Violent Spring (32 page)

Authors: Gary Phillips

BOOK: Violent Spring

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“How, how â¦?” O'Day said to him open-mouthed.

Monk grabbed him hard by the throat. “There better be a phone in there.” He hated the lawyer for all that had happened; the machinations, the avarice, the killing and the blood. And that one, if not two, men were dead by his hand and his gun. He'd done it to protect his and Grant's lives, but the act of eliminating a human existence was a malignancy too many in the world shared. And if there was anything Monk was sure about, it was that guns didn't cure the disease.

He dialed 911.

S
AMUELS DIED AFTER an hour in surgery. Grant made it to life support and for the next week and a half stayed in intensive care. Monk spent several sleepless nights camped out in the older man's semi-private room, the retired cop's HMO plan picking up the tab.

“It's not your fault, Monk,” Seguin told him.

“Neither one of you are kids. And what the hell were you thinking taking an old man along for your backup? Jesus, Ivan, sometimes I think the two of you believe you're Butch and Sundance. That nothing can happen to you as long as you got the luck. Well honey baby, anybody can die by a bullet,” Kodama had said to him. Later she apologized for berating him. She realized he felt bad enough.

“Cute trick, Monk. Tying your shoelace around your left wrist and the other end around your little .38 you had on your ankle. Then hiding it with the back of your hand facing them. You're lucky the light wasn't better in there or they would have seen the lace around your wrist,” Keys had begrudgingly told him.

“The old bastard's tough. The bullet traveled down into the muscles of his back rather than an organ or the spine. He'll be walking again. Oh, he may slow down a step or two, but which one of us hasn't?” the young doctor with the chubby face told Monk.

T
HE EPIC OF Gilgamesh, originating in third millennium Mesopotamia, BC, told of the hero and his friend Enkidu who do battle with the gods. As a result, Enkidu is slain and Gilgamesh wanders the earth searching for the secret of eternal life. The object of his quest eluded him.

In 1460 BC, Queen Hatshepsut of Africa sent expeditions to foreign lands to bring forth the wonders of the known world, and discover what lay in the unknown lands. Though she longed to know the meaning of life, none of her explorations was able to produce the answer she sought.

Crosshairs Sawyer and Conrad James arrived at the Main Street steps of the Los Angeles City Hall in a caravan of chopped and channeled cars piloted by members of the Rolling Daltons, The Swans, and the Del Nines, modern disaffected nomads, returning from the barren regions. Their grail there words on paper, a truce among battling factions. The object of their quest was nothing as cosmic as eternal life or its meaning. It was peace, and if it didn't elude them, it could be as devastating as a swath laid down by napalm.

As one, the carloads of young men and women exited their vehicles and escorted Sawyer and James onto the steps and to their appointment with Councilwoman Tina Chalmers inside City Hall. Reporters pressed forward as cameras and videocams recorded their arrival.

Monk, waiting in Chalmers' office, watched with her from her office window as the phalanx of gang members formed a semi-circle across the steps. This effectively stopped the progression of the media and allowed James and his cousin to enter the building unobstructed.

“Maybe this will be, at least for some of the gang members, their
moksha
,” Chalmers said.

“Their what?” Monk said.

“It means liberation. A release from the bondage of endless reincarnation. In this case, a release from the endless warring and cycle of self-hate and self-destruction. It is good karma, and one creates it by living a good life.”

Monk believed you made your own luck, what little there was to be found in this rapacious world. He didn't tell her that, but he did give her a hug around the waist.

T
HE IMPACT OF the translated notes of Bong Kim Suh reverberated all over town. The 75 members of the board of directors of SOMA held press conferences ad infinitum in board rooms, press clubs, City Hall and street corners denouncing the ruthlessness and venality of Maxfield O'Day who sought to make millions from his shady land deals, and tarnish the image of Save Our material Assets.

Four other Anglo Fortune 500 CEOs mentioned in Suh's notes, in what was quickly dubbed SOMAGate, were forced to resign from their respective positions. Subsequently one of them went into a famous detox hospital up in Montecitoâblaming his years of inebriation for his bad judgment in being part of the Jiang Holdings scheme. Another one opened a pottery shop in Santa Fe, another got a job as a consultant to prisoners in halfway houses, and the fourth wrote a book and sold the movie rights.

Of the three Korean men who were in on the Jiang fix among the Merchants Group, two of them left the United States for parts unknown, and the third attempted to make restitution to some of the land owners who had been forced to sign over their property.

One of the men who left the states, Park Hankyoung, was revealed in an article in the
LA. Weekly
to have ties with the Agency for National Security Planning, formerly called the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. There were allegations that certain officers of the military hierarchy in South Korea, which now enjoys a civilian-led government, had knowledge of Jiang, but this was never proven.

Ultimately, Jiang was a consortium of capitalists whose binding contract was not race or nationalism, but the making of money.

Linton Perry and Luis Santillion held a summit on black and brown relations. And Conrad James, Crosshairs Sawyer, and some other Rolling Daltons started a nonprofit economic development corporation. Some on the board of SOMA, in an effort to clean up their image, provided grants and technical assistance to the ex-gang members. There was even a meeting held between Crosshairs and some of the OGs and the Korean-American Merchants Group in an effort to arrive at strategies to staunch some of the violence in the inner city.

O'Day, who had been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury, died at home. It appeared he'd slipped in his shower/sauna and cracked his head open on the tile imported from Greece. The coroner ruled his death an accident by misadventure. Nobody hired Monk to look into it.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

cover design by Elizabeth Connor

This edition published in 2011 by
MysteriousPress.com
/Open Road Integrated Media

180 Varick Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com