Bad Night Is Falling (12 page)

He got into trying to keep up. An hour went by, he lost three hundred. He'd have to come up with a cleverer—and less expensive—way to approach Booker. Amazingly, once he got down to seventy dollars, he won a hand. The two Asian women became his cheering section. They laughed in unison, and the sneaky one leaned over and patted him on the shoulder. She was still trying to get a look at his tiles as she blew fumes from her Chesterfield in his face.

Booker finally acknowledged Monk's presence with a quick sidelong glance, then resumed his focus on his own tiles. The player between the two men, a woman in a stretched car coat, left the table. She'd been betting heavy, and was down to five red chips. The dour-faced dealer began again after everyone anted.

“Is it true that Acuras are very popular?” Monk said softly amongst the chatter.

Booker flung a white chip into the middle of the table. He remained mute.

Monk lasted another twelve minutes, got wiped out, and left to the applause of his two buddies. He checked his watch: four-twenty. Time enough for something with more grab than a ginger ale. He got a scotch rocks and threaded about the place some more. Waiting and calculating. Booker finally took a bathroom break.

Monk stood next to him at the urinals. “I understand the overseas market for Toyota Land Cruisers is fairly lucrative.”

Booker analyzed the pores in the tile's grouting, finished, then rinsed his hands in the faux black marble sink.

“You don't like meeting new people, or what?” Monk cracked, still at the urinal.

“What the fuck is with you, man.” Booker's voice was thin and insubstantial. It seemed that stringing several words together was an effort for him like walking up flights of stairs.

“Just interested in doing a little business.”

“Oh, what would that be?” the hollow voice said. He spritzed some cologne from a dispenser onto his manicured hands and patted his cheek.

“Cars.”

“I got a car.” He started to walk out. “Three in fact.”

“You so phat you can't get rid of a few more primo rides like an Infiniti or two?”

“And you the man to supply them, Mr. Officer?” he said with interest as they stood in the hallway, patrons ebbing by.

“Ain't no cop.”

“I'm gone.” Booker made his way to another table, chips appearing before him as he sat down.

So much for the infiltration plan. Monk wandered back outside, idly considering waiting around and trying to follow Booker. But he knew the man was too street savvy to let that happen. He walked to his Ford, a splatter of bird droppings on his window and hood greeting him. The capper to a less than fruitful day.

Eí
ǵ
ght

K
odama took the private elevator to her floor and stepped out into the quiet corridor. It wasn't quite eight in the morning. She carried the
Times
and a cup of mocha grande she'd purchased at the Pasqua stand in the courtyard behind the Superior Court building. Her docket for today only had a prelim in the afternoon, and she was determined to maintain her normalcy. She was going to sit in her chambers, drink her heavenly brew, and read about the further troubles of the cash-strapped county. Bigger problems always put your own in perspective.

She said hello to a passing bailiff and undid the lock on her door. Kodama got the light on and entered the office. Putting her paper down, she read the words “Nip bitch sucks black dick,” spray painted in brilliant orange across one walnut-paneled wall. She then saw the other phrases splayed across her desk, another wall, and the carpet.

She removed the lid on her cup of mocha grande and drank, methodically rereading the hateful words. The judge didn't move; she just stood in the office, her door open to the hallway. Calmly she used the phone to call down to the second floor where the sheriff's bailiff's station was. Mitchell wasn't in yet, but she got another deputy she knew, a black woman named Larson, to come upstairs.

Larson got things in motion as Kodama sat in the hall, finishing her coffee. After the LAPD people were through dusting and taking their photos, and had gotten her statement, the photographer from the legal paper, the
Daily Journal
, was allowed to take some shots. He asked Kodama a few questions.

“Do you think this has something to do with the recent controversy around the Wright matter?”

“It would seem.”

“Being a strong proponent of free speech, Judge Kodama, do you find it ironic this kind of thing has happened to you?”

“Somewhat.”

“What sort of society do you think this act represents, Judge Kodama? Where the discourse of ideas is too often reduced to inflammatory rhetoric on talk radio that slyly winks at this sort of behavior.”

“Messed up.” She drained her cup.

“Thanks for your time, Judge.”

“You betchum, Red Rider.”

By the time she got home after six, she found Monk working on the rotisserie wheel in the microwave. Parts, needle-nosed pliers, and several long, slim screwdrivers were spread before him at the kitchen table.

“Hey,” he muttered, concentrating on getting a small gear back into place.

“Hi. Wouldn't it be simpler to just get a new one rather than have you fixing it every month or so?” She didn't wait for an answer as she wheeled about, cadet smooth, tossed her attaché case with its over-the-shoulder strap onto one of the chairs, and left the room.

Monk watched her but said nothing. He continued to work on the motor.

Presently Kodama returned, barefoot, in jeans and a cotton shirt, its tail hanging out. She crossed to the refrigerator and poured herself a glass of pineapple juice. “My office got broken into,” she said conversationally.

“Shit.” Monk gingerly set the motor down. “What happened?”

“It got broken into, didn't you hear me?”

“Fine, if you want to be shitty about it.” He fiddled with the motor.

