Perdition, U.S.A. Read online

  Monk looked in on a darkened chamber which apparently ran inside the wall, the length of the factory. “Old man Elihu must have built it to sneak out from reporters or creditors.”

  “Rumor has it he had a few mistresses and they came in this way. He had a separate bedroom,” Katya amended.

  Down at the other end of the block, a column of flaxen-colored flame spiraled upwards, tickling the moon. Yet there was now a quiet which seemed to have reasserted itself on the town. Monk touched Katya’s shoulder. “Thanks, doll.”

  “Be cool, baby.” She kissed him on the cheek and they hugged. “Take this, huh?” She handed him a pen flashlight and took off.

  There were two light fixtures with drawstrings embedded in the ceiling of the passageway. At the end was a wooden door with a ring in it. Cautiously, Monk pulled on the ring. To his relief, the barrier gave way silently on well-oiled hinges. On the other side of the door was an expansive backyard that included a large flower garden, trees, and the shadowed bulk of a gazebo.

  There was ground lighting and Monk could make out various sprays of white marguerites, jade plants, and hyacinths. The landscape contained other shrubs and a copse of ghostly birch trees. Monk waited in the doorway for more than a minute. Then another. When no dog or creature came sniffing, he walked into the yard.

  The house had a screened back porch and, off to the right, another door. Probably the maid’s quarters. Probably where old man Elihu conducted his extra-maritals. To the left of the mansion, hidden by a growth of overhanging vines, was a walkway. Monk followed it around the side of the house and found himself under a lighted window. Drawing close, the sound of muffled voices could be discerned.

  The window had slats over it, so Monk pressed his ear to the pane. Agitated voices grumbled on the other side. He couldn’t discern the nature of the discussion so he moved back. Monk was almost spotted as two voices came out the back door. He bent low and pressed against the side of the porch trying to make out the dark shapes. It was getting cold so he cupped his hand over his mouth to cover the clouds of condensation his breath formed.

  He could see through the screen’s filigree two red dots as cigarettes were lit. Monk chanced to sneak closer to them, the shrubbery of the place serving as cover.

  “Why’s he pushing him on this?” one of them asked the other.

  “Maybe he thinks he has better ideas,” his companion responded.

  Smoke drifted into the evening for awhile, then one of them spoke again. “Could be he wants to be top dog.”

  “Yeah. Which way would you go if it got to that?”

  More smoke. “I’m not sure.”

  The finished cigarettes were extinguished and the two ambled back inside. Monk stepped around one of several Adirondack chairs onto the back porch, listening. He tried the knob on the back door and, as he’d hoped, it was unlocked. He took two breaths and entered.

  The door let onto a service porch, damn near the size of Monk’s living room. Off to his left was a door ajar to servants’ quarters redone as a guest room. The kitchen itself was cavernous and well-appointed with an array of iron pots and steel pans in overhead racks, spacious ash-blonde-faced cabinets and blue-green pavers for flooring. The swing door that led beyond the kitchen was closed, and Monk went to it.

  Picturing himself as an overgrown bat, he sent his hearing out like sonar to decipher the sounds in the other parts of the house. He could hear footfalls and the clinking of ice in glasses. But it was too hard to figure out what the voices were saying.

  His left hand pushed on the door slowly, deliberately, the Ruger was in his right. He got it open a hair’s breadth and looked in on a darkened hallway. At the other end was a warm light and he could hear Bright talking.

  “Don’t think I’m stupid, Nolan. I know what the fuck you’ve been trying to do.”

  “I’m helping the white worker, Bobby. The little guy who gets up every morning and goes to the job and gets grief from bull-dykes and Harvard-educated beaners.”

  “You’re advancing your own goddamn agenda.”

  “And you’re not?”

  Monk pushed the door further until a creak of the hinge caused a constriction in his throat. The Ruger came up beside his face, ready to be extended shooting range fashion. Print some paper, as the saying goes. Fortunately, Bright and Nolan were trying to talk over each other and had smothered his blunder.

