Perdition, U.S.A.

by Gary Phillips

  Chapter 23

  The number rang three times. On the fourth, an answering machine took over and announced its message. Monk hung up before the beep. He checked the number on the bill he’d filched from Meyer’s wastebasket, and dialed it again. Same message. Thoughtfully, he replaced the receiver. He made a notation beside the 213 area code and got up from the phone in the alcove.

  He’d identified most of the numbers on the bill outside of the area code he was in now but this last one was unexpected. Several of them seemed to belong to other supremacists and one was to the ARM national headquarters in Iowa. Blight’s voice was on a machine for that one.

  Rameses, Katya and Juke came into the house. There was a large bandage taped along the Latino kid’s cheek and chin.

  “What’d you find out last night?” Rameses demanded.

  “Riddle me this, hombre, “Monk countered, “who is the tallow-haired guy who drives a duel carb, Hedman headers ’68 Camaro with racing slicks.”

  Katya was about to respond but Rameses stopped her with, “You first.”

  “Let’s go upstairs.” They did and Monk told them why he’d come to town. From the bottom of the clothes hamper in the bathroom, he extracted the photocopies of the news clips he’d brought along. The three read them in silence.

  “What would be Nolan’s purpose for doing these killings?” Rameses asked.

  Katya twisted her mouth and said. “Is Meyer doing this on Blight’s orders?”

  “I considered that, but from the way it sounded last night, it seems he and Bright are contending for the throne of the most high racist,” Monk said.

  “Yet you’re sure he’s the Shoreline Killer?” Juke asked.

  “If he ain’t, then somebody’s built an awfully intricate frame.” Monk rubbed his stubbled face, the possibility of such a scenario making him irritable.

  Rameses added, “Let’s assume Nolan Meyer must have some logic, some rationale to this. It has to fit into his plans.” Monk put his hands in his pockets, assembling the sections in his mind. “All right. He’s setting up Bright somehow.”

  “Maybe blame the killings on him to get him out of the way,” Katya theorized.

  “There’s something to that,” Rameses concurred.

  The other two shook their heads in agreement. Juke said, “So that’s gotta be it. Meyer must be arranging things to move against Bright when the time is right.”

  “And the Camaro?” Monk asked again.

  Juke looked at the others and lifted his shoulders. “It belongs to John Vickers.”

  “Okay,” he said, not elaborating.

  “Don’t be sly, slick,” Katya joked.

  Monk bugged his eyes at her and got the Ruger from beneath the mattress. He handed it back to her. “I want to thank you cats for your help. And I hope you continue to organize against these dimestore fascists. Peacefully.”

  “Where you headin’, Lone Ranger?” Katya asked.

  “Back to Los Angeles.”

  “What about Meyer?”

  “The chickens might just come home to roost,” Monk allowed.

  A collective “What the fuck?” went up from the assembled.

  Later, Monk went downstairs with his bag. Juanita Oray was sitting in the front room listening to the radio report about last night’s riot, a broom in her hands, a dustpan at her feet and a trash can nearby. He hadn’t noticed before, but two of the house’s large front windows had been busted out.

  “At least five people got themselves shot up pretty bad last night, one of them might not make it. The law made at least forty arrests.” She turned the set off and took a taste from the coffee at her elbow. “On the positive side, with all the media around town, Sheriff Hamm is squirming like the pinhead insect he is.”

  Monk placed the bag on the floor and sat down. “Before I settle up, mind if I ask you something?”

  She stirred the coffee. “Go ahead.”

  “You know why I’m here.”

  “Solve some murders in L.A. Pretty much the opinion of folks around town was from day one you couldn’t be who you said you was.”

  “So much for the James Bond bit. I believe this thing is going to end where it started.”

  “Most of our journeys do,” she said sagely.

  “So I’m told, Juanita.” He leaned forward. “Don’t you think that anything we can use against these supremacists we should use?”

  “Are we to be as vicious as they are?”

  “A little ruthlessness is necessary at times,” Monk conceded.

