Only the Wicked

by Gary Phillips

  “So you wanted to go solo,” Monk commented. “The others holding you back.”

  “Sounds so cliché, doesn’t it?”

  “The ego game keeps repeating itself over and over, and forevermore.” Antony touched his forehead with two fingers.

  “Yeah,” Clara Antony added, sighing loudly. “Mary hasn’t talked to me in over, my goodness, twelve, fifteen years. And Donice—” She shook her head in remorse.

  Antony presented his defense. “So you see why Kennesaw might so badly want to make up for a mistake of his past.”

  “Getting too big for your britches isn’t the same as being a snitch.”

  “But you see my point,” Antony persisted.

  Before they got too far on that course, Monk spoke again. “I don’t have any delicate way of asking this, Clara, but it’s important to me I find out as much as I can about Kennesaw’s murder.”

  She reared back, a sardonic grin contorting her mouth. “I know what you want to know. I’m sure you’ve asked around and heard those stories about me and Ardmore from the bad old days.”

  “Look, you don’t have to do this,” Antony said protectively. He set a hard glance on Monk, his attitude stiffening. “You think you’re some kind of sharpie, don’t you?” He got up and pointed, “You can get out now.” He inclined his head toward the arch, a second away from summoning the behemoth in the Homburg.

  “No, let it alone, Ardmore,” his wife said softly. “It isn’t like he won’t go on and find out.”

  “They always like to hear you tell it,” Ardmore said from experience.

  “That’s true,” Monk admitted. “But I’m not trying any tricks here, Clara. I heard the story about you and poison, and wanted to know what there was to it.”

  Clara Ardmore stuck her legs out and crossed them at the ankles. “I was going around with a couple of smooth operators. This was around ’fifty-five or ’fifty-six, ’cause I remember one of these fellas loved that Davy Crockett show on TV.”

  Monk caught Antony dipping his head.

  “One was him,” she pointed at her husband, “and the other was Howell Exum.”

  “That’s a hell of a name.”

  “I guess. Ex, as we called him, had a job down at the Continental Trailways depot downtown unloading the buses, and doing some light mechanical work.”

  “But his real work was the ponies and craps,” Antony put in mildly.

  “Both showed a girl a good time.”

  “However, both didn’t have chicks packing cardboard suitcases taking the all-nighters from Woodstomp, Georgia, up to L.A. to settle old debts.” Antony got up and retrieved his soda, finishing the bottle.

  Clara crossed her feet the other way as her husband sat back down. “See, what went down is Ex had run out on this girl’s baby sister. Not the first such time he’d done that you understand. So Inez Jackson Shuttlesworth packed her bag with a butcher’s knife with one side of its handle missing, some changes of clothes, and a map of Los Angeles.”

  “You saying this is the woman poisoned Howell Exum?” Monk catalogued the names in his mind.

  “When you check, you’ll see.” Antony used a paper towel to wipe at sweat under his chin.

  “Me and this hard-headed dame, Inez, got into it one night at the Barrelhouse out in Watts. We traded some blows, baby, like Ali and Frazier, I’ll tell you.” She related her ring experience proudly. “Ashtrays and pressed hair flying, upended a table with plates of food.” She boomed with a hearty laugh.

  “Yes, buddy,” Antony clucked his tongue again. “Some kind of woman.”

  “About three days later, I get hauled in by a couple of detectives over to Seventy-seventh. They’re yammering at me about do I have an alibi. Where was I at three that morning, what kind of poison did I use on Ex. The whole bit, man.”

  “And you did have an alibi,” Monk stated.

  “Me,” Antony declared in a defiant tone.

  “That and the bottle of Duniger’s rat poison the cops found in the cans behind the rooming house Inez was staying at on Maple.”

  “This Inez go to prison?” Monk asked with interest.

  “They brought her back from Georgia, and charged her. But there wasn’t anything concrete to pin the deed on her. They got her for a bench warrant and evading arrest.” She pushed out her lips. “I think maybe she did a year in jail.”

  “Ever see her since?”

