Bad Night Is Falling (10 page)

A Scalp Hunter, dressed in oversized khaki shorts and handling a semiauto, ran past a prone Monk, intent on finding a target. There was a large oleander bush in direct line from him across the street, and Monk was very aware of a squat dark shape disturbing its leaves.

“Get between the cars,” he screamed at the Scalp Hunter in the shorts.

The man across the street let go with rounds from the weapon he held. It tut-tutted bullets in no discernable pattern, or at least that was Monk's perception as he vaulted over the trunk of the Trans Am, the back window blowing apart like tossed marbles. He banged his knee on the way over, gritting his teeth as he hit the concrete with his shoulder.

More bellowing of gunfire, running, and “Mother-fuckah” filled the night. As his heart jackhammered in his throat, Monk caught glimpses of the attackers. Body types and recent encounters collided in his mind like Polaroids spread before him on a table. He knew the broad, squat form of one of the assaulters was Big Loco. He was letting loose with whatever the hell his spurt gun was.

Not bothering or chancing to aim, Monk cranked off two shots in the wide little man's direction. More bullets tore into the sports car's frame, some of them penetrating to the other side.

“Goddamn, they popped Stake,” a voice yelled.

“Get them wets,” someone else exhorted.

More gunfire erupted, and the uncertainty of life on the battlefield was played out on Trinity Street.

Monk belly crawled onto an adjacent lawn, two sets of feet trampling over him.

“Watch out, motherfuckah,” a voice belonging to one pair rasped. “Yo, they bookin',” the Scalp Hunter said to no one in particular.

Several members of the gang ran down the street to the sounds of car doors slamming and engines racing.

Monk tried to get up but a foot, shod in slip-ons, kicked at his head. Instinctively, he got a forearm up to block the movement. Utilizing the direction of his motion, he rolled on his back, coming up to thrust the muzzle of his gun into the crotch of the kicker.

“Hey, Pelé, want to go for the goal?” It was the white bodyguard of the older OG.

The face at the other end registered surprise, but was quickly jerked out of sight by a massive black hand. The other bodyguard had snatched him back. “Come on,” he advised hurriedly.

The two surrounded their boss, hurrying him away, the largest one wielding a pistol proportionate with his large hands. The white man looked back, his right arm extended rigidly, the index like an arrowhead intended for the center of Monk's head.

A shot took out grass and dirt near him, and Monk scrambled for the bungalow's porch. By now the attack seemed to have dissipated, the Scalp Hunters having driven the Domingos back.

Monk was among several trying to get their breath back and nerves calmed down when a young man ran up. He wore a black eyepatch with a white Japanese ideogram sewn onto it. “Them eses capped Stake and Junior Blue. Motherfuck”—he threw down a gun—“they gonna pay.”

Monk tried surreptitiously to remove his rattled six-feet-plus-off the stoop.

“Who the fuck is you?” A twenty-odd-year-old with hair dyed a bright blondish-yellow with a maroon streak demanded. The second color was shaped like the prow of a ship. A bright and shiny hoop earring dangled from each lobe. The Dennis Rodman of the gangster set. He underscored his question with a gun.

Monk held his hands out from his sides. “My name is Ivan Monk. I was hired by Antar Absalla to find out who firebombed the Cruzado family in the Rancho.” Though there were holes in the front of the house, the porch light was untouched. Various sweating heads were inclined threateningly at the stranger.

Three Scalp Hunters brought a body into the light. It was the young man Monk had tried to warn. His khaki shorts were now drenched in red. They put him on the lawn, another offering to nihilism. Each week more and more bodies were stacked up on altars of recrimination and selfhate. The trio, moving like
mirzas
given a job at the beginning of time, moved off to collect the other corpse on their eternal rounds.

“These Mexicans follow you here?” The speaker stepped close to Monk, bringing his homely face almost to his nose.

A correction in ethnicity seemed inappropriate. “No,” he said resolutely.

