Only the Wicked Read online

  “Or answering a knock,” Elrod put in.

  Roberts’ lizard-lidded eyes briefly flashed wide. Normally, he usually seemed half-awake, as if missing or not comprehending events around him. But Monk knew from the past Roberts assessed and weighed every word and action, and their nuances. “But then there is the old man.”

  “Dellums,” Monk supplied.

  “He’s wearin’ my ear out about how Riles had been going on about his sins catching up to him. I guess y’all had been at a funeral last Saturday?”

  “That’s right,” Monk said. “I dropped them off at Kennesaw’s place afterward in Willowbrook. Mr. Dellums was kind enough to stay with him.” Recalling his own fuzzy awakening Sunday, he added, “We’d all been sampling the joy juice at the wake.”

  “And you never saw your cousin after that?” Roberts had more coffee.

  “I came by and got Mr. Dellums the next morning. Kennesaw was on the couch, but not in too good a shape. He said he wanted to talk with me about Mississippi, but later when he wasn’t hungover. He went back to sleep, and Mr. Dellums and I left.”

  “This is Friday,” Roberts said unnecessarily.

  “I had to go out of town on Tuesday to finish up a chicken-stealing matter in Flagstaff,” Monk offered without further explanation. “I got back yesterday, and intended to call Kennesaw today or this weekend.”

  “His phone records indicate he called your office on Tuesday, and he talked for about three minutes.” Roberts’ hooded eyes disappeared in a ribbon of vapor as he held the cup to his lips.

  “Yeah,” Monk answered, fingering the cloth. “He talked with Delilah, who told him I would be in today. I have my hotel receipt, Mr. Roberts.”

  “I’m sure you do. But you ain’t my suspect anyway.”

  Elrod kept buffing.

  Roberts returned to the counter.

  A customer entered and Monk filled his order for a bear claw and a large hot chocolate. He started to sit down, but the three pairs of baleful eyes drove him out the door. The PI sat next to the cop at the counter, placing his elbows on its just-polished surface. Behind them, Elrod moved silently and efficiently in his task of restoring the sheen to the leather.

  “I had the medical examiner do a chemical analysis on your cousin, after talking with Mr. Dellums some more.” Roberts had his notepad on the counter, open. His handwriting was compact, controlled, suggesting a linear personality. “There was an over-abundance of a substance called Digoxin in his system. It’s a prescription medication for a heart condition. Too much at any one time speeds up the heart, which could cause it to give out.”

  Monk realized where he was going and said, “Old folks get confused about their doses all the time.”

  “Yes, this is so,” Roberts conceded. “When I visit my dad I always go over with him what he needs to take and when. I make a little chart for him to help avoid mistakes.”

  “But you think otherwise with Kennesaw,” Monk declared.

  Elrod stopped rubbing.

  “I found some empty gel capsules in a trash container two houses down. Good thing, too. We found ’em around five a.m. At six-thirty, the trash was picked up. Anyway, there were traces of Digoxin inside the capsules. No latents, though.”

  “Thorough investigation,” Monk admitted. “A lot of cops would have stopped at just Kennesaw’s garbage.”

  Roberts closed the notebook. “You wouldn’t have.” He sipped some coffee and swung toward Monk. “The glasses had been washed in the kitchen, but there was a fifth of Old Crow in Kennesaw’s trash. I figure the killer chatted him up about the good old days, the two of them having a few drinks. He played in the Negro Leagues, I understand.”

  “Yeah. But are you saying he was killed for whatever he had in that fire box?”

  “He was slipped that speedball for some reason.”

  Monk was trying to make sense of the data. “You said he was found in his bed clothes.”

  “ME estimates the stuff might have taken awhile to work its way to the pump. Depending on how diluted it was in the booze, how much, you know.” He watched Monk, the veiled eyes missing nothing. “Your mother’s a nurse, isn’t she, Monk?”

  “Kind of a reach there, ain’t it, Sarge?”

  “Dellums told me that last Saturday night Kennesaw was moaning and groaning and fretting something fierce with his drunk on. Talking about how he needed to make it plain before the ‘Killin’ Blues’ came to claim him. About how he needed to explain things to your mother.”

