Bad Night Is Falling (31 page)

“But to a jury's mind, they ain't throwing the book at me.” He began to move about in front of the window in small circles. “I did kill an unarmed man, and what's five or seven years for that?” He threw his hand up and brought it down forcefully against the pant leg of his suit.

“I know I don't have to say this, but you're not thinking about running, are you?” Teague continued to lean back casually, fingering one of his Mont Blanc pens. “You've been to many ports in your travels in the merchants.”

“You worried I'm gonna skip on your fee, Counselor?”

“Hardly.” He rocked forward and put down the pen.

“New Zealand is nice and hot.”

“You had to surrender your passport.”

“Pshaw.” Monk grinned. “Dex's got certain friends who can hook me up.”

Teague pointed with the pen. “What you better do, pardner, is get your ass out there and dig up something for me to use.”

Monk rubbed the underside of his goatee. “Yeah, well, I can always write my autobiography if I go to the big house. Something like ‘Me and the Judge.'”

“That sucks.”

Monk took a slip of paper out of his coat, which he flung onto the couch. He punched in a number on the phone and waited. On the sixth ring the receiver on the mobile was picked up on the other end.

“Andrade? This is Monk.”

Distantly he said, “I heard you were in jail.”

“Not yet. You ready to go to work?”

“I was going to Hollywood Park today.”

His voice sounded thick, but not slurry. Monk'd noticed that when Andrade was working the racing form, he might be hung over, but not in the bottle. “This is important,” he enunciated.

A silence crawled by. Then, “Alright.”

Don't get too overwrought there, champ. “I'm going to come over and pick you up in about forty minutes.”

“I'll meet you at the shop.”

Before he could reply, the receiver was disconnected. The odd sometimes accountant and his secrets. “I'm on it.” He flopped onto the couch.

“What's happening?” Teague uncapped the Mont Blanc, and poised it like a targeted Katusha over a legal pad.

“Called a Mrs. Limón back at the Rancho yesterday. Jill's idea, I'm not too proud to admit. Anyway, the old girl's suddenly got a soft spot for me since she heard I cussed out Absalla, and reduced some of the criminal element. So I tell her I still want to find the murderers of the Cruzados.”

“And now she's a little more sympathetic?” Teague asked.

“Indeed. 'Course, there seemed to be something else going on with her, but whatever. She actually seemed nice. I tell her I want to talk with the wife if that's possible. Even if it's only over the phone so I don't spook her.” He winked broadly at Teague.

“This guy you just called …?”

“My translator. I understand Mrs. Cruzado's English isn't the best. Better than my Spanish I'm sure, but still….”

“That's why you need the box and had me switch the service over.” He made his notes.

“Yes, sir, conference call over at my office.” He got up holding his coat and headed for the door. “Don't worry, Parren, I'll put this all down on paper. But right now I gotta jet.”

“Keep me in the loop.” He toyed with the pen again.

“Would I have it any other way?”

*   *   *

Andrade sat erect and still in one of the Eastlakes next to the desk. He was attired in a serviceable checked sport coat, grey slacks, and a shirt with fraying cuffs. He looked neither at Monk nor at the floor. Rather, he seemed like some sort of space-age soldier who between battle engagements simply revved down to conserve energy.

Monk watched him and plucked up the handset on its first ring. He glanced at the Seth Thomas clock on the wall. It had been in his quarters on the last ship he'd been a merchant on,
The Achilles
. A minute past the time Mrs. Limón said they would call. Pretty good.

“I'm here, and so is my associate, Mr. Andrade,” he told the tenant's association leader.

“I want you to know this is very painful for Rosanna,” Limón replied.

Monk took the opportunity to kiss her ass. “I appreciate your intervening on my behalf, Mrs. Limón. And please tell Mrs. Cruzado I wouldn't have bothered her if it wasn't important.”

Limón told her in Spanish but there was no reply. “She is on the other line?” Monk fretted.

A new voice spoke in Spanish. Rosanna Cruzado was speaking softly, but steadily. She stopped, and Andrade, who'd picked up the other line, listened.

