Violent Spring Page 21

  “No. He’s not under arrest and he’s not a material witness. We’re leaving,” Kodama said forcefully.

  “Yeah, and call off your lap dog Scarn,” Monk put in.

  Keys presented Monk with an odd look. “Who are you talking about?”

  “You know who I’m talking about.”

  Keys was halfway out of the door when he turned and spoke. “I don’t know this Scarn or what the hell you’re talking about, Monk. Maybe you ought to go home and lie down again. I think running with the big boys is giving you a headache.” He walked out, rolling down his sleeves as he did.

  “You better not be shittin’ on us, Monk,” Diaz contributed, also walking away.

  “Always a pleasure talking with you too, dear.” He and Kodama left the Wilshire Station and went to their cars parked on Venice. “Are you going to be all right?”

  “Yes. I’m going out to my folks’ place in Gardena for a few days to chill out.” She gave him a hug. “Do you think Keys was lying to you about Scarn?”

  “I don’t think so. He has a big enough hammer with the federal law to hold over me. If I’m busted, men automatically my license is suspended.”

  “Then who registered the complaint against you with Consumer Affairs?”

  “I’m beginning to mink I know, Jill. By the way, there’s Rolling Daltons in Gardena, too, you know.”

  “But you don’t mink it was the Daltons who shot at me, do you?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Something in his face made Kodama take a step back. “You worry me sometimes.”

  Monk clucked his tongue, kissed her and got into his Galaxie and drove over to Lincoln Heights. Monk cruised the neighborhood Ruben Ursua had taken him to the other day, particularly along Darwin Street where Ursua had said Suh had turned onto. It was a long shot, but one worth playing. For it to make sense, he reasoned that Suh must have walked to his rendezvous with Ursua. Therefore, where he was living, where he must have maintained another place separate from his one on Dunsmuir, had to be in the area.

  After two hours of driving around and stopping to look down people’s driveways and behind apartment house carports, his search finally yielded positive results.

  He found a brown 1988 Volkswagen Jetta whose license plate began with 2G. Monk stood in an alley looking onto the backyard of a dull ocher stucco house. The car was on a concrete patio alongside a two-car garage. From the street it couldn’t be seen, and Monk had had to walk down the alley because it was too narrow for a car. There were stairs leading up to a room constructed over the garage.

  To complete the pastoral setting, a sleek, muscular Doberman pinscher sat on its haunches, watching Monk. Waiting, he imagined, for him to put one finger on the top of the chain-link fence so he could take his arm off at the base. Monk started to walk out of the alley toward the front of the house when the back door opened.

  A young Chicano in his early twenties stepped out of the house. He wore a brown-and-red-plaid Pendleton shirt with the two top buttons fastened. His blue-grey chinos were inspection sharp, their creases clean vertical lines that bifurcated each leg. The butt of the pistol tucked into his waistband was in stark outline to the bright white T-shirt he wore underneath the Pendleton.

  “Can I help you?” The dog trotted over to him.

  “I want to talk to whoever it was that rented a room to Bong Kim Suh.”

  “Who’re you talking about?”

  “The Korean gentlemen who was living over the garage here last year. The man who drove that Volkswagen.”

  There was a beat. Then another. Then, “You ain’t no cop.”

  Monk did his license trick, and said, “All I want to do is to go over the room and the car. I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “How worth my while?”

  “Forty.”

  “Sixty.”

  “Sold.”

  The studio apartment over the garage had been added by the young man’s mother as a way of taking in boarders and making some extra money in these lean times. Suh, Monk was so informed, was a good if strange tenant, going and coming at all hours of the day and night. The young man—he said they called him Frosty—admitted he drove the Jetta on “excursions” several times since Suh had disappeared.

  But when he saw the newscast recently about them finding his body, he put the car beside the garage, worried that if he just dumped it somewhere, no matter how good he wiped the car down, the cops would find his prints. He’d already been down once and wasn’t about to go back for something he didn’t do.

