Phoenix Noir

“Cut it out,” a nearsighted Martian said, hitting him in the face.

“We can’t leave marks or it won’t look right,” the H.M.I.C. warned.

“Good advice,” Monk said, trying to get out of the diving bell but forgetting how his legs worked. A jackrabbit with the head of a strawberry hopped onto the hood and quoted Wole Soyinka.

“The human factor, alas, is a ponderous and imponderable factor of history.”

“You got that right,” Monk mumbled. Transfixed by the literate rabbit, he became gradually aware that he was in motion. He had a hold of the steering wheel. The radio speaker fuzzed and Henry Ford spoke. No, Monk listened closer and realized it was Ann Sothern as My Mother the Car. She was trying to tell him something about pedestrians and traffic lights, but the horizon flipped over and everything came to a thundering halt.

Propelled forward, Monk cracked his head open on the windshield. Blood dripped into his eyes and he blinked them clear as he stumbled from the wrecked vehicle. The car had jumped the curb, plowed over a mailbox, and finally came to a stop when it smashed halfway through the side of a building. Martians and creatures with tentacles for arms lunged at him and he ran, so happy he remembered how to make his legs work. He knew what they really were beneath their disguises.

Canadians. Canadians terrified him. Sneaky infiltrating bastards. On he ran through the jungle and into the desert, his heart thudding in his ears, drowning out the sirens and the yelling and the cursing. He ran and ran and stared crying. Suddenly, he stumbled across an arid landscape where the snouts of crocodiles stuck out of the sand like cacti, their fearsome crooked teeth snapping expectantly.

Monk stepped tippy-toe around them and came upon the squatting marble statue of the Great Aztec Toad. Only it wasn’t a statue but the living toad god Tlaltecuhtli. The Earth Mother toad opened her maw, and after hesitating for a moment, the Canadians getting closer with their monkey sirens, he dove into the black. He swam and crawled through the murk, panicked that he’d never find his way out. It was then, at his lowest, that he saw his dead father, Sergeant Monk, Mechanic Monk, Husband Monk, stepping out of a door from nowhere.

Monk’s dad held out his big calloused hand. “Come on, Ivan, you can do it. Come on, son. Just a little further and you’ll be safe.”

“Wait for me, Pop.” Crying and bleeding, he ran and leapt through the doorway.

Dr. Justine Mumford’s private room at the Northcross Manor rest home smelled faintly of gardenias and hyacinths, her favorites. The flowers commanded the room in various baskets and vases, and her attendant had already filled three paper shopping bags with Get Well cards. There was to be no recovery for the civil rights icon, but just as she had confronted adversity, threats, and violence in her life, she faced death with bravery and aplomb.

“It’s going to be fine,” Mrs. Mumford said, her voice barely audible above the humming of the respirator.

Nazeen Loveless cried softly, holding onto the old woman’s hand. Age and illness had diminished the elderly woman’s physical shell but her voice yet reflected her power of conviction.

“It’s been three days and the cops are still looking for him,” Charles Estes whispered. He stood further back from the bed, where Loveless and Minnie Thaxton hovered. He switched off the radio he’d tuned to local news.

“Soon it won’t matter,” Thaxton said.

“What won’t matter?”

The three turned and stared mutely at Monk, who stood in the doorway. He had crashed his Galaxy 500 into some boarded-up storefronts, just down the block from the long-defunct Express Tracks recording studio. The police had been called but he’d run away howling before they arrived. He’d spent several hours hidden in a Port-a-Potty at a strip-mall construction site. At some point he pissed himself as the hallucinogen in his system wore off. Assuming the cops were looking for him, he’d waited until nightfall to sneak away. Monk had collect-called L.A. and asked Jill Kodama to wire him money for toiletries and a room at a hot-sheet motel, since it wouldn’t be safe to return to the Ramada Inn.

Estes started forward and Monk said calmly, “I’m not high now, Charles. You want to jump bad, I’ll be swinging back this time.” Estes paused. “We don’t want to disturb Mrs. Mumford, but you three need to do some ’fessin’.” There was complete silence other than the old woman’s breathing. “I do have a guess.” He pointed at her. “She killed her son, didn’t she? And you got Parchman to take the fall.”

The other three gaped.

“As I came down from my trip,” Monk continued sardonically, “a lot of clarity percolated up. I became fixated on comments from you two,” he indicated Thaxton and Loveless, “about when Mrs. Mumford had entered the studio that day.”

Loveless blurted, “We were exact.”