Violent Spring Read online

  Kelly Drier, the idiot-savant of yellow journalism emerged from the glare into the blare playing on the screen. He looked properly haggard. His collar hung loose, and a day’s growth of stubble dotted his chin. Monk was willing to bet he’d had the make-up department add that touch.

  The bright light receded as the camera pulled back. In reality a series of flares burned on a bare patch of ground. And Monk could make out men clad in black overalls dashing about, carrying semi-automatic rifles, while the intense beams from helicopters stabbed the ground in crisscross patterns.

  “We are at an apartment complex in southeast Los Angeles,” Drier intoned in his best imitation of a newsman. “The police and FBI, operating on a tip, are here to capture one Antoine ‘Crosshairs’ Sawyer. A known gang leader, and a man said to have information on the death of Bong Kim Suh.”

  Jill sat next to Monk and they watched the cops and feds—on the backs of the overalls in big block white letters it either read LAPD or FBI—scramble around on the courtyard and upper deck of the apartment house, the camera a jittery recorder of their mission of search and seizure. Black men, women and children stood frozen next to the baked stucco walls of the complex, Edward Hopper renditions writ large in the grim fresco of urban drama.

  “I believe,” Drier whispered, as if somehow by talking in a normal voice he’d disrupt the organized confusion, “if you point your camera that way, José, we’ll see the cops make an arrest.”

  The invisible camera operator did so and the lens zoomed in on an apartment door in the corner on the second level. The door was caved in and in the dark maw of its interior, lights flickered and anxiety-laced growls of men were heard on live TV. Presently, several men in black overalls emerged. An overhead beam swung into place, affording the camera an illuminated shot of a black man in his twenties being marched down the stairs in their midst. He was muscular and clad solely in 501 jeans. His hair was done in long cornrows and a small hoop earring pierced his left lobe.

  Drier rushed forward to the bottom of the stairs. “Are you Crosshairs?” he breathed.

  Somebody shoved Drier out of the way and the procession moved on. From somewhere else, another figure emerged in front of the camera, blocking the shot. He was a youngish white man of medium build. He wore tortoise-shell glasses, and his hair was slicked back. He adjusted something at one of his wrists, and Monk could see the guy was wearing gold triangular cuff links.

  “Hi,” the man said affably into the camera. Then the picture went black.

  IT WAS AS if he were strapped to a gurney and the tapokata-tapokata machine ran steadily and noisily in a corner. The shadow of the mighty device, backlit against the snowy muslin of a room screen, droned on like a pneumatic race horse, pumping precious body fluids through his failing body. His life-force slipping away like a dirigible yanking free from its tether to sail aloft over a football field where the combatants wore armor the color of fear and the ground was damp from the tears of crushed desires. Monk’s eyes snapped open at dawn and didn’t close again.

  At eight-thirty that morning, Monk and Jill lay propped up in his bed. She read the front page of the morning Times and he the Metro section. Neither section made mention of the incident they’d witnessed the night before, happening as it did sometime after the early edition was put to bed.

  Nine-twenty arrived, and Monk turned on the radio to one of the local all-news stations. Luis Santillion and Linton Perry were in the middle of a heated discussion on the merits of Perry’s continuing campaign of shutting down rebuilding job sites that didn’t include African-Americans.

  “This is where you’re in error, Mr. Perry,” Santillion said in a forced civility. “You’re talking of a South Central that existed twenty years ago. If you were serious about making sure residents in South Central were hired at these sites, you’d be insuring that it was Latino residents too. We are, after all, more than fifty percent of the population now in sections of what had once been an all black part of town.”

  “I’ve got nothing against Latinos getting their fair share, Mr. Santillion,” Perry responded in his modulated tone. “But I am concerned about a potential work force that is suffering unemployment somewhere in the double digits and climbing.”

  “So am I,” Santillion responded testily.

  Monk twisted the dial and found Tina Chalmers on another show being interviewed. “Do you think that Antoine Sawyer will be able to get a fair trial in Los Angeles, Councilwoman Chalmers?”

  “Your old squeeze, huh?” Kodama said, punching him lightly in the side.

