Bad Night Is Falling (11 page)

He pulled his shirt out of his trousers, unbuttoning it all the way as Chuck Niles queued up a cut from a Joshua Redmond album. Monk put out the lights, and laid on the futon as the saxman's tune blew.

It wasn't the first time he'd been fired. He'd been taken off jobs for being too independent, or for getting too close to uncomfortable answers. But he'd never been let go for being incompetent. Despite what he'd said to Absalla, he wasn't that sure he hadn't been followed. In fact, it made sense that this might have happened.

He'd piqued the interest of the Domingos leader when he and his boys had braced him at the Rancho. It hadn't occurred to Monk that the Domingos might have enough wherewithal to tail him. He hadn't taken any precautions, hadn't really made an effort to check to make sure he wasn't being followed once he got the tip from 2X.

“Shit,” Monk said aloud, scratching his bare belly.

“Hey, boss, you want some coffee?” Elrod said through the door.

“No thanks, man.” He could feel the manager's presence on the other side but didn't want to keep talking.

“Alright,” the big man finally said, his footfalls resounding in the cement passageway.

Robert Cray's sharp guitar solo drifted to him from the radio, and Monk wished he could follow it as it transcended distance and walls. Several hours passed, with Monk lying on his back, hands behind his head, alternately staring at the ceiling and dozing off. Finally he got up, buttoned his shirt, and tucked it in as he quit the room.

It was getting on dark and Elrod was counting the cash from the register. Not being a chain, Continental Donuts was not a twenty-four-hour concern, and only stayed open late on Fridays and Saturdays. He zeroed Monk with a questioning gaze. “You need anything?” The big hands kept working as he talked.

The other man clasped him on his steel buttress of a shoulder. “Nothing to sweat, bro'. All my troubles seem like yesterdays.” He poured some coffee into a Styrofoam cup.

Elrod totaled the day's take, and went into the file room to place it in the safe. When he came back, Monk was sitting at one of the booths, his cup of coffee held between both hands. The big man got in opposite. “How about a game of dominoes? I ain't beat your butt in a long time.”

“No, thanks, I wouldn't be much good tonight.” Monk started to sip the coffee and thought better of it. The brew suddenly tasted old and bitter. “I'll lock up. Go on home, man.”

“Okay.” Elrod delayed getting up, his silence indicating he couldn't find the words he wanted to try and pierce the other man's funk. He raised his muscled frame out of the bench seat. The booths were old-fashioned, and each had a coat rack attached on the outer end. The big man lifted his leather coat off one of the hooks, draping it over a thick forearm. “Good night, boss.”

“Take it slow, El-D.” Monk said quietly, his head resting against the padded bench.

In the silence of the room, the phone rang twice, two separate times. Monk didn't bother to answer. The coffee in his cup had long since grown cold.

Seven

T
he Airport Casino was designed with Eisenhower-era coffee shop-futurism in mind. The building was composed of two-story-high angular bronze planes of glass on the front and left sides. The rising reflection of aircrafts skimming across their opaque surfaces from nearby LAX created the effect of an endless film loop. The panes led up to a series of curved trusses that in turn held up an undulating roof line.

The sunken entrance itself was flanked by purple Doric columns topped with brass saucer-style capitals. A wide red carpet led straight from the massive glass and chrome double doors, then curved off toward the sprawling blacktop parking lot. The whole effect was of something designed by the masters of the form, the architect firm of Armét and Davis.

The lot, which was patrolled by blue-grey–uniformed security personnel in white Cherokees, was intermittently landscaped by low shrubs and spiky philodendrons embedded in concrete islands of gravel.

The casino and its grounds sat on a hill west of Sepulveda Boulevard. Directly south lay the airport, and beyond that the unimaginative office buildings of El Segundo, once known as the “aerospace center of the world.” Nowadays, with the collapse of the Cold War, some of the displaced engineers who used to spend hours hunched over bluelines of satellites and MX missiles were equally intent on the outcome of a hand of stud or Texas Hold 'Em. In California the law dictated that players play against one another—that is, jackpot poker—and not the house as in Vegas or Atlantic City. So the antes tended to be smaller, but the incentive to stay longer at the table even if you were losing was greater.

Monk got a ginger ale for $2.50 at one of the bars and strolled across the three-level expanse of the Airport Casino's football field-sized main gambling area. The inside was tasteful in comparison to the exterior. Las Vegas red velvet walls mixed with beaux arts chandeliers and wall sconces. Waitresses in short, tight black skirts, with wide gold belts, medium-high heels, and black garrison caps stitched with a gold lightning bolt along one side flowed through the place like blood cells.

He passed a table where several middle-aged white women, including one in a dark pair of sunglasses, were playing a furious hand of draw poker. Overhead, a soothing version of “Simply the Best” poured quietly from the hidden speakers. This table seemed to be the most lively; many of the other ones were only half full. At the surrounding tables, the players looked haggard, disoriented, like vampires who forgot they shouldn't be out in the day.

Monk made a circuit of the front part of the large room but didn't see the man he'd come to find. He got some chips and sat in for a few hands, losing a quick twenty-five. However, he did discover a ginger ale ordered from one of the girls of the Order of the Jetsons only cost $1.50 if you were playing. Having established his bona fides as a bad poker player, Monk left the table and wandered toward the back, where the real action was.

This section of the main floor was demarcated by an overhead neon sign in royal blue lettering. Hanging perpendicular to the industrial fixtures webbing the ceiling it stated: A
SIAN
G
AMES
. This part was the boomtown to the front's rural subdivision.

