Violent Spring Page 17

  “Motherfucker,” the Scalp Hunter exclaimed. He was trying to free his gun hand which Monk had a serious lock on. He jabbed with his free hand into Monk’s side but his small stature was no thatch for Monk’s greater height and bulk. The private eye got to his feet, holding onto the other’s wrist who was still on his back. He brought his foot down on the young man’s torso for leverage and twisted and jerked the arm forcefully.

  The other one hollered and let go of the gun. Monk grasped it and reached down for him on the floor.

  “Hey.”

  Monk turned at the sound. The Scalp Hunter he’d kicked was standing in the doorway with a gun in his outstretched hand. “Jesus, does everybody have a gun in Los Angeles?” Monk said under his breath. Keeping the small one between them, Monk hauled him to his feet. He kept the gun leveled at his back.

  “Put the gat down,” the one at the doorway commanded.

  “No,” Monk said flatly. He was hoping that Mrs. Chung and the nephew had run out of the store. That had to be why he wasn’t holding one of them hostage. “How long do you think it’ll be before the cops get here?”

  The one in the door allowed his head to turn in the direction of the window looking out onto Pico Boulevard. He looked back at Monk. “Let him go or I’m gonna have to cap you.”

  “Then he dies with me,” Monk said, trying not to show whether he meant it or not. “And what would your homies think of that?”

  The one in the doorway began stepping backwards.

  “What’s up with that, man? You just gonna leave me hangin’?” the other one squawked.

  The first one kept backing up. Monk and the remaining Scalp Hunter, the gun pressed into his spine, remained motionless.

  The gang member who’d been in the doorway disappeared from Monk’s sight. He could hear the jingle of the bells over the front door.

  “So now what, man?”

  Monk cracked the barrel of the gun, a nickle-plated 10 mm Delta Elite, across the base of his neck. He started for the floor, dazed. Monk was already turning and heading for the rear door. He opened it a slit and could see the front end of the Blazer. But he couldn’t see the driver’s door and would have to open the door further to do so. He crouched down and shoved it open.

  Two bullets sent pieces of the doorjamb flying. Monk flattened out behind some crates. He heard the motor of the utility vehicle come to life, and by the time he looked back out again, the truck was moving north, fast, along the alley. Monk considered giving chase in his Galaxie. And almost laughed out loud at the absurd thought.

  He could just see himself tearing after the Blazer, upturning trash cans, causing cars to plow into one another, people diving onto the sidewalk as he and the kid—well, not exactly a kid, they both looked to be in their mid-twenties—tore up city and private property. Losing his license would be the least of his problems. He’d be buried so far under lawsuits he wouldn’t see daylight for eight hundred years. Monk closed the door and reentered the room.

  “You okay?” the nephew asked Monk. He was breathing hard, standing in the store room.

  “I’m fine. David, isn’t it?”

  He indicated yes.

  Monk moved over to the Scalp Hunter on the floor. He bent down, rolled him over and felt his neck. The pulse was strong and regular. The eyelids fluttered. Monk rose. “You call the cops?”

  “Yes, I did. I got my aunt in the store a couple of doors down,” he said, jabbing a finger in that direction.

  The two moved into the front room. “Where’s the kid who was playing the video game?”

  “He ran off too. He’s okay.”

  “What the hell was that noise that distracted our friend?”

  David walked to the counter and Monk followed him. Behind it on the floor was a tall gumball dispenser with the shattered remains of the plastic bubble which held the sticky treats. A multi-color assortment of gumballs littered the floor like psychedelic hail. “I backed up into it,” the young man said sheepishly.

  “You saved my life, man.” Monk extended his hand and the young man pumped it “Look, David, for a lot of different reasons, I don’t want to be here when the cops get here.”

  Incredulously, he said. “What do you want me to tell them?”

  “Tell them everything that happened, just the way it happened, except you don’t know my name. And if you don’t mind, be a little vague on my physical description.”

  “Okay. I figure you saved us a lot of hassle, if not our lives.”

