Perdition, U.S.A. Read online

  Kodama retorted, “It’s about as sexy an outfit as what Janet Reno wears.”

  “Can I help it if you severe-looking broads make me hard as a calculus test?”

  Kodama, clad solely in an azure pair of panties Monk had bought her on one of their weekends away, snuggled next to his nude form. She studied him, and said, “Okay, the bench will rest for the evening. But it retains the right to exercise its option of revisiting this item.”

  Monk caressed her round, solid buttocks. Kodama’s body and general physique belied her forty-plus years of living. She hit the gym at least two times a week and did a full regime of cals, weights, and those goddamn step aerobics. Plus some jogging on the weekends around the Silverlake Reservoir down from her house. He slipped his hand between the crack of her cheeks, her tongue carrouseling with his.

  “What’s been happening in the docket?” he asked, returning to rubbing her buttocks.

  There was a barely audible sigh. “Too much of the same, Ivan. Just the usual sad spectacle of kids with big guns and small brains. The jury came back yesterday and sentenced a sixteen-year-old, tried as an adult, to fifteen years for second degree. Seems he and his homey had a falling out and they had to pop a cap on each other.”

  Monk moved his hand up to the center of her back, the topic shifting both of their moods. “Over?”

  Kodama shook her head slightly from side to side. “Bullshit. One accused the other of ripping off his rap lyrics.”

  “Kids who have nothing attach a lot of meaning to whatever it is they can hold onto for themselves. Whatever it is they can call their own.”

  “Now who sounds like a feminazi, fag-loving liberal,” she snorted playfully. She got on top of Monk and rocked easily. “How’s your case going?”

  Monk told her, omitting his scene with Gloria of the back issues department.

  “Have you looked around in Scatterboy’s pad?” Kodama leaned close and took a bite on a particular spot on Monk’s chest. It was on an old wound he’d received from a ricocheting .38 slug.

  “Yeah, he had a little hovel down in the Shores, which contained nothing in the way of a clue. He was killed not too far from it, though.” Monk’s words triggered the image of the odd assortment of young men he’d encountered earlier.

  “What?” Kodama said, noticing his drift.

  Monk mentioned the young men and what the man at the hamburger stand had said to him.

  Kodama reared back contemplatively. “If one of them was this Angel Z, then could be he was with Scatterboy that night. Maybe these young men know something no one else does about the Shoreline Killer.”

  “Could be,” Monk conceded. “Or it maybe it’s just one more urban folktale started by bored men sitting on crates at Junior’s Liquors.”

  “Hey, how about some kind of vigilante, someone who’s had it with incompetent cops, and knee-jerk liberal judges.”

  Genuine surprise animated Monk’s face. “You joined the fuckin’ NRA?”

  “The only thing I’m fucking,” she reached back and tenderly grabbed his testicles, “is between you and me, honey.” She let go and folded her arms, giving her a supercilious look astride the naked detective. “People don’t want to try anymore. It’s not by accident we’re building 22 new prisons in this state.”

  Monk placed his hand on her muscled brown thigh. “But that’s the easy answer. The Great Society didn’t work, it’s ’cause them dark folks ain’t got the intelligence to raise themselves out of the ghetto.”

  “What’s the real answer then, Ivan?”

  “We learn from the past, Jill. Don’t create more poverty pimps, and take a few lessons in ruthlessness from our enemies.”

  Kodama stopped rocking and got very serious. “How ruthless?”

  “Enough.”

  “You’re taking this case kind’a personal, aren’t you?”

  “I’m cool.” He said, trying to sound detached.

  “All right.”

  Testily he replied. “If you got something to say, your honor, say it.”

  She got off, eyeing him. “Do you want to make this killer pay for every wrong done to African Americans? Wrongs done to you?”

  “Apparently it’s okay if the killer wants all black men to pay for some wrong done to him or some other white person.” That sounded worse than he’d intended.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Then what are you asking?”

  “Look, if it was JAs or other Asians I might not be so objective either.”

