Bad Night Is Falling (36 page)

Seguin looked off, then directly into Monk's grim features. “Then that's what we got, Ivan, twenty-three shots—”

“Twenty-three tries,” Monk interpreted.

There were noises in the corridor. The duo sprinted into position. One on either side of the doorway, each man readied himself at least twenty feet from the entrance. Monk had propped up one of the desks for minimal protection. Seguin was crouched behind a legal-sized filing cabinet. The activity beyond the door was becoming more pronounced.

“Ivan,” Seguin began, barely audible, “whatever happens, whatever goes down, you know you and me was always straight.”

“Absolutely, bro'.”

The door splintered into ziggurats of wood as their attackers unleashed random firepower. The office furniture piled in front of the entrance lit up as if struck by ball lightning. One of the cabinets fell over and several metallic clangs reverberated in the room. Then the smell of gas filled their nostrils.

“Assholes,” Monk swore. One of the open gas cans had landed near him, the odor sinister in its intent.

A volley of more bullets was followed by beer bottles being tossed into the room. The bottles were filled with gas and their wicks were lit. As they shattered, coagulating pools of gas erupted into climbing pyres of yellow-white incandescence, casting freakish gelatinous chiaroscuro forms into the pockets of the room. The storm was unyielding outside, the beat it meted out forming a rhythm that seemed to announce their imminent death.

“Motherfucker,” Monk announced at their cruelty. It wasn't enough to rush in and blast them to pieces—after all, that might put a couple of their shooters at jeopardy. Better to burn them out, put the victims to the torch, as they had done to the Cruzados.

There were more shots and Monk saw Seguin diving forward, starkly illuminated by a river of flaming gas, and pumping three at an arm trying to throw its payload. The arm jerked, dropping the Molotov in the hallway. There was a commotion, and fire was now dancing out in the corridor too.

“Aw, shit, man,” a familiar voice screamed.

“I'm hit,” another voice hollered.

“You more than that, you silly bitch. You just keep fucking up like you was taking a class in it.” There was a burst of gunfire.

Monk was tired of waiting to die. He tore the cuff and part of his sleeve off, and ignited the cloth in the fire. Then he stepped from around the desk, heat and panic making his face slick with sweat. It was as if he were caught up in some druidic ceremony that only Los Angeles tumbling pell-mell into the twenty-first century could dream up. He and Seguin were the sorry replacements for the unsullied sacrificial maidens.

His friend was pressed up close against the door, submerged in one of the few remaining areas of darkness. Monk had held onto the gas can that had landed close to him, his flaming cuff wrapped around the lip. He flung the can at two men who'd pressed into the room.

The container bounced off the chest of one of me men, and a trail of burning liquid leapt from his torso down to his crotch. Reflexively he swung his gun onto Monk as Seguin opened fire from the side. The man dived into another patch of shadows on the same side of the room as the LAPD detective.

The other shooter was firing and Monk was moving, shoving the pile of office furniture at him.
Put your shoulder into it, Monk. Drive, drive
, he could hear his old high school coach Jim Young exhorting him as he hit the tackling sled. His body upset the tall filing cabinets as Monk climbed and scampered onto the metal dominoes, his momentum carrying him out into the hallway. Underneath the pile of cabinets, the gunman squirmed, seeking to free himself and his weapon.

Monk was rocked back and forth like he was riding a bronco, and he popped four rounds in rapid succession among the crevices between the toppled items. The bucking ceased, and a cabinet slid over.

The light from the fire in the hall revealed Isaiah Booker's white bodyguard. He was dressed in slacks, sport coat, and a white, banded-collar silk shirt. The shirt was now splotchy with carmine stains. The thin strand of his ponytail lapped over his face like a giant dead worm. A weighty gold ring with a marbled jade setting was on a finger of the killer's hand, which still gripped his warm MK-9. The Raptor suppressor clamped on the end of the gun's barrel was a mat black in contrast to the shiny finish of the wicked war toy.