“Then how they be here, cuz?”

“How you be here?” The angry query was repeated by the first one who'd spotted him. This one swaggered over.

The ring was constricting, Monk's options of staying alive reduced to nil. “I told you, nobody followed me here.”

“He did try to warn Blue, I saw it,” a thin one offered.

“How'd you know about this meet, chump?” A hard shove to his chest accompanied this request. The ring tightened more.

The .45 was back in his shoulder holster, under his nylon jacket. Could he draw the weapon, take one or two out before they dropped him? As he gauged his next move he became oddly aware that the elbow on his right sleeve was ripped. The breeze felt good on his scraped elbow. “I told you, I was here on business,” he said sharply. He was about to remind them their gang were suspects, but he let it pass. Where the hell were the goddamn cops?

“You gonna jump, frog?” Blondie taunted, waving the gun like a wand—a magician about to materialize him in the afterlife.

“I said what I said. If I led the Domingos here, why the hell would I have been shooting at them too?”

“Maybe they crossed you, sell-out.” With his free hand, Blondie casually dug a finger way up his nose, searching and probing. “Let's take you somewhere so we can find—”

“Sirens,” somebody yelled from the gloom just beyond the porch light milliseconds before they seemed to reach the others' ears.

“Take him,” Blondie ordered to no one in particular, jerking his phosphorescent mane at Monk.

“Like hell,” he declared.

Blondie swung with the flat of his gun, sending Monk staggering back. He faked more pain than he felt, doubling over so as to get his piece clear. Blondie stepped nearer.

“Straighten up, bitch, so I can hit you again.”

Monk did so, jamming the automatic under the hitter's left eye. “This straight enough?”

“We gotta book,” another warned excitedly.

Blondie snarled but said nothing, his gun remaining trained on Monk, as Monk's gun was on him. The overhead light reflected hypnotically in his earrings.

Some of the crew were already running off. “Come on, B.B., we need to hat, man. We'll deal with this punk in a short minute.”

B.B. the blond relented, backing off, gun still leveled at Monk. “We ain't through, bitch.”

The Scalp Hunters faded away and in less than a minute, police cars careened across lawns, disgorging uniforms with the de rigueur shotguns and 9mms at the ready.

Monk stood with his hands visible on the pockmarked porch. The body of the one called Stake stretched before him on the uncut grass.

“We got another one behind this van,” a cop bellowed.

Monk was ordered on his knees, a foot slammed hard into his upper back. He went down stomach first on the weather-beaten floorboards of the porch.

“Now, what's your story, Bo Peep?” A voice thick with malice said as muzzles were connected to his head like antennae.

Out on the lawn, just at the edge of the light, he could see the inert form of the boy-man. Another grave marker signaling one more bad night.

Síx

“W
hat in the fuck did you think you were doing?” Absalla worked his fist, opening and closing the hand like it was hooked to a generator.

“My job,” Monk answered evenly. He crossed his legs, trying to give off a casual demeanor sitting across from the yelling man. Inwardly, he felt like notching it up several octaves himself. He'd already spent six hours with several fairly disinterested LAPD cops doing the “I'm innocent” tango. One of them, a hollow-eyed detective named Fitzhugh, was the cop Cady had mentioned as an extra-large asshole.

He and the compact number called Zaneski were the leads on the Rancho case. Fitzhugh promised to make a formal complaint to the Bureau of Consumer Affairs—the state agency that oversees the licensing of PIs. Yet even hardheaded detectives must give in to logic. They finally put out a pick-up order for Big Loco.

Those pleasantries out of the way, he had to fill out a firearms discharge report, and call Jill to pick him up. He'd been asleep for about an hour, after sharing a shower with the slippery jurist, when the phone call from the man shouting at him now had disturbed his slumber. Apparently Absalla had flown back from D.C. upon getting the news of the shoot-out.

“You supposed to be a pro,” Absalla retorted.

