When Last Seen Alive

by Gar Anthony Haywood

  “I didn’t know if you would or not. I just knew you’d never agree to help me if you knew who Tommy was up front.”

  “So you lied to me.”

  “I took a chance that whatever happened to Tommy last October had nothing to do with his troubles back in Chicago. That you’d be able to find him without ever learning who he was or what he had done.” She wiped her eyes with both hands, shook her head forlornly. “In retrospect, I can see that I must have been dreaming.”

  Gunner didn’t say anything for a long time, letting her squirm while he decided what to do. “Okay. Now that we both know the score, let’s start over. I’m going to need you to tell me everything you can about the scandal. Everything you can remember.”

  It wasn’t what McCreary had been expecting him to say. “I don’t …”

  “As it sounds like you’ve just figured out, whatever happened to your brother probably didn’t happen to Elroy Covington, Ms. McCreary. It happened to Thomas Selmon. The internationally disgraced newspaper man. And right now, all I know about Selmon is what the media were saying about him five years ago.”

  “But I thought—”

  “That I’d walk on you once I found out who he was. Yeah, I know, you said that.”

  McCreary appraised him skeptically, said, “You’re saying you still want to help me? Even though Tommy’s dead?”

  “Call me stupid, but yeah. I do. But not just because I’m a prince among men. I’ve got reasons of my own for sticking this thing out.”

  “Really? Like what?”

  “Like the job you paid me to do’s not finished yet, for one thing. And it won’t be until I find your brother’s body, prove for a fact that he’s dead, just as that photo tonight suggested.”

  “And?”

  “And this thing is personal with me now, needless to say. Somebody tried to kill me tonight, remember?”

  “I’m sorry, but I still don’t understand. Most black people hate Tommy for what he did, Mr. Gunner. Why don’t you?”

  “Hate Thomas Selmon?” Gunner shook his head. “I don’t have that kind of energy to waste. Your brother wasn’t evil—he was sick. To run the game on people he did, he would’ve had to be.”

  McCreary turned her gaze downward, onto the hands folded gently upon her lap, and nodded almost imperceptibly. “Yes. That’s very true.”

  Gunner gave her a moment, then said, “Tell me about him, please.”

  Of all the things Thomas Roosevelt Selmon was good at, nothing came easier to him than lying.

  From the age of four, he could lie about himself, his family, even strangers on the street with total and complete alacrity, and he could do so for reasons of supreme importance, or for no reason whatsoever. Mostly, as his big sister Yolanda now recalled, it was the latter.

  Selmon didn’t mean anything by it; it was just his way of getting by. Truth could open a lot of doors, Selmon knew, but a well-told lie often opened them wider and faster than the mere truth alone. So lies were simply tools to him; devices with which to make his life easier, more hassle-free. And trying to acquaint him with the immorality of the practice was an exercise in pure futility.

  In his youth, Selmon lied spontaneously and impulsively, with little or no regard for consequence. But later, as he began to understand the value of timing and discrimination, he learned to reserve his fabrications for only those occasions when there was something tangible to be gained. An honor or a prize he could not win honestly, or a punishment he was desperate to escape.

  By the time he was twenty, Tommy Selmon was a master of the big lie. Having graduated from Illinois State with honors, embarking on a promising career in journalism as a cub reporter for a small black newspaper in Rockford, he was one of the world’s greatest purveyors of falsehood and deceit—and only those closest to him knew it. Which was the true test of a liar, after all: invisibility. The lack of a liar’s crippling reputation. For all the empty promises and counterfeit history that had fueled all but a few of his successes, Tommy Selmon was looked upon by almost everyone who knew him as a man who could be trusted—and that made him very dangerous indeed.

