Only the Wicked (24 page)

They'd arrived back at the Unicor wire-harness building. Several men, black and white, filed inside.

“Husband and wife each knew the other was foolin' around—”

“And it got to be convenient, I guess. My dad played a couple of years with the Towne Avenue All-Stars. When I got down here, it was Marshall Spears who showed me what's what.” Creel looked over his shoulder. “I better get back in. I get a little slack ‘cause of my notoriety, but I don't try to abuse it, dig?”

“Of course.” Monk shook Creel's hand. He wanted to tell him something might break, that some kind of justice might finally be delivered to this man who'd been waiting more than twenty-seven years for a re-trial on a suspect conviction. That the system didn't always grind up the outspoken. But they both knew that'd be like wishing on a star in a heaven where the lights were going out, one by one.

As Creel walked off, Monk asked again, “Did Sharon have any boyfriends down here?”

He paused, hands in his pockets, turning in profile on his heel. “She was a Plain Jane, bro', living wallpaper, dig? Really, she existed in Ava's shadow. If she had one, I didn't know about it.” He stopped again. “I suppose she would have come into her own though, had she lived.”

“I'll try to see you before I leave,” Monk promised.

Creel waved back and returned to his shift working for the prison industrial corporation.

Monk went south back into Memphis to pick up his gun at an express office. Grant had phoned him early in the morning, and given him the location. He missed the place twice as he drove by. The business was on Walker Avenue, a street of packed-in shops and bars not far from the Liberty Bowl Stadium. It was the address Grant had given him for Mercury Cartage. Over the door was their logo, a faded rendition of Flash from the the Golden Age of comic books. His lightning bolts jutted proudly from his doughboy-style helmet as he ran with a large package under his arm. The art was flaking off the transom above the entrance, but the Flash's broad smile was still discernible.

Unlike its global competitor, FedEx, Mercury Cartage did not go in for the slick image. The interior of the storefront had cheap wood paneling, a wooden counter painted industrial white, and a thrift-store coffee table for decor. There were no chairs for sitting.

Monk came up to an older white woman in a photographer's vest and flower print shirt standing behind the counter. She wore half glasses and was earnestly leafing through a copy of
Playgirl.

“I'm here to pick up a package sent by Dexter Grant.”

The woman kept perusing the magazine. She paused on an upshot featuring the thighs of some young stud from a daytime soap.

“Excuse me—” he began again.

She held up a hand, absorbed in studying the lad's form. “Hold your horses, trooper.” She put a subscription postcard on the page to mark her place, closed it gently, and left the counter. She went through a wooden door behind her that rattled on its hinges, its ancient glass doorknob nearly falling off. She returned momentarily with a squarish package wrapped in ordinary brown paper. She placed the box on the counter and returned to her lusting.

“Want to see some ID?” he goaded her.

“You want me to remember your face?” She managed to turn to the next page.

Monk exited and drove around, debating whether to hang around Memphis and get lunch, or head on back into Mississippi. As of yet, he'd not been able to speak with Todd McClendon, the former editor of the
Clarion-Ledger.
The woman who answered the phone at his home had been evasive as to where and when McClendon might be around, but she had taken his number. He stopped and called the man's home in Jackson again, but got no answer, not even a machine.

Getting gas at a BP station near the highway, he spotted a rib shack across the way. After parking on the eatery's lot, Monk ordered fried turkey, barbeque sauce on the side, beans, corn on the cob, and a bottle of beer. He ate and reviewed his notes.

There was information on everyone in this case, this bifurcated case, except Sharon Aikens. As Creel had said, she existed as an extension of Ava. She was always the one who got less ink in the news accounts of the murders. Why was that? he wondered, dipping a piece of turkey in his sauce. In the articles he'd found on-line, he remembered a profile of Ava Green from
The Progressive
, and there had been a mention of Alkens, but what had it said?

He shook his head and had another beer. Then, feeling lazy and sleepy, he dialed Delilah from a pay phone using his calling card.

“Hey, D.,” he said once they'd taken care of pleasantries, “at the donut shop I've got a file of stuff I found on-line about the Creel campaign and trial.”