Monk made a motion at the sometimes accountant which he only blankly acknowledged. He put his hand over the receiver. “You have to talk, that's why you're here,” he scolded.

A few clipped words in Spanish issued forth from the man. The effort seemed to require great expenditure on his part.

“Is that man ill?” Mrs. Limón demanded hastily.

“He's just tired, Mrs. Limón. Mr. Andrade works hard.” If the other man picked up on the sarcasm, his unchanging expression of cosmic ennui didn't show it. “Can we go on, please?” He knew this was Limón's show and that he'd better temper any impatience he might have with her and act like he had some good sense, as his mother would have advised.

Limón had questioned why it was Monk wanted Andrade present, as she could translate for him. The real reason was that he didn't want her filtering or altering his words and wanted another ear there for Mrs. Cruzado's answers. Of course he couldn't tell her that. So he'd lied and told her Andrade was eager to become a detective and had been assisting Monk on this case.

“Very well.” She translated her English for the other woman.

“Mrs. Cruzado, I know the police have talked with you,” Monk began, allowing a space for Andrade to jump in. This time, unprompted, he did so. “What were you able to tell them, if I might ask?”

In that same quiet, but methodical voice the woman replied. Mrs. Limón said at an interval, “She said she told the two detectives it was her opinion that some of the black gang members had done the murders. She told them about how her husband had several confrontations with the drug sellers.”

Rosanna Cruzado slipped in something.

“What, something about Big Loco?” Monk questioned Andrade.

“The drug selling wasn't just among the blacks,” Andrade amplified. “She herself saw Big Loco and other members of Los Domingos Trece also selling the small plastic bags of crack.”

“Yes, we know it's a problem,” Mrs. Limón harped defensively.

Monk held back a comment about enough sin to go around, and kept on course. “Did you see anything the morning of the fire as you came out of the apartment?”

He got a “No” after the translation.

“Then why do you think it was some of the Scalp Hunters?” he continued.

“They were the ones threatening her husband,” Limón interjected.

“I'd like to give Mrs. Cruzado a chance to answer.” He tried to moderate his tone.

“Ah,” Limón growled.

The other woman laughed quietly and quickly, then made a comment.

“She wanted Mrs. Limón to take it easy,” Andrade explained. After she spoke again, the accountant went on. “She told the cops Efraín had mentioned to her he'd been confronted by a couple of Scalp Hunters for speaking out too much at resident meetings, putting up flyers, and trying to organize some of the immigrant tenants.”

Monk picked up on that. “Did your husband get involved in those kinds of activities back home?”

“
Sí
,” Mrs. Cruzado said after Mrs. Limón repeated the question to her.

“Back in Zacatecas, on the north side, her husband had run for the local council seat,” Andrade translated.

Monk asked what happened.

“He'd run on a … change, a reform platform, you understand. After the elections where the PRI's power was finally challenged successfully, there was of course a new spirit among people that actual democracy was possible. Unfortunately his side lost. Too much influence, too much money being spread around by the local gangsters. The old ways didn't change overnight.” Monk was sure the last sentence was Andrade's contribution.

“La Pandilla Zacatecas?” Monk said.

“
sí
,” Mrs. Cruzado confirmed.

“After they lost, one of the candidates was shot to death outside a bar. Another was beat so bad he lost an eye. It was time to leave.” For the first time, inflection had crept into Andrade's voice.

Monk was assembling the data. “Do you know a Jokay Maladrone?”

“No,” came her reply after Mrs. Limón relayed his question.

“But really,” Andrade said in English as she spoke, “Karla would know some of that business. She was the manager of his campaign. The both of them liked to be in politics. Me, I think it was a waste of time.”

“The sister,” Monk announced. “Is she with you now?”

Something was mumbled. “She can't say,” came Mrs. Limón's terse rejoinder.

“This is important,” Monk emphasized.

“I can't speak for her” was Andrade's version of Cruzado's words.

“I think that's enough,” Mrs. Limón cut in.

