“Where the fuck you come from?” he asked.
“I have a part-time job here. I paint the stripes on the pins. Do me a favor and step back some, will you? Give me some room.”
Gunner used the Ruger to say “please.”
Most backed up. “So I was right about your ass. You just after the buck. You just in this for the motherfuckin’ dollar!”
“And you’re not, right?” Gunner peered into the locker, keeping Most in his peripheral vision. What he saw didn’t make him drop the gun, but it did make him forget for a moment why he was holding it. It made him forget about a lot of things.
He had never seen so much cash in his life.
It wasn’t the kind you saw in banks, or in those all-star-cast, million-dollar-heist movies that were always turning up on TV. It wasn’t crisp and flat, freshly inked and bound in precise, uniform packets. This was street money. Stacks of it. Off-colored tens, twenties, and fifties; folded, spindled, and mutilated. Real money. The kind of which real dreams were made.
The note nestled among it—the lined sheet of paper somebody had ripped from a yellow legal pad that Gunner had fully expected to see—was just a blip on the radar screen of his mind, a once-critical piece of evidence reduced to relative insignificance.
“Jesus Christ,” Gunner said.
“How much you want?” Most was ever the practical negotiator. “There’s almost fifty G’s in there. You tell me what you want, it’s yours. All you gotta do is gimme the rest and let me be on my way.”
Gunner took a minute to make sure they had no new, inquisitive friends anywhere, finding the old man working the cash register still absorbed in “Wide World of Sports” and the three men out on the lanes still throwing gutter balls, then took the note from the locker and pushed the door to just enough to put its remaining contents out of sight and out of mind.
“And what about this?” the investigator asked, directing Most’s attention to the yellow sheet of paper in his hand.
“That comes with me,” the dealer said, not outlining a condition of the deal but stating a fact, irrefutable and non-negotiable. Then he caught himself, realizing he had made too much of something he wanted Gunner to think was unimportant, and tried to play it off by grinning and shrugging, saying, “Ain’t nothin’ any good to you, right?”
“I don’t know,” Gunner said. “Let’s see.”
He looked at the note for the first time. Exactly as Rookie Davidson had promised, it was a handwritten list of names and gang affiliations, nine in all:
“Top Cat” Collingsworth, Seven-and-Sevens.
“Li’l Ajax” Brown, Stormtroopers.
“Def-Mike” Page, Wall Streeters.
Russell Meadows, Rockin’ 90s.
“Late-Train” Anderson, Doom Patrollers.
“Casper-Gee” Brown, Little Tees.
“Two-Jay” Williams, Gravediggers.
Toby Mills, Imperial Blues.
“Nite-Train” Brooks, Double-K Gangsters.
All the names looked familiar; all had no doubt come from Darrel Lovejoy’s notebook. The list was precisely what Gunner had hoped for, and just as he had envisioned it, with one surprising, notable exception: it hadn’t been written by Teddy Davidson.
The inimitable calligraphic style displayed here, Gunner had seen before, on flyers and in ledgers, memo books and calendar pages, check stubs and business cards, all scattered about a cluttered office on the third floor of a crumbling medical building on Hoover and 112th. It was the very same handwriting that filled the book whence the names in question had been taken: Darrel Lovejoy’s.
“Shit,” Gunner said angrily. Another wrench had been thrown into the machine, and his precious one-upmanship was now just that much further out of reach.
He slammed the locker door shut all the way, sealing the money inside, and spun the dial on its face a few times to secure it. Most didn’t know what this meant, but he knew he didn’t like the looks of it.
“All right, all right, what’s happenin’?” he asked.
“Outside,” Gunner said. “Right now.”
“Where we goin’? What about your money?”
“I’m not worried about the money. It’s not going anywhere.”
“Shit, neither am I ’til I find out where we goin’.”
“We need to talk, Whitey. Just you and me. I know a nice quiet place where the drinks are free and the conversation comes easy. How’s that sound to you?”
“Like a ripoff,” Most said, but he started for the door all the same.
The first thing Mickey Moore said when he saw them was, “Now there’s a man needs a haircut!”