  “That’s like being a little bit pregnant. But what I know is … gossipy.” Her finger traced the rim of her cup.

  “But you know something.” He showed her the note he’d made next to one of the numbers on the purloined phone bill. He explained what the place was.

  “They just answer the phone and tell you that?” she said doubtfully.

  “I made an early call to a research service I’ve used on occasion. Using their access to data banks of unlisted reverse phone books, they provided me with the owner of the number in the 202 area code.”

  “Amazing things, computers,” Mrs. Oray remarked sincerely.

  “Information is the key to power.”

  Her lips compressed. “I get the hint.”

  “Give me back my gun or the next thing you’ll be wearing a uniform for is parking cars.”

  Hamm and Oates were on their feet, the deputy had his hand on the butt of his holstered revolver. “Get the fuck out of here, Monk,” the sheriff warned.

  Oates made a move to clear his weapon as Monk remained still. “Go ahead, asshole, do it. I’ve already had a long talk with my attorney in Los Angeles.” Which was truth of a sort. Only the subject of the return of his .45 hadn’t come up in his sexy talk with Kodama.

  Hamm placed a hand on Oates. “What are you saying, Monk?”

  “There are no complaints against me, Sheriff,” he said contemptuously.

  “You’re not licensed to carry in Washington State, Mr. Monk.” Oates’ face broke into his practiced affable grin, the hand not far from the holster.

  “You didn’t let me finish, moron. I told my lawyer all about a little dickweed cop who attacked me and how I’m all set to press charges. I’ve got medical reports from the clinic and I’ve already struck up a swell friendship with a few of the reporters who were around town.”

  In one of the cells behind the cops, two skinheads were snoring, sleeping off their drunk. In another, a black kid with a handkerchief tied around his head watched with interest. Hamm looked down at his badge as if it were a spider crawling up his chest. “If I give you back your piece, you’ll leave town?”

  “I’m already gone.”

  Oates got excited. “Shit, Bert, don’t let this wise-ass—”

  “Shut up,” Hamm said, cutting him off. He went to a locked cabinet, opened it, and handed Monk his gun.

  The magazine and the chamber were empty, but otherwise it seemed to be intact. Monk placed the gun in a large manila envelope and started for the door.

  “I’ll see you around, Monk,” Oates hissed.

  “You just make sure nothing happens to that kid in your jail, Hamm.” He turned his head sideways. “Try to do your job for once.” Anderson came through the door, noting the small package in Monk’s hand. The private eye stepped past him and out onto the street.

  In the morning sun Perdition didn’t look too much worse for wear. There were National Guardsmen stationed around, but they mostly joked amongst themselves or sat on benches or upturned milk crates. Their M-16s leaning against their legs as if they were a new form of fashion statement.

  Behind a detachment of them were two trailers. One for the white racists that had been arrested, the other for the multi-racial prisoners. Each trailer was beige.

  There were buildings with busted-out windows and walls with gaping holes. Some stores had been looted, and several had been set fire to. An appliance store had a running refrigerator propped against t
he still-locked expanding metal grill. Somehow, it had been positioned that way and its doors taken off to allow the removal of its contents from the street. On the shelves were several unopened beer cans, a pitcher of what looked like Margarita mix, and three long-stemmed glasses.

  Walking past Ira Elihu’s statue in the park, Monk saw where the old boy’s lips had been spray-painted a sunset orange and a pair of boxers were draped over his head. Curious, Monk drew near the War Reich’s store front but only found a scorched front entrance, remnants of a Molotov cocktail scattered at its base.

  Around back there were no cars and he tried the rear door. It was locked but he wasn’t going to chance his second burglary in less than twenty-four hours. He got back to his car and drove over to Velotis Records. Juke and another young man were hanging around front.

  Worried, Monk asked, “Is Lonetta all right?”

  “She’s fine, man,” Juke assured him. “She just asked us to keep an eye on her place while she went into Spokane. Some radio station wanted to interview her about what’s been going on.”

  “Y’all be cool.” Monk shook the young man’s hand.

