“So now you believe me, you gonna do anything about it?” the large black woman asked. “Or do I have to hire you for that? Like somebody who wasn’t fillin’ your glass three times a week for free, not so long ago?”
“You don’t have to do anything but stop bitching for five minutes and answer a few questions,” Gunner said. “You feel up to that?”
“Yeah. I feel up to it. What do you wanna know?”
“I want you to tell me again about that phone call you say J.T. received from Lou Jenkins’s man Jimmy Price. I want you to try to remember everything you may have overheard.”
Lilly told the story again, although it seemed even thinner the second time around. Someone had called the Deuce looking for J.T. several days before his death, and Lilly had answered the phone. An articulate young black man she could only assume was Price asked to speak to her husband regarding their “recent dialogue at the Kitchen,” Jenkins’s Lynwood restaurant and base of operations, and the ensuing conversation between the two men had been an ugly one. J.T. took the call behind closed doors and exploded, cursing like a madman, making wild threats. Most of what he said was unintelligible from where Lilly was forced to try and make it out, on the other side of an insulated wall and closed office door, but one thing, at least, was not: J.T. did not want Price or Lou Jenkins anywhere near his place.
“‘You motherfuckers stay away from my place!’ J. kept sayin’,” Lilly recalled, getting the attention of the parson in the booth by the window without particularly wanting it. “Over and over. ‘Stay the fuck away from my place, or I’ll have the police on your ass!’”
“But he never mentioned Price or Jenkins by name,” Gunner said.
“No.”
“Or the Deuce?”
The question took Lilly by surprise. She mulled it over for a moment, then shook her head. “No. I don’t think he ever said ‘the Deuce,’ specifically—now that you mention it.”
Gunner did some ruminating of his own before asking, “You ever see Price or Jenkins come in here? Would you know them if you served them?”
“Yeah, I’d know. You can’t live and work in this community without comin’ face-to-face with those two, ’ventually. They’re goddamn institutions.”
“But they’ve never been to the Deuce that you know of.”
“No.”
“How about the Kitchen? You or J.T. ever visit the Kitchen?”
Lilly shrugged. “A couple times. Once for dinner, once for lunch.”
“J.T. ever go there alone?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Gunner paused. “Can you think of any reason Jenkins might have to want to buy into the Deuce? Either partially or outright?”
Lilly shook her head. “No. This is a bar, baby, not a gold mine.”
And Jenkins couldn’t have been looking to open a new distributorship in the area: unless he had lost his lease, the record store only two blocks north on Vermont was his, lock, stock, and barrel, and anyone who wasn’t deaf, dumb, and blind knew it, the local authorities included.
“Then maybe J.T. wasn’t talking about the Deuce,” Gunner said.
Lilly started to ask him what he meant, but the door to the bar opened and someone invited himself in, catching her eye. It was Little Pete, the neighborhood hot-weapons merchant, a man whose diminutive size made “Little” seem too generous a name for him. Dressed like a Depression-era pencil salesman and sporting a face he refused to shave more than once a week, he looked as insolvent as ever.
“You’re late,” Gunner said.
“My mornin’ appointment ran long,” Little Pete said, coming closer. He could just see over the counter of the bar without standing on his tippy-toes. “How you doin’, Lilly?”
“I’m doin’ fine, Junior. And I’m gonna keep on doin’ fine, providin’ you ain’t brought no shit in here.”
“Who? Me? Carry firearms on my person? Never. That’s illegal, sister.”
“Have a drink and sit down a minute, Pete,” Gunner said, gesturing for Lilly to set the tiny man up at the far end of the bar. “I’ll be right with you.”
Little Pete nodded casually and followed Lilly to a distant stool, which he managed to climb before the bartender had intuitively filled the glass sitting there with the libation of his choice, Johnny Walker Red and Seven-Up. Perhaps feeling ignored, the Deuce’s only other customer, the overweight parson in the window booth, got up and walked out, and Lilly neither stopped him nor said good-bye.
