All the Lucky Ones Are Dead (22 page)

“In case you didn't recognize him, that was the Digga's manager. He's been a little on edge lately.”

“No shit.”

Gunner asked his cousin if he'd like something to drink, and when Del said no, got right down to the business he'd called him here to discuss.

“Forget about it,” Del said when Gunner was through. “I'm not interested.”

“Del, I wouldn't ask if I had some other alternative. You've got to do this for me, man.”

“Sorry, Aaron. I haven't talked to Alred in six years, and I'm not gonna start talking to him now. You have something to say to him, you're gonna have to say it yourself.”

“I intend to. All I'm asking you to do is get me a meeting with him. Call him and say you need to talk to him, set a time and place for the two of you to get together tonight. I'll take care of the rest.”

“Why can't
you
make the call?”

“Because he won't come if I do. The last time I talked to him, we exchanged some words, basically promised we'd never come near each other again. I had my way, we'd leave it at that, but he's become a key player in the case I'm working, there's some questions I've got to ask him.”

Del shook his head in disbelief, astounded by the position Gunner was putting him in. “Damn,” he said. “I hate the fool just as much as you do. Why do
I
have to deal with his worthless ass?”

“Because his mother was your first cousin, same as I am,” Gunner said, referring to his late sister Ruth. “He's as much family to you as he is to me.”

Del made a face, said, “Lucky me,” and asked Gunner for suggestions as to where and when his meeting with Alred Lewis should take place.

f o u r t e e n

J
OLLY
M
OKES
'
S FIRST DAY ON THE JOB
as Sparkle Johnson's babysitter was proving an uneventful one, much to Gunner's relief. Gunner met with Jolly at four at the Deuce, right after leaving Del at Coley's, and listened attentively as the big man told him what a bore it all had been from a stool at the uncrowded bar.

“Ain't nothin' happened the whole day,” Jolly said, as if he hadn't been hoping for precisely that result when Gunner first assigned him the job that morning. “She went to work, she went to lunch, then she went back to work. Gang of reporters and TV people followin' her everywhere.”

“She ever talk to you?”

“Once. In the lobby of the station she works at. She came up to me and said I wasn't foolin' nobody, actin' like I was just in there readin' the newspaper or somethin'. She said my bein' there wasn't servin' no purpose, that she'da been you, she wouldn'ta hired me to keep an eye on a dead tree.”

Gunner grinned. “Fitting name for her, isn't it? Sparkle?”

“The Lord says thou shalt not kill,” Jolly said. “Nobody knows that better than me. But if He could ever forgive a man for puttin' somebody in a box and nailin' it shut …”

“You don't want to talk like that, Jolly. Not even in jest.”

“Hey, man, I didn't—”

“You don't have the right. Or do you think Grace would disagree?”

Jolly shook his head, suddenly and appropriately contrite. Gunner was right: the murder of his late wife would forever make Jolly an unfitting source of such misogynistic levity.

“So what do you want me to do now?” he asked.

“Go back and start again, what else? Watch her until she goes home to Browne's place tonight, I'll relieve you from there. That'll probably be somewhere around seven, seven-thirty or so.”

“I don't get it. You said the cops got the man put the bomb in her car, right? Why do I still have to watch her?”

“Because I'm not convinced the man they have in custody
is
the one who put the bomb in her car. I've got a call in to the detectives who've been questioning him this afternoon. As soon as one of them calls me back—”

“Yo, Gunner! Phone call!” Lilly said, standing at the other end of the bar holding a cordless telephone receiver up in the air.

Gunner turned back to Jolly, said, “That must be them now. Hold on a minute.” He walked over to where Lilly was standing, reached across the countertop for the receiver in her hand, but she just drew it back, all but hissing like an angry snake.

“How many times I gotta tell you about receivin' calls in here?” she asked. “A thousand? Fifty thousand?”

“That would be a very conservative estimate. It's gotta be more like a million. Can I have the phone, please?”

“Two dollars,” Lilly said, holding her free hand out, palm up.

“Two dollars? You must be crazy.”

Lilly started to take the phone back into her office.

“All right, all right, here, damnit!” He reached into his right-hand trouser pocket, freed two one-dollar bills from his money clip and handed them to her. She smiled, practically threw the handset at him in return, and walked away.

As Gunner had thought, the man waiting on the other end of the line was one of the two LAPD robbery/homicide detectives he'd been waiting to hear from. This cop's name was Jay Peers, and despite having earlier received Wally Browne's urgent request that he cooperate with Gunner in full, he was by far the least personable law enforcement officer the investigator had spoken to all week. It was the law of averages; five cops in four days, one of them was bound to be a humorless automaton.

Still, the content of Peers's replies to Gunner's questions bothered the investigator far more than the reluctance with which he presented them. With only a few clipped words, Peers essentially reported that the interrogation he and his partner had performed on Sparkle Johnson's rejected lover, Jarrett Nance, that afternoon had served only to suggest that Nance might know who Johnson's attempted murderer was, but was not himself that person. And worse yet for Gunner, what little evidence in the case the cops had so far been able to piece together seemed to bear that out.

“So who does he say did it?” Gunner asked.

“I'm not at liberty to say,” Peers answered.

“But he gave you a name.”

“Yes and no.”

“Yes and no?”

“He gave us a name, but not of an individual. More than that I can't tell you, Gunner, I'm sorry.”

Gunner paused, feeling the very planets of the universe starting to turn against him. “You aren't talking about the Defenders Of the Bloodline?”

Now it was Peers who fell deathly silent. “You came up with that on your own. Make sure you remember that if anybody ever asks.”

He hung up without saying another word.

“Well?” Jolly asked when Gunner rejoined him, a look of grave concern coloring the investigator's face.

