It’s Not a Pretty Sight
An Aaron Gunner Mystery
Gar Anthony Haywood
A MysteriousPress.com
Open Road Integrated Media Ebook
For Connie and Cheryl
The Roads Not Taken
summer
1978
“HE’S GOING TO KILL ME,” JOLLY’S WIFE SAID.
And if it wasn’t true, you wouldn’t know it from looking at her. Her lower lip was busted and there was a bruise just below her right eye that seemed to be turning colors as she spoke. She was a pretty lady, Jolly’s wife, caramel-skinned and nicely built, but she didn’t look pretty today. No one who got into it with William “Jolly” Mokes ever did.
“That’s crazy,” Gunner said.
Because he didn’t think Jolly would go that far, number one, and because Jolly was his friend, number two. Or had been, once, back in the living nightmare that had been the Vietnam War. Long Binh, 1971. A thousand lifetimes ago.
“I’m tellin’ you, he is!” Jolly’s wife insisted. Gunner remembered now that her name was Grace.
They had only met once before, out at Jolly’s apartment down in San Pedro. He hadn’t even known Jolly was married. The two men hadn’t seen or spoken to each other since they’d both come home, which was just fine with Gunner, but then Jolly called him at the house one day, out of the blue, and kept right on calling after that. Not from his hometown of Oklahoma City, but from San Pedro, of all places. Two, three times a month the phone would ring, and there on the line would be Jolly, primed with liquor and bursting with melancholy, having nothing to say and taking all day to say it. He must have given Gunner his address a hundred times before Gunner finally agreed to come see him, thinking he was lying through his teeth, until he found himself in the car on the southbound side of the Harbor Freeway, pushing into the stench of freighters flooding the docks just outside Jolly’s front door.
He’d had no idea what he was doing or why he was doing it, but Gunner had gone all the same, to see a man he no longer wanted to know, to reminisce about a time he was desperate to forget. And to meet the wife. Grace. Gunner thought they made a nice couple. Jolly, big, dark, childishly plodding, and Grace, short, big-boned, soft-spoken. The field hand and the chambermaid. A natural combination.
That had been three weeks ago.
Discovering now that all was not well between them—that Jolly had the bad habit of slapping his wife around whenever the spirit moved him—was disconcerting, perhaps, but by no means surprising. Gunner had seen the way Jolly treated women before. Whereas most of the less scrupled grants Gunner knew could be satisfied just having their way with the occasional Vietnamese village girl or two, Jolly always had to throw his weight around, too. It was just his way. Giving him hell about it had been useless, and his COs always looked the other way, consoled by the fact he never seemed to hurt anyone seriously. There were, after all, more pressing matters for them to attend to.
Now, the battle scars on his wife’s face clearly proved that Jolly had brought this predilection for violence against women home with him, where it had probably originated in the first place. Some men needed a war to bring out the devil in them, and some men didn’t. Apparently, Jolly was one of those who could raise hell just fine without.
Not that it was any of Gunner’s business.
Jolly’s wife had a fat lip, and a mouse under one eye, but she wasn’t dead. She was perfectly capable of saving herself from the monster she was married to, if survival was really that important to her. She didn’t need a private investigator like Gunner to run interference for her. All she needed was a bus ticket.
“I can’t do that,” she said, shaking her head at the suggestion. “He’d find me.”
“Not if you did it right,” Gunner said.
“Please. Just talk to him for me. If you tell him to leave me alone, he will. He respects you.”
“Why should he respect me?”
“I don’t know. But he does. I can tell by the way he speaks your name.”
Gunner dropped his head and sighed. She wasn’t asking for much, she was just asking the wrong man. He’d had to see Jolly again to remember how little he cared for the man. Jolly had been an oafish, brutal jackass as a GI and he was still one today. What real friends Gunner had made in Vietnam were all dead now, and pretending Jolly had ever been one of them had been a mistake. A mistake Gunner would hardly rectify now by sticking his nose into Jolly’s affairs here at home.
