Only the Wicked Read online

  “Them peckerwoods did that, honey. That’s why Uncle Marshall had all that information about the Creel trial.”

  “I’m not sure why Spears was gathering the news articles, but they definitely start at the time of Senator Bodar’s supposed accident. Kennesaw might have figured if the senator was stirring up the hornets, then some of them might sting him. Could be ol’ cuz wanted to be informed and on his guard.” Monk felt the setting sun on his wounded shoulder and the warmth was good. “Who knows, Spears might have even convinced himself he could get me to find Patton’s album and use the money to re-open the case.”

  Cheryl Murray, who called herself Sikkuh, allowed the untied robe she was wearing to flutter open. She had on a pair of shiny bikini pants and nothing else. She played with a nipple as the two of them stood between the dressing trailers as the sun set over Zuma Beach. “Is that right, Ivan.” She brought a leg up and rubbed it against his thigh.

  He grabbed her firmly by the upper arms, holding her back from him. Sharp pain knotted his sore shoulder and lanced down his back, but he willed himself not to show it. One more bullet wound and this business of getting shot was going to get serious.

  “Here it is, Cheryl: The sheriff down there may be slow in getting going, but once he’s got a direction, damned if he isn’t on it like yellow on teeth. He’s been sweatin’ the two still around after our little party in the woods. Both of them have alibis at the time of Kennesaw’s death. One was banging a cosmetologist over in Bovina, and the other knocking over a quickie mart along the road to De Witt. Neither one knew Kennesaw’s name.”

  “They could be lying.” Sikkuh put out her bottom lip, letting a slight smile form.

  “No, that won’t wash.” He let go of her arms. “So who could have a motive in poisoning him?”

  The bottom lip stopped being inviting and got a tremble in it. “You’ve been checking on me?”

  “Your iron-butt buddy Indigo has worked as a male nurse in several rest homes.” Monk didn’t go on, not bothering to explain that Indigo—Fred Landy—would be familiar with medication like Digoxin since it was a commonplace drug with the elderly.

  He did add, though, “A big LAPD detective named Roberts is going to make inquiries with the production company you said you went out of town with to shoot that bit part. What do you want to bet he finds out you came back earlier than you told me?” Roberts didn’t know about her being out of town, yet.

  “He did it.” She gave up Indigo without hesitation. “It was his goddamn plan.” The robe was pulled decisively shut.

  “What’d you tell Kennesaw?” he asked. ‘“Course he had a taste for the ladies, so any thin story you gave him I imagine he’d go for. But he’d seen you at the wake, and he knew you were Spears’ grand-niece.”

  “I told him how exciting it would be if we could find the album. I had him going that a record magazine would pay good money just for an article about our search that I would write. I think he saw it as a way to tell his side of why he sold out Creel.” A demure look settled on her face. “Anyway, no matter what their age, men don’t mind a good-looking woman paying them some attention.”

  “A fine woman and the blues myth, unbeatable,” Monk said with mock admiration. “So what was it, Cheryl? The death of your great-uncle was definitely on Kennesaw’s mind. His own time was dancing before him. But what in hell made you really think the ‘Killin’ Blues’ album existed?”

  The model who called herself Sikkuh put the edge of her hand to her brow. She squinted into the sun. The robe parted and she knew Monk was looking. She took her time responding. “Death can give you a funny perspective on life,” she began. “I loved Uncle Marshall, I really did, Ivan. After, when I was going through his stuff, I saw those pictures of him and your cousin and remembered him laughing about Kennesaw being like Kirk Douglas and his Golden Fleece.”

  Monk’s questioning look prompted her to elaborate.

  “You know, that movie where he plays Jason, and he has his Argonauts. The fighting skeletons, Neptune rising from the ocean. That was one of his favorite movies.”

  “So you get to thinking about Patton’s maybe record. Your great-uncle was dead, and here finally was Kennesaw. With Spears gone I guess you rationalized you had no moral obligation anymore.”

  She put on the full court press. She got closer, grabbing at his loose shirt, making sure her nails dug into his sides. “This was all Indigo’s doing, Ivan. He kept pestering me that if we found the record we’d be set. That what with licensing fees and the multi-platforming that kind of find would be worth, it would generate millions of dollars.” She let the rest go unsaid, let it build in his mind like she hoped it would.

  “You know your pretty boyfriend Indigo don’t want no part of prison.” Monk felt a tight pull on his lower face and he didn’t know if it was a grin or a scowl. “Roberts is talking to him now.”

  She fell back against the side of the trailer, tucking her shoulders in as if she were readying for a left hook. With her head down, she looked up at him as if waiting for her opening to get her counter-punches in. She did. “Indigo, that is Fred, was the one who told me to look in your cousin’s medicine cabinet on my second visit, and what kind of pills I should look for.”