“No, it's not.” Monk's footing on the precipice was loosening. “There's death and money and the rot of old fixes dancing around the Rancho, lady. Somebody's gotta tell what they know.”

“And the Lord appointed you his archangel?” she seethed back.

“What are you worrying about, Mrs. Limón? 'Fraid I might stumble on more criminals than just some black gangbangers and dope slangers?”

“Go fuck yourself.” She severed the call.

Andrade replaced the handset like a man setting a gem. He sat and waited.

Monk wanted to try out some theories on him, but the absolute immobility of his features ruled such an exercise ludicrous. He pulled the caller ID machine he'd borrowed from Teague closer and wrote down the phone number Mrs. Limón had called from. “Well, at least they didn't have the line blocked,” he said to himself. He'd had Teague transfer the caller ID service he received to the phone in his office.

Andrade folded his hands in his lap.

“Where do you want me to drop you?” Monk felt steamed at the man. He was displeased with him for being so goddamn complacent about everything like he was some kind of goddamn Scientologist on Prozac, and angry at him for being able to speak bilingually. But his tongue was not exotic or quaint or out-of-the-ordinary. It was the language of the waiter, the bank executive, the nanny, the newscaster, the teacher.

The xenophobes had tried to brand Spanish as somehow subterranean, yet it had always flowed through this land. For it had belonged to the founders of the pueblo nestled in the Valley of Smokes. Those forty-some pioneers who were Spanish, mestizo, black, Indian, dark and light.

Despite what the Pat Buchanans and Pete Wilsons of the world would have me anxious masses believe, the past, and the burden of truth, remained. California had belonged to Mexico, the land had been taken by force and sanctified by the pen strokes of crooked lawyers and land grabbers.

And so the inevitable weight of time's gravity was swinging the pendulum back, and the state would once again become an extension of Mexico. The Latinization of the city he'd grown up in was happening every day, and no amount of right-wing jingoism or regressive initiatives was going to stop that. You could make all the English-only laws you wanted, but culture had a way of seeping into your pores and the canals of your brain. Short of sanctioning the language police, busting women cautioning their daughters as they crossed the street or men joking in a bar, neither Spanish nor the people who spoke it were going to disappear from California. Maybe Maladrone was going to realize his version of Aztlán sooner than he thought.

“I'll catch the bus, you're busy.”

The anger had dissipated with the certainty of the inevitable future. “Come on, I'll buy you a coffee at the best donut shop I know.”

Andrade touched the phone as if it were sculpture. “Okay.”

Driving over to his shop, Monk considered his next steps. He hadn't confronted Absalla on what he'd found out about his extracurricular security work. Was the information a decent hole card anyway? It could well be an indication of a closer link between the Muslim leader and DeKovan. But where did players like Booker and Maladrone fit in? And why the hell did the Cruzados have to die?

Was it all just for control of the drug trade in and around the Rancho? Highly unlikely. Unless the Rancho was seen as some sort of cocaine way station. As he came to a stop at a red light at the corner of Rimpau he found himself liking the various facets of that idea.

Or, he mused as he gunned the accelerator, the missus had intimated the sister may know more, so he'd take a run at her next. He knew the phone number wasn't Mrs. Limón's, and was hoping they'd called from where the Cruzados were now staying. The suffix of the number indicated it was in the Boyle Heights/East L.A. area. The same part of town where Maladrone had had his men pick him up. The reverse phone directory he had on CD-ROM should provide the address.

Monk coasted into the parking lot as the black Isuzu Trooper zoomed out from around the corner of Curtis Armstrong's garage and two-pump gas station. He didn't wait for introductions as his right foot sank and the tuned-up 352—Curtis and he had, five months ago, replaced the rebuilt stock 289—V-8 responded. He cranked the big, rectangular car forward, twisting the wheel savagely to the left as he did so.

“Down,” Monk screamed at Andrade as the rear side window dissolved into hurtling fragments and puffs of cotton popped out of the back seat. The Galaxie fishtailed, the rear panel slamming against the side of the donut shop. Monk hurtled the machinery past the doorway and caught movement on the driver's side as he went past.