“IVAN, KEYS SEEMS to be nosing around, trying to dig up dirt on you to put the squeeze to you through official channels.” Marasco Seguin’s voice paused on the tape. “You know if it comes down to it, I’m in your corner. I have a meeting with the chief in a day or two, stay in touch.”
A thin smile crossed Monk’s unshaven face. The next message from last night played. “It’s me, baby. I miss you when I don’t see you.”
The third and last came on after Jill’s. “Long time no see, bro’. I hear we might be of some aid to one another. I’ll try you again.”
Monk played the third message again to make sure it was who he thought it was. Ray Smith. He was glad it wasn’t a long message and Smith didn’t leave a number. What with the shadow of the FBI falling all over this case. It was already past ten so he left a message for Jill on her private line in her chambers.
A long shower, shave, including trimming his goatee, and a breakfast of turkey sausage, three eggs—scrambled hard—two pieces of wheat toast and two glasses of orange juice shored up his energy and chased the vestiges of Weariness from his head’s encounter with whatever it was that sapped him. A bruise behind and to the left of his right ear was tender, but Monk felt good, confident despite what Keys was doing. He was garnering the intricate fragments of the meaning of the riddle. And it was the solution that beckoned him forward.
But every answer has to obey the laws that govern the known world. Every answer has a reaction, a consequence. And what would be the repercussions of finding the killer of Bong Kim Suh? Another fire? Another outburst of rage and frustration? Would Monk feel compelled to bury the truth for the greater good if he found out that Crosshairs Sawyer did indeed murder the Korean shopkeeper? Monk had to admit that he was no purist solely in the pursuit of the eternal truth. It was actually the working of the problem, all the permutations on achieving the desired results that really charged him, made him feel useful, alive.
Buttoning his shirt, he wondered if it came to it, would he make a decision to suppress evidence because it was politically expedient?
Monk was born in a hospital, Queen of Angels, that had been shut down due to county budget cuts. He could remember from his childhood when the first black City Council member got elected in this town. And the Helms Bakery truck would cruise along his street and sell those goddamn, sugary sweet, heavy-as-a-lead-weight donuts. Or when Watts exploded, or the first time he got jacked-up by two of then-Chief Davis’ Boys in Blue.
L.A. might very well be lurching toward a Balkanized future, each ethnic group carving out its larger or smaller fiefdom. It might make a lie of the theory of multiculturalism, American history having long since made a lie of the great melting pot. The city might indeed become a low-rent Blade Runner, too beat and too broke to pay for the special effects.
But it could also be the example, the last possible chance for sanity in a world where the law of the pack—led by the rapaciousness of the big-money boys who fed at the trough that Reagan and Bush slopped for them from the pickings of the poor, the working and middle class—had to be halted.
Men like Maxfield O’Day believed the salvation of Los Angeles lay in the will of the corporate patrician. Possibly that was part of the equation. But Monk was also convinced it resided with her everyday people, those folk like his sister working day to day, under the onus of budget cuts and top-heavy bureaucracy, trying to do their job because they believed it made a difference. It had to.
Monk’s Galaxie took him to his office and a worried Delilah.
“A Ms. Scarn from the Bureau of Consumer Affairs has already called twice for you this morning, Ivan.”
“What did she say?”
“She heard some news that concerned her in regards to you. She’d like you to call her as soon as possible.”
One of the architects who did some work for Ross and Hendricks came out of a suite at the opposite end of the rotunda where Monk and Delilah stood talking. He strolled over and handed the administrative assistant some papers, and they briefly talked about what he wanted done with them. He left.
“Call her back and tell her she better put whatever the hell it is she wants in writing and that I will pass it along to my attorney,” Monk said, checking his watch for the time. “I’m going over to meet with Luis Santillion. After that, I’ll call in to see what’s happening.”
Delilah put a hand on his arm. “Ivan, she didn’t sound like she was playing.”
“Neither am I, baby.” He started to exit, then said, “Call Maxfield O’Day’s office and tell them I need to meet with him, soon.”
Designed by part-time architect George H. Wyman for a mining magnate in the late 1800s, the Bradbury Building on lower Broadway in downtown Los Angeles was best known as a movie prop. With its wrought-iron railings, old-fashioned elevator, and general noir ambiance, it had been the office of many a movie detective, from Boston Blackie, to Miles C. Banyon, to Marlowe, to Deckard in Blade Runner. It was even in an Outer Limits show with aliens crawling all over it, battling an android who thought he was human. Seeing that episode had kept him up half the night when he was a kid.