  “A luta continua.” Juke raised his fist half way in the air and shook it as Monk walked away waving.

  Monk had already said goodbye to Rameses, his mother, and Katya. He went by the Elihu mansion but the red Jeep, as he expected, was gone. In an upper window, a curtain was pulled back but the house held no more mazes for him to traverse. There was nothing left holding him in Perdition. He guided the rental back onto the highway. In the tape deck, Monk inserted a Frank Morgan cassette, “A Lonesome Thing.”

  Morgan’s alto seared bold notes in a continuum Monk’s mind wandered in for awhile. The road stretched out as the introspective sax man wove his blissful tapestry. It would be soon enough for the music to stop.

  Chapter 24

  An hour before dawn, Sheriff Olson had sent through a contingent of bomb-sniffing dogs. Twin metal detectors were erected at the church entrances. Along with a number of deputies and several Metropolitan Transit Authority cops, there was a detachment of LAPD personnel assigned through Harbor Division. Their ranks also included four of the plainclothes detectives who had been working the Shoreline Killer detail. One of them was Lt. Marasco Seguin on loan from Wilshire.

  He finished giving directions to three uniforms and rounded a pillar in the spacious vestibule of the Foursquare Eternal Glory Baptist Church in Long Beach. Absent-mindedly, he undid his two-button Avery Lucas coat as he walked between one set of metal detectors into the open air. He craved a cigarette which meant he was nervous.

  Time to center yourself, man. Draw down on the kung fu you’d learned in the service. Move all the energy down the center, be in the middle of it so you know which way to jump when the truck comes barreling out of the side roads. Be like the raindrop falling from the bamboo shoot. Be all you can fucking be. A thin smile lifted the corners of his drooping mustache.

  Cars were already starting to crowd the big parking lot for available spaces. Members of the church’s men’s auxiliary had been pressed into service and they began to ferry cars around the block to the lot of the Smart and Final which Reverend Tompkins had the use of. Seguin scanned the people piling out and remained immobile as they filed past him.

  A trilling of the metal detector made a muscle in his neck twitch and Seguin swung about, wary. But it had been triggered by the ostentatious broach in an elderly black woman’s hat and she got it back after one of the female deputies had looked it over.

  Pulling in front of the church was a Lexus the sheen of malachite with Senator Grainger Wu at the wheel. Walter Kane and Ursala Brock got out of the car with Wu. A second car let out the state cops assigned to the senator.

  “Lieutenant,” Wu said, extending a hand. “I believe we have a mutual friend.”

  “If I’m not mistaken, the good judge is coming today,” Seguin said, shaking the hand of the man he voted for.

  “Well, I certainly appreciate the pressure you and your fellow officers have been under to catch this killer.”

  “Thank you. Would you mind calling my house and telling my wife that?”

  Wu laughed genuinely. “See you inside, Lt. Seguin.”

  Kane nodded at the cop and Brock stared straight ahead, seemingly unwilling to break her concentration. A uniform showed the trio around to the side and the secured entrance to the room behind the choir section, the state cops trailing behind like temple eunuchs.

  Coming across the street were at least twenty-five young men and women led by Malik Bradford. Some of them gave Seguin an insolent once-over as the group sauntered into the church. He lingered on the steps under the vaulted entrance for a few moments, then went around the other side of the church.

  About twenty minutes after the appointed start time people had filled the lower pews and the balcony of the main portion of the church. Another 350 or so had been seated on padded folding chairs in the adjoining multi-purpose center. There was a widescreen video monitor set up and the audience was afforded a clear view and sound by massive JVC speakers as Reverend Tompkins delivered his opening remarks.

  “Friends, brothers and sisters, if God puts a period on it, it’s not for me to replace it with a question mark.”

  The reverend’s opening line got some audible chuckles from the assembled. “By that I mean, we are all here on this earth for a purpose, but it surely seems there are those who don’t, as my daddy used to say, know mess from Shinola.” He paused for effect. “And you know my old sharecropper daddy didn’t say ‘mess.’”