“What’s he doin’ here?” the big woman asked Gunner upon her return, tilting her head in Little Pete’s direction. “He have somethin’ you need, all of a sudden?”
“Let’s just say I don’t feel safe in this world running around with just a comb in my pocket,” Gunner said. “If that’s all right with you.”
Lilly shrugged. “It’s your ass.”
“That’s right. It is.” He gave Little Pete a quick glance and went on. “Now. As I was saying. If Jenkins was after some place of J.T.’s, but the Deuce was of no use to him that we can see, then maybe he wasn’t after the Deuce at all. Maybe he was after something else. Some place else.”
“Some place else? Like what? Where? The Deuce is all we’ve got that’s worth anything.” She paused. “I mean, the market ain’t worth nothin’…”
She was looking past him at the rear of the club, seeing something that wasn’t really there.
“What market?” Gunner asked.
“J. bought it, last year some time. That old boarded-up Vons market on Manchester and Hoover, across from the fire station. He was gonna make one of those superstores of liquor out of it, he said, if we could ever scrape up enough money to get it into shape.”
“J.T. bought that dump?”
“Yeah. Real estate and J. never did mix too well, God bless the fool.”
“Anybody been using it, that you’re aware of? Are you leasing it out, or anything like that?”
Lilly shook her head. “Are you kiddin’? What’s anybody gonna use it for? Ain’t nothin’ in there but some shelves and stuff. I went there once right after J. bought it, and it’s worthless, like I said. Just an empty buildin’ with a fence around it.”
“You have a key to the fence? And the doors?”
“I think so. You want to see ’em?”
“Yeah, I would. Although I don’t think they’ll do either of us any good.”
Lilly stared at him. “Why not?”
“Because,” Gunner said, “the locks will have been changed by now. Unless I miss my guess.”
“I’ll get ’em for you anyway,” Lilly said, shrugging again, and disappeared into the back of the bar, behind the door marked Employees Only.
Finally, Gunner moved to Little Pete’s end of the bar and sat down. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Pete,” he said.
The short man lifted his shoulders indifferently. “Anything for a preferred customer. What can I do for you?”
“You can help me make it through the night, partner. It’s going to be a long one, I think.”
“That right?”
“Yeah.”
“How many players you expectin’ to see?”
“I don’t know. More than the legal limit.”
Little Pete pulled a makeshift catalog from one of his pockets and set it on the counter of the bar between them.
“In that case, may I make a few suggestions?” he asked.
“Please do,” Gunner said, pulling the catalog closer. “Please do.”
here was a lookout out front. He was supposed to be just a rummy killing time on the sidewalk, waiting for night to pass into day three steps from the gate of the chain-link fence surrounding the property, but he had shown Gunner more interest than he warranted when the detective made his first pass by the gate to look the place over.
He was a mop-headed, middle-aged man with a pungent aroma and a keen eye, dressed in a tattered pair of dungaree work pants and a polyester shirt with an oversized collar. The bag in his hand ha
d a bottle in it, and the bottle was more than a prop, because he was drunk. Too drunk to be taken for sober, but not drunk enough to miss anything important. He was going to be hard to get past.
Reaching this conclusion himself, approaching the lookout again as his trip around the block came to an end, Gunner decided not to try. The corner of Manchester and Hoover at two in the morning Saturday could not be described as dark, by any means, but the lot that interested the detective was, and traffic along both major boulevards was transient, at best. The gas station on the northeast corner of the intersection was open, but there were no cars at the pumps and the attendant was nowhere to be seen. Performed properly, an open mugging had a good chance of going unnoticed.
Gunner closed upon the tipsy lookout fast and dropped him with a right hand thrown from the hip. A blue Ford showing a strong disregard for the speed limit raced by on the northbound side of Hoover obliviously. Propped up against the chain-link fence, out cold, the lookout struck as unassuming a figure as ever.
Gunner’s hunch about Lilly’s keys had been right: none of them opened the padlock on the gate. He stopped pushing his luck and went around to the 88th Street side of the lot to jump the fence in relative obscurity.
