Perdition, U.S.A. Read online

  Chapter 19

  The following day Monk ate a big breakfast at Dudley’s Shack. The topic of conversation was, naturally, Bobby Bright and his return to town.

  “I ought to take this here leg bone and choke that redneck to death,” an elderly gent in thick lenses proclaimed, sitting at a table of his peers.

  “That wouldn’t stop them young lions from stretchin’ your sorry wrinkled ass from one tree to the next,” a compatriot unkindly replied.

  “Sheeit,” the first man responded, “I got my cold blue Colt .44 says I’ll bury some of them goose-steppers ’fore they can say ‘I love you, Hitler.’”

  The old fellows broke up at that one and went on to another topic.

  Monk finished his stack of wheat cakes and went back to Velotis Records. He hoped but hadn’t expected to catch Lonetta Thomas in this early. He returned to his room, unpacked his gun and checked it. It was an unnecessary act since he’d done that before leaving L.A., and it was unlikely it would’ve been touched since arriving in the Northwest. He sat on the bed, idly gazing out the window, the .45 slack in his hand.

  He felt odd, like he was operating on unprocessed mental energy. All his nerves seemed to be right on the surface and it bothered him that he wasn’t as detached as he liked to be on a job. He looked at the automatic and frowned at it.

  On Saturday, Monk fantasized, he could stand on the periphery of the crowd gathered to hear Bright lather and foam. The supremacist leader would be going on about the mud slide and his plans for dealing with it.

  Suddenly a pistol shot would disturb the air, then another, and another. In the confusion, Blight’s bodyguards would try to get him to a waiting car. And that’s where he’d do him, having created the diversion. Sure they’d arrest him, hell maybe the crowd would string him up on the spot.

  Big deal. He’d go down in the history books, at least the real ones, as a hero of the class and race struggle. A determined brother who just wouldn’t take no shit from this self-styled savior of the white race. Somebody laughed but it didn’t sound like anybody he knew. Damn. Come on, Monk, check yourself before you wreck yourself. You got a killer to catch. He placed the weapon back in his suitcase, and slid the whole thing under the bed.

  He washed his face with cold water for a long time and reentered Perdition’s dry air. He staked out the two places where he’d run across red Jeeps. Nothing came of that and then he went to two used car lots on the off chance the killer may have traded his vehicle in for another.

  The killer could have just as easily done that on the road back, but Monk doubted it. The dead-faced man would have been listening to the news which made much of the police theory that the Shores slayer was a California product.

  But once back on his home turf, would he have ditched the vehicle? Monk concluded the killer wouldn’t. It was his badge of honor among his kind, a roving trophy in the gallery of hate crimes.

  Monk brought the car to rest near Elihu Park and got out. A matronly woman on a stroll, wearing a string of discolored pearls, glared at Monk like he was the exterminator and he hadn’t gotten rid of her bug problem.

  It didn’t take him too long to find what he was looking for. It was in a rehabbed brick building two doors down from one of those instant lube places. The company’s logo, on the roof over the service bay, was a plastic statue of a puffy mechanic in crisp overalls brandishing a gleaming grease gun, suggesting a certain kind of military precision when you brought your car in for work. The street was a few blocks northeast of the park in the beginning of what remained of Perdition’s industrial zone.

  War Reich’s corner office didn’t have a neon sign in the window flashing “We Hate Minorities,” but it wasn’t too hard to miss. Out in front was a rack containing several pieces of their doggerel including a recent copy of their newsletter. Monk helped himself to several samples and tried the door, but it was locked. He went around back and came upon four men in their twenties and a disemboweled ’68 Camaro. A bumper sticker plastered on the back end of the trunk read: “The Original Boys in the Hood.” The car’s block was suspended from a hoist. One of the skins was leaning into the cavity where the engine went, working diligently.

  A portable radio perched on a stepladder played a number by Bound for Glory, a skinhead rock band. One of the youths, with a bulging gut poking out of a sweat shirt too little for him, was drinking a beer. He immediately halted at the sight of Monk. Like in a cartoon, the can was frozen inches from his shocked face.

