Perdition, U.S.A.

by Gary Phillips

  “Hey, asshole, you awake?”

  Asshole didn’t feel like answering.

  “You better let the doctor see him.”

  “Fuck that.”

  “Yeah? What’re you gonna do when somebody calls over here looking for him?”

  “Tell them we arrested him for assault and resisting.”

  “Like that’s going to stick.”

  “It better stick, Anderson,” the other voice threatened. Then it said to Monk. “Get your big ass up so I can take a look at you.”

  Monk didn’t move.

  “Look here, I’m Sheriff Hamm, Mr. Private Eye. You beat up one of my deputies last night. You got some serious charges to answer for.”

  Monk said in a tired voice that reminded him of his grandmother. “So do you, Hamm.”

  That got the right kind of response, nothing. After a stretch, in a more tempered tone, “What’s your reason for being here?”

  Monk got the other eye open. The photo taped to the ceiling of his cell had been ripped from a car magazine. “Oates attacked me. Anderson is a witness.”

  “You resisted arrest.”

  “Is that right, Anderson?” Monk got onto his side, nausea welling inside his mouth. “We’ll see when I file my report.”

  Anderson combed one of his big hands through his widow-peaked hair. His blues shifted from Monk to a point somewhere over the injured man’s shoulder. Another deputy sat quietly in a chair.

  Hamm was a tall man with a solid build. He had a clipped salt-and-pepper beard and clear hazel eyes set in a traveled face. In one hand was the fax he’d received. Monk knew it was from the Bureau of Consumer Affairs in California. They’d run the numbers on his gun and his fingerprints.

  “Now look, Monk,” the sheriff began, shaking the fax, “you also attacked some of our citizens.”

  “They make a complaint?”

  Silence, then Hamm replied tersely, “It doesn’t matter, my deputies witnessed the act.”

  Pain came between Monk and a witty response. The door to the office opened and Oates came in. He stopped, assessed the scene, and strode over to Hamm. He talked in a low voice with him, and allowed a couple of head nods at Monk.

  Hamm calmly folded the fax and turned back to the cell. “Your plane came into Portland. The feds have their district office there. Is that who you’re working for?”

  “You figure it out, Hamm,” he bluffed.

  “I should have put a choke hold on you last night,” Oates said sharply. He inclined his head at Anderson who gave him a frosted stare. Oates spoke to Hamm. “Let’s take him over to Spokane so there’s no chance of him yakking to the media.”

  “You and Bryce could take him,” Hamm said evenly, calculating his next moves.

  “Yeah,” Oates said, not trying to hide his glee.

  Monk’s teeth set on edge as another bout of nausea tossed his stomach. Fear started in on him, and all he could do was look at Anderson who averted his eyes.

  “But we still have to know who he was working for, what he’s doing around here,” Hamm said, talking as much to himself as to his men.

  “There’s nothing in his room except his clothes, his license and his wallet. He’s got a photo in it of a swell-looking chink. I say we take him out on one of the switchbacks. I imagine the mountain air will help him remember.” Oates all but salivated.

  Monk tried to stand but couldn’t figure out how to make his legs work. Falling back onto the cot, he said, “Fuck you, small change.”

  Oates came up and leaned on the bars. “Come on out and play, Mr. Monk,” he taunted.

  The door opened again and Rameses, Katya and three others poured in.

  “Kick him loose, man.” Katya got in Hamm’s face.

  “Get the fuck out of this office,” the sheriff ordered.

  Oates, Anderson and Bryce started to move until Rameses cut them off with, “Shit’s gonna blow if you fuck with us, man.”

  “You mongrels ought to spend your time more constructively. Like trying to guess who your daddies are.” Oates contemptuously chortled.

  “I know it’s hard for you, Oat-dick, but think you can count past four?” Katya winked at Monk.

  Bryce pulled back the window blinds as Rameses leveled one of his long arms, pointing toward the street. “Hey, come over here.”

  Hamm looked out and swore. All sorts of media trucks were driving along Liberty.

