Bad Night Is Falling (21 page)

“You going to try to interview Tariq?”

Vigorously she bobbed her head as she wrote. “This will make double truck in the paper, home base. No other media bothered to make the scene,” she said covetedly.

Monk was about to say something when a beat-up Dodge van cruised past the cemetery gates. He was pretty sure it was the one that had taken him to see Maladrone. The vehicle did a U-turn and doubled back on the other side of the street. Monk's alarm broadcast a vibe the savvy Sicorro noticed.

“What's happening, Ivan?”

He said nothing, his mind preparing his hand to reach down and get the Glock strapped to his ankle. The van rolled out of sight.

“What the fuck is going on?” Sicorro looked around as if she could see what he was imagining.

There was the squeal of tires as Maladrone's messengers returned for the third time, not to look, Monk feared, but to do. Tariq seemed to actually be working toward his windup.

“Everything's fine,” he said, patting her in the middle of her back.

“My ass,” she countered.

“That too.”

She arched a thick brow. “Careful, I don't think you could handle two women like me and the judge at once. Although,” she joked, batting her eyes, “we might could work out a tag team arrangement.”

“Knucklehead.” Evidently, the van had moved along.

Sicorro slapped his arm with her pad and sought to position herself closer to the minister. Various people were now stepping forward and taking their turns shoveling a mound of dirt on the now lowered coffins.

Minister Tariq's guards, a seemingly impermeable physical and psychic barrier, stood around him. He clasped his large hands in front of his athletic frame. The minister was wearing red-tinted Gargoyle sunglasses, and his unlined face—Monk recalled he was a grandfather five times—was unbroken by sweat or consternation. Tariq was dressed in a camel-colored sport coat, starched blue shirt, and a dawngrey bow tie. His burgundy trousers broke just so on the crest of his coffee-with-a-hint-of-cream Stacey Adamses.

Sicorro managed to get the attention of one of the grim
burkandaz
, showing him her press credentials. Monk was drifting along the rear wall, anxious to look up the record of Dubro Morris. He was the twenty-two-year-old identified in the program book as Junior Blue, the cousin of Kelmont “Kid Blue” Reeves.

“You must be trippin' to show up here.” Absalla came up and latched onto his arm.

Monk knocked his hand away. “I ain't on your dime, Absalla, and where I show up is my goddamn business.” He squared up in front of the Muslim chief. He was acutely aware mat he was facing him down in hostile territory.

Absalla's hand did its flexing routine, his eyes alert and transmitting a building rage. “What the fuck do you think you're doing?”

“The thing I'm good at, Absalla.”

A sturdy finger bluntly pushed its way close to Monk's down-turned mouth. “You better take your monkey ass out of here before you dip your dick in business where it's likely to get snapped off.”

“Trying to get back in solid with the head man, huh?” Monk goaded. “You pay for his ticket out here?”

Absalla charged forward and Monk jammed the heel of his rigid palm into the crux of his sternum. “Better be cool, fool, or the big man will think maybe you ain't got it back together after all.” A sliver of what might have been joy tugged his lips to one side. “But it don't unhinge my world if you want to tumble.”

There were some people coming over, but none within earshot yet. If they were, Monk was certain Absalla would have had to swing to maintain what he felt to be his manly stature. But the absence of other earwitnesses allowed for room to dance.

“You best be staying out of my way, chump. You might find out I ain't always willing to settle things with talk.”

“You mean like Malcolm X found out?”

By then, others were crowding close, including Keith 2X, who was jostling to the front. Monk couldn't take his attention off Absalla, but could feel their presence. He very much wanted to talk with 2X alone.

The growing crowd was parted by the prow of Tariq's berserkers. His decked-out chasseurs then opened at the juncture of their base and the charismatic minister glided into view.

“Mr. Monk, I presume.” His voice, even at rest, had the quality of a tempestuous ocean right before a squall.

“He's been fired,” Absalla said loud enough for all to hear, “'cause he's responsible for these two deaths.”

Murmurs couldn't drown out Monk's desire to slug the smug Absalla.

“Is that so?” Tariq's head rotated toward Monk.

