Not Long for This World (27 page)

“So you talked Rookie into letting you into his office to look around.”

“Yeah. I thought, maybe the gun’d be in there, or somethin’. I was just
lookin
’. Hopin’. Then, I seen the list. I see homeboy’s name on it: Casper-Gee. My man Toby’s, too. And I figure, this gotta be it. I don’t know what the fuck it means, but this gotta be it, right? Gotta be. So we book up, right there. Just like that. Now I got the list. Now I got somethin’. ’Cept I don’t know
what
I got! It’s a list, yeah, got homeboy’s name on it, and shit, but what the fuck’s that prove? First thing the cops gonna ask me, right? ‘What the fuck’s that prove, Whitey?’

“So I wait again. I wait. Every day, I’m lookin’ at the list, readin’ it over and over, trying to find somethin’ in there, somethin’ I can use. And then it hits me: Russell Meadows, that boy’s
dead, too
! Right? Russell Meadows, he used to run for a partner of mine; cat talked about Russell for a week when homeboy got killed. Somebody rolled on him, the cat say.
Rolled on him!

“Okay. Now, see, I think I’m finally catchin’ on. Now, I think I’m finally gettin’ the
picture
. So I do
me
some ‘investigatin’.’ I start askin’ around a little. Droppin’ names. Very discreet, like.
Top Cat. Def-Mike. Late-Train. Li’l Ajax
…”

“And you find out they’re all dead.”

Most nodded his head. “All of ’em. All dead, all rolled on. ’Cept for the last three. Toby and a couple other homeboys. Them, the man ain’t got to yet, I figure. So now I understand. Now I see what I’m dealin’ with. Everything Rookie ever said ’bout his brother, ’bout his temper and his hard-on for gangbangers, it all fits, way I look at it. He’s crazy.
Crazy
. Motherfucker’s jackin’
Cuzzes!
Cuzzes, Hoods, Tees, Troopers, goddamn
Rockin
’ 90s! Any of them sets found out what he’s doin’, he wasn’t gonna live to fuckin’
regret
it!

“So there it is. I got what I need, now. I got a motherfuckin’
ballbreaker
. I come down on Teddy with this, I know he’s gonna shit in his pants.”

“And ‘ante up.’”

“Yeah. And ante up.”

“That where the fifty grand came from?”

Most pondered not answering that one, then decided it wasn’t worth quibbling about. “Most of it.”

Gunner took a deep breath and said, “So when did you find out that it wasn’t Davidson’s list that you had? That somebody other than Davidson had written it for him?”

“Somebody other than him? Like who?”

“Like Darrel Lovejoy, Whitey. Remember him?”

Most didn’t want to remember. They were getting around to the more damaging elements of his story and he was losing his enthusiasm to tell it.

Gunner was unsympathetic. “Ever hear of Sears, Whitey? ‘Where America Shops.’ Everything you could ever want in life is right there, and all at very reasonable prices. Clothes, furniture, the works. Can you imagine how much shit I could buy at Sears with fifty thousand dollars? Do you know what a vacant
wasteland
I could make out of the appliance department alone with that kind of money to spend?”

“I seen one of them flyers of Love’s one day,” Most said abruptly, almost regretfully. “The ones he be nailin’ all over the goddamn place, talkin’ ’bout the Peace Patrol this, and the Peace Patrol that … and somethin’ just …
clicked
. I don’t know what else to call it. Million times I seen those flyers, and I didn’t never make the connection. I knew there was somethin’ familiar ’bout the letterin’ on the list, but I couldn’t never put my finger on it. Then, one day, I see this flyer, I see the letterin’, and I got it. I
got it
. Like, there it is.”

“You figure Davidson’s doing the killing, but Lovejoy’s the man who put him up to it.”

“Yeah. He’s the one gotta deal with them hardheads every day, right? I figure, man’s just tryin’ to make his job a little easier. Gettin’ some flunky like Teddy Davidson to take some of the most crazier motherfuckers off the street, out of his way.”

“So you looked him up, just as you did with Davidson, even though Davidson was already paying you to keep quiet.”

Most didn’t answer.