  His eyes had became adjusted to the darkened hall and at the end of it he could make out the partial outline of the stair’s banister leading to the second level. Only there was no way he was going to reach it without being spotted. He closed the kitchen door and considered his options. The objective was simple. Get into Meyer’s room and either find the guns he’d used, or find something else that would tie him to the murders.

  Well, he could hide somewhere in the back and hope everybody went out later, but that seemed unlikely. Besides, where was Elsa Meyer? Out of town? Upstairs asleep? Reading a book? Monk had an idea and turned, walking back the way he had come. Sure enough, there were back stairs meant for the help to use. He took off his tennis shoes and, tying the laces together, put them around his neck. Crablike, he clambered up the carpeted stairs using his hands and feet so as to cut down the noise.

  Monk reached the second landing. Light shown under a closed door down the way. He had to cross to that side of the house without exposing himself by walking next to the upstairs railing. He put the shoes in a linen closet and, using the penlight from Katya, he peered into a room next to the closet. It was a bathroom and, going through it, he came into a sun room with flower print curtains. There was an exquisitely redone padded rocking chair, a low rise Eileen Gray sofa, a roll-top desk, and a bookcase containing volumes with cracked spines. Off in a corner was an antique sewing machine which reminded Monk of his business with Mrs. Urbanski.

  A door opened and Monk switched the pen light off, glad he had it pointed upwards and had closed the doors. Feet padded along the hall and the light in the bathroom snapped on. Monk waited behind the big couch which faced the doorway to the bathroom.

  Minutes eased by and Monk remained as still as a painting. The toilet was flushed and water from the sink flowed. The door to the room he was in opened. A whiff of perfume trailed in, and Monk was sure it was the mother. He could just see the headlines now, “Crazed Black Man Shoots Leading Perdition Citizen and Benefactor. Bobby Bright for President.” The feet came into the room, paused, then the light went out again.

  A relieved Monk got up and crept to the hall door, listening. He checked in the bathroom and found that its hall door was also open. He waited and listened some more then went across the tiles in his stocking feet. Down below, he could hear some more words as the front door opened and slammed. Momentarily, somebody came up the stairs and, without knocking, entered the room where the band of light was under the door.

  Presently the door opened again, and Meyer came out, went down the hall, then to his left and into a room, flipping the lights on. Monk, crouching low in the dark recesses of the bathroom, took it all in. After several moments, Meyer came back into the hall and this time knocked at the door with the band of light.

  It opened and a woman in a short robe appeared, leaning on the jamb. The hair was piled high on her head and the legs below the short hemline were taut, shapely. Her profile was in the light and Monk surmised she was older than her legs would lead you to believe. She held a glass of some golden liquid in one hand, which had rings on three fingers, and had the thumb of her other hand hooked in the robe’s sash.

  “Where you going? Is the trouble over in town?”

  “Pretty much. I just have to check on a few things, Elsa.”

  “Everything all right?” She playfully tugged on one of his belt loops.

  “On schedule.”

  “What about this black hawkshaw Hamm said is up here?”

  “I saw him at the rally, but I don’t think he’s going to be a problem.” He said it unemotionally, but his words w
ere like a surgeon gutting a fish. Methodical and deadly.

  His mother spoke again. “See you when you get back. Guess I’ll keep myself busy with the book I just opened.”

  They kissed on the mouth quickly and Meyer descended the stairs, his mother drinking and watching him as he went. She left her door ajar as the front door closed again.

  Monk straightened up in the bathroom, processing the scene he’d witnessed. Not sure of how to interpret it, he quietly made his way along the hall. He stopped inches from the mother’s door, holding his hand out as if it each finger had eyes. Nothing. Monk strained his hearing but nothing—no movement, humming, turning of pages that could he detect. A minute. A minute and a half.

  Praying that speed would make him invisible, he danced past the crack of the door, then halted on the other side. His heart was going so fast he was sure he was going to have a stroke. But there was no scream, no pounding of bare feet across the lush carpet. He moved on past the bend in the hall, on into Nolan Meyer’s room. Monk took another chance and eased the door shut when he entered. He turned the knob so the beveled latch was all the way in and slowly pressed the portal closed, allowing the latch out into its slot quietly.