  Still, his potential for destruction wasn’t fully realized until he reached the age of twenty-six, fifteen months after he was hired to cover the inner city for the Chicago Press Examiner. A brilliant, gut-wrenching series of stories Selmon had written about a black, twenty-something Chicago drug dealer named Zero had won the Press Examiner the coveted Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism for 1991—then brought the paper endless shame and ridicule when Selmon was forced to confess the stories had no basis in fact. Zero had been a figment of Selmon’s imagination, his knee-jerk reaction to the growing pressure the paper’s editorial staff had been placing on him for months to deliver hard-hitting urban crime stories. In the fallout of Selmon’s confession—made only after his employers had amassed enough evidence of his deception to all but render a confession moot—Martin Keene, the highly respected Press Examiner editor who had personally hired Selmon, was fired, a second editor resigned in disgrace, and Selmon himself was publicly flayed and vilified by news media around the world.

  No one attacked him with greater fervor and tenacity, however, than his fellow African-American journalists.

  For Selmon’s incredible fraud had shamed them all. In the arena of American journalism, where the abilities and credentials of black newswriters were already under constant scrutiny, Selmon’s deception served only to reinforce the popular notion that writers and reporters of color could not be counted on to deliver the goods. That their work was not only subpar, but of dubious integrity and reliability. Selmon’s winning of the Pulitzer Prize had promised to free black journalists from the shackles of this myth forever, and when it was stripped from his grasp like the colors from the breast of a court-martialed war deserter, it was stripped from them all.

  Had Selmon only been able to acknowledge this, to understand it enough to offer his wounded peers some form of apology, the call for his blood might not have been so resounding. But Selmon could do neither. He could not openly regret the damage he had done to others because he could not fathom it. The idea that his fate was tied to that of other black men and women like himself was not only against his wishes, but completely beyond his comprehension. Because Tommy Selmon didn’t want to be black, and never thought of himself as such. The Selmon family’s upper-middle-class existence had always allowed him to gravitate toward the white man’s side of the world—white schools, white friends, white lovers—and the experience had rendered him all but blind to the reality of his own ethnicity. He didn’t reject his blackness, exactly—he simply erased it from his consciousness, like a physical defect he chose to ignore.

  It was this crime of self-delusion and insensitivity, in the end, that finally drove him into hiding.

  For once the scandal he had created made him the focus of national and international attention, and his life became the subject of endless newspaper stories and magazine articles, his misguided disinclination to accept what he was—a black man in a white man’s world—was exposed for all to see, bringing the wrath of black America down upon him like a rain of fire.

  Twenty-two days after his highly publicized firing from the Chicago Press Examiner, Tommy Selmon went underground, where he disappeared from public view forever.

  Two weeks after that, in a small motor vehicle office in St. Louis, Missouri, a man named Elroy Covington was created to take his place.

  “Well, I guess now we know what kind of book he was thinking about writing,” Gunner said when Yolanda McCreary’s story had come to an end.

  “What? Oh, yes. I guess we do, don’t we?”

  “His side of the story would have been worth a few dollars on the open market, even after five years. That poor literary agent he called in New York should’ve been in to take his call.”

  McCreary just nodded silently.

  “Who all knew about your brother’s new identity besides you?”

  “Besid
es me? No one. I was the only one who knew. Tommy wrote me a letter from St. Louis right after he got there, telling me how he’d changed his name and where he could be reached, but he made me promise not to tell anyone else. Reporters, especially.”

  “And you never did?”

  “No.” She shook her head slowly from side to side, looking as sad and tired as an abandoned child.

  “What about other members of the family? You said earlier you were Tommy’s only living relative, but was that the truth, or …?”

  McCreary shook her head again, embarrassed, and said, “We have a baby sister, Irene. She lives in Springfield. Springfield, Missouri. But I’m sure she never knew anything about Tommy’s whereabouts. She didn’t want to know. Like our father did before he passed away, she despises Tommy for what he did, she doesn’t want anything more to do with him.”

  “Maybe she felt that way before. But it’s been five years. People’s minds change.”

  “Not Irene’s. That girl’s as bitter now as she ever was.”

  “You don’t think Tommy ever tried to contact her anyway?”

  “No. Irene would have told me if he had.”

  “What about old friends? Somebody Tommy worked with at the paper, perhaps?”