  Monk sat up. “But I’m supposed to be. I’m just supposed to go about finding this white-haired motherfuckah like looking for a guy bouncing checks.”

  There was a silence while Kodama seemed to collect her temper. “The other night you got drunk because of what this alleged white killer had done to Jimmy Henderson. And now you feel all protective of Clarice and her daughter.”

  “That make me a bad person, Jill?”

  “Of course it doesn’t. Your caring is one of the qualities I love you for, darling. But I’m concerned that you have this thing wrapped around your brain, Ivan. It’s squeezing too tight. This killer, or killers, can’t stand-in for every racist and bigot in America, baby.”

  Monk got his arms and hands working. “I’m a professional, Jill, I know what the hell I’m doing.”

  She touched him. “I just don’t want you getting so deep in this you can’t see straight. Or you do something so—”

  “What?” he challenged.

  “You should see the look on your face,” she said hoarsely.

  Indignantly, he said, “I have feelings involved, I admit that. It ain’t like any black man with any good sense wouldn’t. But I’m not out of control, dig?”

  “The very fact my advice makes you so defensive, is an indication—”

  His voice raising, “Hey, stall me out on the indication, all right?”

  “Fine, shithead.” Her temper finally gave way to his unreasonableness. Kodama got out of bed, put on her robe, and stalked out of the bedroom.

  Monk hit the headboard and turned on the portable TV. David Letterman was playing the dozens with Madonna. Just as well, he rationalized. He was having too much doubt about them moving in together to bring it up tonight anyway. From the medicine cabinet he got the clippers and cut his toenails.

  Chapter 11

  Walter Kane’s hand was on the man’s upper thigh, rubbing and kneading the conditioned muscles encased in the light blue faded jeans. The other man, Chip, nuzzled the senator’s aide on the neck as the hand moved upwards. A bottle shattered on the floor. Kane was inclined to ignore it but then somebody screamed and he was forced to look around.

  “Fire, fire!” a voice in the cozy dimly lit bar yelled out.

  Chip’s eyes flashed open and he almost fell off the bar stool. “Jesus, look, Walter.”

  Kane spun around and saw a bright glow creeping into the room from the doorway. Reflexively, he leapt off his stool and started for the door, removing the jean waist jacket he was wearing. Two others were also running toward the door, one of them holding a fire extinguisher.

  Foam shot from the device’s nozzle in a spray of snowy mist. There was another crash and instantly Kane turned to the source. To his left another fire blossomed on top of a lacquered table, like a baked Alaska gone awry. Wind billowed the curtains above the table and over the broken window. They caught fire even as Kane made it to the spot.

  He yanked the curtains free from the rod and threw the burning cloth to the floor. He slapped at the table with his jacket again and again. A smell of gas permeated the room and Kane could see the remnants of the bottle all about him, the vestiges of the home-made Molotov cocktail which had come in through the window.

  A lick of flame tongued at his shirt but he kept beating at the fire with his jacket. Gas eddied off the table onto the floor and he was certain the fire would spread. Fortunately, Kane was soon joined by the man with the extinguisher who swept at the flaming currents on the
floor.

  “Eat me, faggots.”

  Through the broken window Kane could see a pick-up truck, riding high on lifts and big tires, roar past the window. He tore away from the table and made for the entranceway.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Chip demanded, grabbing at him.

  “Come on,” Kane said through gritted teeth. He went through the now-tattered curtain and out onto the street in time to see the truck zoom past.

  “Crack-lickin’ low life mutants.” A white teenager was leaning half out of the passenger window gesticulating and shouting at them. “The War Reich will kick you ass-reaming pigs off this earth.” With that he let out a rebel yell and the truck hauled east along Larrabee, swallowed by the nebula of one a.m. West Hollywood.

  “Fuck you, redneck,” one of the denizens who was out at this hour bellowed.

  Several people gathered around the Spike, the firebombed bar. They comforted those who came stumbling out into the cool early hours. Chip put his arm around Kane. “Are you all right? You’re shivering, let’s get home.”