  Sirens were now audible. “What did the Scalp Hunters want?”

  “They said they wanted us to push some of their crack across the counter. Said it would make us all a lot of money. The short one said it would be like the old days with Suh and the Rolling Daltons.”

  Monk said, “I still need to ask your aunt about Jiang.” But he knew time was against him. The sirens were almost on this block.

  “She won’t say anything now, Mr. Monk. She’ll be too terrified.”

  Monk was back in the storeroom, heading for the door. “Okay, okay. How about your uncle, where is he today?”

  “Merchants Group meeting.”

  Monk was getting into the Galaxie, David watching him from the doorway. “Does he know a Roy Park?”

  “Sure. Mr. Park used to be president of the Merchants Group.”

  Monk tore away from the building, down the alley in the same direction that the Blazer had taken.

  MONK GOT BACK to his office and there was a message waiting for him from Maxfield O’Day. The head of Save Our Material Assets stated his apologies that he had to go back out of town again and the two of them would get together by Wednesday of next week. Monk sat down at his desk and leaned back in his swivel. His inside line rang just as he was dozing off. He reached over and picked up the handset.

  “Hello.”

  “Mr. Monk, glad I caught you. I’m on my way to the airport, but thought I’d chance a call from the car here.”

  It was O’Day. Monk said, “The mayor give you a new assignment?”

  “Money and who has it is a very fluid thing in today’s world, young man. We have to catch it where we can. Anyway, I know it’s imperative that we get together. I’m anxious to review your progress on the case. Why don’t you fax your report to my office and they’ll get it to me this weekend and I’ll be up to speed.”

  “Sure. I’d like to get your thoughts on a few things.”

  “By the way, one of the researchers in my firm informed me they found out a little something about this Jiang Holdings.”

  “Good. Like what?”

  “Let me see,” he said, his voice momentarily fading away from the mouthpiece. He then came back on the line. “Jiang is a wholly owned offshore company. It is registered in Hong Kong, yet as far as we can tell, it only does business in the States.”

  “Who are the partners?”

  “That’s been the stickler. Hong Kong, as you know, will be reverting back to the Mainland in less time than it took for Mao’s Thousand-Mile March. Needless to say, a lot of the old running dogs are enacting various constructs, shall we say, to protect their precious shekels.”

  “And identities,” Monk added.

  “Exactly.” The transmission started to break up. “I’ll have my man keep on it, though. But we did get.…”

  The lawyer started to fade out again. Monk strained to listen.

  “… some kind of other office.…”

  “Say it again, will you?” Monk wrote down on his yellow pad the address that O’Day recited. Like a voice at the bottom of a canyon, Monk could hear Maxfield O’Day say goodby, followed by the white noise of electronic nothingness. He hung the phone up, looking at the address. He dialed Jill’s chamber. Jory, the bailiff, answered.

  “No, Monk, she left already. One of the attorneys got sick after lunch, so she recessed till Monday.”

  “Thanks.” Monk picked up the slip of paper with the address, got on his coat, and left the office again.

  Jill
Kodama parked her pearl black Saab in the parking space the Camaro had just left. She got out, beeped the alarm on, and strolled into the Beverly Connection. There was a new attaché case she’d had her eye on in the tony accessory shop on the second floor. She looked at it again, but decided against it. Though she made good money, she still felt self-conscious if she spent too much on herself. The product of a lower-middle-class upbringing, she didn’t want to signal to her friends at Legal Aid and the ACLU that she had sold out.

  Kodama bought herself a cup of cappuccino in the food court and berated herself for berating herself. Just because one became a judge, that didn’t mean you’d stopped fighting for social justice. It had been as much a push from Asian Pacific groups who wanted her in the high profile position as it had been her own ambition. Who better to mete out justice than one who represented a group who had been on the receiving end of injustice so many times. But wasn’t that the rationalization of every hungry politician?