  “You stopped by to sign up, darkie?” a lanky skin joked.

  “No. But I was wondering if your mama was still giving out blowjobs in the back of the drive-in.”

  Skinny came at Monk with a heavy duty screwdriver thrust forward like a knife. Executing a move his martial-arts-trained friend Seguin had taught him, he deflected the screwdriver and hurled the man over a leg onto the ground. Casually, he kicked the man in the face as he tried to right himself.

  The beer-bellied one had started toward Monk, but he was already moving in on him. The private eye got his arms around the heavier man’s legs and drove him back into the fender of the Camaro. He couldn’t see them, but Monk knew the other two must be working their way closer, and he wanted to get untangled from beer belly.

  A fist crashed down in a spot between his shoulder blades but he was already turning and ramming his head up and into the underside of the thin one’s jaw. It clapped together loudly, and Monk moved his body to the left, rotating back around and straightening up.

  The one who’d been working on the car, a tallow-haired youth, brandished a long-handled socket wrench. “You best take your monkey ass out of here.”

  The fourth one, about twenty-two or -three with a shaved scalp and a pigtail down the back, stood off, examining the scene. Scared or just strategic?

  Monk cranked it up several notches. “Why? Four against one not good enough odds for you inbred motherfuckahs? How about ten against an eight-year-old in a wheelchair?”

  The heavy one again lurched forward and Monk buried a straight left into the intersection of his sternum and stomach. The younger man exhaled a gust of bad breath and sank to his knees. Monk did a roundhouse kick, connecting the side of his shoe to the side of the man’s face. He went over like a busted retaining wall.

  Nothing happened for several moments, time stretching and nerves compressing. A pressure was building up behind Monk’s eye and he wondered if his brain were about to liquify and pour through his nose. It seemed to remain like that for a season as everyone stood immobile like trees.

  A bronze two-toned four-door Lincoln Town Car came into view and pulled to a stop on the oil-stained dirt near the Camaro. A man who’d have a hard time fitting into one of Elrod’s coats excavated himself from the driver’s seat. He wore a short-sleeved shirt to better showcase his corded arms which were slathered in tattoos. A Vermillion swastika stood out like a fresh wound on the back of one of his massive hands.

  The door on the passenger side opened and another man, this one in more human proportions, also got out. He was a well-preserved individual in his late fifties, dressed in a crisp brown pin-striped suit and burgundy shirt. His face was partially obscured by huge wraparound shades. The Lincoln’s back door opened and Bobby Bright stepped out. His attire was casual in worn Levi’s, work boots and a multi-colored cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up. A grain salesman making a stop on his route.

  “Gentlemen,” Bright said, taking in the scene. “Is there something we can help out with here?”

  The massive driver moved closer to Monk, smiling with pleasure. The sensation behind his eye seemed to be spreading across the inside of his face, creating a subterranean mask whose features were a distortion of the outer shell. He had a notion to find out how hard the giant could hit, but managed enough control to remain still.

  “I don’t think that will be necessary, Garth.” Bright spoke with his hands clasped before him like a country preacher. “I’m sure this … person has finished hi
s fun for today.” The capped teeth in his head were evenly spaced and gleamed like an ad for fluoride.

  Reason flooded back into Monk and he was suddenly aware of his vulnerability. How stupid it was to push things with these racists. And now it was the head supremacist who was giving him his out. Probably worried if they killed him somebody from the shop next door might see them. Or maybe not. Maybe Bright figured Monk not worth the effort. He had more important trains to run on schedule.

  He almost didn’t want to take it but turned and went back the way he’d come, memorizing the license number of the Lincoln. Presently, he found himself at Velotis Records.

  “Hi,” Lonetta Thomas greeted him. She was busy cataloging a stack of 45s in the computer.

  “Hello yourself. Mind if I ask you a few more questions about Perdition?” There was a smattering of people in the shop. An olive-skinned teenaged girl with long braids worked the register.

  “You’re a thorough cat. You remind me of my second husband. He was my manager.”