  “Surprisingly, yes. Ex had a daughter who got in a bad way, financially. Me and Ardmore were helping her out, and who shows up one week but Inez. We kinda stared down each other, then all we could do was hug.”

  “This daughter Inez’s niece?”

  It took a few moments for his question to sink in. “Oh no, this child was by some other woman altogether. Not from Inez’s little sister. I’ve seen her a few times after that. Seen her more than I’ve seen Mary.” She drew her legs back under the chair as if a sudden chill had descended on her. “Or rather, I’ve seen Mary, she just doesn’t want to talk to me.”

  Monk got up. “I appreciate you talking so frankly, Clara.” He started to go, then realized the obvious. “Say, did the cops ever talk to the younger sister?”

  Antony too was standing. “Her name was Mardisa. Yeah, they grilled her, too. She claimed she was ironing clothes in her apartment and listening to shows on the radio. You know, the ‘Whistler,’ ‘Gangbusters,’ jive like that. She told the cops what was on when, and given her quiet nature, they had to let her go, too.”

  “She wasn’t sharing rooms with her sister?” Monk got interested again.

  “No,” Clara said bemusedly. “Inez liked to entertain and her demure sister was one to complain. Inez got that room she was staying in because a childhood friend from Woodstomp lived there, too.”

  “How in the hell did the tame Mardisa get hooked up with this hustler Exum?” Monk stood directly under the archway, a cool breeze blowing against his back.

  “Another old tired story,” Clara Antony said. “Fast man puts the whammy on country girl, promises her everything, then cleans out her savings.”

  “So Exum wasn’t that fascinating,” Monk remarked.

  “Hindsight gets pretty clear over decades,” the woman observed.

  “Thanks for the history lesson.” Monk went downstairs onto the sidewalk in front of the office. Did Clara and her husband give his cousin an overdose, maybe having wrangled a clue to the “Killin’ Blues” location out of him? Kennesaw had desperately wanted to talk to the man, so access wasn’t a problem. And Antony could parlay such an album, if it did exist, into quite a hunk of cash for his golden years. He worked it over in his head, his hands in his pockets, standing in front of Antony’s office.

  The space occupied a portion of the front and corner of Somerville Place II. It was a mixed-use building with businesses and retail on the ground and second floors, and low income housing above those. This was on the northern end.

  To the south was Somerville Place I, a similar construction. In between these new buildings was the Dunbar Hotel. Originally the hotel was called the Somerville, after the black doctor who built it in 1923 to service a dusky clientele. The hotel, along with the Clark and the Golden West, were the places black travelers, from Pullman porters during down-time to entertainers like Lena Home and Cab Calloway, could stay in when in town. L.A. in the ’30s and ’40s was known for its orange groves and its legal housing apartheid.

  Monk’s headache had devolved into a steady annoyance, and he remembered something about a bar being in the Dunbar’s basement. He was crossing the street and working on the name when Antony called to him. He looked back at the rotund man leaning out of the window.

  “Hey, I know you want to do right by your cousin. To make up for coming at you like that, let me comp you a couple of tickets to the revue. Just show up and you’ll be on a list at the will-call.”

  Monk waved thanks and drove off. He used the after-work traffic as an excuse not to drive home. He had a bad feeling his sister had
burned up the answering machine and he didn’t want to face her transmitted wrath. He went to the donut shop and was surprised to find Curtis and Lonnie Armstrong at work on a Bluebird yellow school bus.

  He decided to bug Curtis and started to walk over. Lonnie was on a short ladder, bent over the engine compartment. He had his perpetual cigarette stuck behind his ear.

  “I heard from Lonny J.,” Lonnie of the “ie” said without turning. Lonny J. used to work for Monk part-time. That Lonny was in his twenties and played in a band called the Exiles. They’d evolved from a rap act into real musicians playing a blend of socially conscious rap, ska and rock. The group had cut a CD on an independent label, and were on a tour.

  “Tell him I know he and the band are gonna do it.” Monk tapped the fender. The mechanic Lonnie was the play uncle to the younger Lonny J. He’d gotten the job because the singing Lonny had told him Curtis was looking to hire another mechanic. Curtis had a silent partner, a co-owner of the shop, but neither Monk, nor anyone else he knew, had ever met him or her.

