Bad Night Is Falling (33 page)

“His name was Colosio, but he wasn't a member of the PAN, which is the second biggest party in Mexico. No, Colosio was a member of the pree, the PRI, the ruling party. Colosio was the leading candidate on his way to capture the nomination. He was pushing too fast and too … deep for many.”

“You see, President Salinas de Gortari promised a more democratic Mexico when he won. A hollow promise as so many had done before him. Yet despite his best efforts to not do so, world conditions deemed otherwise.” She laughed to herself.

“But your brother ran as an opposition candidate?”

Patiently she answered him. “Again, you must not see Mexican politics like they are here. My brother ran as a member of the PRI, but as a reformer. You see the difference? Not as one who just wanted the office to do the same as the others before him.”

Monk gave a slight nod of understanding.

“My brother worked in a metal … ah
horno de fusión
. Oh I don't know the word in English.” She gestured while she talked. “You know when you take one kind of metal out of what you dig from the mountains? Ore, is the word I want to say.”

“A smelting plant,” Monk supplied.

“Yes.” She pointed as if he gotten a game show question right. “Smelting plant. The owner's brother was longtime friends with our family. The brother had started one of these plants, right? In Zacatecas, the city that's also in the state of Zacatecas. The rock, the ore came from the mountains.”

“And they had one in this city, Villanueva?”

“Correct,” she said, “a second one. Efraín was a supervisor there and I worked on a small newspaper called
El Tímpano
.”

“
The Drum
.”

“Yes, you know some Spanish?”

“Just enough to keep me in trouble.”

“Very good. Sit down, please.” She indicated a lounge chair near the couch.

He did as requested. “Both of you had an interest in politics?”

She hunched her shoulders. “Since college. We did work for candidates, walk and talk in neighborhoods, phone calls, all that you see? Finally, it seemed only logical we would want to directly do something.”

“On the paper we tried to tell the truth about the political situation as it affected Villanueva. Of course we were not fools. Some truth is more important than others.”

“If the mayor got a little
mordida
, as long as he made sure the schools got books …” He looked to heaven.

“Yes. But some things you couldn't say in print were the price of business. Newspeople get killed fairly often in Mexico, Mr. Monk. I'm sure you've heard about the assasination of reporters in Tijuana.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “like the ones who worked for the newspaper
Zeta
, doing investigative work on the border drug lords and their buying off local politicians.” And that their greedy reach had worked its way north, he added to himself.

“We decided Efraín should run to … you know”—she made motions like she was holding something and moving it back and forth—“to clean.”

“To sweep out the old guard,” Monk articulated. “And that's what got the gangsters on you, your brother and the others.”

She touched her bosom. “First the Party, the bosses, say
ya basta
. Then the ones they are partners with, the gangsters also say stop. Only they have more final ways of getting you to stop.”

“On orders from Jokay Maladrone?” Monk looked over at the other two, the man interpreting for Rosanna.

Her sister-in-law shifted in her seat as if invoking his name brought discomfort. “Maladrone is a boss on this side of the border, you understand? He is Chicano, not Mejicano, but his mother is from Zacatecas. The heart of the Pandilla Zacatecas remains among those who came from there. But Maladrone does have much say, his thinking is greatly respected. He has made money and of course that means he has their ears.”

“Money in drugs?” Monk asked.

“Not just the
drogas
. The gangsters have always had the drugs, the
putas
, the gambling. But with Maladrone, they are now involved with
oro
.”

“Gold?” Monk said.

“
Oro
,” she confirmed, fingering a thin necklace around her neck.

Monk flashed on the fact that one of DeKovan's companies was called Ingot Limited. “Is this who you believe murdered your family members?”

She took him in before speaking. “I'm scared not for me. I'm scared for Rosanna.” She bent her head toward her. “She's only been a wife, you understand? Even more, I worry for my nieces. Their deaths cannot be because of me. It cannot.”

“I know, Karla. Nobody knows I'm here, and nobody here will see me again.”

“You found us,” she stressed. Her implication was clear.

“Then help me to stop them.”

