Only the Wicked (12 page)

Kodama stood over him. “How're you?”

“Most days all right.” He reached out for her arm, which felt warm and reassuringly alive.

“What about nights? I watched you last week, Wednesday, it was. You woke up 'round two thirty and went downstairs.” Concern colored her voice and softened her eyes. She bent down, holding onto his knee.

“It comes and goes, that's all.”

“You want to see Melissa again?”

Dr. Melissa Nankawa Hirsch, therapist, was a college friend of Kodama's. She was a tall, round-shouldered woman who favored metal bracelets and necklaces of various designs. She maintained an impenetrable countenance, yet balanced it with the right amount of understanding in her comments and observations. She had listened and had been useful in helping Monk gain a perspective on what had happened to him. That beyond the obvious threat of death and its import, she wanted him to wrestle with “what did his choice of profession say about him” as a person.

“Arrested development,” Monk blurted.

“Huh?”

“What your buddy inferred in one of our sessions. Maybe the reason I like running around, skulking in the shadows and getting sucker-punched by hardheads all the time is 'cause I'm a big kid who likes to still play war.”

“Are you?” she smiled.

“Probably.” He kissed her.

They went into the den and each had a neat glass of Johnnie Walker Black. They watched some TV and Kodama fell asleep halfway into an episode of
ER.
Monk turned off the set and read some of Creel's biography. After some time he too got drowsy, and dosed off, after finishing a passage in which Creel wrote about a confrontation with some crackers outside a store in Tunica.

In his half-sleep he was on the steps of that store, mosquitoes buzzing around him. One of the good ol' boys had made a crude joke and the others were laughing. Over this one's shoulder, through the ripped screen of the store's door, he could see his mother. She had a finger to her mouth signaling for him to be quiet, as she spiked each of the good ol' boys' RC Colas with some liquid from a vial.

Chapter 8

“Nuts, get 'em red hot, nuts, nuts.”

Dexter Grant held up a hand and the wiry vendor with the beak nose and bowlegs pitched a bag to the retired cop. He caught the bag in his left, and passed a dollar along through the crowd.

“Thank you my wise connoisseur,” the vendor replied, continuing to rattle his sales call up and down the section.

“Chan Ho Park looks good today,” Coleman Monk Gardner said. He propped one of his size-fifteen Grant Hill Filas on the back of the empty seat in front of him. He was dressed in stovepipe straight black jeans and a white T-shirt hung loose over his developed upper body. “That boy's smokin'.” He unwrapped and nearly inserted half his extra-long Dodger dog, sopping with relish and onions, in his mouth, all the while never taking his eyes off the field.

“Wow, Coleman, didn't you just eat one?” asked an awed Juliana Seguin. She was twelve, with a gap in her front teeth and her lustrous hair braided down the back. She wore a Dodger base-ball cap and designer label overalls. Her parents allowed her to wear fingernail polish but no lipstick. The color she had on today was a purplish black called Civilization Decay.

“He's got to eat like that to keep the blood circulating in those gunboats of his.” Grant opened a shell between his teeth, pointing at the young man's over-sized shoes.

The Braves' batter got a hit and the ball went high and midway toward left field. Karros snatched it down and threw the runner out at second, ending the fifth inning. Ripples of applause erupted from the crowd. As the giant screen instantly showed the play again, a couple a few rows down from Monk in matching Teamster windbreakers high-fived each other.

“So you said your cousin knew Ardmore Antony?” Grant plopped in more peanuts.

“Yeah, they were kinda chummin' it up at the wake,” Monk said. “The wife seemed put off by Kennesaw. Now I know that was because of what he'd done down south. But he seemed sincere in wanting to talk with Kennesaw.

Grudzielanek from the Dodgers was at bat.

Grant slowly chewed his peanuts on one side of his jaw. “Back in my time, you'd hear a few stories about Antony. He had this club over on Slauson, right?”

“Yeah, the Nile,” Monk confirmed. “He and another cat named Harvey Lyle, a numbers man, bankrolled the baseball team my cousin coached.”

