Perdition, U.S.A.
Gary Phillips
A MysteriousPress.com
Open Road Integrated Media ebook
For my mother, Leonelle,
who knew the power of
words, and tried
mightily to impart
their secrets
“Who knows what happens to a human being from one moment to the next? These things are incidents. There is more to life.”
—Ray Arcel
Chapter 1
“Say brother, I ain’t runnin’ no newsstand where you stop and browse for hours. You gonna buy or what?”
The other man, an older gentleman in a plaid vest and a pair of doubleknit slacks in dire need of a hot iron, massaged his chin between thumb and index finger.
Scatterboy Williams let out an exasperated growl. “This is a genuine Cartier chronometer, my man. Stainless steel band with gold trim and a two-carat movement.”
The man chewed his lip and looked at Scatterboy then back to the watch in his outstretched palm. “Two carats, huh?”
Scatterboy nodded. “That’s right. You go to any one of them stores where them Jews and them Iranians shop up in Beverly Hills and you see this fine timepiece goin’ for no less than three thousand dollars.”
“How’d you get one?”
“You really want to know, or you want a good deal on a handsome watch?” The salesman grinned, because he knew the answer. People were so predictable.
“Two-fifty,” the man mumbled as he grasped the watch, turning it this way and that to determine its authenticity.
That was okay with Scatterboy. He doubted if the man had ever seen another Cartier to compare it to. “It’s gonna be three hundred in a minute, reverend, if you don’t make up your mind.”
“Very well, brother Williams. I wouldn’t be doing this, only the beautiful Omega my dear wife bought me some twenty years ago is just too beat to be fixed again.”
He droned on about the need for a preacher to keep up appearances before his congregation and what not. But Williams wasn’t paying much attention save for the twenties the baritone-voiced healer extracted from his cracked-leather wallet. The money and watch were exchanged, and the holy man strapped the timepiece around his bony wrist.
“Is this band alligator skin?”
“That’s illegal, reverend,” Scatterboy said without a trace of irony. “It’s snake, dyed to look like that.”
“Yes, of course,” the other man responded as he rose from the booth in the King Lion barbecue restaurant. “Well, thank you, Mr. Williams. I hope I see you in church soon.”
He didn’t wait for an answer and exited the establishment. Scatterboy leisurely finished his order of links, greens and potato salad. He also downed another can of Shasta cola, and sat working particles of gristle from his back teeth with a toothpick. The booth was next to a window which afforded a view of Ludlow Street, the main drag of Pacific Shores, and Scatterboy gazed out as the sun set.
Once upon a time, or so the old-timers would tell you, Pacific Shores was a going concern. Chiefly a town erected around the shipyards, the Shores enjoyed a solid, if limited, economic base for decades. Following Pearl Harbor, there were ships needed for the war. Following the war, there were ships needed to stem the red tide. By the ’60s, a steel plant and a GM factory supplemented the shipyards. The working class residents of the Shores—blacks, whites and Latinos thrived.
In those days, most everyone owned their own home and worked twenty to thirty years at the same job, got a pension, and hung out at the VFW or B.P.O.E. hall when it wasn’t bowling night. Not that the Shores was a model of an ethnic utopia. Like most of America, the various races tended to congregate in their own churches and shop in their own stores. But a standard of civic harmony prevailed.
By the tail end of the ’70s, harsh changes came to this city located some thirty miles south of Los Angeles. Ship orders were down, “outsourcing” became the new corporate buzzword, and the GM plant moved to Mexico to cut costs. The outmoded steel plant closed for good. The two shipyards reduced two shifts to one, forced some workers into early retirements and laid others off. Eventually one moved to a “right-to-work” state whose legislature believed things like employees’ rights originated in The Communist Manifesto.
By the mid-’80s, the only heavy industry left in Pacific Shores was one shipyard operating with a skeletal crew. The smaller businesses, dependent on a healthy workforce, withered and blew away in the recessionary winds sweeping the Southland.