“You can't. They are too big.”

Her accurate analysis cut down the tall horse Monk was trying to ride. “You're right,” he admitted. “But the ones who set the fire can pay.”

She regarded him again. Through the walls, the soothing clucking of the chickens could be heard. As far as those birds knew, all was right with their world. But Sunday and dinnertime would eventually come around, and a skillet popping with hot oil might be one or more of the flock's destination. “What I know is Efraín and I thought it best we come north after the killings of some of our comrades when the elections in Villanueva were over.”

“How'd you wind up in the Rancho?”

“We had to bring our mother, and she couldn't get a green card. The government has really made it hard, more regulations, especially for someone her age. But we couldn't live in a … a …”—she searched for the word—“
garaje
, where you put the cars.”

“Garage.”

“Exactly. We could not live like that. A cousin in Mexico City knew Reyisa, Mrs. Limón. She got us a place, but this too made problems.”

“You went ahead of black families on the waiting list.”

She bowed her head. “We were in fear from the criminals in Zacatecas, and then we came here and got ourselves in more problems.”

“Didn't Mrs. Limón try to explain things to the black tenants?” He couldn't call her Reyisa.

“She tried. Mr. Cady tried too. But if people keep not getting what they're supposed to get, then sometimes the reasons sound like excuses. In this country, I know Afro-Americans hear those excuses too often.” She sank into the couch. “I'm still not sure who set fire to our home.

“Efraín and I saw the conditions at the Rancho Tajuata. I found out the Zacatecas were using Los Domingos fighting with the
mayate
—oh, I'm sorry.”

“Go ahead,” Monk said neutrally.

“Using the Scalp Hunters and Los Domingos to kill each other, make a lot of blood. That way, La Pandilla Zacatecas could step in and bring order. Be the peacemakers.”

“How did you find this out?”

She started to cry. Monk felt impotent and looked over at the other two. Rosanna Cruzado came over to comfort her sister-in-law. Karla Ruzón wiped her tears away. “I've been doing some freelance, you call it here, writing for
La Opinión
. One of the editors with contacts in Zacatecas was doing a story about them gaining power in Los Angeles.”

“What I told you is not a secret, really. It's just that some of the other immigrants who also know this, or suspect it, have no means of acting on it.” She ran out of energy like a steam-burning locomotive going too long between stations.

“Or some figure so what? At least it would stop the random violence and too much blood.” Monk also felt a weakness pour over him. Muscles stretched too taut, his mind too hyper to know any state but full throttle. “Karla, have you heard the name DeKovan?”

Her hands were clasped together, her head down. “Once, yes. Efraín had been meeting with some of the nationals, the immigrants. They listened to him because some had heard the news about him from relatives back in Mexico.”

“And one of them had heard about DeKovan?”

“Of course not,” she upbraided him gently. “Because he was trying to bring these people to join together, Efraín discovered he was becoming involved in something else. One time he told me he'd been confronted by Big Loco. That he was on drugs, you understand?”

“High.”

“Yes. Loco was saying how he had something to fight the Zacatecas. He knew what they were trying to do. He said he had a rich
gavacho
who was his friend.”

“A white man named DeKovan.”

“She's tired,” the man said, getting up from the dining room table. “You have to go now. You have to not come back.”

Monk got up, sluggish and directionless. He'd made some notes, but the will to decipher them was spent. He wanted to keep going and he wanted to lie down. He wanted to get Harwick Henri DeKovan in the back room of the Satellite Bar and shake him until he stopped acting goofy. He sleepwalked over to where Karla Ruzón and Rosanna Cruzado sat.

“Don't be so rough on yourself, Karla. You didn't set the fire. When Maladrone learned about you and your brother's activities, he was going to do something.” He touched her shoulder tentatively.

Lightly, she touched his hand. “Why do you do this for Mejicanos, Ivan Monk? People you don't know. People who a lot of them don't have anything to do with blacks?”

“If I had an answer, I'd give it to you.”

She smiled. “You have one, you just don't tell anyone.”

