Perdition, U.S.A. Read online

  “You see I can’t stay away from you,” he quipped.

  “You just love me for my musty newsprint.”

  Monk made a sound like enjoying a good meal.

  Traylor unlocked the door and they entered the darkened interior. She brought the lights to life and handed Monk a piece of paper from her desk. On it, in an unmistakable feminine script, were several brief listings and dates in parentheses.

  “I asked Houston, the paper’s old crime beat reporter,” she began, sitting at her desk. “Those are the incidents he could remember where the victim was white and the alleged attacker was black. And where it happened in or around the Shores. The dates are the approximate year and month the crimes happened.”

  She folded her hands and tapped her thumbs together. “You know there’s a piece in today’s Press-Telegram by Houston saying the sheriff and the cops on both sides of the border are working jointly on finding the Shoreline Killer.”

  Monk was sitting across from her, perusing the sheet she’d given him. “Yeah, I figured as much. You know, now that I give it some more thought, it might even be the mugging or robbery I’m looking for could have happened in Long Beach, or Seal Beach, or other parts around here.”

  “And the crook was from the Shores,” she opined.

  “Exactly.”

  “Then you have an almost impossible task. Our news reports wouldn’t be so complete as to give you that kind of information on each incident. Only the law and their computers could do that.” A woman in a Cardigan sweater with a pair of half-glasses suspended around her neck by a gold lame cord entered. Traylor helped her, then returned to the desk.

  “Also, how far back are you going to look?” she said.

  “I’ll go back three years.” Monk got up. “Is there a coffee machine around here?”

  Traylor gave him a mug and directions to a carafe located down the hall in a cubby hole. Monk filled the cup then returned to her department to begin his search for needles in a haystack of microfiche. So great was his dread of the tedium that lay before him, that he’d prefer to be staked out naked over a hill of angry red ants, awash in honey, with his eyelids peeled back. That or be forced to listen to an Al Gore speech. He took a deep breath and entered the chamber of doom.

  Chapter 13

  “You see,” the man in the dress slacks was telling Grant, “the niggers and the greasers are undermining our Christian way of government. And they are financed and protected by Jewish-dominated organizations like the NAACP and these so-called immigration rights groups.”

  Grant was sitting in the neatly-kept second-story office of ARM, the Aryan Resistance Movement. It was located on a serene commercial street lined with maple trees in Garden Grove, in the middle of Orange County. The man talking calmly was Earl Hooks, secretary-treasurer of the Southern California chapter of the supremacist organization, and editor of their regional newspaper.

  When Grant had first entered, he had noticed a young man stuffing envelopes at a table, who had soon left and then returned. The kid was no more than twenty-two or -three, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt buttoned to the collar. He was wearing red suspenders and his hair was cut moderately long. On the table where he worked a boom box banged out some God-awful caterwauling whose lyrics the older man couldn’t make out save for an occasional, “Drive them to sea, drive the mud people to the sea.”

  Grant had caught the slight hand movement from Hooks that sent the kid on his errand and he knew what that errand was—to check on Grant through the license number of the car he had parked outside. Grant realized they had seen him arrive since their office was located on the corner and afforded a good view of the intersecting streets. Fortunately, he’d established a cover. He was driving his daughter’s car with changed plates and through a friend in the DMV he’d arranged for a fake name to come up on the computer. Grant felt his facade was intact.

  Hooks was talking. “You see, Norman, our movement may have been set back by these years of dyke-loving, flag-burning judges and lawyers always running around looking for the next poor minority to defend. And let’s be frank,” the supremacist winked, “there’s plenty of these supposed conservatives who talk a good game but are just as guilty of feeding at the bureaucracy trough as the socialistic Democrats.”

  “You mean it’s really to keep the movement down,” Grant reckoned.

  “Exactly. Pat Buchanan is supposed to be speaking for American culture yet he dodged his duty in Vietnam by taking a deferment. See, we can’t be having those kind of mixed signals. We have to steer a steady course.”

  “I know what you mean, Mr. Hooks.”