Grant shook his head in ascent. “That fits. I know the club was raided a couple of times for operating numbers out the back. I also know it was a place to see and be seen like Hill's Hideaway and Tommy Tucker's Playroom were in their time.”

“Dang, y'all going back beyond old school to the olden days,” Monk's nephew commented, flabbergasted.

Juliana giggled.

“Even I've heard tales of the Nile,” Marasco Seguin piped in.

“Ardmore also had a record label for awhile.”

Grudzielanek got a hit and got on first.

“I know,” Monk added. “He recorded local doo-wop and R-and-B acts under the Garden of Wonder name. Hell, I have a few of those forty-fives. Apparently that's how he met his wife Clara. And I've come across rumors of him ripping off some of his acts, but that's all it's been, random talk.” He worked his hand like it was a spastic claw, dismissing such conjecture.

Grant scratched at his whiskers. His experienced face was topped with silver-gray hair, a little long along the nape of his neck as it always was. Together with his saddle-tramp build and gruff voice, there wasn't a week went by he didn't get stopped in the street-people sure he was the wraith of the returned Brian Keith. One night in the Satellite, having a beer with Monk, he told one inebriated chap he was the actor and had come back to get some residuals owed him by a producer.

“It might behoove you, old son, to do a little prowling around and see if you can find one of those artists he recorded. All of 'em can't be dead yet.”

The Braves' pitcher struck out Beltre and a groan went up from their section.

Monk asked seriously, “Is the Ancient One suggesting Mr. Antony might have a hand in my cousin's death?”

“If my fevered brain doesn't deceive, I do seem to remember an incident his wife was involved in.”

“Rat poison. A lover of hers,” Seguin commented. “That's the story I heard at a barbecue last year at Sergeant Silva's house. His dad had been in the department, and he was telling us about his old man's days on the force.” Seguin turned at the sound of a crack of a bat. He turned back as the man got tagged out. “That bit about Clara and the rat poison was one of the cases he worked.”

“She stand trial?” Monk asked.

“No,” Seguin drawled, recreating that period in his head. “I can't recall how it was resolved, only that he said a lot of people thought she'd done the deed.”

“Was Roberts there at this barbeque?”

“He sure was, home savings.”

Monk said, “Now ain't that sweet.”

“I'll find out more if you want me to,” Grant offered.

“I'd appreciate that, Dex.” He settled back in his seat. “Say, youngster, how are you and that history study buddy of yours doing these days?” He winked at Seguin.

His nephew gulped down a quantity of his soda. “We kinda had a falling out.”

“Not over a pregnancy, I hope,” Grant whispered too loud to Monk.

“Naw, ain't nothing like that,” Coleman protested. “Safety first, safety always.”

“Safe about what?” Juliana wanted to know.

Monk and Grant looked whimsically at Seguin. The Dodgers got a man on second in the top of the sixth.

“He means when you have a boyfriend or girlfriend, you tell them to put on their seatbelt like we always do, dear,” Seguin answered, absently pulling on his mustache.

Grant said to the teenager, “You're studying computers?”

“Actually, designing software for games and doing animation. I want to try to go to Cal Arts maybe next year.”

“What about basketball?” Seguin asked. “You were alternate All-City last season.”

Coleman mumbled a non-committal sound somewhere between a growl and a huff of air.

“That's the school Disney gets its animation talent from, isn't it?” Monk asked.

“Some, yeah.”

“Expensive, isn't it?” Monk also asked.

The younger man twitched his head and shoulders. “It ain't like going to Southwest junior College, if you know what I'm sayin'.”

“They have scholarships?” Monk knew what his sister made as a public high school teacher. Plus she had a mortgage and car payments to meet. He also knew what he could afford to contribute toward his nephew's goal.

The Dodgers took the field without scoring.

“Sure, but everybody and his brother are trying to get in that bad rascal. Half the students at the place come from out of town, even from other countries, too.”

“We'll work on it, if you really want it, Coleman,” Monk said emphatically.

The teenager shifted his head to look at his uncle but said nothing.

“Dad, I have to go to the bathroom.”

Seguin, who was savoring a now-warm beer, let out an exasperated grunt. “Aw, honey.”