Robert “Scatterboy” Williams, who had once worked as a shipyard welder, watched his second prostitute saunter by the King Lion. With a deft thrust, he freed the last piece of meat between his teeth. He rose, burped, and left the barbecue place.
A cool breeze coming off the ocean greeted him as he made his way along the street. Walking aimlessly, he turned over several options in his mind. All in all, he was about seven hundred dollars richer than he’d been two weeks ago. The seven hundred was the net from what he’d paid the sly Swede for several of the questionable Carriers.
Whether they were genuine or not didn’t matter to him. That they’d been stolen was a certainty. What really mattered was that others wanted them.
Problem was Swede wasn’t the most easy going guy to deal with. He was always cautious, always wondering if you’d slipped up and would lead the cops to him. But, Scatterboy allowed, there was a lesson to be learned from that sort of thinking. Which was why Swede’d never done time when guys like him found themselves marking the days in Deuel, Folsom or—the Lord help his homeboys—Pelican Bay.
Scatterboy drifted along a residential street with rundown Craftsmen and Spanish Bungalows in need of paint and patching. A few of the lawns were trimmed but most were brown and shaggy. A tired street in a worn town.
Passing by an old Riviera parked at the curb, he noticed shapes moving in its darkened interior. He tensed, considering how fast he could gain some distance. Fortunately, the barrel of an Uzi wasn’t suddenly erupting in his direction. Peering closer in the fading light, Scatterboy was relieved to see the windows were up in the vehicle.
He was no gangbanger, but given the vagaries of drug turfs, one never knew what real or imagined line of demarcation you were crossing. As he got closer, he could see two teenagers inside the Buick. The boy was sitting in the driver’s seat, and had his arm around a girl next to him. The youngster gave Scatterboy a challenging look, and the girl sipped on a beer.
A thin trail of vapor was rising from between the two of them, down where the boy had his other hand. Scatterboy grinned wolfishly and walked on. Weed and pussy were about all a man could ask for these days. He got to the corner of Creedmore and Osage and stood there, thinking.
The watches were a good hustle but they took a lot of time to sell and required a lot of exposure. The seven hundred wouldn’t last forever and he’d promised the mother of his baby girl he’d do better at supporting the kid. Slangin’ product was not his forte. He could never score enough crack on his own to make any real money. And if he wanted to be big, he’d have to be beholden to a gang lord. The thought of being in the pocket of some kid with a 9mm tucked in his belt, and malt liquor fueling his thoughts, was not his idea of upward mobility.
Well, he reasoned, something would turn up. He crossed the street and started in the direction of his apartment several blocks over. As he got mid-block on Creedmore, an open-air Jeep rounded the far corner.
The driver crept at a slow pace then pulled to the curb. A light came on under the dashboard. Scatterboy could see that the man at the wheel was dressed casually, and he studied a map spread out on his knees.
“Maybe something’s turned up already,” Scatterboy happily intoned to himself.
>
He got closer, rehearsing how his next moves might go. Slip close while the lost chump looked for his route. The man wasn’t wearing a seat belt. Perfect. Just ease up, yank the square out of the car by the elbow and slip an arm around his throat. Grab the wallet and run off before the mark could react.
The other man wasn’t too big and Scatterboy, standing over six feet, had worked out daily on the prison iron yard. He gloated inwardly and drew closer, trying to control his hurried breathing.
“Do you know how I can find Terminal Street?”
“Wha?” The man’s head had come up so suddenly it caught Scatterboy off-guard. Shit, now this punk could ID him. He turned sideways and pointed back the way he’d just come. Scatterboy figured to give him his directions, then as he looked that way, jump him. Fuck it, he needed the money. He better not resist. “Yeah, man. Go to the end of this block, make a left and go down another four or five blocks, you can’t miss it.”
“I don’t plan to.”
“Huh?” Scatterboy said as he pivoted back around.
