.H.,” Grant said. “You remember me?”

The face in the monitor didn't move while wispy words floated from the thing's speakers. “You've held up well, Dexter Grant.” The hand moved and suddenly the image onscreen became merely a finger pointing out into the world. “Isn't this one the one who used to be in the Pharaohs down at the Rancho?”

“No, I'm Ivan Monk, the one investigating the recent murders that happened there. How are you?” The Pharaohs, along with such social organizations as the Slausons, the Business Men and the Bartenders, had been black gangs in the fifties and sixties.

“You were fired, weren't you?” The finger was again raised in his direction.

“How'd you know that?” Monk wanted to know.

DeKovan ignored the question. “I heard Perry Jakes passed away not too long ago.”

“Yeah, Father Time don't play favorites,” Grant said. “This is Khristi, his widow.” He indicated the woman.

“I believe we talked once or twice, did we not?”

“Yes sir, that's right.”

Son of a bitch was going to have it his fucking way, but he'd try. “Mr. DeKovan, do you know Isaiah Booker or an Ismael Vaccarano, better known as Big Loco?”

Grant sucked on his bottom lip but remained quiet.

“Their names both begin with
I
's; how interesting,” the elliptical man responded.

Monk grimaced at Grant, who subtly signaled with his hand for him to go slow. “H.H., I hear you spend some time in Mexico now and then. Monterrey, Zacatecas, Mexico City, right?”

“Oh.” The stop motion head moved and halted again. “I like the jungles they have down there.”

“And the pyramids?” Monk ventured.

The head didn't move and Monk got the feeling DeKovan had inserted a still picture of himself. Eventually, “Why yes, I have a fondness for the Mayas' architecture.”

“The Mayas were superseded by the Aztecs,” Monk said.

“Precisely.”

“And what of the ancient ways?” Monk inquired.

“The first sun was created by Tezcatlipoca, the god of Earth.” He pronounced the deity's name flawlessly.

“But he made a mistake: he made men as giants, and made only half a sun.” Monk recollected the tale from his reading. “The inadequate sun could not grow the right food to sustain their huge bodies.”

“The jaguars swallowed that sun, and as darkness descended, they also swallowed the giants, too big and too malnourished to save themselves. And after three more suns, there would come Nanahuatl, who would throw himself into the Divine Fire.” The head had tilted up, the image coming several seconds behind the last of the words. He looked off at something only he could see or imagine.

“And is that how the last sun is born?” Khristi Jakes asked.

Monk grinned at her. “You also read Aztec mythology in your spare time?”

She grinned like a porcelain harlequin. “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

“But that would mean blood, and the awful redness like before,” DeKovan said.

“Like before, H.H.?” Grant probed.

“The red tide,” the recluse went on. “The Soviets are no more. The Vietnamese are doing business with us. Do you know I have two bottling plants and a circuit board operation there now? The only Communists left are the Chinese. But really, they want to hide their capitalism with phrases from Mao.” He'd turned his head again, this time at an angle like a child bewildered by the antics of adults.

Monk asked, “Are there still Communists at the Rancho?” Maybe to DeKovan's way of thinking anybody who squawked like Efraín Cruzado was a Communist.

“Ross Perot was a friend of Deng Xiaoping. How do you think the Chinese were always able to copy our electronic devices so facilely?”

Soothingly, Grant put in, “Is that so, H.H.?”

“You don't think I'm telling the truth,” the sharp voice said from the immobile face. “I thought you believed in me, Dexter. In our crusade.”

“It's not that, H.H. But Ivan here has to be convinced you know the score.”

It was like dealing with a moody nine-year-old. Between that, the stilted picture, and the stress of his upcoming hearing Monday, Monk was getting a serious headache. He wanted results. “Like the Cruzados, they too believed. You can tell by their name.”

“Is that why they were sacrificed?” The face of stone retorted guilelessly.

“Did you—”

Grant cut Monk off with the flat of his hand pressed against the younger man's chest. “Is the jaguar on the loose, H.H.?”

“Margins of profits,” the TV man said.

“What kind of profits?” Monk said, ignoring Grant's facial injunctives.

The image again jerked and twitched and suddenly DeKovan was staring at his hands. “Sifting about, dodging Mictlanteuctli, but he can't be ducked. The price is too great.”

Monk was about to go off.

Noticing his body language, Khristi Jakes patted his arm with her silver-nailed hand. “Who sets the terms for this price, Mr. DeKovan?” she purred.

“The Randlords, of course.”

“What the hell,” Monk admonished sotto voce.

“Let's stay with it,” Grant whispered back. “They were the rich mine owners in South Africa, right H.H.?”

“Exactly.”

His first direct answer. Monk made a face at Grant but remained quiet.

“Have they set loose the jaguar?” Grant leaned forward.

The head again went through its slow-motion gyrations. It was apparent that DeKovan was moving about in his seat as if a comfortable position were impossible to attain. “So much has changed since Fletcher Wilkenson's time. I guess it was wrong to make him leave.” The TV man became motionless again. “Do you sleep good at night, Dexter?”

“Most of them.”

Rhetorically, Monk said, “How would the Rancho be different if Fletcher had stayed, H.H.?”

“Jokay would always have been Jokay,” DeKovan mused.

“He would still be working with you?” Monk also leaned forward.

“I'm not Ralph Bunche. I can't make everybody happy.”

“Who's Ralph Bunche?” Jakes asked quietly.

“He grew up off of Central Avenue, not too far from where the Rancho stands now,” Monk replied. “He brokered a peace accord in the Mideast for the U.N., and won the Nobel Prize.”

Grant said earnestly, “Who's at war, H.H.?”

DeKovan's image flickered and Monk half rose from his seat, fearful the man had severed the connection. It snapped back to clarity and he sat down. The headache was worse.

“Everybody, Dexter, everybody's got it in for each other.”

“But who at the Rancho is behind the fighting?” Monk blared, his tolerance way past breached.

The head on the box did several shakes and it finally occurred to them DeKovan was laughing. Over the crisp speakers his high cackle only made Monk feel like strangling him.

“Come on, H.H.,” Grant cajoled. “You were the one who wanted compromise, right? You were the one who bankrolled the job training center, put money into drug rehab programs up and down Watts and Boyle Heights. Even gave money to the Panthers and the Black Muslims when they were on Broadway.”

Monk gaped at Grant.

The head was at rest again. “Is there still time for fairness?”

“You can make it so, H.H.,” Grant said.

His head cocked. “I've tried. Ask Absalla. That's why I hired him to see about my other places.”