Images registered in miniseconds as Monk attempted to right himself. Behind him, he heard the truculent echoing of the other attacker's silenced weapon. “Marasco!” he bellowed, his feet and legs tangled in the Staples detritus. He was trying to get oriented, but it seemed like everything was happening in accelerated time, and he was stuck in slow gear.

“Shit yes.”

An assault gun clacked sibilantly, and pain racked Monk's leg.

“Put the gun down, chump.” It was B.B., the dyed blond with the maroon wedge. His other hoop earring twinkled, catching the fire's light. The other side of his head had a bandage where his other ear used to be. His piece was centered unwaveringly on Monk.

Desolate, he tossed the .45 onto the floor. He'd never reach the MK. His lower leg, where Blondie had shot him, bled freely. But it seemed as if his mind were detaching itself from his body, and that soon all his pain would be a sensation without a home. Was that the “Dead Letter Blues” blowing in below the howl?
Put my baby on the coolin' board
. Would Jill and his mother lay him out?

“I'm going to dot you like you did me.” Blondie swaggered closer, giving Monk a better look at the gauze and tape plastered on the side of his head. “Take off half your motherfuckin' face 'fore I shoot you in the dick, then really start on you.”

A subconscious clarity took hold of Monk. By the undulating jonquil light, he recognized the man's weapon as an Uzi 41 A.E., with the .40 Smith & Wesson aluminum magazine, adaptor, and suppressor. Very efficient, very professional. Not a gun sold to gangbangers out of the trunks of Chevys like the assembly-line Norinco Chinese model AK.

“What are DeKovan and Maladrone up to?” He was tired, and he let his head thud against the wall. He wanted it to be over. His knee throbbed, and his lower leg was losing feeling. The fire was spreading. Fuck it, let it come. I love you guys. But goddamnit, he wanted to know. “What's in the room back there? The one with that door on it.”

Blondie roared and got closer still. He was breathing like a dynamo whose breakers had shorted. He stood triumphantly over Monk. “I ain't even gonna give you the satisfaction, man.” Fleetingly, an emotion that might have been respect nuanced his look, then disappeared. “It bees this way.” The gun came up and Blondie blinked, his shots going right and wide of his mark.

Like a man coming up one last time for air, Monk's incentive returned and he reached out with both hands, grabbing and yanking on the other man's legs. Blondie reaimed the Uzi at Monk's head. Instinctively, futilely, Monk latched a hand around the suppressor screwed onto the gun's barrel. Blondie gurgled and drooled. His face lit from within with purpose as he struggled to free the gun. Yet his strength left him and he fell forward, sprawled across Monk and the filing cabinets. There was a neat hole up high, a little off center, in his upper back.

“Thanks, Marasco.”

Seguin slumped down against the doorway, his face sallow. “My pleasure.”

“We gotta get out of here,” Monk said with growing concern. The fires were congealing together and their growth was imminent. He tried to get up but couldn't put weight on his leg. Monk fell back. “Marasco,” he started. Glancing over at the doorway, he could see his friend had gone slack, his chin lolling against his chest.

“Marasco,” Monk repeated. He forced himself back up, his wound tearing his eyes. The fire ate away at the insides of the room they'd been in. Monk limped over to Seguin, passing the gunner Blondie had shot in a pique. It was Eddie Waters.

Monk got to his friend as the fire in the hallway whooshed onto one of the walls, consuming an aged poster announcing a Sugar Ray Robinson fight at the Olympic.

“Come on.” Monk couldn't handle Seguin's weight on his bad leg, so he held him by his upper body and dragged him along. Monk got to the far end of the hall, the flames gyrating boldly along the corridor. Monk continued his task, getting some feet down another corridor. But the encroaching brightness told him he wasn't moving fast enough.

“Now would be a good time to wake up, Marasco.” He didn't comply. Monk kept moving, coming upon the stairs he'd been up earlier. Sweat soaked his clothes and his arms were numb hubs. He tried to weigh his options rationally, but he knew ultimately he had only luck and intuition left.