  She bared her even teeth and took another sip of her coffee. So you’ve revealed your true motivation, Kodama. In your heart of hearts you want to run for office. DA? Hell, no. County Supervisor, huh? The judgeship a there stepping stone to further your insatiability for righting wrongs and punishing evildoers. And the fact that Supervisors oversaw huge kingdoms of the sprawling County of the angels. Jill Kodama, County fucking Supervisor. Bullshit. She threw away the empty paper cup and left the mammoth complex.

  Kodama drove over to Betsey Johnson, the woman’s clothing store on Melrose. She walked along the side street where she’d parked her car and was near the corner when someone screamed. It was a pair of young girls in ripped jeans and layered lace tops. The red-and-blue-haired one was yelling and pointing. A sick fear in the middle of her chest blossomed, and the judge couldn’t help it. She half-turned, yet stumbled and ran all the same, knowing what was coming.

  “Rolling Daltons, bitch.”

  The shotgun blast could be heard above the young girl’s screams.

  • • •

  The place didn’t look like money, it looked like hell. It was a squat affair off an alley/street near Riverside Drive on the border of Glendale. There was no sign on the building, only a tiny address over the roll-up door which thatched the address Monk had received from O’Day. He tried the door, but it was locked. He walked around the building, but all the windows were up high near the parapet. In addition, they were barred and their panes composed of frosted glass.

  A trash container was next to an inset door. That too was locked tight. And there was nothing—no paper, no cups, no plastic bag, zip—in the unlocked trash container. Monk got a roll of transparent tape out of his glove compartment and tore off a small piece. This he taped on the bottom edge of the door and across the door jamb. He repeated this with the roll-up door and the concrete slab beneath it. He quit the building and drove back into Los Angeles proper.

  Monk got to his office as dusk began to settle. An unmarked police car he knew well was parked at the curb in front. Marasco sat at the wheel, smoking. The private eye walked up on the driver’s side.

  “The only time you smoke is when you got something on your mind, homeboy.”

  Seguin threw the cigarette to the ground. Quietly he said, without looking at Monk, “Better get in the car, Ivan.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s Jill, she’s been—”

  “What,” Monk yelled, cutting his friend off. He grabbed his shoulder, squeezing hard.

  The tapokata-tapokata machine was surging in his head. He stared at the picture before him, people’s voices buzzing all around him, but it was only the steady pump of the all-purpose, all-weather machine that he could hear. Slowly, as if his ears were unplugging as he descended a great height, Monk began to filter in the voices.

  “She was lucky,” one voice said.

  “Luck, nothing,” the other voice intoned. “It was a warning intended for Monk.”

  “They don’t think that complicated,” the first voice rasped.

  Monk turned to the voices. “Marasco’s right, Keys. How the hell do you miss with a double-barreled shotgun from less than twenty feet unless you really want to?”

  “So why not just kill her?” Keys retorted, adjusting his glasses.

  To stop himself from planting his fist in the upwardly mobile fed’s mouth, Monk turned back to look at Jill.

  “If they kill her, Monk’s got nothing left, and goes after them,” Seguin said. “This way, a close shave on purpose, he’s got more to think about, more to consider.”

  The doctor who was bandaging Kodama’s arm finished and wrote out a prescription for her. “In case there’s any pain,” she said, handing the slip of paper to her. The doctor left the room. Kodama sat on the examining table, incongruously dressed in her slacks and a paisley print paper gown.

  “He’s not the only one who’s got something to consider, boys,” Kodama said, getting off the table.

  “Was it Crosshairs who did this, Judge Kodama?” Keys asked.

  “I really don’t know, Agent Keys. As I’ve told Marasco, they wore ski masks. They were both big, that I could tell.”

  Keys glared at Monk. “What do you have to say to that, Monk?”

  “Look, man, if I knew where to find Sawyer, I wouldn’t be standing here right now having you give me the blues.”

  Keys shook his finger at Monk. “You think you’re slick. Monk. But the Bureau gets what it needs to see that crimes are solved.”

  Monk almost laughed. “Jesus, Keys, did you get that from the one hundred and one quotations of J. Edgar Hoover?”

  “It’s people like you, who subvert the law for their own ends, who are the danger.”