  “You talk to her?” Monk asked. He wouldn’t admit it to Roberts, but he was curious as to what her reaction might be to her cousin’s murder.

  “Oh yes,” the plainclothes cop said. “She was properly shocked, but ’fessed up she’d been finished with him for some time. She told me about his testifying against Damon Creel and what not.” Roberts’ eyes took on a dreamy quality. It was as if his mind were floating in several realms at once, assaying information of a physical and ephemeral nature.

  “When’s the last time Dellums saw Kennesaw?” Monk tried to sound professional, not indicate the surprise the last bit of information had been to him. It was logical that Roberts would assume he already knew his cousin was the reason Damon Creel was in prison. And that this was the family disgrace his mother had been unwilling to share with her family at dinner.

  A tight smile pulled Roberts’ face, automatic cop resistance. “Since you’re gonna ask him anyway, I’ll tell you. He saw him on Wednesday. He called him to see about the two of them getting together to watch a baseball game on Thursday.”

  “So he does drive,” Monk confirmed.

  “Daytime, not at night.” Roberts got up, producing another kitchen match. He busied it between his substantial thumb and forefinger. “I’ve been going at this strong since I got the call. I’m gonna go home and hit the sack.” He put the match in the side of his mouth, where it bobbed as he talked. “You might want to have a conversation with your mother, Monk.”

  “You can’t believe what you’re thinking,” Monk said.

  “I believe a lot of things, brother.” He nodded at Elrod and strolled out.

  Monk helped Elrod finish cleaning the booths. He needed to do something mundane while he tried to make sense of what had happened. That Saturday, Kennesaw had been going on about setting the record straight. He’d figured it was just the liquor making an old man contend with his regrets, a room full of should-have-beens-and-dones all of us have. Only his cousin maybe had one big regret: He’d sent a man to prison under possibly questionable circumstances. Had someone finally exacted a payback on his cousin for what he’d done? And if so, why now? Could it have been one of the old-timers at the shop, men who hadn’t seen Kennesaw in decades? Without a doubt, he had to talk to his mother.

  Later, he went back to his office file room rather than call her from the phone on the wall behind the donut case. As he’d hoped, the message machine was on. His mother’s cheery voice was a sharp contrast to the concerns festering within him. He quietly replaced the receiver, and considered what time to call her at Cedars-Sinai.

  He’d recently hung a print of John Biggers’ “Harriet Tubman and Her Underground Railroad” in his research room. The courageous Tubman stood, arms outstretched bearing a flaming torch, leading runaway slaves to freedom. In the left quadrant of the illustration, there was a black man, head hung low, brow deepened by years of burden and abuse. He was struggling mightily with a cotton sack, full of the fiber, its rope around his neck holding up the bag. He looked as if his labors would never end, as if fate had intended for him to forever travail in back-breaking endeavors.

  Monk smiled sardonically at the idea.

  Kodama bent down and picked up a copy of L.A. Parent. She smiled at Monk, folding the free tabloid in half the long way. The judge tucked it under her arm. Impulsively, Monk kissed her and they nuzzled faces and continued past the newsstand after leaving the Nuart movie theater.

  “Did you realize The Armored Car Robbery’
s plot was about a heist at the old LA. Wrigley Field?” Kodama asked.

  “Yes. After all, he is the unrecognized king of the taut, terse, B-gangster epic.”

  “Especially when the movie featured yours and Dex’s favorite actor, Charles McGraw.” Kodama said, in a passing imitation of the tough-guy-actor’s gravel voice.

  They went to a coffeehouse around the corner from the theater. They ordered a regular and a café au lait. Sitting outside in the warm evening, Kodama thumbed through the LA. Parent magazine.

  “Is that supposed to be a subtle hint, dear? Looking for tips on how to balance career and kids?” Monk asked, noting Kodama was reading an article with interest in the magazine.

  “It’s about women my age and what happens once they decide to have children.” She didn’t look up. Her cafe au lait rested near her hand, untouched.

  “Just what is your age?” Monk inquired seriously.

  “You know us Asians, like some black folk, never show, honey.” She kept reading the article. “And I suppose I’m to believe you’ve never sneaked a peek at my driver’s license when I’ve been asleep?”