“You've gotta go back now, Jolly. Right now, I don't want Ms. Johnson left alone again for a minute.”

“What did the cops say?”

“I'll explain all that later. Get back over to the station before she leaves for the day and stay by her side—no more watching her from a distance. I'll relieve you tonight out at Browne's place just as soon as I can, like we discussed earlier.”

He needed more convincing, but eventually Jolly obeyed the order and took off, left Gunner alone to rue the prospect of becoming reacquainted with his old friends, the Defenders Of the Bloodline.

The DOB, as the group was most commonly known, was an underground, highly secretive band of urban terrorists intent on purifying the African-American community of the so-called “traitors” in its midst: those black men and women who failed to meet the Defenders' guidelines for proper sociopolitical conduct. Anyone who had ever been accused of being either an Uncle Tom or the female equivalent due to their less than liberal viewpoints on subjects relevant to race was open to targeting by the Defenders—high-profile right-wing conservatives like Sparkle Johnson being a prime example—and people so honored all too often ended up dead as a result.

It had been roughly six months ago, while he was working the case Yolanda McCreary had hired him for, that Gunner had had his first and only run-in with the Defenders. Yolanda's brother, Elroy Covington, had disappeared in Los Angeles under mysterious circumstances the previous year, and in trying to determine what had happened to him, Gunner learned the DOB had sanctioned the missing man's assassination. It turned out that while Covington had indeed been murdered, the Defenders were not actually to blame, but this only became apparent after Gunner had been kidnapped and threatened with death himself by the infamous clan. Had there been any real closure to that experience—most specifically, the arrest and incarceration of all the individuals involved—it might have been easily forgotten. But with only one exception, the Defenders Gunner had dealt with were still out there somewhere, as faceless and anonymous as shadows on the sidewalk, and so were free to make good on the promise they had made him that he would now and forever be under their watchful eye, on the off chance he should someday foolishly choose to lock horns with them again.

So far, that day had failed to come. Not because Gunner had actively avoided it in any tangible way, but because fate had merely deemed it so. Now, however, a second meeting with the Defenders seemed a very likely eventuality. He had been able to dismiss Wally Browne's initial suspicions that the DOB was behind Sparkle Johnson's harrassment without much difficulty, baseless as they had been at the time, but now those suspicions would have to be reassessed. Jarrett Nance had seen to that.

It wasn't a pleasant thought.

Gunner called Lilly away from the other customers in the house, and when she came back around the bar to reach him, told her to pour him something lethal.

“It's like that, huh?” she asked, eschewing a shot glass to fill a tumbler halfway to the top with Wild Turkey.

“Oh, yeah. Bad news doesn't come any badder.” He grabbed the glass before she could push it toward him, downed a good swallow of the bourbon like it was Diet Coke.

“Should I bother to ask what the problem is?”

Gunner shook his head. “You don't wanna know.”

“Would a little good news help?”

Gunner grunted. “Good news? What's that?”

Lilly grinned, took a business card out of her apron pocket and handed it to him. “Lady said to give this to you next time you came in. Maybe you remember her.”

The name on the card belonged to Brenda Warren, and it identified her as the public relations manager for a company in Torrance called Digiphonics. A short note was scribbled in blue ink on the back:

Sorry I missed you! Was hoping for some more stimulating “conversation” …

This was followed by her signature and what Gunner could only assume was her home phone number.

He stared at the card for a long while, Lilly having a wonderful time watching him wrestle with his conscience.

“When was she in?” Gunner asked.

“Last night. Came in around seven, I think, didn't leave till about eleven. When it was obvious you had other plans fortheevenin'.”

“She say anything else?”

“No. What the hell could she say? ‘Can you tell me when that big, handsome nigga I'd like to screw the pants off of might be in again?'” She threw her head back and laughed like a madwoman.

It was an amusing quip, but Gunner was in no position to appreciate it. He had had more than one extended thought about Brenda Warren since their meeting two nights ago, and discovering the feeling was mutual was not going to help him leave things at that. He had tried to tell Del and Lilly they were crazy to question his ability to remain faithful to Yolanda McCreary, unavailiable as she was to him for weeks at a time, but the truth was, they had known exactly what they were talking about. Yolanda had instilled in Gunner a need for sexual contact he hadn't known in years. The last thing he needed now was to be actively pursued by a fox like Brenda Warren.

“What's wrong, Gunner?” Lilly asked, her laughter having finally wound down to a mere grin. “That didn't make your day?”

Gunner looked at her, wondering why it was he considered this woman a friend, and not his worst enemy. “You're a very fat woman, Lilly. I ever tell you that before?”

The insult only cracked her up again. “Yeah, I know I'm fat. But I also know I'm beautiful, least to some people.”

“Sure you are. You've got that special kind of beauty. The kind woolly mammoths had before the Ice Age came and wiped 'em all out.”

“Ha! Fuck you!”

The big bartender waddled away, chuckling, not such a hard-ass that she couldn't see the humor in a joke made at her expense.

Gunner's meeting with his nephew Alred Lewis took place in the coffee shop of the Holiday Bowl bowling alley on Crenshaw Boulevard and Rodeo Road a few minutes after six that evening, just as he'd asked Del to arrange it. He expected this to be the last bit of work he would do on the Carlton Elbridge suicide case before turning his full attention to Sparkle Johnson and the Defenders Of the Bloodline. Tomorrow, barring a miracle, he would call Benny Elbridge and resign, saying he'd come to the same conclusion the police had about C.E. Digga Jones's death at the Beverly Hills Westmore Hotel two weeks ago: the kid had killed himself. Now that Desmond Joy had given the Digga a motive, mat appeared to be all but a certainty, especially since no evidence existed to suggest otherwise.