  His light revealed a large room which was more of a studio apartment than a simple bedroom. In the front part were chairs, a couch, a large desk, two filing cabinets, and a modernistic desk where it was obvious Meyer did his paperwork. A 486 SX computer was on the desk, and a laser printer rested on a side stand.

  The room itself was divided by a curtained arch, with the bed and dresser in that part of the space. Grazing the beam over a low set of book shelves, Monk saw copies of such works as the supremacist near-future novel The Turner Diaries, The Bell Curve, a Newt Gingrich tome, and Clausewitz On War.

  The file cabinets were locked and Monk wasn’t about to force them open. He knew he couldn’t be thorough about his search. And he hoped he would hear the front door or Elsa Meyer’s bedroom door if either opened.

  On the desk were bills the War Reich had incurred pulling off today’s rally, other miscellany, and a sketch of a flyer intended for distribution to high school teens. But a search of the closet, under the bed and in the drawers of the dresser didn’t yield anything of value. No guns, no incriminating personal diary.

  In a letter caddie there were opened envelopes with messages from Bright and from several chapter heads of ARM and the War Reich from across the country. Just for kicks, Monk copied down the names and addresses on his steno pad. There was one letter from California that mentioned the Pacific Shores killings but the writer was going on about if the authorities caught the killer, they ought to start a defense fund for the guy. A wink and nod to Meyer? That wouldn’t stand up in court. As if tainted evidence obtained from his illegal entry would be admissible.

  After another twenty minutes of fruitless endeavor, Monk was ready to quit the room and the warm and cuddly racist household. He’d go with what he had to the Legal Aid contact Jill had given him and see if they could get some action. At the least, leak the information to the press and hope a brushfire of inquiry lit under Meyer and his War Reich. Maybe char Bright’s tail in the process.

  Monk’s body calcified at the now-familiar sound of the front door opening and closing. He shut his light off. The gun was back in his hand, and he stood alongside the door, ready to slug Meyer if he entered. Mom too if necessary. Run like a bastard and hope to get away before being identified.

  Attuned to the quiet, Monk could hear the soft clomp, clomp up the stairs, and another door opening, then giggling and music underneath.

  “Well,” he heard Elsa Meyer say.

  Monk couldn’t make out the response and stood immobile for a minute, but he couldn’t tell what was going on. Shit. He did his bit with the lock and eased the door open a sliver. The door to the mother’s room was now wide open and light spilled out into the hall. He could hear mumbling and the rustling of clothes.

  Hell, he couldn’t go back that way. He was also getting nauseous again, and his kidneys began to ache. His stomach started to knot, and he shut the door to Nolan Meyer’s room, desperate for another way out.

  He went to one of the windows and, pulling back the drawn shade, looked out on the roof. Monk was seriously considering that route when he chanced to look down at the wastebasket beneath the window, set against the wall. The familiar red striping of the phone bill caught his attention. He took it out of the trash and uncrumpled the sheets.

  Scanning it, Monk made out a man’s laughter approaching. He jammed the bill in his back pocket, unlatched and slid the window open, and went out on the roof. From the outside he carefully closed the window.

  He flattened his body on the wet shingles. Down below, the street was empty, an unnatural calm holding. Off somewhere, there was shouting and the rumble of heavy machinery.

  The shade was down over his exit window but a sudden aurora of light spread around it. There were sounds of rummaging around and, briefly, a distorted silhouette of a couple which slipped from view like melting butter. Monk crept backwards, his feet coming to a rain gutter. Deftly, like a spider, he got his body around and looked over the edge. He was above the pathway. And then he remembered his damn shoes were in the linen closet. Now the music—Gershwin?—was turned up, and he heard throaty laughter in the room.

  Monk clambered slowly like a backwards crab along the multiple tiered roof with its intersecting triangular parts. Wet and apprehensive, he finally got in position over the porch and eased his body to the ground. The damp concrete instantly soaked the bottom of his socks and inspired him to go to the front rather than around back across cold mushy earth.