  “So you know, I’ve been in a kind of panic about it ever since then.” He was standing in the apartment with his dog as Monk searched the place. They’d had another renter since Suh, but this guy had skipped out on the rent he owed. Frosty said he and his crew were going to find him and request he make good on his debt

  In the closet, where Frosty’s mother had put what Suh had left behind—his clothes had been given to Goodwill—Monk found a loose-leaf notebook. Lucky for him, Frosty pointed out, they’d put the stuff in there and hadn’t bothered to throw it out Inside the tablet the writing was in Hangul. But there were several words in English interspersed. Including Jiang Holdings. He took the notebook.

  “Hey, man, don’t you thing if you find something you ought to pay extra for that?”

  Monk wasn’t about to argue with a man, a gun and a dog. He forked over another twenty. “Does that thing work?” Monk asked, pointing to a portable TV in the corner of the front room.

  “Uh-huh. That’s the only thing worth anything that chump who split left us.”

  Without asking, and trying to avoid another charge, Monk turned it on. He dialed it to the local station that had a mid-day news show. Kelly Drier, his suntanned face framed by his two-hundred-dollar-styled hair, was talking.

  “… Acting on a tip, our news crew arrived several minutes before the combined might of the Los Angeles Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation descended on the Imperial Courts housing project here in Watts.” Over Drier’s shoulder, the camera picked up several bodies wandering around a cluster of townhouses. The camera panned, revealing several residents standing around talking and pointing at Keys and his task force.

  Drier began speaking again. “As of yet, they seemed not to have produced Crosshairs Sawyer as he was rumored to be in hiding here. I have it—” Monk shut off the set and looked at his watch.

  “Thanks for everything, Frosty.”

  “Sure, man. Hey, what should I do about the car?”

  He wanted him to leave it alone, save it for the cops. But he wasn’t about to push it. “I’d leave it alone at least for the next two weeks. If you don’t hear different, you can do what you like by then.” He quit the room and drove back to his office, pleased with himself.

  He’d slipped out of bed last night and phoned in the tip to Drier’s station, which had a twenty-four hour hotline. He’d hoped Drier would be eager enough to act on it and he had. If Crosshairs had been in the townhouse, seeing the TV crews would have spooked all of them into running. If and when Keys could get a subpoena for the voice tape, he’d hoped to have this thing blown open.

  “Mr. Li called you and he’s furious,” Delilah said to him as he walked into the rotunda.

  Monk waved at her and went into his office and called the head of the Merchants Group. He came on the line fuming.

  “Am I to understand that you could have captured Crosshairs and you didn’t?”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “It was on the news this afternoon, Mr. Monk. One of our members was in his store watching it and called me. This FBI man claimed a private eye had tipped the news media. That this private eye could have done his duty and captured a suspected murderer and didn’t.”

  “That smart-ass bastard,” Monk said under his bream. “It’s more complicated than that, Mr. Li.”

  “But you admit you met with Crosshairs.”

  “Yes, but—”

 
“Yes, but you didn’t inform us. The only thing we have from you is this report which has no mention of you possibly meeting with the murderer of Bong Kim Sun,” Li boomed.

  “That was done before I was sure I was going to have a meeting. I can assure you, as things have developed, I would have told you.”

  “Really.”

  “Really.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell us you were being paid by SOMA also?”

  He wanted to know how Li had found out but he said, “Because it wasn’t a conflict of interest And because it serves their purpose to bring to justice the killer of Bong Kim Sun as well. And as an entrepreneur, I’m sure you’d appreciate my bootstrapism.”

  Monk listened to the quiet buzz of the line for several seconds. Then Li spoke again. “Is there anything else I should be aware of?”

  “Yes, there is. I’m sending it over to you now.”

  “What is it?”

  “When you get it, I think you’ll know.”

  “Very well then.”