  “I’m not sure how to take that.”

  She laughed heartily. “That’s okay, he didn’t either.” She motioned for Monk to follow her into a office behind the counter. It contained a small desk, three padded chairs and a sparsely stocked bookcase leaning to one side. Along the walls were photographs depicting Thomas in numerous venues over the years. These were interspersed with several gold records.

  “This was at the Hollywood Bowl, wasn’t it?” Monk pointed at one of the shots showing a younger, slimmer Thomas on stage in front of Count Basie’s band. Basie, in an open-collared suit with his omnipresent yachting cap, vigorously worked the piano’s keys.

  “Yep. That’s got to be about twenty-five years ago.” She came over and looked at the photo. “The Count, Carmen, Dinah, Little Esther, Prez, Dexter with his junkie-lidded eyes and flat crown brims, that crazy lizard-brained Miles.…” She shook her head to ward off the tears. “All gone,” she said mournfully.

  “But they left something behind.”

  “You couldn’t have been out of high school then, baby,” she said, referring to the photo. Thomas tapped him playfully on the shoulder and went to sit down behind her desk. From somewhere she brought out her thin cigar and holder and inserted it in a side of her mouth. She made no effort to light it.

  Monk also sat down. “You said Beckworth grew up here.”

  “Who? Oh, I’d forgotten that was his real name. Way I hear it from the old timers, Derek Beckworth was an average kid who played some football and ran track.”

  “How’d you wind up in this place?”

  “After I was diagnosed with the cancer, I knew if I lived, my singing days were over. Unlike many of my peers, I wasn’t ripped off by managers and record companies. Well, I was in the beginning, but we got that shit straight.”

  Monk nodded appreciatively.

  “I was living in Oakland and got tired of all the wonderful life Cokeland had to offer. Christ. I’m sounding like Bright, ain’t I? Anyway, my third husband passed, the kids had moved out, and then I heard about this store coming on the block.”

  “Who owned it before?”

  “Kid Charlemagne, ’member him?” One side of her face raised, waiting.

  Monk had to plow through some rusty doors in his mind but finally found a face to go with the name. “Yeah. Played bass with the King Cole trio for awhile, then was in Eckstine’s band for a good stretch.”

  “Uh-huh. Seems he grew up in Portland when there was hardly no black folks ’round here. He came back up this way to retire from the road, and because he never did like all that rain over there, he bought what used to be an electrical fixture outlet store and made the space into a record shop with classic jazz a specialty. Only he had a second of his three strokes, and his daughter got in contact with me.”

  Monk concentrated on a photo behind and to the left of Thomas’ head. It was a rapier cut of a man draped in a light-colored zoot suit whose coattail was nearly the length of his long legs. He was wearing an incredibly broad hat and seductively hugged an upright bass as if it were a woman he’d been lusting after. Kid Charlemagne in his ascendancy.

  “And what have you heard about Bright’s early days?”

  “Juanita is the one that knows. She used to take care of their house.”

  “Really.”

  The ex-singer idly fingered through a short stack of papers.

  “Yeah, she was the housekeeper when young master Bright was lettering at Whitman High.” An odd contortion pushed at her lips then her face settled back into its normal ironic cast. “You hanging around till Saturday?”

  “Is this the first time ARM and the War Reich have had a rally here?”

  “They tried to pull one off last year, but the NAACP, the ACLU and the Socialist Workers, or whatever they call themselves, had enough warning and brought people into town from Portland and Seattle. The skins were outnumbered ten to one.”

  “Why is this time different?”

  “Bright and his allies. Namely that Christian fascist preacher who runs the church near Hell’s Canyon. The one that says the Holocaust never happened?”

  “Elmore Creed,” Monk amended.

  “Right. Well, this time they hired a part-time organizer to whip up the troops and kept changing the date to throw people off. Plus the fact our Sheriff Hamm is either too incompetent or too much of a sympathizer to try and ride herd on these wild-assed white boys.”

  Monk got up. “Thanks for your time, Lonetta.”

