Bad Night Is Falling (7 page)

Mrs. Limón had more to offer and Monk wanted to meet with her in person to better press the woman for answers. “Couldn't you come out to my office? Or maybe I could meet you at a friend's house outside the Rancho.”

“We'll see,” she hung up, quietly severing the connection.

Monk got home around seven. Kodama, in jeans and rolled up sleeves, was already there, sitting in the study before the gessoed canvas she'd stretched over the weekend. Oil painting was a hobby of hers. Several of her pieces hung over mantels and couches in the homes and offices of friends. She was humble about her work, claiming her friends just wanted a conversation piece from the painting judge.

Her paintings did not have an amorphous, impressionistic quality, nor did they exude the studied calm of the landscape artist. Kodama's works were representational with definite line and purpose. Subdued under-colors gave way to strong colors, Prussian reds and Cyan blues. Her masculine stroke gave her subject matter a nearly tactile quality.

Kodama was currently doing street scenes. A recent piece depicted multihued party goers along Melrose Avenue passing a window where a solitary old-fashioned rotary phone resided with a cracked casing. Another, now residing in a legal services office up in Humboldt County, was of an old woman in a shawl feeding her parakeet on Alpine Street in Chinatown, an indistinct City Hall in the near distance.

Tonight, no such inspiration moved her.

Monk touched her lightly on the shoulder. “Your fans back at the courthouse today?”

“Like flies on stink.” She made disinterested motions with a charcoal pencil over the blank plane. This soon ceased and she added, “And it's getting shittier every day.”

“Want me and Elrod to pay a visit on a few of those Newt-lovin' burghers as they emerge disoriented from their tanning salons?”

She patted his leg, smiling without much feeling behind it. “Save your energy, baby.” She got up and gave him a quick kiss and headed for the bar. She uncorked a bottle of Chianti and poured a measure for herself. She didn't look at him as she walked toward the archway. “I'm going to take a long bath,” she said, waving the wineglass listlessly, “with a little something for comfort.”

“What do you want for dinner?” Monk asked. “Maybe I'll try to do something from that
tapas
cookbook we got. Whip down to Trader Joe's to get the ingredients for potato and seafood
banderilla
.”

“Whatever.” Kodama was already moving toward the back of the house.

Monk stood before the canvas, tapping the charcoal pencil against the knuckle of his index finger.

Fíve

B
urnt orange light permeated the room, a salmon color flooding across its walls. It was as if an unseen hand was swathing the room with ephemeral jelly. Monk turned from the shade he'd let up to look at the inert form of Kodama.

“Time to chop some cotton,” he said loudly. “My mama's folks used to say that, being from Mississippi and all.”

She didn't acknowledge his words by movement or sound.

Monk, clad solely in a pair of tan chinos, went back to the bed and gently rocked her hip with his hand. “We gotta move and groove, honey.”

Softly from beneath the blanket: “My docket is clear for a few days. I'm going to rest today. Call in for me, will you, Ivan?”

He decided against the urge to shake her more vigorously. All he could do was stand there looking down at the fetal form and feeling about as wanted as a Hare Krishna selling flowers at a Pat Robertson convention. “How about some coffee, Jill?”

Her legs scissored slowly then stopped.

“Do you want some coffee?” He demanded more than asked.

“No,” she stated with equal brashness.

Monk went and retrieved the morning
Times
on the lengthening lawn, snapping the string on his way back into the kitchen. Once there, he put on the radio beneath the sink's bay windows and tuned it to the all-news station. As the coffee got going he sat at the oblong pine table in the breakfast nook. He unfolded the paper, scanning the front page for a story of interest.

He settled on Boris Yeltsin still complaining about the pesky Chechens who kept pissing him off. Imagine their temerity after the last bombing raid he'd ordered on their territory? By the time he got to the interior pages, the brew was ready.

Monk got his cup and finished the piece on Russia, and another on electronic piracy in China's Hong Kong before traipsing back into the bedroom upstairs.

Kodama was still in the bed lying on her stomach, her face turned to the side. He wasn't sure, but it seemed her eyes were open.

“We'll get through this, Jill,” he mumbled.

“Maybe. But I'm in a glass box where everyone can spit on me but I can't give them the finger.”

“Did you read the information I had Coleman get online for you about the homeowners' group?” Coleman Josiah Gardner was the teenaged son of his divorced sister, Odessa. He was a B-minus senior in high school, but that wasn't much of a reflection of his capacity. The six-foot-four-incher was a nimrod of the hardwood and the outfield. And despite knowing the odds, he was of the opinion he was going to be the next ten-million-dollar flash in pro basketball or baseball.

When not out tossing the rock or batting, Coleman could be found attentively plying the cyberways on the Pentium computer his uncle got him last Christmas. It was the fourth computer the young man had received, but the first new one. Coleman's introduction to the electronic keyboard was not the result of a keen interest in the wonders of the computer.

When he was eleven, Coleman had gotten into a shoving match with a classmate and been sent to detention. Due to the fact that the principal's office was being painted that day—after thirty-two requests and five years of waiting—the two pugilists were sent to sit in a corner of the teachers' lounge.

In the room was Mr. Timmons, the seventh grade teacher. He was attempting to fire up an ancient Kaypro computer a parent had recently donated to the school. Beyond turning the thing on, he couldn't get the monitor to show him anything save a series of green dots.

Disgusted, the teacher had tromped out of the room muttering, leaving the computer running. The two battlers continued with verbal thrusts, each daring the other to fool with Mr. Timmons's machine. The harried teacher returned to find Coleman sitting before it, typing on the keyboard.