“Yeah,” she said expectantly.

“Would you look up what's there on Sharon Aikens? She was at Brandeis, too. I want you to give that stuff to Dex.”

“Why not the whole file?” she suggested.

“Yeah, you're right.” A bus cruised by the rib joint. Painted on its side were the words
Graceland Tours.
In the windows, Monk could see some of the people admiring the gewgaws they'd bought at their sequined ashram. One child, about ten or so, held up an Elvis doll in a sequined outfit and shook it at Monk, smiling eerily. He couldn't tell if it was meant as good or bad juju.

They said their goodbyes and Monk dialed his mother's house. He got her answering machine and left a message for Grant to see if he could track down any of Sharon Aikens' family or friends. Next he called Dr. Jones and found her during office hours at UCLA.

“Hercule, 'zup, cutie pie?”

“You and Ava ever talk about Sharon Aikens' love life?” He covered his ear as several semis roared past on the highway.

“Funny you should bring that up, slick,” Helena Jones said, a seriousness working its way into her light tone. “I was thinking about that after we talked. Seems to me Ava and I were joking over the phone about a month before the murder and she said this cryptic comment concerning Sharon.”

“And that would be?”

“Ava and I were, ah, well you understand this was the era in which women felt liberated, indeed compelled, to discuss sexual matters.”

“Don't be shy now, doc, we got wires between us.” And your kids and husband and my old lady who can bust a cap in my ass, he didn't add.

“I'm not being coy, I just don't want you to picture me as one of your skank chippies.”

“Can we quit digressing?”

“I make you stutter?”

“The conversation.” He didn't sound as professional as he wanted, or needed to be. What? Did he have a sign tattooed on his forehead, Committed Man, Let's Mess With Him? Or maybe he was leaking psychic come-ons.

“Hey, you fall in a vat of chitlins?” Jones kidded. “You there?”

“Jet lag.”

“So you say. So yes, Ava and I were comparing the sexual athleticism of our respective lovers at the time, Damon for her and a rather spry fellow for me, when Sharon came up.”

“Her being the retiring sort.” He wondered who was the spry chap, but refrained from pursuing that particular inquiry.

“That's right, since it was known the permissiveness index seldom had her included in that curve.”

“But this time was different?” Monk asked.

“I want to say this right,” Jones let out an amount of air. “But I've been trying to reconstruct Ava's words since it came back into my head. Unfortunately, I was drinking wine and toking on some weed when I was on the phone with her.”

Impatience gnawed at him. “The gist, Helena, was Sharon seeing some good ol' boy? Or one of the campaign workers?”

“What I remember,” she responded, her classroom demeanor apparent, “was Ava and me cackling about why men didn't go down unless you berated them. I mean if you told a guy you were going to give him a blow job at two-oh-five on the dot, then he'd race five miles driving backward the wrong way down a one-way street to get mere on time.”

“Okay,” he drew out.

The smile was in her voice as she spoke. “And Ava saying that Sharon was content to have this dude slip a hand up her dress and rub her thigh.”

“Who?” Monk shouted as another tour bus belched past him.

“I'm sorry, Ivan, I really don't recall exactly. I have the impression it was a Southerner though; that was an aspect both of them found interesting.”

“College boy?”

“Could be, but that's reaching for tadpoles in a muddy lake. Isn't there anyone left around there who could answer that?”

From the way Creel had talked, it didn't seem he knew about Sharon's beau. “Maybe Ava was high and she was only referring to an incident in a bar and not some steady guy.”

“Maybe,” Jones allowed.

“Anybody you can think of from the old college days might have been buddies with her besides Ava?”

Quiet, then Jones said, “I wish I could tell you, but she was one of those who was always around, but not making much of an impression, like an extra on a TV show.”

“That's rough, doc,” he responded. “Did Ava take a liking to her, or did Sharon just attach herself?”

“No, no it was genuine. Ava didn't have any siblings and sorta saw Sharon as the younger sister, show her the world thing.”

“Sharon was younger?” A kid walked by him bouncing a basketball and rhyming a rap song.