  “Goes to means and motive, but Monk remained mute and simply nodded his head. “Uh-huh.”

  “I didn’t know what he was going to do, Ivan.”

  “So you’re saying he mixed the lethal dose.”

  “God, you know I couldn’t do that.” The robe was held fast to better coincide with her chaste demeanor.

  “Here’s what I think: You two figured the best way to take care of Kennesaw was to make it look like a heart attack. Take the fire box below his bed, where you must have figured were clues to the record’s secret location. You assumed no one knew about the box. Only, Mr. Dellums had seen it that first night he was over there and remembered. You two got even cuter and broke into Mr. Spears’ place, even though you have a key. That way, it would look like some outsider was rounding up any information that might lead them to the ‘Killin’ Blues’.” He took a breath “Including attacking my mother and staging the break-in of your place.”

  “I told him not to touch your mother, I swear.” She didn’t overdo it, she didn’t get closer this time.

  “You sent him after my mother just like you engineered Kennesaw’s death.”

  “How—” she stammered, seemingly hurt.

  “I’d asked you about the ‘Killin’ Blues’ at the coffeehouse, and you said you didn’t know anything about them. The next day when we were leaving the bank, you were laughing and mentioned Patton. I figured maybe you were just playing the percentages, keeping any knowledge you had of the ‘Killin’ Blues’ to yourself in case the album turned up. But since the men who chased me in the woods couldn’t have done the deed to Kennesaw, I quite logically looked closer to home for the answer.

  “And I sure didn’t see Indigo as the brains of this outfit, Sikkuh. When you got nothing from the fire box, nothing from any of your great-uncle’s effects, and the attack on my mother went bust, there was always me. You’d get me to feel sorry for you, mad about getting back at whoever assaulted my mother, and send me off to do your looking for you. You knew Indigo would stumble around like a big clown, and probably not scare up anything of value.”

  Barely audible, she said, “I don’t know how you can say such vicious things about me. You must have a heart of stone.”

  “But,” Monk added, “Kennesaw wasn’t so much wrapped up in finding Charlie Patton’s album. Or maybe he was, but I heard him that Sunday when he was tight. He’d mixed the legend of the album together with the myth about Malachi and that was shaken up with his own gnawing guilt over selling out. You put more booze in him, and with him smelling you around him he was libel to spin any goddamn tale you wanted to hear. Maybe greed makes you hard of hearing.”

  She started to respond but Monk cut her off. “I’ll go inside with you so you can change an
d then give you a ride to your lawyer’s office.”

  Venomously she said, “What makes you think I’m going to go anywhere with you?”

  “Do I stutter? Roberts is sweatin’ Indigo right now. And if you get funny, I’ll hook you in the jaw and say you tried to knee me in the balls.”

  She evaluated what he’d said and the fight left her. “It wasn’t my idea to kill your cousin.”

  “Don’t want to peak too soon, Sikkuh. You might want to save some of your act for the jury.”

  “You’re wrong about me, Ivan. All wrong.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  Somebody called, “Three minutes,” but they were already moving toward her trailer.

  Chapter 26

  She pulled the strands across the table top and got on her hands and knees. She giggled as she crawled toward the space between Frank Harris’ spread legs. Clad in heels and a G-string, she went underneath the table. Reaching the other side, Odessa Monk got on one knee and bit teasingly into Frank Harris’ left thigh.

  “Harder,” he requested.

  She complied like she was eating a raw piece of steak. She laughed and made growling noises, and left teeth marks in his smooth muscle. With her free hand she pulled on his stiffening shaft. She then parted the strands and tied the ends around each thigh. Odessa Monk stood behind him. In the position he was now, Harris, nude, was bent over the table, his arms flat on its surface and tied together at the wrists. The strands then continued to the table’s edge, where she’d brought them underneath and tied the straps securely and tight, around his legs.

  “Is that okay?” she asked him, running her hand between his legs and up the crack. She let her index finger probe in there.

  “That’s great, baby.” He squirmed against his bonds, the purple vinyl straps pulling taut. Odessa Monk briefly wondered how she might tell her brother that Harris had only bruised her that time her son had seen the mark during one of their cherished S&M sessions. And it had been her fault as she’d been excited and demanded him to hit her harder with a padded paddle as he worked a silver vibrator with a mushroom head in her. She blushed, imagining the uncomprehending look on her dear sweet brother’s face.

  She bent gently, whipped her man with the cat-o’-nine-tails and kissed and licked his back. Odessa Monk, public high school teacher, nearly naked and slick with sweat, dug her nails into his love handles as he squealed with pleasure.