  “Call me Earl.”

  “Okay, Earl. I worked a long time in the sales game, traveling all over the place. Detroit, Washington D.C., New York—”

  “Once good cities, cities that were the heart of this country, once-proud centers of industry that the niggers and spics have run down,” Hooks amplified.

  Grant nodded. “Well, like I say, I know I’m a little late in getting on the bandwagon, but now with my grand kids growing up and all, I feel I should be doing something to ensure their future.”

  “Do you have pictures of them?” Hooks asked, feigning innocence.

  Grant pulled out the wallet his pal on the Santa Ana P.D. had helped him to prepare for his back-up story. He flipped it open, making sure the secretary-treasurer got a glimpse of the license that stated his name as “Norman Andrews.” He showed Hooks a picture of a blonde Santa Ana police woman with a tow-haired girl and a brown-haired boy in a Raiders T-shirt.

  “The contamination’s already beginning,” the ARM member dourly commented, pointing at the T-shirt.

  Grant swallowed hard. “I know. Dan even has posters of that big basketball-playing buck on the wall in his bedroom. Shack something or another.”

  Hooks, in his mid-forties, thick but solid, shook his head from side to side, a psychoanalyst understanding his patient’s troubles. “I think that’s why men like you, Norman, men who’ve worked hard all their life, are coming to us.” He leveled serious eyes on Grant. “And why the young are tired of being brow-beat by porch monkeys with Ph.D.s and pussy-licking fembots who defend women who cut off men’s penises.”

  “I’ve been reading some of Bobby Bright’s stuff,” Grant said. Bright, the leader of ARM, was rumored to be living in a fortified compound in Montana. He criss-crossed the country whipping up the troops and the great unwashed in the cause of white supremacy.

  A former syndicated radio personality, Bright made appearances on Oprah and Sunday news shows, willing and able to debate his movement’s goals and objectives. Aided by hair plug transplants, a strict diet and a tummy tuck, Bright was the Bishop Sheen of the white supremacist set.

  He’d published numerous articles in the supremacist press, some of which surfaced in the mainstream. And using a small publisher north of San Francisco, Bright had put out a book of essays promoting with great exactitude the reasons, both historical and scientific, behind the greatness of the white race.

  From a stack of papers and magazines, Hooks handed a recent issue of ARM’s newsletter across to Grant.

  “We had to go back to the printer twice on this one it was so popular.” He held aloft a copy of The Insurgent. Grant smiled like a spoon-fed goon. On the front page was a 60-point headline that read: “White Man’s Manifesto.” It was subtitled, “How We Will Take Back Our Country, House by House.”

  There was a bust shot of Bright set in the body of the text.

  He was a dark-locked man who combed his transplanted hair straight back from a high forehead. His neck, large and muscular, like an offensive lineman’s, was attached to a face of pronounced angular lines partially obscured by a full beard. Even in the grainy reproduction, the eyes suggested a willful personality.

  Grant said, “Can I come to the next meeting?”

  Hooks rubbed a side of his face with an open palm. “Once I check out the information you gave me, I’ll let you know.”
r />   “What? I look like a cop? I’m too damn old.”

  “You look to be in pretty good shape if you’re the age you say you are,” the beefy man replied. He gave Grant another once-over. “The FBI headed by that kike has been sucking around our movement, and the Jews and jigaboos in the IRS keep threatening to take away the nonprofit status of our publications division. We have to be careful.”

  Grant had provided Hooks with information and phone numbers that would put him in touch with some old cronies from his days on the LAPD who would prop up his false front. “I understand your need for security.” He got up, holding onto his copy of The Insurgent like it was holy scripture.

  The other man clapped Grant on the back and handed him a brochure. On the cover was a photo of a young Chicano clothed in sagging khakis with a bandanna wrapped around his head. The title read: “The Future of America.” Grant shook the other man’s hand. “I appreciate you taking the time with me, Earl.”

  “My pleasure, Norman. I look toward to seeing you around. You’ll be hearing from us.”

