Bad Night Is Falling (3 page)

“Been on them like white on rice since your boy subpoenaed my records. See, Monk”—Absalla pointed with the blunt end of his fork—“them cops are out to catch a case on one or more of my crew, and that ain't how it's going to be.”

“I'd like a copy of your records too.”

“You gonna take my money and not trust me?” Absalla's voice went up half a notch over a piece of baguette in his cheek.

“It will help give me a full picture. And I'd also like a list of who's in the tenants' union. And if you would, I need you to introduce me to the members who can get me some play at the Rancho.”

Absalla worked the bread. He chewed like a man with loose bridge work. “Black faces open some doors, brown ones others at the Taj, my man.”

“I assumed that.” Monk tried to get their waiter's attention for more lemonade. As was the fashion at trendy restaurants, the kid who'd seated the two had told them what his name was, and what the specials of the day were. He had told them that his name was Daniel, pronouncing the name like it was made of paper-mâché. He was a tall, dark-haired Filipino lad. He sauntered over to the table.

“Yes,” he cooed at Monk.

He made his request and the waiter took off with his empty glass.

Absalla smirked. “Looked like he was hopin' you'd ask him for more than a refill.”

“He's just doing his gig until the multimillion-dollar movie offer comes along.”

“Oh, you one of them tolerant niggers, huh?” Absalla goaded.

“To a point,” Monk retorted. Daniel returned with his refilled glass. “The possibility of you hiring me to find a killer or killers is to take the heat off you, Antar. Now there's nothing about that says I have to convert to do my job, right?”

Absalla held up his hands in mock deference. “Calm, my brother, be calm. I was only foolin',” he said unconvincingly.

“How long does the tenants' association have until they're supposed to have their application in to HUD?” Monk asked, eager to conclude their business.

“Well, it ain't no secret them crackers in Washington want to be shuck of as much public subsidies they can push through. What with time limits on welfare, creating workfare programs and all.” Absalla stabbed at a piece of cauliflower like it was trying to get away. “The association's been told they've got about three months to apply and see if they qualify.”

“That means most of the tenants want to stay and be owners together,” Monk concluded.

The other man nodded. “That's right. Things weren't exactly ‘we are the world' at the Rancho to begin with, then this incident had to go down. The tenant organizing has stalled, and the association needs at least another four hundred families or so to even attempt to apply. Plus,” he added, pointing with the end of the fork again, “the city housing people are also getting jammed up and want to see the Rancho conversion go through.”

“And if the tenants can't get it together then the housing project is sold on the open market.” Monk ate some of his chicken fettucini. “A lot of these potential signatures are to be found among the Latino population?” Monk surmised.

Absalla grinned. “You must study this housing jive in your off days.”

“It seemed obvious given the changing demographics of the Rancho.”

The other man made a curt sound that sounded like a semi's power brakes letting off air. “That and every other part of the city. Even a liberal like you has to admit this city is turning into one big Tijuana.” He gleefully attacked his vegetables once again.

Monk searched for an offhand comment, but couldn't find one. Presently he said, “What are your theories about the murders?”

“I think it was those goddamn Domingos Trece. I think some of the Hispanic tenants living around the Cruzados know that, and are either too afraid to say it, or don't want to.”

“How do you mean?”

Absalla leaned forward, using his fork as teacher's tool a third time. “Before the Ra-Falcons were brought in, the folks at the Rancho were catching hell, caught between the Scalp Hunters and the Domingos. Bricks through your car window to snatch a purse, muggings, dope dealin' on your front stoop. The security company they had wasn't doin' shit.”

“Your turning things around in other housing projects has gotten you a lot of press,” Monk commented. “I guess the tenants' association at the Rancho had nothing to lose.”

The security chief got going, waving the end of the fork as he talked. “We take those that many have given up on and give them something to believe in. Now don't misunderstand me, Monk. I stand foursquare for my people, but I'm also the first one to come down on a brother when he's doing wrong. The Scalps ain't no Jehovah's Witnesses. We came in, and with the aid of the tenants' association, we put the squash on a lot of that action. At least as the Rancho proper is concerned. See, the Ra-Falcons don't joke, and people know that.”

Monk wanted to reel him in before he launched into one of the soliloquies he'd seen him doing at televised press conferences. Absalla would regale, to any who'd listen, his rise from car thief and dope dealer, then redemption as a convert to the Muslim faith. The successes his security services had achieved at several crime-plagued housing projects in various cities had received national press.

However, his hip-hop Horatio Alger tale usually skipped the part about him being kicked out of the Nation of Islam due to some questions about bookkeeping at the mosque he ran in Philadelphia. His exile had precipitated his move west.

“How does all that get us to Los Domingos?” Monk abrasively cut in.

Absalla seemed caught up short, like a pitcher called in just before throwing a no-hitter. “Sure, I was getting to that. Over the last year or so, there's been some shootings and retaliations between them Central Americans and the Scalps. This despite the fact there's been an unofficial detente between the two sets for years.”

“I gather the escalation is over who will control the drug traffic in the area,” Monk concluded glumly.

“Yeah, mere's that. But there's also been threats against black residents who aren't in any way mixed up with the gangs.” Absalla looked at him knowingly.

Monk was adrift. “What are you getting at?”

“I'm not the only one who thinks the Domingos are working for some others who want to make sure the Rancho doesn't get into the hands of the tenants. Black tenants anyway.”

Monk rested his chin on his hand, his elbow propped on the table. “So the Domingos kill a Latino family as part of mis conspiracy.”