  Rameses said, “Want us to have a little press conference?”

  The crew got Monk to a clinic shortly thereafter. They took an X-ray of his head and the doctor was pleased to discover that the cartilage hadn’t been disturbed. The nose bone wasn’t broken, merely cracked. He also had a slight concussion, swelling over one eye, and a hairline crack along the left cheek bone. Plus two of his ribs were bruised and one of his kidneys was enlarged from the pounding he’d taken.

  Rameses insisted Monk not stay overnight in the place. The youth leader got the prescription for his anti-inflammation medicine and pain killers. He rode in the car with Rameses, Katya, and another youth. The quartet stopped at a drug store to get Monk’s medicine and some cold paks. Resting in the car, he got another look at what, besides the media’s arrival, was upsetting the sheriff.

  Milling about town were several large groups of skinheads of numerous hues and shapes. Added to that were various other types more readily classified in the gangbanger category. “How long have you been organizing this?” Monk asked.

  “Some us started out as wiggers,” Katya answered. She saw the blank look on Monk face and explained. “You know, white niggers, those who dress and act like they’re African American. The gangsta style, home,” she said, slipping into an effortless black inflection.

  “Started hangin’ with some of the homeys in high school,” the other one in the car began. He was a tall Latino, about twenty-two, with nut-brown skin who called himself Juke. “My folks settled in Idaho, you know, sponsored by a church group to leave Guatemala. The old lady was involved in some shit.” He let that settle in before continuing.

  “But Mark Fuhrman’s new home state wasn’t hittin’ it, ya know? We soon got over this way, just kicking it on the positive tip. Ain’t gonna have them white boys runnin’ us ragged here.”

  Silently, everybody acknowledged Juke’s political analysis.

  “But it ain’t like we all joined hands and sung ‘Kumbaya,’” Rameses informed Monk, rounding a corner where Dudley’s stood. “You had the blacks and Latinos going after each other and then ganging up on the Asians.”

  “Is Bright the common enemy everyone needs?” They hit a pothole and Monk’s eyes teared up.

  “Certainly helps,” Katya said. To their left, a group of supremacist skinheads were coming along the sidewalk, and Rameses slowed the car. But the skins, who must have come from out of town, suddenly realized which part of Perdition they were in, and changed direction for downtown. Rameses and Katya grinned at one another, then he drove the nondescript Aspen on to his mother’s rooming house.

  “You remember the original ‘Outer Limits’ with Robert Culp?” Katya asked no one in particular.

  “Which one? He was in a few of them,” Monk remarked.

  “The one where they’re sitting around a table, drawing their names from a bowl.”

  “‘Architects of Fear,’” Monk and Juke said simultaneously.

  The passengers laughed and Katya continued. “So these scientists are going to take one of their own and make him into a monster.”

  “Thus pulling people together,” Monk finished, images of the episode flickering through his subconscious.

  Rameses pulled in to the driveway. “Before they were the War Reich, they were just a ragtag group of metalheads with angst and nothing to do but swill beer and go over to Spokane every once in a while and ambush a queer.”

  Juke and Katya helped Monk get out of the car and up the steps of the old well-kept house. The young woman had a muscular arm around Monk’s waist and squeezed him
playfully as they went along.

  Rameses went on with his local history. “But that was before Bright and ARM made the scene. It was in ’87 these supremacists and some right-wing Christian types have a big confab in Hayden Lake, Idaho and decide to concentrate on youth organizing. From that groups like the War Reich came about.”

  “The following year we could start to see the results in high school,” Katya said. “Flyers started appearing denouncing interracial dating. Then the Reich tried to get recognized as a campus club and that helped bring some of us together.”

  They reached the screen door. Through it, the omnipresent sound of the TV greeted them. “Look, what I said the other day,” Monk started, addressing Rameses. “I’ve been acting like I’ve been sniffing glue or something. But it takes a good old-fashioned ass-whuppin’ to remind one that solving this kind of problem isn’t done by meeting fists with fists. I mean, I believe in self-defense, but you’ve also got to take this beyond street action.”

