Only the Wicked

by Gary Phillips

  “Yes, that is so.” She showed great teeth and tipped her head slightly.

  “You sustain any other injuries?”

  “You’re sweet,” she purred. “No, just this.” She held up her arm.

  They sat, talked, drank and listened to several poets and writers do their thing at the mike. Some were okay and some were too paralyzed by angst and self-pity to produce work of any reflective nature. But all at least had something to say.

  Monk checked his watch. “I better be getting along. Can you stay at your friends’ place in Sherman Oaks for a few days?”

  “Yes, I’ve already talked to them and they said cool.”

  “What about some clothes and towels and such?”

  “Come back with me to get them?”

  “Sure.” But he felt a tug in a place he shouldn’t. Monk forced himself to remember she was a client, and he was living with a woman who knew how to use a gat.

  They started walking out. A wiry-built dark-skinned black man with high cheekbones in over-sized gabardine shorts and a tight black T with gold epaulets was coming through the entrance. His eyes were lidded, and he smelled as if he’d just smoked a joint.

  “’Zup, girl? What’s your hurry?” He snagged her forearm, tugging and moving his body as if his spine were a slinky.

  “Jing,” she said tonelessly, removing her arm.

  He made another grab and Sikkuh’s face got hard.

  “Excuse us, okay?” Monk inserted himself between the two.

  Unfocused orbs swam before him. “You her daddy?”

  “You ought to listen to yours, and learn some manners.”

  Jing stood defiantly, arms loose but ready at his sides. “You motherfuckin’ Martha Stewart now?”

  Monk was about to get further in the young man’s face when Indigo stepped over. “Come on, let me buy you a raspberry frappé.” He put an arm around the belligerent younger man’s shoulders.

  Jing snarled, “Aw, man, Pops Racer here don’t raise no water on my balls.”

  “I know, my brother. Come on, let’s talk about it over here.” Indigo winked at Monk and led the surly and high Jing to a table near the kitchen.

  “Who in the hell was that?” Monk asked, walking with Sikkuh to her car across the wide expanse of Coldwater.

  “Jing’s done some acting on a couple of episodes of the Wayans Brothers’ show.”

  “That explains everything.” Monk scratched his cheek. “So the cool tiling these days is to have one name?”

  She giggled, touching his arm. “Pretentious, isn’t it?”

  They took her Probe to her apartment on a dark street where the leaves of the maple trees bristled in the night wind. There was a security gate on the entrance and one on the underground carport to her complex.

  There was a locked door off the garage and Sikkuh explained tenants had to use their key to enter through that door, and the door beyond to the elevators. “Of course the intruder could have hung around the entrance until someone came in or out and slipped inside.” Monk knew this could be the case since he’d done just that himself in the past. “Then the attacker changed into his work uniform once in the stairwell.”

  Upstairs, Sikkuh got some clothes together. Looking around the living room, Monk noted the lock to her apartment door was nothing special—not that he was a lock-picking expert. He studied the mess the intruder had made of her place. He crouched down, holding pieces of a broken CD case. It was an album by James Cotton.

  “You dig the blues, huh?”

  Sikkuh stepped into the room from her bedroom. She was holding onto some clothing. “Don’t everybody?” She held aloft some black lace panties in one hand, pinkish silk ones in the other. “Which ones should I wear tomorrow, Ivan?”

  Monk managed to convey his opinion without taking her up on the offer to see how each one fit. Afterward, she drove him back to his car parked near the Grassy Knoll. “Two o’clock tomorrow,” she said, running her hand on his upper thigh as he sat in the passenger seat.

  Gently, and with some hesitation, he removed her hand. “Until then, ma’am.”

  “Nice ass for an old guy,” she laughed, driving away into the humid Valley evening.

  “Kids,” Monk grumbled, admittedly flattered a gorgeous young thing would flirt with him. He managed to cease fantasizing by the time he rolled home and found Kodama replacing a washer in the bathroom sink’s faucet.

