Violent Spring (17 page)

“See? I'm not going to let you do that. You want to break it down to category A, category B and so on. That way you argue each point like a lawyer rather than address the broader issue.”

“And what is the broader issue?” He heard his voice ratcheting up a notch. “You're the one that's a lawyer.”

“Don't yell at me.”

“Okay,” he said reluctantly. “But will you answer my question?”

“It's not one simple answer. Get some sleep, and we'll talk about this later. I don't want to go into this over the phone.”

“Fine.”

“Goodnight. I love you.”

“So you say.”

Monk tossed the handset onto its cradle. He stalked into the kitchen and poured himself a shot of black and red label rum. He drank it down swiftly and instantly regretted it. Intent on his discussion with Jill, he hadn't paid attention to the dull throb working its way into a corner of his brain, a product of the two Beck's he'd had at Elrod's. Now with the potent mixture of the rum hitting his system, the ache was metamorphosing into a laser beam slicing his head into sections.

Monk got undressed to his boxers, brushed his teeth and slipped into bed.

“Women,” he grumbled, feeling sorry for himself. He turned off the light on the nightstand and lay awake for the next hour.

I
N THE MORNING Monk received a message from one of the attorneys in Maxfield O'Day's office. O'Day would be in touch with him on Thursday when he got back to town. No, they hadn't as yet been able to pierce the paper veil as to who were the true owners of Jiang Holdings.

He called Luis Santillion, but he was out again. Yes, they'd told him he'd called the other day, and yes, they'd tell him he'd called again.

Down at the library, Monk spent some time poring over phone books covering the cities that made up the greater Los Angeles area. He found a Bart Samuels in Redondo Beach, one in Santa Monica and one out in Diamond Bar. Monk wanted to find out from him if he really did tell the cops he hadn't seen Grimes bring the gate down on his car. There was no listing of a residence for Stacy Grimes.

Monk drove out to the address in Santa Monica. It was on a street south of Pico and east of Lincoln, the more working class section of the trendy city by the sea. The apartment was a rambling two-story complex fenced in by a water-damaged wooden fence. Monk read the mail boxes and, in blue-and-white Dynamo lettering, found the listing for Samuels.

He walked to the apartment and knocked. No response. If it was the right Samuels, he'd be sitting in Cerberus' belly this fine sunny day, working on his tan.

Would he come straight home after work? Stop for a drink? Go by the gym and pump some iron? Maybe swing by the old lady's pad and spend the evening with her? Too many variables. Maybe any one or two of those things in combination. And it meant one thing. The number-one pain-in-the-ass part of detective work Monk abided. Stake the fucking place out.

Problem number one was the apartments had a carport off the alley in the rear. But the alley was too conspicuous a spot for Monk to park his Galaxie. Which meant parking in front. Problem number two was Samuels knew his car. Which meant parking far enough away to not be spotted and yet be able to keep an eye on the complex.

Monk left and bought two sandwiches at a stand and returned. He repositioned the car down the block and waited. Early on when he was bounty hunting, he'd ignored advice from Grant and used to bring a large thermos of coffee on stakeouts. So, of course, after downing half of the contents of the container, he'd have to relieve himself.

It was on one such occasion, watching for a bail jumper at his mother's house, that Monk had to leave his car and find a secluded spot to pee. When he got back to his car, he knew the jumper had been and gone because the mother's car was then absent from the driveway.

Monk eased down into the Galaxie's seat. He emptied his mind, concentrating on being at one with his environment. Zen and the art of surveillance. Bullshit. Listening to one of the Governor's speeches was more exciting.

The shadows on the lawns got longer. Teenagers on their way home from school passed by. The loud banter of the young men and women, fueled by raging hormones and the seemingly biological urge to be hip, made Monk wistful for a moment. A sure sign of his advancing years, he realized.

He finished one of the sandwiches, absently considering if he'd developed a flat spot on his butt by sitting on it for so long. The late afternoon came on and the working stiffs began to arrive. A middle-aged woman with a beehive hairdo drove her Ford Escort twice around the spot Monk was parked in. It was obvious that she parked there every day at this hour. The woman glared daggers at Monk, and he smiled at her like an imbecile. She snarled and found another place.

Monk watched several people enter the apartment complex, none of them Bart Samuels. He stretched and checked his watch. Six forty-five. Waiting until seven, as the light of day started to fail, Monk got out of his car and walked back to the apartment.

He knocked on the apartment door.

“Yes.” The man who opened it was slight of build and had a receding hairline.

“Are you Bart Samuels?” Monk said.

“I am. What can I do for you?”

Monk gave him a lame story about investigating an auto accident and looking for the witnesses. He parted with another business card and left. Angry with himself that he'd wasted a day, he drove to the Norm's on Lincoln. Sitting at the counter and waiting for his order, it flashed on Monk how he was going to get something on Stacy Grimes, as well as the correct residence for Bart Samuels.

And it was as easy as going to a baseball game.

The Dodgers beat the Astros four to two. There were ejections for fighting, and some guy spilled his beer over a woman in a Teamster Local 417 jacket.

Monk wasn't overly fond of baseball—football and roundball were his favorites—but his nephew, his sister Odessa's son Coleman, loved it to death. There was a shelf in his room lined up with the plastic encased baseball cards of Maury Wills, Hank Aaron, Nolan Ryan, and other stars.

Trophies attesting to Coleman's own prowess in the sport were stacked along another shelf. Atop that shelf was another one that was testament to the teenager's other passion.

Computers. On it were technical manuals, magazines about new and powerful software, books about cyberspace and virtual reality, and other publications intended for the practicing hacker. Which his nephew was, to a degree.