“That's his opinion,” Monk countered. “But I have a different theory.” He wanted to look at 2X but resisted the impulse.

“So you're still looking into this? For who?” Tariq inquired.

“My own enlightenment. You're for empowering the black man, aren't you, Minister Tariq?”

“Indeed.” Tariq pondered that then said, “I hope matters will remain peaceful with all these goings-on. Don't you, Mr. Monk?”

“Naturally.”

His audience over, Tariq returned to the graveside with his brutally efficient entourage. Absalla trailed behind, not deigning to look back at Monk. Keith 2X also followed, but he did look back. Monk winked, and the young man blanched. Sicorro made a menacing face at him and went to try to get her story.

“Why can't I go in, dammit.” She kicked at the floorboard.

“Because I don't want to get grandma in there all worked up. She's got to feel comfortable with me asking the questions.”

“Yeah, like you're Madeleine Albright. Tell her I'm your assistant. Which is kinda accurate considering the day I've had.” Sicorro pouted.

Monk was already half out of the Ford's driver side. “You're getting all this great background for the piece. And you can always come back and talk with the old girl after this is over with.”

“That's assuming your sorry ass ain't doing ten to fifteen in Mule State.” She tapped his dash. “How come you don't have a CD player in this ride?”

He was standing and closed the door calmly. “Whatsa matter, Mari, ain't ya getting it steady?”

“Sexist dog,” she retorted. “We all can't be enjoying the priapic life of Ivan Monk, the Sleuth of South Central. Now don't be forever, huh? I'd like to get over to the office and get these notes typed up.”

“On it.” He marched up the cracked walkway to Constance Smalls's house. She was the maternal grandmother of the Morris clan, and had been at the funeral. Monk recognized her choice 1982 Frank Sinatra Edition Chrysler Imperial in the driveway. If he recalled correctly, fewer than three thousand Imperials had been built that year. The following year was the last go-round for the model. Too bad, he mused, knocking on the security screen, he'd always wanted to see Chrysler do a Sammy Davis edition. Ca-chung, ca-chung.

The inner door opened. “Yes?… You were the one having words with Absalla this morning at Dubro's funeral.” The screen stayed shut.

“Yes, ma'am, I was. I'm sorry to come calling on a day like this, but I got your name from a bail bondsman I know here in Compton.”

“You some kind of policeman, is that it?”

“Not really. My name's Ivan Monk. I'm a private detective originally hired by Absalla to find out who did the murders over in the Rancho.”

She said nothing and Monk was worried she was going to shut the door. “This have something to do with my grandson's death?”

“I think so, at least, I want to finish what I started to find out.”

“What Absalla says about you being responsible, is that so?”

“I'd be lying if I told you that was a hundred percent the opposite. I don't think I was followed to the meeting where Dubro was killed. I have been doing this kind of work for some time now. But I'm man enough to come back and tell you if I played a part in it after all this is over.”

The screen cracked open. “Come on in. I guess anybody who can get under Absalla's skin can't be all bad.”

She was a tall, large, and solidly built woman who couldn't have been over fifty-five. Though not fashion-magazine pretty, there was a compelling allure to her wide brown eyes, flaring nostrils, and well-proportioned full lips. They were African features little diluted by the Middle Passage and centuries of the American journey.

Her short, curly hair was pinned to one side with only wisps of grey sprouting at the roots hinting at her years. She was still wearing the dress she'd worn at the funeral. It was a black, midlength sheath dress. The hemline bordered a strong-looking pair of calves. Her matching pillbox hat with its arching peacock plume rested on a chair in the corner.

“I just got back from my sister's, where we had the gettogether. His father managed to drag his pitiful self over there.” She shook her head at the surreal pathos of it all. “What do you want from me, Mr. Monk?” Her hand was on her hip. It wasn't from exasperation, but from a life lived too much at the behest of others' dreams delaying her own. The death of her grandson, nothing more than a blip in the annual crime statistics compiled by the state, was just one more chunk taken out of her soul.

“I'd like to know who Dubro's friends were. Are they the same as Kelmont's.”

