“I’m sorry to bother you,” Gunner said, “but my cousin was killed in the house there yesterday and I wonder if you’d answer a few questions for me.”
“Oh, no, no,” the old woman said, shaking her head while waving him away. “I no speak English, sorry.”
“No un poco?”
“No, no.” She smiled, her head still wagging from side to side.
Before Gunner’s disappointment could even sink in, somebody behind the old lady said, “Yo! Can I help you?”
A cholo in his early to mid-thirties had emerged from the house and was stepping off the porch to join them. He wore a short-sleeved, blue plaid shirt and a baggy pair of plaid shorts that fell damn near to his ankles. He had beach sandals on his stockinged feet, and his arms bore more ink than a morning newspaper.
“My mother don’t speak no English, bro. What the fuck you hasslin’ her for?”
He put himself squarely between Gunner and the old woman, pausing only for a moment to tell her, “Volver a la casa, mamá!”
“I wasn’t trying to hassle her,” Gunner said. “I was just asking—”
“She’s an old woman, she don’t know nothin’. Why don’t you go ask somebody else?”
It was liquor doing most of his talking—Gunner could tell that much from his breath alone—but he was angry more than he was drunk, and not because some mayate he didn’t know was annoying his mother. His was an old outrage, something that had been with him for a long time, and all Gunner was was a convenient excuse to let it off its chain for a while, rather than drink another beer to try and suppress it.
“Sure thing. No problem,” Gunner said.
“Goddamn right, no problem. Get the fuck outta here, asshole!”
The man’s mother was tugging on his left arm, trying to guide him away from Gunner and into the house, pleading, “Por favor, Gordito! Dejarlo solo, mijo!” But Gordito wasn’t moving, determined to stand his ground until Gunner had bitched up as ordered and skulked away, tail between his legs.
Only a few weeks ago, Gunner would have been happy to comply. His pride would have been easier to swallow, the shame of letting a bully like this think he’d sent Gunner home, crying to his own mother, no great burden to carry. But of late, Gunner wasn’t as prone to trade an ounce of dignity for a pound of common sense; his business was going south and his relatives were dying, and every affront to his self-esteem felt like another nail in his coffin.
“What, you didn’t hear what I said? Get the fuck off my property!”
The man named Gordito pulled out of his mother’s grasp to leap right in Gunner’s grille, likely planning to do nothing more than chest-bump him into submission. And Gunner drove a straight right hand into his face. The blow met his forward momentum head-on, making a sound all three people could hear. As his mother screamed, Gordito dropped to the ground like a ballast bag from a balloon, eyes rolling up in his head on the way down, and he didn’t get up.
While Gunner stood there watching, rubbing the knuckles of his throbbing right hand, the old woman fell to her knees to attend to her son, frantically imploring God in Spanish to spare his life. Gunner was certain her prayers were in vain—from all appearances, Gordito was dead—but then the fallen man’s eyes began to flutter and a finger on his left hand twitched, allowing both his mother and his assailant to feel a common sense of relief.
The two small children who’d been playing in the yard earlier now stood on the front porch, watching in wide-eyed terror and open-mouthed curiosity. The aged Latina Gunner assumed was their grandmother finally looked up at him, tears streaming down her weathered brown cheeks. “Vete, por favor! Mi hijo está enfermo! Largáte y déjanos en paz!”
Her words were lost on Gunner but not her meaning.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He slowly backed away, then turned to make a full retreat.
10
GUNNER DROVE FROM ZINA’S HOME to meet his uncle at Harbor UCLA with the idea they would talk over an early dinner in the hospital cafeteria, but Daniel Curry surprised him.
“To hell with the cafeteria. Let’s go get a drink.”
Leaving Daniel’s wife with Zina—only an act of God could have uprooted her—they found a steak joint with a bar a few blocks away and took the corner table farthest from the nearest patron. Little had been said between them before now, at the hospital or in Lilly Tennell’s Tahoe, short of a few words about Del’s daughter, whose condition had apparently changed only marginally for the better since Gunner had last checked. His uncle’s silence suited him, in any case. His mind was elsewhere, still trying to make sense of the altercation he’d had with Zina’s crazed, expansively tatted neighbor, Gordito.
What the fuck had been the fool’s problem? What had Gunner done to provoke him to such madness, and how could it have been worth all he had placed at risk? Because nothing less than his life had hung in the balance. It used to be a man could step to a stranger in anger without inviting death; fists would fly and blood would flow, but no one had to die. Those days had passed, however, and Gordito had to know it. Today, in this new America where hate speech was every citizen’s first line of defense and violence came right behind it, no insult was too trivial to answer with mere injury, and an argument was just a lead-in to a fatal exchange of gunfire. Restraint was for punks, and tolerance of any stripe—racial, religious, political—was an outmoded concept.
Ultimately, Gunner decided that both he and Zina’s deranged neighbor had been lucky. The latter, because one punch had been enough to extinguish Gunner’s anger, and the former, because Gordito hadn’t come off his front porch shooting, dispensing with conversation altogether.
“Well? What have you found out?” Daniel Curry asked, snapping his nephew out of his reverie.
