Bad Night Is Falling (9 page)

The shop was an investment he'd made with the scratch earned as a ship's engineer, a bit of entrepreneurship he'd been talked into by Dexter Grant. Originally, the establishment had belonged to a cop buddy of Grant's, also retired. The buddy used the money to go to Burma. He'd gone there with some other ex-law enforcement and military types to hunt for some supposedly stolen caches of Chinese gold. Wisely, Grant hadn't gone along. The former owner of Continental Donuts and his expedition were never heard from again.

Monk's mother had also been an influence in his decision to buy the shop.

“You got to have property, boy. Black folks been struggling and dying for hundreds of years because of land, son. You ain't never without something to tide you through the bad times when you have a grant deed with your name on it. Especially if it's earning you an income,” his mother, a nurse, had advised him. “Why you think I been keeping up the taxes on that plot we got down in Mound Bayou, near Clarksdale? We've had that family farm since right after slavery.”

What little profit the damned place showed generally went for salaries and expenses, but he liked being a donut magnate. As he walked in, Elrod the giant was fixing one of the fryers. Monk went into the reinforced room where he kept hard copies of his files. He punched in Kodama's number, and the receiver was picked up immediately.

“Yes, who is this,” the voice snapped.

“Monk. Is Jill there?”

“How'd you get this number?”

Fucking Mitchell. “I said this was Monk, you know who I am.”

“Oh yes, I believe I've talked with you before,” he replied, feigning only a fleeting recognition. “The judge is busy right now, I'll tell her you called.”

The word “called” already sounded distant as the receiver was replaced in its cradle.

“Asshole,” Monk cursed, backslapping the phone. Anxious, and with nothing else to do, he swept and straightened up the room. He finished, taking the files on the members of the Ra-Falcons with him.

Elrod the invincible donut shop manager resided in the kitchen. The former heister was six feet eight inches, three hundred and twenty-five trim pounds of prison-tested muscle. His squared-off head topped shoulders as wide as an aircraft carrier's deck, and three earring studs, in gold, silver, and turquoise, were punched into the rim of his left ear.

“Chief,” Elrod greeted him. He was instructing a new employee on the fineries of making raised chocolate donuts just so. “This is Andre, he started yesterday.”

The young black man, he couldn't have been over twenty-three, looked in Monk's direction but said nothing. He promptly returned his focus to rolling the dough. His coal black jeans were long in the leg and frayed at the heels of his white Pumas. He wore a heavily starched blue work shirt buttoned at the sleeves and at the collar. His hair was shaved very close to me scalp on the sides, with a modicum more along the top.

“Dre's been in CYA,” Elrod said, confirming what Monk had been speculating. “He's the little brother of an old pardner of mine. Said he wants to do right, ain't that so?”

Dre nodded quickly that indeed it was so, and began to pull little plugs off the dough and roll them into balls.

“Righteous,” Monk responded and moved toward the front. If the kid didn't work out, and especially if he tried to run a scam, he'd have to deal with the big fella. A fate to make grown men weak in the knees. The fact mat Elrod could inspire such fear allowed Monk to sleep sound at night.

Out in the main section were three customers. Gloria was in her MTA bus driver uniform, playing a game of chess in one of the booths with a woman he didn't recognize. At the counter was Andrade, occasional accountant and periodic binger. A medium cup of coffee and an uneaten French cruller sat before him. He was dressed in a sport coat and open collar, his black hair uncombed, grey beginning to set in. He was going over the racing form, making tight, concise circles around his picks as he read through the upcoming heats.

“How're you fixed for some possible extracurricular work?” Monk poured himself a cup of coffee.

“You that hard up for a sidekick?” Andrade answered, never taking his eyes off his homework.

“I need,” Monk began, making his way around me counter to sit next to the accountant, “a Spanish speaker for some translating.”

Andrade put his red-shot eyes on Monk, blinking. “
¿Cómo?
”

Monk sketched him in on his case and said, “Basically, it might be needed for a meeting I am hoping to get together with a few of the neighbors. Or else several phone calls. Of course you'd be compensated.”