The former Vons market Lilly had inherited was a vast, boarded-up, graffiti-covered mess, seemingly impossible to penetrate, but one door in the back still looked like a door: it was locked securely by dual padlocks, top and bottom, and was free of any crosshatched wood slats nailed across its face. Gunner shunned any further use of Lilly’s keys, undid the tape he had used to tie a stumpy tire iron to his right calf, and went to work on the door, compromising quiet for speed.
It took him a little over six minutes to get inside.
“They’re MK760s,” Sweet Lou Jenkins said.
He looked tired, but not uneasy. He was trim and fit, dressed to kill even at four in the morning, and his smooth, coffee-colored face seemed totally incapable of projecting distress.
But he was distressed.
It seemed to Gunner now that only five minutes had passed, but the reality was that it had been nearly two hours since he had entered the building to learn that somebody was paying the electric bill. The breaker panel he eventually located with the aid of a small flashlight had actually brought some overhead lights on, not that there was much to illuminate: a few rows of empty display cases, a barren freezer box with shattered glass in some of its doors …
And seven casket-like wooden crates stacked neatly in the middle of the floor.
Gunner already had two crates open and was setting aside the lid on a third when Sweet Lou made his entrance, Jimmy Price at his right hand, Mouse at his left. Price was wielding a gun.
“Nine millimeters, thirty-six rounds, fully automatic,” Jenkins elaborated, stepping forward to take one of the factory-fresh machine guns out of the crate Gunner had just opened. “Navy’s big on ’em, I understand.”
Gunner watched him fondle the weapon with the awkward touch of a novice and said, “I’m sure the Brothers will be, too.”
Price shook his head. “Some niggers just can’t be reasoned with,” he said, disgusted.
“We should’ve killed the wiseass motherfucker when we had the chance,” Mouse agreed, moving to pat Gunner down. He found nothing, shook his head at Price and Jenkins, and returned to his position beside the latter.
“You boys forgot your Halloween masks,” Gunner said. “Or do I have you confused with somebody else?”
“We called it doing you a favor,” Price said. “Disguising ourselves. The plan at the time was to let you live.” He shook his head again. “That’s not the plan anymore.”
“Amen,” Mouse said.
Jenkins put the automatic rifle back in the crate and eyed Gunner with grave disapproval. “I’m afraid you’ve investigated yourself right out of this life, Gunner. It took you a while, but you’ve finally become more valuable to us dead than alive. And for what? Really?”
“Just the truth,” Gunner said succinctly, having no other excuse to fall back on. “For whatever it’s worth.”
Jenkins grinned. “You think you know the truth?”
Gunner shrugged. “Enough to be dangerous. No pun intended.” He nodded toward the crates on the floor. “You’re selling guns to the Brothers of Volition. Guns you bought with Lewis Henshaw’s money, at a lower price per unit, of course.”
“Lewis Henshaw? The White is Right bullshitter running for Congress?” Jenkins laughed. “You think I stole money from that idiot to arm the Brothers of Volition?”
“You didn’t have to steal it. Your old college buddy Larry Stewart stole it for you. Or maybe Henshaw donated it willingly, I don’t know. I haven’t pieced that part together, yet.”
“I hope you can do it in the next ten minutes,” Price said, smiling. The pistol in his hand was the same chrome-plated Browning automatic he had flashed in Stan Ferris’s living room over a week ago.
“I could go on,” Gunner said, “but I’d need some help with a few details.”
“Such as?” Jenkins asked, amicably.
“Such as why you got involved in this mess to begin with. Why you set it all up.”
“Who says I did?”
“I’m giving you credit for having more imagination than Stewart. Maybe I’m wrong.”
Jenkins grinned. “Just for fun, let’s assume you’re not. You’re stuck for a motive, is that it?”
“You could say I’m stuck, yeah. Because there had to be more in it for you than the money. I mean, you made a few bucks on the deal, of course. Whatever premium you charged Mayes and the Brothers for the hardware, and anything Stewart or Henshaw may have tossed you for the boost to Henshaw’s campaign the Brothers will provide when and if they start flashing this stuff around. But we’re talking chump-change for an aristocrat like you. Walking money. You didn’t take the risks you have just for that.”