  Monk made a tsk-tsk sound. “How could you think that about me?”

  She raised an eyebrow, and finally had some of her coffee. “Anyway, older women turn you on.”

  Monk drank and started to unwrap a petite cigar as quietly as possible.

  “Don’t even,” Kodama warned.

  “You’re not pregnant right now, are you?” Monk asked, the cellophane wrapper shaking in his unsteady hand.

  “No, darling, but one must lead by example.” She closed the magazine.

  “Parenting advice from Chairman Mao.” Monk replaced the wrapper, and put the cigar back in the pocket of his jean jacket.

  “Hey, did you talk to your mother yet?”

  “I called over to the hospital once, but her station said she was busy.”

  “You sound glad about that.”

  “Do I?”

  She slapped his hand. “Your mother ain’t a killer.”

  “She didn’t like him. She didn’t want to talk about him.”

  “There seems to be good reason, Ivan. Anyway, that’s not exactly a motive, Nick Charles.” Monk grunted. “For your own peace of mind, let’s find out,” she said.

  “Yes, your buddy Roberts talked to me yesterday, Thursday.” Nona Monk took off her reading glasses, placing them on the chart she’d been making notes on. She pinched the bridge of her nose. A soda machine hummed in a corner, providing a background cadence in the nurse’s lounge.

  “Mom, you’re a natural suspect. You have means, and from what Roberts has told me, motive.” Monk sat across from her at the round table, Kodama, her arms folded, to his left.

  “I didn’t call you because I didn’t know how I wanted to get into this business of what Kennesaw did,” his mother started. The door opened and a man in scrubs entered. He took off his plastic hair net, nodding at Monk’s mother. The male nurse got a container out of the refrigerator, and sat at one of the other tables.

  “Kennesaw was a boot-licking, Mr.-Charley-lovin’ Uncle Tom, plain and simple,” Nona Monk explained. “It was his testimony that put Damon Creel in prison for more than a quarter of a century now.”

  “And he was lying?” Monk asked.

  “Yes, he was lying,” his mother said flatly.

  The man in the corner looked up from his salad and the Newsweek he was paging through.

  “Why’d he do it?” Kodama asked.

  “Why does anybody sell out, Jill?” Monk’s mother shot back. “Years ago Senator Hiyakawa stated that internment was good for the Japanese; Ward Connerly gleefully working to break up affirmative action programs nationwide; Finks in the civil rights movement; other so-called black organizations being used willingly by the FBI to move against their own. Get a little jive power from The Man, I guess.” She shrugged, looking at Kodama unblinkingly.

  “Was Kennesaw an informant for the Bureau?” Monk’s own opinion of the organization, given his actual experience with its agents, was not high. And the history of the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO, an all-out effort to destroy the civil rights movement and the Black Panther Party, didn’t win them many fans in several quarters of the African-American community.

  His mother yawned, holding the back of her hand to her mouth. “Excuse me. No, your cousin had his hat in the Southern Citizens League.”

  “The buttoned-down Klan,” Kodama said.

  Nona Monk stretched. “You know how they got their start?” She gave both of them an inquisitive look. “The Mississippi and Alabama Southern Citizens Leagues were started because of Little Richard and Chuck Berry.”

  “Race music,” Monk said.

  “Sweet little white high school girls getting all worked up over these velvet-voiced, pompadour-wearing, hip-shaking, long lean black men hollering their hoodoo songs.”

  “Chuck wasn’t wild like Little Richard,” Kodama pointed out. “He made rock and roll ballads like ‘Roll Over, Beethoven’ and ‘Johnny B. Goode.”’

  “And ‘My Ding-A-Ling,”’ Monk laughed. “But I guess they all can’t be prize winners.”

  Nona Monk said, “That’s true, Jill, but the white teenagers lined up to see him like they did Little Richard, Frankie Lyman, all of them. You can imagine the fallout up north, let alone the absolute stark panic it must have caused in the deep south. ‘Nigger bop music’ they called it, jungle rhythms enticing their womenfolk to do God knows what devilment.” His mother yawned again. “They would have these huge bonfires where hundreds of forty-fives by black singers and musicians would be thrown in. You’d have sheriff’s deputies and assorted crackers standing at the edge of town with shotguns to keep out touring R-and-B acts.”