The bullet entered his head on the right side of the bridge of his nose. It angled up and left the rear of his skull near the top of his close shaved head. The Jeep did a vicious U-turn and sped off as Robert Williams, aka Scatterboy, fell dead to the pavement.
Chapter 2
The small single-family house was the second from the end of the block. The grass was brown, and a low hedge bordered the driveway. A baby swing rested on the enclosed concrete porch. A cat leapt onto the balustrade and curled out on the warm stone railing.
“Are you Ivan Monk? Are you the man I need?”
Assuming the questions weren’t meant to be existential, the private eye said, “Yes. Are you Clarice Moore?”
The screen door opened outward to reveal a teenaged girl with long strands of thick cornrowed hair. She was holding onto a baby. The kid had three of its fingers jammed in its mouth and drooled as it eyed the stranger. “Do you have some kind of identification? Mom says I should ask to see that.”
It occurred to Monk that Clarice Moore should have listened to her mother when she’d told her about boys. He produced his photostat and the young woman took it from his hand.
She consumed it with a fierce glare. The baby began to cry and Clarice bounced the child gently and continued to peruse the private investigator license. Finally she handed it back. “Come on in.”
He entered a room that reminded him of his mother’s house. The home was lived in but cared for like a favorite shirt. Hanging from the walls were prints—a Charles White, a Rome Bearden, and an artist Monk didn’t recognize.
“Come on in the kitchen. I’ve got to get Shawndell’s formula.”
Monk followed Clarice Moore into the back of the house. She retrieved a baby bottle warming in a saucepan and leaked a few drops from the nipple onto her slender forearm. “Can’t give this child cold formula, no sir. Little Shawndell wants it toasty.” She held up the child and giggled at her. “Isn’t that right?”
She gave the baby her nutrition, and put her in a highchair. She sat at the kitchen table but didn’t offer Monk a seat.
He remained standing in the doorway, his arms crossed. The young woman looked at him, then down at a few letters and a folded newspaper on the table. She shifted the letters around but didn’t speak.
Monk broke the silence. “You said over the phone that your boyfriend had been murdered.”
For an answer she unfolded the newspaper. Monk got closer to read it. The paper was the Press-Telegram from two days ago. Clarice’s thin finger hovered over a five-paragraph article relating the street shooting of 26-year-old Robert Williams. Who, the report stated, had been on parole for assault and robbery from Solano State Prison. It went on to say that he’d previously done time at the California Youth Authority for second-degree manslaughter. Police sources said the investigation was continuing.
“Do you think someone he knew from Solano did him in?” Monk took a seat at the table and watched her face and body movements.
She looked at him and for the first time Monk noticed her light-caramel eyes and the tiny freckles that dotted her fine-boned coppery face. “I don’t know anything about that. I just want you to find out who killed Scatterboy.”
“Scatterboy?”
“Yeah.”
She didn’t seem inclined to explain the root of the nickname so Monk said, “How’d you find out about me?”
The baby threw her bottle on the floor and smiled a toothless grin at her mother. Clarice put the child over her shoulder, and walked out of the room patting her back gently. Several minutes later she returned alone.
“My mother remembered hearing about you on the radio. Something to do with the mayor of L.A. killing Koreans,” she said earnestly.
Monk blinked. “It wasn’t the mayor, Clarice. Was it your mother’s idea to have me look for Robert’s killer?”
“No, that was my idea. Matter of fact, I kept on about Scatterboy’s death until finally she said if I wanted to do something so bad, I ought to get a detective. I told her I didn’t know no detective and that’s when she got smart like she do and said if I listened to more than Ice Cube and Yo Yo I’d know about you and how you was a black private eye and famous and all.”
In the face of unassailable logic, Monk moved onward. “This is not a game, Clarice. The father of your child wasn’t a candidate for a Nobel Prize.”
“That mean he deserved to get killed like he did?” There was a sternness in her voice but the eyes were calm as they locked on him.
