All the Lucky Ones Are Dead (13 page)

e i g h t

T
HE GATES LEADING ONTO THE GROUNDS OF
C
ARLTON
Elbridge's Hollywood Hills estate on Woodrow Wilson Drive were the kind no one ever left open, so when Gunner found them standing that way later that afternoon, he considered it a bad omen.

And more were yet to come. No one responded to his calls from the gateside intercom, and his drive up the red brick driveway to the front door of the mammoth Tudor home went completely unimpeded. The bronze Lexus coupe Danee Elbridge had tried to run him over with the day before sat nearby, its hood as cold to the touch as the water in the ornate stone fountain that graced the front lawn. Gunner looked to the winged female nude atop the fountain for clues as to what was going on here, but the figure remained silent, unmoving.

“Thanks,” Gunner said.

He turned to start for the portico when the first shot rang out, a slight buzzing noise filling his left ear as the bullet passed within a few inches of his head.

“What the f—!”

He ducked for cover behind the Lexus, reached under his left arm for a Ruger that wasn't there as his attacker fired on him again, succeeding only in punching an ugly hole in the crown of the Lexus's left front quarter panel. Less than twenty-four hours earlier, Gunner would have had the Ruger with him, but not today; he'd put the gun back in its drawer at home the previous evening upon learning the giant who had had Mickey so spooked was only Jolly Mokes. One day, Gunner chided himself now, he'd learn to carry the damn thing twenty-four/seven just for occasions such as this.

“Hold your goddamn fire!” he shouted, trying to give his voice all the authoritative power he could raise above his fear. “I'm unarmed!”

But a third round sounded all the same, shattered the Lexus's side glass just over his head after entering the car's interior through the roof. A clear and unsettling indication that the gunman he was facing was perched above him, on a second-floor balcony, from where he was no doubt at least partially visible.

“Hey! I said I'm unarmed!” Gunner barked again.

“Bullshit!
”

A fourth shot followed the tiny, childlike cry, struck nothing but air and green grass this time. Gunner poked his head up, caught a quick glimpse of the diminutive black woman leaning over a balcony railing, both hands clutched tightly around the grips of a silver-plated automatic: Danee Elbridge.

“I'm telling you the truth, Ms. Elbridge! I'm not armed!” Gunner steeled himself, gradually raised one empty hand into the air, then the second, jerked both back simultaneously when the Digga's widow fired two more rounds in his direction, hit the driveway an inch from his right foot with the first, the hood of the Lexus with the second. “Shit! Put the goddamn gun down already!”

He was still alive only because the lady couldn't shoot straight, but that was a shortcoming she could eventually overcome, if he gave her enough chances. He quickly ran over his options in his mind, realized he had only two: stay where he was and hope she'd keep missing him forever, or make a run for it, either away from the house and out the main gate the same way he'd come in, or toward the house and the safety of the portico beneath her. Jumping back into the topless Cobra to try and save his car as well as his skin was out of the question.

As impatient as she was silent, Danee Elbridge fired her silver automatic at him again, actually scored a hit this time: the bullet grazed Gunner's left calf, ripped a hole in his pants leg as it gouged a painful if benign trench through his flesh. He yelped, furious, and instantly made his decision: he would go for the portico. If he could get that far now.

He slid quickly toward the rear of the Lexus, head down and body low, and provoked the woman above him to fire three more rounds at him wildly in a desperate effort to halt his advance. None hit anything but the Lexus, the resale value of which was plummeting by the second. When the last bullet zinged off the trunk lid, Gunner made his move, sprinted as fast as his bad left leg would allow through the space between the Lexus and the Cobra, up onto the front porch. He had to dodge two more slugs to get there, but he managed to make it without suffering any further injury.