He was talking about Whitey Most, thinking the dealer was just some new business Gunner had drummed up for him but then he saw the Ruger pinned hard against Most’s ribs and the “Cut the shit” look on Gunner’s face, and he knew that wasn’t the case. Naturally, the place was packed with the usual Saturday-afternoon crowd, much to Gunner’s chagrin: They had to weave their way through seven men, not counting Mickey, to get to Gunner’s work space in the back. Everybody noticed the gun, of course, despite the detective’s efforts to hurry Most along, but that couldn’t be helped. Mickey had a back door, too, just like Lilly Tennell’s Acey Deuce, only his was locked and boarded up, in deference to the thieves who had used it to break into the shop five times in the past two years.
Moore put down his scissors and stuck his head through the curtain after them, as Gunner had figured he would, but Gunner just said, “It’s okay, Mickey,” and the barber went away, a snoop who knew how to take a hint. He and his small army of customers created a dull roar debating the possible meanings of what they had just seen, but there were no more interruptions.
A desk, a couch, two chairs, a desktop reading lamp, and a wastepaper basket—that was still the extent of Gunner’s office. It all looked pretty feeble in the dark, and turning on the reading lamp did little to improve it. Still, Most took the chair in front of the desk, Gunner took the chair behind it, and they both made the best of it.
“You said somethin’ ’bout drinks,” Most said, slightly agitated. He was still looking down the unfortunate end of a German-made 9-millimeter automatic, yet his first priority was getting something to drink. He was as bad as Rookie Davidson.
“When we’re finished,” Gunner said. He could have explained that when he had made Most the promise of “free drinks,” he had had the Acey Deuce on his mind, but he felt like Most should have figured that out. He had been right there when Lilly had turned them away, less than ten minutes ago, closing the Deuce’s back door in their faces, saying, “Not two days in a row, no, no, no, no! This ain’t no goddamn speakeasy!”
“Finished what?” Most asked.
“Filling in the blanks. What else?”
“Man, make some sense.”
“I’m talking about the list, Whitey. I want you to tell me about it.”
“The list?”
“The list of gangbangers. Dead gangbangers. The one I just took out of your locker at the bowling alley. That list.”
Most said nothing. Recognition did not register on his mottled face.
Gunner shook his head and said, “You tell me you want to make a deal, and then you don’t talk to me. What kind of shit is that?”
“Look, man, why you gotta know ’bout the list? What the hell do you care ’bout it?”
“Because it’s mine now, Whitey. It doesn’t belong to you anymore, it belongs to me. Assess the situation at hand and I think you’ll see what I mean. All the options are mine. I can turn you over to the cops right now and make myself fifty thousand dollars richer, or I can listen to you tell me what I want to know and maybe forget the fifty grand is even there.”
“Forget it?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Forget it.”
“Shit. I’m s’posed to believe you’re gonna forget about fifty motherfuckin’ grand?”
“Look at it this way: The money’s there for me to take no matter w
hat you do. You decide to cooperate and clear some things up for me, maybe the money’ll be there the next time you go to look for it, and maybe it won’t. On the other hand, you waste another five minutes of my time with this deaf, dumb, and blind routine, and you can kiss your money goodbye. Guaranteed. I’ll go into the Fox Hills Mall tomorrow and make like I just hit the big six in Lotto.”
Most still had to think about it. Watching him sit there, bitterly ruminating, it occurred to Gunner that he looked not unlike a man trying to decide whether he wanted his left arm lopped off at the shoulder, or his right.
Finally, with much reluctance, he said, “What about the list?”
Gunner smiled. Now you’re being smart, the smile said. “Let’s start with why the people on it, with one or two notable exceptions, are all dead.”
Most shrugged, as if the answer to his question was self-evident. “They’re ’bangers. What else do ’bangers do ’cept die?”
“You mean they were murdered.”
“Yeah.”
“By Teddy Davidson, maybe?”
“Who the fuck tol’ you that?”
Gunner shrugged himself. “Nobody keeps a list of dead people unless they’re an undertaker or a murderer. Davidson’s in the retread business.”
“Who says it was his note?”
“Somebody making a lot more friends downtown than you are here. Somebody who knows the value of a good rapport with his local law-enforcement professionals. Somebody who was with you the night you broke into Davidson’s garage and got your hands on the note in the first place.”
“Rookie? You gonna believe him?”
