Bad Night Is Falling (17 page)

The phone rang as Huggie Bear's apple cap flew off his head after he was hit upside it.

Monk coughed hello after the third ring.

“Is this Ivan Monk?” the recognizable voice asked.

“Yes, is this Fletcher?”

“That's right. I tried your office, so I thought I'd try the other number you left me.” There was an uncomfortable silence, then he proceeded. “Have I caught you at a bad time?”

Monk, aware that Wilkenson could probably hear the TV going, became embarrassed. Tonelessly, he said, “No, go ahead, Fletcher.”

A gust of hurried breath carried his words over the line. “Have you heard what happened at the Rancho yesterday?”

“What?” He took a swallow of his tepid coffee.

“Two members of Los Domingos were gunned down in that little park they hang out in over on Union.”

“Payback from the Scalps,” Monk concluded unhappily.

“That's the kicker, Ivan. The word is the shooters were Latinos.”

“Another gang moving in?”

“I think it was a message from someone else,” the other man said cryptically. “One of the youths was shot in the upper thigh, the other much worse—the stomach.”

“Christ, what's the kid's prognosis?”

“If he lives, he won't be eating cheeseburgers anymore.”

“What the hell's going on, Fletcher?”

By way of a response, he said, “You heard of Jaguar Maladrone?”

“The boss of the Zacatecas Mob. They've been linked to some sort of smuggling operations as I recall.”

“Jaguar called me this morning,” Wilkenson said huskily.

“Why'd he call you?” Huggie Bear's plight got shoved to the bottom of his list.

“I used to train him,” Wilkenson tendered, as if the explanation would make everything clear.

Thírteen

S
omewhere along the drive his left foot fell asleep. It was tingling as if gnats were crawling around inside his skin. The van hit another rut in the road, which only served to remind Monk how badly he wanted to relieve himself.

He estimated he'd been lying on his side, a blanket thrown over his head, for at least two hours. He hadn't bothered to try and raise up since he assumed the two gentlemen in pointed boots and straw cowboy hats were still seated near him. Their semiauto Ingrams handy and greased.

There was a swerve, and Monk's spine slid into the cool metal of the '73 Dodge van's side. More travel, then the wheels squealed to a stop. Words were exchanged in Spanish and one of his guards removed the serape from his head.

“Come on, my friend, the man wants to see you,” the friendly face said. It belonged to the one with a deep incision running from his hairline to his eyebrow on the left side of his hide of a face. He was crouching near Monk's prone form, pointing toward the rear swing doors with the barrel of his weapon.

Because the interior was dark, Monk's eyes didn't require readjustment as he sat up, rotating his foot in an effort to get the circulation going. The other straw hat had been sitting up front next to the driver, an individual in a cutoff Levi's jacket and bedecked with arms like the girders on the Terminal Island Bridge. This man looked at Monk unexpressively, one of his eyes clouded over from either disease or past violence.

The one who'd taken the covering off him went out, and Monk scooted after him. The day itself was overcast, and an unblinking Monk found himself standing on ground layered with a chalky dirt. His foot continued to bug him, and he was about to wet himself any minute.

“Hold up, huh,” he grunted. He turned, unzipped, and peed near the rear bumper. The two guards looked bored as he did so. The driver was already walking into the house.

The van had parked before a large Spanish Colonial structure done in muted hues of off-yellow trimmed in deep brown. There were bracketed balconies around the second story, and a rooster walked along the fringe of the tiled roof. A satellite dish poked into the air adjacent to a hexagonal turret slotted with rectangular windows running lengthwise. Monk watched the driver disappear under an archway bordered in white and blue tiles.

“Feel better?” the first one asked, again pointing with the barrel. Behind the man in the near distance were power lines, and beyond them the landscape was broken up by low mountains. A few houses were planted here and there in the manner children sprinkle pieces on a Monopoly board.

The three marched into the archway, the rooster looking down at them. Monk self-consciously came down hard on his foot in an effort to get the circulation going. Their brief trek through the house led to a darkened patio with a bench swing suspended by rusting chains. On the swing a fat Siamese lazed, stretching its corpulent body. The animal didn't acknowledge their presence as they passed and entered tall double doors of heavily paneled rosewood with silver ring knockers on each side.

Inside was a circular foyer that opened up to the second floor. Several carvings and paintings hung in the entranceway; Monk recognized an Orozco and a Braque. They looked like originals. The carvings were faces of what he presumed to be ancient gods of some sort in feathered headgear over broad brows and sunken eyes. Off to the left were stairs, but he was led the other way into an area mat in other houses would have been the living room.

The room served as the repository for a man in an iron lung machine. The steady whir of the artificial breathing chamber's motor could be heard between the breaks of Santana that came from a stereo unit in a corner. The cylinder was etched with various symbols and designs that Monk took to be either Aztec or Toltec in origin.

The driver sat in a high-backed medieval chair near the machine, reading the Business section. Another man, in a cobalt blue suit and grape-colored shirt, sat in a rocking chair near one of the windows. Outside, the power lines stood like unfathomable metal totems.

“Fletcher says you're straight.”

It took Monk a moment to realize the strong and clear voice had come from the man in the machine.

“You're Jokay Maladrone?” he asked, stepping more into the room.

“I used to be.” The man laughed.

In the mirror angled over Maladrone's head, which poked out of the machine like a turtle's head, Monk could see the eyes flick to the side, then settle on his own reflected image again. Following the line of sight, he read a laminated poster on the wall, done in black block lettering printed on aging paper. It was the kind made to be stapled to telephone poles and fences. This piece of preserved history announced a boxing match between Jokay “Jaguar” Maladrone and Terry Wallis at the Olympic Auditorium in 1962.