  Of that he was sure. Grant left the office and got into his daughter’s car. He took the 22 freeway back into L.A. County, passing hillsides still scared and barren from the devastating fires of recent memory. The fires before the last quake that rocked the Southland.

  It had been a particularly hot and dry winter, even by Southern California standards. The fabled Santa Anas had barreled down from their mountain passes and spread the blazes from Ventura County all the way down to the Mexican border.

  Some were set by humans, and others by the caprice of fate.

  Yet all were subject to the unyielding laws of physics. More than two weeks of flame and heat had burned massive patches of ground where once homes and businesses, and forests and groves, had existed.

  Near where Grant lived in Lake Elsinore, in Riverside County, some eight thousand acres of timberland were consumed in the Cleveland National Forest. The aging ex-cop, like many of his neighbors, had spent a night on his roof, hosing down his fire-retardant shingles. The blazing sky, a tremendous coppery orange shot through with huge funnels of black smoke, reminded him of another night long ago, when Berlin fell at the end of the war.

  The then-young Oklahoman was an operative for the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, the U.S. intelligence agency and forerunner of the CIA. Headed by the loquacious “Wild” Bill Donovan, the OSS gathered information and carried out sabotage. Grant, fluent in German—thanks to his uncle, an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World—and just young and strong enough to think he was tough shit, had parachuted with three others behind enemy lines.

  Their job was to plant ground transmitters that would confuse the radio signals of the Soviet planes, should they reach the capitol of the Reich before the Western allies did. The task was to protect U.S. interests in Germany, financial and political. The future of trans-national capitalism lay ahead. It was okay to bomb the ball bearing works in Schweinfurt or anti-aircraft placements in Regensburg but certain areas in Berlin were off-limits. That wasn’t how it was explained to Grant and his colleagues at the time but years later, piecing together subsequent events, Grant arrived at that conclusion. Perhaps his post-war reasoning had been a further contribution from his Wobbly uncle.

  The sky that night in 1945 took on the rich color of aged wine as the Flying Fortresses blasted emplacements on the outskirts of the city. Watching the evening light up and hearing the awful roar of the bombs exploding from his hiding place, Grant learned something about himself then. Something that came back to him while he stood on his roof, mesmerized by the glow not so far away. He loved it. Not fire like some slobbering pyromaniac, but the excitement that dangerous situations brought. The heady stuff of moving through the enemy’s camp, not knowing when, or if, you’d get caught.

  Like being an LAPD detective, or a private eye, like he was when he left the force in the mid-seventies. A long time ago he’d come to the disheartening revelation that it wasn’t justice and great truth he was after, but the chance to make his mind and body work together as a crafty machine. The fact that he found criminal behavior abhorrent was secondary. But on his roof, in the midst of the fire, he was just an old man with a water hose in his hand, and meandering memories crowding his mind.

  Eventually the maze of freeways which compose the blood system of the wicked beast that is Los Angeles carried Grant back into the city. He took the exit on Riverside Drive and stopped to purchase a bottle of Johnny Walker Black at a market on Hyperion. He drove above the area of the Silverlake Reservoir and parked at Jill Kodama’s house, which commanded a view of the water.

  “Dexter,” she said warmly upon opening the door.

  “Hey, doll,” he responded, kissing her on the cheek. He ambled into the split level home and closed the door behind him. A certain smell drifted to him and he said, “Working on a new one, huh?”

  “Yeah, Ivan hates it.” Kodama gloated, taking the bottle of whiskey toward the kitchen. “You know where everything is.”

  Grant went into her study. It was comfortably furnished in an odd but workable mixture of Art Deco and Japanese functional. Along one wall was a built-in bookcase of volumes ranging from the latest John Grisham to reprints of Engels.

  On an easel was a stretched canvas Kodama had prepared herself, with the beginnings of her latest oil painting. The composition had been laid out in graphite transfer and a fresh undercoat had been applied. The image depicted three people in a barge with a standing helmsman. The passengers had their heads down, forlorn looking. The boat floated along in a cavern while gaseous charges erupting from the surface of the still water. The boat’s pilot bore a close resemblance to Monk.