So he told the wife he was sorry, but there was nothing he could do. Get a good lawyer, throw some things in a suitcase, and go see the folks back east, he said. Three times. When the recommendation finally stuck, the lady stood up, tucked her purse under one arm, and walked briskly out of his office.
He never saw Grace Mokes again.
Although he did catch a brief glimpse of her on TV two days later. Just a body under a sheet on a late-night local newscast. A couple of kids had found her under a freeway overpass in Long Beach early that morning and the coroner’s boys were just now carting her away. Jolly was already in custody, the voice-over said, having offered the police more confessions to the crime than the DA’s office would ever need to convict him.
To say that Gunner felt responsible for Grace Mokes’s fate would be an overstatement of the facts. He hadn’t told her to take the vows with Jolly any more than he’d told her to take the big man’s abuse for the two years that followed. She’d been standing in front of that runaway train for a long time, and it wasn’t Gunner’s fault that she’d waited until the last minute to try and get out of its way.
Hell, no.
Showing somebody the palms of your hands when they were looking for a way out of an open grave wasn’t murder. It just felt that way.
As it probably would, Gunner knew, for the rest of his miserable life.
one
THE FIRST MISTAKE BEST WAY ELECTRONICS MADE WAS giving Russell Dartmouth credit. The second was losing sight of him after he’d used it.
In two visits to the store, a converted retail shoe outlet on Central Avenue and 135th Street in North Compton, Dartmouth bought a nineteen-inch color TV, two VCRs, one bookshelf stereo system, and a pair of microwave ovens. Over $2,000 in merchandise, and all Best Way had to show for it was $47.18, the first and only payment Dartmouth ever made on the debt.
The three Best Way bills which followed went ignored, as did numerous phone calls to Dartmouth’s residence. Only once did someone at the store actually manage to speak with Dartmouth over the phone. Dartmouth made a host of assurances that some form of payment was forthcoming, then proceeded to completely disregard them. Best Way was never able to contact him again. First his phone was disconnected, then his mailing address went away. Best Way tried tracing him through his employer, B & L Tool and Die in Southgate, only to discover the firm had laid him off six days after he’d made his last Best Way purchase.
That’s when Roman Goody called Aaron Gunner.
Goody was the owner of Best Way, and the loss on Russell Dartmouth’s account was his alone to bear. As was the embarrassment of having ever allowed the machinist to leave the Best Way premises with so much as a pocket calculator in his possession. Goody had built Best Way’s reputation in the community on an all but foolhardy willingness to grant people credit when no one else would, so he was accustomed to getting burned now and then, but people like Dartmouth tried his patience. He could let folks miss a few payments on a four-hundred-dollar washing machine, he said, but there was no way he could allow a customer to take him for two thousand in electronics without completely losing face. Not to mention the two thousand dollars.
“It’s a helluva way to make a livin’,” the stumpy, fiftyis
h black man said, “but it works. I can’t offer people all the things the major chains can—price, service, selection—but I can sure as hell make it easier for ’em to buy. They appreciate that.” He clasped his hands over his belt buckle and threw himself farther back in his chair, making the giant coiled spring beneath its seat groan in distress. “Of course, every now and then, I get taken advantage of.”
Goody frowned and shrugged like this last didn’t really matter. He didn’t have the look of a particularly easy mark, Gunner decided, but he did look like someone you could try to screw over without fear of getting your teeth kicked in. He had the soft, unassuming body of a frog, round and fleshy everywhere, and his hair was an ongoing argument; it was dry and brittle and, against his better efforts, stood up on his head like a flag blowing against a stiff tailwind.
“I would like to believe Mr. Dartmouth made his purchases here in good faith, and merely fell on hard times,” Goody continued, “but I’m afraid that’s not the case. I think Mr. Dartmouth is a thief, and I want you to find him for me. Before people get the idea our generous credit policy here at Best Way can be similarly abused for fun and profit.”
“I understand,” Gunner said simply. The disheartening austerity of Goody’s office was beginning to get to him a little.
