Perdition, U.S.A. Page 25

  The force of the impact loosened his hands and Monk got free, rolling off. A yellow-and-pea-green finger painting did itself inside of Monk’s head as he got on all fours, hacking. Spittle and a bad taste gathered in his mouth. Where was Meyer? He looked up and saw the other man running away. No, he wasn’t trying to escape, he had a purpose in mind.

  There was a barbecue grill tucked in a corner of the pool area. A brick had been placed behind the trailing leg to steady it. Meyer had it and was wielding it in a slashing motion back and forth, advancing on Monk. “Come on, nigger, come on and dance.” His nose was bleeding and he limped slightly.

  “Sure,” Monk hissed.

  Meyer brought the brick across in a vicious arc that would have split Monk’s head open like a ripe grapefruit had it registered. But he went low and came up inside the swing. Monk brought a knee up and got it in Meyer’s stomach.

  But the other man engaged the brick again in a downward swipe which crashed into Monk’s deltoid and a portion of his upper left shoulder.

  “Shit,” Monk blared, shock and a throbbing pain beginning to set in.

  Meyer was raising the brick again but Monk grabbed the man’s wrist, temporarily halting the blow. Weakness lanced through his injured arm and it took all his will to put any strength into it. Then he shifted his body, toppling them both into the small pool.

  Monk got Meyer back against the rim of the tub. The brick was still in his hand and he attempted to club Monk again. “I’m going to kill you, nigger boy.”

  “Not today. This is one black hide you ain’t tacking to the wall, Meyer.”

  Head down, arms over it for protection, the brick tore off a piece of Monk’s hand but he bulled headlong in the water, slamming into Meyer. He brought his head up, butting the other man under the chin. Monk got his hands around Meyer’s throat, but the left had lost a lot of sensation.

  Meyer cackled, knocking away the hand. He hit the other man in the lower body with a fist and used the brick again. But Monk had turned, most of the blow landing on his upper back.

  The water was turning carmine and Monk laced his fingers together, batting Meyer alongside his head. The skin on his right hand hung like streamers. But he clamped it on Meyer’s face and dug his fingers in like an excavator. He shoved, forcing the man under. Using him for leverage, Monk got out of the tub, encircling his arm around Meyer’s neck, hauling him back up.

  Red water poured from Meyer’s mouth. “Monk,” he bleated.

  Gripping the edge of the Jacuzzi with his left hand, Monk pulled up with his right arm across the dead-faced killer’s carotid artery, a variation on the LAPD’s once-infamous choke hold. Monk planted his left hand against the back of Meyer’s neck. It was a technique which shut off the supply of blood to the brain. And one in which the ex-LAPD Chief Daryl Gates said caused the death of more black suspects because they didn’t have normal physiology. Monk laughed a sick, salacious burst at the irony. Do whatever it takes, he raged. Do whatever it takes. Meyer beat at Monk’s forearm with the brick but his desire for the other man’s death made the pulping his limb was taking insignificant. Meyer let go of the brick and he got both his hands on Monk’s arm in an effort to pull it off. But a lust had possessed Monk and he jerked up, getting his knee into the other man’s back.

  “Monk,” Meyer rattled, fear in his voice,” let—” But the rest was lost in approaching death.

  “It’s your turn in the box today, Nolan.”

  Hoarsely, Meyer got out, “Please.” Impotently, his fists beat at Monk’s arm and face. Then they dropped to his sides.

  Monk continued the pressure, cutting off the words, trying to cut off the hate he’d built up. Meyer twitched a little, but was rapidly loosing energy. “What’s wrong, Nolan? Black cat got your tongue?”

  A primal gurgle and spittle the consistency of syrup issued from the dying man onto his front. The last gasp this side of the grave. His legs had ceased thrashing, and his hands were now completely lifeless. Meyer’s head lolled forward like a patient injected with too much sedative.

  Strobe light images of Jimmy Henderson’s chest rising and falling, rising and falling, showed themselves on the back of Monk’s brain. Anonymous black life that Meyer was willing to snuff out to accomplish his own ends. Life worth no more to him than the thought that went into lighting a cigarette. Or extinguishing it.