Monk turned from gazing up at the wonderfully restored Bradbury and walked across the street and entered the exquisite chaos of the Grand Central Market, a sprawling indoor facility of stalls of fresh poultry, fish, fruits and vegetables. And vendors selling every imaginable chachka from Elvis dash ornaments to Navajo throw rugs made in China. People eddied back and forth through the maze-like setup of the place, haggling and bargaining over quantity and quality while mariachi music blared from one section, and Chicano rap from another. There were a lot of Mexican food places in the giant mercado, but there was only one called the Taquito Factory.
It was ten to one, and as Monk approached the stand, he didn’t see Santillion or anybody who looked like they worked for him. He took a seat at the counter and ordered the especial numero dos and a glass of iced tea. At precisely one, while Monk was slathering guacamole on his chicken burrito, the head of El Major rounded a corner near the stand. Two other men, in severe suits of charcoal grey, trailed four paces behind him. He strolled over to Monk.
“Glad to see you’re on time, Mr. Monk,” Santillion said, extending his hand.
Monk had half-turned in his seat to face the other man and rose to shake his hand. As he did so, a flashbulb went off and Monk stared at the two in the dark suits. One of them was working a camera with the flash, and the other one seemed to be there to keep other people from entering the picture. Monk turned to look at Santillion.
“What’s all this?”
“Something for our next newsletter. Just showing that I’m not opposed to black and brown unity.” Santillion sat down beside Monk. The two ciphers faded from view.
“Do you have something to tell me?” Monk had also sat down again and was intent on finishing his lunch. He felt too used to it now to be pissed for being suckered into another publicity angle one of these jokers who think they represent the people seemed hell-bent to use him for. Everybody’s favorite black private eye pinup.
The waitress brought Santillion a Corona and an empty glass with a wedge of lemon perched on it. He poured some of the pale brew into the glass and took a liberal sip of it. “About six or seven months ago, I got a call from a man who is not in our organization. He’s a small businessman, he and his wife own a launderette and corner market over on Atlantic Boulevard near Compton. They had suffered some damage in the riots, and were still trying to get through all the red tape to get an SBA loan so they can expand.”
“If he’s not in your group, then why did he call you?”
“I’ve known him a long time. He’s one of those kind of people who’ve always believed that you only needed the sweat of your brow and a strong woman to make your way in the world.”
Santillion’s order came. Monk said, “And not the help of some guy who wears eight-hundred-dollar suits and sits on the board of SOMA.”
Santillion bit into his taco, grated cheese spilling onto the counter. He chewed and swallowed. He turned his head slightly to look at Monk. “My brother and I were born and raised in City Terrace, Mr. Monk. We both ran with the White Fence gang, and he was the one who got the good grades in school.” A slight grin creased his weathered face. “But none the less, we’re brothers, and I’m the one he felt compelled to call.”
“So he swallowed his pride and asked you to help him get an SBA loan.”
“Of course not. He’d cut out his tongue first. He’d been approached by two men who said they represented a company who’d buy his distressed property. Of course they offered below market value. Way fucking below.”
“And what did your brother say?”
“In his own warm way, he told them no.” He took another sip of his Corona. “But these two representatives seemed intent on not taking a no and they suggested he rethink his decision.”
Monk had stopped eating and waited for the other man to continue.
“The roof of his car was caved in one morning, the side of his house was chopped with a fire ax, and his daughter had a rock thrown at her on her way to school. It took five stitches to close the wound in my niece’s head.” Santillion halted, reliving the image in his mind.
“So your brother was scared?”
“I said we were crime partners in White Fence, man. He called up some of our old homies, some of these carnales who’ve done time in Pelican Bay and Q, and had them do bodyguard duty. The trouble went away.”
“Both of these gentlemen were white, buffed and one had a ponytail?”
Santillion nodded. “I never saw them, but I remember my brother mentioning the ponytail.”
“And they said they represented Jiang Holdings?”
As an answer, Santillion took out a card and slid it across the countertop toward Monk. On it was the name of Jiang Holdings and a phone number in Orange County. Nothing else.