“Exactly. See, Cruzado was trying to organize some of the immigrant tenants into his own association. He claimed neither the Chicanos nor the blacks were responsive to his people's—you know, immigrants'—concerns.”

“So he was disrupting the program,” Monk said, trying to flow with Antar's reasoning.

“Something like mat, yeah. I'm not saying I'm sure who's behind me Domingos, but whoever it is wants everybody to roll over and let the place get sold out from under them.”

Absalla continued. “The African-Americans there are generally the longest-running residents. They want to buy the place.” The man sat back, content that he'd given the initiate a few glimpses of the secrets of the keep. “Did I scare you?”

Monk willingly took the bait. “I'll start tomorrow.”

“Here.” With a grin, Absalla handed Monk a sheaf of papers from a soft leather portfolio he'd placed against the legs of the table. “These are the reimbursement forms.”

“You mean I have to submit these before I get paid?”

A quick torque of his gleaming head. “'Fraid so, my man. See, I can hire you through some consultant funds I can access, but it is federal money, and there is a bureaucracy to follow.”

“Isn't there always.”

The other man made a fist and began working it as if kneading on an invisible ball. “I hope you can get onto something soon, Monk. I don't expect you to go up against the Domingos, but find us proof so the law can move on them. Make your friend Seguin a big man downtown.”

Monk worked on a wan smile then lost interest.

“If I didn't have to oversee two other housing projects we patrol, I'd get to it myself.” He rose, placed some money down, and tucked the portfolio under one muscled arm.

“I'll see what I can do to fill in,” Monk deadpanned.

“Right on,” Absalla said guilelessly.

Daniel hoped they'd have a nice day. Monk walked with Absalla part of the way along the boardwalk. They parted company near the refurbished Muscle Beach area. Several buffed participants were going through their routines for the enjoyment of both the onlookers and themselves.

In particular, Monk noticed a light-skinned black woman with a back broader than a set of double doors. She was doing a set of behind-the-neck lifts with some serious iron. Monk watched her for several minutes, the fluid muscles beneath her coppery arms bunching and flexing like part of a timeless machine whose sole function was to provide chiseled, efficient beauty in a flawed and treacherous world.

Eventually he walked off, trying to pick out tourists from residents. His path took him past a jazz trumpeter he recognized sitting in a frayed chaise lounge. He was singing a version of “I Should Care” which Rodgers and Hart probably never intended. But when he got to the instrumental part, his horn proved he still had his chops.

Monk, his sport coat draped over his arm, came to Ozone then turned left past a clump of bleached-out apartment buildings. He reached the street called Speedway, where he'd parked his restored '64 Ford Galaxie. The thoroughfare had gotten its name in the late '40s from the hotrodders who used the then isolated straightaway to run their milled-out Fords and Willyses.

He beeped off the alarm and got behind the wheel. A homeless man wearing a grimy peacoat buttoned all the way up stuck a Styrofoam cup against his window. Monk cranked it down.

“How 'bout a little change, trooper?”

He dug out some coins and plopped them in the cup. “There you go.”

The man mumbled something while he jingled the cup, staring intently at the contents as if he were a sage rolling the bones. He started to walk away, looking up at the warm, clear sky. As Monk started the car he noticed that the man was talking to himself.

“Bad night is falling,” Monk thought he heard the man say as he drove off.

Three

“T
hat was the going-away dinner they had for me. Gilbert Lindsey himself handed me the certificate.” Henry Cady beamed, touching a corner of the framed photo. In the shot, an obviously pleased Cady stood alongside the diminutive Lindsey, the late councilman who had represented the district of L.A. he'd called “the Mighty Ninth.”

Lindsey had been the first black member of the L.A. City Council. He had been appointed to fill a vacant seat in January of 1963. He'd worked his way up from janitor in the Department of Water and Power to aide to the late liberal white County Supervisor, Kenneth Hahn. Hahn had attended Thomas Jefferson High School. The same school Monk had, decades later.

Next to that photo was another one of a younger Cady without glasses, in creased khaki pants and shirt standing at the apex of an inverted V of men dressed similarly. The other men, all black save for a couple of Latinos, were in squatting positions and some had floor buffers before them. A small metal caption read: C
ITY
H
ALL
J
ANITORS
, A
UGUST
1965.

“This couldn't have been taken during the riots,” Monk observed. Everybody in the picture looked relaxed.

“That was taken on the sixth, a Friday. Five days before everything happened on the following Wednesday,” Cady said offhandedly, clearly having repeated the date often to visitors. “Man, we didn't get back to work for damn near a month after the streets blew up.”

“I was too young then to understand the cryptic smile on my dad's face,” Monk said, reminiscing for no one's benefit save his own.

Cady was still examining the photo taken in the basement of City Hall. “Worked thirty-two years there. Made swing shift supervisor and was five times the shop steward for my local.”

“SEIU?” Monk asked.

“Yep,” the older man replied, finally turning from the past. “You'd be hard-pressed to believe it, Ivan, but in them days the Taj wasn't such a bad place to live. Had us barbeques in the common area on Saturdays, women and kids got in their finest to go to church on Sundays. None of this knockin' people in the head by young men with pants down around their cracks and can't spell cat.”

The two were standing in the spacious living room of Cady's townhouse unit. Being one of the veteran tenants had its perks even in the Rancho Tajuata. The apartment had two levels and a separate kitchen, not a kitchenette like so many of the other apartments Monk knew.