Now out of reach of Danee Elbridge's vision, he moved immediately to the front door, tried to push it open. But it was locked. He could hear her footsteps pounding along the floor above him as she ran, no doubt hoping to race downstairs and catch him breaking in. Which of course, he had no intention of doing. Just as he had no intention of fleeing, the prospect of getting shot in the back being as real here as it had been down in the carport, if she decided to come out after him. And he had no doubt she would. She wasn't running down those stairs inside to escape; she was coming to get him, looking to put a permanent end to whatever threat she thought he represented.

Gunner had all of four seconds to think of something to do with her when she got there.

He eventually stood directly in front of the door, and waited. It was a solid slab of white, ornately paneled but windowless, so he couldn't be seen standing there from within, except through the narrow decorative windows on both sides. If she chose to peer out through one or the other before exiting …

But she didn't. The gun and her eagerness to use it made her careless, encouraged her to go straight to the door and yank it open. The second it cleared the jamb, Gunner shoved on it with both hands, drove its weight into the face of the unprepared woman behind it. Wood and bone met with a loud bang, and Danee Elbridge hit the white tile floor on her back as if struck by a speeding Peterbilt, the automatic in her left hand spitting one final round into a nearby wall. Gunner stepped forward quickly, snatched the gun from her listless grasp before it could go off again. The Digga's widow never even knew he was there.

He released the clip of the lady's weapon—a .45 caliber Smith & Wesson, he noted—and put it in his left-hand trouser pocket before stuffing the body of the gun into the front of his waistband, taking a good long look at the woman fighting unconsciousness at his feet as he did so. She was the same short-haired, caramel-colored beauty he'd seen flying out of the Bad Rock recording studio parking lot the day before, only now she was marred by a growing lump on her forehead, and her wardrobe was far more casual. She was wearing a peach baby doll negligee as transparent as water, and there was nothing whatsoever beneath it but the skin she'd been born in. Had she not been trying to kill him, he might have noticed this last about her right away.

Bravely refusing the opportunity to pass out, the widow Elbridge eventually brought a hand to her head, moaned an unladylike curse, and gazed up at the black man standing over her like someone trying to read a newspaper through a dirty screen door.

“Who the fuck are you?” she asked, fighting to get the words out.

“I would've thought you knew. Or do you try to kill just anybody who dares to drop in on you unannounced?”

“I
asked
you a question.”

“My name's Aaron Gunner. I'm a private investigator.” He got his wallet out, turned it open to his license, and handed it down to her. He glanced around the house as she studied it, said, “No kids around today?”

“They're at my mother's. Not that it's any of your bus'ness.” She looked his credentials over the way she might an advertisement for toothpaste, pushed his wallet right back at him. “Bullshit,” she said.

“Bullshit?”

“You heard me. Bullshit. What the hell would a private investigator want with me?” She finally saw how much trouble he was having keeping his eyes trained on her face, tucked her legs up underneath her and covered her breasts with her arms. Accomplishing very little, actually, other than to draw more attention to herself.

Gunner smiled as he put his wallet away, said, “I've been hired by a friend of your late husband to look into the circumstances of his death. Either to confirm it really was a suicide, or to produce evidence it was a homicide.”

“Homicide? You mean murder?”

Gunner nodded. “You don't think that's possible?”

She didn't answer the question, just let her eyes bore into his for a long, painful moment. “I don't believe you,” she said.

“I can see that. But maybe if we got you up off the floor, found some ice for your head, you'd be a little more inclined to.”

“I don't need any fuckin' ice.”

“I respectfully disagree. That bump's changing colors by the minute. Come on, let's get up, find our way to the kitchen.”

He extended his hand, let her take all the time she wanted to think the offer over, accept it in the spirit given. When at last she did, she stopped at a hallway closet to grab a powder-blue silk housecoat, tossed it on over her immodest dress before leading her guest past an elaborately furnished dining room into the largest kitchen he had ever seen. It was all iceberg-white with marble trim, and a small yacht could have been parked within it without marring any of the cabinet doors. Only the island in the center of the Mexican-tiled floor bearing a six-burner stove and a giant butcher-block surface would have had to be moved to accomplish the feat, and that with nothing less than a fifty-foot crane.

