Not Long for This World Read online

  Gunner decided it didn’t, after some deliberation, and said so.

  “How about Darrel Lovejoy? You ever hear of him?”

  This time Gunner nodded. “He was the anti-gangbanger who was murdered a few weeks back. The one the press made such a fuss over about a year ago. A couple of kids shot him in a drive-by, supposedly.”

  DeCharme nodded her own head, spilling a wisp of brilliant chestnut hair before her face. “That’s him. Founder and CEO of the L.A. Peace Patrol, one of the most successful anti-gang community-service organizations in the inner city. He and the Reverend Willie Raines ran the program together. He did some good work and turned a lot of bad kids around before he was murdered, but he pissed off just as many in the process, so you can imagine how thin the ice was he’d been skating on. Any one of the hundred or so youth gangs presently operating in the South-Central area could have ‘done’ him, as they say, and been thrilled to admit it.

  “Ordinarily, sorting through them all to find the gang actually responsible for his murder might represent a monumental task for the police to undertake, but this time around they’ve had some rather unusual help. It seems they’ve found a witness who’s positively identified the killers as members of the Imperial Blues, a local Cuz set active in the neighborhood in which Lovejoy was killed. Not far from your own neighborhood, if I’m not mistaken.”

  The observation didn’t seem to mean much to Gunner. “I believe so. Yeah.”

  “Then you are familiar with the Blues.”

  Gunner shrugged. “I know only what I can’t help but know. I bump into a few kids flashing their colors every now and then, and come across their spray-paint artwork from time to time.” He stopped short, making the connection belatedly. “This Mills kid was supposed to be a Blue, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s the one they have in custody? The trigger man?”

  “The alleged trigger man. Yes. His prints were among several found on a weapon the police turned up a few days after the murder, but that doesn’t make him the one who used it on Lovejoy. There’s only the testimony of Tamika Downs to imply that, and for my money, that kind of evidence leaves plenty of room for doubt.”

  “Downs is the witness?”

  DeCharme finished off her beer and nodded again. “She’s an unemployed barroom dancer with four kids to support and no past history of humanitarianism to speak of, yet she’s appeared out of nowhere to voluntarily identify Mills and a second Blue by the name of Rookie Davidson as the pair in the car. Which either makes her a very special lady or a very dishonest one, because I just can’t see it. I mean, since when do unwed welfare mothers of four like Downs put their asses on the line for a dead man?”

  “As a rule?” Gunner asked. “Never. But maybe she’s a special case.”

  DeCharme waited for him to explain.

  “You live in that part of the world—and I assume Downs does—you learn pretty fast that cooperating with the police in a murder case—especially one dealing with a gangbanger—is no way to enhance one’s life expectancy. But”—he shrugged and took a sip of his drink—“every now and then you come across somebody with no interest in the odds. Somebody who’s been hit too close to home and has decided they’ve had enough. Lovejoy was an unusual man. If Downs was among his many fans, her sudden show of good citizenship could figure.”

  DeCharme gave that some thought, momentarily forgetting to hold up her end of the conversation.

  “Maybe,” she said eventually, not sounding at all sold on the idea.

  Gunner tossed another generous shot of Wild Turkey down his throat and said, “I take it you’re either Mills’s or Davidson’s court-appointed attorney.”

  DeCharme rewarded his insight with a woefully hollow smile. “Give the man a cigar,” she said.

  “Mills is your client?”

  She nodded.

  “And Davidson?”

  She shook her head. “Davidson doesn’t need a lawyer—yet. As of this morning, he’s still at large. Which, you’ll no doubt be happy to know, finally brings me around to that point I promised almost an hour ago I’d get to.”

  She pushed her empty beer bottle aside to clear the space between them and leaned forward on her elbows to take advantage of it. “Toby Mills wasn’t in that car the night Darrel Lovejoy was murdered, Mr. Gunner. If Rookie Davidson was driving, he was playing chauffeur for someone else.”

  “Uh-huh. And who says that? Mills?”

  “That’s right. Says Mills. And I believe him. Don’t ask me why.”

  “No. I don’t think I will.”