“And that’s where it all went wrong. You saw a second fat calf in Lovejoy and went for it. You got greedy. Only this time, it didn’t pay off. It wouldn’t have figured to. Lovejoy was a hard nut; he couldn’t have done the kind of work he did and be anything less. You thought he’d roll over as easily as Davidson had, but he wasn’t that gullible. Chances are good he told you to take your list of names and shove it up your ass.”

Most laughed now, finding something incredibly amusing in the memory. “He tried to treat me like one of his homeboys. One of them runny-nose little suckers he could just say ‘boo’ to and get ’em to jump, give it all up an’ go home. He wasn’t thinkin’ straight. Man would’ve been thinkin’ straight, he’d’ve known I couldn’t just let it go at that. ‘He don’t wanna pay, forget it.’ How the hell was I gonna forget it? How the hell was I gonna keep his partner Teddy flyin’ right if he ever found out I let Love slide, just let ’im tell me to go fuck myself and walked off? Shit. What’d the man
think
I was gonna do?”

“Maybe he didn’t care. Maybe he figured all you
could
do was take whatever you’d gotten out of Davidson and consider yourself lucky. He would have been smart enough to know you couldn’t go to the police without blowing even that.”

“Smart? He was a goddamn fool! Shit I had on him and Teddy was worth more than some jive-ass fifty thousand dollars! They was killin’
gangbangers
, man! Homeboys off the streets! Wasn’t no way I was gonna just walk away! Take fifty thousand sorry-ass dollars and make myself happy with it.”

“So you rolled on him. You took a page right out of Teddy Davidson’s book and faked a drive-by.”

“Yeah, that’s right.” Most was angry now, pumped up by the recollection of how Lovejoy had just tried to shrug him off like a minor annoyance, and in his rage was ready to admit to—or boast about—anything pertaining to his revenge.

“Your boy Toby was playing games with your rock, and Rookie was always a little spaced-out errand boy close at hand, so you let the Blues play scapegoat.”

“Shit, why not the Blues? Cops had to think
somebody’s
set did it, right? The Rook, that boy’s always fucked up, anyway. I figure him, I just be puttin’ him outta his misery. But Toby …” He shook his head sadly, like a mother talking about a stray son. “That boy, he just pissed me off.
Off
. I set the boy up, give ’im a piece, a real
piece
, and what does he do? He disses me, that’s what. Uses my own shit to try and ace me out, like he’s some kinda fuckin’ entrepreneur, or somethin’. So I say, cool. That’s the way he wants it, fine. I deal him into the drive-by. I tell Rookie to get me homeboy’s gun, one got his prints all on it and shit, and I give him some piddly errand to run when we’re gonna do it, so he won’t have no kind of alibi when the Man picks him up. I
fix
his ass, you understand? I got another man can run in his place; I don’t need no goddamn backstabbers workin’ for me.”

“You’re talking about Cube Clarke,” Gunner said.

“Yeah, that’s right. The Cube.”

“He was the one who tipped you to where Rookie was hiding in San Fernando.”

“Yeah. He heard it from a friend of a friend, like I told you the other night. See, the Cube, he ain’t like most gangbangers. That’s what I like about ’im. The Cube, you tell ’im what to do, what you need, and it’s done. No questions asked.”

“Especially when you can give him something fun to do like roll on Tamika Downs, no doubt.”

Most tried to make his face look apologetic, but it came off as something far less. “Tamika, she brought that on herself. I was gonna trust the bitch to keep her mouth shut, but she seen a couple cops sittin’ outside her house an’ went to pieces, made me lose all faith in her ass. So, I put the Cube to work, yeah. An’ it’s just like you say: He got off on it. Didn’t give me no shit, just went. The Cube, that motherfucker workin’ for you,
you’re
his homeboy. You understand what I’m sayin’? ‘Fuck the set, gimme my
money
.’”

He laughed again, obviously admiring such mercenary wisdom.

Gunner watched him cackle, the Ruger feeling somehow heavier in his hand, and decided he had heard enough. He stood up from his chair and started to circle the desk, toward Most, moving like he had something other than a short walk in mind.

“Do me a favor, Whitey,” he said, waiting until he was right on top of the dealer to speak. “Don’t laugh. I don’t like the sound of it.”

Most grinned, eager to please, and said, “Whatever you say, my man.”