“Did you see that hit Robinson got, Uncle Monk?” Coleman said, his fourteen-year-old voice edging into the baritone it would soon become.

“Yeah.” Monk finished his Dodger Dog. “He hasn't lost much since his back surgery.”

“Yeah,” his nephew agreed.

The crowd started to leave and Monk and his nephew exited the stands to his car. Since it was a weekday, traffic wasn't too bad leaving Dodger Stadium, and Monk took Scott Avenue down to Glendale Boulevard. There he went south and wound his way to 3rd Street and headed west, into the haze of the setting sun.

“What's happening in school?” Monk asked nonchalantly.

Coleman pulled his X cap low on his forehead. “Same ol', same ol'.”

“How about a little more elaboration?”

Coleman smiled. “I ain't one of your suspects, you know.”

“Every teenager is a suspect.”

“That's what the coach says.”

“Speaking of which, how does the season look for you guys?”

His nephew proceeded to tell him how his team was coming together if only the starting pitcher, Martinez, could get his fastball under better control. They traveled south along Western toward Continental Donuts.

They arrived as evening darkened the contours of the city. The plaster donut on the roof of the building looked like the lost wheel of Paul Bunyan's buckboard. Monk cut the motor, and he let them in through the back door.

“What kind of information do you want the to bring up?” Coleman said, sitting down in front of the computer as it warmed up in Monk's room at the donut shop.

“I want whatever I can get on Stacy Grimes and Bart Samuels. Addresses, credit reports, et cetera.” He elected not to tell his nephew that Grimes had been murdered. Not that the kid was fragile, he did go to public school in Los Angeles. And certainly he had classmates who had friends that had died by violence, by drugs, or by their own hands.

If anything, Monk was sure Coleman, like his peers, had an almost nihilistic attitude to their coming of age in this town on the edge of the abyss. How else could you psychologically balance dealing with zits on your face and what route to walk to school to avoid a crossfire?

But it was a mixture of family love and a certainty in his being that whatever he could provide in the way of a father figure to the young man—albeit a flawed one, but one that at least was consistent—provided one more rung for one more young black man in the ladder out of self-destruction.

Coleman's fingers depressed several keys then hit the return bar. “The online service I had you subscribe to has a sub-service called PhoneBank.”

“It provides phone numbers?”

“And addresses and something about them sometimes.” Coleman got his prompt and typed in Grimes' name, backslash, then the name of Hermosa Beach.

“How does PhoneBank gather its information?” Monk asked, pulling up a chair next to his nephew, worried that his sister would kick his ass if he got the boy in trouble. The screen went black momentarily.

“Don't sweat it, Unk. They get it from phone directories, birth certificates, real estate and stuff like that. Everything we're gonna get tonight is legal.”

“If not exactly ethical,” Monk remarked. “Good thing it's for a good cause, huh? Maybe I should feel guilty that I'm corrupting you?”

“Naw. This is what they call situational ethics, right?”

“It is the way the world works.”

“Mr. Rationalization.”

Monk rapped a playful shot on his shoulder. “Where you learning them big words?” Yes, quite a father figure. Maybe his sister could remarry a priest.

Grimes' name reappeared along with his birthdate, place of birth, address and a phone number. Below that was a record of an '89 Ford Bronco he'd bought on credit from a used car lot in the Valley.

“What about criminal records? He was supposed to have been busted for assault.”

“I have to exit PhoneBank and try Recon.”

Monk queried, “They're the ones that offer one of the databankers who do pre-employment criminal checks of public courthouse records?”

“Yeah.”

Monk's nephew punched the code and soon had a service called Recon on the screen. An 800 number flashed below the logo.

“You need to call them and give them your detective's license number.”

Monk dialed the number and got a service rep. He gave the required information, along with his bond number, and charged the information retrieval to his credit card. Numbers into data, data into information, information available to those who know how to work the circuits.

Was Keys sitting at his computer calling up Monk's record, reviewing it, changing it? Maybe that natty, cuff-linked son-of-a-bitch was looking at Jill's data. Maybe he and his boyfriend, Diaz, were drooling over the fiber optic lensed video of Jill and him making love in their bed. Jesus. Monk felt like Winston Smith falling down the rabbit hole. He replaced the phone's handset and sat down again.

On the screen was a listing of three arrests and one conviction for Stacy Grimes. All the charges revolved around assaults of one kind or another. In 1987, Grimes had been arrested for allegedly putting a man's head into the side of a car. Coleman did a cross reference, which showed that Grimes had been a bouncer in a bar in that incident, released on his own recognizance.

In 1989, Grimes was convicted of armed assault in an incident involving a former girlfriend. In 1992, he was again arrested for assault. This time against a man named Roy Park. Cross-indexing brought up an address in South Central where the incident took place. Grimes was bailed out and had been currently awaiting trial on the charges.

“It should be on record who posted bail,” Monk said.

Coleman drew down a selection from the on screen menu. “Nothing.”

“Interesting, must mean they paid cash. Let's see what we can find on brother Samuels.”

His nephew repeated the inquiry for the other man who guarded the Odin Club. No arrests came up. “How about an address,” Monk said.

After several moments three Bart Samuels and their respective addresses tumbled onto the ether of the computer's field. The one in Santa Monica, and the other two in Redondo Beach and Diamond Bar. Monk stared at the Redondo Beach address. He wrote it down, and opened a drawer in the desk, taking out a Thomas Brothers Map Guide.

“Now go back for Grimes and see if you can punch out the address for that night club he worked at.”