He was an imposing-looking man under any circumstances, Gunner’s uncle, but in the dim crimson light of the restaurant, he appeared almost otherworldly. The temptation was great to tell the old man he hadn’t found out a thing, that he, Daniel Curry, had relieved Gunner this morning of all responsibility where Del was concerned. But Gunner wasn’t so far gone that this was anything more than a passing thought.
“I’ve found out Del was in money trouble. Both at work and at home. I don’t know how bad his situation was, exactly, but it was bad enough to have him seeing a doctor for ulcer-like symptoms and chewing antacid tablets like candy.”
“Never mind all that. Who cares if he had money trouble, we all have money trouble at times. I’m asking you what you’ve found out about my son’s murder.”
“Murder?”
“You heard me. All this talk—”
He was forced to stop as the bartender came by to take their drink orders.
“All this talk about him shooting his wife and daughter before killing himself is a damn lie,” Daniel Curry continued, the second they were alone again. “Del was murdered, Aaron, plain and simple, and if you can’t see that, you’re just as big a fool as that idiot police detective I’ve been arguing with all day!”
Gunner put down the water glass he’d just picked up, lest he do something with it he would instantly regret. “You think I want to believe it? That Del did what they say he did?”
“No, but—”
“He was more my brother than my cousin, Uncle. I loved him. I can’t see him killing himself, let alone trying to kill Noelle and Zina, any more than you can. But what we can see him doing and what all the evidence to this point says he did seem to be two different things.”
Del’s father dropped a fist on the table like the hammer of Thor. “I don’t give a damn about the evidence!”
“Then you’re the fool, not me. It was Del’s gun. Witnesses say he, Noelle, and Zina were the only three people in the house.”
“I don’t—”
“Listen to me!”
Their drinks arrived as heads all around turned their way. The two men held their tongues only long enough for the bartender to serve them and disappear again.
“Listen to me,” Gunner repeated, lowering his voice. “He called me to say he was sorry and then he took his own life. Whatever happened to Noelle and Zina, Del committed suicide; the coroner’s report is clear about that. If he didn’t shoot Noelle and Zina, what the hell was he apologizing for?”
He waited for his uncle’s answer. The old man merely sat there glowering at him, lips quivering, hands flat on the table.
“It’s a lie. You can’t make me believe it,” he finally said.
“I’m not asking you to believe it. All I’m asking you to do is prepare yourself and Corinne for the possibility. You won’t be able to help me find out the truth unless you do.”
“The truth?” Daniel Curry gave Gunner a skeptical look.
“I told you. I loved Del like a brother. I’ve got no reason to think the police aren’t doing their job, but I’m not about to take their word for what happened yesterday, either. I’m going to find out for myself how Del died—how and why. Not because you demand it, but because I demand it. I’m doing it for my peace of mind, not yours. Now, you can help me or get the hell out of my way, I don’t give a damn which. What’s it going to be, Uncle?”
His uncle studied him, trying to gauge his sincerity, and slowly nodded his head. He wasn’t a man for tears, Daniel Curry, but he was on the brink of them now.
“How can I help?”
“Del’s financial problems. Were you aware of them?”
“No. Who says he was having financial problems?”
Gunner told him what Del’s office assistant Viola Gates had reported about Del’s ailing business of late, and the similar story he had read in the family checkbook at Del’s home earlier that afternoon.
“Are you sure you didn’t know about any of this?”
“Yes, I’m sure. We never talked about money.”
“Then he never asked you for a loan of any kind.”
“Certainly not.”
“What about Corinne?”
“Corinne?”
“Is it possible Del borrowed money from her?”
“Without my knowledge? No. I handle all the finances in our home; my wife gets all her money from me.” He lifted his glass of scotch to his lips and sipped from it like a maiden at a church social.
“What about Del’s marriage? Were he and Noelle doing okay, as far as you knew?”
“Why ask me? You were the one living out here in California with the two of them, seeing them on a regular basis. Don’t you know?”
“I only know what Del let me see,” Gunner said defensively. “On the surface, they looked happy enough. But maybe there was more going on between them that he only felt comfortable sharing with you and his mother.”
“They had their fair share of troubles, certainly,” Daniel Curry said, under obvious duress. “But name me a married couple that doesn’t.”
“What kind of troubles, Uncle?”
“The usual kind. You know.”
“Let’s pretend that I don’t.”
The old man took another sip from his drink, stalling for time. “The boy was getting restless. His eyes were starting to wander.”
“Wander how?”
“You know what I’m saying. Do I have to spell it out? He was thinking about other women. Same way we all do, sooner or later.”
“You’re saying he was having an affair?”
“No. No! He was thinking it about it, I said. Just thinking about it.”
“And why was he thinking about it?”
“I just told you. Because we all think about it, eventually. Especially when our wives are leaving us little choice.”
“Excuse me?”
“You aren’t a married man. You wouldn’t understand. Wives are temperamental creatures. Their affections come and go like the wind. One day they love you and the next day they don’t. A good woman never rejects you for very long, but sometimes, even a good one will keep her distance for months. Especially if she’s going through the change.”