“I was not followed.” Monk spaced his words like flares around an accident. “I ain't no goddamn greenhorn.”

“Oh really,” the other man said condescendingly. “Aside from Keith, you was the only one who knew where the meet was.”

“No,” Monk corrected forcefully. “Whoever told Keith also knew.”

Absalla tugged on an ear. “That floats like shit, Monk. What are you trying to get at?”

“Something that makes sense. If I wasn't followed, then whoever peeped Keith must have rolled over on the Scalp Hunters.”

The Ra-Falcons' leader put a foot on the edge of his desk, leaning his chair back. “Naw, that don't wash, Monk. It could have only been another Scalp Hunter, and an OG at that. That meeting was on the high level.”

“So what makes it such a lock?”

Absalla detailed, “Keith gets his info from a Scalp Hunter, who then turns around and tells them Domingos. Why should he? What the hell's in it for him?”

“Maybe Big Loco laid out some of the dinero he's rumored to be getting from the Zacatecas mob for the information,” Monk speculated. “Or the real answer is easy to grasp. A Scalp Hunter gets followed to the meeting.”

“The second part still assumes the Domingos would be following a Scalp around. And let me clue you, that's about as likely as Whitney Houston breaking down the door right now so she could sit on my face.

“In your world,” he flared, “maybe blacks and browns can get along.” Absalla took his foot off the edge of the desk, letting the chair's legs come down heavily.

“But this here's the Rancho, Monk, the Taj, you dig? Black kids get popped at around here when they're doing nothing more than waiting for a bus out on San Pedro. Not 'cause they're in the Scalps, not 'cause they look like somebody who crossed some other dude's girl. They get shot at 'cause they're black.”

“It happens the other way around too,” Monk noted.

“It does,” Absalla conceded. “But that's why I thought I was hiring somebody sharp, somebody who knew the deal and could maneuver around without stumbling all over the place like a chump.”

“I wasn't followed.”

Absalla did an apologetic gesture. “You still looking like the bah, bah.”

Monk got up quick, his chair scooting back forcefully. “I got your goat.”

The security chief also shot up. “What it be, Monk?” he yelled, “we gonna redecorate the office?” He worked his fist, kneading his unseen ball. The muscles along his arm bunched under the pressed cotton sleeve.

A vein in Monk's neck was pulsing like a gas hose fed too much fuel. He felt the intensity working its way up to his head and he welcomed the feeling. Each man gave the face to the other. Go on, prove how much of a tough private eye you are and leap over the desk at that self-righteous, self-appointed black leader.

The standoff ticked down; a baby's cry carried in on the breeze. Finally Monk exhaled, and calmly righted the chair. “I guess I can submit an invoice for my expenses.”

Absalla looked down at his desk, his mouth working at words but not vocalizing them. He looked up with his eyes. “Mail it in.”

He pulled open the door; Keith 2X and a Ra-Falcon he didn't know were making a show of being absorbed in some sort of paperwork. 2X went out of his way not to look at him. Something that wasn't a smile lighted on Monk's face as a rush of hot blood filled his forehead.

Crossing quickly to the main door he asked, “One of you mind telling me who were the two that got killed last night?”

The one Monk didn't know looked at Keith 2X. Absalla stood in the doorway to his office, his hands placed on either side of the doorjamb as if guarding against bad spirits.

“Junior Blue and Stake,” 2X replied tersely.

“This Junior related to the Reeves who used to be called Kid Blue?”

2X's expression told Monk what he wanted to know and he left. He managed to make it to his car, feeling his height and esteem diminish with each step. He aimed the Ford over to his donut shop on automatic pilot. He went in, grunting hellos to Elrod and two of the regulars.

“Andrade came by and picked up the phone,” Elrod informed him.

“Glad to see somebody's on their J.” He disappeared into his steel-shuttered room. He used to keep a cot in the room, but was glad he'd recently replaced it with a futon. He put the radio on, sliding the dial left to KLON, the jazz station out of Long Beach State.