“Risks? I took no great risks. I based my play on careful calculation, Gunner, the same as I always do. I went to Roland Mayes and Larry Stewart with separate propositions perfectly suited to the needs and personalities of each. I offered Stewart a chance to lend some credence to his boy Henshaw’s ignorant admonitions about the Great Black Menace, and I offered Mayes the opportunity to assume a more literal role in the liberation of our people. No risk there. They could say yes, or they could say no, simple as that. Either way, I had nothing to lose, and everything to gain. Just as I do, even now.
“Because, believe it or not, I am just as tired of being somebody’s nigger in the underworld as you or anyone else may be of being one in the so-called straight world. My business is no different from any other in that respect, at least: I can only go so far up the administrative ladder or gain so much of my peers’ respect because of what I am, and how I am perceived. Which is why I will very much enjoy seeing Mayes and the Brothers raise some long overdue hell in the house of the Almighty White Man. It’s time somebody did. And the irony of a racist white pig like Henshaw footing the bill for the bullets appeals to me more than I can say.”
“A pity Buddy couldn’t see it the same way,” Gunner said.
“Yes. It is a pity. But what happened to Buddy, Buddy brought upon himself, because he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—find it in his heart to believe my good intentions. He had to second-guess and snoop around, to find things out he was bound to misinterpret. And in the end, he had to be foolish enough to try blackmail.”
“Blackmail?” At last, a revelation: Buddy Dorris dabbling in capitalism.
Jenkins was amused by his surprise. “Funny, right? He didn’t seem capable. One would think he’d have gone directly to Mayes with the news that Henshaw was subsidizing the Brothers’ arsenal and leave it at that. But Stewart showed me the note himself: it was badly misspelled and looked like it had been typed on one of those creaky manuals the Brothers use. Buddy knew how the guns had been paid for and wanted fifty thousand dollars to keep quiet about it. Can you imagine?”
“So you had him k
illed.”
Jenkins shook his head. “I didn’t do anything. He was blackmailing Stewart, not me. You think that filthy white boy worked for me?”
“His name was Townsend,” Gunner said.
“His name was shit! He was a whacked-out faggot that could have blown everything, but Stewart didn’t want to dispose of him. He thought he could just pay him off and forget about him. I convinced him otherwise.
“Unfortunately, my good friend Mouse here botched our first shot at the boy, and he went into hiding. We looked around for him, naturally, but we had to be discreet, and that hurt us. We were actually about to give up when you suddenly came on the scene, and then, of course, we got lucky.”
“I led you right to him,” Gunner said, bitterly.
“Yes. You did, didn’t you?”
“What about J.T.? Was he just an accident, or did Townsend have orders to take him and Buddy out together?”
Jenkins smiled. “That was just more good luck. One of life’s little coincidences. I was looking for a place to hold the guns the cops couldn’t connect me with, and someone mentioned this little gem. You heard I was getting nowhere trying to negotiate with Tennell outright, I suppose.”
Gunner nodded.
The grin on Jenkins’s face widened. “You’re not nearly as stupid as your reputation leads people to believe, are you?”
“No,” Gunner said. “Not nearly.”
Jenkins began to move about in a small circle, one hand caressing the other thoughtfully. “At another time, in another place, I may have been able to use a hardcase like you, Gunner,” he said. “There’s something to be said for having so pigheaded a man as yourself on one’s side, no matter how misguided or naive. I’m afraid, however, that we’ve missed our chance to cooperate, you and I. In fact, unless I’m greatly mistaken, I expect our relationship is about to turn quite ugly.
“Because it is obvious to me that you can only know what you do because you have either read, or seen, or actually come into the possession of some form of physical evidence pertaining to my arrangement with Larry Stewart—evidence my associates and I have been trying to locate for some time now. Do you know what I’m referring to?”
Fear of the Dark Page 15