  Kane was focused on the end of the street and what lay beyond it. “I’m not cold, Chip. I’m shaking because I want to tear someone’s head off.”

  “Let’s go home,” the other man emphasized.

  Kane kissed him and said, “And in the morning, let’s buy a gun for the apartment.”

  Chip mumbled a lame, “Sure,” to avoid an argument, but knew he would talk sense into him later. Shortly, as they sweated by the heat from the fireplace, Kane entered his lover from behind. He drove hard as his powerful hands clutched the other’s slim legs. The larger-built man was hissing with pleasure as Chip matched the rhythm of his body.

  “I can smell blood in the air,” Kane said later in a voice belonging to a stranger. “There’s going to be a new day, a new way of doing things.”

  Chip was fascinated by the ragged emotion Kane expressed. He found a sensual new quality to embrace about his man. It only occurred to him later that it also frightened him.

  Chapter 12

  “Whoomp, there it is.” Lieutenant Detective Marasco Seguin, Wilshire Division LAPD, gently tossed the folded newspaper onto the tabletop.

  Monk, sitting with Grant, nodded at his friend. “You won the lottery and your picture is on the front page.”

  Seguin eased out of the charcoal Hugo Boss double-breasted jacket. He draped the coat around the back of the chair and took a seat opposite. “I wish I was, ’cause I could have told the captain to go ‘f’ himself when he told me to find you this morning.”

  Over a mouthful of grits, Grant said, “What gives?”

  Seguin unfolded the paper. It was a copy of the Los Angeles Sentinel, the venerable black weekly. He pointed at a headline slugged below and to the left of the masthead. “My captain gets a call from a sheriffs captain named Olson very early this morning. Seems this Olson had an understanding with a certain private eye known for playing the angles.”

  “Stop, you’ll turn my head,” Monk teased. The headline read: “Black Men Targets in Pacific Shores.” Monk skimmed through the first few paragraphs then looked up. “This isn’t my fault, Marasco. Bradford’s been ducking my calls for the last couple of days.”

  Grant moved the paper so he could read it. While he did, he mixed some of his scrambled eggs with his grits, and forked in a healthy portion. He then picked up the paper and opened it to where the article continued on the inside.

  The waitress came over and Seguin placed his order. She went away and the plainclothesman made a brief survey of those gathered for breakfast at Dulan’s. The restaurant was located on the southern end of the Crenshaw Strip, a major thoroughfare of the black business district. Stores along this section of the boulevard ranged from the three “Bs,” the staples of black businesses—beauty shops, barber shops and barbecues—to banks and major chains like Sears in the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Mall.

  Even the avant-garde was served via Leimert and Degnan Streets that veered off Crenshaw. Located there was a cafe where jazz could be heard on its upper floor until early into the morning on weekends. Another place offered live theater. And a writer’s workshop with an open mike session was at yet another location.

  Dulan’s was where the shakers and breakers, the preachers and back sliders in the African American community had their power confabs over such fare as hot links and biscuits or trenchers of meat loaf savored with peppers and herbs.

  Seguin waved at a city councilman who the other week had been on local TV shaking a finger at the Chief of Police. He said to Monk, “So lay it on me, bro’, make me look good to the brass.”

  Monk slavered jelly across his buttered wheat toast. “There must be something more than Olson being pissed off for your boy to send you out to talk to me, Marasco.” He took a big bite.

  The city cop leaned back in his chair and rubbed an index finger along one side of his drooping mustache. “We’d like to know just what are your interests in the murders down in the Shores.”

  Monk asked, “Is Harbor Division officially investigating these murders?”

  “Yes, and coordinating with a contingent in Orange County.”

  Grant spoke up. “Then the official line is the killer is coming across the border to do his dirty work.”

  “There’s nothing that organized, Dex, aside from coordinating the sharing of information at this point.”

  Monk proceeded to tell his friend of the events that led to his encounter with the weight-lifting sergeant and the media-wise Captain Olson.

