"The first time he came in after Abe showed up. They just seemed to be shootin' the shit and all. Willie broke down with his cheap ass and bought a small coffee and then complained about having to pay for a second refill. And," he added ominously, "that was the night I first noticed some chocolate twists had been taken."
Another power motor joined the first— must be gardener day in Silverlake, he glumly concluded. "Why would Willie steal our goodies, Elrod? He can't be selling them on the side."
"He might. Should I question him on the sly, like?"
He didn't have to activate much of his imagination to see how that might go. "Hold off, all right? How could he be sneaking the doughnuts out? If you're not there, Josette or Donnie or Moises is around, right?"
"Unless one of them is in on it with him." Elrod sounded like Jack Webb drawing in his dragnet.
"I tell you what, before you start hauling everybody in and putting them under the hot lights, let's sleep on this, dig? Let me catch a few hours of Z's, then I'll come over and we can formulate a plan."
"A plan is good," the other man concurred.
Monk, despite his interest in the doughnut caper, could feel the lead weights pulling his eyelids down. "We'll figure it out, Elrod, you'll see."
"Okay. Get some rest."
The line went fuzzy, and Monk stretched and scratched himself like a domesticated bear. The mowers were still going, but their engines were like a motorized melody to his overtired body. He lay still, curled up under the covers again. The world went about its business outside the bedroom, and no doubt bad actors were out there doing bad, bad things. And apparently one of them was a reprobate scarfing down his ill-gotten doughnuts. And he was probably washing down Monk's meager profit margins from the shop with cups of exquisite coffee.
The answers, he reminded himself, would have to wait until he joined the waking again. Although, he advised himself, a cup of coffee would be just the right nectar of nourishment right now. And for him, he could drink the stuff day or night and go right to sleep. He got up and traipsed into the kitchen. Kodama had left the coffeemaker on, and he poured a cup. He walked back to the bedroom carrying the morning
L.A. Times
.
Propped against the headboard, he leafed through the paper. In the Calendar section he saw a piece about a new film version being made from Ferguson Cooper's last book,
Platinum Jade
. This novel was the final in the series of sardonic and surreal tales Cooper had written about two South Side Chicago cops called Tombstone Graves and Hammerhead Smith. Cooper, a black writer who would later reinvent himself with "mainstream" novels about race and class in the seventies and early eighties, would subsequently disavow the hard-boiled books as merely ways to meet the rent while living in Kenya and Cuba.
But toward the end of his life, Cooper admitted he'd had a lot of fun writing about Graves and Smith, and thus published
Platinum Jade
in 1983. The book was both running commentary on the coopting of the civil rights movement, women's lib and the Reagan-led backlash against social safety nets, as well as a pretty solid mystery. Monk sipped some coffee and put the paper and cup aside. He stretched and soon his head sagged against the headboard, blissfully sleepy.
"Carson is a carpenter. Honest Abe they call him. Ain't that sweet?" Hammerhead Smith snickered in his basso profundo voice and tossed aside the bio and photo of the man printed on card stock. He pushed the aged bowler back on his large head, crossing his size-seventeen Stacy Adams on the desk where he'd propped them up. His hand, as large as a car engine's fan, held up the next Criminal Investigations Division print off the desk.
"Peter Worthman, longtime labor organizer and general rabble-rouser," Smith's partner, Tombstone Graves, illuminated upon eyeballing the photo. "He's operated in some interesting circles over the years: backroom deal making with pols, getting thousands of workers to strike and stay united on the picket line, and been married to more brainy, good-looking women than I can shake your dick at."
"You the one the chicks go for, man," Smith said, not without a touch of jealousy. "Here I am, all six feet eight big dark burnished inches of me, and with thumbs that are, shall we say, longish." He winked, chomping on the smoldering cigar in his mouth. "But no, you with your Savile Row and St. Laurent suits, alligator and ostrich skin ankle boots…"
The dig was coming, but Graves didn't mind, so much now anyway. It was his gruff partner's way of saying he liked him. "But to top it all off" —Smith flapped the file card in the air— "that bullet-scarred mug of yours seems to actually turn the ladies on. They love to feel your scars, Je-sus."
"Back to the case," Graves said, hiding his ego boost. "Worthman can be ruthless, so we can't rule him out."
Smith unlimbered his brogans from the table and straightened in his chair. "He's no pie-card union fat cat sitting on his can collecting his worker's cut from their dues check-offs,"
"Spoken like the son of a city hall clerk that you are," Graves said, adjusting his gold chain-mail cuff link.
"My point, fashion plate, is why in the hell would Worthman— hell, any of these supposed suspects— be involved in the theft of sixty-seven assorted doughnuts? In fact, why the hell did the Captain assign this goofball penny-ante misdemeanor to us anyway?"
"Because there's more to it than what's apparent, Sergeant." The new voice belonged to Captain Mitchum. Phones rang, perps and cops bustled and argued, yet there was a quality to his baritone that cut through the institutional din. He was standing near their desks, his lidded eyes at once giving nothing away yet taking in everything. He shoved his hands in the box-style coat he always favored. His barrel chest strained against the coat's buttons.
"Word just hit the streets that the shop owner where those doughnuts were swiped is offering sixty-seven grand for their return."
"A thousand dollars a doughnut?" Graves asked rhetorically, gazing at his partner.
"It would seem," Mitchum confirmed. "Could be there's more missing than icing and jelly."
"Like something hidden in the doughnuts." Smith shoved the bowler even farther back on his broad forehead.
"And, ah" —Mitchum moved the file cards around on the desk— "don't forget that our good counselor Oh also legally goes by the name Kodama." He tapped the woman's card for emphasis.
Smith was staring at the photos, then suddenly clapped his mammoth hands together. "And she defended Willie Brant."