  Rameses looked at his two companions. “Okay, grandpa.”

  “Fuck y’all, and help me to my rocking chair.”

  “Get your rest, big daddy.” Katya said, patting him on the butt.

  Monk creaked up to bed.

  Chapter 21

  Monk slept the remainder of the day and woke to a gentle knock on the door to his room. “Come in.” He tried to get on his side, but took the path of least resistance and stayed on his back. It was like when he overdid a workout, and the muscles got so tight you couldn’t move without pain.

  The door opened inward slightly and Juanita Oray’s handsome face filled the space. “I didn’t wake you earlier, but you had a call from a woman named Jill Kodama.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yes,” she stammered, “I’m afraid I told her more than maybe you wanted her to know.”

  What? That he was flirting with Katya? Panic pushed words out of him breathlessly. “How do you mean, Mrs. Oray?”

  “I told her you were upstairs resting and she said she found that odd, considering. Then I didn’t want her to think you had gotten sick or something so I—”

  “Don’t sweat it, Mrs. Oray.”

  The older woman entered the room, her alert eyes glittering. “So you’re a private eye.”

  “A battered one, yes.” Monk rubbed a hand over his unshaven face and suddenly felt very hungry. He managed to prop himself against the headboard of the bed’s polished maple.

  “You might be interested to know there’s all kinds of press people prowling around town since right before sundown.”

  “We saw them this morning. Bread and circuses,” Monk glumly concluded.

  “How’s that again?” Juanita Oray took a seat near the bed, placing her hands in her lap.

  “The show they’re all expecting on Saturday.”

  “It seems it’s going to be the largest rally Bobby Bright’s pulled off yet.”

  “I understand you tended house for his folks when he was in high school.”

  She lifted a hand and moved an imaginary object with it in a small motion. “His folks were decent people. His father owned a lumber yard and his mother sold a little real estate now and then.”

  “Something traumatic happen to him then?”

  “To make him like he is now?” She inclined part of her body like doing an impression of a giant question mark. “Not that I can recall. He was like any kid then.”

  “Popular?”

  “Not particularly, but not the loner type like Oswald or something.”

  “Any of his friends still in town?” Monk moved and became acutely aware of how sore his kidney was.

  “A few. He and Carter Ash used to hang around together back then. Car nuts, you know. Bobby, or Derek in those days, had some kind of car he’d hot-rodded. It was a purple Dodge something or another I think.”

  “He was into sports too, I understand.”

  “That’s true. I believe he was disappointed when he didn’t get a football scholarship to a Pac Ten school.”

  That was two things he had in common with Bright. One more, and they’d both be holding hands and singing “Day-O” over hot rum toddies. “Rameses played hoop in high school,” Monk safely guessed.

  She beamed with a mother’s pride. “Varsity in his second year, got scouted by a couple of back east schools too. But he was already more into reading DuBois and Angela Davis than memorizing game books. He took classes locally, but lost interest in that too.” There was little admiration in her voice then.

  “Last couple of years Orin’s been working over at the Firestone out on the interstate. But he keeps reading and at least he’s working with some of these less together young folks, giving them direction.”

  “But you’d be happy if he found his.”

  “You have children, Ivan?”

  “No, but lately I’ve thought more about having them.”

  “Parenthood has its moments,” Juanita Oray said.

  “Are there any of Blight’s old girlfriends around?”

  Guardedly, she said, “No, there aren’t.”

  “Aren’t around?”

  “Not really.”

  It seemed to Monk there was more there but he wasn’t sure of the angle to take to get to it.

  “Mrs. Oray,” Monk wheedled.

  Her frame straightened. “It was a different situation, then.”

  “What kind of situation?”

  “Youthful miscalculations.” With that she abruptly made to quit the room but added. “I’ll be back with your dinner in an hour or so.”

  “I’m sorry about leading people on with that story about scouting for a company.”