“Yeah, she'd graduated high school at sixteen, which only added to her feeling awkward.” Another drag of silence ensued where no words were spoken. “Does any of this help?”

“Damned if I know, Helena. Thanks for your time.”

“Bring me back some crayfish.”

“On it.” Monk stood at the pay phone for a few moments after he hung the handset up. He wanted to talk to Hiram Bodar, the state senator who apparently, according to the voice of the honey-dripping woman in the state capitol who answered his call in Bodar's office, was still away recuperating. Healing from his car accident or hiding out? He got back in his car and was going to head back into Mississippi, then decided to turn around and catch some blues on Beale Street.

Around two the next morning, he was on Highway 61 driving back into the Delta. He'd called Kodama from a place called the Alphonse Club earlier, and told her how much he was already missing her. Monk had a couple of beers and listened to a band whose idea of blues was loud licks and a screeching harmonica.

Leaving the mainstream section of Beale Street, he'd wandered into a hole-in-the-wall joint where the windows were grimy and the chairs were lopsided. This band, however, played some down-home gut-bucket blues. The woman singer, thin as a clump of reeds, had mastered renditions that tickled the tailbone and blew smoke across your soul.

He knew he shouldn't have had those Wild Turkeys on ice, but what was the blues without whiskey, he'd reasoned stupidly, the cold wind numbing his face. Not having a supply of Vitamin B with him to cut the hangover he knew he was going to have, he'd powered down the window so as not to get too warm or comfortable, and therefore drowsy, on the way back to his room. A headache was already festering somewhere behind his left eye, but he managed to get back to the A-Model Lodge without running into a pole or wiping out a litter of raccoons. Monk got to his door and absently pulled off two messages that were taped to the panel. Inside, sitting on the bed, Monk was pleased to read that Todd McClendon had called him back and had left a number.

The second message, again in the feminine script of the manager, simply read:
Welcome to Mississippi Mr. Monk
At first glance he assumed the message was from her, he fantasized a sweet, innocent flirtation. Then he looked at the note closer. She'd taken a message. The caller had said those words and left no name.

He was tired and drunk and his come down from his drinking should have zonked him out. But the “welcome” message had set him on alert. He dozed, snapping awake off and on for hours, propped up in bed in his clothes and shoes. The package from Mercury Cartage was open, his father's gun at the ready next to him on the bedspread. He was happy Grant had also sent a box of Hansen shells with the shipment.

Chapter 15

“Judge Jarius Malachi Forrest was hard but fair, at least to white defendants. Black men coming before him, that was a different story, yessir. The judge was the condemnor, the embodiment of the unforgiving hand of the state exacting every bit, and more, from the brawn and sweat of poor colored boys he'd put on the chain gang for years on end for such heinous misdeeds as being drunk in public or late on their sharecropper's rental.”

Todd McClendon was short and stout and solid. He had the body of a college wrestler. He had large hands, and deep-set eyes that held steady on you like a doctor observing suicidal patients. He was dressed in light-blue, pressed jeans, linen coat and overrun loafers. The lower part of his face was tinged with bluish shadow.

Somebody whooped, and Monk clamped his teeth.

“And God forbid it be a real crime like theft against a white merchant or the soiling of southern womanhood, well,
white
southern womanhood,” McClendon said dramatically, making his eyebrows go up and down.

A gleaming white monster truck rolled over a black Falcon stationwagon, and the crowd yelled with great pleasure.

“Or should Forrest hear of some miscarriage of justice in a fellow jurist's court, then the judge would round up a few bailiffs, a shoemaker or two, and let righteousness be served at the end of a rope and tree limb.”

Monk's throbbing hangover, and the lack of continuous sleep, had made for a joyless, and long, afternoon drive to the meet with McClendon at Smith-Wills Stadium on Lakeview in Jackson, the largest city and capital of Mississippi. Numerous confederate battle flags were being waved around, and more than one set of blue eyes had fixed on Monk as he'd found McClendon at a prearranged spot They'd entered the Harkins Sisters Truck and Tractor Demolition Derby Spectacular as it ramped up full tilt.