Stepping back outside, a light drizzle had begun. Monk glided back into downtown L.A. behind the wheel of the rental. He moved along the quiet freeways, the wipers going at half speed. He slipped off the 110 at the Wilshire exit, and took the boulevard east toward Flower—Figueroa was one-way here, running north, and he wanted to go south.

To the west, Wilshire ran nearly sixteen miles to the ocean in Santa Monica. The street was named for H. Gaylord Wilshire, a socialist publisher who at one point controlled a monopoly of billboards in L.A. His one-time Wilshire tract had been more orange groves than roadway, but the colorful developer had envisioned the street becoming a fashionable concourse and driveway.

Gaylord had got his wish, sort of. Nowadays, on either side of Wilshire Boulevard were Central American enclaves, yet along its length were Korean-owned businesses from bridal shops to photocopier stores. The wide thoroughfare then went on to touch the edges of working- and lower-middle-class black neighborhoods. It then cut through the mid-Wilshire district, the Miracle Mile of car dealerships, Middle Eastern restaurants, and office supply outlets.

Above that the street got more gussied up to properly represent Beverly Hills and then continued into Westwood and the area with upscale furniture and electronic equipment shops situated west of Sepulveda.

But Monk had a more immediate location to get to. He turned right onto Flower until he came to Olympic whereupon he made another right and right again, doubling back north onto Figueroa. He got to the left on the oneway street and parked at the curb near Ninth.

The Original Pantry sat unimpressive but sturdy on the northeast corner of Ninth and Figueroa. The eatery had reposed for more than seventy years in this spot; it was where his father used to take his mother when they were dating. The Pantry was one of the few places downtown in those days of restrictive housing covenants that didn't slow-service black patrons.

The diner's fare was simple and varied little from week to week. Breakfasts were hubcap-sized pancakes, thick rashers of bacon, and eggs yellowy bright. Lunch and dinners were steaks, chops, rib tips, roasted chicken, sometimes hamburger loaf, fried fish about every three weeks, or, incongruously, lamb curry. The potatoes were either mashed or cubed and fried in a kind of chunky hash brown style. The vegetables were overcooked but the coffee and Pepsi always flowed. It wasn't four-star, but it damned sure filled a hole.

“Hey,” he said, his call connecting on a pay phone outside of the place. Several club goers and college types mixed with the truck drivers and security guards on break going in and out of the diner.

“Ivan,” Jill said on the other end, “Mitchell told me something you should know.”

“Oh I bet he did.”

“Don't even go there.” Her voice quickly got serious again. “Mitchell said sheriff's deputies found Keith 2X on the banks of the L.A. River down below the Fourth Street bridge. He'd been trussed up and tortured, but was still alive. They left him to gag on his own blood, Ivan.”

Momentarily, Monk took the phone away from his ear then brought it back up. “Goddamnit, Jill.” The too-constant urban refrain of grabbing the opportunity to waste life, this time a young black man who seemed to be trying so hard, took something out of him. Constance Smalls was at his shoulder, damning him, and he had no words to say in his defense.

Kodama spoke. “The sheriffs have turned this back over to LAPD since this seems to lead right back to Absalla.”

Monk found that too obvious. But then again, maybe the Muslim leader was just arrogant enough to believe Allah would protect him. “Have they arrested him?”

“Yes.” She halted, her speech jumbling up before she ordered her thoughts. “Fletcher Wilkenson called for you.”

“And?” Two woman in skirts shorter than his shirttail and tighter than conga skins brushed past him. They were laughing loudly and the one in orange heels threw back her head and let out with a horse whinny. They sauntered into the Pantry.

“He said,” Kodama went on, “that he got a visit from Jokay Maladrone.”

“Great.” He imagined Maladrone somehow metamorphosing out of his iron lung into a jaguar and descending onto Wilkenson's porch in his animal guise.

Kodama explained. “Mr. Wilkenson said Maladrone was being transported in a medically rigged trailer truck of some sort. He'd had his men take him to Wilkenson's house in Mount Washington to give him a warning: stay away from you, and don't publish his book.”