“I'll take her. Old folks and youngins got something else in common besides a love of Nick at Night.” Grant made an excessive amount of groans rising from his seat. He led Seguin's daughter down the steps as the Braves got a man on first. Grant cracked peanuts for her as they descended.

“You don't think Grandma did this dude in, do you?”

Monk's nephew commented as he watched the field.

“He was our cousin; naturally I don't think she did him in. And”—he hit Coleman lightly with his rolled-up program—“would I admit that in front of a cop?”

His nephew cackled. “Right, right.”

Seguin shook loose a Camel filter cigarette from a fresh pack.

“You enjoying them a little too much, ain't you there, Red Rider?”

“I guess.” He lit up, defying the California law against smoking in public.

Monk sucked in his cheeks, watching his friend smoke.

“Look, don't you get going like the old lady,
comprende?”

“What I say?”

Seguin tapped an index and forefinger to his temple. “I'm psychic.” He took a long drag, and blew out a stream through his nose.

“Sleeping okay.”

“Mostly.”

“Me too.”

Monk's nephew, who was hunched forward, elbows on his knees, pivoted his head in profile, listening.

Seguin narrowed an eye as he lodged the cigarette in a corner of his mouth. “You trying to tell me something?”

“It hit me sitting in a movie with Jill the other night. The feeling came over me like an invisible sheet suddenly being thrown over my head. Then just that quick, as I'm squirming, trying to get air, the sheet was taken off.”

Seguin's cigarette burned down some more. The crowd yelled their approval for a catch by Green. “I was,” he started haltingly, “I was on my way to pick up Juliana from her soccer game when I started sweating like I was in a sauna.”

He looked at Monk's nephew, who was transfixed. “I just had on a shirt and it was an overcast day. “There was this clammy feeling like a pound of dough had been pressed against my fore-head. Then the water started and wouldn't stop. By the time I got to the field, my shirt was soaked in the back. It wasn't like I felt somebody was after me … I know that feeling. But the sweats …” he reached for another cigarette.

Monk put a hand on his arm. “Let's you and me go fishing next weekend.”

“You don't fish,” Seguin pointed out.

“You can teach me, Marasco.”

Grant and Seguin's daughter, who was making a face at her father, were coming up the stairs.

“I'd like that, Ivan.” He hid the pack and called out to Grant, “You didn't fall for her ‘we always get candy at the ball game,' did you?”

Grant settled in his seat. “She wanted to buy me a beer, but I told her next time.”

“Good, glad to see you're maintaining those family values, you old croaker sack.” Seguin looked panicked as his daughter sniffed the air around him.

“Dad,” she wagged an accusing finger at him.

They watched for another inning and a half, Juliana asking her father questions about bunting, what does a manager do, and why did the man standing next to third base keeping touching his face in funny ways.

“Excuse me, now I've got to go the restroom.” Coleman Gardner unlimbered his lithe body and stepped over his uncle's legs.

“I'll go with you.” Downstairs, walking out of the facility, Monk put a restraining hand on his taller nephew's packed shoulder. “I need to ask you something, ‘cause we're family, dig?”

The male half of the Teamster couple ambled past them, giving a little salute as he went into the toilet. The teenager leaned against the pockmarked concrete wall, folding his arms as if to ward off his uncle's inquisition into some sector of his private affairs. His face was a mask of quiet defiance.

A wistful look composed Monk's own countenance. He had the impression, more than actual memory, of a similar look Coleman's father used to get. “This may not be what you think, Coleman.” Monk shifted on his feet, the scuffing of his soles suddenly very audible. There was an outburst from the crowd, but they seemed to be leagues away, under great depths of heavy gauze. “I want to ask you about your mother and Frank.”

The defensiveness of his nephew's body language didn't let up. “How do you mean? What do I think of Frank? He's all right,” he went on without prompting.

“I want to know what's up with them. Why does she dote on him so much?”

“She's your sister, Unk, you ask her. Come on, we gotta catch the rest of the game.”

He started to walk away. Monk wasn't moving. “This is important to me, Coleman,” he said quietly.