Men and women, mostly Asian but with a smattering of whites, Latinos, and a few blacks, were laughing, shouting, cursing, and slapping cards on the green felt as they gamed earnestly. Examining one table, Monk could see two-inch black tiles similar to dominoes being put into position. Pai gow was a game of chance from China which had become very big in Los Angeles and Vegas.

Monk, keen on differentiating Asians by ethnicity, noted the majority of people in this part of the casino were Chinese or Chinese-American. There was a kind of possession gripping each table, as players—young and old, welldressed and decked out like pensioners—held their respective tiles facedown. Each player rubbed a finger over the hidden red or white sunken dots as if reading braille to discern the value of the tile. It was considered a weakness if an opponent saw your hand. But it wasn't considered cheating, and attempting to see another's tile was part of the pleasure of the game.

The object of Pai gow is to make nine or as close to it as possible. A player is initially dealt four tiles. Then a frenzied state of betting and bluffing ensues. Like poker, there are low and high stakes tables. This Monk knew from past observation. But as to actually playing the game, it seemed to him learning to fly a 747 would be easier.

A fog of cigarette smoke hung in the room like old moss. Unlike at typical poker games, here the consumption of alcohol was kept to a minimum. “Bombers,” he knew, referred to players who lifted the tiles of other players who'd gotten too drunk or tired. If players got too inebriated they also risked miscounting their dots with their ginoozing fingers.

Several dialects of Chinese were being spoken as tiles were slapped down. A few of the tables in this part of the room were also engaged in poker. One in particular held some men, aged fortyish, in off-the-rack suits playing anaconda. Their eyes were more intent on a table near them of Pai gow players using black and white chips—big money chips—than on their own game.

Sure enough, in a corner table sat Isaiah Booker, the man Monk had spotted three nights ago on Trinity Street at the disrupted Scalp Hunter summit. Booker was adeptly making bets with blue and white chips. At his table English and Chinese mixed, and the cofounder of the Scalp Hunters was going with the flow.

Nursing his soda, Monk took up space on a far wall, next to a Hockney print in a cheap frame. Searching online through numerous reference and news sites, Monk had produced several listings of the Scalp Hunters' deeds: drive-bys, strong-arm tactics, drug dealing, including amphetamines, moving stolen vehicles across state lines, busts for automatic weapons, etc. The gang had evolved from mere street thugs to a multitiered underground capitalist enterprise.

The most recent piece was about the ambush. In the article, the reporter mentioned a rumor that Isaiah Booker had been in attendance on Trinity. A sidebar was a capsule history of the founding of the gang. It seems that Booker and fellow Manual Arts High School dropout Tony Tyler established the Scalp Hunters in the early '80s after each had finished his sentence at the California Youth Authority. Monk had also found an archived article from the
Atlantic Monthly
on the lives of L.A. gangsters. The piece included a profile on Tyler. Tony T, as he was called, was discovered one bright and sunny morning in 1995 with five bullets in him in his office at the rap record label he'd started.

Pulling up additional info, Monk had found an article from the
Times'
s now defunct
City Times
Sunday supplement that described how a remorseful Booker supposedly went straight after Tyler's murder. Timeslink offered rekeyed text, not the actual typeset articles. But at the downtown library, using the date he wanted to view, Monk went through the right section of microfilm, finding the article from the fall of 1995.

The article mentioned that Booker had been supplying ex-gang members to his construction project in the Crenshaw District. Brooks was described as a retired former Raider and a prominent brother who had grown up in Watts, who was now a partner in building a movie theater complex and music/video superstore. It was the first firstrun theater to be built in that part of town for over forty years.

The former NFLer had also hired Booker to be a kind of independent consultant on the project. A photo taken at the grand opening of the theater accompanied the article. It showed Booker, along with the football great, city councilwoman Tina Chalmers, and Mayor Riordan, each with a hand on a bifurcated prop movie ticket.

There was a quip from Booker saying his only vice these days was going to a card club now and then for relaxation. Taking his lead from that quote, Monk had spent three days trawling from the City of Bell, to Commerce, and other junctures located in the southeastern end of the county. These were towns where once the steel, auto, and rubber factories had run double shifts. But those days, and those industries, were long gone. Now these bereft municipalities chased the chimera of gaming dollars, gambling on sustainable economic development.

Monk's search inevitably brought him to the Airport Casino. The newest and shiniest citadel of chance. He again showed Booker's photo to employees and clientele. That and a few pretty little green ones got the confirmation that Booker frequented the club at least once a week, and that he had a penchant for Pai Gow.

The PI hung back for an opening until one came forty minutes later. A young woman dressed in middle management style tossed her remaining chips onto the felt and departed, disillusioned, from the table. He took a seat at the so-called reformed gangster's five o'clock.

Two Asian women, both heavy smokers, assayed Monk as if he were a bumpkin come for the fleecing. He put his four hundred and fifty dollars' worth of chips before him, trying his best not to show his panic. This was on his dime, goddamnit. There would be no reimbursement of expenses on this go-round.

A large-bellied white man in a cap and with a Pat Buchanan for President button pinned on his lapel shook his head from side to side at the sight of the newcomer's meager chips.

Monk was dealt four tiles, and he concentrated on counting the dots with his fingers. One of the Asian women made it obvious she was trying to see his hand. He subsequently lost the first three rounds, the play moving too fast for him. But he found if he paid attention to the calls of the dealer, he could at least keep track of the respective bets.

Booker hadn't looked at him once, which Monk hoped meant he hadn't gotten a look at him the other night. Every now and then, one of the black-heeled hammers would come by, giving Booker a drink, offering a sandwich, and even a towel to dry his moist fingers. At one point, he signaled a hostess to come over. Booker penned his name on a card, and she returned with some black and white chips. About a thousand dollars' worth, Monk estimated. He also noticed neither of his bodyguards were around.