Only the Wicked (11 page)

The duo had convinced him to go for a re-designing of the place, and there were now sections of wall and the stacked about. Delilah Carnes, the admin assistant he also shared with the two, had her work space moved into what had been the copier and storeroom down the hall. At the moment, she was standing in the doorway to the room, leaning against the jamb.

These days Delilah favored head scarves and retro bell bottoms. The new look was due to her taking twenty pounds off her formerly large, but well-defined frame. She had a swatch book in her hands.

“I think I like the burnt bronze for trim.” She waved the rectangle of color at Monk.

“Whatever you like. Can I get you some coffee, Mr. Dellums?”

“No thanks. I stopped drinking the stuff before I retired.”

“Come on in and take a load off.” Monk poured himself some coffee. The carafe and coffee-maker rested temporarily on a pallet of glass bricks.

The older man got up and followed Monk into his inner office. Dellums walked around, assessing the various photographs Monk had along the walls. “You were in the merchants, huh?”

“Yeah.” Monk hung up his sport coat on his artifact of a coat rack.

“Where was this taken?” Dellums pointed at a black-and-white on the wall of some dark men sitting and laughing in an open-air café made of corrugated metal. They drank from small, yellow ceramic cups.

“Blufields in Nicaragua.”

“These cats look like blacks or half-breeds.”

“They are mixed. Blufields, like a lot of places in Latin America, has a history of African settlement.”

The older man kept looking at the picture. “I sure wish I'd done more traveling. That's the problem with our people. We don't know how strong our line is. Wine heads on the corner just think their genes only go back to when their people came up from Georgia.”

Monk sat behind his desk, stirring his coffee. “I was a ship's engineer.”

“No joke,” Dellums said, finally turning from the photo. He touched some carved letters in Tagalog that meant “Luck is Found” mounted over the filing cabinet in one corner. Monk kept the thing empty save for back issues of
Popular Science
and the
Atlantic Monthly.

“Is there something I can help you with, Mr. Dellums?”

The old man eased onto one of Monk's Eastlake chairs. He glanced at the Javanese-batik-covered couch set perpendicular to his Colonial desk. “You got some interesting ideas on decorating.”

Monk scratched an index finger on the side of his goatee. “The old lady helps me out.”

Monk knew Dellums was tempted to ask if she were black, but he probably reached his own conclusion.

“I came over this morning 'cause I didn't want to try and tell you this the next time you dropped by to see me at Lordain's.” He scooted the Eastlake closer as he talked. Then he got out his wallet and removed from the cracked billfold a cut-out newspaper article. “When I looked under the bed and saw the fire box gone, this was sticking up in the slats of Kennesaw's bed. See, I'd gotten flat and just happened to look up and spot it.”

Monk unfolded and read the section. The piece was bylined AP, and related the near-fatal auto accident of Hiram Bodar, a state senator from Mississippi. “The paper's not brittle, so this is a recent clipping,” Monk mused aloud.

“I thought it best not to go blabbing in front of them fellas down there. Some of them got loose gums worse than church women.”

“You don't believe any of them had anything to do with my cousin's death?” The idea of a plumber being the killer almost made him chuckle. Except who better to do the deed man someone used to working mediodically? He had more coffee to calm down.

“Not really, but why not be careful?”

“True, true,” Monk responded absently, reading more of the article. Apparently the alcohol level in Bodar's blood qualified as being over the legal limit. “And”—he read silently—“they say here he was alleged to have been returning from a lunch with a woman in Memphis who was not his wife. An assignation is alleged.”

“I read that three times. Are they saying he was screwing around?” Dellums asked, running his tongue over his front teeth.

“Oh certainly.” Monk flipped the article over and read part of a story about a sniper killing in Belfast. “Can I hold onto this?” He waved the piece.

“That's why I brought it, brother. I ain't looking at this advanced stage to be playing Nick Carter.”

“I'm pretty sure you're in no danger.”

“Fine.” He got up and so did Monk. “Oh, your friend called me yesterday.”

“Roberts, on Sunday?” Monk asked.