Snatching the child up from the Kaypro and threatening him with a suspension, Mr. Timmons noticed the book report the youngster had been writing.

“I looked through it,” she said disinterestedly.

“There's some good stuff in there, Jill,” Monk said, incensed. “Members of the association have ties to the Christian Coalition, some of 'em have gathered signatures on anti-affirmative action and English-only petitions. There's a menu of lovely items to blast them on. You could challenge one of those yahoos to a debate and peck their liver out. Or write an op-ed defending your view of what the justice system should be about.”

“I don't need you to tell me what I should and should not be doing.”

“Cool,” he snapped sarcastically. He stalked into the bathroom, shutting the door. After his shower, he got into his chinos again and a loose-fitting polo. Kodama had left the bedroom, but he didn't hear her moving about.

Walking to the front, he went past the sunken study and could make out her form submerged in there. The blinds in the study were still closed, the judge slouched on the couch. She wore a robe with Aztec cut ziggurats lancing over the folds like chain lightning. Her legs were open; one of them swung back and forth like a gate in the wind.

“C'mon, Jill. You can't let these Valley bastards get you up against it. You gotta start hitting them back.”

“You and Glenn think the same,” she said dryly. The leg continued to work like a motorized derrick left unattended.

“Glenn Tsong?”

“He came to see me the other day, and gave me the pitch that it was my duty as an Asian jurist to stand for the cause. He didn't have to mention it was the APILA's PAC and a few other organizations that are responsible for substantial amounts of the fifty grand or so they raise for me and others to run for the bench.”

Tsong was a lawyer, and the president of the Asian Pacific Islander Law Association, a civil rights grouping of fellow API lawyers. One of its functions was to watchdog the legal system. But its main, its pragmatic, function was to put their money where they saw fit.

“So what're you going to do, Jill. Go to work, come home, bury yourself here until the recall goes down?”

She craned her neck to glare at him.

“You know that's what this is leading up to,” he said.

“Goddamnit, Ivan, I'm just tired of feeling like everything I do I have to uplift the race.” She sat forward, thrusting an open palm at him. “Get on the bench in my thirties, get feted and written up in the Asian and mainstream presses before I've even tried three cases. Then”—she began to count off on one hand using her index finger from the other—“I have all my so-called peers, the old white guys in the black robes, reviewing my rulings like they're ogling the latest
Penthouse
.”

“You do be out there on the lofty tip, my dear.” Monk amended warmly. “Considering the wolfish political climate in these times, you're making a hell of a statement every time you get up there swinging from the bench.”

“Increasingly unpopular statements,” she modified.

“You're woman enough for the job.” He gave her a hug and kissed her on the forehead.

They separated, Kodama adjusting the material hanging formless on her. She seemed to fill it for the first time. “Very well, my dark and dangerous Balmasar, I'll get back on the horse. Or at least get dressed.”

They parted, and Monk swung by his office and then got breakfast at the Cafe 77 downstairs. The eatery used to be located in its own tiny building on the lot behind his building—an edifice constructed as a mini version of the famous Flatiron Building in New York. But the market at the other end facing Venice Boulevard had gone through a remodeling, and exercised its option for the footage to increase available parking.

Cafe 77 was run by an older couple whose menu selections included crawfish and potato latkes. The two'd been together so long they'd taken on portions of each other's mannerisms and ways of speech. Each morning one could find both in their crisp white shirts, sleeves always rolled past the elbow. The woman forever wore a black skirt and the husband shapeless black slacks.

“Hey, Gorzy, did you check on those heads of lettuce?” The wife growled, moving behind the establishment's sole waitress taking Monk's order.

“Yes, Mrs. Gorzynski,” the husband said deferentially as he made notations on a tablet, standing behind the register. “I'm taking care of it as you said, Mrs. Gorzynski.”

“If only he would look after me as he does the asparagus,” she said with genuine remorse.

Monk enjoyed the floor show while he ate his meal. He finished his second cup of coffee and paid Mr. Gorzynski, who clasped his arm, leaning over to him across the counter.

“You got plenty work these days?” The older man smelled like a produce section.

“Maybe, why?”

“Could be someone has something to be seen about.” His watery blues were unwavering.

“You need me to look into this something for you, Mr. Gorzynski?”

He counted out Monk's change rapidly. “Why you think it's me?”

“You play poker, Mr. Gorzynski?” He pocketed the change, having already left the tip.

“What?” The watery blues gleamed with confusion.

“'Cause you'd be lousy at it. I've got to be out most of the day, but come on up tomorrow morning if you want to talk.” Off to the side, Mrs. Gorzynski was writing the lunch special on a chalkboard propped up on an easel. If she was paying attention to the conversation, she didn't let on. Now, she'd make a fine poker player, Monk reflected as he took the stairs up the four flights to his office.

“Good morning, champ,” he said upon entering the rotunda and seeing Delilah Carnes. She was working at her computer, and waved as he crossed the space to her left.

“Hendricks wanted to see you, but she had to leave for an appointment.” Carnes was moving the mouse, eyeing the monitor with malice. “Shit,” she exclaimed.

“I hate when that happens,” Monk said, going into his office to make a few calls. That done, he exited and found the office manager still boxing with the computer.

“What are you doing, D?”

“Trying to lay out this newsletter on Quark. Whoever said it was better than PageMaker can kiss my butt.”

“I know several cats who would line up in the rain and spend the house rent for that thrill. I'll be down at the Rancho for a while. You have the number to the RaFalcons' office, right?”