With Gunner's hand on her left arm to keep her steady, Danee Elbridge went straight to the brushed-aluminum refrigerator, reached for the handle on its freezer door. But Gunner stepped in to stop her, said, “Here. I think you'd better let me.”

Shortly thereafter, the two of them sat in the Elbridge living room to talk, she holding a damp dish towel filled with ice cubes to her head, he holding the same to the wound on his left calf.

“If this leaves a mark, I'll kill you,” she said, grimacing.

“You already tried that. Twice. Maybe you should try to kill somebody else for a change.”

“What do you mean, twice? I ain't never seen you before in my life.”

“Actually, you have. First time was yesterday, out at Bad Rock. I was pulling in, you were pulling out, somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy miles an hour, as I recall. You don't remember?”

She studied him more closely, smiled through her pain. “That was you?”

“That was me. Desmond say something to insult you?”

“Desmond? What's Des—” She stopped, getting a sudden thought. “Oh. I get it. That's the friend of Cee's you was talkin' about workin' for a minute ago. Desmond.”

“Tell you what. Let's leave who I'm working for for later, talk right now about who you thought I was when I first arrived. That okay with you?”

The Digga's widow moved the makeshift ice pack around on her forehead, said, “I don't know what you're talkin' about.”

“Come on. You were layin' down ground fire out there like a Huey tryin' to take out a bridge. People don't throw ammo around like that unless they've got a specific target in mind.”

“You were trespassin' on my property! I don't have a right to protect myself?”

“Sure you do. Only, if that's all you'd been interested in, protecting yourself, you'd have given me some chance to escape. Told me to get my black ass back in my car and get the hell out of here, rather than shoot at me like somebody you needed
dead
, not gone.” When she acted as if he had to be talking to himself, Gunner went on: “You were expecting somebody else, Mrs. Elbridge. Somebody who either scares the living hell out of you, or makes you see some serious red. One or the other.”

Still, Danee Elbridge refused to speak.

“If you're in trouble, I might be able to help. You never know.”

“Help? Why should
you
wanna help
me?
”

“Call it a hobby of mine. Sticking my neck out for beautiful, half-dressed women in distress. And you are in distress, aren't you?”

The Digga's widow teetered on the brink of lying, decided to nod her head instead, tears pooling up in her eyes.

“Why don't you tell me what kind?”

“I got a nigga tryin' to get in my pants don't wanna take no for an answer. All right?”

“You mean 2DaddyLarge?”

Danee Elbridge blinked at him incredulously. “How did you know?”

“I haven't had a conversation in three days in which his name hasn't been mentioned at some point. And you two were a couple at one time, right? Before Carlton came along?”

“We weren't never a couple. We weren't anything. I went out with his ugly ass a couple times, that's all. He wants to make a thing outa that, that's his problem.”

“Only he doesn't see it that way.”

“No. Nigga's hardheaded.” She started crying. “I tell 'im I don't wanna be with 'im, that it ain't nothin' personal, but he don't listen. He says we're gonna be together whether I like it or not.”

Gunner watched her find a tissue in one of the pockets of her robe and blow her nose gracelessly into it. “Is 2Daddy here now? In Los Angeles?”

She nodded. “He's waitin' for me at some hotel somewhere. He said the name, but I don't remember it.”

“You talked to him today?”

“He got my cellular number somehow, called me in the car on my way home from the gym, said he was gonna send one of his boys over to pick me up, take me to see 'im. I told 'im I wouldn't go, but he just laughed.”

“So
that's
who you thought I was. His boy.”

“Hell, what would
you
think? Strange nigga comes crashin' through your front gate …”

“Actually, the gate was open. You didn't leave it that way?”

She shook her head, re-creating her arrival in her mind. “No. But then, it ain't been workin' right lately. It's supposed to close automatically when you pull in, but sometimes it don't. I shoulda looked back to check it, but I was so crazy…”

“Hello?” a voice called out from the direction of the front door.