  “I’m not the one fast-tracking black and brown youth for a bullshit few ounces of crack, Keys.”

  “Drug dealers shouldn’t be punished, huh?”

  “There shouldn’t be two tiers of justice, Keys. Possession of powder cocaine, favored by middle-class whites, is not prosecuted under harsher federal sentencing like crack is. And anyway, you damn sure ain’t throwing no real drug dealers in jail. What with the DEA, the Justice Department, and members of the Peruvian and Colombian armies on the pad to the drug lords.”

  “Let me tell you about the brave men and women who’ve died to—”

  “And let me tell you about the brothers dying in the streets every day,” Monk began, cutting the FBI man off.

  They moved closer to one another, jaws tight, muscles tensed. Seguin got between them. “All right, that’s enough.” His attention went to Keys. “The judge said she couldn’t identify her assailants, Keys. She didn’t get a license number on the car, nothing. That’s it.”

  “No it isn’t,” he said, boring his eyes into Monk.

  A silence attached itself to the room. A shroud under which nothing happened for several long moments. Eventually, Keys said, “I want to see the report on my desk this evening, Lieutenant.” He departed.

  “Well, if you boys are through waving your dicks around, give a girl a lift, will you?” She put an arm around Monk’s waist, and they hugged each other.

  “What the hell is going on with this case, Monk?” Seguin said, thrusting his hands in his pockets.

  “I know you mean well, Marasco. But you’ve got to believe me, I don’t have all the answers yet.”

  “But you won’t tell me what pieces you do have?”

  “You’d have to tell Keys.”

  The left side of Seguin’s face twitched. “I’m still my own man, Ivan. You know I don’t give a shit about Keys.”

  “Everybody wants something different out of this.” Monk bit down on his bottom lip. “You’ve got all the machinery, Marasco. All I’ve got is my next check and the client’s signature on it.”

  “I’m sorry this had to come between us.”

  “It’s the nature of our work.”

  Seguin’s angular face arranged itself into hard lines. “I know.” He walked out.

  Monk kissed Jill on the fore
head. He whispered, “I’m sorry, baby. I couldn’t stand it if anything happened to you.”

  “It’s all right. Just some glass from the car’s windshield and a few buckshot pellets.”

  “Right. You could have been cut in half by the blast or your body lit up with 9-mm slugs from an Uzi.”

  “It could happen walking down the street, honey. Or more likely it’ll happen because the crime partners of some guy I sentence to hard time will be just smart enough to find me and pop a cap on me.” She looked up into his face. “I’m not saying I’m not scared. I am saying I can’t let it paralyze me. I won’t just curl up in a ball and wait for the end.”

  “Damn, you’re tough.”

  “Shut up.”

  Kodama got dressed and they checked out of the Kaiser. They drove to El Coyote, a Mexican restaurant over on Beverly, and had a meal out on the patio. Afterwards, Kodama retrieved her car and they went back to Monk’s apartment. They took a shower together and went back out to catch jazz bassist Charlie Hayden and his quintet at a club in Hollywood. It was past one-thirty in the morning when the two got back to Monk’s place in Mar Vista.

  The red light blinked on his answering machine. Monk rewound the device. “Ivan, Ray Smith again. I’ll try you in the morning.”

  Monk and Kodama headed for the bedroom, taking off their clothes as they went. “What did he want? You haven’t seen him in a long time,” Kodama said.

  Monk pulled her close and said in a low voice, “I think he’s going to get me to Crosshairs, and hopefully, his cousin Conrad James.”

  “It could be a set-up.”

  “I realize that. But like you said, I’ve got to go forward on this thing.”

  “You make sure you be careful.”

  They went to bed and made love by the light from the light on his nightstand, casting ever-changing dark shapes across their taut muscles. Damning the watchers if, indeed, they were also under visual surveillance as well as sound by the FBI. The light of morning arrived too quickly, and Monk got out of bed and made them a breakfast of wheat toast, poached eggs and spicy beef sausage. They were just sitting down to it when the phone rang.