“Ever see me fight?” Maladrone seemed to ask no one in particular.

“Like lightning in a room, he mowed down everything,” the man at the window said, rocking and looking out at the Martian landscape.

The driver didn't join the amen chorus so Monk spoke up. “A little before my time, Jaguar.”

The head moved sideways. “Oh, I thought you were one of Fletcher's buddies from the old days. Shit, you're still young enough to get your dick up.”

The driver snickered and turned to another page in the newspaper.

“What can I get you to drink?” Maladrone asked. Discordantly, Maladrone's face was healthy looking with its bronze color and the fullness of his cheeks. His eyes were clear and his hair, though greying, was full and combed back from an unwrinkled forehead.

“Water or juice would be fine,” Monk responded.

“And a chair too,” Maladrone added.

The man in the rocker got up and retrieved another leather and oak medieval-style chair from a row of them under an aquarium sunk into one of the walls. Numerous colorful fish inhabited the darkly lit tank, including koi and cichlids.

The suited man placed the chair near Maladrone's tank and went off to another room.

Monk sat down. Maladrone stared at his mirror. Monk had thought of several questions to ask since Fletcher Wilkenson had called him back to tell him to be at the southeast corner of Soto and First this morning. Wilkenson had been calling around about Maladrone, the kid he used to train in his boxing program. Apparently, when the gang leader contacted Wilkenson he said that he had information about the Cruzado murders, and wanted to know something about Monk. Word was the Zacatecas Mob heard a lot about what went down in the Rancho. Maybe another point he'd get to.

“Why not just tell Fletcher what you knew, Jaguar? Why'd you bring me out to your house?”

“To see if I had to cap you or not,” he said easily. The face remained static in the mirror. The driver kept reading the Business section.

The man in the suit returned with a tray stocked with a tall glass of lemonade, a plate of sliced roast beef, Ritz crackers, and some cheddar cheese. A good-sized knife was embedded in the block of cheese. He put these down on a serving cart and rolled it near Monk. The man took his place again in the rocker.

Monk played unfazed and sliced off a portion of cheese and popped it in his mouth. Imperceptibly the driver shifted, the muscles along his arms knotting like molten iron being cast. Calmly, he replaced the knife on the tray.

“I guess I appreciate your invitation even more. At least it wasn't a bullet in the belly.”

“At least,” Maladrone quipped. “How tight are you and Absalla?”

“You know he fired me.” Monk tried the lemonade.

A raspy laugh, the first hint of what had put the former boxer in the iron lung, escaped from the unsmiling head. “Sure, sure. Then why're you still interested in finding the killers?”

“I don't like getting bounced.”

“Or letting go,” Maladrone said appreciatively.

“So what have you got, Jaguar?” Monk tore off some roast beef and made a cracker sandwich, munching on it loudly. He figured the best front with this powerful man with the infirm body was to pretend his balls were as big as grapefruits.

“I was born here, in L.A., off of Chicago, near the big hospital, you know?”

Monk nodded.

“At eight my old man left me, my moms, and my two sisters. No particular loss 'cept the weekly beatings from his drunk ass and the paycheck he brought home every two.” Maladrone made a clicking noise with his tongue. “Moved to the Rancho after that.”

The driver folded up his newspaper, got up, and took some crackers and meat off the plate. He went to sit near the man at the window who continued to rock softly.

“I don't know if you know how it is coming up hard, man, but it tells you something about yourself,” Maladrone continued. “Ran with the Furys at eleven, overlord by the time I hit sixteen.”

“You must have started to box around then,” Monk guessed, thinking about his own serious foray into athletics via high school football.

Maladrone pushed out his bottom lip. “Fletcher was the first white guy I'd met who hadn't raised a baton to my head, or showed up at my mother's door sucking after the payment on the refrigerator. He'd grown up in Boyle Heights and knew more hiding places than me and my boys.” He quit talking, his eyes flicking back and forth from the mirror to somewhere else.

“He was stand-up, you understand. He really tried with us. Didn't matter they said he was a red and agitator and all that. I didn't see no baby's blood hanging from his teeth or some dude named Boris with a beard and a trenchcoat.”

Monk grinned and said, “Way I hear it, you were on your way to a sweet little career as a middleweight. But you still walked in the gang life, and got hung up in a robbery of the Olympic. Supposedly you'd planned the ripoff to take place on the night of your title fight.”

Maladrone breathed into his mirror.

“Shit went bad,” Monk went on. “Somebody got caught when they were high on glue and ratted. You split to Zacatecas where your mother was from, and where she had gone back to with your sisters. There you were supposed to start a franchise with the Furys. Only you had other plans.”

“Fletcher tell you that?” The music had stopped, the steady humming of the iron lung's electric motor providing a hypnotic rhythm the fish and the men responded to.

“Yeah,” Monk said, “he's still disappointed.”

A flinty look set the other man's face and Monk was worried he'd overdone his bit. The driver was pretending not to look at him and the rocker had stopped moving. For several hot seconds, he was wondering how far and how fast he could get if he ran for the power lines.

“You make choices, you make decisions,” Maladrone finally breathed. “The Pandilla Zacatecas grew out of disorganization and misdirection, blood and paybacks over bullshit. I gave it purpose, I gave it heart.”

Even as the machine that gave him life hummed on, thereby reminding all how fragile Maladrone's hold on existence was, Monk had the impression that though his vision was corrupt, it nonetheless sustained him, made him something other than an ill gang chief in an iron lung.