  “Those people weren’t Tommy’s friends, Mr. Gunner. When he needed their support, they all turned their backs on him. None of them could be trusted to keep his new life a secret, and he knew it.”

  “Still, he must have been tempted. After five years …”

  McCreary shook her head, said, “Tommy was very comfortable with his life in St. Louis. He wasn’t at first, of course, but in time he learned to be. He wouldn’t have jeopardized it all just to get in touch with some old friend at the newspaper.”

  “Just the same, I don’t suppose you’d know if any of the people we’re talking about ended up here in Los Angeles, would you?”

  “I wouldn’t have any idea about that, no. I never knew any of those people myself. But why—” She cut herself off, answering her own question before she could even voice it. “Oh. You’re thinking maybe that’s what brought Tommy out here from D.C.”

  Gunner shrugged. “It’s a thought.” He thought McCreary might want to expand on the idea, but she showed no interest. He decided to let it go. “And Tommy’s wife? Does she know who he really is?”

  “Oh, yes, of course. After they’d been married a couple of years, he told Lydia everything. They were about to have their first child, and he wanted to be sure she wouldn’t run out on him if she found out on her own.”

  “So how’d she react?”

  “About the way you might expect. Tommy said she was horrified. But fortunately, she loved him, and she was pregnant with his baby, and she believed him when he told her that he wasn’t the same person he used to be, that more than his name had changed since he’d moved to St. Louis. And that was really true, Mr. Gunner. Tommy was a changed man. It might have taken him too long to see it, but he finally understood how wrong his actions had been in Chicago, and how many innocent people he’d hurt with his lies.”

  Good for him, Gunner wanted to say, but didn’t. Instead, he shifted gears, asked McCreary if the initials DOB meant anything to her.

  “DOB? No.” She shook her head again. “Why do you ask?”

  “Apparently, Jack Frerotte received five thousand dollars from somebody with those initials about the time your brother disappeared. Two grand before, and three right after. There may be no connection, but I’m inclined to believe there is.”

  “DOB?” She stopped to think, eyes focused straight ahead on nothing in particular, then shook her head one more time. “I’m sorry, no. I can’t think of anyone with initials like that.”

  “What about an acronym? For an organization, or a group of some kind?”

  Again, McCreary considered the question in silence for a moment, then shook her head. “No,” she said. “You think this DOB paid Frerotte to murder my brother, is that it?”

  “It’s beginning to look that way, yeah,” Gunner said.

  “Why? For what reason?”

  “I won’t know that until I know who or what this DOB is. Or until Frerotte recovers enough from his injuries to talk to either me or the police, if he’s so inclined.”

  “But you think it had something to do with Tommy’s problems in Chicago, you said.”

  “That seems like a safe bet, doesn’t it? Unless there was more to your brother’s role as Elroy Covington than anyone’s made me aware of yet.”

  Recognizing a thinly disguised question when she heard one, McCreary said, “As far as I know, Mr. Gunner, Tommy’s life in St. Louis was just as innocuous as it appeared to be. Tommy liked it that way.”

  Gunner nodded, reviving the headache he’d been presented with down in Jack Frerotte’s basement. Watching him rub the back of his head with one hand, wincing, McCreary asked if he’d like her to go get him some ice.

  “No thanks. I’m on my way out.” He stood up.

  “What are you going to do?” McCreary asked, getting to her own feet.

  “Go home and get out of these clothes, for one thing. Shower and get some sleep, for another. After that, I don’t know. I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

  McCreary walked him to the door, held it open for him as he stepped out into the hall. “If you want, I can call Lydia and Irene, ask if either of them knows who this DOB could be,” she said.

  “That would be helpful, thanks,” Gunner said.

  “You said you couldn’t see the face in the photograph. The one you said you found in this man’s house—Frerotte, was it?—before it burned down.” She paused. “Should I take that to mean there’s still a chance my brother’s alive?”

  Gunner had hoped she wouldn’t ask the question, disliking the answer he knew he would have to give her. “You want my professional opinion, or a more optimistic one?”

  “I’d prefer the professional one, of course. But I think I just heard it, didn’t I?”