  “Jealousy becomes you, dear.”

  Chalmers was talking. “That’s hard to say when it comes to our young black men entering what passes for the criminal justice system in America.”

  “Does that mean you advocate amnesty for Crosshairs as some radical elements are calling for?” the anonymous questioner asked.

  “No, I don’t. Any wrong must be accounted for.”

  “Tell him, honey,” Kodama said.

  “But I want to emphasize that like the four cops in Simi Valley, I want Sawyer to have a trial of his peers. I want it proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he did indeed kill Mr. Suh.”

  Kodama pulled Monk out of the bed, shutting the radio off. She put the Coleman Hawkins LP The Hawk Flies on Monk’s battered stereo. The wizard of the tenor sax belted out tunes such as “Cocktails for Two” and “Sih-Sah,” The classic driving, monster sound that only Hawkins could command shot from Monk’s aged speakers true and straight to that part of the brain that dug the sound on the subterranean level where the cool came from.

  Hawkins was a jazzman who could consume massive quantities of scotch, fried chicken and chops, and listened at home not to his contemporaries but to wigged-out straights like Verdi and Debussy. But the whiskey did him in as any vice—Monk reflected while holding onto Jill as warm water pelted them as they took a shower together—would get you if you were human and you wished to experience the world. Just as he knew one day he’d catch that bullet in the temple or feel the knife tickle deeper than the third rib.

  Leisurely, they toweled one another off and padded, naked, into his living room. They sprawled onto the couch and started reading the paper. Monk read the comics to her, but soon forgot about Charlie Brown’s troubles as Kodama’s hand fondled his erect penis.

  Later, they both dressed. For breakfast, Kodama drove them in her Saab 900 CS to a chi chi joint in East Hollywood called the Flaming Parrot. It was where the boys and the girls wore eyeliner and, if you asked nicely, you could get your nipples pierced instead of a second cup of coffee.

  It was Kodama’s turn to pay after breakfast, and as she did, Monk stepped outside to the sidewalk. He leaned against the building, working his mouth with a toothpick, casually taking in the sights.

  A little sensation touched his nerves, and something whispered in a corner of his cerebellum.

  Monk jerked his head around, expecting some mugger’s attack. But no one made any hostile move toward him. He glared down the block in both directions, and across the street. Only the heady mix of a bright day in the lower end of Hollywood assailed his senses.

  Funky second-hand stores abutted hardware and electronic outlets as gay men walked hand in hand along the thoroughfare past heavy-thighed Central American women carrying laundry baskets on their heads. Vato Locos prowled in lowered four-door Chevys, and a woman on a Harley with a diamondback sissy bar rolled by.

  “Ready,” Kodama said, coming up beside him. “What are you looking for?”

  “Wha … nothing, I guess. Just daydreaming I suppose.”

  “Why don’t we go over to the newsstand on Melrose?”

  “Sure, honey.”

  They got in the Saab and began driving toward Highland along Santa Monica Boulevard. Monk suddenly stopped feeling as if he were watching events from afar and jolted back into the normal space/time continuum.

  “That wasn’t Crosshairs they captured last night,” he announced quietly. “
That’s what’s been in the back of my mind all morning.”

  “How do you know?” she said in that controlled, yet probing manner of a judge.

  Monk stared at her. Kodama slipped on her sunglasses, looking like a spy on holiday. She kept her hidden eyes pointed to the front. Monk said, “Remember I told you that O’Day gave me a description of James and his infamous cousin?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, it don’t match up, baby. The brother they vamped on last night was too buffed to be Crosshairs.”

  “He could have been working out since the data was gathered.”

  “Yes, that’s so. But Crosshairs Sawyer was shot on the side of his face in ’89. A copy of the police report was in the envelope O’Day gave me. His left earlobe was blown clean away.”

  “And,” Kodama added, “the young man on TV last night had an earring in his fully intact left lobe.” She adjusted her glasses, then said, “A prosthesis?”

  “Nah.” Monk looked back through the rear window.

  “What is it?”

  “Pull over to that pay phone at the Chevron station over there.”