  Li hung up and Monk laboriously made three complete sets of photocopies of the book. He had Delilah messenger one set over to Li and one to Kenny Yu. If, as he suspected, Li and some others were behind Jiang, the pages would force their hand. He called Kenny Yu’s office but he was out. He left him a message telling him about the papers on their way to him, and how he’d appreciate a translation of them. The original he placed in his safe. In the meantime, he had an appointment to keep across town.

  Roy Park was chatting with the woman inside the corner store. He was a big man in height and girth. He had on gold-rimmed, red-tinted glasses, and his hair was slicked back in a Vegas pompadour. He wore a pair of tight black-going-to-grey Guess jeans, snakeskin boots and a Raiders jacket over an open-collar Gant dress shirt. He stuck out a small hand upon seeing Monk.

  “Mr. Carr,” he said, using the fake name Monk had left for him.

  “That’s not my real name,” Monk admitted, shaking the other man’s hand. “My name is Ivan Monk and I’m working for the Merchants Group to find the killer of Bong Kim Suh.”

  A shroud dropped on the affable act. The creases around the eyes disappeared, and Park said, “I have nothing to say to you.”

  “Sure you do.” Monk showed him the papers tucked under his arm. “This is the information that Suh accumulated on Jiang Holdings. It got him killed. I think you know something about that. I think that’s why you’re not the president of the Merchants Group anymore. You might also be interested to know that Stacy Grimes is dead, and Bart Samuels is on the run.”

  “If you’re working for Li, then why haven’t you given him these?” He fingered the pages Monk held onto.

  “I did as a test, Mr. Park. But I want to know what these pages say. I want to know the truth of Jiang Holdings.”

  Park looked from the papers to Monk, then back to the papers. “I’ll do it for Bong Kim. Let me have them and I’ll tell you what they say. But that’s all I’ll do. I won’t go to court, I won’t go on TV, or talk to the press. You understand?”

  Monk handed him the copies and his card. On the back, he wrote down his home number. “Let me know as soon as you can, Mr. Park.” He left and went to Continental Donuts. Elrod was cleaning the coffee maker behind the front counter when he entered.

  “I heard through the grapevine you met with Brother Crosshairs,” the big man said.

  “I did.”

  “I saw on the news that the cops and feds raided some houses in Imperial Courts.”

  “But they came up empty,” Monk detailed.

  Elrod wiped his hands on a dish towel. “That’s true.”

  “Is there a point you’re getting at here, Elrod?”

  “Just people should be careful about what they promise. Sometimes folks take them seriously, and they don’t like getting disappointed.”

  “I know, Elrod. I know.” Monk went into his back office and brought up the file of the case on his PC. He entered information, then turned the machine off. He walked toward the front again and right into Maxfield O’Day. He and a bison in a chauffeur cap who looked like he could give Elrod a round or two.

  “Good afternoon,” O’Day said.

  “Mr. O’Day, back in town.”

  “And just in time, it would seem.” An unpleasant lilt was in his voice. “Are you of the opinion that you know more than the authorities?”

  “A little bird been talking to you.”

  “I’ve no truck with your insolent manner,” O’Day said, pulling class on Monk.

  “What do you have truck with, Mr. O’Day? Do you have truck with giving me an address to a building near Glendale that’s supposed to belong to Jiang Holdings but belongs to you.”

  “I thought you needed a boost to keep you moving forward. It was a harmless white lie to keep what otherwise appears to be a man operating, if not in collusion with the criminal element, then working aimlessly, which is aiding that element.

  “I’ve been-so goddamned aimless, I found the notes Bong Kim Suh left.”

  That brought O’Day up short. “You’re lying.”

  “Your momma.”

  The creature in the black cap flexed, and Elrod stepped up behind him. He turned toward Elrod, and it was as if two locomotives were heading at each other along the same track.

  O’Day repeated, “You must be lying. Who have you shown this to?”

  “Nobody yet,” Monk lied. “They’re in Hangul.”

  “As your client, shouldn’t I have a copy?”

  “I’ll send it to you in the morning.”