  Gunner nodded, grateful that nothing more needed to be said. He was hurting and needed sleep, and the anger he had come here with was all used up, leaving him drained and listless.

  “Thank you for your honesty, Mr. Gunner. Good night,” McCreary said.

  Gunner watched her close the door on him, then quickly walked away.

  On the long ride home, he thought about her terry cloth robe, and the smooth, well-rounded body it enveloped.

  It was a small pleasure, and one that he could only now enjoy. Lusting after his client while breaking the news of her brother’s death would have been inexcusable, the conduct of a boor. And had he allowed himself to contemplate what she looked like in such a partial state of dress, how badly he was starting to want her, while she was still within reach …

  Better that he go to bed tonight with the mere hope of someday being with her, than the knowledge that he never would.

  Proud, then, to have proven himself yet again a man of tremendous moral character, he drove straight home, went directly to his lonely bedroom, and found two messages waiting for him on his answering machine there. The first one was from Mickey, informing him that Sly Cribbs had been looking for him, and that Mickey had given the kid Gunner’s number at home—he hoped that was okay. The second message, predictably, was from Sly himself.

  “Yo, Mr. Gunner. I got ’em. I got the pictures.” Sly laughed. “Wait ’til you check this shit out. You’re not gonna believe it. Man, it is wack! I’m havin’ the prints developed now. I’ll bring ’em by your office first thing in the mornin’. Peace.”

  Gunner wasn’t sure he could wait until morning to hear the details, but the clock on his nightstand said it was well after midnight, no time to be calling the kid’s household and raising his mother out of bed. Sly was probably in enough trouble for disappearing on his mom earlier as it was.

  So Gunner just showered and went to bed as planned, unaware that neither Sly nor his mother would have been available to take his call, even if he
had chosen to make it.

  seven

  MICKEY SAID, “TELL ME WHAT I HEARD THIS MORNIN’ AIN’T true. Tell me Jack Frerotte’s house didn’t burn down last night.”

  “We’ll talk about it later, Mickey. I’m busy right now.”

  “I’m the one got you the keys to the man’s house, Gunner. If I’m about to go to jail for that—”

  “Nobody’s going to go to jail, Mickey. Now, get the hell out of here, please, I’m waiting for somebody.”

  “You’re waitin’ for somebody? That’s why you’re sittin’ back here in the dark? Because you’re waitin’ for somebody?”

  “That’s right. If Sly Cribbs comes in, send him straight back, will you?”

  But Sly Cribbs never did come in, and he didn’t call, either. Gunner waited for him patiently right up until 10 o’clock, then tried to reach the kid by phone at home. It was like trying to get someone to answer the pay phone in a boarded-up gas station.

  Gunner didn’t get it.

  Then Matt Poole called, and it all made sense.

  “You’re on some kind of roll, partner,” the cop said dryly.

  In no mood for his repartee, Gunner said, “Every phone call has a point, Poole. You wanna tell me the point of this one?”

  “You’ve got another friend in the hospital, Gunner. That’s what.”

  Gunner sat upright in his chair, said, “Not Sly Cribbs.”

  “Then he is a friend of yours. She isn’t just makin’ it up.”

  “Who?”

  “The kid’s mother. Charlotte Cribbs.”

  “Tell me what happened, Poole. No more bullshit, all right?”

  “You better come down here and see for yourself. Kid’s in a pretty bad way.”

  “Where?”

  “Daniel Freeman ICU. Just follow the red stripe on the floor, you can’t miss it.”

  Gunner said he was on his way.

  In a contest of who had the most medical hardware keeping them alive, Sly Cribbs would have undoubtedly beaten Jack Frerotte by a landslide.

  In the dark, silent spaces of his room in ICU, the kid looked like something out of a sci-fi movie: smothered in gauze, encircled by instruments, wires and tubes and IV lines fanning out from his body like the tendrils of Medusa’s crown. The only indication that a living being lay at the center of all this chaos was the languid beeping of the machines tracking Sly’s vital signs.