  Juanita Oray chewed on the inside of her mouth. “Well, the way everybody on our side of town figure it, Mr. Monk, you must be here for something to do with these supremacists. And that can only be a blessing, can’t it?”

  Monk wondered if any deity did indeed oversee the doings of private eyes. And if one such being did exist, surely he or she in their patented trench coat had a sardonic wit only another god would appreciate. He spent the next forty minutes going over in his head what he’d learned and how he might go at Mrs. Oray again with what she meant about “youthful miscalculations.” No astounding plan emerged. He got up to use the can.

  He passed a trickle of blood but the intern at the clinic said not to be worried unless it continued on the third day. Presently, he ate a hot meal of roast beef, mashed potatoes and steamed Chinese broccoli. Full and sleepy, he took the tray downstairs and returned it to the kitchen. He got a glass of water from the kitchen and went to use the phone in the alcove.

  “Hey,” he said after the line connected.

  “Ivan, what the hell is going on?”

  Monk brought Kodama up to date.

  “You want me to get ahold of the Legal Aid office down in Portland? If they’re not already doing it, they could probably send up some observers for the bash on Saturday. And I mean that jokingly. And you might need to talk to them in case the good sheriff gives you some lip.”

  “That’d be solid.” The two of them let a little silence slip away then Monk spoke again. “I’m glad you called. I did call you, but I didn’t leave a message. I was still mad. Mad because I’m not sure what’s happening to us.”

  She didn’t speak for a time then said. “Since you’ve been gone, I’ve been thinking about … things. When you’re around I sometimes feel you take our relationship for granted. Good ol’ Jill always there for you.”

  “And when I’m gone?” he asked tentatively.

  “Come home soon, baby.”

  Monk clucked his tongue. “You’re too tough.”

  “I’m not going to waste time with be careful and all that bullshit. I know you will be, up to a point. But I also know justice isn’t always so easily obtained.”

  “The things you say, counselor,” Monk joked. “I love you, Jill. I probably do assume too much. But that doesn’t mean I can’t learn.”

  “Yeah, right.
”

  Monk whispered a lascivious reply and he and the judge did their version of trying out for an X-rated record until he had to ring off or figure out how to crawl through the receiver. He got up and gasped. His back was locked as if it were in a steel brace and the bones under his left eye pulsated. He put a hand out on the wall to steady himself, and it took a few moments to gather his strength. “Too much phone sex,” he mumbled to himself.

  Finally, he began to make his way up the stairs. Monk heard the front door open and was terrified he couldn’t swing around with anything approaching swiftness. It had to be Bright and his big grinning goombah come to polish the kitchen linoleum with his head.

  “Continental Dick.”

  “That was Op,” Monk corrected, agonizingly turning his body. Katya stood in the doorway dressed in faded black jeans torn in both knees, a loose fitting plaid shirt, and her motorcycle jacket. “What brings you around here?”

  “Just making sure you were safe. I know you ain’t up to speed just yet.” She came over the to foot of the stairs.

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “Sheriff’s got your gun, Ivan Monk.” She pulled back her leather jacket, displaying a pistol in its rig beneath. She took the automatic out and walked up the stairs, holding it by the barrel. “Come on, I’ll show you how to shoot it.”

  She walked past him and Monk, his temples warming up, followed her. In his room she sat on the bed, placing the gun beside her. He remained standing.

  “Use this model before?” She hitched a thumb in the weapon’s direction.

  Monk picked it up, examining it. On the inlaid rubberized grip was a familiar round stamp of a double wing stylized eagle. “Ruger P90, isn’t it?”

  “Yep. Closest thing we had to your ancient ACP 1911 model.” She took off her jacket, revealing the fact that the top two buttons of her shirt were undone.

  The healthy curvature of her breasts momentarily flustered Monk. “How many guns do y’all have?”

  “How many you think Bright and his boys have?” She leaned back on the bed. “Don’t worry, son. Some us may be strapped on Saturday, but we won’t throw down unless those assholes start the shit. But we’re gonna make sure this ain’t no Greensboro.”