  It was so easy. At worst they’d charge him with justifiable homicide. His friends would testify to his good record and his past accomplishments. He was an asset to the community, not this scumbag supremacist he was killing. All his friends would understand.

  Yeah. Through the electric haze fevering his thoughts Monk saw his mother, then Jill, then his dad, standing in the yard, laughing that big laugh of his as his young son caught a pass he’d just thrown him. His hands holding onto the George Halas-autographed football from the Rams as he ran into his dad’s muscular arms. He had his father’s build and the old man’s arm was ending someone’s life. Something that deserved it.

  His head hurt and he felt like passing out. The arm which was now throbbing and useless came away from Meyer’s neck. With his other one he brought the inert figure out of the still water.

  He dropped Meyer on his chest, and fell back on the deck, spent. Too beat and too ambivalent to do anything else. Meyer could live or die, and he didn’t have an opinion one way or the other.

  Eventually the other man began to cough, spit up gore and fluid. Monk felt neither elated nor cheated. He could conjure up no emotion. But that didn’t bother him either.

  Chapter 27

  A ’70’s number was playing on the Spike’s stereo when Jill Kodama walked into the bar: “Everybody Plays the Fool” by the Main Ingredient.

  “Nice legs, sweetie,” one of the queens said flatteringly to her as she went past. “You must tell me how you do it.” Another one at the table raised a glass of wine to Kodama who smiled back at them. She joined Walter Kane on a stool next to his lean form. A tumbler full of rough pieces of ice and brown liquor, a bowl of pretzels, and a folded section of the late edition of the Times were on the bar in front of him. Half of Nolan Meyer’s battered face was visible in the article about his capture. The piece had run in the early edition, too.

  “Hey,” he said, chewing on a pretzel.

  “Could I have a gin and tonic?” Jill said to the bartender. “Long day, huh?”

  “Mmmm.” Kane took a swallow, making a face as he did so. “It’s gonna get longer, ain’t it?”

  “I suppose.” Her gin arrived and she dug for money in her handbag.

  “Let me get it, Jill,” Kane said, putting his hand on her arm. He handed a ten across. “Reporters were all over the office today like friggin’ cucarachas,” he continued, picking up the thread of their conversation.

  “Meyer’s a tough mother, he ain’t said squat so far.” Kodama took a sample of her drink.

  “How do you know?” Kane asked, assessing their reflections in the mirror tucked behind the tiers of whiskeys, bourbons and liqueurs. Offerings to the muse of bottled wisdom.

  “I heard it straight from someone I know in the D.A.’s office. Meyer has refused to speak and won’t take any food down at Parker Center. His only statement was he considered himself a prisoner of war in Zionist Occupied America.”

  “Good for him,” Kane sarcastically jibed. He took another sip. “Would you like an appetizer?” He turned his handsome face toward her, showing teeth like a model in a suit ad. His pencil mustache glistened with alcoholic sweat. “The grilled shark sticks with artichoke palms are very vogue.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about it, Walter?” Kodama tried her gin.

  “I think the shark’s yummy.”

  “I’m not here to play,” Kodama warned.

  The pretzels on their way to Kane’s mouth stopped on the ridge of his lip. “How do you mean, Jill?” he said with too much innocence.

  “Ivan put it together, boy friend. It started with some numbers Meyer called
from his house in Perdition. Including an electronic bulletin board he subscribed to.”

  Kane threw back his head, raking his hair with his supple fingers. “Since I know your stud isn’t on the fav list with most branches of law enforcement, I’m willing to bet he obtained that information illegally.” He dumped the pretzels in his mouth and chewed with vigor.

  “I wouldn’t know, we’re not having this conversation. But we learned from Ursala she’d gotten onto this particular board by pretending to be a supremacist.”

  “How charmingly risqué,” Kane chuckled.

  “To keep up on them,” Kodama shot back. “Seems she stumbled into a ongoing conversation with someone calling himself ‘Crusader’, who’d suggested he’d done more than just talk about the problem.”