She angled her head again and walked past him to the kitchen. “Come on, I was about to have a cup of tea.”

Monk sat patiently as the water boiled and Constance Smalls talked about growing up in Arkansas, and coming out here when she was in her teens. She'd married young, and gave birth in Los Angeles. Her daughter, though attentive to her grades, got tangled up like so many young girls do, and wound up pregnant at sixteen. But unlike her mother, the daughter had no man to at least stick around for the first ten years as Constance's husband had.

If the story hadn't had a human face, it would sound stereotypical, a litany used by the moral values bunch to further browbeat the denizens of the nation's urban core for having no goals beyond Pampers and TANF checks.

“It's crazy, I know. But I swear what with all this Nintendo, and shoot-'em-ups on cable all night, and rap stars killin' and makin' songs about their real lives, then how the hell are our young men supposed to come up right?”

He listened and sipped and leaned back in his chair. Her downcountry accent became more pronounced as she told of her daughter's efforts to raise Dubro, the setbacks, the sometimes father coming around, and her own contributions over the years. Kelmont's mother, Smalls's second cousin, helped when she could, and Smalls of course did what she could for her daughter too. Underneath her words, Monk could hear her disappointments, keen and sharp like the swath of a machete.

“Kelmont got out of the life,” he ventured eventually, “but Dubro remained in the Scalps.”

“Nature or nurture,” she said, holding up her hands. “You would have sworn Kelmont would be the gangster till I die the way he was ripping and running in high school. Dubro was the one in the science club in his freshman year.” She looked at a photo on the wall in a round gold frame of a man in overalls, sitting before an ancient tractor in a plowed field. “Who could tell?”

“By his junior year, while his friends and even his cousin were getting themselves together, he got it in his head he was going to have big bank, as they say out in them streets. It ain't like he knocked up one of these tightskirted heifers.” She shook her head again at the great imbalance of things.

“I saw you talking with Keith 2X this morning.”

She made a dismissive wave. “I've known that boy since before he got the call, when he was just plain Keith Burroughs. Him and Dubro been knowing each other since grade school. Eddie Waters too. He was there today. But don't misunderstand, Ivan, I think Keith's doing good. He's a couple of years older than Dubro, and both him and Kelmont tried with the boy.”

“You don't think much of Absalla though.”

She chuckled. “It shows, huh.” She leaned forward across the table in the breakfast nook. “I got a stepbrother who became a Black Muslim, back in Philadelphia. According to him, word was Absalla was always more about building himself up than working to better the conditions there. I know he's supposed to have cleaned up, and I guess there's something to that. But when it comes to doing the day in and day out work, he was always more interested in finding the nearest camera or microphone to stick his face in.

“'Sides, Jesus is good enough for me and mine. I wasn't raised up believing in no god who didn't let you eat a little pig. But maybe that's just a weakness, huh? I like them smothered pork chops too much.” She guffawed and Monk laughed with her.

She put aside her cup and said, “Listen, it's been nice unburdening myself, but I've got to get over to Helen's.” His mystified look brought clarification. “That's Dubro's mother.” She got up, shaking into her mantle of responsibility.

“Can you tell me where Keith lives, Constance? It was his information that led me to the house on Trinity, and I think he knows more than he's been willing to tell me.”

“Keith wouldn't do anything wrong,” she said guardedly.

“I'm not saying he did, at least not knowingly. But I need to see him, away from the Rancho, to talk freely with him. Maybe it will help get those who killed your grandson.” As he said the words, it occurred to Monk Big Loco was still nowhere to be found.

Constance Smalls evaluated the man before her for several long spaces of time. She shifted her large, firm body and scratched at one side of her shoulder blades. “If something should happen to Keith because of me, Lord help you.”

“I understand, Constance.”

“Alright,” she finally agreed, wagging a warning finger at him. She went to a pile of sympathy cards in the living room stacked on a TV tray near the big-screen Panasonic. She rifled through them until she got to the one she was looking for. “Helen asked me to take care of these.” She handed Monk the envelope with the handwritten return address of Keith “2X” Burroughs.