  ***

  At eleven minutes after ten the next morning, Monk was standing in the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research in the 6100 block of South Vermont Avenue. The Library was a nonprofit Kodama had belonged to for a number of years.

  The nonprofit was housed in a two-story, large rectangular structure. The building had been an appliance store during the Watts Riots of 1965. The holdings of the facility included pamphlets from the Industrial Workers of the World, the Wobblies, in the ’20s; the End Poverty In California campaign of Upton Sinclair in the ’30s; more than 26,000 volumes of books on history, women’s studies, the Chicano civil rights movement; the Unemployed Councils that operated in the South in the ’30s, and many other paeans to the strugglers who wanted to make a better world.

  “This Freed cat secreted a lot of material away during the McCarthy era, didn’t he?” Monk was leafing through an anniversary publication and had stopped on a photo of Emil Freed, the library’s founder, and his wife, Tassia. He and the wife—he was squat and squarish like a high school football coach—were marching with others brandishing placards demonstrating against the Smith Act. The repressive law was a Congressional measure used to round up radicals and Progressives in the late ’40s and ’50s.

  “Like a man hiding pieces of the Grail, Emil hid people’s books and papers in garages and apartments all over town,” Sarah Cooper said. She was the director of the library, and looked like any casting director’s idea of a librarian, complete with glasses on a chain around her neck. She wore little cows for earrings, and could recite the Ten Point Program for Progress of the Black Panther Party, backward and forward.

  He closed the booklet and set it down on a long counter. “And after things settled some, he gathered this material back together?”

  “Yes. Of course Emil had this material jammed in boxes, crates, grocery bags and whatever else he could use to keep them together. It took a long time to get things catalogued and situated.” She pointed toward the open upper level where a couple of oldsters were shelving stacks of newspapers. “And the work still goes on.”

  Monk, his hands thrust into the back pockets of his jeans, nodded his appreciation.

  “Come on, I’ll get you the Embara tape,” she said.

  He followed her around several stacks to a door located down a hallway with a plaque tacked to it announcing it as the EARL ROBINSON Room.

  “Who was that?” he asked as Cooper twisted the knob.

  “Composer, ‘Ballad of the Americans,’ made famous by Paul Robeson.”

  There were shelves of audio and videotapes neatly arranged and labeled in the room. Equally important, there was a monitor and a VCR. “Since I knew you were coming, I got her tape out and had it ready to go.” Cooper turned on the power.

  “Thank you.”

  “No problem.”

  She closed the door behind her and Monk hit PLAY to get the tape going. Entitled Fire and Justice, the video was a documentary about Damon Creel by independent filmmaker N’Kobari Embara. There were a couple of ’60s-era kitchen table seats in the room. Monk put one in place and sat down.

  He watched the absorbing story of Creel’s life and times. From his days growing up in a white, lower-middle-class neighborhood in Culver City, to his volunteering for Vietnam, and his politicalization while in the service during his second tour. There was also a fairly recent interview with Creel conducted at the federal correctional institute at Millington, Tennessee. Creel was over six-two, with a runner’s sleek build. He had an expressive face, and a full mustache that he’d appar
ently worn for more than twenty-five years. Though the brush was now salt and peppered with gray, the hair on his head was still black and full. When he spoke, there were pauses in his speaking voice attesting to the weight he gave each question from Embara.

  “You have to understand, when we did the campaign, Jackson State had gone down.” Creel was sitting in a metal chair in a sterile room, looking ahead intently. His speaking voice was hoarse but steady. “Four black students gunned down, protesting racism on campus and the war was a very big thing in Mississippi,” he went on. “The repression that was unleashed was fierce. Conversely, the national attention built up by the work since Freedom Summer in ’sixty-five had inspired do-good foundations and even some corporations to start feelin’ guilty and donate money to us.” He tapped the table with the side of his hand several times underscoring his words.

  The interview cut to a clip of Bernie Descanso, the attorney who’d come to fame during the Days of Rage as a leader of the SDS, and who had championed Creel’s case for more than twenty years. He said some supportive words, working his hands in big circles as he did so.