“He called me because he wanted to know if I’d heard anything about them. I hadn’t up till then.”
“And now?”
“I’ve heard from a few small landlords, some in Pico-Union and some in South Central, that they’ve been approached by this Jiang Holdings. But much more discreetly, much less harsh than with my brother. Some have sold and cut and run.”
Monk tapped the card against his index finger. “So are we to believe there is some kind of conspiracy of Koreans buying up property all over town?”
Santillion raised his hands palm up into the air.
“That kind of talk could set off another goddamn conflagration.”
Santillion eased off his stool. He laid a five on the counter. “Yes, I’m aware of that. But I felt you should know. And there’s something else. Several of the properties that have been bought are in areas that the Administration in Washington are targeting as Revitalization Zones.”
“But the federal money won’t cover all costs.”
“That’s right. But if you were someone who had the land, and had the start-up capital that enabled you to get things going once the zones were established.…” He patted him on the shoulder and walked away.
Monk left his meal unfinished and placed another five on the counter. He walked out of the bustling Grand Central Market into the hustle of Broadway with its discount electronic stores, cut-rate gold jewelers and knock-off designer jeans. He walked North until he came to Temple and then into the Municipal Court House at 210 west. He hadn’t worn his gun and didn’t have to go through a hassle at the metal detector at the entrance. He took the elevator to the floor where Jill Kodama’s courtroom was.
“Are we to believe, sir, that when you pointed the AK47 at Mr. Wade, you didn’t think that would anger him?” The attorney who said that was a tall, portly man Monk had met at a dinner party once. He sat down in the area of the court reserved for observers and watched as the trial progressed. A little after three-thirty, Kodama recessed the trial until ten in the morning. The defendant was led away, and several people who had been in the gallery, including a young woman with an amazing amount of mascara over her eyelashes, exited the courtroom. Monk got up and walked over to the bailiff.
“Sherlock, how’s it hangin’?”
His name was Jory. He was a white guy in his mid-fifties, and he’d been over to Grant’s house for poker games off and on for the last fifteen years. “Same old sixes and sevens, you know,” Monk said, leaning on the rail separating the jury section from the rest of the courtroom.
“I hear you’re hip deep in it”
Monk lifted a shoulder.
“Yeah,” the bailiff began, shaking a Pall Mall loose from a rumpled pack. “I never thought Los Angeles would wind up like New York, but damned if it hasn’t.” The smoke from his cigarette plumed from his straight line of a mouth. “I’m taking my early retirement in two years and blowing this hell hole.”
The door to Kodama’s chambers opened and she stepped through sans judicial robe. Smartly dressed in a double-breasted cream-colored linen suit and an electric blue blouse, she smiled at Monk.
“And if you two are smart, you will too. Go someplace where you can have a lot of babies and fish all day,” Jory said, emphasizing his statement with a tap of his back hand on Monk’s stomach.
“There’s a war on all over the world. There is no such place, Jory,” Monk countered.
“Ain’t it the truth.”
The bailiff left. Monk stared up at the handsome woman standing beside the large swivel chair upholstered in black cracked leather. “How are you?”
“Fine,” she said.
“Want to go for a walk?”
“That sounds good.”
They wound up going through Pershing Square on Olive Street, stopping twice to give change to a homeless person in the one-block-square plot of greenery. There were numerous men and women sitting on the stone benches erected by the city to deter the homeless from gathering. “So what were we arguing about?” Monk asked.
Kodama put her arm through the crook of his elbow. “Our future.”
“Oh yeah, I knew it was something insignificant.”
“He-yuk.”
They went across the street and into the Beaux Arts-designed Biltmore Hotel, an old institution that had fallen into ruin, and was then restored during the brief laissez faire portion of the ’80s. They got a quiet booth in the bar.
“I apologize for what I said the other night, honey,” Monk said, holding onto her hand across the table.
“Well, I was a bit vague, wasn’t I?”
“What’s bothering you?”
“Maybe I just want us to clean up all our business and get the hell out of here.”
“Like Jory.”
“Somedays I feel like that. Like this whole thing, the very idea of the urban metropolis, was a mistake of the twentieth century.” She paused, watching Monk.
“What does that have to do with us, baby?”