  Curtis, the beefy one, let loose in his Mike Tyson squeak from down below. “Ain’t this some fucking shit.” The front end shook as he worked to loosen some particularly stubborn fitting.

  “This be our contract with the school district,” Lonnie said without being asked, engrossed in his work. “We gets the overruns. Good money, but that mean we gets the buses at all times, days and weekends.”

  Monk hadn’t heard Lonnie string that many words together in half a year. “I’ll catch y’all later.”

  Lonnie grunted and Curtis banged some part of the frame with his tool and hand. Monk’s ears were seared with the mechanic’s swearing as he crossed the lot and entered the donut shop. A couple of the regulars were there. Teresa, a good-sized woman given to mammoth necklaces, who worked graveyard at the county morgue, was playing chess with Elrod in one of the now pristine booths. Andrade, a sometimes accountant when he wasn’t on the juice, was at the counter, studying a racing form. He swirled the contents of his coffee cup listlessly.

  “Monk,” Andrade managed in a bored tone.

  “Peoples,” Monk said, walking past them to his office. He unlocked it and entered the room. Getting on-line, he searched around in various newspaper archives. He retrieved some cursory pieces on Senator Hiram Bodar’s accident and alleged affair from the New York Times and the Boston Globe. He printed out hard copies, and read them more carefully.

  He wanted to read the past articles from The Jackson Ledger, but only a smattering of their pieces were on-line. Rereading one of the Globe’s accounts, he noted the name of the assistant editor of the Ledger. He got out the clipping Dellums had saved. It had been written by the assistant editor, a Todd McClendon. Typing McClendon’s name in HotBot, he came up with several matches. Monk whittled it down to the McClendon he wanted in a piece in the Wall Street Journal from earlier in the year.

  This article talked about McClendon’s firing, and interspersed statements from the former editor. McClendon alluded to the fact that Bodar had been stirring up old sins, that his accident wasn’t one, and McClendon’s subsequent firing was connected. There was a response from the management of the paper which went on about the usual restructuring, that McClendon was a sound editor, the fit wasn’t right for the new Ledger, blah, blah, blah. Reading between the lines, Monk had the distinct impression that once McClendon broke with the established line about Bodar’s accident, his tenure at the paper was time certain.

  He made a note on one of the printouts to hunt down Bodar. He went out front and helped Elrod and Josette, another of Monk’s staff, prepare dough for frying fresh donuts early tomorrow morning. The three locked up, and he got home to find Kodama sprawled on the couch in the den. She was watching the late afternoon news, her shoes off, feet on the coffee table. Next to her toes lay a picture book of I.M. Pei’s architectural projects.

  “Baby doll.” He sat on the coffee table, massaging her feet. The answering machine had contained no message from his irate sister.

  “What you do today, handsome?”

  He told her, leaving out his tirade at Harris’ job. He’d tell her eventually, he knew, but he just wanted to pick the right time. But for now, as he settled beside her, putting his arm around her, watching the lack of progress of peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians, everything was just fine.

  Chapter 10

  Nona Monk extricated herself from her Grand Am with great effort. The sun wouldn’t be up for another twenty minutes or so, but she could hear that damn woodpecker doing his mischief on her maple tree high up on the trunk. She liked her little house on Stanley, on a nice section between Packard and San Vicente. She was active in her block club, and it only got noisy on the weekends. And even then not every weekend.

  When Josiah was alive, they lived on McKinley off 39th. In those days, South Central was solid working class, her neighbors toiled in the post office, at the railroad, and as skycaps, bus drivers, teachers, and nurses. Her children may not have had everything, but they didn’t want for the basics of clothes, shoes, decent food, or a bike when they outgrew their previous one. Now that they were quite grown, getting gray themselves, it seemed like someone else’s life to think about when Ivan and Odessa were growing up.

  These days, Nona Monk was working hard to remain a size ten, when for most of her life fluctuating between size seven and eight had been the norm. Her feet ached and there was that twinge again in her right elbow. Yeah, the next check-up she’d bring it up.