“He wanted to know if I'd seen a tan-and-yellow Grand Am near Kennesaw's house. I told him no, but he wouldn't tell me why.”

Monk's mother drove such a car. The sleepy-eyed sonofabitch was still working his theory about her. “Cops are always asking something. I'm glad you got this to me. Did you mention the clipping to Roberts?”

The old man batted the air with the back of his hand. “Naw. See, I stuck the thing in my pocket, and forgot it was there. Guess I was more shook than I knew. Then when I realized later I had it, I was scared that cop might think I was holding out. You seemed to be the best one to tell.”

“We'll keep it between us for now.” Monk walked him to the door, then headed over to Eso Won bookstore on La Brea near Coliseum.

Inside, the store's co-owner, James Fugate, was delightfully telling someone on the phone that a recently lauded book was absolute dribble. Monk bought a copy of Creel's collection of essays,
Slipping into the Abyss
, and a biography tided
Damon Creel, Last Round for Justice.

He also leafed through a few books on the Delta blues, but could find no reference for Patton's “Killin' Blues.” Although he did come across a passage stating the actual count of songs recorded by Patton would vary from list to list. The writer suggested Patton, like several blues artists, may have secreted away some of his songs like one would deposit money in a bank, thereby to have something of value in case hard times hit.

Monk dropped by the Mayfair market on Hyperion on the way home and bought food for dinner. He arrived to an empty house and prepared a supper of potato and fish cakes and grilled portobello mushroom salad with corn muffins. Fleetingly, he'd considered getting a bottle of wine, but its myriad variances were lost on him. He could make a decent choice when it came to brew, and had done so. He'd chosen Saparro Black, and was enjoying one while at the stove when Kodama came in.

“Darling.” She put an arm around his neck, smooching him loudly.

“Baby, baby.” He plopped his freshly patted fish cakes into the hot oil.

Kodama wore a knee-length red Chanel skirt and matching tunic with black matte buttons. She undid the top buttons on the blouse and got a beer for herself from the refrigerator. She sat at the table in the breakfast nook, examining one of Creel's books.

“This what everything's about?” She opened the collection of essays, reading the introduction by the late radical defense lawyer William Kunstler, whose funeral she'd attended in New York at the Riverside Church.

He flipped the sizzling patties over, savoring the smell. Monk told her about the clipping Dellums had brought him that morning. “My cousin seems to have spent his last few years either trying to reconcile his cowardice, or looking for some evidence that he did what was right for the cause.” He shook a fist in the air in a quick power to the people.

Kodama crossed her shapely legs, her hand supporting her chin as she gazed at him.

Monk removed the fish cakes with a spatula and lifted them onto doubled-up paper towels. The rest of the food was already on the table and he transferred the patties onto plates. The phone rang.

Kodama got up and plucked the handset from the wall phone. “Yes … Oh, hi, Dex … Uh-huh. Listen tough guy, you caught us as we were just sitting down to eat … Of course Ivan cooked. What do you mean by that? … Sure … Yeah, I'll have him call you after dinner.”

They ate and Kodama read Kunstler's foreword aloud. She bit off a corner of a muffin, and said, “Listen to what Bill wrote here, ‘I stand firm in my belief of Damon's innocence. Let me be perfectly clear, the testimony of Kennesaw Riles was spurious from beginning to end.”' She looked at Monk for a reaction, then resumed, ‘“I am assured by parties who will never enter a court of law who the guilty bastards are. Who it is who impeded Damon Creel that evening, and who it is, who's still alive, still running the show from his mansion in the woods, who calls the shots, so to speak.”'

Monk thoughtfully chewed on a thick slice of mushroom. “You implying we should try to contact ol' Bill through one of those psychic hotlines and see if he'll come clean?”

“What if the murder is somehow tied to something that's happening now with Creel's case?”

Monk swallowed. “I checked. His last bid for a new trial was turned down three years ago.”