  Parked in front at the curb was the Camaro he’d seen the War Reich members working on the other day. The red Jeep was not around. Monk jogged over to the vehicle, tried the door, but it was locked. He wrote the license number down and scurried back to the side of the house at the sound of another approaching vehicle.

  Maybe it was how Ahab felt upon finally cornering the great whale, the object of his fear and loss. The moment that crystallizes the long search. Knowing it would take only one more thrust of the spear, one more twist of the harpoon to end the existence of the creature obsessing his life. Monk watched the red Jeep driven by Nolan Meyer roll down the street.

  He hadn’t realized it, but the gun was back in his fist, the veins on the back of his hand pronounced from the pressure of his grip. One shot to the head. The authorities would write it off as one more anonymous incident in a violent day. Sure, they’d probably hassle Rameses, but they couldn’t make him for the hit. If he worked it right, he could even make it look like Bright had done the deed.

  With Meyer gone, the comatose Jimmy Henderson, tubes running in and out of his emaciated body, would no longer rise to point an accusing finger at Monk in his dreams. Clarice would have satisfaction. And maybe some of the debt to his dad would be paid.

  The Jeep slowed and pulled into the driveway, its lights briefly illuminating the moist blades of the lawn, the droplets glowling brightly as if sprayed with glycerin. Monk crouched down, his eyes registering the young white-haired man getting out of his vehicle, getting something out of the back end. The composition handle of the gun was warm against his palm as if it too were responding to the acceleration of his senses.

  Meyer was carrying a briefcase. It was almost too easy. The fates must want this. The young War Reich leader stared at the Camaro for a long moment, pivoted, and walked to the house, keys in his free hand. He got to the door, his back to the street, head down as he concentrated on getting the lock sprung. Bap. Bap.

  The door stuck slightly, swelling from the day’s moisture. Monk pressed the barrel of the gun against his own forehead. But its coolness didn’t ease the heat in his brain. Meyer entered the house and Monk tried to think normally. He straightened up and headed back to Oray’s rooming house.

  Monk’s poplin jacket was nasty and clammy from his jaunt on the roof. His feet were freezing in wet sock
s and he took them off and threw them away. He hadn’t gotten too far when a patrol of National Guardsmen in Humvees stopped him.

  “Is there a problem, sir?” the officious Huck Finn of a sergeant asked him.

  “I got pushed around by some skins. They took my shoes and socks,” he lied.

  “Do you have any ID?” the Guardsman asked nicely.

  Monk produced his driver’s license and gave them his cover story, hoping none of them were locals in possession of the truth.

  “How come you were out this late?” the sergeant inquired, holding onto his license.

  “I’d been over in Port Cascade most of the day. By the time I got back, the riot was going on and I got caught up in it.” Monk wove a tale about being forcibly stopped by skins in another car and the harassing they’d given him. With no radios or VCRs tucked under his arm, his shaky story carried him through. The accommodating sergeant offered Monk a ride back to the rooming house. Actually, insisted on it as he was sure they wanted to know if that part of his story was true.

  On the way back, Monk could see the state cops and Guard had got things under control. He saw the part-time soldiers patrolling the town, placing blankets on passed-out skins and hip-hoppers. Big Brother with a smile.

  Nearing Juanita’s, Monk noticed a car of four skins parked up the block. They were just sitting there talking and smoking while their radio played low. They had a good view of the front. The Humvee slowed, and the car, a Bondoed ’77 Grand Prix with mismatched tires, started and drove off. Monk was sure they’d been waiting for him.

  The sergeant verified who Monk was with a harried looking Juanita Oray, who went along with the Intertek front. Rameses and a few of his crew were camped out in the front room, looking angelic for the Guard.

  After they left, Monk thanked Mrs. Oray and took a hot bath to thaw out his feet and fell asleep while soaking his tired body, the Ruger on the bath mat beside the tub.

  A single gunshot in the early morning woke him, terrified, from his light sleep, certain his psychic emanations had manifested themselves inside Meyer’s house.