And then the last thing Gunner thought possible happened: Most used his right arm.

His right arm was supposed to be useless, he had taken a bullet, possibly even three, somewhere in his upper torso only two nights ago, and the sling he was wearing made a powerful argument that his right arm had paid the price. Gunner had even been compensating accordingly, favoring Most’s right side, thinking himself wise, using the man’s handicap to remain out of harm’s way. But no. Most had brought the appendage up out of the sling like the head of a cobra, just a blur that had knocked the Ruger aside long enough for its owner to let loose with a straight left hand that caught the startled, stupefied investigator flush on the jaw.

That was twice now Gunner had been caught watching someone’s “wrong” hand.

It was an error to be ashamed of, certainly, but Gunner didn’t have time to feel ashamed. Most had knocked the Ruger from his grasp and was diving to the floor after it, with lousy form and decidedly bad intentions. The dealer’s left hand hadn’t had much behind it, but it had served its purpose all the same: Gunner couldn’t get to Most, or the Ruger, in time.

Most had the gun aimed at his face before he could join the dealer on the floor. Gunner froze in place, holding the pose of a cat about to pounce, but he could see by the gleam in Most’s eye that it was a wasted effort. Unconditional surrender was not what Most had in mind. The dealer had the upper hand now, and he wasn’t going to do anything with it but put a hole in Gunner’s forehead and go back for his fifty grand.

A flash of white lightning lit the walls of the room, and a cruel, guttural thunderclap accompanied it—but Gunner did not go down. Most did. Something made a bloody mess of his left collarbone, separating him from the Ruger, and sent him sprawling, limbs akimbo, over Gunner’s desk and down to the floor on the other side. His awkward landing alone suggested he would not be getting up again.

Gunner turned to find Rod Toon standing in the doorway, his chrome-plated .38 Special smoking in his right hand like a fat cigar. Behind him, fighting with the curtains hanging in the doorway, Mickey Moore and his seven customers were trying to look past Toon into the room, jostling for position, muttering excitedly among themselves.

Without saying a word to Gunner, Toon crossed the room to where Most lay and felt for a pulse.

To no one’s great disappointment, he never found one.

chapter
fifteen

T
he thing that had saved Gunner’s life was that Rod Toon believed in one-upmanship, too.

His suspicion that the investigator was holding out on him, keeping secrets, had inspired him to assign a pair of plainclothes officers to the task of following Gunner around, but he had done so in the hope of getting something more out of it than a stranglehold on Gunner’s P.I. license. No one had been more frustrated by the gaping holes in Rookie Davidson’s wild story than Toon, nor more anxious to solve them, and he had made up his mind that when the time came to fill them, to lay the whole thing down for Assistant District Attorney James Booker with every who, what, where, and when perfectly in place,
he
would be the man with all the answers, not Gunner.

One-upmanship.

Gunner’s shadows had been placed on his tail only hours after his release from police headquarters early Saturday morning, but they had missed him at home and did not actually pick him up until he and Whitey Most showed up at Mickey Moore’s Trueblood Barbershop at a few minutes before three that afternoon. They recognized Most at once but made no move to apprehend him; Toon had given them specific orders to just sit tight and notify the CRASH unit detective directly if anything worth reporting developed, and that was what they did. Toon slapped the red dome light to the roof of his car and raced over as fast as he could.

Had he stepped through the curtained doorway leading to Gunner’s office five minutes sooner than he had, things might have worked out exactly as he had planned. He could have handcuffed Gunner to a water pipe, grilled Whitey Most himself, and handed the completed tale of Darrel Lovejoy’s murder to James Booker on a silver platter. Instead, despite all the precautions he had taken to avoid such an eventuality, he ended up yet again at the mercy of Gunner’s sense of recall.

He was not a happy camper.

So this time, when his three-round verbal sparring session with Toon and Booker was finished, Gunner was not sent home with a stern warning and a stinging slap on the wrist. This time, they made reservations for him at the Black Bar Saloon, aka city jail, and advised him to get used to the decor of the place. The official charges pressed against him were “obstruction of justice” and “aiding and abetting a known fugitive,” and they earned him, at least to start, two nights of bad sleep in a crowded cell and the use of a toilet bowl that looked like a plumber’s worst nightmare.