  Chapter 27

  Monk and Kodama left the Shur-Cho Korean Bar-B-Que restaurant on the corner of Catalina and 8th Street full and sleepy. They walked toward Vermont Avenue.

  Thinking about how much she’d just eaten, Monk asked, “You’re not eating for two, are you?”

  “Not yet, smart ass. And if you keep it up, I never will, if you know what I mean.”

  They took in the sights along busy Vermont. Friday night and the thoroughfare was hopping with a combination of Hangul pouring from karaoke bars, vendors selling ears of corn and pulpusas, and nortena beats pulsing from passing cars. There were also some elderly whites straggling into an event at the Gothic-styled First Unitarian Church on 8th Street.

  Monk tightened his arm around his old lady’s waist. “Aw, baby,” he jived.

  The couple kissed and continued toward where Monk had parked his car east of the Unitarian Church.

  “You hear that?” he murmured to the woman he loved.

  “What?” she nuzzled his neck.

  “From”—Monk stopped, pointing at two apartment buildings sandwiched together in the dense area—“there,” he said, pointing at the buildings. “You hear it now?”

  “An old blues recording it sounds like.”

  “That’s Charlie Patton’s voice.” A cold jolt tweaked his cortex. “And it’s not a song I recognize, and I’ve played them all several times in the last couple of weeks.”

  “No,” Kodama disagreed.

  “Yes,” he insisted, moving across the sidewalk toward one of the buildings. A stout woman with a laundry basket on her head was going through the building’s security entrance and Monk, Kodama coming up behind him, put his hand on the edge of the door.

  “Con permiso” he said.

  “Gracias,” the woman said, smiling at the two. She went in and Monk, motioning for Kodama, followed.

  The apartment was an older building, originally constructed sometime in the ’30s. There was an open courtyard that contained an egg-shaped patch of dirt where only a few undernourished rubber plants remained.

  “Listen.” He drew Kodama close to him. There was no mistaking Patton’s panther voice as he whacked the pine of his guitar.

  I got the ticket from my darlin’ gal-she done sent the letter across the nation—gonna ride the train ’til it makes the Clarksdale station—gonna ride that rail even though they’s after me—even though them killin’ blues is after me.

  “Through there,” Kodama pointed toward an open archway containing stone steps leading up. The couple ascended and found themselves in an enclosed hallway. Two uncovered bulbs, one at either end, dispersed their diminutive light in the space. They went down the hall.

  Drop down to the bottom—drop down and see ol’ Satan-he got my soul in a jar—say I got to pay my dues—say I got them killin’ blues.

  The voice on the scratchy recording yelped and hollered and then the music faded. Monk paused at a door of peeling ochre paint. The number on it was an upside down seven, loose on its nail.

  “Can I help you?” a Latina with curlers in her hair asked, sticking her head out a door near the stairs. “You two looking to rent?” Down at her side Monk could see the glint of the pistol she held.

  “Is this one occupied?” He poked a thumb at number Seven.

  The woman looked back at Kodama and made the decision the two were either too old or dressed well enough not to “be up to foolishness” as Monk’s mother would have said. “Hold on,” she said, easing her door shut to a crack. Momentarily she stepped out into the hall, sans the firearm. She marched over to the door where Kodama now stood next to Monk.

  Examining the duo she asked querulously, “You two aren’t going to run some kind of business out of here, are you? I’ve already gotten hassled by Building and Safety about that.”

  “No,” Kodama answered.

  The woman did a thing with her head and eyebrows and unlocked the door. She flicked on the light, revealing an empty apartment. No furniture, but there was a green shag rug in need of immediate replacement on the floor. Covering the windows were clean, light-blue sheets. Monk stepped inside.

  “Who used to live here?”

  The manager also stepped inside. “Old man, black man, I think.” She addressed their quizzical looks. “It was hard to tell. He certainly wasn’t as dark as you”—she indicated Monk—“he was colored like gold, you know? And his hair was straight, but you know, curly on the ends. The way he talked, he sounded black.” She worked her head up and down. “I guess he must have been black.”

  “He have a name?” Kodama asked while Monk prowled around the empty rooms.

  “His name was,” she searched her memory, “Dockery. Yeah, I called him Mr. Dockery.”

  “For Dockery Farms,” Kodama whispered.

  Monk was back in the front room. “When did you last see him?”

  The manager scratched at her chin. “It’s been some time now.” She looked around. “Funny, too, I haven’t been able to rent this apartment since.”

  Monk wanted to wait around for who knew how long, but Kodama made him leave. Back out on 8th Street, Monk and Kodama sleepwalked to the Ford. Neither one said anything as he drove them home.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage
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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyright © 2000 by Gary Phillips

  cover design by Elizabeth Connor

  This edition published in 2011 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media

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