  “Interesting,” Kane retorted blandly.

  “Seems she also confided in you about this. That from what ‘Crusader’ said, he might be the Shoreline Killer.” Kodama studied her friend for several moments. “One of the numbers on the bill was the line into that bulletin board. Was he, Walter? Was ‘Crusader’ Nolan Meyer? Was that how you first made contact?”

  He bunched his shoulders, munching more pretzels.

  “I also understand one of the numbers was to your inner line.”

  “A crank call,” Kane said, probing a finger inside his cheek for pretzel residue.

  “Maybe. Only the other number of interest Meyer had was to the Mattachine Association in Washington, D.C.”

  “So he’s coming out of the closet. I knew those skinheads were hiding something by being so aggressively homophobic,” Kane said triumphantly.

  Kodama considered her cocktail but didn’t try it again. She’d lost her taste for the stuff. “The operating theory is that Meyer was gathering background dirt on Bobby Bright. Who, for practical reasons, has had to hide his sexual preference from the supremacist movement.”

  “That hunk of yours get that information over the phone, huh?”

  “Of course not, dear heart. But he’s got the eyewitness testimony of a woman who knew Bright when he was a teenager and had seen more than one time his bringing ‘friends’ over to study up in his room.”

  A faraway look glazed Kane’s eyes. “That was such a nowhere time for me. I was a high school jock, and I loved to go to the funny car races with my dad. But he didn’t take me much. He wasn’t around much after he and my mother went their separate ways. She was a woman who thought sex would be a parachute, but she still fell into ruin.” His voice halted, whatever was in his head seemed too much for him to articulate. Kane had more of his drink.

  “The Mattachine Association is a national lobbying and advocacy organization for lesbian and gay rights,” Kodama said rhetorically. “Anyone can call their main office in D.C. and obtain a number for contacting a particular local chapter. When the FBI searched Elsa Meyer’s mansion, they found the newsletters which had been sent to her son.”

  Kane waited.

  “They were from the Palm Springs chapter. Which is also where Bright had recently rented a house under the name of Edmond Wilde. That name was in the last issue of the chapter newsletter as a recent member.”

  “But—” Kane began.

  “But Dexter, that is Dexter Grant,” Kodama interjected, “Ivan’s old boss, found out about the alias and told Ivan when he’d called him from Perdition. Dexter heard Bright moved around the country using various names for security reasons. Our friend, Lt. Marasco Seguin, got Ivan in on the sly to see what the seizure by the FBI had produced.”

  “One thing always leads to another, don’t it?” Kane remarked. After a pause, and after he’d taken another swallow of his drink, Kane spoke again. “Meyer called me up once after I’d gotten this plan rolling with him wanting to know if Bright and I were lovers? Can you believe the gall?”

  “Were you?” Kodama asked seriously.

  Kane guffawed. “Oh Jesus, I may be a schemer, darling, but I haven’t lost my good taste.”

  Something was welling in the back of her throat. “Walter, why did you arrange the murder of your friend Grainger Wu? One of the last good ones to make it to Capitol Hill.” She’d tried to sound detached, but disgust was rapidly overtaking her objectivity.

  Kane rubbed a hand over one side of his taut face. “So you all thought there was some connection to me and Bright? That we were having a tryst?” He gazed at her from behind his hand, still held against half his face, laughing softly.

  Her right hand trembled on the bar, and she brought it down onto her lap. Kodama spoke. “After establishing that Bright was a member of the Mattachine Association, Ivan, me, and Dex discussed it. None of us was sure what it meant. But when the venue for Grainger’s speaking engagement changed, we put our money on you.”

  “Honored.” Kane bowed his head slightly. “You must have talked to Grainger and he told you I was the one who convinced him to make it Tompkins’ church.”

  “The funny thing is that Grainger did think that was a good idea, talking about the need for support of his legislation in the area where the Shoreline Killer had struck. Very symbolic,” Kodama admitted. “And very goddamn sick.”

  Kane contemplated his image behind the bottles again and said nothing.