  “He was out in his mother’s driveway changing the oil in his sister’s car when they arrested him, for Christ’s sake. That doesn’t sound like a guilty man to me.”

  “So if the gunman in the car wasn’t Mills, who was it?”

  “That’s where you come in. Because Mills doesn’t know. He can drop some names and make a few guesses, but that’s not going to buy him much, is it?”

  “You need Davidson.”

  “At this point, yes. He’s supposed to be something of a weak sister, just a junior flip; Mills says the police’ll have no trouble getting the truth out of him once he turns up.”

  She passed a photograph across the table toward him. It was a blown-up mug shot of Rookie Davidson, as the name across his chest advertised. He was a dark-skinned kid with a jheri-curl haircut and a frail goatee who looked about fifteen years old. If he had posed for such photos before, he had yet to harden from the experience; the expression on his face was the kind a man generally wore just prior to wetting his pants.

  “And if he doesn’t turn up?” Gunner asked.

  “We just need a name, Mr. Gunner. Proof of the real gunman’s identity. If you could manage to get that without Davidson’s help, that would be fine, of course.”

  Gunner smiled dourly. “Of course.”

  DeCharme saw the smile and said, “I say something wrong?”

  The black man rolled the ice cubes around in his glass absently, watching them play leapfrog in a shallow sea of thinning bourbon. “Generally speaking, Miss DeCharme,” he said, facing her again, “gangbangers aren’t my favorite people. I don’t much like their manners, or the heavy iron they’re so fond of demonstrating in public places. They kill children in sandboxes and grandmothers on porch swings in the never-ending process of killing themselves, and that kind of fatal inefficiency pisses me off no end. So I do what I can to see that our paths cross as rarely as possible. You know what I mean?”

  DeCharme said nothing, unwilling, at least for the moment, to argue with him.

  “While I’ve never met your client, I’d imagine he’s a hard-nosed little man-child I’d dislike immediately. Big and bad, cold to the bone, a master of the scathing, monosyllabic cry of social protest. Abusive and cynical; a postadolescent wound looking for a place to bleed.

  “The reason I don’t have to meet Mills to safely assume all this is because I deal with hoods like him every day, down in our little war-torn corner of the world. I see the bloody messes they make up close and personal, hours and sometimes days before they make the evening news. All it takes is a walk around the block, any time of day or night, whether I’m in the mood for the carnage or not.”

  “So what’s your point?”

  “My point is, I can’t see why I should have the slightest interest in what happens to your client, counselor. Can you? You want me to help such a fucked-up antisocialist get his act back out on the street—my street, remember—you’re going to have to explain my motivation for me.”

  “You have a job to do as a licensed operator for the state of California,” DeCharme said pointedly. “How’s that for motivation?”

  Gunner laughed, an abrupt, guttural edge to his voice turning heads around them. “I’m going to need a little more incentive than that, lady,” he said.

  “I’ll pay you what you’re worth, for as long as it takes. That’s incentive enough for most people.”

&nb
sp; Gunner’s laughter ground abruptly to a halt. “Maybe. But you’re not trying to hire most people. You’re trying to hire me. And the thing about me is, I have to give a damn about the people I represent. Otherwise, I do piss-poor work, believe me,”

  The public defender stood up quickly, fished through her purse, and tossed a twenty-dollar bill on the table. “In that case, Mr. Gunner, I’m afraid I’ve wasted your time. Because Toby Mills obviously fails to meet your high standards in people. And quite frankly, you fail to meet mine.”

  She said the last in passing, already executing a fast retreat. Gunner had to do some serious hustling to catch up with her out on the sidewalk, where she stood at the curb waiting for traffic to clear on Grand, trying to get back to the courthouse. It was after 6 P.M. and the sky was growing dark, giving up the ghost of day ever so grudgingly. DeCharme seemed not to notice Gunner at her side.

  “Guess I blew the interview back there,” Gunner said dryly.

  “Don’t worry yourself about it,” DeCharme said, eyeing the street. “I should never have come to you in the first place. We have our own detectives. One of them will help me.”