“I’m going to believe whoever tells the most complete story. One with a beginning, middle, and end. Just like the cops. You think this is the last time you’re going to have to cope with all these asinine questions? Get real. In the next couple of days, you’re going to be answering them in your sleep. May as well get a little practice in now.”
“Okay, so it was Davidson’s note. So?”
“So how did you know to look for it?”
“Look for it? Shit, I wasn’t ‘lookin” for it. I was just lookin. Lookin’ for somethin’. Somethin’ like, you know, incriminatin’. Somethin’ to prove what I seen.”
“And just what did you see?”
The dealer shrugged yet again, smiling at his good fortune. “I seen the Rook’s big brother waste a homeboy. That’s what I seen. Little cat name’ Casper-Gee. Casper-Gee, the Tee.” He chuckled. “Over on Colden Avenue, by Avalon. Man made it look like a drive-by, thought there wasn’t nobody ’round to see it, but I seen the whole goddamn thing.”
“When was this?”
He paused to think about it. “Two, three months ago.”
“If it was a drive-by, how did you know it was Teddy Davidson?”
“I seen the motherfucker’s face. I was in the ride ’cross the street, doin’ a little taste, an’ I looked right at ’im. Right at ’im. Him, though, he never seen me. He wasn’t thinkin’ ’bout me. It’s like I’m tellin’ you, man had everything scoped, planned real nice. ‘Gee, he was just standing on the corner, alone, like he was waitin’ for a fuckin’ bus or somethin’. Davidson come down the street, stop, boom! boom! boom!, then takes off. Gone. Perfect. He’s thinkin’ the coast is clear. ’Cept I seen the fool’s face. The jig was up.”
“You knew Davidson at the time?”
“Yeah, I knew him. ’Fore I got my Maxima—” The thought of his pearl white Nissan Maxima—the low-slung, wide-tracked, powerful beauty that was now, after Rookie Davidson’s bumpercarlike pummeling, probably nothing more than a four-wheeled slab of twisted metal rotting away in some LAPD impound yard in the San Fernando Valley—stopped him cold. He had to squint—biting the bullet—before he could go on. “’Fore I got my Maxima, I use’ to buy all my tires over at his place. Ted’s Tires. He was always in there, servicin’ with a smile. You couldn’t miss his ass.”
“So what happened after the drive-by?”
“Didn’t nothin’ happen. I lay back. I think about it. I ask myself how I can make this fresh information I got pay off. You know. Make it profitable. And I think, if I go to the man and just say, ‘I seen what you did, ante up,’ he’s gonna laugh in my face. He’s gonna say, ‘Your word against mine, blood,’ and there you go. There it is. My word against his, that’s all it’d be, and why the Man gonna wanna believe me? So I think about it, I keep thinkin’ ’bout it, and I re’lize I got to wait. I got to wait ’til I got more than my word ’fore I go to the man and give it up, tell him what I know, tell him what I seen. Wait ’til I got somethin’ he gotta deal with, somethin’ he gotta take serious.”
“So you talked Rookie into letting you into his office to look around.”
“Yeah. I thought, maybe the gun’d be in there, or somethin’. I was just lookin’. Hopin’. Then, I seen the list. I see homeboy’s name on it: Casper-Gee. My man Toby’s, too. And I figure, this gotta be it. I don’t know what the fuck it means, but this gotta be it, right? Gotta be. So we book up, right there. Just like that. Now I got the list. Now I got somethin’. ’Cept I don’t know what I got! It’s a list, yeah, got homeboy’s name on it, and shit, but what the fuck’s that prove? First thing the cops gonna ask me, right? ‘What the fuck’s that prove, Whitey?’
“So I wait again. I wait. Every day, I’m lookin’ at the list, readin’ it over and over, trying to find somethin’ in there, somethin’ I can use. And then it hits me: Russell Meadows, that boy’s dead, too! Right? Russell Meadows, he used to run for a partner of mine; cat talked about Russell for a week when homeboy got killed. Somebody rolled on him, the cat say. Rolled on him!
“Okay. Now, see, I think I’m finally catchin’ on. Now, I think I’m finally gettin’ the picture. So I do me some ‘investigatin’.’ I start askin’ around a little. Droppin’ names. Very discreet, like. Top Cat. Def-Mike. Late-Train. Li’l Ajax …”
“And you find out they’re all dead.”