  Kodama continued. “Ivan thought it was significant for another reason. If it was going to be at the Shrine Auditorium as planned, he knew they had their own security force who’d be covering all the exits. The sudden change of location might mean something was going to happen.”

  Kane ventured, “That’s not much to go on.”

  “Ivan had Dex shadowing you since finding out you were the one who suggested the change.”

  “Really. Are you wearing a wire, cutie?” His lip curled back melodramatically.

  She put her arms out at ninety degrees. “Search me.”

  “Alas, it would afford me no pleasure,” Kane demurred.

  Kodama placed both her hands on the edge of the bar as if to steady herself. “Dexter saw you step outside the kitchen door of the church. That was the morning of the afternoon of the event. That must be when you jammed the lock somehow.”

  Kane drained his glass, then rolled the empty tumbler between his hands. “Unless your old friend has Kryptonian vision, even with binoculars all he could say for certain was he saw the senator’s chief aide doing his job.” He leaned into her, “making sure everything was cool.”

  She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of recoiling. “Why, Walter?”

  Kane reached across Kodama and started on her drink. “You know how all these right-wing assholes love to glom onto certain incidents? Creating rallying cries for them and their hateful buddies. These yahoos are still fetishizing over the supremacist shoot-out at Ruby Ridge, and making heroes out of a maniac like Koresh from the Waco debacle.

  “So Randy Weaver gets three mil and change from the FBI for the death of his wife and son. But where was the compensation for Fred Hampton and Mark Clark? Slaughtered in their sleep by the law during the government’s war on the Black Panthers.” He glared at her, daring her to refute his indignation.

  Kodama said humbly, “The state of Illinois settled, eventually.”

  “But no Panther got a chance to tell his side of the story to a Senate sub-committee complete with TV cameras while choking back tears and earning sympathy.

  “I know the system is racist,” Kodama answered defensively.

  “And where was the outrage from the politicians when the children of MOVE died? No more in command of their own fate than the children of Waco were. You know why, Jill. They were black, they were extremist on the left, therefore no purchase, no succor can be found for them among the agendas of the demagogues stalking the hallways of Washington.”

  His serpentine logic crawled into her head, and it bothered her. “There are other examples, Walter. Like when the nazis burned the Reichstag in 1934, blaming the communists so as to aid in the consolidation of Hitler’s power.”

  Kane replied, “When you get down to
it, the left and the right have employed similar tactics over the decades in numerous countries.”

  “And Grainger would become a martyr. His sacrifice writ large as a catalyst to bring people together, Walter? For what, so you can lead us to the mountain top?”

  Kane drank, the ice clinking in his glass making a loud noise.

  Kodama pressed on, getting it all out was the only way she could maintain equilibrium. “Grainger told me, about six months ago you went to a meeting of other gay rights activists in New York. The conference was sponsored by the Mattachine Association.”

  “Networking, discussing strategies to use against the religious right, and so forth. All very kosher considering my … frame of reference.”

  Kodama stared with a stranger’s eyes at him. “Is that where you heard about Bright being gay?”

  “An old rumor, love.”

  “But it must have been substantiated there. Something happened to get you to conceive this bizarre idea.”

  “How about getting our ass kicked all the time?” Kane snarled. “Shit, laws of average say there’s gotta be a few other prominent white supremacists who have fantasies of getting it up the rear by Stallone.”

  “Why didn’t Bright get outed?” Kodama asked, a hotness on her breath.

  “Though they stole the name, this incarnation of the Mattachines, unlike in the fifties, aren’t lefties. Being a liberal doesn’t make you gay, as being conservative doesn’t make you straight. It’s in the genes, baby.

  “The Association’s got Log Cabin Republicans to in-your-face Jesse Helms Act-Up members on the board. Their creed is respect for the gay lifestyle. Outing someone, even a Bobby Bright, isn’t their thing,” Kane said with melancholy.

  Kodama would not allow herself to feel empathy for him. “You’re a foul, self-important bastard, Walter.”

  He moved his mouth silently, as if talking were an unknown practice. “You ever hear of man called Isaac Kaufman from the fifties? During the witch hunts?”