  “Damn,” Grant declared.

  “Here,” Kodama said, handing Grant some Johnny Walker on the rocks in a heavy stout glass.

  “Thanks. So what does it mean that our man here is escorting the doomed on the River Styx.”

  “You’ll see when it’s finished.” She wandered off again to the sound of the doorbell. Grant could hear her greeting the painting’s model.

  Monk entered the study. “So what have you been up to, you old croaker sac?”

  “Your mama.”

  “That’s nice.” Monk groaned at the painting. “What the hell, right?”

  “Art is anything you can get away with.” Kodama said, wandering off again.

  “I thought that was life,” Monk retorted. “I’m going to help Jill in the kitchen, then you and I can catch up after dinner.”

  Grant was looking at the painting again. “Sure.”

  The meal was a hit with everyone; southern fried chicken strips combined with a spinach, arugula and corn salad and a fresh baguette. Grant switched from whiskey to a large glass of lemonade. Kodama and Monk each had a glass of a very dry white wine. Afterward, they gathered in the study. All three had neat drafts of the Black Label and Monk was allowed to puff on a small cigarillo.

  “Did you guys hear about what happened to Walter Kane the other night?” Kodama sank beside Monk on the couch.

  Grant, sitting in an easy chair under a Rothko print, shook his head in the negative. “If I might be so bold, who the hell is Walter Kane?”

  Monk told him and added. “I heard Grainger Wu talking about it on the radio.”

  The judge filled them in on the incident at the gay bar. “Someone claiming to represent the War Reich phoned a local TV station and took credit for it. The same night, there was a desecration of a Jewish cemetery, and two assaults on Latinos in Sylmar. The Reich took credit for all of these antics.”

  “They share some office space with ARM out in Garden Grove,” Grant contributed.

  “One of your police pals tell you this?” Monk took a hit on his drink.

  Coyly, Grant said, “Oh I’ve been busy since you’ve been hanging out and looking through musty racks of newspapers, old son.”

  “You’ve been to their office,” Kodama stated.

  “Yep. They might
even make me the activities director before I’m through.”

  Monk’s eyes became slits. “Them chaps ain’t for playin’, Dex.”

  “Thanks, honey, and I’ m gonna save you my ’I been at this longer than you’ve been eating solid food’ speech.” He sampled more of his Johnny Walker. “My friend on the Santa Ana P.D. told me the cops down there are definitely working the angle that the killer is coming across the Orange County line into the Shores and going back when he’s done.”

  “How did they conclude that?” Monk asked earnestly.

  “The scuttlebutt I got is from some of the guys on the anti-gang detail in the barrio in Santa Ana. They heard from some of the kids who said they spotted the white-haired man driving a red Jeep around there.”

  “Is the killer lining up his next target area?” Kodama wondered aloud.

  “Maybe. And then there’s this.” Grant took out a folded paper from his inside jacket pocket. He handed it across to Kodama. It was the copy of The Insurgent that Hooks had given him.

  Sarcastically Monk remarked, “The brilliancy of Bobby Bright.”

  “Who changed his name from Derek Beckworth when he started doing radio,” Kodama added.

  “Take a look at the want-ad section.” Grant said, sitting down again.

  Kodama paged through the publication. She and Monk looked through several ads for mercenaries, two for databases that provided listings of leftist and liberal organizations, and one detailing where to buy WWII-era .50-caliber machine guns complete with tripod mount. Modified not to be able to shoot, of course. Kodama pointed at a bold-faced announcement boxed in by a thick black border. It read: “To my Aryan brothers and sisters, keep the faith, your defeat on Winslow shall not go unpunished.” It was unsigned.

  Monk bit. “Okay, what the hell is Winslow?”

  Grant explained. “It’s the main street where Tri-Harbor Community College in Wilmington is located. A couple of months ago there was a dance at the gym. Afterward, some of the young folks, black kids mostly, were hanging around out front. Now who should roll up drunk but a bunch of white kids out for a night’s entertainment.”