Andrade opened the paper, folded it to another page, then folded it down to quarter size agin. “I suppose this would require me to be, oh, how should I say it, around?”

It suddenly came to Monk he didn't know where Andrade lived, but assumed it had to be nearby as he'd never seen him drive to the shop. “I'm at the mercy of other forces, Andrade.” He refrained from making a comment on the
bruja
Limón. “It would help if I got your home number, so when someming jumps, I can buzz you.”

“No phone,” he retorted, making another pick on his form. “No car, either.”

“How the hell do you do business?”

“Badly.” He made another find.

This was beginning to annoy him. Andrade wasn't the only Spanish speaker he knew, but he was the most handy. “How about I get you a cellular to hold onto for a while.”

The red pen circled a horse called Distant Gloom. “Sure, I can come back here to get it.”

Monk's curiosity about where the strange accountant lived was gnawing at him, but he didn't want to make an issue of it and tick him off. “Fine. I'll leave it with Elrod by ten tomorrow. Just so we don't run up the bill on the damned thing, for now just click it on between”—he consulted his watch—“eleven and three.”

“On it.” Andrade got off me stool, finally taking a bite of his cruller.

“Andrade …” Monk began, then stalled.

“What?” The man rubbed his unshaven jaw.

“Thanks, I appreciate your trouble.”

He made a casual flick of his hand, took a few gulps of his coffee, and tucked his racing form into his jacket pocket. He departed without another word.

Elrod, standing in the opening leading to the kitchen, was wiping his hands on a cleaning rag. “If his Spanish is anything like his accountin', you might be peddlin' backwards.”

“I've heard him speak Spanish more than once; as far as I can tell he's not some
gavacho
.”

“Uh-huh,” the giant remarked dubiously. “You just better hope he's sober between them hours you told him to be available.”

“You ever been to his pad?” Monk enjoyed some of his coffee.

“Nope. As far as I know nobody knows where he stays. Wait.” He held up the rag in one massive paw. “I think maybe Honest Abe took him home once. Way I hear it, Andrade lost his license for his second DUI conviction.”

Abraham Carson was a carpenter and regular at the Abyssinia Barber Shop and Shine Parlor where Monk got his hair cut and the neighborhood 411. “I'll give him a call, thanks.”

Sitting at the counter, Monk started to go through the files Absalla had left for him. From his stash underneath the Formica counter, he retrieved a compact Te-Amo number 4 cigar. He puffed on the ember and read, sometimes stopping to fill orders for customers who came in. He pretended not to notice the disapproval on some of their faces at the sharp smell. When he got to Kelmont Reeves, he finally found something of interest. It was an assessment Absalla apparently did of each of his employees.

As a member of the Del Nines street gang, Reeves had been known as Kid Blue. Taking out his notes and browsing through them, he found the reference to a Baby Blue that Mrs. Hughes had mentioned. Absalla's write-up stated Reeves had a cousin in the Scalp Hunters called Junior Blue. Monk was sure that was one of the kids Mrs. Hughes said Cruzado had confronted.

Monk put a Post-it on Kelmont's rap sheet and went through the other files. Nothing else jumped out at him, but he'd make another pass later. He plodded into the kitchen to answer the ringing phone attached to the wall.

“Continental Donuts.”

“Ivan, you got a call from a Keith 2X down at the Rancho Tajuata,” Delilah relayed over the wire. “He said you'd want to know this like yesterday, yo?”

The house was a toast-colored stuccoed bungalow with wide green trim on Trinity, off of East Adams. Sections of its aging paint had fallen away from parts of one wall. Someone had made a halfhearted attempt at repainting, giving the wall a blotchy relief effect with mismatched explosions of other shades of light brown.

The block was full of similar homes, with other variations on the Craftsman style, and a couple of nondescript clapboard jobs too. Several of the houses had cars in various stages of repair and ruin placed at angles along their respective fronts. Tall palm trees dotted both sides of the street, and Monk could smell eucalyptus on the evening breeze. Big dogs could be heard bellowing indifferently, contemptuous of the need for peace among humans.