  Then on to a scene of people walking around holding their heads and some others shouting and still others crying. In voiceover, a woman stated there was a loss of student life at Jackson State on May 7, 1970, when highway patrolmen indiscriminately opened fire on unarmed students. Later,” the narrator intoned in the voice-over, “the authorities would claim there had been sniper fire. The same unproven assertion the National Guard made at Kent State in Ohio that same year.”

  For several moments, the image froze on a young woman with a puffy Afro, her finger held to her mouth as if holding back recriminations. She stood at a window that had been shot out, bullet holes from large-caliber weapons dotting the wall around her.

  Monk watched more of the film, then halted the video. He left and walked over to get an early lunch at Goss’ Seafood You Buy, We Fry—two blocks north of the library. He returned with his lunch of cornmeal-breaded catfish, fried shrimp and potato salad. Dousing his fish with hot sauce and ketchup, he worked out his next steps in his head. After he finished eating, he watched the rest of the documentary and shut off the monitor. He sat still for several beats, then got up.

  “Thanks for letting me see the tape,” he told Cooper.

  “Are you looking into his case?” She was in a room fronted by large glass panes, working on a computer.

  “Not directly,” he said. “But it seems current incidents keep revolving around Creel and the trial. I was hoping to find out details that might help me with what I’m trying to solve.”

  She murmured an assent. “We had a half-day conference on him and other political prisoners like Leonard Peltier, not too long ago.”

  Nobody had said it, but Monk felt a burden to do something right for Creel, if only to allay his own suspicions. Yet he also had to be realistic. “What I’m looking into may help Creel—”

  “Or may not,” she finished. “I understand.” She put on her glasses, though she looked over them at Monk. “Want to talk to N’Kobari?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  Cooper wrote down an address and phone number. He thanked her and drove out to the Valley to meet Sikkuh at the Glendale Savings on Ventura Boulevard. His temperature gauge drifted past center. As usual, the Valley was hot and dry and he could not see why in the hell people lived out there. The streets were over-built, and the houses all had that ensconced neo-Brahmin pseudo-ranch look he found so infuriating.

  Marshall Spears’ grand-niece was cheerful and optimistic in a plaid, pleated skirt and green velveteen top. She had on a pair of lace-up burgundy Skechers boots, and waved at him as he pulled into the parking lot.

  She wrapped an arm around his and they walked that way into the place. Soon they were sitting in the private cubicle examining the contents of the large safe deposit box.

  “It must be seven years since I put this stuff away. Every now and then I get a notice from the branch telling me I have to sign the form so they don’t throw out the box.”

  Monk was examining the objects he’d taken out of a large manila envelope folded over and held in place by rubber bands. There were three rail spikes stamped with dates on their heads, baggage claim tags, decals from several cities like Yazoo and Greenville, postcards not filled in on the back, and some photographs. The postcards had various locomotives chugging along, The Atchinson, Topeka and Santa Fe, the Reading, Southern Pacific and so on. Among the photos, there was a slightly out of focus shot of a picnic scene that garnered a second look from Monk.

  “I think this is Damon Creel sitting at this table, your greatuncle on the other side.” He peered close and handed it to younger eyes to judge. He’d put off the visit to the optometrist last month. In the photo people were eating and talking. Off to one side was a barrel barbeque pit and a man hard at work grilling some Q. He was sweating like Hercules on his seventh labor.

  “Yes, it is,” Sikkuh confirmed. “Who’s Damon Creel?” She handed the photo back.

  He explained who he was and the connection to Kennesaw Riles. Then, “Damn,” Monk said faintly.

  She hovered a black-nailed finger over the man doing duty over the pit. “That’s your cousin, isn’t it?”

  Monk glared at her questioningly.

  “I saw his picture on the funeral program, slick.”

  “Let me hold on to this for awhile, okay?”

  “Certainly. Do you think those tags are any use?”

  Monk picked them up. They were for depots of numerous cities. He’d only heard of about half the towns, all of them, he assumed, scattered through the deep south. There was no tag more recent than 1974.

