Conviction

SEVEN

LARRY MINNEHAN AND HIS PARTNER, JACK BRESLIN, DROVE MONK and Ainsworth out to look for Eddie Fleet.

Their unmarked car entered Double Rock, a public housing project so lawless that cops who went there feared being shot. "Came out here last week," Minnehan said, "to pick up a guy for a probation violation. Walked into his kitchen and the fucker jumps out from behind the refrigerator and tries to shoot me in the face."

"What happened?" Ainsworth asked.

Behind the wheel, Minnehan kept tautly watching the street as he drove. "Pretty much blew his kneecap away. He's off the street for a while."

Not that it much mattered, Monk thought. The dingy stucco buildings spewed an endless supply of young men warped by Double Rock into dead-enders before they could make the choices they never believed they had. The place they lived in looked like a training ground for prison: even the graffiti-scarred buildings, some with windows boarded up, had addresses—like F-7: 1840–1860—which reminded Monk of a prisoner's ID number. As they passed one parking lot, a gangly teenage boy, urinating on someone else's car, called out to Minnehan, "Don't give me a ticket for pissing, man."

Minnehan, laughing, gave him a jocular version of a papal blessing. "That's Lance," Minnehan explained. "He's a Crip, and stupid as a rock. Whoever owns that car will probably do him for us." Breslin kept his eyes on the street.

A block later the car slowed to a stop beside a gray-bearded man in a Yankees cap cooking burgers on a grill. Breslin rolled down the window. "Hey, Globetrotter."

The man glanced warily at the two strangers in the back of the car. "Hey, man. What's happening?"

"Nothin' much. Just looking for Eddie Fleet."

"Eddie? Haven't seen that boy for a while. Heard he took a job being President of Microsoft."

A corner of Breslin's mouth turned up, though his eyes didn't change. "If he gets sick of it, Trotter, and comes back here, you might mention dropping by our office. We've got an opportunity for him."

The man nodded. It would not take long, Monk knew, for word on the street to spread.

"Fucking waste," Breslin said as the car pulled away. "Man used to play for the Globetrotters before the white powder got him. Now all he can afford is crack." They kept on driving, eyes combing the sidewalk idlers for the guy who looked back at them a little too long, or avoided looking at all, or maybe just started walking faster—the small signs of psychic disruption at the otherwise routine appearance of an unmarked car.

Two blocks later it happened. From the backseat, between the broad shoulders of the two cops, Monk saw a tall man slide from inside an old blue Cadillac and swiftly head for the door of an apartment in a one-story complex. "Step on it," Breslin said.

Minnehan did, snapping Monk and Ainsworth against their seat. Tires squealing, they pulled up in front of the complex; Breslin leapt out of the car before it stopped and covered the twenty feet to the door before the man could get inside. By the time the three others came up behind him, Breslin had his quarry by the scruff of his sweatshirt and was pressing his face against the door. "Give me trouble, Eddie, and I'm gonna be truly pissed."

Fleet said nothing. Jerking him three steps to the sidewalk, Breslin held Fleet upright while Minnehan searched him. In the bright afternoon sunlight, three women and a small boy walked by with their eyes straight ahead, their silence the only sign they had even noticed a black man being frisked by two white cops.

This gave Monk time to look Fleet over. He was perhaps six foot five, with close-cropped hair, cleft chin, and a broad face whose most remarkable features were a nose which appeared to have been flattened—perhaps by a flying elbow in a Darwinian game of playground hoops—and large brown eyes, which just before they assumed an unusually persuasive look of otherworldly detachment had raked Monk's face with a swift, keen glance. Monk had never seen Eddie Fleet before, but he understood at that moment that Fleet knew who he was—Monk's reputation on the street, held with a mixture of awe, fear, and respect, was that of a man who could be trusted but never crossed. By the time this piece of street theater was over, word would begin spreading in the Bayview that he had picked up Eddie Fleet.

"You keep Eddie company," Minnehan directed Breslin. He climbed up the stairs, Monk and Ainsworth following, to knock on the door Fleet had tried to enter.

It took several more knocks until a young woman answered, clutching the front of her white robe. She was in her early twenties, Monk guessed, with one eye swollen half shut in her scared, pretty face. It was Eddie Fleet's notion of foreplay, Monk supposed.

"Mind if we come in," Minnehan said. Though it was phrased like a question, the woman knew that it was not one: she lived in public housing, and any problem with the law could get her thrown out. In her world Larry Minnehan had more power than the President.

Her name was Betty Sims, and she turned out to be no housekeeper. She backed away from them into a cramped three-room apartment with sheets strewn across the couch and floor, CDs scattered all over a small kitchen table, and what looked like a couple of days' of dirty dishes in the sink. The chicken cooking on the stove seemed to Monk a sad gesture toward domesticity, as did the incongruous Chinese painting above the couch. The woman's one unblemished eye as she watched them was frightened and sad and deeply resigned, and Monk could feel her shame and helplessness at being exposed to the judgment of strangers.

Minnehan left to search her bedroom. With a nod to Betty Sims, Monk followed.