He could discern music playing nearby. It was an old number, whose tune he couldn't quite identify, but was pretty sure was a cut by the trumpeter Lester Young. Prez. Right out of Woodville, Mississippi, swaying and playing in that signature flat, broad-brimmed porkpie hat of his blowing grooves for the horn players before him, and setting the double-time pace for the cats after him.

Monk moved back into the recessed darkness between the patched wall and a stand of cypress trees as another car rolled past the house.

The vehicle stopped, reversed its travel, and coasted beneath the pale glow of a street lamp. The car drove farther down the street. It was a late-model Buick Regal, glossy black with shimmering gold trim. The Regal evidently found a parking spot, because Monk heard its doors open and close and footfalls approach along the cracked sidewalk.

Three men came toward the house he was spying on. Two were black, above average height. One of them was sporting a natty beard. The third was white, or a lightskinned Latino, of medium build. His dark hair was shaved close to his head with a thin, long braid swatting lightly down the center of his back.

Each was fashion-model sharp in coat and slacks, all of them wearing gold rings that dispersed flutters of light along their large hands. It was obvious from the way the one with the strand of hair and the black one with the beard flanked the man in the middle that they were his bodyguards.

They gained the porch, knocked, and a vertical shaft of light briefly striped the middle man's face. From his hiding place, Monk could see his features. The man was matinee handsome, his eyes horizontal slits that seemed to have been drawn rather than organic. The door opened wider and the three went into the meeting.

Keith 2X had told Monk he'd found out this house on Trinity would be the site of the OGs' gathering. He'd made him promise not to tell anyone else, or be discovered, as 2X had been told the information on the down low. Monk wanted to know who'd told 2X, but the Ra-Falcon corporal was not willing to give that information up.

He knew 2X wanted to follow Absalla's orders by letting him know what was happening, but he understood 2X also had to maintain his standing with the rest of the security force. The private eye liked the young man for standing up and doing the right thing.

Problem was, Monk had hoped to catch snatches of conversation from a cracked window. But the night was cool and no window was open. No sounds other than the occasional burst of raucous laughter could he hear by crouching alongside the wall.

He eased out of his hiding spot, checking to see if anyone was coming or leaving the house. He went for his car parked down the block to wait until the gents and their Buick left. The man with the smooth face had been older than the others who'd previously entered the house. Given the near seppuku existence of a gang member, being an OG usually meant anyone who'd managed to live past twenty-five. The man last to arrive was at least thirty-two or so, Monk estimated. His age and his dress set him apart as a man who doubtlessly held an emeritus position with the Scalp Hunters.

Time dragged, and Monk was losing the battle to stay awake. He hated stakeouts, hated them even if he had Dexter Grant along. Invariably the older man would relate a series of ancient battle tales derived from his days on the force. And plentiful they were, since Grant had made detective under that drunk Parker in the late '50s.

“Gates was an ingratiating little prick even then,” Dex would regale. Not only could he go on forever with these stories, he could also sit for long stretches of time, just watching and existing. Monk had to believe Grant did it just to mess with him, as only a manic-depressive could enjoy sitting on his sweaty butt for hours staring like a loon out of a bird shit-splattered windshield.

He was working on naming the B sides of hits by Big Joe Turner alphabetically in his head when the door of the bungalow opened. Monk could only make out a knot of bodies gathering on the porch. He got out and did his best to become one with a palm tree's trunk. The door to the house remained open, the inner light bathing me clustered forms from one side, giving them the quality of a single, writhing entity. A compressed thing of pain and fury, soon to spin off its spirochetes in erratic orbits to zooming and then eventually faltering in a universe of chaos.

Some of the Scalp Hunters began to depart and the trio made their way to the Regal. Shots suddenly reverberated from the other side of the block. The remaining mass on the porch became numerous tendrils elongating into action, as several guns flashed.

Monk, his old man's .45 in his hand without his thinking about it, hurtled along the street side of the parked cars. He ran in a crouch as his fingers graced cold metal. Gunfire, curses, and darting bodies filled his senses. A shotgun let loose, scattering its load into the fender of a cream-colored Trans Am inches from Monk. He fell flat, straining to see his assailant.