“So. How long do you think it will take?” Goody asked.
The investigator considered the question briefly, and then shrugged. “That’s hard to say. How long did you say he’s been missing?”
“About ninety days. Maybe a little longer than that. Last bill we sent out to him that didn’t get returned went out back in November sometime.” He consulted a document on his desk. “November twenty-fourth, to be exact.”
Gunner nodded and thought a moment. “It’s just a guess, but I’d think I could draw a bead on him in a week or two. Three at the most. Unless, of course—”
“A week of two? Are you joking?”
If it was a joke, Goody wasn’t laughing.
“Joking? No, I’m not joking.” Gunner could see what was coming with both eyes closed, and it wasn’t much fun to look at. “You had some other time frame in mind?”
“You damn sure better believe I did. I was thinkin’ more along the lines of three days, not three weeks. Who the hell can afford to pay you for three weeks?”
Gunner started to laugh. Slowly at first, then in earnest. Goody just watched him in silence, until the younger black man finally shook his head, rose up from his chair, and headed for the door.
“Hey! What the hell’s so funny?” Goody demanded, calling out after him.
Gunner stopped and turned around, holding Goody’s office door open in his left hand. He wasn’t laughing anymore, but he still found the round little man’s naiveté worth a smile. “Mr. Goody, I couldn’t find a lost dog in three days. And a lost dog wants to be found.”
Goody just stared at him.
“I tell you what. Keep your money. Maybe Dartmouth will turn up on his own, you never know.” He started to walk out again.
“Waitaminute, waitaminute. Hold on a minute! You’re gonna need more than three days, is that what you’re tryin’ to tell me?”
Once more, Gunner postponed his departure to turn and regard Goody directly. “I’m trying to tell you there’s no way to predict how much time I’m going to need. Depending on how well Dartmouth’s made himself disappear, I could find him next week, or never at all.”
“Never at all?”
“That’s right. There is always that possibility. Of course, that’s not very—”
Goody grunted derisively and, waving his right hand to shoo his guest out the door, said, “In that case, Mr. Gunner, don’t let me keep you, please. You obviously need to find yourself a richer client, and I need to find myself a more confident private investigator. No hard feelings.”
Gunner raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“You heard me. I am not a fool. I will not pay you to do nothing. My pockets are not that deep.”
“I see. I’m trying to scam you, is that what you think?”
“That is my impression, yes. You walk in here and talk about nothing but all the things you can’t do for me, instead of all the things you can. And I’m supposed to hire you anyway. Why? If you can’t promise me results, why in God’s name shouldn’t I just go out and look for Dartmouth myself?”
“Because you’re not a skip tracer, Mr. Goody. You’re a camcorder salesman,” Gunner said.
“But if you can’t find him any better than I can—”
“I never said that. What I said was that I can’t guarantee you anything. There’s a difference. Perhaps I should have explained to you what that difference is.”
This last comment was designed to make Goody feel stupid, and it achieved the desired effect. The store owner was shamed into silence.
“But look, I’m easy,” Gunner went on. “You’re right—I’m the detective and you’re the prospective client, whatever you want you should get. You tell me what you want to hear, and I’ll say it. You want guarantees, I’ll give you guarantees. Never mind that I won’t be able to make good on any of them. If it’s your preference to be disappointed later, rather than now, that’s your business, right?”
“It’s my preference not to be disappointed at all,” Goody said.
“Yes, well, disappointment sometimes comes with the territory, Mr. Goody. Skip tracing is not an exact science, it often takes a great deal of luck to locate a subject. And time. Generally, however, it takes neither. Generally, the man or woman you’re looking for turns up rather easily. I’d say the average time invested is about three weeks. Maybe Mr. Dartmouth would turn up sooner than that, who knows? But I’m not going to tell you now that he will, and then have you bitching and moaning to me later when he doesn’t. I don’t do business that way. I promise what I know I can deliver, and nothing more.