He drank some more scotch and Gunner did the same with his bourbon, piecing the puzzle of his uncle’s words together as best he could.
“So they weren’t having sex because Noelle was going through menopause, and Del was having a hard time coping. Is that it?”
“It is.”
“How long had it been? Since they’d last…you know.”
“I can’t tell you, exactly. And I’m not sure you have any right to know, in any case. But suffice it to say, to my knowledge, it had been a year at least, maybe even two.”
“Two years?”
Gunner was incredulous. He’d had no clue. Twenty-four months without sexual intercourse had never proven fatal to anyone, male or female, but it was the kind of drought men still young enough to care took hard. Del had only been fifty-seven, three years younger than Gunner, and as long as Gunner had known him, he had talked as good a sex game as anyone. Of course, talk was cheap, a eunuch could do it, yet Gunner couldn’t imagine his cousin doing all the crowing he’d done in Gunner’s presence over the last several months, let alone twenty-four, with Noelle rejecting his advances all the while. Del had seemed to love his wife too much to hide that kind of pain so well.
“I know what you’re thinking. No wife of yours would have ever done that to you,” Daniel Curry said. “Denied you what she promised would be yours for the asking, ’til death do you part, for weeks, months, years at a time. You wouldn’t have allowed it.
“Well, that’s what we all think in the beginning.” He downed the last of his drink in one swallow, finally resembling a man who knew how to handle his liquor. “And then we discover where the real power lies in a marriage.”
“Actually, I don’t know what I’d do if it happened to me,” Gunner said. “I suppose it would all depend on the woman.”
“Of course it would. And the woman in Del’s case was Noelle. Which should explain, if you knew her at all, why my son was so willing to wait for her to come around. Until very recently, anyway.”
“When he started thinking about having an affair.”
“Yes.”
“Was he angry at Noelle or just hurt?”
“I’d say a little of both. But more than either, he was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“That he’d lost her and might never get her back.”
Gunner let a moment pass before asking his next question. “How ugly did things get between them? Do you know?”
“Ugly? What do you mean by ‘ugly’?”
“I mean argumentative. Vindictive.” He added pointedly: “Violent.”
Daniel Curry recoiled from the word. “If you’re suggesting my son ever laid a hand on his wife in anger—”
“He loved her, but she wasn’t reciprocating, at least not physically. He was angry and hurt, by your own admission, and no doubt highly frustrated as well.”
“Del would never have hurt her. Never.”
Gunner interrupted his uncle again. “The idea that she might have some other reason for cutting him off—that she was seeing someone else, for instance—would have had to enter his mind at some point. And if she was—”
“No! Enough!” Daniel Curry exploded. “Del would never have abused Noelle. Not for any reason, in no way, shape, or form. He wasn’t that kind of man. He was a good man. A decent man. He was a loving husband and devoted father and…” His voice caught. “…a fine son. A fine son.”
The tears he’d been able to hold at bay until now finally came, but only under the old man’s silent and stubborn control. He turned his eyes to one side, away from his nephew’s gaze, and sucked in a breath, already fast at work reining in his emotions.
“I’m sorry, Uncle. I know this is hard.”
Del’s father faced him directly again, and said, “I don’t understand. It makes no sense. Why my boy? Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“If things had been that bad for him, he should have told us. Whatever he needed, we would have given it to him.”
> It was the same thought Gunner had been having, off and on, for almost two days now.
“You’re assuming what he needed was something you and his mother had to give. But maybe it wasn’t. May be what he needed was something nobody could have given him, short of Noelle.”
“’Pray,’ I told him. ‘Pray for strength. Pray for patience. She’s a good woman and she loves you. She’s just going through a rough time right now; she’ll find her way back home. Watch and see.’ ”
“She bought a gun,” Gunner said, putting it out there without preamble to see how his uncle would react.
“What? Who?”
“Noelle. I found it in a kitchen drawer at their place this afternoon.”
Gunner’s uncle considered the implications. “How do you know it was Noelle’s?”
“Because she tried to buy one from a mutual acquaintance of mine and Del’s three weeks ago. She must have found another seller when he turned her down.”
“I’m not following you.”
“The reason he turned her away was the condition she put on the sale: she didn’t want Del to know about it.”
Daniel Curry said nothing.
“Married women who buy guns they don’t want their husbands to know about are very often the victim of some kind of abuse, Uncle. If things between Noelle and Del were as bad as you describe, or worse—”
“It wasn’t her husband she was afraid of.”
Gunner stopped, surprised. “What?”
“Del and Noelle had been having a great deal of trouble with my granddaughter in recent months. Especially Noelle. From what I understand, she didn’t care for the kind of people the girl was associating with and wasn’t shy about saying so.”
“Are we talking about Zina’s boyfriends?”
“The men she was sleeping with. Yes. Noelle described them to my wife as dogs. Parasites who only wanted one thing from the girl.”
“And you think that’s why Noelle bought the gun? To protect herself from one of those parasites?”
“Like I said, she was in the habit of telling them to their faces what they were. Some took it in stride, but others responded violently. Once, even physically.”
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