  “All right.”

  She pulled the car into the station and parked near the phones. Monk got out and walked over to Kodama’s side of the car. The electric window sunk into the body of the thing, and Monk leaned close to her handsome face. He said something to her, and she pulled off the lot, again heading west in the direction of Highland.

  Monk watched the broad expanse of Santa Monica east of the station. All sorts of cars went past with all sorts of people at their wheels. He heard the screech of tires and the blaring of horns as Kodama, per their plan, suddenly cut across the pair of double yellow lines of the street and aimed her powerful sports car back toward the station.

  “Hey, big boy, want to get lucky?” Kodama said, zooming onto the lot, the passenger door thrown open.

  “Punch it, baby.” Monk dove in, and the Saab roared east on Santa Monica.

  Kodama ducked and dodged around cars until she came to a red light. She grinned widely and said, “Yeah.” The Saab kicked out and darted across the intersection as drivers, flowing in the north-south lanes, bleated their horns and stood on their breaks as the judge’s car rammed ahead against the red.

  Monk looked back through the rear window. A pale blue Le Baron emerged from the cars behind them still waiting for the green. It too made its way across the intersection and began to gain ground on the Saab. Just as suddenly, it slowed up and flowed back into the rest of the traffic. Monk settled into his seat.

  “You can slow up, Jill. The experiment is a success. The patient is fucked.”

  “We were being followed.”

  “That’s why Keys wanted to make sure he’d know where I’d be yesterday at two.” Glumly, Monk looked out at the city passing by.

  Kodama parked the car at the curb. They exited and walked several feet from it. Kodama looked up into his face, her brows in a deep V. “So what’s going on here, Ivan?”

  “Keys wanted me in one spot because I’m sure he’s had my place bugged, and maybe your pad, and,” he pointed at the Saab, “maybe yours and my car, too.”

  “I’ll have the cocksucker’s badge.”

  “This isn’t something he’s looking to use in court.”

  Jill removed her glasses. “The Bureau wants to make points since they’ve come under so much criticism for their involvement in anti-gang operations.”

  “And they want Conrad James so they can deliver the goods.”

  Jill sighed. “So what are we going to do?”

  Monk stuck his hands in his back pockets and started to walk further away from the car, his nerves screaming to separate themselves from his skin. He looked at people strolling past, and wondered which pair of eyes was a window to a G-man or G-woman’s grey soul. He looked up at the facades of buildings, envisioning which one hid the directional mike and the night binoculars.

  “They’ve got so much fancy equipment, it doesn’t actually have to be a transmitter inside the house, what with devices that pick up vibrations off of windows and all that kind of shit,” Monk muttered.

  “Let’s not get more paranoid than we have to.” Kodama put her arm in the crook of Monk’s elbow as they walked. “I think your best move is to act like you know they’ve been tailing you, but don’t suspect that maybe they’ve got you wired, too.”

  “You’re right. But how in the hell am I going to conduct my business?”

  “We better get ahold of Dexter.” Kodama guided him to a phone booth. “He’s the one with experience in this stuff.”

  Monk dialed Grant’s number to his house in Lake Elsinore. Morricone’s score from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly greeted his ears. It quit and Monk said, “Dex, if you’re there, pick up.” A pause; nothing. “Call me tonight at the Cork.” He replaced the receiver very carefully, as if jarring it might set off Pandemonium. He stared at the instrument.

  “Hey, you still there?” Kodama placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “Take me to my office, will you?”

  “That’s only going to escalate matters,” she said, a disappointed tone to her voice.

  Monk smiled weakly. “I think we could safely conclude matters have already escalated. Anyway, Charlton Heston, Ice-T and I think alike on this subject.”

  Kodama didn’t move.

  “Jill, we don’t have time to argue the issue about the proliferation of guns right now. I’ve got the feds jumping on my ass and pretty soon probably some Rolling Daltons,” he said, remembering the Blazer outside Hi-Life liquors. “And I’m a little too far into this to turn back and go home, telling all the fellas I don’t want to play anymore.”