  “If he was hiding things in each city, it woulda been long since cleared out by now.” It wasn’t too much of a strain to fancy Spears operating like Emil Freed behind enemy lines, hiding away the precious works of generations to keep them safe.

  “So what does this mean?” She pushed the aged receipts around like Jigsaw pieces.

  “I can stand still and see if the Creature comes for you or my mother again.”

  “You mean set a trap.” She almost bounced in the seat.

  “Slow down, Honey West.” Monk patted her arm. “The killer may be a cold-blooded thug, but the bastard’s also smart. He’s moving around, knowing things about us that only an insider could know.”

  “So you’re going to pretend like you found this thing he’s looking for, and he comes after you.”

  “He would know I hadn’t,” Monk had already decided. “Plus, how would we do it? Go to all the old-timers at the wake and drop hints like we’d actually found this whatzits?”

  She twitched her shapely nose. “Where’d you get that term, out of a old movie on AMC?”

  “Regardless,” Monk said dryly. “We have to assume the killer is connected to someone who knew one or both of our relatives.”

  “Maybe someone in this picture.” She pointed at the indistinct figures in the picnic shot.

  “Another reason to head to Mississippi.” He stared at the photo.

  “And the killer will follow you? That seems pretty shaky to me, Ivan. Plus, how’s he gonna know you left town?”

  “’Cause if I bang enough bells down there he’ll know.”

  “And come after you ’cause he’ll think you’re on to something? Why wouldn’t he just wait until you got back here to town with your whatzits?”

  “Sikkuh,” he said patiently, “this thing might be information and not an object.”

  She bobbed her head to an inaudible beat. “Something to prove this Creel’s innocence.” She leaned to one side, hand under her chin, regarding him with amused interest. “But what you really want to be is the mack daddy player, the man who makes things happen.” She put a hand on his cheek. “You’re so cute, Ivan Monk.”

  “Damn, girl,” he admonished.

  She laughed and slapped his arm. Leaving the bank she said, “Maybe you’ll get lucky and find something ou
t about Patton’s record, too.”

  “Maybe.” He got in his car and drove away.

  The next day Monk went to see N’Kobari Embara at her office/workspace on the lot of the Las Palmas studios in Hollywood. The studio was a collection of large work areas rented out to concerns as diverse as prop shops to interactive game production. Each office was fronted with graying wood decks. The filmmaker was on the tall side, with frizzed-out hair and three wide silver bracelets along one muscular arm. Monk guessed she was about his age since there were bags under her eyes.

  “I was down in Texas getting some information on this private prison company called Percival Facilities Management. They’re looking to take business away from Unicor, the Bureau of Prisons’ whacked-out labor scam.” She was fiddling with a camera mount. “Innocent sounding, aren’t they?”

  “Everybody’s trying to make a buck.” Monk crossed his leg at a perpendicular angle to his knee.

  She leaned the collapsed mount in a corner. “Uh-huh, taking federal dollars out of our pockets for doing the job of warehousing on the cheap. Symptomatic of the further abandonment of compassion and responsibility our politicians should be exercising.”

  “I’m not arguing with you.”

  She laughed heartily and lifted a pile of books and papers from one part of her desk to another to get a clearer look at her visitor. “You want to see what wasn’t in the film?”

  He uncrossed his legs. “It won’t be sold to Hard Copy, N’Kobari.”

  She vibrated an open palm in the air. “I know, I know. I called around about you. You’ll be happy to hear some folks actually think you’re a down brother even though you’re a semi-cop.”

  “What do the others say?”

  Embara belted out another gust of her infectious laughter. “Could be I’ll use that in the documentary I’ll do one day on the capitalism and the underworld, and the role of the private eye who maneuvers in both arenas.” She picked up a set of inter-locking gears and sprockets and idly manipulated the device. “To get the first unstated question out of the box, yes, Damon Creel was having an affair with one of the white girls from Brandeis.” She stared straight at him, adroitly twisting and turning the gears as she spoke.