  Seguin’s order arrived and he thanked the waitress. He ate in silence and listened, then said, “So this Malik Bradford, the one quoted in this article, has a personal and political agenda?”

  “Like I said, I haven’t talked with him yet but from what Grant found out over at Long Beach State, it would seem my man has got something going on.”

  Seguin turned his head in Grant’s direction.

  “The kid is a campus activist and does a weekly opinion column in the school paper. He imparts his views on such issues as the homeless, police abuse, black self-development and the need for national health care.” Grant polished off his grits and gravy by sopping up the remains with a biscuit. “Even I have to admit the kid’s not all hot air.”

  “Then he’s the next coming of Farrakhan?” Seguin asked genuinely.

  “I read the copies Dex made of Bradford’s stuff, he’s for real,” Monk interjected.

  “What do you make of his excursions into the Shores on these patrols of his?” Seguin stirred milk into his coffee.

  “You mean do I think he’s just grandstanding to get headlines?”

  “Whatever,” Seguin replied.

  “Probably like any dissident worth his copy of Let Them Call Me Rebel” he’s got to get out amongst them, Marasco.”

  “Part opportunist and part idealist,” Grant said.

  “Nothing wrong with that as long as you can keep the balance,” Monk concluded.

  “Sure you right.” Seguin ate more of his breakfast.

  “Now that I’ve been so forthcoming, how about a little something from your end?” Monk finally asked.

  Seguin made a big production of looking at his watch. “Gosh, can you believe it?”

  “Oh, what a fucking comic you are,” Monk deadpanned.

  “Don’t you know I have to keep alive the myth of the antagonism between PI’s and cops?” his friend teased.

  Monk went on. “You guys are talking with your counterparts in the Orange wasteland. Even if it’s not official, what’s the operating theory?”

  “Several scenarios are being considered, including white supremacists on a mission. Suburban revenge for specific crimes. Vigilante justice. We’re not ruling anything out. There’s also the angle about white bikers in Calipatria Prison trying to corner a piece of the crack market. Several of these guys are from the San Pedro-Wilmington area.”

  Seguin added, “The drug dealer who was killed, Ronny Aaron, seems he had
a run-in with one of these boys about half a year ago.”

  “Over turf?” Grant asked.

  “Yeah,” Seguin responded. “And the one called Midnight, Brian Lake, he’s been known to help launder drug money.”

  “Have you heard if any of the civil rights groups or other black organizations have received letters or calls lately?” Monk said.

  Seguin gave him an even-tempered look. “Southwest reports that the Southern Christian Leadership Council has received several hate calls since this business started. But they seem generic, you know, the usual stuff like the jigaboos got what was coming to them and so forth.”

  “Were all the shootings done with the same gun?” Grant broke in.

  “No. Each shooting involved a different caliber weapon. And we’re supposed to get the report today from Olson on the rounds fired at Ivan.”

  Seguin took another bite of his unfinished omelet, rose, and threw some money onto the table. “I really gotta book, gents. Officially, Ivan, I’m to remind you as a licensed investigator the authorities would like to be kept informed of your progress.” He winked broadly. “The reality is ain’t nobody got a good solid lead to follow up. Give me something down the road, all right?”

  Monk held up two fingers pressed together. “You know me and the police, ocifer.”

  “Thanks, brougham.” Seguin slipped his fluidly muscled frame into his jacket then said, “You two take it slow.”

  Grant snorted, “At my age, I’ll take it any way I can get it.”

  “I know you will.” Seguin saluted and marched out of Dulan’s.

  Monk said, “The different kinds of guns could just mean our killer has more than one piece at his disposal.”

  “Yeah. Between the two of us we’ve got six or seven gats. Look, I’ve still got a couple of contacts down in Anaheim. What about I take a run out there and see what I can see?” Grant slurped at some orange juice.

  “Sure, as long as you feel up to it.” Concern tinged Monk’s comment. He recalled an incident in a warehouse where he’d let Grant talk him into going along. The older man got shot and Monk spent sleepless nights second-guessing his decision.