  Gunner shook his head. “You don’t want to deal with those clowns.”

  “No,” DeCharme agreed. “I don’t. They’re overworked and not very good. But they’re at least willing to deal with me, and that’s something, isn’t it?” She turned to him at last, glowering. “Toby Mills is twenty-two years old, Mr. Gunner. He’s just a child, to most people’s way of thinking. He has time to wise up, to turn his life around. Yet you want to write him off, sight unseen, because you think you know him and every kid like him like the back of your proverbial hand. Well, join the club.” She clapped her hands sarcastically. “The world’s full of experts like you. And they’re all just as amenable to seeing the poor bastard hang for one thing or another … even if it has to be something he didn’t do.”

  “That’s a big ‘if,’” Gunner said defensively.

  “Not for me it isn’t. I’ve spoken to Mills. Have you?”

  Her eyes wouldn’t leave his, throwing down the gauntlet, and he could actually feel himself diminishing under the weight of her gaze.

  “No,” he told her reluctantly. “Not yet.”

  He took the public defender’s arm and led her across the street.

  chapter two

  The prisoner-visitation room at the Los Angeles County Jail facility on Bauchete Street in the heart of downtown was a three-ring circus, sans clowns, at noon the next day, a Friday.

  The room was bad enough any other day of the week, the heavyset, baby-faced guard at the door said, but Fridays were always the worst. For the endless procession of prisoners and visitors that packed the little room to its maximum capacity from dawn to dusk, it was harder to be on the inside looking out on Fridays, and almost as hard to be on the outside looking in. The weekend was waiting, two days of endless promise under the bright light of Southern California sunshine, and the incarcerated were all too aware of the pleasures, both sacred and profane, of which they were about to be deprived. Tempers were short on Fridays, and physical violence was not uncommon. Sexual frustrations, erupting on either side of the conference tables, often led to some steamy and embarrassing scenes.

  The garrulous young guard grinned at Gunner wolfishly. “Real embarrassing,” he said.

  Gunner and DeCharme were assigned to the only vacant hardwood table at the south end of the room’s long, evenly spaced row of six, near a pair of barred windows and the warm wash of sunlight they provided. They sat down on the cold aluminum of some cheap folding chairs at the table and took in the crowded room while waiting for Toby Mills to be escorted in. As a motley crew of gray- and blue-garbed prisoners conferred with friends and family, lawyers and accomplices, a pool of mixed voices speaking several different’ languages splashed off the flatlatexed walls and rolled through the stale, smoke-filled air, rising and falling in volume like an eccentric ocean tide. Through the din, Gunner found himself eavesdropping on the Hispanic couple at the next table, who were engaged in a heated, bilingual debate on the merits of grand theft auto; the uniformed inmate was defending the practice in English, while his portly, swarthy wife was soundly denouncing it en español.

  Before a winner of the pair’s exchange could be established, a lean black guard with a clean-shaven head dropped Toby Mills into the chair opposite Gunner and DeCharme, acting not unlike a man taking out the garbage. He frowned at DeCharme, frowned harder at Gunner, then moved off again, having made not even the most casual of introductions. Gunner watched him come to rest not far away, at a spot along one wall where their table could be easily observed; he made himself comfortable there and grew still, his eyes never leaving Mills for a minute.

  “He don’t like me,” Mills said gleefully.

  Gunner turned his attention from the guard to appraise DeCharme’s client, without concern for discretion. Mills let him look, enjoying the spotlight. He was just short of average height, somewhere around five seven or five eight, with jet-black skin, lady-killer eyes, and an iron-man build too well-defined for his undersized blue prison blouse to conceal. He had high cheekbones and small ears, and his hair was cut to an all-but-invisible length all the way around, with the exception of a tiny rat’s tail hanging at the back of his head. His teeth were good, but his gums were discolored, and a meandering scar drew an ugly tan line from the corner of his mouth to the edge of his earlobe on the left side of his face. The scar did a dance whenever he smiled, and he looked like the kind of man who did a lot of smiling, for nothing but the worst possible reasons.

  Gunner was immediately able to see the guard’s problem with him.