Her bureau was covered with cosmetics and empty beer bottles. Minnehan yanked open the top drawer, revealing a treasure trove of frilly bras and panties with the sales tags still on them.

"Girl's an underwear klepto," he observed.

Ainsworth was studying a framed picture on the bureau: next to the carousel in Golden Gate Park a slight woman stood beside a fleshy, smiling man. "Demetrius George," Ainsworth said. "Last time I looked, he was a suspect in a gang murder."

"Still is," Minnehan said. "Let's ask Betty."

Betty Sims sat on the couch now, shoulders slumped, knees pressed together beneath her half-open robe. Minnehan held the picture out to her; his other hand, Monk saw, held a wad of tinfoil plucked off the top of the bureau.

Betty's gaze flickered from the photo to the wad of foil. "Who's the lucky girl with Demetrius?" Minnehan asked.

Betty glanced back at the picture. "My cousin, Cordelia. Cordelia White."

"What's her address?"

Betty told him. "Know where we can find Demetrius?" Minnehan asked her politely.

She shook her head. "Maybe Cordelia does."

Without asking anything more, Minnehan took out his cell phone and directed someone at the station to visit Cordelia White. Then he opened up the tinfoil and showed Betty Sims two rocks of crack cocaine—maybe forty bucks' worth, Monk thought. Enough to get her tossed out in the street.

"Who this belong to, Betty?"

She looked away, silent. Minnehan appraised her swollen eye. In a gentle tone, he asked, "Eddie do that to you?"

She hesitated, then shook her head, no longer looking at Minnehan. Still speaking quietly, Minnehan said, "If you can, Betty, stay away from him. Guys like Eddie don't get better."

The words were followed by silence. In an affectless tone, she asked. "Am I going to be in trouble?"

Minnehan studied her with a look akin to resignation. "The crack?" he answered. "No. That's Eddie's now."

They left her sitting on the couch. Closing the door behind him, Minnehan murmured, "Demetrius and Cordelia. Almost sounds like Shakespeare."

* * *

Monk and Ainsworth put Eddie Fleet in the same room they had used to question Payton Price.

He sat staring at the wall, eyes as blank as poker chips. The bulky gray sweatshirt he wore, far too thick for such a day, was meant, Monk supposed, to create the illusion of a body mass to go with the attitude.

"Minnehan took your last two rocks," Ainsworth said. "I don't think he likes you beating up on Betty. I don't think he likes you, period."

The tacit threat induced only silence. Monk placed the photo of Thuy Sen between them. "Ever seen this girl, Eddie?"

Seconds passed before Fleet looked down. Then he gave an almost indiscernible shake of the head.

"Was that a no?" Ainsworth asked skeptically.

This time Fleet shrugged. "I never seen her."

" 'Cause my friend Inspector Monk has. He saw her floating in the bay."

Fleet neither moved nor spoke. "The thing about a body," Monk told him conversationally, "is it just lies there. Most uncooperative kind of person you'll ever know.

"Now it's one thing, Eddie, to murder somebody in his house—you just leave him there. But killing someone at your own house is a whole different deal. As long as the body stays there, it's incriminating.

"So you got to move it. That's how this poor child wound up in water way too cold to swim in."

How long, Monk wondered, could Fleet go without seeming to breathe? "The whole problem," Monk continued, "comes down to transportation. How do you get little Thuy Sen where she won't take herself? You drive her." Monk softened his voice. "Unless you don't own a car.

"Don't own a car, Eddie, then you've got to borrow one."

With this, Monk fell silent. Moments passed before Fleet slowly raised his eyes. With a touch of melancholy, Monk said, "You got anything to tell me, son?"

Fleet stared back at him. This time the frozen look of his eyes struck Monk as more than attitude.

In the silence, Monk reached into his wallet and pulled out a card, laying it beneath Thuy Sen's picture. "Time may come you need to talk. If it does, I can do more for you than any lawyer can. But it's way better to seek me out before somebody else does."

For another long moment, Fleet gazed down at the card. Then he reached out and slipped it into the front pocket of his sweatshirt, the reluctant, surreptitious movement of a man whose head doesn't know what his hand is doing.

Abruptly, Monk informed him, "That's it, Eddie. Inspector Ainsworth will call a car to take you home."

The last thing Fleet wanted, Monk knew, was to be dropped off in the Bayview by a squad car. But he seemed to have lost the gift of speech.

Ainsworth left. Glancing at his watch, Monk gave himself five minutes with a man who would no longer look at him at all. Then he stood and said comfortably, "Let's see if your ride's here."

Ainsworth was waiting outside. Together, they walked Fleet out the door and down the dim, tiled hallway to the elevator.

As they approached, one of the elevator doors rumbled open. Breslin and Minnehan stepped out. Between them were the Price brothers.

For an instant, Payton looked startled, then managed a subdued "Hey, man."

Fleet nodded as they passed, his brief glance meeting Payton's. But when Payton looked away, Rennell still stared at Eddie Fleet, eyes wide with surprise in his sullen face.