Monk tapped the paper. “This seems to infer your Robert was out doing something he shouldn’t have been doing at that time of night.”
Her lip curled upward but she fought to get it under control. “I know he wasn’t out seein’ no other woman. I know Scatterboy was loyal.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about, Clarice. Anyway, how do you plan to pay me?”
Peeved, she leaned close to Monk. “I ain’t on welfare, man. I work part-time at a Radio Shack. I can pay you for your time and effort.”
Monk continued to humor the headstrong girl. “Fine. Do you have a list of Robert’s friends and acquaintances?”
“I told you, none of them had anything to do with this.”
“The investigation has to start somewhere.”
Her brows bunched in that absorbing countenance she’d used on Monk’s license. Abruptly, she got up from the table and left the kitchen again. The sound of a drawer opening and shutting forcefully filled the empty moments as Monk waited.
Clarice returned and put a single piece of white lined paper on the table. She sat and began to laboriously write on the sheet. At various intervals she would pause and study her output. Then she would resume in her slow, steady pace. Finally she slid it across to Monk.
Listed in compact block letters were individuals with names like Li’l Bone, Two Dog, and an Angel Z. There were no addresses for these and the others written down. But she had indicated where a particular individual might hang out. A Junior’s Liquors, a place called the King Lion, and so on. Lines were drawn from the names to the places.
Monk said as evenly as he could, “I could spend a lot of time looking for these people you put down here just so I could talk to them. Don’t any of them live somewhere? Didn’t Robert have a mother or father, some relative somewhere?”
Clarice snatched the paper from Monk’s hand. “Why you got to be askin’ so many smart questions? Look, that’s how I know where to find them. Ain’t none of them got an office, man.” She began to jiggle her left leg and slap the table quietly with the back of her hand. “I mean you acting like you don’t want to help and all.”
“Come on, Clarice,” Monk said, allowing exasperation to color his voice. “Robert, Scatterboy, or whatever you want to call him probably got done in by a homey he’d stiffed.”
She pointed at the doorway. “Then why don’t you leave, Mr. Headlines.”
“All I’m trying to say, C
larice, is that you know perfectly well what kind of dude Robert Williams was. Be realistic. I bet if you thought about it, you could come up with one or two people on this list who might have done him harm.”
She was having none of it. The headstrong teenager cocked her head and bounced her leg again. He waited for a few minutes, but all he got was the sound of her foot tapping against the patterned linoleum.
Monk got up and headed for the front door. He looked back at her sitting in the kitchen, head cradled in her hand, fuming. He clucked his tongue, feeling like he was casting her adrift. Slowly, the big bad detective went back into the afternoon air.
Ronny Aaron sold his next-to-last dub of crack to a blonde woman whose license plate frame read: I only tan in Newport Beach. The Infiniti roared away and Aaron took his lanky frame along Ludlow. He was tired and he walked without much of a destination in mind.
It had been a long night of mostly haggling with money-poor crack heads. But the two or three sales to upscale clientele—Pacific Shores was less than a half hour drive due north from the Orange County border—who paid the rate and split, made up for the hassles.
Aaron adjusted his Fila so it rested more fashionably on his head and drifted into the Zacharias corner market on Osage.
“Give me a half pint of Seagrams,” he said to the middle-aged Latina behind the counter. Hefting his purchase, he walked back outside and ran into one of his customers, an addict named Herbert who was always short of cash.
“My man,” Herbert effused.
Aaron kept walking but Herbert wouldn’t take the hint.
“Say, bro’, how ’bout a little something on credit?”
Aaron gritted his teeth and marched on.
“You can’t speak, motherfuckah? Can’t say shit to one of your best customers?” Herbert shoved Aaron from behind and the drug seller stopped, then turned to backhand the man.
“What the fuck’s your problem, Herbie? You don’t want me to get in your ass right here in the street, do you?” Though he knew Herbert could be violent, Aaron also sensed he was too strung out to cause him much damage.
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