  “And from this the Southern Citizens League grew?” Monk asked.

  “Oh yes,” his mother said vigorously. “The men who organized their own associations in various states were the downtown business interests and the big landowners. Many of these men were college-educated, had been to the war and so forth. They understood that some kind of change was going to come. And that the Klan had its uses, but used like a scalpel, not a hammer. In the long run, it was better to cultivate good, friendly Negroes willing to work at a snail’s pace rather than create a bunch of martyrs with dynamite and rope.”

  “So what did Kennesaw get out of this arrangement?” Monk leaned forward on his elbows.

  “He didn’t get any of his white pals to sign with his wife’s insurance company,” his mother said defiantly, as if her cousin were listening in. “What he got, or rather what he hoped to get by being a turncoat was some under-the-table money and a pat on the head for being a reliable nigra.” The venom in her voice cut through the room. The man in the corner pretended he hadn’t heard.

  “Just for money? Come on, Mom, how much were they paying him?”

  “Honey, I don’t know and I don’t much care.”

  “He was murdered, Nona,” Kodama reminded her.

  Unconsciously, Ivan gauged his mother’s body language.

  “Now I already told you about sizing me up, Ivan.” She wagged a short-nailed finger at him. “Ain’t a whole lot of us in the family had much to do with Kennesaw after that damned trial. How he’d go around saving he’d done it so as to make things better in the long run. That somebody like Creel was just gonna bring down the wrath of the almighty white man and something had to be done. Shit,” his mother snorted, “I guess the poor fool actually started to believe his own bullshit after a while.”

  “Do you know if he and Dora had any children?”

  “I’ve made some calls, Ivan, and can’t get one straight answer. AC down in Corpus Christi swears she knew the child. And Louise in Yellow Springs claims Dora fooled around on Kennesaw as much as he boasted he did on her. And that if she had any child it was mama’s baby and papa’s maybe.”

  “The errant offspring returns to slay the father?” Kodama glared at the other two.

/>   “It has happened before.” Nona Monk got up, placing her wire-frame glasses back on. “Listen, Ivan, I realize it’s serious that apparently somebody overdosed Kennesaw. Who’s to say one of those old-timers at the barber shop on Saturday didn’t do it? Maybe one of them had an old grudge to settle for some other reason.”

  “I can’t see one of them being that subtle.”

  “So you’re telling me not to leave town, McGarrett?” She laughed hollowly.

  “Roberts has an interest in this, Mom. And he ain’t slow.”

  “Well, I am, baby.” She patted his cheek, and picked up her forms. “He can catch me ‘cause I ain’t running.” She walked on dead feet to the door. “I’ve got to get the schedules posted for the weekend. ’Bye, Jill.” She waved and exited.

  “Sweatin’ your own mother,” Kodama admonished mockingly.

  The man in the corner grimaced at Monk with disdain.

  Chapter 6

  “Where you going?”

  Monk, in his boxers, had one knee on the bed and his other leg trailing. He leaned over and kissed Kodama’s shoulder. “I want to check on something at Spears’ house.”

  “Can’t it wait?” She slid across the sheet and took a playful bite on his leg.

  “It’s been on my mind all night.” He moved out of the bed, grabbing his 501s off the floor. “I won’t be long.”

  “Hey, if I get inspired, I might even make breakfast.” Kodama wafted a lazy hand onto the nearby radio, and clicked it on. Scott Simon’s voice, of National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition, filled the room.

  “Interesting.” The preparation of food was not an attribute the judge would go down in history about.

  “All right,” she warned, hearing the hesitation in his voice.

  “Yes, dear.” He patted her butt and walked out of the bedroom.

  He took the Ford over to Apex, then down to Glendale Boulevard. Monk was proud of himself that after months of living with Kodama in Silverlake, he’d finally mapped, after much experimental trailblazing, the various byways and their permutations in his head. He’d learned the streets and terraces that dead-ended, those that became another street on the other side of the hill, and those that one could take to and back from his pad to avoid the jam-up Silverlake Boulevard invariably became during rush hour.