“You know exactly. I’m a judge and you’re a private detective. We’re two sides of the same dollar and nobody will give us change.”
“That’s a little too cryptic for me.”
“It’s what keeps us going, Ivan, it’s our reason to live. And it will also be our undoing.”
“Not if we try.”
She leaned back, the stark gloom of the place temporarily swallowing her chiseled face. Momentarily, Monk had the irrational feeling that the monsters of the city had abducted her for daring to speak of their secrets. Her voice floated to him. “We aren’t cops, Ivan. I try to be detached, objective. I’m not. That is to say, I do my best to render fair and impartially, but I carry the burden with me.”
“You’re a good person.”
“Shit.”
“You can’t escape it”
“Speaking of which, how’s the case coming?”
He filled her in on recent developments, including the threat against his license. “But it’s starting to come together. It’s starting to make sense.”
“You should see your face. You’re addicted to this way of life.”
“It takes one to know one.” He pointed a finger at her. “See that’s what’s got you worried. You think our relationship is built on a vicarious thrill we each derive from one another.”
She waved a hand in the air to dismiss the words. “You can stop with the cheap psychology, Dr. Freud.”
“Remember, a cigar is just a cigar.”
“Uh-huh, except when Ivan Monk waves his around, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“Do you think that’s our only attraction for one another, Ivan?”
“We can’t divorce it from who we are, Jill. But that’s not to say if tomorrow one or both of us were doing something else, we’d fall out of love.”
She raised an eyebrow.
Monk sat back in his chair, studying the woman before him. “I’ll always want you.”
Kodama leaned across the table and kissed Monk. “You’re such a romantic.”
“We can’t all be hardboiled like you,” he said. At length they arose from the table and went back to Kodama’s house above the reservoir in Silver Lake. She made dinner, a rarity, and afterwards they snuggled near a fire Monk built in the study’s fireplace. “I’ve got to see a man about a horse.”
“What?”
“I’ve got to be down in Anaheim by eleven-thirty tonight.”
“Why does that not surprise me,” she said, sneering at him.
He opened up a magazine on the coffee table and wrote something on a page. He tore it out and handed it to her.
She read it, then threw the page into the fire. “Put on some music, honey. Put on some Diz, will you? His music is magic, and you’ll please his ghost by invoking it,” Kodama said. “You’ll need his protection in the days ahead.”
The phono played a scratchy album that was one of the lord of be-bop’s outings with him and Roy Eldridge on trumpet, Oscar Peterson on piano, Ray Brown on bass and Mickey Roker on drums. By the time the needle found the opening groove of “I Cried for You (Now it’s Your Turn to Cry for Me),” Monk laid a blanket on the sleeping judge. She’d fallen asleep with her head in his lap and he’d managed to place it on one of the couch’s pillows.
As John Burks “Dizzy” Gillespie plowed into the second chorus of “Indiana,” Monk eased out of the house into the chilly evening, the moon a broken quarter of bitter light. Faintly, he could hear the strains of Eldridge’s solo as he got in his car and drove away. Monk took pains to make sure he wasn’t being followed and he got out to San Pedro seventeen minutes past eleven.
It was a harbor town and its population included an interesting mix of Italians, Greeks, Serbs and Croats. They each had their own social clubs, expressed by their segregated soccer teams, and several community papers. Monk drove past a storefront whose Slavic lettering had several large flyers pasted up in the picture window. He couldn’t read them, but could guess it pertained to the continuing bloody conflict in the Balkans.
He reached 4th Street and went along it till he got close to Beacon and the water. Once upon a time, Dexter Grant had informed him there was a hill here, and the radical union of the Industrial Workers of the World held their rallies there for the Maritime Union which was one of their locals. And, Grant had gone on to tell him, in 1925 there was a big rally here where Upton Sinclair, teetotaler, the author of The Jungle, and who ran for governor as a socialist in California in the ’30s, came to speak. This was another facet of life Grant’s Wobblie Uncle Logan had bestowed upon his nephew.
Liberty Hill was what they called it. Parked at the curb along Beacon Street was Grant’s 1967 Buick Electra 225. Monk pulled in behind it and watched the older man get out of his car and into the passenger seat of the Galaxie.
“I was about to give up hope on my number-two protegé” he said.
“Who’s number one?”