Moments built up, the emotional temperature rising. Kodama dissipated it with, “I'm sorry, baby, this goddamn thing is getting to me.” She moved toward the table as Monk held out his arms. He hugged her around the waist as she clasped his upper body, tight. She sat down and told him about what she'd encountered.

“Mitchell has another deputy assigned to watch just the office for the next few weeks,” Kodama said.

“Helpful motherfuckah,” Monk chimed in.

A defensive alignment set her mouth. “He's just trying to be sweet.”

“Oh, he's being sweet all right.”

She got up and poured more pineapple juice and handed the glass to Monk. “It absolutely frosts my left tit that these yahoos think they can fuck with me, and because I'm a judge I have to walk the line.”

“Debate Jamboni,” Monk said, his voice rising with indignation. “News shows would step over each other to have the both of you on.”

Her mouth twisted. “Ideas and reason are not the wont of most of those venues. We would only wind up shouting at one another with me looking shrill and unyielding because I'm the woman.”

“We keep having this same discussion, Jill. You said yourself the review process is loaded from the get-go. Ideas and reason can't be your only weapons in this battle. These fools out in the Valley are willing to play to fear and handily use half-truths to make their point, namely, the elimination of any semblance of liberalism from the bench.”

“I stand for something more than that, Ivan. The law isn't some village idiot to be paraded along main street to be pelted by the rubes.”

“This ain't about the law, Jill, it's about perception and who shapes it.”

“So I must become a propagandist.”

“If that's what it takes to win, yes.”

“I refuse to do so.”

“Then you've already lost,” he said harshly.

“Maybe you're just tougher than me, Ivan, you want me to say that? You came in here the other night depressed about what went down on Trinity and being fired. So you wallow in your self-pity for a while. But being the hardheaded man I know you to be, you say fuck 'em, I'll show them they can't sucker punch me.”

“But I don't sit on the bench because I want to get some payback so I can turn down invitations to be on Johnnie Cochran's cable show.”

“The law is like this old, hand-carved wooden box.” She leaned on the kitchen counter. “The catch on the lid sticks, and it has to be pried open now and then. And inside are these pieces. These pieces don't gleam, nor do they fit just so in the big mosaic. Some of the pieces come out warped and grimy from being pounded and shaped by rough hands.

“Pieces like the law that threw nisei into camps, while their businesses and land got expropriated, in the forties. Or the restrictive housing covenants that forbade home-owners from selling to black folks in this town until the sixties. Or Lemon Grove in the twenties when Mexican-American families demanded the same education for their kids as the white parents received for theirs. Separate and unequal. Laws upheld in court case after court case until some jurist said enough bullshit, enough with the con job and let's put an end to it.”

“That's also because there was pressure from civil rights organizations, and actions in the streets,” Monk added.

“True. But you still needed a judge, Ivan. You still needed somebody like Brown in the Scottsboro case who stood up to his peers, the stump-sitting, cigar-chawing pals of his who'd just as soon see a blue gum nigger die as give him an adequate defense.”

“Not because Judge Brown worried about making himself look good in the press. Hell, he got ostracized from the civilized Southern circles he used to be part of for his efforts to clear those innocent boys.”

Monk balanced two small screws in his palm. “Then what are you going to do, Jill? You have to stand up to these pinheads, and you might just have to come down off your soapbox to do it.”

“I'll decide what I need to do.” Kodama left the kitchen, humming a tune to irritate Monk.

Again he stared after her, then got back to his work. Later, he got the rotisserie back together and tested it by heating a cup of coffee from the morning's brew. It rotated in a halting manner like a one-eyed rat trying to navigate a circular maze. Getting a new one was easy; it was making what you had work that was the real deal.

His coffee warm and cheery, he read through the newspaper, which he hadn't had the chance to do in the morning. When he got to a column Left in the Metro section, he read it with studied interest. Kodama came back.

“Can I buy you a drink, soldier? Say, at the Go Room?”

Monk folded the paper to display the article. “Throw in one of their swell roast beef sandwiches.”

“Okay, and the paper towels to sop up the grease. And to keep things kosher, no talk about my work, right?”

“No, ma'am.”

Driving in her Saab parallel to the reservoir, the couple let the reasonably clean air in through rolled-down windows. It was a balmy night to make the Chamber of Commerce proud. The palm fronds made their particular overhead music hacksawing in the lax breeze. A comfortable silence took hold of them, neither feeling they had to fill the void to keep the other's interest. Betty Carter's voice played from the dash CD unit, her singular style touchingly precise in its incantations.

Near the Hollywood Memorial Cemetery, perpendicular to the Beth Olem Cemetery containing the bones of Bugsy Siegel, the Saab came to a halt at a light. Up on the sidewalk, a dark-haired chickenhawk lolled against a mailbox. Clad in faded cutoffs and no shirt, he rolled a leg muscle, enticing potential clients.

Monk bit Kodama playfully on the shoulder. “You ever hear of somebody called Fletcher Wilkenson?”

“Is this some kind of kinky game, baby?” Her hand touched the area between his legs.

“Wouldn't think of it in public.”

“Prude.” She took her hand away and shifted. “The name is familiar, but I'm not sure. Why?”

“He was the most dangerous Lutheran in Los Angeles.”

“The deuce you say,” she replied, genuinely impressed.