“So here’s the deal: I charge you a fair fee for my time, and then I charge you again for the results of that time, if and when there are any. If you still think that sounds like some kind of a rip-off …” He shrugged. “Then I guess you were right the first time. You need to find yourself another private investigator, and I need to find myself another client.”
Gunner struck a confident pose and waited for Goody to make up his mind.
Which apparently required the store owner to do little but return the investigator’s stare and twiddle his fingers, both in complete and unnerving silence. Gunner watched the fingers work to keep from going insane, meaty little stubs of flesh rolling about one another in a furious ballet of concentration. It was almost fascinating. But not quite.
“I’ll pay you for ten days,” Goody said at last, his voice weighed down by the humiliation of concession. “And if you haven’t found Dartmouth by then …” He didn’t bother to complete the sentence, knowing he didn’t have to. His meaning was clear.
“Fair enough,” Gunner said.
He closed Goody’s office door and sat back down.
There was a pay phone just around the corner from Best Way, outside a liquor store on Manchester Boulevard. In fact, there were two, but only one was working; the handset on the other was hanging from its shredded cord like the victim of a lynching, which, in a way, it was. Stripped of both its receiver and transmitter, it was only a plastic shell now, just one more slice of inoperative blight for the people of South-Central to get used to. The working phone, meanwhile, was in use, providing the means for a dark-skinned, fat woman with a thousand pink curlers in her hair to relate the story of her life to a girlfriend who, as near as Gunner could tell, never had a word to say of her own.
Fortunately, Gunner had no interest in the phones themselves, but in the directories that dangled beneath them. All but the lower third of the cover on the White Pages was missing, but what remained was enough to identify the volume as a relatively new one. Gunner opened the book and started flipping through it, hoping the page he needed would not be among those previous users had ripped out and walked a
way with like so many coupons in a neighborhood flier.
It wasn’t.
Three Dartmouths were listed in the book: Dartmouth, L.; Dartmouth, William B.; and Dartmouth, R. R., as in Robert, or Richard, or …
Russell?
Life was not supposed to be this good to anyone, but every now and then it honored Gunner with a gift, all wrapped up in fancy paper and tied with a bow. Go figure.
He snatched the page out of the book and rushed back to his car before the Fates could change their minds.
“You gonna tell him?” Howard Gaines asked, several hours later.
“Who? My client?”
Gaines nodded and grinned. Gunner knew damn well who he was talking about.
“Tell him what? That I’ve found an ‘R. Dartmouth’ in the phone book?” Gunner shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’ve gotta check it out first, make sure the ‘R’ doesn’t stand for Rodney, or Rachel. Something like that.”
Gaines laughed, risking the loss of what few healthy teeth remained anchored in his mouth. “Shit. You know what it stands for. You just tryin’ to keep the man on the clock a few more days, that’s all.” He gulped down the last of his beer—by Gunner’s count, his sixth of the night—and slid the empty bottle across the bar, toward the huge black woman in the dirty apron standing behind it. “Ain’t that right, Lilly?”
Lilly Tennell grunted, offering her usual response to most things said about Gunner. She and the investigator were friends of many years, but this was obvious to no one, least of all the two of them. The Acey Deuce was the lone point of commonality between them. Gunner liked to drink here, and Lilly liked having him do so. Not because she needed his business, exactly, but because her customers seemed to find him entertaining. Hell if she could figure out why.
Gunner, meanwhile, liked to think of Lilly as an overweight, overbearing, humorless example of Afro-American sisterhood wearing too much red lipstick. Other than that, she was great.
As was the Deuce itself—for a dump. The South-Central bar was ice cold in the winter and a steambath in the summer, as inviting to strangers as a lumpy mattress in a cheap motel room. Its mirrors were cracked and its chairs all listed to one side or another, and there wasn’t a red vinyl booth in the entire house that wasn’t coughing up balls of foam padding somewhere. But it felt like home. Everything about the Deuce was as dirt poor and bone tired as the people it shared the neighborhood with, so walking through its doors into the stifling despondency of its ambiance had a certain comfort to it.
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