"How do you know that?" Graves asked.
"I was down at the courthouse last week on that Veese matter. So I'm strolling down the hall, and who do I see all huddled up on the bench outside one of the courtrooms but Oh and Brant? Me and her nod at each other and I keep going. But I recognize Brant from his picture here."
"We got to get out and circulate," Graves said.
"Keep me posted." In that particular gait of his, Mitchum stepped back into his office, whistling a tune.
The next thing Graves knew, he and Smith were tooling along Quincy in their big, beat-to-hell-looking Ford. Underneath the hood, the gas-guzzling 425-cubic-inch V8 performed like a champ. It was nighttime, but Graves couldn't remember what he'd done after the conversation in the squad room. Presumably, he reasoned, he and his partner had been busy working the case.
Smith guided the car along several rain-slick streets. Lit neon announcing everything from cocktail lounges to twenty-four-hour shoe repair was reflected in the shallow puddles. Odd too, Graves reflected, he didn't recall any rain storm either. Must be working too hard. The car pulled to a halt across the street from an office building that must have been constructed during the Warren G. Harding administration. From the upper floor the chiseled eyes of stone gargoyles looked down from their perches.
"She's in," Smith stated, glaring up at a lit window on a particular floor. He blew white cigar smoke into the ebon sky.
As he extricated himself from the passenger seat, Graves said, "Let's see what our beautiful defense attorney has to say about missing doughnuts."
The two men made for an imposing pair as they crossed the narrow thoroughfare, cars of various eras cruising by. The hem of each man's rumpled top coat came to mid-shin, and flailed behind him like dusters worn on the plains a century ago. Smith towered over most civilians, but people tended to forget that Graves, too, was large, six feet two and built like an aging linebacker. Together, the duo reached the vestibule of the building.
"How long we been doing this, partner?" Smith flicked the butt of his cigar into the street. As it bounced, it gave off orange and yellow sparks.
"You thinking of retiring?" Graves replied. He didn't know how long they'd been chasing criminals. It seemed to him this occupation of theirs, if that was the right term, had been a forever job.
"Just making small talk," Smith deflected. His pale grin gave away his true feelings, but he didn't pursue the matter further as the night watchman let them in. Their flat cop feet slapped against the marble floor of the lobby, the sound bouncing everywhere in the cavernous area.
In the elevator, Smith said, "I was wondering, that's all, Tombstone. I've been trying to figure out what it all means, ya know?" He adjusted his bowler, shading his deep-set eyes.
Tombstone Graves said, slumped against the far wall, "Our lives of absurdity, you mean?"
The elevator stopped, and the doors opened on an opulently appointed reception area. "Exactly, my man, exactly."
"Gentlemen," Karen Oh, a.k.a. Jill Kodama, greeted them from a doorway to their right. She was a handsome woman of average height and a build belying her fortysomething years. Her hair was of a moderate length with auburn highlights. She wore a dark blue power suit and a magenta blouse underneath. Her look told them she was formulating several moves ahead of their questions even before they spoke.
"Come on in." She made a gesture with a sheaf of papers she held toward her inner office. They hung their top coats up.
"About these missing doughnuts," she said after everyone was settled. She grinned and lit a thin cigar after offering the two of them one from her humidor. "I can be unequivocal in that my client, Mr. Brant, had nothing whatsoever to do with these items being eaten."
"How do you know they were eaten?" Smith jabbed. His bowler rested on the mound of his knee.
"Why else would a hungry person take food?" She looked from the big man to his partner. Her eyes stayed on him for more than a beat.
"We think there may have been something hidden in one or more of the doughnuts," Graves put in. "We know that the doughnut shop owner has been involved in some questionable activities in the past."
"Allegations, not convictions," she averred.
"And we find it interesting that your other client happened to come to the doughnut shop at or around the time the doughnuts went bye-bye." Smith worked his tongue on the gristle stuck between his teeth from the pastrami sandwiches they'd scarfed down for dinner.
"What's your point, Detective?" Again, she did a sideways glance at Graves. As she did so, she repeatedly touched a ring on her finger. A particular kind of ring Graves had seen before.
"Of course," Tombstone Graves suddenly blurted out.
"What?" Smith glared at him.
"Of course," his partner repeated, snapping his fingers. Kodama, too, was standing, and he felt an irresistible urge to kiss her. So he did. And to his pleasure, she kissed him back. "You're terrific," he told her.
"So are you, big boy. I knew you could do it."
"You two mind telling me what the hell's going on?" Smith was now dressed in a chef's apron with streaks of flour on it. He adjusted his chef's hat as he sank doughnut dough into the industrial deep fryer.
The oil crackled and popped to a beat that hummed in Graves's head. He and the attorney slow-danced to Nat King Cole singing "It's Only a Paper Moon." The fish in her aquarium sang the melody. As the great crooner went on, the sound of the doughnuts frying replaced his voice, and Monk woke with a start.
He rubbed a hand over his face and looked at the time: a few minutes past eleven in the morning. Scratching his side, he dialed Elrod. Idly, he considered mentioning to the big man how he looked in a bowler in his dream.
"I know why the doughnuts have been missing," he announced after pleasantries. "And why Moises did it."
"You talked to him?"
"Nope." He didn't explain further. "I'll be there around three, Elrod. See you then." With that he hung up and finally slept soundly.
Moises had been destroying doughnuts because the one material thing in his life, his high school ring, had disappeared. He was sure it had somehow been sucked off his thin finger by the sticky doughnut dough. He was also replacing the doughnuts as he learned how to make them by working with Elrod. His accomplices in this deed were the other employees Josette and Lonnie, whom he'd enlisted, swearing them to silence. He didn't want to seem like a flake to Elrod, his immediate boss.