  She was also worried about her son. She’d noted the new lines on his forehead, and detected the occasional dread moving behind his eyes last week at dinner. The after-effects of the shoot-out in the Rancho Tajuata were as apparent to her as the tribulations of Vietnam vets she’d cared for decades ago. Ivan’s state reminded her of the constant quiet anguish, intensified by the racism back home, that had eaten at her husband, a Korean War-era sergeant. That gnawing of the way things were, and how hard it was to change the unfairness, tore at him until his will and heart gave out.

  At first the jerk of her left shoulder had her thinking she too, like her departed Josiah, was having a heart attack. But she was already dismissing that idea by the time the hand spun her around, and shoved her back against her car. The thing at the other end of the arm was wearing overalls, fur-lined gloves, and a Creature of the Black Lagoon mask. Behind the eye slits, some kind of mesh obscured the masked man’s race.

  She’d been mugged before and calculated this wasn’t the same thing. Street thugs had very little imagination nor aptitude for advance planning. She threw her purse at her attacker’s feet. “Take it and go. I’m getting off a double shift and too tired to spit.”

  Nona Monk wanted to sound brave and defiant, despite what her son had told her to do in such a situation: to as much as possible go along with the bad guy’s demands. If she didn’t, he’d warned her, defiance would result in angering the crook. And that would be a challenge to his misplaced manhood, thereby compelling him to up the ante into violence.

  The Creature kicked the purse back toward her and pointed at her.

  Scared and confused, Nona Monk could only gape as the Creature rushed her, forcibly clamping a hand over her mouth. With the other hand, the attacker reached for her hand, the one holding her house keys. “You ain’t going in my house,” Nona Monk said more to herself than in any clear, audible fashion. She started to squirm and got a bop upside her head for her efforts. She sagged against the passenger door, and slid to the grass next to the driveway, near her purse. Dizziness gripped her head, and she felt her stomach lurch.

  The Creature bent down, and gurgled, “Look, Nona, let’s get inside and get this over with.”

  The gruesome realization of being raped and murdered, particularly in her own house, channeled the fear coursing in her veins. In a strange third-person way, she floated outside her body, watching the gun as it pressed against her temple. The Creature roughly tugged her upright. Reflexively, she s
wung the can of pepper spray she’d pulled from her purse. She let it go at the eye slits, and prayed as she did so.

  “Motherfucking bitch,” the Creature wailed as she emptied as much of the stuff as she could at his face. The Creature put its gloved hands over its immobile face, tearing at the rubber mask. She was on her knees, and tried to stand. Weakness and terror had her disoriented.

  “I’ma fix you, you old ho,” the Creature yelled, stomping around, trying to aim the gun at her.

  Nona Monk went down on all fours, crawling toward the end of her car. A shot went off, and she didn’t know if it hit her or not. It was so damn loud. All her energy seemed to be leaving her like water out of a pitcher. She blew the whistle on her key ring. She kept blowing it even after she heard a couple of doors open and feet scuffling across manicured lawns wet with dew.

  Chapter 11

  Monk, his sister, his nephew, and Kodama bunched in Nona Monk’s semi-private hospital room. She was propped up in bed, an IV running into one arm, an oxygen hose clipped to her nostrils. There was gauze holding a bandage around her head. She smiled weakly, her daughter crying softly, holding her hand.

  “Mama, Mama.” Odessa Monk put a hand to her own face in a useless effort to halt the flow of her tears.

  Monk gripped the railing at the end of his mother’s bed, looking at, but not focusing on her. Kodama rubbed his back with an open palm, comforting him.

  “She’s got good neighbors,” Kodama said.

  “And the family’s hard head,” he said dryly.

  Odessa, who had made a thing of not looking at him since arriving, spoke without turning her head. “What in hell was this crazy bastard after?”

  “I’d like that answer my damn self,” Sergeant Roberts said from behind them. “How is she?” he asked no one in particular.

  “Some clotting under the scalp, and we’re waiting for the MRI to come back,” Monk answered, straightening up.