“But there's an active defense committee in Atlanta. And Creel remains on Amnesty International's list of political prisoners.” She sopped up salad dressing with a piece of her muffin. “Anyway, aren't you burning up with the need for retribution for your cousin's murder?” She ate her dripping muffin with relish.

Monk made fitful gestures with his hands. “I wasn't close to him, Jill, so honestly, it doesn't make me angry that he was murdered. I don't have an emotional connection to the man. But he was family, even though he deserved to be an outcast. He was a sell-out, and I despise people like that. I can see rolling over on your friends if your children are threatened, something like that. But to be one of those who was, apparently, willing to be used as a tool by racists to hold us back …” Monk went silent, smoldering.

“Yet you still feel the need to find out who killed him?”

“Maybe I feel sorry for him.”

“Maybe.” She winked at him.

Over coffee the phone rang again and Monk picked it up.

“Ivan, it's me, man, Marasco,” Seguin said after Monk spoke.

“Yo, what it is, what it could be.” That room in the Rancho where the fire and bullets had stormed materialized in his head at the sound of his friend's voice.

“All of the above,” the Detective Lieutenant joked hollowly. “I didn't catch you during dinner, did I?”

“Just finishing.”

“Yeah, same here.” There was a quiet each let drag on.

“You been watching any of the women's basketball games?”

“I watched a little of the Sparks game the other night.”

Kodama started to clear the plates. She smoothed her hand on the side of his head as she walked past.

“I had to work a double that night. Had a stabbing over in a bar in Pico Union. Seems some
companeros
who
had split off into two different Central American organizations still patronized the same watering hole. They then get into a disagreement over the direction the immigrant rights struggle should be taking. Add some Pacificos and Negra Medallos, and the old bit about booze and politics proves itself right every time.”

“I'm hip. How're the kids?”

The cop didn't answer right away, and Monk imagined Seguin was back in that dark room, the heat and fear swarming over him, like it had Monk. “Frank and schoolwork are like strangers sometimes,” he answered without emotion. “I swear man, me and Gina must be arguing about this boy every third night. Why the hell pay for a Catholic school education when the boy could be getting his C's and D's for free at a public school?”

Monk dabbed at a damp spot on his temple with a paper napkin. “Maybe it's not just him that's got you bugged.” The clamminess on his forehead wouldn't go away.

“Good thing Juliana is the smart one,” Seguin went on like he hadn't heard. “I don't know what we'd do if both of them were mess-ups.”

There was a rustle of cellophane and Monk could tell Seguin was shaking out a cigarette. He had always been a light smoker, mostly when he worked. The last few times they'd talked on the phone—they hadn't seen each other in person for at least a month and a half—Monk could tell Sequin had been smoking heavily. “You going to take the captain's exam?” He didn't know why he blurted it out. Seguin had been a lieutenant for eight, nine years now. His close rate was above average and he was respected by those under him. The first month after the shootout, studying up for the captaincy had been his constant topic of conversation. In subsequent months, his interests in doing so varied from high to low.

“I haven't made up my mind yet, Ivan.”

“Thought you wanted that desk duty in your advancing years.”

Seguin laughed gruffly. “Look, I called to see if you're free for a Dodger game tomorrow afternoon. I'm using some of my comp time.”

Monk was inclined to say no. The momentum of the case was beginning to gather, and you had to let it roll along to see where it took you. Conversely, he would like to see his friend. Not that he figured they'd get into a psychoanalytical session among the bleachers, but a couple of Dodger dogs and beer, and smoggy sun just might be a poor man's rejuvenation formula. “Okay if I ask Dex to come along?”

“Sure,” Seguin replied vigorously. “I haven't seen him since I don't know when. Fact, I might ask Juliana. It's some kinda school-free-day for her class. Why don't you ask that hulk of a nephew of yours to come, too?”

“Okay.”

“I'll meet you guys at the stadium around noon, okay?”

They said their goodbyes and Monk leaned back in the bench seat of the breakfast nook. His face felt numb.

“How's Marasco?” Kodama asked. She was loading a large clear glass bowl into the dishwasher.

“Same, I think.” He touched his face to reassure himself it was still attached to his head.