  “Who’s this nosy motherfucker?” Mills asked DeCharme curiously, eyeing Gunner with the kind of amusement most people reserved for circus clowns.

  “This is Aaron Gunner, Toby. The private investigator we talked about earlier.” DeCharme was blushing slightly, and she glanced briefly in Gunner’s direction, apologizing.

  “No shit,” Mills said.

  “Toby, I’ve hired Mr. Gunner to find Rookie. He’s on bur side, all right?”

  “Oh, yeah. I hear you. He’s a cop, but he’s on our side. He’s here to help.”

  “Yes.” DeCharme glared at him, the cords in her neck pulled taut and hard.

  Feigning boredom, Mills yawned and said, “So how’s he gonna do that? Man ain’t asked me shit yet. How the fuck he gonna help me, he don’t never ask me nothin’?”

  His eyes were on Gunner, and the scar on his cheek was dancing again. DeCharme turned and joined him in waiting for Gunner’s response, encouraging the detective to take the floor with a light shrug of her shoulders.

  Gunner absorbed Mills’s indignant grin with great restraint, his own expression a masterpiece of neutrality. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely audible above the room’s throbbing wall of sound.

  “How fast do you heal, sweet pea?” he asked Mills.

  “Say what?”

  DeCharme bit down hard on her lower lip.

  “I take this chair I’m sitting in and crack your skull with it,” Gunner said, “how long you think you’ll be laid up? A few weeks? Five or six months, maybe?”

  Mills’s scar stopped dancing. Gunner pulled his chair up closer to the table and said, “I think you’d better give it some thought. Because your ‘homeboy without a cause’ routine is weak, and if I hear another ten seconds of it, I’m going to jack your smart ass up and explain it any way I want, with your partner over there as my star witness.” He nodded his head at the guard who had dropped Mills off at the table; the bald man in the crisp Sheriff’s Department uniform was still watching their conference with open interest. “Or do you think he’d side with you?”

  Mills didn’t answer. He sat in silence and allowed the last glint of charm to dissolve from his face like a serpent shedding its skin. He stiffened in his chair and glared at Gunner with eyes narrowed down to mere slivers of white, fingering the edge of the
table with both hands, battling indecision.

  Gunner and DeCharme let him have all the time he needed to make up his mind.

  “What you wanna know?” he asked Gunner finally.

  “For starters, where were you the night Lovejoy was killed?”

  Mills looked at DeCharme. “She ain’t told you that?”

  “I’m not asking her. I’m asking you. I’d like to see if you still remember how the story goes.”

  Mills shrugged. “I was with a friend.”

  “Be more specific.”

  “You mean, what was her name?”

  Gunner nodded.

  “Sharice Phillips. My girlfriend. Me an’ Sharice was together that night. You can ask her.”

  “Together where? Doing what?”

  “We was at the movies. At the Baldwin theater, up in Baldwin Hills. They got three screens at the Baldwin.”

  “Tell me what you saw,” Gunner said.

  Mills made the scar quaver anew, seemingly remembering. “We seen a little of everythin’. We seen some of that new Sylvester Stallone movie, Heavy Artillery; we seen some of this love-story flick, I forget what they call it; and we seen almost all of that stupid-ass Friday the Thirteenth, Part Eight, or Nine, or whatever number they up to now. I think it’s Eight. Yeah, Eight.”

  “So you were bouncing from screen to screen.”

  “Yeah. Right. From screen to screen.”

  “Anybody see you who might remember it? The cashier in the booth out front, or an usher, maybe?”

  Mills shook his head. “Didn’t nobody workin’ there see us that night. We didn’t see no cashier, ’cause we snuck in the side door, like we always do. And we didn’t see no ushers, ’cause we didn’t wanna see none. I didn’t wanna have to bust nobody up if one of ’em tried to say somethin’ ’bout us not havin’ no tickets, or ’bout us sneakin’ in all the theaters, some shit like that.”

  “You have any idea how long you were there? From what time to what time?”

  Again, Mills shrugged indifferently. “We was there all night, is all I know. From ’bout eight o’clock ’til they closed, I guess.”