  “Sure, Mr. Ivan Monk.” That odd look returned but she quickly dismissed it. “Stop back in ’fore you split, okay?”

  “I promise.” They shook hands and Monk found a phone booth a few blocks from her shop. He placed two long distance calls using his phone card and talked for several minutes each time. He finished and went back to the rooming house. Juanita Oray wasn’t around but Mr. Khan, the elderly Asian gentleman, was in his usual spot. He waved and Monk waved, and Mr. Khan went back to the Ricki Lake Show.

  Using the phone book, Monk found the names and addresses for the two high schools in Perdition, Whitman and Rainier. Whitman was only a few blocks away, while Rainier, if he had his geography right, was south of downtown.

  It took a little doing, but Monk convinced the gate keeper at Whitman High that Intertek merely wanted to make sure the school was up to snuff. If they did build a facility, some of the management team would relocate also. The sentinel, a woman with reddish blonde hair and a squared-up body like a bookie’s, judiciously reviewed Monk’s card.

  She dialed the number on it and Delilah, as rehearsed, answered. The woman in the school office drilled her. Monk formed the opinion that her main worry centered around how many children of Intertek employees smoked marijuana and listened to gangsta rap or heavy metal. Having satisfied her queries she enthused at Monk as she replaced the handset. “I’ll get you the last few years of the state’s test scores for our kids.”

  “Thanks. I’ll wander over to the library to look around a bit and be back.”

  “Fine.”

  In the library he found copies of Richard Wright’s American Hunger and Orwell’s Animal Farm. It comforted him to know the place wasn’t too backwards. He then found the true object of his search, the old yearbooks. As he had done over at Rainier, he worked back from Bright’s age, and this time located the right volume. Figures, the dude had gone to the more mixed school. Course in those days, Whitman was probably going through a transition. The better to form his theories, Monk mused sarcastically.

  Though he wasn’t sure what he was going to divine, Monk stared at the black and white picture of senior Derek Beckworth with a cocky smile and a cowlick. Huck Finn by way of Lincoln Rockwell.

  Paging through the book, he found a grainy shot of Bright tearing up yardage on the gridiron. There was even one of him and a black kid, fellow shotputters standing side by side proudly holding up their trophies. He went back through Beckworth’s earlier years but found no photo of him at an
I-like-Joe-Goebbels youth rally or kicking stray dogs.

  “Mr. Monk, I have your copies.”

  The helpful woman from the office stood over him as he sat at the table “Nice crop of students you turn out here,” he remarked plain-faced. He closed the book.

  The woman placed a sealed 9x12 envelope on the table. She tried to be sly, but made no effort to hide the curiosity on her face.

  “Thanks for your help, ma’am.” He made no motion to rise.

  She glanced at her watch. “There’s going to be a class here in a few minutes.” For support, she shifted her head toward the librarian, a bear of a man wearing half-glasses quietly reading behind the front counter. If he heard her, he didn’t let on.

  “I’ll just be a little longer.”

  A beat. A piercing look. Another beat. Then. “Very well.” She lingered and Monk opened the book again, casually leafing through it. He heard her huff and puff away.

  He quickly paged through more recent yearbooks, looking for photos of the all-white shooter, but none caught his eye. When his time was up, he left, went back to the rooming house, and got the photo Dexter had filched for him of the skinhead baseball team. He trudged back to Rainier, mad that he hadn’t thought about checking for the gunner in those yearbooks.

  The younger librarian at Rainier waved at him as he strolled over to the yearbook section. Once again, he took out the now-wrinkled photo. The white-faced man, when you looked closer, couldn’t be more than twenty-four, twenty-six at the outside. On his second try, Monk opened the right yearbook. He’d been a point guard on the basketball team and a member of the chess and the junior Kiwanis clubs. The picture was of a taciturn young man whose hair was already showing its premature streaks. The name under the kid with the tapered square jaw was Nolan Meyer.

  Monk looked back through Meyer’s previous yearbooks but, as with Bright, he could find no indication that Rainier High was a hatchery for white supremacists. But he did discover that Rameses had been a sophomore in Meyer’s senior year.