  Tompkins was batting a thousand and Seguin, as had been prearranged, moved into the pantry of the kitchen beyond another door. Built-in open-faced cabinets were lined with clean, crisp shelf paper and stocked with enough canned goods and jarred preserves to wait out World War III. Leading from the storage area was a large functional kitchen of the industrial variety. It was outfitted in stainless steel counters and drawers all burnished to a starship sheen with two stoves that had eight burners each.

  Ursala Brock entered from the far door and spotted the LAPD detective. Seguin perceived a change in her demeanor. Was this woman put off by cops or was it something else? The door opened again and one of the state cops came in, followed by the tall one, Walter Kane. Seconds afterward, Wu also came in, munching on a handful of peanuts.

  Seguin joined them.

  “I asked you all here to get your opinion on the possibility of a national health plan,” Wu said jocularly.

  As one, the five pressed forward, Seguin in the lead. The group had just passed a metal side door with a push bar which let onto the parking lot. The door’s mechanism clicked and it swung outward.

  “That goddamn thing’s supposed to be locked,” Seguin whispered, his hand wavering close to his gun.

  Several reporters flooded through the open door, their laminated IDs loose about their necks like cheap pearls.

  “Senator Wu, do you think your proposed legislation on hate crimes has a chance of getting out of committee?”

  “Senator, what is your take on this supremacist center that Bobby Bright is going to open?

  “Just one question, Senator, don’t you think your recent comments about what you say is the lack of resolve by Congress to curtail the militia movement will make enemies in the wrong quarters?”

  Kane was trying to urge Wu forward but he patted his aide’s shoulder and slowed down to respond to a few of the questions. As he did, there was a sudden commotion from behind the gathered journalists. Bodies were jostled and shoved as if a running back were trying to bowl his way through from the outside.

  “Hey, hey, ho, ho, chink has gotta go,” one of the new voices said. “Back to nipland where his rice-eatin’ daddy and GI dick-suckin’ mama came from.”

  Seguin glumly concluded there was no use arguing with the shouter about his mismatch of derogative adjectives.

  As if they’d been teleported, several skinheads were now pushing their way in, ch
anting, finger pointing and a few brandishing their clever signs.

  Seguin tugged on Wu’s arm, urging him forward. At the same time, the state cop and Kane tried to form a barrier between the senator and the vociferous skins, who, at the moment, were engaged in vigorous repartee with the reporters.

  A body went down and others got entangled and all of a sudden the doorway was a jumble of arms and legs and shouting. Against his best intentions, Seguin felt his body being pressed back into the pantry and he had to shoulder someone hard to reinsert himself into the middle where Wu was.

  Kane and Brock were trying to help Wu along when a sound like a wooden ruler slapping against a desk top went off. He’d been brought up attending Catholic Sunday school on the east side. The seasoned detective knew what the real source of the retort was. “Shots,” he hollered.

  A bolt of fear thundered through the mob and Seguin locked onto Wu, getting his wiry frame over the man. The plainclothes cop forced him to the ground. The state cop barked orders into a mike on the underside of his lapel. One of the skinheads was looking around with a confused expression, a small animal with its leg caught in a trap. The crowd began to point at him.

  “He did it, he shot Wu,” a woman reporter yelled, aiming her mobile mike at the man like the Book of Judgment.

  Somebody else swore and two youths—one was Bradford—detached themselves from the bunch and tackled the young skin. “I got it, I got it, he’s got a gun, goddamnit.”

  Seguin moved off and ran into a skin who he decked without a beat by a sideways blow to the temple. The state cop was also moving and the two of them with Bradford dragged the kid in and shut the door. They hauled the young man to his feet.

  Seguin appraised the scene even as he did so. Several of the reporters were still about and three or four other skins who looked a little surprised. “All you fuckheads are under arrest,” he informed them, emphasizing his point with his nine-millimeter.

  The state cop had managed to wedge a chair under the push bar, freezing the door. He too had his gun trained on the young racists.