  She looked away, then looked back. “All right, I guess I can’t have you running around unprotected.”

  He gave her a hug around the shoulders. “Sure you’re right.”

  Kodama drove Monk to his office and waited in the car as he went up. Presently he returned, carrying a gym bag which he put behind the seat.

  “Is ’ol Betsy in there?” she said, thumbing at the bag. Kodama pulled away from his office.

  “The only name for my gun, is gun,” Monk responded, absorbed in working out strategies for the coming days.

  “Well, it did belong to your father in the Korean War.”

  “So I’m attached to it, okay?”

  “Okay,” Kodama replied tersely.

  They drove in silence for a while until Kodama spoke again. “Where am I going?”

  “Let’s just do what we were going to do.” Monk rubbed her upper thigh as a sign of conciliation.

  They went to the newsstand, took a walk along Melrose and got lunch at a bar-b-que place they both liked in the Crenshaw District. From a pay phone in the restaurant, the two called their answering machines. On Monk’s was a message from Tina Chalmers.

  “Ivan, I need to talk to you as soon as possible, call me.”

  He did, but only got her machine at her home. “Tina, it’s Monk, I’ll be at the Cork later tonight.”

  “Oh, a little rendezvous with Ms. Chalmers,” Jill said.

  “Business, baby, business.”

  “Make sure it ain’t monkey business, sport.”

  They left the eatery and walked toward the car. A silver van with gold rims drove by with the SOMA logo emblazoned on its side.

  “Creepy,” Jill remarked, eyeing the cruising van. “Like there’s been a silent coup, and tomorrow morning we’ll have to wear our uniforms to work in the SOMA plant making soma.”

  “I’m hip. Hey, look at this.”

  They had stopped in front of a building undergoing some rehab work. There were the ubiquitous plywood boards thrown up around it as a barrier, and posters announcing upcoming movies and record albums had been slavered across the wood. Monk pointed to one about a meeting to take place at an auditorium of a black-owned insurance company on Western Avenue. It was billed as a meeting of the minds between Linton Perry of Harvesters Unlimited a
nd Luis Santillion of El Major. The event was to happen tonight.

  “Meeting of the titanic egos is more like it,” Kodama enthused, reading the announcement.

  Monk smiled at her and they walked on, holding hands. Monk retrieved his car from home, and they took two cars back to Kodama’s house. But they found intimacy impossible to initiate given the possibility of being recorded for the lecherous pleasures of the FBI. Instead, Kodama, an accomplished amateur painter, worked on a piece she was doing in oils.

  It depicted two women, one Asian, the other black, sitting at a diner’s counter drinking coffee and rolling dice. The counterman, garbed in a forties-style white apron and three-corner hat, was a dead ringer for the late African liberation leader, Patrice Lumumba. Seen through the diner’s window was a street scene of burning oil rigs. Monk always waited until after the paintings were done before he asked her what they meant.

  The aroma of drying oil paint, like the smell of fresh apricots, embraced the study. Monk read more from the book he’d started, The Closest of Strangers, the title gaining a new meaning for him. Dusk burgeoned and Monk prepared them a supper of broiled bass, southern dirty rice and sauteed carrots. A pall hung over them as they ate in near silence, looking at their food more than at one another, picking at it and moving it around on their plates.

  Afterward, Monk rose and opened the gym bag he’d brought with him. He took out his well-worn shoulder holster and the Springfield Armory issue .45 automatic. Jill watched him in stony silence. He sat at the dining room table, the pistol before him on a sheet of yesterday’s newspaper. Next to that he placed the gun kit he’d also brought along.

  “Happiness is a warm gun,” she said.

  Monk didn’t respond but disassembled the weapon which had originally belonged to his father, Master Sergeant Josiah Monk. Over the years, the younger Monk had replaced several of the original parts with aftermarket ones to insure continued proper functioning of the 1911-based model. He checked the slide, and the remanufactured stop which made for positive release of the slide and ejection of the magazine. He made sure the Wilson full-length guide with the Dwyer Group Gripper was the one he’d put on, as well as checking the neoprene washer he’d installed to reduce frame battering during firing.