“Come on, Slick.” Monk started up the stairs, resting at each second landing. Somewhere around midway, as he'd hoped, the bumping aroused Seguin.

“We're still in the building?”

Monk didn't have enough strength to laugh. “Can you stand?”

On the third try Seguin got up, supporting himself on the railing. They put arms around each other and managed to get to the top, collapsing there.

“You hear that?” Seguin eked out.

“Yeah, the rain's let up.”

“You're hilarious.”

Sirens. “Henry must have gotten to a phone,” Monk surmised.

Seguin had passed out again.

Monk propped himself against the wall at the top of the stairs, sweat stinging his eyes. Heat and flame were gobbling up rooms and hallways. Soon it would embrace the two. He was drifting in and out of consciousness when a figure with a face enclosed in an oxygen mask and bearing a hatchet shook him awake.

“We got more than roast on the menu today,” the fire fighter quipped to other squad members who were clambering up the stairs.

“He's a cop,” Monk lifted a listless arm, then dropped it. He'd forgotten how to make his fingers work.

“Let's get some stretchers up here,” the joker ordered.

“Eddie Waters was a Ra-Falcon, and an old friend of Keith 2X.” Monk lay in the ambulance riding over to USC County General. “Keith must have found out from Waters about the meeting on Trinity, and told me.”

Seguin, who'd stirred again, was laid out across from him. “When they were pulling us out, I saw some uniforms taking the shooter you'd wounded down from the roof. It was one of the Domingos.”

“You two should take it easy,” the woman paramedic advised.

“Big Loco knew he was getting squeezed out. But from what Karla Ruzón told me, it seems he was still getting comped at the Airport Casino. Maybe he figured that meant he was cool with DeKovan.”

“Probably just part of how they were suckering him,” Seguin offered. “Judging from who the regulators were who came after us, it seems Maladrone and Booker were in this together.”

“And who says black and brown can't unite,” Monk commented sarcastically. “Especially when money's the great motivator.”

Seguin tried to sit up but the paramedic gently, yet forcefully pushed him down. “Okay, you win,” the wounded cop said. “So the new regime was to be made from pieces of the old.”

Maladrone's words about the need for discipline and order came back to Monk. “There is something to be said for organized crime, Marasco. No random shootings, petty thefts and burglaries stop. Progressive gangsterism.”

“Liberal simp,” his friend fired back.

“Why don't you two save it for the Brinkley show, alright?”

Ignoring the paramedic, Monk added, “It's the story of big business, Marasco.”

Seguin laughed softly.

“Anyway, I think Loco found out about the meeting on Trinity and went there to cap Isaiah Booker,” Monk conjectured. “Maybe he figured he'd make himself invaluable to DeKovan.”

The ambulance drove along Soto, the street glistening with the clean rain.

“Then how does he get lured over to the apartment in the Crenshaw area?” Seguin asked.

“You said yourself the guy on the roof was a Domingo Trece. Loco couldn't conceive the idea that some of his boys could cross over to the new combine.”

“Makes sense.” Seguin grimaced as he shifted on his stretcher.

“He probably went over there with one of his supposed homies on the pretense he could get Booker, I bet.”

The ambulance hit a pothole. “But you only saw two men enter that night. Counting Loco, there were three in the room,” Seguin pointed out.

“Either Blondie or Eddie was already hiding in the apartment. Lying in wait for 2X's return or to spring the trap on Loco.”

The ambulance went past Hazard Park, which looked like a lush island newly risen from the ocean floor as its trees dripped with fresh rain. The ambulance got to Marengo and headed on into the hospital.

“The hitters kept in contact by cell phones,” Monk surmised. “The plan was probably to do Big Loco at the apartment, and place the blame on Keith. He was on the run 'cause he realized that his own pardner was playin' him, and was in deep. If he showed up, no cop would listen to him, as they'd figure he'd be trying to get out from under the Loco murder beef.”

“All police are not as stupid as you think, Ivan.”

“So I've been told.”

They both laughed and coughed up heavy wads of phlegm. The ambulance wailed to a stop.