Most nodded his head. “All of ’em. All dead, all rolled on. ’Cept for the last three. Toby and a couple other homeboys. Them, the man ain’t got to yet, I figure. So now I understand. Now I see what I’m dealin’ with. Everything Rookie ever said ’bout his brother, ’bout his temper and his hard-on for gangbangers, it all fits, way I look at it. He’s crazy. Crazy. Motherfucker’s jackin’ Cuzzes! Cuzzes, Hoods, Tees, Troopers, goddamn Rockin’ 90s! Any of them sets found out what he’s doin’, he wasn’t gonna live to fuckin’ regret it!
“So there it is. I got what I need, now. I got a motherfuckin’ ballbreaker. I come down on Teddy with this, I know he’s gonna shit in his pants.”
“And ‘ante up.’”
“Yeah. And ante up.”
“That where the fifty grand came from?”
Most pondered not answering that one, then decided it wasn’t worth quibbling about. “Most of it.”
Gunner took a deep breath and said, “So when did you find out that it wasn’t Davidson’s list that you had? That somebody other than Davidson had written it for him?”
“Somebody other than him? Like who?”
“Like Darrel Lovejoy, Whitey. Remember him?”
Most didn’t want to remember. They were getting around to the more damaging elements of his story and he was losing his enthusiasm to tell it.
Gunner was unsympathetic. “Ever hear of Sears, Whitey? ‘Where America Shops.’ Everything you could ever want in life is right there, and all at very reasonable prices. Clothes, furniture, the works. Can you imagine how much shit I could buy at Sears with fifty thousand dollars? Do you know what a vacant wasteland I could make out of the appliance department alone with that kind of money to spend?”
“I seen one of them flyers of Love’s one day,” Most said abruptly, almost regretfully. “The ones he be nailin’ all over the goddamn place, talkin’ ’bout the Peace Patrol this, and the Peace Patrol that … and somethin’ just … clicked. I don’t know what else to call it. Million times I seen thos
e flyers, and I didn’t never make the connection. I knew there was somethin’ familiar ’bout the letterin’ on the list, but I couldn’t never put my finger on it. Then, one day, I see this flyer, I see the letterin’, and I got it. I got it. Like, there it is.”
“You figure Davidson’s doing the killing, but Lovejoy’s the man who put him up to it.”
“Yeah. He’s the one gotta deal with them hardheads every day, right? I figure, man’s just tryin’ to make his job a little easier. Gettin’ some flunky like Teddy Davidson to take some of the most crazier motherfuckers off the street, out of his way.”
“So you looked him up, just as you did with Davidson, even though Davidson was already paying you to keep quiet.”
Most didn’t answer.
“And that’s where it all went wrong. You saw a second fat calf in Lovejoy and went for it. You got greedy. Only this time, it didn’t pay off. It wouldn’t have figured to. Lovejoy was a hard nut; he couldn’t have done the kind of work he did and be anything less. You thought he’d roll over as easily as Davidson had, but he wasn’t that gullible. Chances are good he told you to take your list of names and shove it up your ass.”
Most laughed now, finding something incredibly amusing in the memory. “He tried to treat me like one of his homeboys. One of them runny-nose little suckers he could just say ‘boo’ to and get ’em to jump, give it all up an’ go home. He wasn’t thinkin’ straight. Man would’ve been thinkin’ straight, he’d’ve known I couldn’t just let it go at that. ‘He don’t wanna pay, forget it.’ How the hell was I gonna forget it? How the hell was I gonna keep his partner Teddy flyin’ right if he ever found out I let Love slide, just let ’im tell me to go fuck myself and walked off? Shit. What’d the man think I was gonna do?”
“Maybe he didn’t care. Maybe he figured all you could do was take whatever you’d gotten out of Davidson and consider yourself lucky. He would have been smart enough to know you couldn’t go to the police without blowing even that.”
“Smart? He was a goddamn fool! Shit I had on him and Teddy was worth more than some jive-ass fifty thousand dollars! They was killin’ gangbangers, man! Homeboys off the streets! Wasn’t no way I was gonna just walk away! Take fifty thousand sorry-ass dollars and make myself happy with it.”
Not Long for This World Page 20