“Me, baby, me,” he said, putting a file folder on the dash, and holding onto a Winchell’s styrofoam cup of coffee.
“It was a good clue, Dex. Using beeps for the foghorns of the harbor here.”
“Just like your first time in the sack. You don’t forget where it was that someone first took a shot at you. Or the time.”
“And people say you’re a bad influence on me.”
“Fuck ’em, and feed ’em fish. What’s happening on the case?”
Monk filled him in, then asked, “What did you find out about brother Suh?”
“There’s an all-night strip joint over on Gaffey. Let’s go over there and talk.”
Monk stared at Grant.
“The place is circular. We can sit at a table and one of us watches the front while the other keeps an eye on the back. The music’s a good cover in case your girlfriend Keys is using a directional mike or some of that other sophisticated eavesdropping equipment. We’re both good at shaking tails, but let’s face it, the Bureau’s been at this longer than both of us have been alive.”
“Okay,” Monk said, gunning the motor to life. “I think it’s just an excuse for you to leer at naked young women more than half your age.”
“Sure, there’s that, too.”
The Chain Puller’s clientele was sparse, but diverse. A couple of the typical middle-aged businessmen with their ties askew in their Hart Schaffner & Marx costumes, a trio of bikers—one of whom gave Monk an “I-dare-you-to-fuck-with-me” look—some collegiate types who looked underage, and a lone woman in a peasant dress who drank in a corner and scribbled on a pad of paper.
Grant and Monk took a table toward the middle of the rear. The stripper, a thin brunette with a protruding rib cage, did her act on stage as heavy metal music played. It was loud enough so that they both felt safe talking, but not so much that they had to shout.
It was a two-drink minimum in the place, all well drinks were five dollars, plus the cover charge. They both ordered beer from the topless waitress. Monk browsed through the contents of the folder.
“Bong Kim Suh,” Grant began, “was a labor leader in a large steel mill in Inchun.”
The waitress returned with their order, and he waited until she put down the order to continue. Monk said, “I don’t think there’s anywhere on her to hide a bug, Dex.”
The older man was staring at the departing woman’s backside and didn’t respond. He went on. “From 1945 to about 1965, the U.S. supplied the sometimes less-than-democratic governments of South Korea over 12 billion big ones in military and economic grants. Not to mention some spare change they picked up from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and so on.”
“All in the name of stopping the red hordes to the north.”
“Something like that,” Grant conceded. “Anyway, the South Koreans sniffed the then-subtle shifting of political winds, and knew they best be about developing some economic independence. They started what would be the first of several five-year plans.”
Monk took a sip of his tepid beer and made a face. “That sounds kind of socialist to me.”
“National Socialism, I guess. After all, the Nazis began Germany’s nationwide healthcare system, and it’s still used today.”
“But we digress.”
“The first five-year plan called for economic diversification. They normalized relations with their former colonizers, Japan, and received $800 million in government grants and loans, and private industry loans, too. With that, and the fact that U.S. aid also continued, they achieved some degree of their goal.”
“Which was?”
“Increase in electrical energy capacity, upping the production of food for internal use, and building up the industrial infrastructure.”
“This leads us to the second five-year plan.”
“Absolutely, weed hopper.”
One of the bikers and a businessman had gotten into a shouting thatch but one of the frat boys had stumbled over to them. A drunk referee. After several moments of consultation with the young man, the bikers and the businessmen pushed some tables together, and all of them commenced to have a grand time of it.
Grant returned to his subject. “In the second phase, the economic wizards sought further food production, an increase in employment and retooling of industries such as textiles. As a matter of fact, GNP shot up damn near 12 percent during that period.”
“The beginning of the rise of South Korea as an economic power in the East.”
“Partly accomplished because most of the union officials were paid by the company.”
“Handmaidens of the government,” Monk elaborated.
Grant continued. “In the ’60s the workers lived on industrial estates or in towns near the factories they worked in. Bad pay, long hours, lousy housing and no playgrounds for your kids, quite a fucked-up deal. Most of the unions worked in concert with the big companies to fuel the economic miracle.”
“The only place to go, as far as the workers were concerned, was up,” Monk added, having given up on trying to drink the swill the Chain Puller passed off as beer.
