Bad Night Is Falling by Gary Phillips Page B

assessment Absalla apparently did of each of his employees.
    As a member of the Del Nines street gang, Reeves had been known as Kid Blue. Taking out his notes and browsing through them, he found the reference to a Baby Blue that Mrs. Hughes had mentioned. Absalla’s write-up stated Reeves had a cousin in the Scalp Hunters called Junior Blue. Monk was sure that was one of the kids Mrs. Hughes said Cruzado had confronted.
    Monk put a Post-it on Kelmont’s rap sheet and went through the other files. Nothing else jumped out at him, but he’d make another pass later. He plodded into the kitchen to answer the ringing phone attached to the wall.
    â€œContinental Donuts.”
    â€œIvan, you got a call from a Keith 2X down at the Rancho Tajuata,” Delilah relayed over the wire. “He said you’d want to know this like yesterday, yo?”
    The house was a toast-colored stuccoed bungalow with wide green trim on Trinity, off of East Adams. Sections of its aging paint had fallen away from parts of one wall. Someone had made a halfhearted attempt at repainting, giving the wall a blotchy relief effect with mismatched explosions of other shades of light brown.
    The block was full of similar homes, with other variations on the Craftsman style, and a couple of nondescript clapboard jobs too. Several of the houses had cars in various stages of repair and ruin placed at angles along their respective fronts. Tall palm trees dotted both sides of the street, and Monk could smell eucalyptus on the evening breeze. Big dogs could be heard bellowing indifferently, contemptuous of the need for peace among humans.
    He could discern music playing nearby. It was an old number, whose tune he couldn’t quite identify, but was pretty sure was a cut by the trumpeter Lester Young. Prez. Right out of Woodville, Mississippi, swaying and playing in that signature flat, broad-brimmed porkpie hat of his blowing grooves for the horn players before him, and setting the double-time pace for the cats after him.
    Monk moved back into the recessed darkness between the patched wall and a stand of cypress trees as another car rolled past the house.
    The vehicle stopped, reversed its travel, and coasted beneath the pale glow of a street lamp. The car drove farther down the street. It was a late-model Buick Regal, glossy black with shimmering gold trim. The Regal evidently found a parking spot, because Monk heard its doors open and close and footfalls approach along the cracked sidewalk.
    Three men came toward the house he was spying on. Two were black, above average height. One of them was sporting a natty beard. The third was white, or a lightskinned Latino, of medium build. His dark hair was shaved close to his head with a thin, long braid swatting lightly down the center of his back.
    Each was fashion-model sharp in coat and slacks, all of them wearing gold rings that dispersed flutters of light along their large hands. It was obvious from the way the one with the strand of hair and the black one with the beard flanked the man in the middle that they were his bodyguards.
    They gained the porch, knocked, and a vertical shaft of light briefly striped the middle man’s face. From his hiding place, Monk could see his features. The man was matinee handsome, his eyes horizontal slits that seemed to have been drawn rather than organic. The door opened wider and the three went into the meeting.
    Keith 2X had told Monk he’d found out this house on Trinity would be the site of the OGs’ gathering. He’d made him promise not to tell anyone else, or be discovered, as 2X had been told the information on the down low. Monk wanted to know who’d told 2X, but the Ra-Falcon corporal was not willing to give that information up.
    He knew 2X wanted to follow Absalla’s orders by letting him know what was happening, but he understood 2X also had to maintain his standing with the rest of the security force. The private eye liked the