  “I’ll pick it up back at your office now, if you don’t mind.” The driver and Elrod were still doing the stare down. Monk smiled languidly. “It’s not there,” and seeing O’Day’s face brighten, he added, “it’s not here either.”

  “Where is it?”

  “You may have a right to its contents, I have a right to secure the notebook. You can come by my office tomorrow morning and get a copy.”

  Imperiously, O’Day intoned, “I don’t want to wait until tomorrow.” He held up a finger and the lunk rotated his muscular torso in Monk’s direction.

  “If your boy could get past Elrod, what makes you think he’ll get me to do this for you any faster? Or is this always the way SOMA gets things done in the community?”

  “What are you implying, Mr. Monk?” The beast in the black suit, at another raise of O’Day’s hand, went to one side. An automaton waiting for its master to throw the switch and set it in a frenzy of destruction.

  “I’m recently of the opinion that the work of the late Stacy Grimes and his missing partner Bart Samuels isn’t unknown to you.”

  “I explained to you about that number on the back of my card.”

  “So you did. And now it occurs to me who might have put a bug up the ass of the Consumer Affairs Bureau.”

  O’Day stepped very close to Monk, smelling heavily of cologne. “Speak a bit plainer, won’t you. I’d like to think that we could be frank with one another after all this time.”

  “Well, frankly, old son, I think you’ve been having one on me. Jerking the chain to see which way I’ll jump. SOMA and the Merchants Group seem very anxious to lay this killing at the feet of the Rolling Daltons.”

  “What of it?”

  “So maybe you thought it would speed up the process if I’m not only getting pressure from the FBI, but closer to home in the form of who pulls the strings on my license.”

  Taking a step back, O’Day breathed. “That sounds like a paranoid fantasy.”

  Thinking aloud, Monk said, “Well, if you did, it would mean you knew I’d been to Samuels’ place that night. Now, how would you know that? And the notebook ain’t no fantasy. I’m very eager to see what can be learned from it. And I’m very curious to see what he has to say about you, since there are some English words in it and your name pops up once or twice.” It was a falsehood, but it was geared to unbalance O’Day. To Monk’s disappointment, it didn’t.

  “I’m
curious, too. But I guess I will have to wait until morning to find out.” The lawyer and businessman, and the creature molded in the shape of a car jockey, left.

  Monk said to Elrod, “Thanks for the backup, big man.”

  “I haven’t lost faith in you yet, boss.” He returned to his work.

  Abe Carson came in and Monk waved hello. On the phone, he reached Kenny Yu’s office, but they informed him he was still out. No, they didn’t expect him back today, probably in the morning, and yes, they received the package he’d sent over. No one answered the telephone at Roy Park’s office. Li, he would let simmer.

  An anxiousness pounded at him, and Monk hurried away from the Continental shop and back to his office. Delilah was getting ready to leave when he breezed in.

  “What’s up?” she said.

  “Something I don’t want lying around, even in the safe.” Monk moved into the office and tumbled the safe’s dial in the proper sequence, popped it open, and extracted the notebook. Hefting the pages, he considered where he might feel better hiding it. Jill’s house, his house, and the donut shop were all out. Dex’s place was a possibility, but it was in Riverside County and even then, anybody who had done their homework on him would know about Dex. But there was one place.

  An hour later Monk knocked on the door of the house on 76th Street. The door swung inward to reveal a startled Ray Smith.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “What, no flowers?” Monk moved past him into the front room. A Rolling Dalton Monk didn’t recognize was sprawled in one of the chairs, reading a rap magazine.

  Smith grabbed his arm. “How is it that the FBI came crashing around Imperial Courts this afternoon?”

  “I told them, Ray.” From the corner of his eye, Monk could tell that the Dalton had put down the magazine. “Otherwise, the head FBI boy Keys was going to lock me up. That’s why I called the TV station hoping they’d blow it for the law.”

  “You some kind of sissy?” the Dalton slurred. “Can’t stand being in the joint?”

  Monk swallowed a reply and kept his focus on Smith. “It’s a matter of working the angles, know what I mean, Ray?”