“Right. And there began a new militancy on the part of some workers who put it on the line with their unions. But,” Grant held up a finger, “General Pak Chung Hee, who’d been in power since 1963, wasn’t about to have any of that. And he wasn’t about to step down, though two terms was the prescribed limit on holding the presidency.”
“This is about in ’71, right?” Monk said. “He declared martial law.”
“Sort of. He finagled the National Assembly to allow him a third term. Everybody was screaming, the people, the business leaders and so forth. But he managed to squeak through in a very shady election. Chung Hee could see democracy was not for him, not if he wanted to stay in power, so he declared a national emergency and suspended the constitution. The Korean Central Intelligence Agency and the cops got a free hand. Chung Hee used the spectre of communism as his excuse to crack down on unions, political movements, university students, and whoever else pissed him off.”
“Old story,” Monk mused. “His version of Yushin.”
“You’ve been doing your homework, youngster. Anyway, during this period, as you can imagine, there was a lot of opposition to this iron hand of government, particularly in the ranks of labor. As I said,” Grant stopped because the screeching music had suddenly stopped. It was now quiet in the strip bar save for the carousing crew of bikers, businessmen and students. But all of them seemed too drunk to notice that the stripper had left the stage as they continued to laugh at one another’s jokes. The woman in the corner continued to write.
Grant went on. “Like I was saying, Bong Kim Suh was a worker in a steel mill and he was also a member of a group that didn’t express themselves as socialists, but they definitely were left of center. He’d been through trainings for union leaders at church-based organizations who, later, would be influenced by the Liberation Theology movement. Suh was bright, articulate and courageous. He became a shop steward on a platform of more union independence and more militancy.”
“I imagine he got his hand slapped once or twice.”
“He made a visit to South Mountain, which was a nice way of saying you got picked up by the KCIA and taken to their headquarters. There they practiced a little bit of the ol’ ultra-vi to make you see the error of your ways.”
“And did he?”
“He took it, and more. He and some others organized a strike in the late seventies that resulted in the deaths of some twenty workers.”
“Anything about his wife?”
“That’s a bit sketchy. But I concluded she was involved in some union business, textiles. Seems there was a job slowdown and the bosses hired some goons to teach the ladies the true meaning of labor relations. She was killed sometime in the mid-seventies.”
“Damn. What else on Suh?”
“Well,” Grant said, sipping his beer, “that’s where I got my hand slapped. The background stuff we’ve been talking about, most of the stuff that’s in that file, can be obtained from books and magazines written about South Korea. My contacts at State were okay about supplying that.”
“But when you started to ask about Suh?”
“I got as far as his labor background and the strike in the late seventies. Then all of a sudden, my contacts dried up.”
“Like they got a memo to be cool,” Monk offered.
“There’s no doubt.”
“Keys must know about you and me, so he must figure I have this info.”
“But he must know the complete history of Suh.”
“Which raises the question as to what it hides. What bearing does it have on his death in South Central Los Angeles?”
The waitress returned without being summoned. She placed two more beers on the table and said laconically, “That’ll be ten dollars plus tip.”
Monk’s eyes assailed her, but he could not pierce the veil of distance he’d seen on the faces of women like her, those who mostly by factors they could never control found themselves trapped in the sex trade. He put a ten and five on her tray. “Okay.”
She picked it up and looked at him. “Thanks, man.” And off she went.
Grant hunched forward across the table. “How about this scenario? After the strike there came reprisals from the government. Suh flees and for the next several years bounces around and winds up here in ’82, okay?”
“Yeah. But something makes him close up shop a week before the upheaval and then he starts keeping odd hours where he lives.”
Grant’s brow furrowed. “Like he was on to something. That would explain closing the store. Harder to find a guy if he ain’t where he’s supposed to be.”
“Yet his actions would seem to indicate he was working on something. And it has to be all tied in with Jiang Holdings.”
“But you told me the phone number you got for them is now out of service.”
“And the address is an empty lot. But Jiang holds the liquor certificate on the Hi-Life liquor store, the non-operation certificate for Suh’s car was filed by the concern, and most importantly, it would appear that Bart Samuels and the late Stacy Grimes were employed by Jiang.”
“For the purpose of buying up distressed properties.”
“So I need to know who is behind Jiang,” Monk said.
“Bong Kim Suh probably found out and paid for the knowledge.”
Monk nodded his head in the affirmative.